Honourable Intentions

7

Ranklin was waiting in Noah Quinton’s outer office when the solicitor bustled in at a quarter past nine the next morning. He stopped abruptly when he saw Ranklin, then said: “Yes, you’d better come in,” and bustled on through.

As Ranklin had half expected, Quinton’s office was not just grand, but self-consciously so. There was nothing in it that a long-established and successful solicitor might not have in the way of antique desk, Turkish carpet, silver ashtrays and client chairs covered in dark green plush, but they should have been stained and worn, as if the owner didn’t think or care about them. Quinton obviously cared, and you didn’t want to be the first to spill coffee or drop cigar-ash.

“I suppose,” Quinton said, unpacking papers from a briefcase on to his desk, “that I have you to thank for a new client. I’m getting a little too old to be hauled from my bed in the early hours, but the Mrs Finn connection is . . . welcome, shall we say?”

Ranklin, sitting uneasily in an easy chair, just smiled.

“I suppose you want to know what happened.” Quinton sat down and automatically shifted his chair by fractions of an inch to just how he liked it. “Well, it’s not privileged . . . The police haven’t charged Ma’mselle Collomb with anything, they’d only detained her but were clearly going to hang on to her for as long as they could. I got her released on bail, put up by Mrs Finn, who’s now looking after her.”

Ranklin frowned; he hadn’t expected that, and Corinna wouldn’t have, either. He was going to hear more about it. Considerably more.

“The police objected to Ma’mselle Collomb going back to her Bloomsbury address. They made it out to be a community -” a very suspect word, that, “- of intellectual depravity. My own brief impression of Ma’mselle Collomb is that she could teach any Bloomsbury intellectual more about depravity than he could stomach – but that’s neither here nor there. So she’s now officially in the care of Mrs Finn.”

“Did Ma’mselle Collomb say anything interesting?” Ranklin asked casually. “Or tell the police anything?”

Quinton looked at him warily, but Ranklin was all boyish innocence. So Quinton said: “I wouldn’t say so . . . The police didn’t even seem certain that Guillet’s death was murder.”

“They can’t be,” Ranklin said. “Death was due to a mixture of asphyxia and shock. Not enough water in the lungs and stomach for drowning. There had been a heavy blow to the head, above the right ear, some time before death, but it’ll take more time to work out if it was long enough to suggest he’d been deliberately whacked. It might have been him hitting a moored boat or river steps – they don’t even know where he went into the water. He hadn’t got enough alcohol in him to have been drunk.”

After a time, Quinton said: “I suppose I hadn’t better ask you where you got such remarkably exact information.”

“Take it as some small recompense for having to get up so early.” And for what was to come.

Quinton nodded, quickly, birdlike. “So it may be that the police can persuade the coroner to write it off as an accident if they can’t induce anyone to confess to it. Or does your behind-the-scenes knowledge give you a different opinion?”

“We have professionally suspicious minds,” Ranklin said, “so naturally we incline to murder. But I suppose accidents do happen, even to important witnesses in the middle of a case. And concerning that, what’s going to happen now Guillet’s dead?”

Mention of the case made Quinton look at his watch; there was a clock on the wall, but it looked too expensively antique to be trusted. “That’s up to the magistrate. The French will fight tooth and nail to keep Langhorn in custody until they can come up with something, and I shall fight just as hard to have the matter wound up. Knowing this magistrate, I think he’ll adjourn until Monday now, and hope for divine guidance over the sabbath.

“But remember, even if Langhorn’s freed, he won’t have been declared innocent. Extradition isn’t about guilt or innocence, so there’s no double jeopardy involved. The French could ask for him to be re-arrested on new evidence – if they can find it.”

“And if they can find him,” Ranklin mused. “I’d think he’d be off home to America like a shot from a gun.”

Quinton nodded. “And America won’t extradite one of its own citizens.”

But did the Bureau want young Grover – and presumably his mother – landing in America stony-broke and looking to raise cash from the American scandal sheets? Incautiously, he said: “I’m not sure we’d like that, either.”

“I’m sorry if that displeases you,” Quinton said, dryly sarcastic. “Does that mean that you’ve been investigating further, and found there was something to investigate?”

But it had to come to this anyway, and this was one of the reasons Ranklin had come, though it still wasn’t going to be easy. “I was down in Portsmouth yesterday looking for traces of Mrs Langhorn, the boy’s mother. There was a Portsmouth address on the marriage certificate. I had to have some sort of excuse so I, er, said I was working for you.”

“Did you?” Quinton considered this. “And did you learn anything?”

“Nothing of relevance to Grover Langhorn’s case.”

“Oh? I think I might be the better judge of that.”

Ranklin said nothing. Quinton leant forward, chin on hands, elbows on desk, expression stern. “Let me see if I’ve got this right: without my permission, you posed as an investigator working for me, but you won’t tell me what you found out – is that correct?”

No, it was not going to be easy. Ranklin did his best at a disarming smile; at least his features ran to that. “Well, more or less, but-”

“Captain Ranklin -” Quinton threw himself back in his chair “- when we first met, I assumed you must be Palace officials or liaison between them and the Prime Minister. I’m sure such people exist, and it seemed quite reasonable that, moving in the circles she does, Mrs Finn should know them. It seems I underestimated the width of her acquaintance; judging from your behaviour, I do believe that you and your precious Commander are from the Secret Service.”

It was said with such contempt that Ranklin recoiled. He knew that the Bureau and spying generally weren’t held in high regard, but what right had a Jew lawyer to sneer at him? Then he recoiled again, only inwardly this time, and took a hasty glance at his own prejudices. He hadn’t (he told himself) been despising Quinton for being . . . well, what he was. But perhaps he had been secretly hoping the man would do or say something so that he could despise him anyway.

“Or, at the very least,” Quinton added, “take it that your conduct leads me to that conclusion.”

Ranklin squeezed out a smile. “If we were what you suggest, then obviously we’d deny it. But whoever we are, you must have known we’d have to follow this up in a rather surreptitious manner. And I thought you were happy to remain ignorant of that and concentrate on the legal end.”

“True. But I then believed, rashly it seems, that you could do such following without pretending that I was behind it. So in effect, you’ve been spreading the idea that I sought and have now got knowledge that I didn’t seek and haven’t, in fact, got. What sort of position does that leave me in?”

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“I wish I had a penny for every time someone has told me, in this very office, that there was ‘nothing to worry about’ or so-and-so ‘wouldn’t do that’ and so on. My whole professional life is worrying about such things. Trying to make legally sure of things my clients are certain about already. Believe me, they shriek loud enough when I fail. So unless you tell me exactly what you’ve learnt, I’m sure you’ll understand that I reserve my position on this.”

Sounding pained and almost offended, Ranklin said: “I am working for the government.”

“And I’m working for my client, Grover Langhorn.”

After that, Ranklin decided not to ask for a lift to Bow Street in Quinton’s motor-car.

When Ranklin arrived by taxi at Bow Street’s wide pavement, it looked like old home week. Quinton’s Lanchester was parked at the kerb again and he had presumably already gone in. Corinna’s father’s Daimler, similarly Pullman-bodied, was parked just behind and Corinna herself was chatting to Lieutenant Jay. In the background, wearing a shabby tweed suit and cap, O’Gilroy was leaning against a wall.

You had to admire how he did that. He wasn’t skulking or trying to look invisible. He just leant there, smoking an interminable stub of a hand-rolled cigarette, half-wrapped in his own concerns, half conscious of the world around, and wholly ready to tell it to bugger off and mind its own business.

It was a good day for leaning on walls: fine and bright and perhaps a shade warmer than the day before.

Jay asked: “D’you want me to go in or are you?”

“You go.” And Jay darted inside.

Corinna said: “Good morning,” in a tone that suggested Ranklin was to do the rest of the talking and had better make it good.

“I’m most frightfully sorry that you had to take over Berenice. I had no idea . . . But I’m very grateful. Er – where is she, by the way?”

Corinna jerked her head, almost dislodging her matador hat. “In there, watching the boy-friend come up – or go down – for the umpteenth time. Is anything going to happen?”

“Quinton doubts it. Umm . . . I imagine you had a rather busy night?”

“I imagine I had a totally loused-up night. Getting up and flogging down to Scotland Yard just to be ignored by pompous policemen and given cups of what they think is tea . . . I’ll say this for Noah Quinton, he knows how to handle those bastards. They don’t like him, but they run scared of him . . . And then having to speak French to that . . . that-God Almighty, the girl is a complete slut. And d’you think she has a word of thanks for it all? She despises me! Thinks I’m the ‘idle rich’ – idle! After a night of running around promising God-knows-what for her on top of a busy day . . .

“It’ll take more than Professor Higgins to make a duchess out of that squashed cabbage leaf.” Shaw’s Pygmalion had just opened at His Majesty’s and its characters had already passed into the language.

“Well,” Ranklin said, “I can’t say how grateful-”

“You can try!”

“Er – are you stuck with her indefinitely?”

“It seems like it – until your wonderful police say different. We’re going round to Bloomsbury when this is over to collect her things.”

Ranklin was a bit surprised to hear that Berenice actually had any “things”. But perhaps even the inhabitants of La Villette might own more than they could wear at one time.

“D’you want to take O’Gilroy with you?” he offered. “Just on general grounds.”

“No, Bloomsbury isn’t the East End. It sounds like a bunch of half-assed artists being anarchists on money from home.” It was the wrong morning for anyone to expect the benefit of the doubt from Corinna.

Then there was an eruption at the court door and several obvious journalists rushed off towards Fleet Street. It hadn’t taken long, but clearly something had happened. Ranklin had already guessed what when Jay came out to report: “Adjourned. The police say they’re treating the meat porter’s death as murder.”

Ranklin had instinctively stepped away from Corinna to listen to him; now, they both watched as Berenice Collomb shuffled up to Corinna. Her very pace was sullen, as if she were going from one funeral to another. Ranklin saw Corinna’s face set into a wide, false smile.

“So that’s Paris’s answer to Eliza Dolittle?” Jay observed. Trust him to have seen the latest play. “I saw her around yesterday.”

“You didn’t see-” Ranklin began, then saw him for himself. Gorkin, wearing the same check suit and foreign-looking hat, came out, smiled at Ranklin, then vanished round the corner into Broad Court. Ranklin thought about nodding O’Gilroy to follow, but that would just be make-work; he had Gorkin’s address anyway.

Corinna was ushering Berenice into the car, relaying instructions to the chauffeur, driving off.

“What d’you want me to do now?” Jay asked.

“Did the police say anything more about Guillet than just murder?”

“Pursuing various lines of enquiry, that’s all.”

“See what else you can dig up. Here or through the Yard. Try and be in the office around lunchtime.”

Jay, looking like a playboy who has unaccountably got up before noon, moved off to deploy his rakish charm. That left Ranklin, who wanted a word with Quinton, and the unacknowledged O’Gilroy. Since Ranklin hadn’t the Irishman’s talent for loitering, it was lucky that, after almost a week of sunshine, other Londoners had finally decided they could risk simply standing around in the open air.

It was twenty minutes before Quinton came out, and Ranklin intercepted him. The solicitor seemed quite ready to speak to him, smiling in a somewhat interrogatory way, and letting Ranklin lead off.

“I gather that the police now have Guillet chalked up as murder?”

“They must have got a new pathologist’s report.”

“Is that good or bad for Ma’mselle Collomb?”

Quinton shrugged. “I believe he was struck a quite heavy blow – for but an iron bar would do that by itself, you wouldn’t need much strength. If they knew this happened some distance from the river, that would imply a slip of a girl dragging a heavy manthat distance – which is unlikely. But if it happened at the top of some landing steps, all she’d need do is roll him down them.”

“D’you think they’ll ever find out where?”

“It seems highly unlikely now, after two days. Unless they find a witness, which would add a whole new dimension anyway.”

For a moment, Ranklin thought of producing such a witness, and wasn’t even shocked at himself. But that would call for very careful scripting – certainly better than Guillet himself had got. “And for how long does Mrs Finn have to nursemaid her?”

“Until the police have lost interest in her, I’m afraid. Or changed the terms of her bail.”

“Are they likely to call her in for more questioning?”

“Not until they’ve got far more to go on, now they know they’ve got me to deal with.” Which was perfectly reasonable, but could have been said more humbly.

Ranklin nodded vaguely. There didn’t seem much more to say.

But Quinton went on: “I had a little talk with my client.” He paused, smiling. “Aren’t you going to ask me what he said?”

Ranklin just nodded, but felt lead in his stomach.

“He told me about his putative father. I can now see, I confess, why your people have been acting as you have. But that does not, to my mind, excuse your interference in the legal process.”

Ranklin thought quickly back. As far as he could recall, the legal process was about the one thing they hadn’t interfered with. Yet. “Sorry, but I don’t follow.”

Quinton adopted a foursquare stance in front of him, a bit like an outraged bantam. Oddly, Ranklin only now noticed they were much the same height. Usually he was very conscious of men’s heights.

“Word has seeped out,” Quinton said, “that if this case goes to the King’s Bench on a writ of habeas corpus, it is to be heard by judges who are sympathetic to the boy’s plight – for or at least theKing’s.”

The Palace. The damned Palace.

Ranklin shook his head slowly. “Not our doing, I’m afraid. We simply don’t have that sort of influence.”

Quinton eyed him closely. “I’m certainly glad to hear that – and on balance, I’m inclined to believe you. I suppose,” he mused, “you’d have to tell someone closer to the King that . . . yes, I think I see what would have happened. But Captain, I believe I am doing a good job of representing my client, and have a reasonable chance of getting the case against him dismissed on grounds that even the French authorities will accept. I can manage very well without string-pulling in high places, and especially the implication that I need that. Perhaps you can find a way of passing that on.”

“If the opportunity arises, yes.”

“And in regard to what I learnt from my client, I can assure you that I am not breaking any confidences.” Quinton seemed anxious to prove his own legal virginity. “He spoke out because he’s concerned that nothing seemed to be happening in that area. I said that I was sure steps were being taken.”

“Did he have a view about Guillet’s death?”

“Oh yes. He believes that was punishment for Guillet failing to tell his lies properly. And that the capitalist sheepdogs at the Prefecture must be rehearsing a new witness to take his place.

“Single-minded little bugger, isn’t he?” But Ranklin’s vehemence was aimed at more than just Langhorn.

Quinton smiled coldly. “You might tell your Commander Smith that I’ll be in my chambers the rest of the day, if he wishes to speak to me.” He got into his limousine.

Ranklin watched it go, saying several un-bright-spring-day things under his breath. Trying to stifle this scandal was like trying to stop ripples on water . . . And they couldn’t even be sure whether it was true, dammit.

He was about to nod O’Gilroy off duty when Corinna’s Daimler rushed back down the street, stopped with a jerk, and she jumped out long before the chauffeur could get round to the door.

“That bloody little tramp! She’s shut herself in a room there and won’t come back with me! Can I let the police have her back? Never mind the bail, I just want shot of her.”

Ranklin made soothing noises whilst thinking quickly. There wasn’t time to check with the Commander, he had to act himself.

He pointed up the street, as if giving her directions, and muttered: “This isn’t for your benefit, I’m trying to instruct O’Gilroy. Ah, he’s got it.”

The shabby figure was moving away at a slouching amble.

“Right, get the motor-car turned round, we’ll pick him up further along.”

In the dingier and less public surroundings of Endell Street, Ranklin swung the door open, O’Gilroy stepped in, and they zoomed off. Well, not zoomed, in a Daimler, but definitely hurried – through the wide tangle of traffic near the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, across New Oxford Street and up Bloomsbury Street. By then O’Gilroy knew as much or as little as there was to tell.

“What’s the address of this place?” Ranklin asked.

“14 Bloomsbury Gardens.” He knew that address, and checked with a card in his wallet: it was the one Gorkin had given him.

He hadn’t time to work out what that meant. “Are you armed?” he asked O’Gilroy and got a nod. That meant a .38 semi-automatic Browning: O’Gilroy was a modernist in these matters.

“Good, but keep it out of sight until I say so.”

It was a middle-middle class area which the young of the upper class regarded as daringly slummy. Most of it was squares like this: rows of tall, narrow terraced houses that had been built of yellow brick now black with London’s soot (like the rest of London), around a private but communal garden across the road. There were no front gardens, just a handful of steps leading up from the pavement to the front door, which had a fanlight above to align it with the tall windows.

Ranklin pressed the bell. After a while the door was opened by a tall young woman. It took a moment for Ranklin to decide that anarchists wouldn’t have maidservants, so she couldn’t be one. She had long, very definite pre-Raphaelite features and gingery hair drawn back into a bun. She wore a pale violet garment like a smock that went straight from ankle to throat without being visibly distracted.

She looked past Ranklin at the Daimler. “And who would you be?” Her voice was light, pleasant, educated.

“We’ve come to collect Ma’mselle Collomb.”

“She doesn’t want to go.”

Ranklin nodded. “The problem is, the police released her from custody to Mrs Finn. They think they’ve got first call on her. So, if Mrs Finn doesn’t get her, the police will.”

“That will be an example of police oppression.”

“Did you want an example?”

That hadn’t been the expected answer. She frowned.

Ranklin went on: “You do know that it’s a death they’re questioning her about?”

A slight, cool smile. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. They have no evidence-”

“They seem to have now; I’ve just come from the court. It’s murder, now. And a rather embarrassing one, a French witness. So the police feel a bit on their mettle. They’d rather like a Frenchwoman to have done it – keeps the British out of it, one might say. And an unworldly little girl from La Villette . . . by the time they’ve finished, she’ll have confessed to everything and the Jack the Ripper murders as well.”

She frowned again. “Do you really believe that?”

“Don’t you?”

She licked her thin lip s. “You’re just saying that.”

“I asked you if you believed it.”

“Well, yes. I certainly believe the police are . . .” She wasn’t quite sure what.

“Capitalist sheepdogs?” Ranklin suggested cheerfully. “I think they’re actually more complicated than that, but it still leaves the question of how you’re going to protect Ma’mselle Collomb from them.”

“They’d never dare come tromping in here.”

“Ah, that’s what you really believe, isn’t it? That they’re nice friendly men in uniform who tell you the way when you’re lost, just like nanny said. Well, probably they are to people who live in houses this size, but not to Berenice Collomb. And I think it would be rather sad for you to learn that by putting her on the gallows. Still, it’ll be a good chapter for your memoirs, so maybe you think it’s cheap at the price.”

She jerked the front door wide. “You’d better come in.”

A few steps down the narrow hallway was Gorkin, who had obviously been hearing every word.

“Hello, Dr Gorkin,” Ranklin called. “Sorry I haven’t had time for you to convert me, but been rather busy. Still am, as a matter of fact.”

“You have come to return Berenice to the rich Mrs Finn?”

“I have. Mrs Finn doesn’t like it either, but seems ready to go along with it on behalf of a fellow human being.” He turned back to the woman. “Can you fetch Ma’mselle Collomb?”

“You’d better come up and talk to her yourself.”

They went up to the second floor. The house was sparsely furnished, mostly with rather rigid, elongated Art Nouveau pieces, oriental pottery and a lot of paintings in bold primary colours. And William Morris wallpaper, of course: the silly bastard had once proclaimed himself an anarchist, hadn’t he?

The woman rapped on a door and said: “Berenice?”

“Ils sont retourner?”

“Oui,” Ranklin called. “Avec moi -James Spencer. Vous avez un choix: venir avec moi et Madame Finn, ou avec les flics.”

She told him, in colloquial French, to go and fuck himself. Ranklin grinned at the woman. “You’d better talk to her. I’ll let Dr Gorkin show me the error of my ways.” He wanted to get Gorkin out of the conversation to come. He had nothing against the man except for his tendency to be present, watching and listening. For example, he had followed them up the stairs.

So Ranklin took him by the arm, led him aside and launched straight in: “One thing that bothers me about anarchism, especially when it depends on a revolution, is the transition period from the ancien regime to a perfect anarchist state. Can you get people to give up their old dog-eat-dog ways overnight, without a period of education? – and what happens during that period?”

“People – working people – are oppressed, not corrupted. You see it everywhere in working communities, the help they give each other. It is the bourgeoisie who put up fences and have secrets.”

Thinking of Aunt Maud’s house, Ranklin couldn’t but agree. “You could be right – but there’s getting to be an awful lot of the middle class: are they all going to perish in the revolution?”

“They can choose.” Gorkin was looking over Ranklin’s shoulder, trying to hear what the woman was saying to the still-locked door.

“You’re talking to me,” Ranklin reminded him. “So, the middle class can make a quick choice: either join the revolution or off to Madame la Guillotine?”

“Once the revolution has happened, there will be no need for guillotines. It will be secure – in science, a stable state, if you understand that.”

“The only truly stable explosive is one that’s exploded already? Yes, I think – ah.”

He had heard the click of the door behind him. Berenice came out, carrying a small, tattered shopping basket. She gave Ranklin a look of sullen dislike, and he smiled back and gestured politely at the stairs. The woman had got things this far; let her stay in charge. He followed them down, keeping Gorkin well separated.

Outside, O’Gilroy was standing by the open rear door of the Daimler. He let Berenice in, then went to sit by the driver.

The woman had stopped at the foot of the steps and Ranklin paused to ask: “One thing: was Berenice out on Wednesday night? – the night before last?”

“Yes.” Cautiously.

“What time did she get in?”

“About ten o’clock.”

“Was it only you who saw her then?”

“Oh no. There were several of us.” She half-turned towards Gorkin, watching from the doorway. “Including Dr Gorkin.”

“Have the police asked you about this?”

“No.”

“If they get really serious, they will. Tell them the truth. It helps her. Thank you, Miss, er . . .”

“Venetia Sackfield.”

They shook hands, hello and goodbye, and Ranklin got into the back seat of the Daimler and they headed for the Sherring flat in Clarges Street.

“How in hell did you pull that off?” Corinna growled.

“All done by kindness. And threats, of course.”