Anything For a Quiet Life (10 page)

“There’s a time element in this,” said Jonas. “I don’t want to ask for an adjournment, but it only gives me one day to locate our witness and persuade him to give evidence. I shall have to start the search in London, and I’m going up at once. If I’m not back by the time court opens you’ll have to hold the fort. You can spend a bit of time cross-examining Mr Grandfield.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Sabrina.

“Now, Mr Grandfield,” said Mrs Mountjoy, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about the subject matter of this charge.”

“About the silver? I thought I’d described it fully. I could do it again if you like.”

“Not a description. I was interested, at the moment, in establishing your title to it.”

“I’m not sure that I understand.”

“The charge here is one of receiving stolen goods. The stealing is alleged to have been a theft of
your
property. I was therefore starting from the beginning, and establishing that it
was
your property that was taken.”

“Are you suggesting that I stole it?”

“I am not suggesting anything,” said Mrs Mountjoy, “and we should get on more quickly if you refrained from flippancy.”

Mr Grandfield looked at the bench to see if they were going to support him. The chairman said, “I think this line of questioning is legitimate, although I cannot, at the moment, see where it is going to take us.”

Mr Grandfield said, “Then I’ll answer the question. The silver is a collection known as the Croxton silver. I inherited it, some twenty-five years ago, from my uncle, Colonel Croxton.”

“When you say that you inherited it” – Mrs Mountjoy was studying a document – “is that strictly accurate? I have here a copy of Colonel Croxton’s will. It does not, in fact, mention you at all.”

The reporters looked interested, the magistrate looked up, and the frown on Mr Grandfield’s face deepened. He said, “Need we go into all this?”

“Now that the point has been raised,” said the chairman, “it might be as well to settle it.”

The audience was with him. They scented the possibility of a family scandal. It was known that the old Colonel had loathed his young nephew.

“Oh, very well,” said Mr Grandfield crossly. “There was no need to mention me by name in the will, because the property was entailed. It came to me as the nearest male descendant. That was after both the Colonel’s sons had been killed in Burma.”

“But the entail would only have covered real property, wouldn’t it? And I see that the personal effects – that would include the silver – were left specifically to his niece Clarissa.”

“Yes.”

“Then how did they come into your possession?”

“Clarissa had gone abroad a short time before the Colonel died. No one knew what had happened to her. After seven years I, and everyone else, assumed that she must have died abroad.”

“And the silver went to you as next of kin?” Mrs Mountjoy had dragged out her questions to the best of her ability, with one eye on her watch. A telephone call from London, received just before the court opened, had informed her that Jonas would be back by eleven o’clock – it was now nearly half past.

The chairman started to say, “That would surely—” but was interrupted by the arrival of Jonas, followed by a spry, white-haired old gentleman.

Jonas said, “I must apologise to the court for not being present at the commencement of these proceedings, but I had the most urgent business in London. If you have no objection I will continue the cross-examination of this witness myself.”

“That’s entirely up to you,” said the chairman. He was looking at the old gentleman, who had seated himself at the end of the solicitor’s bench. He had a feeling that he had met him before but was unable to place him. Mr Grandfield clearly knew him. He had not taken his eyes off him since he had come into court.

“In fact,” said Jonas, “I have only one more question to ask the witness. Mr Grandfield, do you, or do you not, recognise the lady in the dock?”

“Recognise—” said Mr Grandfield. “I—can’t—”

At this point his voice seemed to stick.

“Come along, Charles,” said the Queen briskly. “I know it’s nearly thirty years, but I haven’t changed all that much, surely?”

Mr Grandfield opened and shut his mouth, but still no sound came out.

The chairman said, with admirable self-restraint, “Do I understand, Mr Pickett, that you are in a position to prove the identity of the prisoner?”

“If I might call my witness.”

Mr Grandfield seemed thankful to leave the box. The white-haired old gentleman took his place, recited the oath with practised briskness, and said, “My name is Marcus Apperly. I was, until five years ago, the senior partner in the firm of Apperly and Hulbert. We acted for Colonel Croxton. I drew up his will and was well acquainted with his family, or with such of them as were left after the war. In particular his nephew Charles Grandfield, and his niece” – he shot a quick glance at the Queen who smiled encouragingly – “Clarissa Oldshaw.”

“And you recognise her?”

“Certainly. And even if I was not in a position to identify her, I have been shown papers which are, I think, quite conclusive. I’ll be happy to produce them to you, sir, in due course. I should like to add that, in addition to making his will, the Colonel asked me to draw up the deed by which he dedicated an acre of his land to travellers. He had already heard that his favourite niece had some romantic intention of joining the gypsies, and I think he hoped that, if she did so, some time, maybe long after his death, her caravan might come to rest on one of his fields.”

There was a long silence. No one seemed to know what to say next. In the end Jonas said, “I take it, sir, you would agree that if we can produce proper evidence of this, there is no question that the charge can stand.”

“I would entirely agree,” said the chairman, “that no one can be convicted of receiving stolen goods when they turn out to be their own property.”

Late that afternoon Jonas and Mrs Mountjoy sat in conference with Mr Apperly and the Queen, now to be known as Clarissa Oldshaw.

Mr Apperly said, “I’ve had a word with Grandfield’s solicitor, Cedric Porter. He’s a pompous young ass, but he fully appreciates the position his client is in. If they’d gone to the court for a formal presumption of Clarissa’s death we might have had to go back to get it reversed. As they didn’t, there’s no need. The furniture, the pictures and the silver will have to be handed over to Miss Oldshaw.”

“Not a lot of room for them in my caravan,” said Clarissa.

“I’ll be happy to arrange their sale. One of the pictures is a small, but unquestionable Stubbs and two of the equestrian pictures are Herrings. They are in fashion at the moment and will realise a lot of money. It should be quite sufficient to enable you to buy a house and be comfortably off for the rest of your life.”

Clarissa considered it. Extraordinary eyes, thought Jonas. An uncanny, piercing blue, like sword blades.

“All right,” she said. “Sell the lot. Except the loving cup. I’ll keep that. I’ll turn respectable and settle down in Eastbourne, among all the pussies.”

“It will be a change after your previous existence.”

“Don’t talk about it as though it was an ordeal, Marcus. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’ve learned to speak Polski, Romany and Basque. And the people I’ve met – you’ve no idea. I’d write a book about them, only no one would believe it.”

“Maybe,” said Mr Apperly severely. “I still think it was imprudent. However, there’s one other point. I hear that Clegg has disappeared. Which is fair proof that what we thought was true. He did plant the silver in your place. Maybe the Grandfields put him up to it. Maybe they didn’t. But in any event you clearly have a case against
them
. They brought a criminal charge against you, which turns out to be unfounded, and had you taken into custody. I imagine they’d be glad to pay handsomely to have it settled out of court.”

“No,” said Clarissa. “No. It’s not worth bothering about.” She was staring out of the window. “They’ll both be dead inside the year.”

It was, in fact, almost exactly a year later that the Grandfields were killed in a crash on the Portsmouth motorway; a combination of a lorry with inefficient brakes and an icy road. When Miss Mountjoy showed the newspaper report to Jonas she said, “I warned you not to be cynical.”

Jonas was sitting on a bench at the end of the pier watching the seagulls.

He was not, as he was fond of explaining to his friends, a retired solicitor. He was a retreating solicitor. Having made as much money as a bachelor of modest habits was likely to use in the rest of his lifetime, but not wishing to rust in idleness, he had abandoned a successful practice in north London and set up a modest office in Shackleton-on-Sea.

The trouble was that it was becoming too damn successful. He was beginning to turn away new clients. And human nature dictated that the more clients he turned away, the more flocked to consult him.

He had been firm on one point. On a lovely summer’s morning he was not going to kick his heels behind his elegant office desk. After some argument he had compromised with Claire, and had agreed to carry with him a horrid little gadget called a radio-pager.

Claire had devised a code.

One bleep meant come back before lunch, there are papers to sign. Two meant an unexpected client. Three was an emergency.

“And I mean a real emergency,” said Jonas. “Like the office burning down. Not that a mouse has appeared in the muniments room, or Sam has brained some over-persistent salesman.”

The second contingency was the more likely. Sam had a short-fused temper which he vented from time to time on everyone except Jonas, who now abandoned his inspection of the seagulls and examined the pier. It was a palatial structure, a bit out of scale with the rest of the town. All right at Brighton, thought Jonas. But they could have done with something a bit more modest in Shackleton. It had a concert hall for the pierrots who came each summer and an amusement arcade with a miniature roundabout for young children and a ghost train for children of all ages. Also rows of space age games and a few elderly slot machines which had fascinated Jonas when he discovered them.

Originally they had been operated by the insertion of a penny. Nowadays you had to buy a metal disc which cost you five pence. When this was inserted exciting things happened. Gravestones rose in churchyards, bats flitted round belfries and skeletons emerged from the cupboards in a haunted house. One of the most popular was the Reign of Terror. In this a guillotine descended on the neck of an aristocrat and old women waved knitting needles in ecstasy.

Worth all the space age games put together, thought Jonas.

The amusement arcade was open from two o’clock in the afternoon until nine o’clock in the evening, from May to October. A compromise to suit the permanent inhabitants of Shackleton, many of them elderly, who considered that the pier was a place for walking, fishing and thinking about life. They pointed out that they had to put up, in August, with Bailey’s Circus on the Lammas. Four weeks of pandemonium. Enough was enough.

Jonas agreed. He disliked disturbances of any sort, human or mechanical.

His radio-pager gave two bleeps.

He said, “Blast,” got up and started back through the crowd which was beginning to thicken. A squat man with a squint snapped a camera at him and said, “Fifty pence for a lovely picture to put on your mantelpiece.”

Jonas said, “Take that damn thing away.”

The man grinned. “No offence, Granpa. I thought the kids might like a picture of the old man.”

Jonas ignored this impertinence and pushed his way out into the street.

At the office he found two men, both of whom he knew. He had helped Farmer Maggs when there was trouble over his bull, Black Bob. With him was Mike Landless, proprietor of the South Wind Restaurant.

“I told Mike you looked after me all right,” said Maggs. “So when Mike had this bit of bother I thought I’d bring him along and inter-jooce him.”

“No introduction necessary,” said Jonas. “I’ve eaten a lot of good dinners cooked by Mr Landless.”

The South Wind was in the street behind his office.

“Nice of you to say so,” said Landless, who was a tubby middle-aged Londoner. “I hope we can keep it up. Perhaps I’d better explain. It’s not only me, there’s a lot of us in it, almost all the main restaurants and hotels in the town.”

Jonas had some idea of what was coming. He had heard the stories that were beginning to circulate.

Landless said, “It’s these people from FSP who’ve been going round.”

“Food Sales Promotion? Headquarters in Brighton?”

“That’s the crowd. Their reps have been calling on us. They know that most of us buy our supplies locally. I get a lot from Mr Maggs here. New potatoes and mushrooms and asparagus and raspberries and strawberries and such. The idea was, would I switch all my orders to World Wide Suppliers? I told him, thank you very much, but I was well suited. That was when he got a bit nasty.”

“Nasty?”

“Perhaps that’s the wrong word. But implying that I’d better think again. What he actually said was that it might be
safer
to deal with his clients, who were a large outfit, rather than relying on buying here and there from farmers who might let you down. He sort of underlined that word,
safer
. The way he said it, I thought he was repeating something that he’d been taught to say. In fact, I got the impression he wasn’t a hundred per cent happy about it himself.”

“I suppose you’d heard about what happened in Brighton last summer.”

They had both of them heard.

There had been the Fooderie and Hamburger Palace which had turned down the approach of FSP. The health authorities had made a lightning raid and discovered a swarm of black beetles in a food store which they swore had been kept as clean as a new pin. There had been Gino Ferrari’s Fish Restaurant on the front. Coming down to open up one morning Gino had found the dining room almost knee-deep in offal from the Fish Cleaning Station.