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

‘Then you think it might have been this man Jos saw on the steps who killed Davie?’

‘Perhaps, but whether it was or not does not matter. As I have said, our main concern is to put a doubt in the minds of the jury as to whether
you
did it. As a matter of fact, I intend to speak to Mr. Travers on this subject as soon as possible. He may be of the opinion that it is better not to search too hard for this man, for if it turns out that he did not kill your husband, then we are back where we started.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Angela. Of course, she could not tell Mr. Addison what she was really thinking, for she had the most dreadful suspicion that the man seen with Davie outside Burkett’s was in fact Edgar Valencourt. It would be quite astonishing if it were so, but according to this Jos, the altercation had taken place at around four o’clock, not long after she had met Valencourt in Hyde Park, and she could not help but remember the furious look on Valencourt’s face when he had seen the bruises on her arms, although he had said little at the time. What if he had taken it upon himself to go and warn Davie off? She would never have supposed him to be the type to threaten people, for he had always said that he preferred to avoid all that sort of unpleasantness. However, she knew from her own encounters with him that he disliked violence against women, and perhaps he had enough feelings for her—or at least was angry enough on her behalf—to go and speak to her husband when he found out that she had been hurt.

But what an idiotic thing for him to do, if he had indeed done it! Why, he might easily have aroused Davie’s suspicions against them even further—although, on second thoughts, perhaps he believed it did not matter, since he was intending to leave the country the next day. Angela did not know whether to be appalled or pleased at the thought of what Valencourt might have done. Her dealings with her husband were none of his business, and it was sheer arrogance on his part that he felt he had the right to threaten Davie, for of course he had no right at all. Still, though, she could not suppress a flutter at the thought of his caring enough about her to do it. But surely he could not possibly have meant what he said about shooting Davie. What a terrible coincidence that he should have said such a thing, given what had happened only a few hours later!

She spent several hours after Mr. Addison had left turning the matter over in her mind, and became more and more convinced that Edgar Valencourt was the man who had been seen on the steps with Davie. Of course he would never be found, for he was far away now and had probably taken good care to hide his traces, but perhaps Jos’s story would be enough to convince a jury that Angela was not the only possible suspect in the case, and would be sufficient to induce them to acquit her. The thought gave her some comfort—of which she had felt little up to now. If Valencourt could not be there in person to give her an alibi, then he might at least be able to save her this way. It was only a very slight possibility, but at present it was the only hope she had.

‘Now, Mrs. Marchmont,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘If we are to secure an acquittal, it is of the utmost importance that you tell me everything you can about your relations with your late husband. You understand that you must not hide anything, however damaging you believe it might be to your case—in fact, the more damaging you believe it to be, the more important it is that you tell me of it, for if the prosecution were to catch us by surprise, then that could easily ruin things completely. Let me be quite clear; I do not want to hear vital information for the first time in court. If you know anything, then you must tell me now.’

The poisoning case was finished, and Mr. Travers had won yet another victory (although privately he was certain that his client was guilty), and he was now ready to devote his full attention to Mrs. Marchmont’s case. Percival Travers, K.C, was one of the finest legal minds in the country, and had made a great reputation in his thirty or more years at the Bar. Very early in his career he had shown a decided talent for defending the most hopeless of cases, and it had become something of a point of pride with him over the years to add to his tally of successes—for as he never tired of saying, it was easy enough to point at a poor soul who was already wretched and miserable at having spent a month or two in prison and convince a jury that he was guilty, but it was not so easy to plant enough doubt in the jury’s mind as to the wretch’s guilt that they would be prepared to acquit him. He had been only too keen to represent Angela, for they had met once or twice in the past, and although he thought the case would be a difficult one, he had defended worse, and successfully, too, as he pointed out. He now smiled encouragingly at Angela in his most avuncular manner.

‘Very well,’ said Angela hesitantly. ‘What is it you wish to know?’

‘Let us start from the beginning. When did you first meet your husband?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Angela. ‘It must have been about fifteen years ago, shortly after I first went out to America.’

‘You worked for many years, I believe?’

‘Yes. I was employed by the Duke of Lewes as personal secretary to his wife when I met Carey Bernstein, the American financier, who took a liking to me and asked me to come and work for him in New York instead. I had always rather wanted to travel abroad, and so I said yes. Davie was a relation of Mr. Bernstein’s wife—her sister’s son, and I met him very soon after I arrived in America. That was before the war.’

‘You did not marry him then?’

‘No,’ said Angela. ‘We married a few years later, in early nineteen seventeen.’

‘And was the marriage a success to start with?’

‘No. I realized very quickly that I had made a mistake,’ said Angela shortly.

‘In what way?’

Angela hesitated. Mr. Travers peered at her over his spectacles.

‘Remember, you must tell me everything,’ he said.

Angela had always hated talking about personal matters, but she knew he was right, of course. This was no time to keep things to herself. She gritted her teeth and went on.

‘I worked for Mr. Bernstein for five years and in that time became his most trusted employee. He was very rich and owned many companies, most of which he had built up himself. He was particularly astute in the matter of investments—the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and so forth—and he taught me a great deal about it. He was kind enough to say that I had a better mind for picking investments than any man he had ever met, and after a few years he surprised me by putting me in sole charge of a small stockbroking firm he owned, Bernstein & Associates. He told me the job would be very difficult, because many people would refuse to deal with a woman, but he was willing to try me out and see what I was made of. He was right, of course; the early years were very hard, and there were many occasions on which I was convinced I had failed and thought of giving it up. But somehow I stuck with it, and eventually I started to make the place a success, and soon the company was bringing in more money than it had ever done before, and people stopped worrying about the fact that I was a woman—mostly, at least—and were happy to deal with me because they saw that I knew what I was doing.

‘When Mr. Bernstein died in nineteen sixteen he left me some money and a fifty per cent share in the firm. I think he would have liked to leave the whole thing to me, but his family were horrified at the very idea, and so in the end he gave in to them and left me only half. He left the other half to Davie—I believe at the urging of his wife, since they had no children themselves, and Mrs. Bernstein thought of Davie almost as a son.

‘Davie and I married a few months afterwards, but I regretted it almost immediately. He had always been very charming to me but I had never thought seriously about him, and had it not been for the fact that I was feeling rather low at the time I don’t think I should have accepted him.’

‘Why did you regret it?’

‘Because I quickly realized that his purpose in marrying me was merely to get his hands on more money. Davie had no head for business at all, and certainly no inclination to work, but he knew I had made Bernstein & Associates a success in only a few years, and he thought I should provide him with an easy income. And of course I did,’ she went on bitterly. ‘Within a year he’d spent all the money Mr. Bernstein had left me, and was draining the company of cash as fast as he could. I saw well enough what was going to happen and in the end I bought him out at a premium. I had to go into debt to do it, but I didn’t want to see all my past efforts in making the company a success go to waste, and I was certain I could pay it off very soon if I worked as hard as I possibly could. It took me nearly five years to pay it off, but I did it. Of course, Davie had spent what I paid him for his share of the company long before that, and kept on coming back for more. I suppose it was all the same to him whether he had an interest in the firm or not, since he knew he could rely on me to supply him with anything he wanted.’

‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘But you did not apply for a separation when it first became clear to you that the marriage was not a success?’

‘No,’ said Angela. ‘Oddly enough, I took the view that if one makes a vow then one ought to keep it as far as possible. Davie had no such scruples, though.’

‘Do you mean there were other women?’

‘Yes, and plenty of them,’ said Angela. ‘He had no shame at all in flaunting them in front of me. For a long time I thought I must be the one at fault, and so I did my best to please him. It was perfectly useless, though, and in the end all I could do was to try and ignore his unfaithfulness as much as possible. Oh, listen to me,’ she said in sudden distaste. ‘How I despise myself for complaining like this. Look here, Mr. Travers, I should hate you to think of me as some feeble little wife, wringing her hands helplessly while all this was going on. I assure you I was nothing of the sort. I was a grown woman when I accepted Davie and it was my mistake to make. Of course the marriage didn’t work, but I might have escaped from it whenever I chose. It was partly my pride that prevented me. I’ve never grumbled about it because I’ve always rather taken the view that one must play the hand one’s dealt, and for a long time I was very good at that. In the end it was too much, and I came back to England to get away from him, but I won’t be painted as a victim. Davie’s arrival in London was an annoyance to me but nothing more. When he turned up at my flat I decided that enough was enough, and that I would divorce him as soon as I got the opportunity, but that’s all. I disliked him and wanted him to leave me alone, but I didn’t murder him.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘And as a matter of fact, you have put your finger on the very thing that is most important in the affair. It would be a grave error for us to try and paint you as a victim of an unpleasant husband, for that would give the jury the idea that you had a strong motive to kill him. Motive does not make a case but it must be a very independent-minded jury indeed that fails to be swayed by it, and of course the peculiar circumstances of your husband’s death make it all the more important to play down any apparent animosity between the two of you.’

‘I know that very well,’ said Angela. ‘It’s just rather unfortunate that we disliked one another so much.’

‘You must not mention that,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘Now, then, we come to Mr. Marchmont’s unexpected appearance in London. I understand from the police that you gave him a cheque for a rather large sum of money.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Angela.

‘Why is that?’ said Mr. Travers.

‘Why, to get rid of him,’ said Angela. ‘I wanted him to go away.’

‘But five hundred pounds? That is an enormous sum. And I understand that that constituted most of the money you had in your bank account at the time.’

Angela opened her mouth to reply, but Mr. Travers went on:

‘Mrs. Marchmont, you must understand the way a jury’s mind works. Of course, you are perfectly aware that under the law a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. Now, it is my unpleasant duty to tell you that whatever the law says, this is pure nonsense. The very fact of your appearing in court accused of a crime creates an unintentional presupposition that you are guilty—for if you were innocent, then why should you be there at all? That is what people think, and that is why it can be very difficult to secure an acquittal once a case has come to court, for the jury is already half-convinced that the person before them is guilty of the crime for which he is being tried. It is unfortunate, but it is the best system we have at present, and this is what you are battling against. Now, then, if a jury hears that you have been writing cheques for five hundred pounds and giving them to people you dislike—for the fact of your estrangement from your husband indicates that you were no longer on good terms—they will immediately wonder why you did it. And in this sort of case, the first word that is likely to spring into their minds is “blackmail.”’

He paused and looked at her earnestly.

‘Mrs. Marchmont, was your husband blackmailing you?’

Angela hesitated. She had never thought of it in those terms.

‘I shouldn’t call it blackmail, exactly,’ she said reluctantly at last.

‘Ah,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘I thought so. Then he knew something to your disadvantage and was threatening to disclose it? Did he have evidence of another man, perhaps? I beg your pardon, but I must ask these questions.’

‘No, he had no evidence of anything like that,’ replied Angela with exact truth.

‘Then what is it? What have you not told me? Did anybody else know of it? Is it something which is likely to come out in court? I understand the prosecution intends to produce one or two witnesses from the United States, including your husband’s mother.’

Angela looked up sharply.

‘Della?’ she said in dismay. This was bad news. Davie’s mother had always heartily disliked Angela, and if she were intending to give evidence against her daughter-in-law then that meant only one thing: it would certainly all come out now.

‘You had better tell me,’ said Mr. Travers gently.