An Immoral Code (15 page)

‘I know it’s unorthodox,’ said Jeremy, ‘but the fact is, I’m going to be in Indonesia for two months. I’ve already spoken to Cameron about it, and, frankly, it seems like you’re the only person available to take her on. Besides, you could probably do with another pair of hands on this Capstall thing.’

Anthony stared at Jeremy Vane in dismay. ‘But I don’t want a pupil. Anyway, she’s
your
pupil.’

‘Well, I’m not much good to her when I’m on the other side of the world, am I?’ rejoined Jeremy irritably.

‘Can’t Julian have her? Or David?’

‘Julian’s too junior and David is far too busy. I’m afraid you’ll just have to lump it.’

‘But there’s hardly room in here for another person!’ The idea of Camilla sitting opposite him all day while he worked was pretty appalling. No doubt she didn’t fancy it much, either.

‘Bags of space,’ said Jeremy, glancing around. ‘Henry says he’ll have it sorted out by tomorrow.’

‘But what does Camilla think about it?’ Anthony couldn’t
believe she had simply accepted the idea of being moved from Jeremy to Anthony, just like that.

‘Not exactly ecstatic, but then she doesn’t have much choice. Nor do you. Anyway, my flight’s at nine this evening, so she’ll be all yours as from tomorrow morning.’ Anthony sighed and slumped back in his chair as Jeremy breezed self-importantly from the room. What a way to start Monday. He was still staring with vacant gloom at his desk when Leo came in.

‘Right,’ he said, slapping a piece of paper down in front of Anthony. ‘Actuarial experts, auditors’ experts, US law experts, claims experts, marketing claims experts, and underwriting experts. We need to find one of each and get statements from them.’ He sat down opposite Anthony and smiled at him. Anthony was grateful for the smile, grateful for the charming familiarity of Leo’s face and the pleasure it always gave him.

‘Guess what?’

‘What?’ Leo slid the little mat which Anthony used for his coffee to the edge of the table and flipped it into the air with his fingers, then caught it deftly.

‘I’ve got a pupil. Starting tomorrow.’

‘What? Don’t be absurd! You can’t take on a pupil right in the middle of a case like this—’

‘It’s Camilla,’ interrupted Anthony. ‘Jeremy’s Indonesian case is so mightily important that it appears he has to move his practice to Indonesia, more or less, and he and Cameron have decided that I should take over Camilla.’

‘Well, she could be useful, I suppose,’ said Leo, and got to his feet. He chucked the mat onto Anthony’s desk. ‘I think that’s very funny, actually,’ he said. Anthony stared at him morosely. ‘Very funny indeed.’ And Leo left the room, chuckling.

Felicity was quite pleased with herself. It was she who, when Cameron Renshaw had stood grumbling in reception at the
prospect of having to find a billet for Jeremy’s orphan pupil, had suggested Anthony. He had been going to pass her on to David Liphook until she had told Cameron that David had too much work, and had pointed out that Anthony could do with an extra pair of hands in the Names case. So now Camilla and Anthony would be constantly in one another’s company, and if that didn’t do the trick, she didn’t know what would. Camilla had already taken a few tips from her and had managed to sort herself out some decent work clothes, things that at least made her look female. And Felicity had made an appointment for her the previous week at her hairdresser’s near Ludgate Circus, so that now her hair had been cut into a pretty, manageable shape, and didn’t look as though rats had nested in it. Altogether a change for the better, thought Felicity, glancing with satisfaction at Camilla as she came into the clerks’ room.

‘You look nice,’ she remarked.

Camilla didn’t smile. She felt that she could murder the person whose idea this was. If they had made her anybody’s pupil except Anthony’s, she wouldn’t have minded. It would be a relief not to have to work for Jeremy any more. But of all the people in chambers … ‘I suppose you’ve heard?’ she muttered.

‘Mmm?’ Felicity widened her eyes enquiringly and glanced back at the morning’s mail.

‘I’m working for Anthony now. They’ve made me his pupil, because Jeremy’s going off to Indonesia for a few months.’

‘Well, then, that’s nice, isn’t it? You’ll be able to sort out your differences.’

Camilla sighed and turned away, and bumped straight into Anthony as he came into the room. She backed off and they both looked embarrassed. They had scarcely spoken since the morning after their disastrous evening together.

‘Camilla – just the person,’ said Anthony quickly. ‘I’ve got someone from Cray Leveson coming round any minute now,
but I’ve just got to dash over to Dunstable’s chambers. Can you take this chap upstairs and give him a cup of coffee, that kind of thing? His name’s Evans. I won’t be five minutes.’ And Anthony strode out of chambers and hurried across Caper Court.

Camilla sat listening as Anthony and Mr Evans, an actuarial expert, talked for two hours. She took the occasional note, but had ample leisure to sit pondering the erstwhile object of her affections and considering her own feelings about him. She still regarded him as a most attractive man, she liked his smile and the deceptive innocence of his glance, but she no longer felt that heart-stopping sense of embarrassed inferiority in his presence. She had seen Anthony at his worst – well, in a pretty bad way – and that experience had dispelled her illusions, killed her infatuation. A pity, really. Crushes of one sort or another had always been her emotional mainstay, and she felt a bit lost without one. Still, if she was to be his pupil until summer, it was probably just as well. A schoolgirl crush was not much of a basis for a working relationship, and since she badly wanted to do well at 5 Caper Court, she was probably better off without any distractions.

Anthony regarded the thing in a slightly different light. When Jeremy had dropped his bombshell the previous evening, Anthony had consoled himself with the thought that at least Camilla seemed to have cured herself of her dogged devotion to him, and so working with her wouldn’t be too tiresome or embarrassing. On the other hand, after Mr Evans had left and they sat working together in silence, he was aware of feeling peeved by her new, slightly offhand manner. How could any girl be totally infatuated with him one day, and then behave as though he was hardly there the next? Well, he supposed he knew the answer to that, given the dimly recollected events of two weeks ago, but he felt it showed that she was rather unnaturally erratic in her affections. Then he became annoyed
by this train of thought and told himself that it shouldn’t matter to him one way or the other how she regarded him. She was only a pupil, after all. He should merely be glad that she’d started to dress a bit better, and had had her hair cut decently. She really looked quite pretty today, he thought, as he watched her writing, leaning her head on one hand. She looked up from her work, and he expected her to glance in his direction. But her gaze strayed no further than the law report a little further up her desk. It suddenly occurred to him that he wanted her attention, and so he said, ‘By the way, are you busy this evening?’

She glanced up warily, and he realised, to his chagrin, that she assumed he was going to ask her out. Evidently this was not an idea she welcomed. Annoyed, he went on, ‘The only reason I ask is because the committee and some of the Names are having a bit of a party – well, no, party’s not quite the word – a sort of private celebration over winning the time-bar point. It’s this evening at some place in Upper Brook Street. Might be an idea if you came along.’

She glanced away from him and tapped her lips with her pencil, then shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Her casual manner irritated him even more, and he found himself adding pompously, ‘You might show a little more enthusiasm. If you’re going to become seriously involved in this case, you should want to make a point of meeting some of the people, I would have thought.’

She did not blush or look distraught, as she would have a few weeks ago. Her gaze shifted casually from the window back to him. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise it mattered if I went or not. But I’ll have to see, anyway. I’ll try to be there if I can. Give me the address at the end of the day.’ She closed her books and glanced at her watch. ‘Mind if I go to lunch now?’

‘No, off you go,’ said Anthony. He bent his head over his work again, then lifted it as soon as she was gone. God, how
arrogant that had sounded. ‘Off you go.’ Like dismissing a class. She must think him a complete berk. Maybe it was something infectious which he’d caught off Jeremy.

Rachel sat at her desk at the end of the afternoon, signing letters for the evening post, feeling better than she had done the day before. She thought of how she had wept helplessly by Oliver’s cot for twenty minutes last night. Maybe there was something cathartic about crying. It seemed to cleanse the spirit. She felt less bowed down by depression and uncertainty. She had even managed, after splashing her face and eyes with cold water, to go downstairs and have a fairly civilised conversation with Leo afterwards. That she had been weeping, that he had witnessed her unhappiness and had failed even to speak to her, was not touched upon. But then, so much between them was never touched upon. No, that hadn’t mattered. She had grown used to dissembling, to adopting a pretence of normality. Leo had turned the chicken and some vegetables into a rather appetising stir-fry and they had eaten it together with a glass of wine. She had not told him about her conversation with James Rothwell and John Parr. She had decided to put the matter of her salary in abeyance for the moment, until she could find out what kind of formal steps she could take. Instead they had talked about Fred’s partnership, and from there the conversation had led to the Capstall case, and to the party that was being thrown this evening for the Names. Leo had suggested that she should come along. She had said then that she probably wouldn’t, that she would rather go home and see Oliver, but now, as she signed the last letter and capped her pen, she decided that she would look in for half an hour or so. A few drinks, some conversation with new faces, might help to sustain her in her attempt to behave like a normal, sane person with an ordinary life.

The party in Upper Brook Street was being held in a suite of rooms regularly hired out for private functions. The furniture and decor were over-opulent and anonymous, the carpets thick and the curtains elaborately patterned and swagged. By the time Anthony and Leo arrived the air was already filled with the hum of voices, as little knots of Names and members of the committee stood around with glasses of champagne, discussing their misfortunes and the future of their litigation. Leo had made a point of arriving late, telling Anthony that it befitted their status as legal stars to make something of an entrance. Being there early to meet and greet was strictly the kind of menial work for which solicitors were cut out, he said.

Anthony was still grinning at this as they handed their overcoats to the young man at the door. They went into the reception room and were given glasses of champagne, and it was only a matter of seconds before heads turned, and several people made their way across to greet Leo and Anthony, intent on annexing and buttonholing them before anyone else did. Counsel were regarded by the Names as kinds of guru, omniscient, holding all the clues to the success or failure of the action, and conversational opportunities were at a premium.

Freddie, being slightly deaf and slower than the others, didn’t notice Leo make his entrance until it was too late. Blast, he thought, eyeing him greedily from the other side of the room, he had particularly wanted to talk to him about the new Chatset estimate for the run-off on all open years. Freddie took another swallow of his champagne and turned to give another tortoise-like glance in the direction of the kitchen. He had been a bit disappointed to discover that this was to be a stand-up affair, but he hoped the buffet was going to be on the generous side. He took it as a good sign that the food wasn’t already laid out on the side tables when they arrived – presumably the rations, whatever they turned out to be, would at least be hot.
He wagged his head, muttering under his breath the figures which he wanted to put to Leo, and went off in search of the girl with the champagne.

Anthony was standing making conversation of a polite, commiserating kind with an American woman and her English husband, who, like all Names, allowed the cataloguing of their misfortunes at Lloyd’s to dominate all social encounters. And when it came to talking to their lawyers, they were even more vociferous, regarding them as people whose job it was to listen to their grievances. Anthony found it all horribly boring. It was bad enough having to work on the case every day of the week without having to talk about it in the evenings. But he recognised, he supposed, that there was some therapeutic value for these people in talking endlessly about it. As though it would make any difference. He glanced at Leo and caught his eye for a fraction of a second, long enough to see that they were both thinking exactly the same thing. He wondered, scanning the roomful of people as he nodded at something the American woman was saying, whether Camilla was going to come. She’d gone off to the library at the end of the afternoon, so he’d just left the address of the place scribbled on a scrap of paper on her desk. Not that he cared. It was just that he’d meant what he’d said about getting to know some of these people. He found himself glancing at the doorway each time someone came in.

Leo, too, was watching the doorway, and when he saw Charles Beecham step into the room, he felt that unmistakeable sense of heart-stopping pleasure. It was the feeling for which he lived, he told himself, glancing at Charles just long enough to take in his tall figure, clad in a casually untidy but very expensive set of light tweeds, a pale blue cravat above his white shirt. Charles, as he stood in the doorway and glanced round the room, caught Leo’s eye and raised his eyebrows, giving him a smile and nod of recognition. Leo turned back to Basher
Snodgrass, who was holding forth on the subject of late joiners to the action, with the perfect contentment of knowing that Charles was there, and that he could talk to him and enjoy him at his leisure later in the evening.