The Crimson Rooms (52 page)

“That’s right.”

“And you’ve also said you’d have preferred not to travel so far on a Saturday but she insisted. Did you make any further attempt to change your plans?”

“Not really. On the day of the picnic I said I was tired and it was too hot to go on the Metropolitan Line but she said we must go, she had gone to so much trouble.”

Trouble?
Corned-beef-and-pickle sandwiches made in that joyless little kitchen.

“And after the picnic, she suggested you go for a drink on your own. Were you surprised?”

“Sad. Like I said. She was so keen to get rid of me. I thought I’d irritated her.”

“You see the prosecution has said that you used the picnic as a chance to get your wife out of town and, forgive me, kill her. I think in fact the opposite is true. It was Stella who made all the plans and when you tried to alter them, insisted that they went ahead. Is that true?”

Warren of course had the last word. “Mr. Wheeler, do you have any witnesses to the fact that it was your wife who insisted on picnicking in Chesham and then sending you down to the town for a drink?”

Wheeler shook his head.

There followed a succession of defense witnesses, including Wheeler’s mother, who spoke of her son’s devotion to Stella and the absurdity of the suggestion that he would ever hurt her.

“But, Mrs. Wheeler,” said Warren in cross-examination, “I believe the war altered your son’s previously gentle nature.”

“I wouldn’t say so, not much. It made him thoughtful, maybe moody. What did you do in the war, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“We are not here to discuss my record, Mrs. Wheeler.”

“I think you would not be so ready to judge my son if you’d fought alongside him.”

Wheeler’s father, though less eloquent, made an emotional defense of his son. “I’ve heard it suggested that my boy was something of a last resort for Stella. Far from it. There was a queue of girls at our church and elsewhere who would have married our Stephen like a shot, given half the . . .” But at that moment there was such a commotion that Wheeler’s potential as a husband was disputed no further. The courtroom door was flung open and Wolfe burst in, perspiring and wheezing, jacket unbuttoned, collar loosened. He held a whispered conversation with Breen, who in turn passed a note to Wainwright, who immediately asked for an adjournment so that he could consult with the judge.

The court was in an uproar as Breen and Wolfe disappeared with the judge and two barristers. Meanwhile, I sat in the lawyers’ benches, as bemused as any other spectator, in fact more so because I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what Wolfe had been up to or, even more disturbingly, why I hadn’t been told about it. Meredith was signaling frantically from the gallery but I merely shrugged, thinking how foolish I must look, claiming to have made inroads into the legal profession but actually excluded at a moment of crisis.

The ten minutes had stretched to forty before the judge returned with his entourage and addressed the court: “Gentlemen—and ladies—of the jury, the defense has produced three additional witnesses on very short notice. This is highly irregular, not to say lamentable because one regrets any tendency in one of the parties to spring surprises upon the other. It appears, however, that there has been a degree of confusion on both sides and some failings in the police investigation, which have led me, with my good friend the prosecutor’s reluctant permission, to allow this irregularity, especially in view of the fact that we are dealing with a capital offense. I might add that despite the drama with which the defense have introduced these witnesses, it may be that they lead us nowhere. It would be quite wrong of you to read anything into the suddenness with which they’ve been produced.”

Breen refused to meet my eye and I tried to quell my growing frustration. It was as if I were a child again, clamoring for the attention of my father while he quizzed James on what he had learned in school that day. To have been extended the hand of comradeship by Breen and then excluded hurt me.

The next scheduled witness was Carole Mangan, pale and dignified under her dark hat, surely the one she had worn at Stella’s wedding, as she gave evidence about Stella’s work at Lyons and how she used to be admired by many of the customers. I was a little soothed by the knowledge that Carole had come to court partly at my instigation: she was my witness, I had discovered her.

“You say Miss Hobhouse, as she then was, had plenty of admirers. Did she have any particular followers?”

“There was lots. I made a list and gave it to Miss Gifford. And the police asked me about it too.”

“Miss Gifford?”

“The lady lawyer, sitting there.” Wainwright smiled benignly at me. The spectators muttered. I met Carole’s eye and we exchanged a private smile.

“Despite these several admirers, did you ever have cause to believe that Stella was seeing anyone—I mean, romantically—apart from her fiancé, Stephen Wheeler?”

“No.”

“Have you seen any of those admirers since Stella Hobhouse’s marriage?”

“One or two pop back to Lyons for a cup of tea from time to time. And I seen one just now outside the court.”

In the flurry of excitement that followed this remark, I saw Wheeler’s head snap up.

“Miss Mangan. I am about to produce an object—as agreed with the learned judge and the prosecution—that was found in Mrs. Wheeler’s childhood bedroom. I wonder if you could tell me whether or not you’ve ever seen it before?”

Wainwright here opened a cardboard box, about a foot square and four inches deep, of the sort used for transporting shirt collars to and from the laundry, and from it he lifted the bronze dancer. There she stood on the bench before the pallid judge, a tiny foot extended, her hair flung back, and every curve in her slender body sinuous and exposed, poised to run clear off her plinth if only she could.

“I seen it once, when Miss Gifford showed it to me.”

“You don’t know who gave it to Stella?”

“I told her. No.”

“Finally, Miss Mangan, this court has heard the prosecution suggest that the Wheelers’ marriage was troubled. Forgive me for being blunt but the suggestion was that Mr. Wheeler could not satisfy his wife, if you understand what I mean. I believe you met her once, after her marriage. Did she give you any indication then that all was not well?”

“No.”

When he stood up, Warren pretended to have no interest in the bronze dancer, although his eyes were drawn to her from time to time, as they might have been to the bosom of a woman seated opposite him in an omnibus. In cross-examination, he concentrated on Carole’s recollection of the Wheelers’ betrothal. “Do you think Stella loved her husband-to-be?”

“Yes. She was very loyal to him and talked about him often, and was always in a hurry when she knew he was going to meet her after work.”

“Did she ever show interest in any other man?”

“I’ve already said. No. None special.”

“What does that mean,
none special
?”

Carole fixed him with a cool gaze that made his color rise. “What do you think we girls talk about, when we’ve got a minute?”

“So you have no cause to think she had any involvement with anyone except Stephen, her husband.”

“That’s right.”

Warren subsided. Wainwright, in response to a note from Breen, had one question in reexamination. “Is there anything, in all your time of working with Stella, eight years in all, that gave you cause to think she was not quite faithful to Stephen?”

“Only the thing I told Miss Gifford.” Her pale eyes again met mine. “There was one night she stayed out and come in with her uniform dirty and smelly and mud and grass on her shoes, very tired, red-eyed. I never did find out where she’d been.”

Wainwright had no more reexamination but invited Miss Mangan to sit at the back of the court, if she could spare the time. He wiped his brow, folded his hands across his immense chest, and fixed the usher with a benign eye. “I’ll call Mr. Smedley.”

Mr. Smedley was a diffident, slow-spoken gentleman in a frock-coat, who identified himself as a dealer in fine art, owner of the eponymous Smedley’s of Piccadilly.

“Mr. Smedley. I wonder if you would be so kind as to look at this object. Do you recognize it?”

“I do. I bought one of an edition of fifty last year in Paris. Lamourdedieu.”

“Could you tell the court where you have been for the last ten days?”

“In Paris.”

“For how long had you been planning that trip?”

“I go every three months or so. I plan the next as soon as I’ve finished the last.”

“And what happened early yesterday morning, when you were at your lodgings in Paris?”

“I was told I had a visitor. A lawyer. Mr. Wolfe.”

“Mr. Smedley, if you’ll forgive me, nothing in your demeanor suggests that you are a man of impulsive habits. What persuaded you to dash back from France to appear in court here today?”

“Mr. Wolfe told me that one of my most trusted employees had suddenly left the business, and that I was needed in his stead to give evidence of a particular sale. I confess that it was largely because I couldn’t understand why my man had left in such a hurry that I came back so readily. I still haven’t got to the bottom of my employee’s desertion but I did search our books for a record of sale. At first I found nothing, but fortunately we make records in triplicate—that is obviously in addition to the receipt we give the customer. I have often been reproached by my wife and sometimes by my senior staff for my insistence on such laborious procedures. The triplicates file is kept locked away in a safe for just such eventualities as this. We deal with very costly and rare items, you see, and it’s therefore essential to keep punctilious accounts. At any rate, in the triplicates file I found that the bronze dancer had indeed been bought, on January 18, by one of our regular customers.”

“Could you tell the court who that customer was?”

Smedley showed considerable reluctance and had to be prompted. “Sir David Hardynge.”

Hardynge
. But there was no time to ponder this extraordinary development; Warren was on his feet. “My friend has insinuated that your employee, Mr. Arthur, left under suspicious and irregular circumstances. Do you have any cause to believe this was the case?”

“It is very odd. Mr. Arthur had been in my service more than fifteen years. I would expect him to give adequate notice.”

“Odd, you say. Not suspicious.”

“Decidedly odd.”

“You say you had to look in the triplicates file, again implying, perhaps, that it was irregular not to have found a record of the sale elsewhere.”

“It was irregular. But then the files were in a very bad way. I’d been gone more than a week and I’m afraid it showed in the disorganization of the accounts.”

I was as transfixed as the most prurient spectator in the back row of the public gallery. Why hadn’t I been told about Wolfe’s excursion to Paris? After all, it was I who had discovered the bronze dancer and realized her significance. But the next witness, even more astonishing than the rest, had already been called and the courtroom doors swung open to admit Sir David Hardynge.

In he came, Nicholas’s prospective father-in-law, somewhat older than in the photograph Lady Curren had handed me yesterday, dressed head to toe in black apart from collar, cuffs, and pocket handkerchief. He was precisely as I remembered from my brief glimpse of him at Wheeler’s earlier court hearing: a good-looking gentleman, slim, slightly smiling as if bemused but by no means discomposed at finding himself here.

In clipped tones, he gave his date of birth, March 12, 1868; his address, 18 Belsize Square; his professions—government adviser, parliamentary candidate, entrepreneur, company director, and financier; and his marital status—married, two children, now both grown up.

“Sir David Hardynge,” said Wainwright, oily with deference. “Could you tell us, were you acquainted with the dead woman, Stella Wheeler?”

“When I knew her I believe her name was Miss Hobhouse. And yes, I saw her from time to time when I went to Lyons for tea.”

“And what did you think of her?”

“I thought she was a very sweet girl.”

“Did you ever single her out in any way?”

Hardynge’s smile was a touch wistful: “She must have been some thirty years younger than me.”

Wainwright smiled too. “Quite so. But perhaps you could answer the question, Sir David.”

“Single her out? Rather the other way around, I should say. She was very patient with me. She knew that I couldn’t tolerate tea that wasn’t piping hot and strong.”

“Did you ever see her outside Lyons?”

“Once or twice perhaps. She was the girlfriend of one of my employees, after all. I first met her, I think, at one of our Christmas parties.”

“And on that occasion, did a relationship develop?”

Sir David was puzzled. “She and I had a dance. I make a point of dancing with the wives and girlfriends of my employees; they seem to like it and it helps me to get to know them better. She told me she worked at Lyons so I looked in one day when I was passing.”

“If you would specifically answer the question.”

“Our relationship always kept within the boundaries I have just described: she a waitress, I a customer.”

“Did you give her a wedding present?”

There was a long pause. “Why, yes, I believe I did. I made her a present of a little statue. Yes, that one there.”

“That statue is worth some fifty pounds.”

“Good gracious, is it? I don’t remember. I’d bought it some time ago, for my daughter actually, but my wife decided it was inappropriate.” He gave a rueful smile as if remembering a painful conversation. “So I gave it to Miss Hobhouse instead, when I heard she was to marry. As a matter of fact I’m surprised to learn she kept it. I thought she would sell it immediately.”