“May I ask you one question, my lord?”
“Certainly.”
“If this child I’m carrying now turns out to be a boy, what happens to the money then?”
“Edna!”
Mr. Joliffe, who up to that moment had been sitting listlessly watching the proceedings as though they did not concern him, suddenly rose to his feet, his face scarlet.
“You shameless girl-” he began. He got no further.
“Sit down,” said Mr. Justice Pomeroy.
He spoke quietly, but Mr. Joliffe sat down as though his legs had been pulled from under him, his red face suddenly pale.
His lordship turned to Mrs. Gorman as though the interruption had not occurred.
“I understood you to say that your husband left you two years ago,” he said.
“True enough, my lord. But he came to me on the Friday night, the night before he was killed. It wasn’t the first time either, though my father never knew. He wanted money, of course-he always did-and I had little enough to give him. But he was my husband, and what I had, I gave.”
“What you had, you gave?” the Judge repeated quietly. “I see.”
There was silence in the court for a moment. Pettigrew was seeing once more the farmyard of Sallowcombe in the half-light of dawn and the blended shadows of a man and a woman at the window opposite his own. He marvelled that he should ever have been so blind as not to guess the truth.
“Mr. Manktelow,” said the Judge, “this raises rather an interesting question, does it not?”
“My lord, it does. This has taken me entirely by surprise. I need hardly say that those instructing me were quite unaware-”
“So I should have imagined.”
“If your lordship would be good enough to grant an adjournment to allow me to consider the position…”
“I don’t see the necessity for an adjournment, Mr. Manktelow. The situation is unusual and involved, but I think it is perfectly clear. If this child proves to be a girl, nothing is changed. Matters remain in statu quo ante. But if it should be a boy”-Mr. Justice Pomeroy licked his lips-“it is a really delightfully complex proposition, Mr. Manktelow-he will preserve the base fee for his mother’s enjoyment, will he not?”
“I should apprehend so, my lord.”
“Preserve it, that is, so long as he lives-” he went on in a rising tone of excitement. Manktelow caught his mood, and chimed in:
“And he has only to live till he is twelve years old-”
“Just so. The Limitation Act, 1939-”
“Section 11, my lord-”
“And in that case his mother’s interest will become-”
“Indefeasible!”
The two men, smiling broadly, chanted the last word in perfect unison. Under a capable producer, Pettigrew thought, they could have made a reasonably good pair of cross-talk comedians. Then Mr. Justice Pomeroy abruptly recovered his dignity and said:
“I shall not grant an adjournment.”
“As your lordship pleases.”
Turning to Mrs. Gorman, he said, “The answer to your question, madam, as you may have gathered, is that the sex of your child may make a considerable difference. When is it expected, by the way?”
“The third week in June, my lord.”
“You have not so very long to wait, then. If it is a boy, the property is yours so long as he lives, and yours for good should he survive to the age of twelve.”
“Thank you, my lord. And now that is settled, may I go away?”
“But nothing is settled. I still have to try this case.”
“I don’t see what there is to try.”
“Don’t you understand? Whether you have a son or another daughter, this property is yours already, under your husband’s will, unless the Plaintiff, Mr. Dick Gorman, can prove that your husband died on Saturday, the 9th of September and not on Tuesday, the 12th.”
“He needn’t bother to prove that,” said Mrs. Gorman sadly. “Jack died on Saturday, the morning he left me. I’ve known it all along.”
“The Death Certificate before me certifies that he died on Tuesday, and that remains the date of his death until the contrary is proved. I have to hear the evidence.”
“He died on Saturday,” Mrs. Gorman repeated, and for the first time there was passion in her voice. “And how he died no one will tell me, though there’s someone here knows well enough, I think. And Gilbert, that had lain a- dying for months, lingered on till Sunday. That’s how it was. The gentleman said right when he told you the coroner and all were deceived, my lord. But I was deceived, too. My Jack was hidden away till after Gilbert was dead, and then brought out to be found again with his wounds all fresh as though he had only just died. It’s that I can’t get out of my mind-my husband’s poor body shut up in a butcher’s cold store like the carcase of a sheep or a steer, so that his daughters would get what wasn’t rightly theirs. It doesn’t seem possible, but there’s those will do anything for money. And that’s the truth, my lord. Ask my father if it’s not the truth!”
CHAPTER XIV. According to the Evidence
Edna Gorman’s voice trailed away into a silence that lasted just long enough to give Pettigrew time to wonder what was the appropriate Chancery reaction to these very untypical Chancery proceedings. Then Mr. Justice Pomeroy supplied the answer. He raised his heavy-lidded eyes towards the time-piece on the wall, heaved himself out of his chair and observed to the assembled company, now respectfully upstanding, “Two o’clock.” The morning had gone; it was time to be thinking of lunch.
In the corridor outside the court, Pettigrew felt his arm being taken in a firm but friendly grip. He looked round, and saw that it was Manktelow.
“I’m not sure that I want to talk to you,” said Pettigrew.
“Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You’re my witness.”
“What you mean is, that you want to talk to me.”
“You will find that it comes to exactly the same thing. You will be lunching in hall. So shall I. You will sit at the same table you have used since you were called. So shall I. I shall come and sit next to you and you will have no escape. You had better accept your fate quietly.”
Pettigrew surrendered. Manktelow, after all, was a man and a brother. Chancery had long since claimed him for her own, but he was none the less a Templar of the same Inn as Pettigrew. They had lunched together, with intervals for two world wars and other interruptions, fairly regularly for over forty years. Since Pettigrew retired from practice after the second war, they had neither met nor corresponded, but this did not prevent them from taking up their acquaintance exactly where they had left it. They walked together to the robing-room, and it seemed odd and unnatural that only one of them should have a wig and gown to leave behind there. Together they strolled across the Strand, in the wake of a judge for whom a policeman was holding up the traffic. It was all deliciously like old times. Then they went into hall.
“Hall” to Pettigrew meant a lofty stone building in Victorian Gothic, panelled with highly varnished wood, adorned with the escutcheons of by-gone celebrities and nonentities, and populated by large statues representing the nineteenth-century’s idea of medieval Knights Templar. Aesthetes had condemned it; Hitler had destroyed it; Pettigrew missed it very much. The familiar table was still in the same place, with the familiar faces around it. He noticed that one or two strangers had contrived not only to get themselves called to the Bar, but to insinuate themselves among his friends, but he was prepared for a reasonable amount of change in ten years. What he was not prepared for was the babel of sound that assailed his ears as he entered the shining, new, handsome building that was now “hall”. Everybody seemed to be shouting at the top of his voice. The clatter of knives and forks was deafening. The feet of the waiters hurrying across the floor thundered like charging cavalry.
