Now he was going over in his own mind a conversation of nearly two years ago.
He saw again, sitting in the chair opposite him, a girl, a short, stocky figure the olive brown skin, the dark red generous mouth, the heavy cheekbones and the fierceness of the blue eyes that looked into his beneath the heavy, beetling brows. A passionate face, a face full of vitality, a face that had known suffering would probably always know suffering but would never learn to accept suffering. The kind of woman who would fight and protest until the end. Where was she now, he wondered?
Somehow or other she had managed what had she managed exactly? Who had helped her? Had anyone helped her? Somebody must have done so.
She was back again, he supposed, in some trouble-stricken spot in Central Europe where she had come from, where she belonged, where she had had to go back to because there was no other course for her to take unless she was content to lose her liberty.
Jeremy Fullerton was an upholder of the law. He believed in the law, he was contemptuous of many of the magistrates of to-day with their weak sentences, their acceptance of scholastic needs. The students who stole books, the young married women who denuded the supermarkets, the girls who filched money from their employers, the boys who wrecked telephone boxes, none of them in real need, none of them desperate, most of them had known nothing but overindulgence in bringing-up and a fervent belief that anything they could not afford to buy was theirs to take. Yet along with his intrinsic belief in the administration of the law justly, Mr. Fullerton was a man who had compassion. He could be sorry for people. He could be sorry, and was sorry, for Olga Seminoff though he was quite unaffected by the passionate arguments she advanced for herself.
'I came to you for help. I thought you would help me. You were kind last year.
You helped me with forms so that I could remain another year in England. So they say to me: 'You need not answer any questions you do not wish to. You can be represented by a lawyer.' So I come to you.'
'The circumstances you have instanced-' and Mr. Fullerton remembered how dryly and coldly he had said that, all the more dryly and coldly because of the pity that lay behind the dryness of the statement '-do not apply. In this case I am not at liberty to act for you legally. I am representing already the Drake family. As you know, I was Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's solicitor.'
'But she is dead. She does not want a solicitor when she is dead.'
'She was fond of you,' said Mr. Fullerton. 'Yes, she was fond of me. That is what I am telling you. That is why she wanted to give me the money.'
'All her money?'
'Why not? Why not? She did not like her relations.'
'You are wrong. She was very fond of her niece and nephew.'
'Well, then, she may have liked Mr. Drake but she did not like Mrs. Drake. She found her very tiresome. Mrs. Drake interfered. She would not let Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe do always what she liked. She would not let her eat the food she liked.'
'She is a very conscientious woman, and she tried to get her aunt to obey the doctor's orders as to diet and not too much exercise and many other things.'
'People do not always want to obey a doctor's orders. They do not want to be interfered with by relations. They like living their own lives and doing what they want and having what they want. She had plenty of money. She could have what she wanted! She could have as much as she liked of everything. She was rich rich rich, and she could do what she liked with her money. They have already quite enough money, Mr. and Mrs. Drake.
They have a fine house and clothes and two cars. They are very well-to-do. Why should they have any more?'
'They were her only living relations.'
'She wanted me to have the money. She was sorry for me. She knew what I had been through. She knew about my father, arrested by the police and taken away. We never saw him again, my mother and I. And then my mother and how she died.
All my family died. It is terrible, what I have endured. You do not know what it is like to live in a police state, as I have lived in it.
No, no. You are on the side of the police. You are not on my side.'
'No,' Mr. Fullerton said, 'I am not on your side. I am very sorry for what has happened to you, but you've brought this trouble about yourself.'
'That is not true! It is not true that I have done anything I should not do. What have I done? I was kind to her, I was nice to her. I brought her in lots of things that she was not supposed to eat.
Chocolates and butter. All the time nothing but vegetable fats. She did not like vegetable fats. She wanted butter. She wanted lots of butter.'
'It's not just a question of butter,' said Mr. Fullerton.
'I looked after her, I was nice to her!
And so she was grateful. And then when she died and I find that in her kindness and her affection she has left a signed paper leaving all her money to me, then those Drakes come along and say I shall not have it.
They say all sorts of things.
They say I had a bad influence. And then they say worse things than that. Much worse. They say I wrote the Will myself.
That is nonsense. She wrote it. She wrote it. And then she sent me out of the room.
She got the cleaning woman and Jim the gardener. She said they had to sign the paper, not me. Because I was going to get the money. Why should not I have the money? Why should I not have some good luck in my life, some happiness? It seemed so wonderful. All the things I planned to do when I knew about it.'
'I have no doubt, yes, I have no doubt.'
'Why shouldn't I have plans? Why should not I rejoice? I am going to be happy and rich and have all the things I want. What did I do wrong? Nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Nothing'
'I have tried to explain to you,' said Mr. Fullerton.
'That is all lies. You say I tell lies. You say I wrote the paper myself. I did not write it myself. She wrote it. Nobody can say anything different.'
'Certain people say a good many things,' said Mr. Fullerton. 'Now listen. Stop protesting and listen to me. It is true, is it not, that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe in the letters you wrote for her, often asked you to copy her handwriting as nearly as you could? That was because she had an old-fashioned idea that to write typewritten letters to people who are friends or with whom you have a personal acquaintance, is an act of rudeness. That is a survival from Victorian days. Nowadays nobody cares whether they receive handwritten letters or typewritten ones. But to Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe that was discourtesy. You understand what I am saying?'
'Yes, I understand. And so she asks me. She says 'Now, Olga' she says. 'These four letters you will answer as I have told you and that you have taken down in shorthand. But you will write them in handwriting and you will make the handwriting as close to mine as possible.' And she told me to practise writing her handwriting, to notice how she made her a's, her b's and her F's and all the different letters. 'So long as it is reasonably like my handwriting,' she said, 'that will do, and then you can sign my name. But I do not want people to think that I am no longer able to write my own letters. Although, as you know, the rheumatism in my wrist is getting worse and I find it more difficult, but I don't want my personal letters typewritten.''
'You could have written them in your ordinary handwriting,' said Mr. Fullerton, 'and put a note at the end saying 'per secretary' or per initials if you liked.'
'She did not want me to do that. She wanted it to be thought that she wrote the letters herself.'
