father died when I was very little. He was one of those optimists who are always going to be rich tomorrow. When he found one day that his speculations had not left even enough for a loaf of bread on the morrow, he committed suicide and left Mother to face things.”
Robert felt that this to some extent explained Mrs. Sharpe.
“I was not trained for a profession, so my life has been spent in odd-jobs. Not domestic ones – I loathe domesticity – but helping in those lady-like businesses that abound in Kensington. Lampshades, or advising on holidays, or flowers, or bric-à-brac. When old Mr. Crowle died I was working in a tea-shop – one of those morning-coffee gossip shops. Yes, it is a little difficult.”
“What is?”
“To imagine me among the tea-cups.”
Robert, unused to having his mind read – Aunt Lin was incapable of following anyone’s mental processes even when they were explained to her – was disconcerted. But she was not thinking of him.
“We had just begun to feel settled down, and at home, and safe, when this happened.”
For the first time since she had asked his help Robert felt the stirring of partisanship. “And all because a slip of a girl needs an alibi,” he said. “We must find out more about Betty Kane.”
“I can tell you one thing about her. She is over-sexed.”
“Is that just feminine intuition?”
“No. I am not very feminine and I have no intuition. But I have never known anyone – man or woman – with that colour of eye who wasn’t. That opaque dark blue, like a very faded navy – it’s infallible.”
Robert smiled at her indulgently. She was very feminine after all.
“And don’t feel superior because it happens not to be lawyers’ logic,” she added. “Have a look round at your own friends, and see.”
Before he could stop himself he thought of Gerald Blunt, the Milford scandal. Assuredly Gerald had slate-blue eyes. So had Arthur Wallis, the potman at The White Hart, who was paying three different monetary levies weekly. So had— Damn the woman, she had no right to make a silly generalisation like that and be right about it.
“It is fascinating to speculate on what she really did during that month,” Marion said. “It affords me intense satisfaction that someone beat her black and blue. At least there is one person in this world who has arrived at a correct estimate of her. I hope I meet him someday, so that I may shake his hand.”
“Him?”
“With those eyes it is bound to be a ‘him’.”
“Well,” Robert said, preparing to go, “I doubt very much whether Grant has a case that he will want to present in court. It would be the girl’s word against yours, with no other backing on either side. Against you would be her statement; so detailed, so circumstantial. Against her would be the inherent unlikeliness of the story. I don’t think he could hope to get a verdict.”
“But the thing is there, whether he brings it into court or not. And not only in the files of Scotland Yard. Sooner or later a thing like that begins to be whispered about. It would be no comfort to us not to have the thing cleared up.”
“Oh, it will be cleared up, if I have anything to do with it. But I think we wait for a day or two to see what the Yard mean to do about it. They have far better facilities for arriving at the truth than we are ever likely to have.”
“Coming from a lawyer, that is a touching tribute to the honesty of the police.”
“Believe me, truth may be a virtue, but Scotland Yard discovered long ago that it is a business asset. It doesn’t pay them to be satisfied with anything less.”
“If he did bring it to court,” she said, coming to the door with him, “and did get a verdict, what would that mean for us?”
“I’m not sure whether it would be two years’ imprisonment or seven years penal servitude. I told you I was a broken reed where criminal procedure is concerned. But I shall look it up.”
“Yes, do,” she said. “There’s quite a difference.”
He decided that he liked her habit of mockery. Especially in the face of a criminal charge.
“Goodbye,” she said. “It was kind of you to come. You have been a great comfort to me.”
And Robert, remembering how nearly he had thrown her to Ben Carley, blushed to himself as he walked to the gate.
Chapter 4
“Have you had a busy day, dear?” Aunt Lin asked, opening her table napkin and arranging it across her plump lap.
This was a sentence that made sense but had no meaning. It was as much an overture to dinner as the spreading of her napkin, and the exploratory movement of her right foot as she located the footstool which compensated for her short legs. She expected no answer; or rather, being unaware that she had asked the question, she did not listen to his answer.
Robert looked up the table at her with a more conscious benevolence than usual. After his uncharted step-picking at The Franchise, the serenity of Aunt Lin’s presence was very comforting, and he looked with a new awareness at the solid little figure with the short neck and the round pink face and the iron-grey hair that frizzed out from its large hairpins. Linda Bennet led a life of recipes, film stars, god-children, and church bazaars, and found it perfect. Well-being and contentment enveloped her like a cloak. She read the Women’s Page of the daily paper (How To Make A Boutonnière From Old Kid Gloves) and nothing else as far as Robert was aware. Occasionally when she tidied away the paper that Robert had left lying about, she would pause to read the headlines and comment on them. (“MAN ENDS EIGHTY-TWO DAY FAST”—Silly creature! “OIL DISCOVERY IN BAHAMAS”—Did I tell you that paraffin is up a penny, dear?) But she gave the impression of never really believing that the world the papers reported did in fact exist. The world for Aunt Lin began with Robert Blair and ended within a ten-mile radius of him.
“What kept you so late tonight, dear?” she asked, having finished her soup.
From long experience Robert recognised this as being in a different category from: “Have you had a busy day, dear?”
“I had to go out to The Franchise – that house on the Larborough road. They wanted some legal advice.”
“Those odd people? I didn’t know you knew them.”
“I didn’t. They just wanted my advice.”
“I hope they pay you for it, dear. They have no money at all, you know. The father was in some kind of importing business – monkey-nuts or something – and drank himself to death. Left them without a penny, poor things. Old Mrs. Sharpe ran a boarding-house in London to make ends meet, and the daughter was maid-of-all-work. They were just going to be turned into the street with their furniture, when the old man at The Franchise died. So providential!”
“Aunt Lin! Where do you get those stories?”
“But it’s true, dear. Perfectly true. I forget who told me – someone who had stayed in the same street in London – but it was first-hand, anyhow. I am not one to pass on idle gossip, as you know. Is it a nice house? I always wondered what was inside that
