City of Spades

14

Mobilisation of the defence


The message reached Theodora, in a highly garbled version, through an agitated secretary who boldly interrupted an interdepartmental conference at Broadcasting House on a projected series of talks to be called, provisionally, ‘The Misfit and the Body Corporate: a survey of contemporary unintegrated types.’ Theodora, scenting mischief, had asked the DAC (Programmes) if she might be excused, and had parliamented with the secretary in an airless corridor outside.

‘I’m sorry if I did wrong, Miss Pace, to barge in on the meeting,’ the secretary whispered, ‘but it sounded urgent. This person said this person was “in big trouble” – those were his words.’

‘Which person?’

‘The one who phoned said it. I think he must have been a native.’

‘You mean the African who telephones me sometimes?’

‘No: an illiterate sort, Miss Pace. I could hardly understand a word he spoke. But he did say to tell you “the Law have put the hands on she Spade friend” – those were the exact words he used.’

‘Thank you, Miss Lamb,’ said Theodora. ‘You did quite right. Please go in and tell the DAC I’m called away on urgent family business. A sudden case of sickness.’

All this Theodora told me, in calm, shrill tones, over the telephone to the flat, where I was helping Norbert Salt iron the ruffles he’d sewn on to the front of a silk shirt he planned to wear with his tuxedo at a gala.

‘It sounds, Theodora, as if Johnny’s been arrested.’

‘Of course it does. But where? And why? How does one find out?’

‘Telephone the police station.’

‘Which one?’

‘Well, try the East End ones first. Would you like me to do it?’

‘No, I’ll work from here. I’ll call you back when there are developments.’

‘Just a minute, Theodora. Lay your hands on some money if you can – it always comes in useful. And what about a lawyer?’

‘I’d thought of all that. I’ll call you later.’

I waited half an hour, then telephoned the BBC. Theodora had gone and left no message. I wondered what to do. I opened the fourth volume of the telephone directory and looked up ‘Zuss-Amor’.

Though the hour was late, a female voice replied. Yes, Mr Zuss-Amor was in, but what was it about? I started to explain, but clickings in the line suggested to me someone listening on an extension. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘May I please speak to Mr Zuss-Amor direct? Tell him I’m a friend of Alfy Bongo’s.’

Immediately a male voice said, ‘What sort of case is it, Mr Pew?’

‘I don’t know yet, my friend’s only just been arrested. We’re trying to find out why. He’s an African.’

‘Oh. Then we know what the case will probably be, don’t we. I can see you here tomorrow at half-past-five.’

‘But Mr Zuss-Amor, that’ll be too late. Won’t the case come up in court tomorrow morning?’

‘He’ll be formally charged tomorrow, yes, but you can take it from me, if the case is at all serious, the police will ask for a remand. There’s nothing I can do till I’ve heard some facts from you and from the client: that is, if I agree to take the case, of course, and he agrees to me.’

‘What should I do tomorrow morning?’

‘Where was your friend arrested?’

‘I don’t know yet. He lives down in the East End.’

‘It’ll be Boat Street magistrates’ court, most likely. Go there, try to see him, and try to get the magistrate to grant bail. I doubt if he will, though.’

‘Why?’

‘The police usually oppose bail in the kind of case I think it’s likely to be. See you tomorrow, then, Mr Pew, and thanks for calling.’

I had a lot more to say and ask, but Mr Zuss-Amor hung up on me. The moment I put the telephone down, the bell rang, and it was Theodora.

‘I’m at Aldgate, Montgomery,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get any sense out of the police over the phone, so I took a taxi down here and went to the station.’

‘Yes, yes. And?’

‘He’s been arrested, but they won’t tell me where he is or what the charge is.’

‘Why?’

‘They wanted to know what they called my “interest in the matter”. I said I was willing to go bail, but they told me that was a matter for the magistrate. Then I tried to get through to Sir Wallingford Puke-Drew—’

‘Sir who?’

‘He’s my family solicitor: the one who advised us on the eviction trouble; but there’s no one in his office.’

‘I’ve got a solicitor, Theodora. A Mr Zuss-Amor.’ And I told her of our conversation.

‘But what do you know about this person, Montgomery?’

‘Nothing. But he’s seeing me tomorrow, isn’t he? We must get things moving.’

There was a slight, agitated pause. ‘Suppose they convict him tomorrow before we have time to get legal advice?’

‘They can’t possibly do that. He has the right to apply for legal aid.’

‘But does he know that?’

‘He’s not an idiot, Theodora.’

‘If only I knew what it was all about.’

‘Well, stop fussing, and come back here and talk about it. There’s nothing else to do now that I can see. Would you like me to come down there and fetch you?’

‘No. I’ve kept the taxi waiting.’

She arrived back, battered and dismayed as I had never seen her before. I gave her a glass of vodka (a present to the household from Moscow Gentry), and she recovered something of her poise.

‘I’ve been thinking, Montgomery,’ she said, ‘and it must be one of three things. Either some act of violence, or else having that disgusting hemp in his possession, or else …’

‘Yes?’

‘You don’t think this woman Muriel was a prostitute, do you?’

‘I’m certain she wasn’t. She wouldn’t know how.’

‘Would he have lived on any other woman of that type?’

‘You can never be certain, Theodora, but I really don’t believe he would.’

‘What can you get for having Indian hemp?’

‘I believe on a first conviction it’s only a fine – unless they could prove he dealt in it as well.’

Theodora poured out another glassful. ‘I’ll have to cook up some story for the office,’ she said. Then, draining it down, ‘I wish I knew more about the world!’

Next morning saw us driving down to Boat Street in a taxi – I in my best suit with an unusual white shirt, and Theodora in her severest black. She opened her bag as we drew near the East End, and made herself up rather excessively. Then she took a small yellow pill, and swallowed with difficulty. ‘Dexedrine,’ she said. ‘Want one?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Good for the nerves. Tones you up in an emergency.’

‘Like hemp, apparently.’

‘But if you’ve got a kind doctor or chemist, perfectly legal.’

‘White man’s magic.’

‘No wonder they think we’re hypocrites.’

The public waiting at the court were not prepossessing: though even Venus and Adonis would have looked squalid in this antechamber of the temple of justice, built in Victorian public lavatory style. When the sitting began, we squeezed in among a considerable throng, and watched a succession of small, grim cases – on all of which two dreadful old men beside me throatily passed whispered comments, invariably derogatory to the accused. Somebody nudged me. It was Mr Laddy Boy, the seaman I’d met earlier in the Sphere. He shook hands, and pursed his lips as if to say, ‘I’m here, and you’re here – so there’s nothing to worry about at all.’

When Johnny Fortune was brought in, he looked a little shrunken and shop-soiled, but preserved, I was glad to see, his habitual buoyancy. He immediately glanced round to where the public were, saw us, nodded slightly, and then faced the magistrate.

This was one of those old gentlemen who look so amiable, but in such a neutral, meaningless sort of way that one really can’t tell very much about them. The clerk read the charge, which, as I’d feared, and all the time secretly believed it would be, was one of living on the immoral earnings of a common prostitute, to wit, Dorothea Violet Macpherson. To this odious charge, Johnny Fortune pleaded not guilty in ringing, confident tones.

‘F*cking ponce,’ whispered one of the disgusting old men.

‘These black bastards,’ said the other.

Laddy Boy trod accidentally on their feet. There was some slight scuffling, and the usher turned and frowned severely.

Through watching this, I did not at first see Inspector Purity until he stepped into the box. My heart sank. He gave evidence of arrest in a clear, manly, honest voice and immediately asked for a remand.

‘For how long, Detective-Inspector?’ said the magistrate, as if asking a neighbour how long he wanted to borrow the lawnmower.

‘We should be ready in a week, sir.’

‘Very well. What about bail?’

‘We oppose bail, your Worship. The accused showed violence when under arrest, and we fear intimidation of the prosecution’s witnesses.’

‘I see. Have you anything to say?’ the magistrate asked Johnny.

As soon as Johnny spoke, the court stiffened slightly, and all of them – audience, Press, lawyers and innumerable coppers – glanced curiously towards the dock. This was evidently not the ordinary African.

‘I wish to ask that you grant me bail, sir, in order that I take law advice, prepare my case, and see my witnesses to defend me. Two white friends of good reputation are here in the court to bail for me.’ (Everyone looked towards the public box.) ‘I undertake no violence to anyone, unlike what has been stated by the police evidence.’

The magistrate mused, then turned. ‘What do you say, Detective-Inspector?’

‘An additional reason that we have, your Worship, for opposing bail, is that the prisoner refused to have his fingerprints taken. We also know the accused consorts with coloured merchant seamen, and have reason to believe he may try to stow away and leave the country without standing trial.’

Laddy Boy muttered something in African.

‘Why wouldn’t you have your fingerprints taken?’ the magistrate asked Johnny, as if he had thereby deprived himself of a curious and amusing experience.

‘My belief, sir, is that here in this country no man is forced to have prints taken of his fingers unless he has been convicted of some crime, which in my life I never have been at any time for any reason.’

The magistrate contrived both to frown and raise his brows. ‘But don’t you think you ought to help the officers in their enquiries?’ he said, in a mild and fatherly way. ‘You know, of course, I could always make an order for you to have them done.’

‘If, sir, you say I must submit to fingerprints, I will. But what is most important to me is that you give me bail, because in my cell I cannot fix to be defended as I should be. I am not a stowaway, and came to England here as proper passenger paying my own fare; and shall not wish to leave in any other way before I stand my trial.’

This speech of Johnny’s seemed a little too voluble, and syntactically unsound, to please the magistrate.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said finally. ‘You’ll have every opportunity to prepare your case and take legal advice in custody. Bail refused.’

I turned in a rage to Theodora, but found she’d gone. I went outside the court with Laddy Boy.

‘They put him in Brixton for remand,’ the African said. ‘We go and see him there and bring him liquor.’

‘In prison?’

‘Port wine is allowed for only on remand, but not some spirits,’ he told me. ‘We also take some chicken.’

This seemed to me so irrelevant to the major problems that I wanted to clout Laddy Boy. ‘The thing is to get him a good lawyer and get him out!’ I said crossly.

‘Oh, yes, lawyer,’ said Laddy Boy. ‘You fix him that.’

Theodora reappeared, red-faced and furious. ‘They wouldn’t let me see him,’ she exclaimed. ‘But I spoke to the jailer. He says we can go down to Brixton this afternoon and see him there.’

We walked out in the chilly sun, breathing great gulps of air. I stopped Theodora on the pavement.

‘Doesn’t one thing stick out a mile?’ I said.

‘What sticks out a mile is that the magistrate’s a moron.’

‘Forget about the magistrate, Theodora! Isn’t it obvious that if we can get Muriel to go into the box, he’s free?’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because if he lived off her moral earnings in the shirt factory, he couldn’t have been living off her sister Dorothy’s immoral earnings on the streets.’

‘He could persuade Muriel – but can we? That’s why they refused him bail,’ cried Theodora. ‘Why isn’t Muriel here, anyway? She’s ratted on him.’

‘You speak of Muriel?’ said Laddy Boy. ‘She leave Johnny some many weeks now.’

‘And who’s he been living with since?’ asked Theodora sharply.

‘Sometimes Dorothy, I think, but he leave her too.’

‘My God!’ cried Theodora. ‘The imbecile!’

‘Laddy Boy,’ I said. ‘You don’t think he did this with Dorothy, do you?’

The sailor looked vaguer than ever. ‘Thing is to get him free,’ he said. ‘What he do, not matter. What matter is get him free.’

‘We’d better go and see Muriel, anyway, and find out,’ I said.

‘Muriel, she with her mother now, Johnny tell me,’ Laddy Boy said, rather indifferently.

We had a not very agreeable lunch together at a fish-and-chip place. Laddy Boy went out shopping, and, when he came back, spent much time making mysterious little bundles of what he’d bought.

‘These Africans are hopeless,’ said Theodora in a whisper like a scream.

‘What are you up to, Laddy Boy?’ I asked.

‘I tip out the port wine from the bottle, and put in whisky,’ Laddy Boy said proudly. ‘He like that better. And in these chicken wing, I put some weed beneath the skin of it.’

‘Good heavens! Don’t they examine everything?’

‘Oh, yes. But I do it very clever.’

‘Let’s hope to God you do.’

We set off to Brixton in dejected silence, only Laddy Boy undismayed. He pointed out landmarks on the way. (‘That the Oval station, there,’ for example.) Outside the prison gates, the taxi driver was facetious. (‘Don’t stay in there too long, mate, will you?’ etc.) We were kept waiting in the waiting-room inside by a jailer whose face had to be seen to be believed. Laddy Boy carefully handed over his parcels, which the warder dumped like offal in a cardboard case. At last, behind the partitioned wire-netting that ran down one half of the room, Johnny Fortune made his sad appearance.

And it was sad: the buoyancy had dropped, and for the first time since I knew him I thought he looked afraid. He wasn’t much interested in Theodora and in me, and talked most of the time to Laddy Boy in African. Theodora grew increasingly enraged. ‘We must get the information out of him, Montgomery. Do interrupt that wretched African, and talk to Johnny.’

‘The lawyer will see him for all that, Theodora. Don’t be angry – just try to cheer him up.’

Almost at once, the warder said, in tones like a funeral bell, ‘Time up!’ At this Laddy Boy seemed suddenly overcome with hysteria and, clutching the wire-netting, cried, in English, ‘My brother! Bless you, my brother! Oh, my brother!’ – and tried to kiss Johnny through the grille. The warders tore him away, and Johnny was marched off.

‘Any more of that,’ the jailer said, ‘and you’ll be coming inside to keep him company.’

Out in the street, as soon as we’d turned the corner, Laddy Boy let out a roar of laughter. ‘I do it!’ he cried. ‘I do it.’

‘Do what, you idiot!’ Theodora shouted.

‘Theodora!’

‘The five-pound note, he get it! I kiss it to him through the bar!’

When the ingenious seaman’s mirth abated, he told us he’d screwed the note up in a ball, put it in his mouth, and passed it through the grille into Johnny Fortune’s. ‘But is money all that much use when you’re in jail?’ I asked the sailor.

Laddy Boy stopped in his tracks, and said: ‘Man, in that place, loot is everything. You can buy anything if you have loot.’

‘It’ll make him more cheerful, then. He didn’t look too happy, did he.’

‘Understand me, man,’ said Laddy Boy. ‘It is his family he think of. Wounding or even thieving, that is nothing; but this charge they put upon him is the top disgrace.’

Nearby Lambeth town hall, Theodora insisted on entering a phone box to call up again Sir Wallingford whoever-it-was, her family solicitor. I was not surprised when she came out and told us, ‘He wasn’t there, but his chief clerk says it’s not the sort of case they handle.’

‘Very helpful. Let’s stick to Zuss-Amor.’

‘You want me to come with you to see him?’

‘Not unless you really want to. I think it’d be much easier if I call on him alone. But first of all I’m going to try to contact Muriel. I know where her mother lives in Maida Vale.’

‘I shall come too.’

‘No, Theodora, you will not. The last thing likely to encourage Muriel to help Johnny is to hear a rival pleading for him to her.’

‘What else can I do, then?’

‘Go to your office and write some enormous memos. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve seen Zuss-Amor.’

‘I might ask the Corporation to let me appear in court as a witness to his character.’

‘Suppose he gets convicted, Theodora.’

‘He won’t get convicted. He’s innocent.’

‘Yes, but if he were convicted, and you’d appeared in court, you’d lose your job.’

‘I wouldn’t. No one is ever dismissed from the Corporation.’

‘No doubt; but I can’t believe you’d rise to any further dizzy heights there if you got mixed up publicly in this case.’

‘You’ve no guts, Montgomery. No moral fibre.’

‘Oh, SHUT UP, Theodora. You’re beginning to get on my tits.’

‘Easy now,’ said Laddy Boy.

I seized his hand, shook it, waved to Theodora, and leapt into a taxi on the rank. Then, remembering I had no money for the lawyer, had to climb ignominiously out and borrow it from her. I set off northwards in a rage.

But I got no help from the Macpherson family. A horrible old woman who admitted to being the mother refused to let me in, and though I shouted through the door for Muriel, she wouldn’t come.

‘She’s finished with him – finished!’ Mrs Macpherson yelled, sticking her face and body out at me like the figurehead of a ship. ‘I don’t care if they hang him for what he’s done, my daughter wouldn’t lift her little finger for him!’ And she banged the door.