The Scandal at 23 Mount Street (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 9) (12 page)

‘So, then,’ he said. ‘You were in company with him from Tuesday the sixth until Saturday the tenth of November. Did you see anything in that time which might have indicated that he had an enemy?’

‘No,’ said Pearson. He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘As a matter of fact, though, I didn’t spend all the time in company with him, since by that time I’d rather realized that he wasn’t my sort of man at all, and so I’d begun to try and avoid him wherever possible.’

‘Oh? Why was that?’

‘Why, to start with the fellow never liked to pay his way,’ said Pearson. ‘Ducking out like that simply isn’t done, but he seemed to expect that I would cover all his expenses. You know, his bills here at the club and suchlike. He was playing cards one evening and he borrowed some money off me for that, too. I assumed he’d pay me back, but after a day or two he still hadn’t done it and I thought I’d better say something. I remarked upon it jokingly and he said something about settling up later, but when I reminded him of it the next day he laughed and said he’d thought I wouldn’t expect it of him, given the obligation I was under for his having saved me in New York that time. I thought that was rather a low thing to say, and I was so surprised at it that I said so. That just made him laugh all the more. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and said he was a little short of funds and he knew I wouldn’t mind subbing him while he was here, because we were pals, weren’t we? After all, we both knew I could rely on him not to mention anything to my wife about what we’d got up to in those drinking places in New York.’

He paused, a worried expression on his face.

‘That sounds rather like blackmail to me,’ said Freddy.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Pearson. ‘And yet I never thought of it in that way at the time—I mean to say, he never said outright that I’d better pay for him or he’d tell my wife—but I did feel uncomfortably as though I had better watch my step. At any rate, I stopped mentioning the money and tried to distance myself a little from him for the next day or two. Of course, I couldn’t go home to Aldershot as I’d spoken for him at the club, but I said something about going to visit an old friend of mine who was sick, which gave me an excuse to get away for a day. He didn’t seem to mind—said he could amuse himself easily enough while I was away.’

‘What day was that?’ said Freddy.

‘That was the Saturday,’ said Pearson.

‘The day he died?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you never saw him again?’ said Freddy.

‘Yes, I saw him again,’ said Pearson. ‘I returned early that evening and found him at the club, playing cards with some of the chaps.’

‘And how did he seem then?’

‘Oh, tremendously cheerful. He always had a smile on his face, you know. Nothing ever seemed to put him out. He greeted me as though he hadn’t noticed that I’d been trying to avoid him—although I’m certain he must have—and invited me to sit down and join in the game. I didn’t want to give him any more money and was about to refuse when he threw a bundle of notes at me and said it was by way of repayment, and that he’d had a stroke of good fortune and was feeling rather flush at present. He was intending to return to New York in the next day or two, he said, and I’d soon be rid of him. He must have seen me hesitate because he said, “Come on, old fellow. I’ve thrown down the gauntlet and you can’t say no.” Then he laughed uproariously as though he’d said something enormously funny, and kept on urging me until in the end I agreed to join in. There didn’t seem any harm in it—especially as he was paying his own way now and was going to leave soon. To be perfectly frank, it was idiotic of him to play that evening. He’d quite obviously been drinking, but he didn’t seem to care about the amount of money he was losing.’

‘Did he lose a lot, then?’ said Freddy, thinking of the five hundred pounds that Angela had given her husband only a few days earlier, thrown away in a drunken card game.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Pearson. ‘He seemed to be very much in funds that evening. I pointed out to him that perhaps he ought to give it up before he lost it all, but he just said I needn’t worry—that there was plenty more where that came from, and he was going to get it very soon. Then he said “I’m going to throw down the gauntlet again, Pearson, and then I’ll be set for life.” He seemed to think the remark was hilarious, although I haven’t the faintest idea why.’

‘People get odd ideas when they’re drunk,’ said Freddy.

‘I suppose so,’ said Pearson. ‘At any rate, he didn’t have the chance to lose all his money, because eventually he looked at his watch and said he had to leave, as he had arranged to be elsewhere.’

‘At what time was this?’ said Freddy.

‘Nine o’clock, or thereabouts. That’s what I told the police, at any rate. I can’t remember to the exact minute, of course.’

‘And he didn’t give you any clue as to where he was going?’

‘None at all,’ said Pearson. ‘But now I realize he must have gone to see his wife. Strange, isn’t it? I mean, I didn’t know him especially well, but one would have thought he’d have mentioned being married, don’t you think?’

‘They were separated,’ said Freddy.

‘Ah, is that it?’ said Pearson. ‘Sad when that happens. It goes on too much these days, and I don’t like to see it. Still, if they weren’t on good terms I suppose it explains why she killed him. I don’t like to speak ill of a man when he’s dead, but he wasn’t quite the thing, you know.’

‘Yes, and that’s the problem,’ murmured Freddy. It was all too easy to see why Angela might have taken a gun to Davie Marchmont. What he needed was a reason why she had
not
. Pearson’s story had given him little new information, although one part of it was certainly suggestive. Davie had left the club at about nine and gone somewhere else—and not in the company of Pearson, by the sound of it. But where had Davie gone? No-one had come forward to say that they had seen him after nine o’clock, and so the police had naturally reached the conclusion that he had gone straight to Mount Street. Angela herself had said that she thought Davie might have wanted to search the flat while she was out, but if the police’s theory were the correct one, and Davie had died after midnight, then that meant he had spent three hours there until Angela came home. Surely it would not have taken him three hours to search the place? It seemed improbable that he had been there all that time. But if he had gone somewhere else before going to Mount Street, then where? And with whom? There must have been someone with him, surely—and perhaps that person had gone with him to Angela’s flat. This was not much, and was certainly unlikely to impress a jury, but it did seem to be a point in Angela’s favour.

Freddy thanked Mr. Pearson and left the club, then walked the short distance from Pall Mall to the White Star offices, where a representative of that company greeted him cheerfully and listened to Freddy’s heartfelt and completely fictitious story of an elderly uncle of reduced understanding and his entanglement with a gold-digging American chorus-girl. A secret marriage was suspected, and there was the matter of an inheritance, upon which a most virtuous and deserving family had been relying to save them from a life of poverty and humiliation. Freddy gave a most affecting performance as he described the travails of the family in question, who had accepted their lot patiently and without complaint. It was of the utmost importance, he said, that they find out one way or the other whether a marriage had indeed taken place in the United States, for the principals would not or could not speak, and the only way of finding out seemed to be to consult the White Star passenger lists, since a trip to America was quite out of the question.

Whether or not the company representative believed him cannot be said, but evidently Freddy made a good enough impression that he very soon found himself examining the passenger lists of the
Homeric
for early November. There in the first class column he soon found Davie Marchmont, who, as was only to be expected, was not listed as travelling with a wife—although Freddy had half-hoped that if there
were
a woman she might have travelled under his name. He then looked at the few single women’s names. They meant nothing to him but he took them down anyway. Then it struck him that, from what he had heard of Davie Marchmont, she was just as likely to have sailed second class—although on second thoughts perhaps not, since then they would have been kept apart during the passage, and Angela had said that Davie always liked to have a woman on hand.

Freddy chewed his lip in thought. What he really needed was to speak to one of the stewards who had been on that voyage, and who remembered Davie and could tell Freddy whether he had spent any time in company with a woman while on board ship. The cheerful White Star representative was hovering helpfully nearby, and Freddy made his request. The representative’s face fell. He was sorry, he said, but the
Homeric
had departed that very morning for New York, with all its usual crew on board (as far as he knew), and was not expected back for over two weeks.

This was a blow. Angela’s trial was due to begin in ten days, and Freddy had hoped to have some solid evidence to present long before then. He took a note of the
Homeric
’s expected date of arrival, then thanked the man and left the offices. It looked as though he had reached a dead end with respect to that particular line of inquiry, at least for the present, although he was determined to speak to someone from the crew as soon as the ship docked. In the meantime, he would carry on with his investigation as best he could, however hopeless the case was now looking.

The trial of Mrs. Angela Marchmont for the murder of her husband promised to be the greatest of
causes célèbres
. Not since the arrest of Dr. Crippen had the British public felt such pleasurable anticipation at the thought of the sensation which could be expected from the event, for rumours had emerged of scandalous behaviour on all sides, and there was nothing the man in the street liked better than the sight of high society conducting itself shamefully. Mrs. Marchmont was, of course, already well known for her exploits in the field of amateur detection, and all recognized and appreciated the grim irony that now placed this woman, who had brought several murderers to justice, in the dock, charged with the very thing she had always fought against. All wanted to see the spectacle of a famous society lady being forced to answer for herself—for although there was no particular bad feeling towards her on the part of the public, there was perhaps a tinge of malicious glee at the thought of seeing her in the very position in which she had placed so many others with apparently so little thought.

It was a grim day in early January when the trial began, and so great was the curiosity to witness the event that a queue of people began to form outside the Old Bailey from quite early in the morning. By the time the doors opened, the queue stretched almost as far as Newgate Street and one or two scuffles had broken out, which immediately came to an end as soon as the crowd began to move forward. Once inside, it was a race to secure the best seats, and there was a certain amount of bickering and shoving until everyone was settled.

Freddy Pilkington-Soames had no need to queue at dawn, of course, for he was there representing the
Clarion
, that shining beacon of truth and reason, as he liked to call it when in particularly jocular mood. He arrived at the last possible minute and sauntered down to the press bench, accompanied by a woman with fair hair and a worried expression.

‘Shove along, Harry, will you?’ said Freddy to the grizzled old man sitting at the end of the bench, who announced his credentials as a paid-up and long-suffering member of the Fourth Estate by means of one pencil behind each ear and three more sticking out of his top pocket. The old man began to protest, but Freddy ignored him, sat down at the end of the bench and forced everyone to shuffle up until there was room for his companion, who sat down likewise.

‘Are you sure I’m supposed to sit here?’ whispered Kathie Jameson. ‘I’m not a reporter.’

‘No, but we’ll say you’re here to take notes on behalf of Scotland Yard,’ said Freddy. ‘After all, it’s almost true. We don’t want old Jameson to miss anything, do we? Here, have a pencil.’

He plucked the aforesaid object from behind the ear of Harry and handed it to her. The old man protested again briefly then immediately filled the vacancy with another from his top pocket. Kathie dug out a scrap of paper from her handbag and glanced around guiltily.

‘I wish Alec could be here,’ she said.

‘He has work to do and criminals to catch,’ said Freddy. ‘Not for him a life of ease, sitting in court idly watching the public dissection of friends.’

‘Don’t!’ she exclaimed.

‘Sorry, old girl,’ he said. ‘I’m as upset about it as you are, of course, but I can’t help the black humour. It rather helps one get through things like this.’

‘I do hope she’s all right,’ said Kathie.

‘Of course she is,’ said Freddy. ‘And she will be. It’s all rotten, but soon it’ll be over and she’ll be released and we can all go back to poking fun at one another.’

‘I wish I could believe it,’ said Kathie. ‘But Alec says the case looks bad against her.’

‘Well, she’s got Percy on her side,’ said Freddy. ‘If anyone can get her off, he can. Perhaps he has a few tricks up his sleeve.’ Just then, there was a commotion and a barked instruction to rise. ‘Oh, and we’re off. Up you get.’

Everyone rose to their feet as the judge and his acolytes filed in and made themselves comfortable. Then they all sat again and Kathie, whose eyes had been fixed on the bench, now turned her head and saw Angela standing in the dock, smartly dressed and very composed. She was perhaps a little thinner than before, and was certainly pale, but otherwise she looked as she always had. Mrs. Marchmont glanced briefly at the crowd she had drawn and then turned her attention towards the judge. Throughout the trial, she would maintain that same attitude of calm concentration, causing some to call her cold and unfeeling. For now, those in the public gallery contented themselves with examining her closely. Some whispered that she was taller than they had supposed, while others said she was shorter. Some said she wasn’t as good-looking as she’d been made out to be, while still others said it was a shame for a woman to be so concerned with dressing elegantly when her husband was lying dead and cold in the ground. Fortunately, Angela was oblivious to all this, as was she to the curious glances that were darted at her by the members of the jury: ten men and two women, all of whom seemed extremely aware that they were taking part in an event of great importance, for they all had a certain air of self-consciousness about them, as though they had been asked to pass judgment on Queen Marie Antoinette or some other grand personage, instead of the rather ordinary woman before them who was accused of a domestic crime that was by no means terribly unusual. At any rate, their expressions seemed to say, at least this was likely to be interesting—far more interesting, in fact, than a mere case of burglary or fraud.