Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair. Джозефина Тэй

yes, Inspector. We have no intention of going anywhere.”

      If Grant was aware of her too-ready comprehension he did not show it.

      He handed over the girl to the matron and they left without a backward glance. Then he and Hallam took their leave, Hallam still with an air of apologising for trespass.

      Marion had gone out into the hall with them, leaving Blair in the drawing-room, and when she came back she was carrying a tray with sherry and glasses.

      “I don’t ask you to stay for dinner,” she said, putting down the tray and beginning to pour the wine, “partly because our ‘dinner’ is usually a very scratch supper and not at all what you are used to. (Did you know that your aunt’s meals are famous in Milford? Even I had heard about them.) And partly because – well, because, as my mother said, Broadmoor is a little out of your line, I expect.”

      “About that,” Robert said. “You do realise, don’t you, that the girl has an enormous advantage over you. In the matter of evidence, I mean. She is free to describe almost any object she likes as being part of your household. If it happens to be there, that is strong evidence for her. If it happens not to be there, that is not evidence for you; the inference is merely that you have got rid of it. If the suitcases, for instance, had not been there, she could say that you had got rid of them because they had been in the attic and could be described.”

      “But she did describe them, without ever having seen them.”

      “She described two suitcases, you mean. If your four suitcases had been a matching set she would have only one chance in perhaps five of being right. But because you happened to have one of each of the common kinds her chances worked out at about even.”

      He picked up the glass of sherry that she had set down beside him, took a mouthful, and was astonished to find it admirable.

      She smiled a little at him and said: “We economise, but not on wine,” and he flushed slightly, wondering if his surprise had been as obvious as that.

      “But there was the odd wheel of the car. How did she know about that? The whole set-up is extraordinary. How did she know about my mother and me, and what the house looked like? Our gates are never open. Even if she opened them – though what she could be doing on that lonely road I can’t imagine – even if she opened them and looked inside she would not know about my mother and me.”

      “No chance of her having made friends with a maid? Or a gardener?”

      “We have never had a gardener, because there is nothing but grass. And we have not had a maid for a year. Just a girl from the farm who comes in once a week and does the rough cleaning.”

      Robert said sympathetically that it was a big house to have on her hands unaided.

      “Yes; but two things help. I am not a house-proud woman. And it is still so wonderful to have a home of our own that I am willing to put up with the disadvantages. Old Mr. Crowle was my father’s cousin, but we didn’t know him at all. My mother and I had always lived in a Kensington boarding-house.” One corner of her mouth moved up in a wry smile. “You can imagine how popular Mother was with the residents.” The smile faded. “My 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