The Crimson Rooms (16 page)

As soon as she saw Breen, Leah actually seized his hand and kissed it. “I knoo you’d come. Now I shall be free.”

Breen responded to her relief and delight like a cat caressed beneath its jaw. “My dear Mrs. Marchant. I am touched that you remember me after so many years.”

“I wouldn’t forget you, Mr. Breen. And now I’ve seen you I know for sure that me and the kids is safe.”

Breen perched on the edge of the plank that passed for a bed and patted the space beside him as if he were offering Leah a velvet sofa. “Your case is being dealt with by Miss Gifford here, who has left no stone unturned to ensure that you will be freed. I want you to listen to her very carefully.”

The jailer brought a chair for me and I sat facing the pair of them in that tiny cell, upright and lofty as a maiden aunt. Leah gave me a disdainful look and pushed her hand into Breen’s. “I want you to represent me, Mr. Breen.”

“Well, I shall, in a manner of speaking, because Miss Gifford and I work together, but once a lawyer has taken on a case it’s most irregular to hand it to someone else. You are fortunate because you will have the benefit of Miss Gifford’s advice as well as my own.”

Throughout this conversation, the argument with Breen had been continuing in my head. Could I defy him? Must I do as he said? I wondered what James would have done in my place. Father would certainly have chosen the most expedient route, but James? I was frantic with the knowledge that James’s life had stopped when he was barely twenty, before he’d had time to develop into a moral touchstone.

In the end, deference got the better of me. I owed Breen this much, surely. He had taken me on against all the odds.

“I have visited Caractacus Court, Mrs. Marchant,” I said briskly. “Your friend Mrs. Sanders will appear in court this morning to offer a character reference and an undertaking that you can have your old room back, should such information be required. We’re hopeful that proceedings can be completed today and you will be released.”

“Eh? I was expecting a trial. How can that be?” Again she addressed Breen, who nodded toward me.

“We suggest that you plead guilty to the charge of child abduction. I will then give the mitigation—the reason why you did it—and afterward we expect the magistrate to accept your reasons and to agree to a conditional discharge, which means that you will be free.”

“You mean, plead guilty to somethin’ I didn’t do?”

“Not exactly, as I . . .”

“Never.”

“You see, you did take the child, Leah.”

“What does she mean,
the child
?” she demanded of Breen, whose hand she still clasped. “Does she mean my own son, Charlie? ’Ow can that be abduction? I never heard such rubbish. No, I won’t say such a wicked thing, that I was a criminal in taking my own child. Don’t make me, Mr. Breen.”

I plowed on. “If proceedings are concluded today we will be able to arrange for you to visit the children, or at least the girls. I have already written to the home.”

“What does she mean,
visit them
? I don’t want to visit my own children. I want them back. I’m not listening to ’er any longer, Mr. Breen, it seems to me she doesn’t make no sense. All I want is my own kids back. Oh, Mr. Breen, I beg you, please set them free for me.” Tears ran down her newly washed face and onto her hands and Breen’s wrist.

I suspected that he was relishing every moment of this interview. Squeezing Leah’s fingers, he removed a handkerchief (not the Liberty silk) from his pocket and handed it to her. Meanwhile, precious time was passing; we were due in court in ten minutes and we’d received no indication from Leah what she would plead.

“So may I repeat, Leah,” I said, “that our considered advice is that you should plead guilty to this offense. If you do, we very much hope that you will be free within half an hour.”

“Oh, yeah, and what if it doesn’t turn out as you say? What if they say, ‘Ho, guilty are you? Then ’ave six months inside.’ I know what happens to people like me when they’re in the ’ands of people like them.”

“It’s a risk,” I began, but Breen stood, adjusted his necktie, and picked up his briefcase. “Miss Gifford has given you the benefit of our advice, Mrs. Marchant. If you don’t choose to take it, that’s up to you. We shall do our best for you, whatever the circumstances, but I make you no promises. We shall see you in court.”

“Don’t go, Mr. Breen. Oh, I beg you. And don’t make me plead guilty to somethin’ I ain’t done.”

“You’ve heard what Miss Gifford said: We are suggesting that you plead guilty to something you
have
done,” and so saying he swept out of the cell, leaving Mrs. Marchant staring at me with burning resentment as if his unwelcome advice were all my fault.

Catching up with Breen on the cramped staircase, I whispered: “What will we do if she persists in pleading not guilty?”

“You will have to make a plea in open court for the case to be dropped. After all, we know it’s what the prosecution wants. Failing that, you will have to get her bail. But let’s hope she’ll do as we told her. I suspect she might.” It did not occur to Breen to hold the door for me, so I had to prop it open with my shoulder. In all my years as a student of law, nothing had prepared me for the state of inner turmoil with which I entered that courtroom. I hardly knew whether to hope that Leah would follow our instructions and plead guilty, or not.

This time, when Leah Marchant’s case was called,
the courtroom was relatively crowded. In addition to Mrs. Sanders, who was dressed head to toe in black, and a handful of other spectators, a couple of reporters lounged in the public benches, and beside me, in a supervisory role, sat Breen, though he pretended a complete lack of interest by filling in the
Times
crossword with one hand and leafing through the pages of a file with the other.

Also present was Meredith, who had insisted on being told the date and time of my next appearance in court. “If I don’t see you in action, you’ll never make me believe you actually are nearly a lawyer,” she said. Her presence was a distraction; I neither trusted nor understood her, the words she had spoken above Beachy Head lighthouse were scorched into my consciousness and I feared what new surprises might be sprung on me. I had not been told the result of the interview with Doctor Stopes.

The same magistrate, Shillitoe, presided as before. When Leah was brought up to the dock, he made a show of shooting his cuffs and wiping his pen before peering first at her, then Breen, over the top of his spectacles. “Mr. Breen?”

“Huh,” said Breen, as if awoken from sleep.

“I presume this is your case.”

“This is Miss Gifford’s case.”

“Then why are you here, Mr. Breen?”

Breen’s right eyebrow arched and he did not trouble to rise more than a few inches from his seat. “Forgive me, I presumed this was a public court of law.”

The charge was read by the clerk, and the police prosecutor began: “Your Worship, as you know, the case is an unusual one, because it concerns Mrs. Marchant’s attempt to kidnap her own baby. The 1891 Custody of Children Act gives the court the right to refuse Mrs. Marchant custody of her children if she be proved incapable, and her parental rights having been voluntarily relinquished by Mrs. Marchant when she gave the children in to the charge of the Good Samaritan’s Home, Hammersmith, section 3 of the act gives the court a duty to decide whether it ought to restore said children . . .”

“I just took ’em into that blasted ’ome in the first place because I couldn’t manage. Nobody told me I wouldn’t get them back,” yelled Leah from the dock. “Nobody told me what I was signin’ my name to. If I ’adn’t of tooken ’em in, if I’d kept them at ’ome I wouldn’t be ’ere now. I curse myself for trying to care for my own . . .”

“Mrs. Marchant, kindly do not intervene in these proceedings unless you are invited so to do,” said the magistrate.

“But they’re my bloody kids.”

“Excuse me, Your Worship,” I said, “might I have a word with my client?” and I hurried to the dock, where I used its high oak sides to hoist myself up on tiptoe and whisper: “Leah. You must be quiet. Above all, don’t swear or you will find yourself in contempt of court.”

She glowered but said nothing more. As I swung around to face the bench, I caught a glimpse of Meredith, who was watching with such intense interest that it would have been no surprise if she had leaped to her feet and berated the magistrate.

“Are we now ready for pleas to be taken?” asked the clerk. “Leah Marchant. Do you plead guilty to the offense of child abduction?”

The dock was behind me, so I couldn’t see Leah’s face. Breen entered another answer on his crossword. At last, she murmured: “I might.”

The magistrate’s eyes widened. “
Might?
That’s no reply. Guilty or not guilty?”

“They told me to plead guilty, even though I’m not.”

“Mrs. Marchant . . .” began Shillitoe.

I remembered but chose to ignore Thorne’s advice about not interrupting a judge: “Your Worship, we
advised
our client to plead guilty, we did not
tell
her to do so. I would ask that the charge be put again.”

The magistrate raised his hand to quell me. “Sit down, Miss um . . . Mrs. Marchant, I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. You are charged with a very serious offense indeed. If you plead guilty, you may face many months of imprisonment, so you should think very hard before you give your answer. Under no circumstances should you obey blindly the dictates of your lawyer . . . legal adviser, if you don’t agree with her.”

I clasped my hands in my lap and gazed straight ahead to a point above the clerk’s bald patch. Breen swiveled around and stared long and hard at Leah.

“Guilty, then,” she said sulkily.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I plead guilty.”

“Are you sure?”

“How many more times do I ’ave to . . . ?”

“Mrs. Marchant, please be aware that you are addressing a court of law. I don’t like your tone.”

The clerk said soothingly, “Now that we have a plea, perhaps the prosecution can give us the facts of the case.”

The prosecutor, as if reading from a script prepared by Theo Wolfe and his lunch chum, outlined the facts and stated that although on the face of it there could be few offenses more serious than child abduction, in this particular instance the prosecution was well aware that there were many mitigating factors, as would doubtless shortly be outlined by the defense, which was why the case had, exceptionally, in view of its seriousness, not been sent to a higher court, and certainly if a lenient sentence, for instance a conditional discharge, were, on this occasion, to be passed, the prosecution would not object.

It was my turn. “Your Worship, I would support what the learned police prosecutor . . .”

“Then there’s nothing more to be said, is there?” said the magistrate in a quiet and measured voice. “I have the full picture.”

Breen threw down his pen, readjusted his weight, and folded his arms. I gathered my wits: “On the contrary, Your Worship, I of course want to be sure that you give due consideration to my client’s circumstances before you sentence her, even though I am grateful for the police prosecutor’s compassionate view of her offense. Her landlady, Mrs. Sanders, is here to vouch for her good character and devotion to her children. Would you like to hear her speak, Your Worship?”

“I would not.”

The courtroom was so still that I could hear Leah’s uneven breathing in the dock behind me. The magistrate had me on the end of a wire and I recognized that this was not a matter of professional dislike or suspicion, as I had previously assumed, but of mortal outrage. He saw me as an aberration, an enemy of the establishment, and I had no hope at all of reaching him.

“Are you minded then to go along with the police—?” I said shakily.

“I am minded to sentence this woman as I see fit, Miss Gifford. I won’t be dictated to by you or anybody else.” He smiled, showing small, white teeth.

Too late I heard Leah’s sucking intake of breath. “I told you so. I told you what would ’appen when we was down in that fuckin’ cell. Oh my Gawd, he’s goin’ to lock me up and I ain’t never goin’ to see my kids again.”

“Silence, Mrs. Marchant.”

Leah lurched at the door of the dock, but one jailer seized her wrist, the other whipped out handcuffs and held her while she writhed and yelled: “I ain’t never goin’ to listen to anyone again. You’re all bastards. You don’t care a damn for me an’ my kids. I’m not waitin’ any longer . . .”

The magistrate intoned: “Leah Marchant, for the offense of child abduction I commit you to three months imprisonment, that is penal servitude, with hard labor, plus another month, to run consecutively, for contempt of court. Four months in all. You may take her down.”

The courtroom was suddenly abuzz and my own voice rang out: “Your Worship, you cannot commit a defendant to imprisonment of any but the first division for contempt of court.”