The Crimson Rooms (22 page)

Breen was between them, spaniel-like, smiling his grammar-school-boy smile as famous legal names were tossed about easily as bonbons. I, on the other hand, sipped my tepid coffee and tried to assume an expression of tolerant disdain. My heart had told me Thorne was perfect, my head already knew that he was not. What a shame to find him guilty of being so tediously true to type.

Even so, he moved me so that the air around him seemed to oscillate with color like a shattered rainbow. Surely I was not so shallow as to be stirred by spotless cuffs, knife-sharp creases, or fineness of cloth? So what was it? Perhaps he reminded me a little of the dead boys I had known, my brother and his friends, Peter Shaw who had kissed me under the canal bridge. Like them, Thorne bore himself eagerly, as one anticipating an ever more interesting future. Like them, he had a boyish laugh and the ability to switch mood from jovial to solemn in a flash. He was undoubtedly the most beautiful man I had seen in years, not so much for the regularity of his features and the cleanness of his limbs as for the openness of his gaze, his slow but momentous smile, the particular inclination of his head when he was listening. And I loved to hear his voice, which was clipped, bright, and full of easy laughter. I wondered what kind of war he’d had, that it could have left him so apparently unscathed.

“To business,” he said at last, drawing himself upright and unaccountably managing to wrong-foot us, as if only we had been indulging in idle chat while Wheeler suffered. “Sir Hardynge has decided that Imperial Insurance will fund Wheeler’s defense. He’s very cut up over this case, thinks the least we can do is make sure we get the very best barrister for the job. Wheeler has been with the company since he was sixteen—his position was kept open during the war, of course. Had it not been for the slight conflict of interest I might have worked on the case myself.” His smile was self-deprecating, but we were left in little doubt that his days of working on briefs in a junior capacity were all but over. “We are somewhat embarrassed over the police assumption that the motive was an insurance claim and find it hard to believe Wheeler would be so misguided as to think he could get away with it. After all, he, more than any man on earth, will have been very clear about the terms and conditions under which life insurance is bought—he will have explained them himself to numerous clients. But one way or another, in the circumstances, I can only help and advise, and perhaps suggest whom we might instruct. Marshall Hall would have been ideal but he’s taking on far less work these days. There’s Burton Wainwright.”

“Could we afford him?”

“Money is not at issue here. We want to do the right thing by Wheeler.”

“Then Wainwright would certainly have my confidence,” said Breen. “You’ll be aware that the evidence against Wheeler is very strong except for the matter of a plausible motive. I would like to believe he’s innocent but at present there is not a single scrap of evidence to suggest another culprit. We are therefore pursuing a parallel line of defense, at least for the time being; that Wheeler is not in his right mind, whether or not he committed the murder. Had he maintained his silence I would have gone for a fitness to plead hearing but he now speaks very coherently indeed. The fact remains that Wheeler served nearly four years in the trenches, the crime is insanely unsubtle, and his response when arrested was that of a broken-spirited and bewildered man. Burton Wainwright has, I believe, dealt with other such cases and would therefore be an excellent choice.”

“Stella’s family told us that Wheeler has been moody since the war, something Miss Gifford’s waitress at Lyons mentioned too,” said Wolfe. “Breen, you spoke to the Wheeler clan. What had they to say on the subject?”

“That he was often withdrawn, not himself.”

“Any money worries?”

“They thought not. But he had a terrible war. Refused to rest, even when offered the chance. Saw countless slaughtered. Finally got sent home with half a hand missing just weeks before the ceasefire. Who would not be damaged by such experiences?”

“Who indeed?” said Thorne. “But I’m afraid the counterargument to shell shock as mitigation is very powerful. The prosecutor will ask, Where would we be if every ex-soldier whose nerves had been shot to pieces took to killing his wife?”

“And the murder was hardly unpremeditated,” I said, and found myself abruptly the center of attention.

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Breen. “The mad have their own logic.”

“It seems to me,” I added, “that his plan was both ridiculously ill-conceived and meticulously well worked out. If Wheeler really killed his wife and hoped to get away with it, why did he hide the gun and gloves next to her body? And why didn’t he take the opportunity to bury her properly, given that he had most of the weekend? Besides . . .”

“Besides?” Breen prompted.

“Besides, Wheeler says he didn’t kill his wife and I believe him.”

“What makes him different from every other murderer who pleads not guilty in our courts?”

“He was trusted. I met a friend of Stella’s who knew him quite well, and today her sister. They both trusted Wheeler.”

Thorne smiled. “I’m afraid most murderers are trusted by those who know them well.”

I could scarcely add: And I would defend Wheeler with the last atom of my being because he reminds me of James, not for his appearance or demeanor, of course; Wheeler was nothing like my slender, straight-backed brother. It was the way that war had swallowed these hopeful young men and spat them out as strangers. I remembered the soiled scrap of paper upon which James had scrawled Meredith’s name. He had marched to war one person, died another, just as Stephen Wheeler had returned moody and sorrowful and was now engulfed by this new tragedy. In my book, he should be cherished and protected if for no other reason than that he had been treated with such abject lack of humanity in the past. “If he’d done it,” I said weakly, “I think Wheeler would not lie about it.”

Breen said with surprising warmth: “Well, Miss Gifford, you have the makings of an excellent defense lawyer. You speak of our client’s innocence with conviction, exactly what we need.”

All this time I’d barely looked at Thorne, but as we prepared to leave that small upper room where the smell of spilled beer and old cigar smoke lingered in the dust, Breen said: “I was wondering, Miss Gifford, if we might instruct Thorne on the Leah Marchant appeal. It’s up to you, of course, I wouldn’t dream of interfering but it seems to me a good opportunity to ask him. I have to watch my step with Miss Gifford,” he added to Thorne. “She can be very fierce.”

“I’m well aware.” Thorne shook my hand and looked directly into my eyes. In the street below two dogs were rivaling each other in barks. A window was open behind him and a shaft of sunlight fell, a parallelogram, onto the intricate pattern of the rug. It seemed to me I could smell that sunbeam, a hint of bonfire.

“Drop me a note at my chambers,” he said, “if you so wish.” Then he released my hand and handed me his card.

I picked up my father’s briefcase, passed through the low doorway ahead of him, and went down the crooked stairs to the public bar. “I saw Thorndike’s
St. Joan
,” he said as we emerged onto the street. “Did you, by any chance?”

I nodded. He smiled. “I thought you would have done.”

“We’re off to visit the crime scene, Thorne,” called Wolfe. “Care to join us? We could just about squeeze you in.”

He laughed. “Thanks. I’ll have to give it a miss. Con. at two.” And I tried to dislike him again for being so busy, for using the slang of his chambers to such crushingly exclusive effect. Why not say conference? But with what terrifying speed he was becoming enmeshed in my life and at what risk to my equilibrium? I did not watch his departing form as he strode off toward the station; instead I turned resolutely away and threw back my head, pretending to crave the sun.

W
olfe’s blue Austin tourer lurched
and spluttered jauntily along the Chesham Road. Breen sat in the front with his hat off and his hair like a dandelion clock around his bald patch while I twisted sideways to accommodate my legs in the backseat and prayed that the journey would not last long enough to make me sick. My eyes were alternately blinded and dazzled as we flashed in and out of dense shade; first deep woodland, then head-high hedgerows. Due to the engine noise, I couldn’t participate in conversation, so I was mercifully free to pursue my own thoughts.

I was lecturing myself: you have seen Nicholas Thorne three times, Evelyn. You know him to be arrogant, ambitious, engaged to an heiress
.
Do not behave like a lovesick girl. Put him out of your head at once. So he was in my mind all the way to Chesham as I relived the walk on sun-baked cobbles from Toynbee Hall to the tearoom, the way he had swung my father’s briefcase back and forth, the competence of his hands among the teacups, his voice today in the upstairs room, gentle, cultured, full of laughter.

He was still with me as the car jolted to a halt under a wall near the church, where a policeman was waiting in the shade of the lych-gate, detailed to accompany us to the crime scene. When we followed the track through the churchyard and on up the hill, Thorne was ghostly at my shoulder. Breen, in his element, took off his jacket and walked in his shirtsleeves with his waistcoat undone and his striped braces exposed. Wolfe, far less fit, panted behind us, complaining of the seed-heads, pollen, wild flowers, the
smell
, all sure to lay him low. And ahead of us ambled the policeman, heavy-hipped in his sweltering uniform.

It was a near-perfect day; a light breeze, a few puffs of cloud, the track shaded. Only the company was wrong. A skylark soared, like at Beachy Head, and the air was filled with birdsong and the whirr of insects. Cow parsley and ragwort clustered in the hedgerows, cattle lowed in a field nearby. We came to a stile by a copse and beyond it a gap in the hedge and on the other side an uncut hay meadow dense with color. Prudence could have named every flower but I was able to identify only campion with some misgivings, poppies with certainty.

Under the hedge, out of sight of the path, a squarish patch of meadow had been trampled down. “This is where the picnic was held,” said the policeman, “according to our man Wheeler, although by the time we comes up here on the Sunday morning, he’s removed all the evidence and taken it home so we have only his word for it. It’s true the grass was crushed and my colleague found a bit of gristle that might have been corned beef, but that’s all we got.”

It was a dreamy, isolated spot, a twenty minutes’ walk from the town yet absolutely cut off from it. The Wheelers could have got up to anything there but I imagined a languid Stella lying back on her elbows and telling her husband to keep off, anyone might come along. “The poor young girl was wearing pink,” said the constable, who had been present at the finding of the body.

What had she been feeling? Restless, bored, sleepy? And Stephen, according to his own version of events, would have been aching for a pint while trying to entertain his flighty young bride with his plodding conversation. Or was his heart pounding and his hands shaking because of what he had in mind?

“Of course she weren’t shot here,” said the policeman, “that much we do know even though he denies until he’s blue in the face knowing of the place where she was buried or how to get there from here. We think they must have walked half a mile or so to them woods across the valley.”

“Only one witness has come forward who saw them on the way up the hill from Chesham at twelve,” said Breen. “Isn’t that extraordinary? We’re within a stone’s throw of the town.”

“You could be hours out here and never see a soul, especially weekends. I can take you to where she was shot and buried if you like. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so, there and back.”

Wolfe said he would wait for us in his automobile on account of his asthma, then the constable went ahead as before, followed by Breen and finally me. The path sloped quite steeply down to a dry valley and up the other side so that the view was constantly changing. Meredith would have dubbed the countryside
quintessentially
English—that is, well-managed, its wildness confined to patches. We walked in silence for a while, as if out of respect for Stella, who had been a few minutes from death as she swished through these grasses. But with Breen ahead of me and not a word said about our disagreement after the Leah Marchant hearing, I could not be quiet for long. “Mr. Breen, yesterday I was hasty. I . . .”

He gave a bark of laughter and put up his hand to silence me. “I knew that would be on your mind, Miss Gifford. Never undermine a good argument by backtracking. You were right and you know it, at least on the question of my intervention over the appeal. Learn to stand your ground without self-recrimination.”

On we went, along the side of the hill with a cluster of farm buildings ahead and a soft breeze funneled through the valley. Nothing else was said but I smiled at the back of Breen’s head and loved him.