Джозефина Тэй - The Franchise Affair

“You learned later where she had gone, and why?”

“Yes.”

“You heard the girl Betty Kane give evidence today?”

“I did.”

“Evidence that she had been forcibly detained in a house near Milford.”

“Yes.”

“That is the girl who went with you to Copenhagen, stayed there for a fortnight with you, and subsequently lived with you in a bungalow near Bourne End?”

“Yes, that is the girl.”

“You have no doubt about it?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

There was a great sigh from the crowd as Kevin sat down and Bernard Chadwick waited for Miles Allison. Robert wondered if Betty Kane’s face was capable of showing any emotion other than fear and triumph. Twice he had seen it pulse with triumph and once – when old Mrs. Sharpe crossed the drawing-room towards her that first day – he had seen it show fear. But for all the emotion it showed just now she might have been listening to a reading of Fat Stock prices. Its effect of inward calm, he decided, must be the result of physical construction. The result of wide-set eyes, and placid brow, and inexpensive small mouth always set in the same childish pout. It was that physical construction that had hidden, all those years, the real Betty Kane even from her intimates. A perfect camouflage, it had been. A façade behind which she could be what she liked. There it was now, the mask, as childlike and calm as when he had first seen it above her school coat in the drawing-room at The Franchise; although behind it its owner must be seething with unnameable emotions.

“Mr. Chadwick,” Miles Allison said, “this is a very belated story, isn’t it?”

“Belated?”

“Yes. This case has been a matter for press-report and public comment for the past three weeks, or thereabouts. You must have known that two women were being wrongfully accused – if your story was true. If, as you say, Betty Kane was with you during those weeks, and not, as she says, in the house of these two women, why did you not go straight to the police and tell them so?”

“Because I didn’t know anything about it.”

“About what?”

“About the prosecution of these women. Or about the story that Betty Kane had told.”

“How was that?”

“Because I have been abroad again for my firm. I knew nothing about this case until a couple of days ago.”

“I see. You have heard the girl give evidence; and you have heard the doctor’s evidence as to the condition in which she arrived home. Does anything in your story explain that?”

“No.”

“It was not you who beat the girl?”

“No.”

“You say you went down one night and found her gone.”

“Yes.”

“She had packed up and gone?”

“Yes; so it seemed at the time.”

“That is to say, all her belongings and the luggage that contained them had disappeared with her.”

“Yes.”

“And yet she arrived home without belongings of any sort, and wearing only a dress and shoes.”

“I didn’t know that till much later.”

“You want us to understand that when you went down to the bungalow you found it tidy and deserted, with no sign of any hasty departure.”

“Yes. That’s how I found it.”

When Mary Frances Chadwick was summoned to give evidence there was what amounted to a sensation in court even before she appeared. It was obvious that this was “the wife”; and this was fare that not even the most optimistic queuer outside the court had anticipated.

Frances Chadwick was a tallish good-looking woman; a natural blonde with the clothes and figure of a girl who has “modelled” clothes; but growing a little plump now, and, if one was to judge from the good-natured face, not much caring.

She said that she was indeed married to the previous witness, and lived with him in Ealing. They had no children. She still worked in the clothes trade now and then. Not because she needed to, but for pocket-money and because she liked it. Yes, she remembered her husband’s going to Larborough and his subsequent trip to Copenhagen. He arrived back from Copenhagen a day later than he had promised, and spent that night with her. During the following week she began to suspect that her husband had developed an interest elsewhere. The suspicion was confirmed when a friend told her that her husband had a guest at their bungalow on the river.

“Did you speak to your husband about it?” Kevin asked.

“No. That wouldn’t have been any solution. He attracts them like flies.”

“What did you do, then? Or plan to do?”

“What I always do with flies.”

“What is that?”

“I swat them.”

“So you proceeded to the bungalow with the intention of swatting whatever fly was there.”

“That’s it.”

“And what did you find at the bungalow?”

“I went late in the evening hoping I would catch Barney there too–”

“Barney is your husband?”

“And how. I mean, yes,” she added hastily, catching the judge’s eye.

“Well?”

“The door was unlocked so I walked straight in and into the sitting-room. A woman’s voice called from the bedroom: ‘Is that you, Barney? I’ve been so lonely for you.’ I went in and found her lying on the bed in the kind of negligée you used to see in vamp films about ten years ago. She looked a mess, and I was a bit surprised at Barney. She was eating chocolates out of an enormous box that was lying on the bed alongside her. Terribly nineteen-thirty, the whole set-up.”

“Please confine your story to the essentials, Mrs. Chadwick.”

“Yes. Sorry. Well, we had the usual exchange–”

“The usual?”

“Yes. The what-are-you-doing-here stuff. The wronged-wife and the light-of-love, you know. But for some reason or other she got in my hair. I don’t know why. I had never cared very much on other occasions. I mean, we just had a good row without any real hard feelings on either side. But there was something about this little tramp that turned my stomach. So–”

“Please, Mrs. Chadwick!”

“All right. Sorry. But you did say tell it in my own words. Well, there came a point where I couldn’t stand this floo – I mean, I got to a stage when she riled me past bearing. I pulled her off the bed and gave her a smack on the side of the head. She looked so surprised it was funny. It would seem no one had ever hit her in her life. She said: ‘You hit me!’ just like that; and I said: ‘A lot of people are going to hit you from now on, my poppet,’ and gave her another one. Well, from then on it was just a fight. I own quite frankly that the odds were all on my side. I was bigger for one thing and in a flaming temper. I tore that silly negligée off her, and it was ding-dong till she tripped over one of her mules that was lying on the floor and went sprawling. I waited for her to get up, but she didn’t, and I thought she had passed out. I went into the bathroom to get a cold wet cloth and mopped her face. And then I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. I had cooled off by then and thought she would be glad of something when she had cooled off too. I brewed the coffee and left it to stand. But when I got back to the bedroom I found that the faint had been all an act. The little – the girl had lit out. She had had time to dress, so I took it for granted that she had dressed in a hurry and gone.”

“And did you go too?”

“I waited for an hour, thinking Barney might come. My husband. All the girl’s things were lying about, so I slung them all into her suitcase and put it in the cupboard under the stairs to the attic. And I opened all the windows. She must have put her scent on with a ladle. And then when Barney didn’t come I went away. I must have just missed him, because he did go down that night. But a couple of days later I told him what I had done.”