Morry; a portrait of a lawyer

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Class TZ _

Boo k-

Copyright N ° ' 0 _

CHAPTER I Random Memories

I remember gazing round the Abramsons’ draw¬ ing-room in awed surprise: everything seemed either bright-coloured or shiny, and Mrs. Abramson like a large bird of brilliant plumage. She wore a violet satin dress with puff-sleeves gored and ruched, the skirt made full and flounced; and a cap of white lace on a pink satin foundation: these being in the newest fashion. My mother was wearing her calling gown, which she had had for several years, a puce poplin, cut to the figure, with tight sleeves, and made plain; and a small black bonnet, with a cream lace fall. I wore a black-and-red-checked flannel frock, white socks with black bars, ankle-strap shoes, and a black velvet tam-o’-shanter with a cairngorm brooch and a feather at one side — this being the kind of costume worn by little boys when I was three.

I owe these particulars to my mother’s recollection. I only remember, dimly, that there was a marked con¬ trast between her and Mrs. Abramson (Mrs. Abram¬ son was stout, and my mother slim and elegant); also that Mrs. Abramson had a loud voice and a hearty laugh (my mother’s tones were always modulated). I cannot be sure whether it was then, or later, that I noticed the rolls of fat at the back of Mrs. Abramson’s 3 neck and the slight moustache which darkened her upper lip.

The ostensible reason for our call was to see how the baby was getting on; really, it was a duty call. The duties of a rector’s wife were extended in my mother’s case by my father’s large-mindedness. The Abramsons were business Londoners who had in¬ vaded our sleepy Hertfordshire village, and Jews; that made no difference in my father’s eyes; they lived in the parish, therefore my mother must call. So my mother called — when she could not get out of it.

The baby was brought down in his nurse’s arms for us to admire. I was told his name was Morris. My mother duly admired him; I peered from a respectful distance. He looked like a starfish — all noses.

“ You needn’t be afraid of dear little Morry,” said Mrs. Abramson. 66 He won’t bite you.”

I went closer. I bent over dear little Morry, and Morry shoved his fist in my eye, and-

And it must be supposed that we took a fancy to each other.

As soon as Morry could toddle, he was brought to play in our garden. Sometimes I went to play in their garden. Mr. Abramson, a kindly father, had provided his children with a sandpit; I built castles of sand, and then allowed Morry to kick them to pieces. He used to shriek like an Indian while he did so, but with a grave face. Morry’s gravity was remarkable from childhood. He rarely smiled; he beamed in¬ stead, in a peculiar fashion of his own: he never laughed.

RANDOM MEMORIES

About the age of seven I learned something of the history of my family, and became inordinately con¬ ceited over it. I announced to Morry, one day when he came to play with me, that I was a descendant of Saxon Kings.

44 You must take the oath of allegiance. Say after me ” — I have no idea where this rigmarole came from — 44 4 1 take you as my liege lord, and will true faith and allegiance bear, in no wise to oppose or hinder your designs, and to be your faithful and lov¬ ing subject as long as I shall live.’ ”

Morry said it. He looked up at me while he did so. I suppose he almost worshipped me in those days.

I think that was before Nesta joined us. Her parents died, and my father adopted her. I renamed her 44 Cockles.” She was a little younger than Morry, and small for her years, with the tiniest hands and feet imaginable, dry sandy hair, green eyes, and a hot temper. We became a trio.

Our favourite game was playing trains. Up and down the long straight paths in the kitchen-garden we trotted tirelessly, puffing and whistling and blowing off steam. Later there were signals, connected to levers in a potting-shed. Later still, we acquired a telegraph set — one instrument was installed in the potting-shed and the other in the harness-room. Morry and I played traffic-manager and signalman alter¬ nately, while Nesta acted as train. When she required a rest, we allowed her to enter one of the offices and dictate a message to be transmitted to the other.

Nesta liked this because it gave her a chance to insult us with impunity. Thus, when Morry was sender, she would dictate for my benefit some such message as: 66 Hallo, Beanpole, how are the beans do¬ ing with the wire brush on top ” — a general allusion to my lankiness and sticky-up hair which was not in¬ tended to convey the idea that the imaginary beans found my mop in their way: she had a trick of jumb¬ ling her sentences. When Morry was at the receiving end he would get: “ Hallo pudding face with two cur¬ rants; they must have been expensive” — meaning that the price of currants was high when his face was made, not that his eyes particularly had been costly. Her nickname for him was “ Plumduff,” afterwards reduced to the last syllable.

Riddles and puzzles were a form of social diver¬ sion in those days, and my father was fond of putting to us such problems as: “What is the price of eggs when two more for a shilling would mean a penny less per dozen?” Morry, by the time he was eleven, could solve almost any of these problems. At my prepara¬ tory school I learned to guy them; at the end of my first term I brought home a cod puzzle. It was: “Mary looked at the portrait of a man and said, ‘ That man’s father was my father, and his mother was my mother, yet we are not brother and sister.’ What was Mary?”

My father was angry when he was sold over this. Morry came to tea. I put it to him. He was sitting by Nesta, who, during my absence at school, had replaced me as his companion. She watched him eagerly while he reflected; I can see them now — Morry with his parrot’s beak and beady eyes, the broad smooth forehead unwrinkled, the indetermi¬ nately-coloured eyebrows unknitted; and her little

RANDOM MEMORIES bright face, the green eyes bent on him adoringly.

Morry gave judgment. “I should say she was not speaking the truth.”

The prescribed answer was 66 A liar.”

In Morry’s thirteenth year his father was made bankrupt, and the family left Mirfield.

Two years later, I went to stay for a few days with the Abramsons at Brixton. The house was small, and there were ten people living in it. The two elder boys, Dan and Joe, were grown up and went to business; Jessie, the eldest girl, was a teacher; but Mr. Abram¬ son was not prospering as a commission agent, and the housework had to be done by Mrs. Abramson, Jessie, and Sarah, who had appeared in the world next before Morry. There were three younger chil¬ dren. Mrs. Abramson was unfailingly jolly despite her trials and her increasing stoutness, which made it difficult for her to get about; Sarah had a genius for management, and Jess did not grumble at having to get up early in the holidays; she was working for an examination in every spare moment. They were all very kind to me; but the house was overcrowded, noisy, and, as I thought, their way of living was messy. No doubt, I was something of a snob. Morry had not changed much, or if he had, I did not notice it. He was still my playmate.

Chapter II

I WAS eighteen, in the sixth and a prefect at my public school, when Morry came to Mirfield again. He seemed to me a very suburban London youth indeed; naturally, he had acquired manners and standards of conduct at his day-school which were different from mine. Also, he was a swot—he actually thought school work important! I must have betrayed my sense of superiority, for Nesta took me to task.

“Who are you to look at Duff and speak to him like that? He has more brains than you have!”

I put on my loftiest air. “Very likely. But there are a number of things he does not know.”

“ What?”

“What is good form and what isn’t, for one thing.”

“Good form!” exclaimed Nesta scornfully. “Pah!”

I seized her by the arm. “Cheeky kid!”

“Let me go, Dick.”

“Not till you apologise.”

“Do you really want me to apologise?” Nesta put her head on one side and smiled sweetly into my face.

I suddenly became aware that although Nesta had not grown up much, she had grown into a pretty girl. I had continued to look on her as plain—that is to say, I had never thought about her looks. But the gentleman of the sixth is at the waking-up point. 1 woke up.

Her green eyes had sparkles in them. Her cheeks were rosy, her skin like alabaster. Her bow of a mouth was richly red, her sleek hair a beautiful golden brown.

I let her go.

After that I was jealous of Morry because he was on such good terms with her. They went for walks together; I was with them, but they were walking together. They danced together, and Nesta smiled up at Morry with her head tilted; I knew somehow that she would only do that to someone she liked very much. Moreover, she took pains with Morry: my shaft about good form had gone home.

I tackled her as to this. “I notice you don’t take any trouble over me.”

“Oh, you! You are Mr. Know-All. No one could teach you anything.”

“There is one thing you might teach me, Cockles.” “What?”

“How to make you like me better.”

Her green eyes glinted mischievously. “Sir,” she said, “if you cannot find that out for yourself, no one can teach you.” Which I have since found to be true—not only in regard to Nesta.

I decided to let Morry know that I was in love with her. Then, if he were too—as I rather hoped—we could agree to be honourable rivals in accordance with tradition. Imbued by this romantic nonsense, I invited him to go for a walk with me alone. While I was revolving how to put what I had to say, Morry remarked:

“You are for Oxford, I suppose?”

I said I was going up to Christ Church next year. “Are you likely to be coming up?” I knew that his father could not afford to send him to a university, but it seemed polite to ask.

“No. I intend to try for a school in London.”

London was not a university in my eyes.

“You see, Dick,” Morry went on, “there is no money to spare. I ought to go to business and earn something. But I want to be a barrister.”

“Oh? That is rather expensive.”

“Yes. I must manage as cheaply as I can. If I take honours, I might be able to get into Montagu’s chambers. He is a friend of one of my uncles, and I think he would give me a chance.”

Montagu was a well-known barrister. I became interested.

“Couldn’t you manage Cambridge?” Cambridge was, in my eyes, a mere second best to Oxford; but still, it was a second best.

“I don’t think so. I must live at home. It is rather hard on the old man anyhow, because he can only just make ends meet as it is. Jessie is married, so we have lost her contribution to the expenses. But Dan is getting on splendidly, and Joe is doing better now; they are quite willing for me to have a shot at the bar.”

“Good sports!” said I carelessly, and then found myself realising the difference between Morry and myself as to opportunities. It came to me with a shock that much on which I prided myself was merely the result of that difference. If it had been my father who got into difficulties instead of Mr. Abramson—

The result was that I did not tell Morry about my passion, because it seemed as if it would be taking an unfair advantage. I decided instead to watch him and Nesta while discreetly pursuing my own court¬ ship, and if I came to the conclusion that she pre¬ ferred him, to retire and nurse my wounded heart in silence. It is difficult now to be serious over it; but I was desperately in earnest then.

I wrote to Nesta regularly after I went back to school, and, while not daring to make my letters into love letters, contrived to slip in a little something here and there which would give her a handle if she wished to respond. Nesta did not respond, and after I went to Oxford I forgot that I was in love with her. I do not remember what—or who—was responsible for this.

My mother died, and I became independent of my father to the extent of four hundred pounds a year. I decided for the diplomatic service. A couple of years later my father also passed into the silence, and when his affairs were investigated a curious situation arose. He had not been as well off as we supposed, and had never made a new will since he adopted Nesta, who had no money of her own. We tried to keep this from her; she was told that she would share equally with us; but when she learned how much her share would be, she refused it.

“If that’s all you are going to get, I won’t touch a penny, it’s not much.”

We represented to her that we had our mother’s money.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

She was informed that she would have to take her legacy.

“Why? What does the will say?”

This was an awkward point to deal with, and I suppose we bungled it, because in the end Nesta dis¬ covered that she was not mentioned in the will at all. Then, nothing would move her.

“Uncle Alwyn took me in when I was left penni¬ less, brought me up and educated me, gave me a dress allowance the same as you”—this was directed to my sisters—“I can earn my own living, isn’t that enough?”

We protested.

“If you try to force me, I shall go abroad, I won’t have it.”

I was deputed to persuade her.

“Do be reasonable. Cockles,” I said as we walked in the dear old garden, soon to be surrendered to a stranger. “If you don’t take it from us, Aunt Betsey is sure to insist on allowing you something.”

Nesta’s paternal grandfather and mine were brothers; their father married again when they were grown up, and Aunt Betsey was their half-sister. She married Henry, fourth earl of Wrenford and seven¬ teenth baron Youatt of Markhamsted, who was reckoned the head of the family, although belonging to a younger branch. Uncle Henry had died some years before, but Aunt Betsey still had Markhamsted by arrangement with his nephew Tom, who had suc¬ ceeded him, Tom being a drunken waster who pre¬ ferred cash to responsibilities. Nesta was going to stay with her.

“She could afford it, but I shan’t take it from her either, you can’t. Don’t you believe I can earn my living?”

“I am sure you can. But suppose you get into a bad place? If you are dependent on your salary, you will be afraid to break away. Whereas if you had funds to draw upon, you could leave and try for something better.”

Nesta was not impressed by this businesslike argu¬ ment. I went on until she stopped me with:

“It’s no use, Dick, you are all three perfect dears, I have made up my mind about it.”

She had linked her arm in mine as we strolled. Now she squeezed it, and looked up at me with glistening eyes. The fiction that I was in love with her came back. I fancy that I had as well a con¬ fused idea of acting nobly to save her from what was in those days a perilous experiment.

“Then—will you marry me?”

We stood still, facing each other. Nesta stared.

“Oh, Dick, are you really in love with me, what a darling you are, I wish you weren’t.”

I said I was—in love with her, not a darling; I think I swore it. Her eyes grew very tender; she was wise enough to guess the truth. I mistook the meaning of the look, and, with a quickly-beating heart, tried to draw her to me. She put out her little hand to ward me off.

“I couldn’t,” she said definitely. “Don’t you know why?” I didn’t.

“Because—oh, surely you must have seen.”

“Is it—Morry?”

Her breast heaved, she flushed, and tears came into her eyes. “You won’t give me away, will you? I should never have told you but for what you said just now.”

Another young man might have been excused; Nesta, at nineteen, was bewitching enough to make a fellow lose his head. The epithet oftenest applied to her, “fairylike,” did not really fit; Meredith’s “dainty rogue in porcelain” came nearer; but Nesta’s elfishness and roguishness were only superficial, and there was nothing she resembled less than a china figure. She was wholly human and warmly affec¬ tionate, with a temper-jet like a salt flame to keep her lovingness wholesome and sweet. Just because her affection for me had always been frankly ex¬ pressed in look and tone and deed, I knew that she regarded me as a dear brother. I knew, too, in my heart, that I did not love her in the sex sense. There was no excuse for me.

The recollection of that evening scorches me when¬ ever it recurs. I may plead, now, that nothing is more difficult for youth than to be certain of the genuine¬ ness of its emotions.

Chapter III

I WAS in England on leave, spending the last week of it at a country-house near Redminster. I cycled into the town one afternoon, and met Morry in the High Street. He had been at the bar for some con¬ siderable time then.

I dismounted. “What’s brought you here?”

“The assizes begin to-morrow, and I have a case for the Crown.”

“You must be getting on.”

“Not so badly. What are you doing in these parts?”

“Staying with the Cavershams.”

“Ah.” Morry had developed a legal manner. “Have you anything special to do this afternoon and evening?”

“Then let us take a walk, and we will eat together.”

We left the town, exchanging news.

“Cockles is at Montpellier,” I remarked in the most casual tone I could assume. “She is companion to an old lady, a school friend of my mother’s.”

“Yes. She wrote to me soon after she went.”

So they corresponded. I was glad to hear that.

“Do you know about the trouble we had with her after my father died?”

I told him. “We persuaded her in the end to take something.” (That was an accidental result of my lunacy: Nesta had consented to a compromise.)

“She is very fond of all of you,” said Morry.

I tried to be artful. “She might marry, and it makes such a difference to a girl then if she has something of her own, even if it is only a little.”

Morry looked at me as if he were uncertain what I had in my mind. “Have you been making plans in connection with her?”

“Yes, to some extent—that is to say, it has occurred to me—but I wasn’t sure about you.”

I do not recollect that there was a pause, but there may have been, before Morry said in a grave tone: “It will be years before I am in a position to marry, Dick.”

So he did care for her. I wondered whether he had told her so.

“You see,” he went on, “a good deal of responsi¬ bility has fallen on my shoulders. There are five of us still at home: my father and mother, Sarah, my¬ self, and Matt. I am the only one who earns any¬ thing. My father potters about the city, but he only makes his expenses. Dan is very good; he has assisted me until lately. But he has three children now, and it would not be right for me to allow him to do so any longer.”

“What about Joe?”

“Joe has not made a success. He goes from one thing to another. He, too, is married, and it is as much as he can do to keep himself and his wife and child—more, sometimes. I owe them both a debt,

Dick, and I owe Sarah a debt, too. She might have married years ago—at least, there was a project to that effect; but the man wanted something with her; and my father could not give it and at the same time find the money for me to train for the bar. Judith has secured a good post—she is teaching—but there is Ben at Cambridge. He won a scholarship, but, of course, he has to be helped. Matt is still at school. He must have his chance. So, you see, marriage is beyond my horizon.”

I acquired a new respect for Morry. I said: “I am very glad you have told me this.”

“Ah.” He began to talk about his professional prospects. “I am in Montagu’s chambers. Did you know that? He has been very kind to me. It is owing to him that I am here now for the Crown. The case is one of murder and robbery, and has points of interest. The crime occurred seven miles from here, at a village called Frey. I thought I would go and have a look at the place this afternoon. Have you any objection?”

I said I had not. “Tell me about the case.”

“Have you ever been to Frey?”

“The situation of it is peculiar, and the peculiarity is of some importance. It occupies the head of a peninsula made by the river, and the neck of the peninsula is taken up by Frey Park. The road to Frey runs through the middle of the park, each half of which is surrounded by a high wall; and on the river-hanks, at each side, the park walls go sheer into the water. The consequence is that there is only one way to get to Frey by land—along the road. There is a ferry, by which one may cross the river in the daytime, but I don’t think that has any bearing on the case.

“The crime was committed during the night of the twenty-sixth-twenty-seventh October. lhe victim, Mrs. Sutlin, was a widow. She lived alone in a semi¬ detached house on the west side of the village: the adjoining house had been vacated in September. There is a garden abutting on the river-bank. The prisoner, John Jafes, lived with his wife and his wife’s sister in a cottage on the other side of the village; his garden also goes down to the river-bank. He had no regular occupation. He depended on his garden, his bees, and odd-job work; his wife keeps fowls. In previous years they managed to pay their way, but last season everything went wrong. Jafes earned very little, the garden did badly, there was little honey, and most of the chickens died.”

“Poor devils! Couldn’t they get help?”

“I gather that Jafes was unwilling to accept help. He seems to be an independent person. Mrs. Sutlin was seen alive on the afternoon of Thursday the twenty-sixth, about half-past five. Probably she was alive until after ten o’clock; her light was visible until then. The night was a stormy one. Rain began soon after eight, and became heavy an hour or so later, lasting through the night. The next morning, at half¬ past nine, a neighbour, a Mrs. Bone, went to the front door. Receiving no answer to her knocks, she opened the door and went in.”

“Wasn’t the door locked?”

“No. It had a trick latch. Presumably Mrs. Sutlin thought that a sufficient protection. Mrs. Bone went into the kitchen: seeing that Mrs. Sutlin had not been down, she went upstairs to find out if she were ill. She found the body half in and half out of bed. There was a gaping hole in the side of the head, a sort of deep double cut, which had bled profusely.”

“What a horrible sight to come on unexpectedly!”

“Yes. The room contained a nest of drawers, a stout piece of furniture made of oak. The front of the bottom drawer had been smashed in, the drawer was pulled out, and on the floor lay a japanned iron cash-box which had been pried open. The cash-box was empty.

“After ascertaining that Mrs. Sutlin was dead— the body was cold and stiff—Mrs. Bone went to the post-office, and the postmistress called up Stag’s Head, asking for the policeman to come. The constable at Stag’s Head telephoned to Redminster for the inspec¬ tor and a doctor, and then went to Frey. He looked at the kitchen window, and saw that it had been forced. He also noticed that the back gate was open. There is a special significance in both details which I will explain presently. By this time a crowd had gathered, and the constable was told that Mrs. Jafes had been to the village shop that morning and changed a sovereign. He thought this deserved inquiry, and went to the cottage. The door was opened by Mrs. Jafes; Jafes was sitting at the table, smoking; Mary Faith, his sister-in-law, was in bed.”

“ In the same room?”

“Yes—there is only one, a lean-to scullery. On the table were the remains of a meal consisting of bacon, bread, butter, and tea.”

“Chops and tomato sauce, Morry. Also the warm¬ ing pan.”

“What?”

“Vide ‘Pickwick.’ You recited the breakfast menu as if it imported criminality.”

“I am quoting the constable. The details have a certain significance.”

“I apologise.”

“The constable said: ‘Where did the spread come from Jafes?’ Jafes replied that it came from the shop. The constable said: ‘But you were owing money at the shop, weren’t you?’ and Jafes flared out at him. The constable asked Mrs. Jafes where she had got the money from which to pay for the things she had bought that morning. Jafes said he gave it to her. Where did he get it from? He told the con¬ stable to mind his own adjectived business, and go.”

“Did the bobby tell him about the murder?”

“Then is this evidence?”

“Some of it. But Jafes had not been warned. The constable reported his discoveries to the inspector. The inspector made a careful examination of the bed¬ room, and found in the edges of the cuts in the drawer-front traces of blood, and even minute portions of brain matter. He also found a towel lying on the floor, crumpled but otherwise clean. It had been taken by the murderer from the drawer, presumably for the purpose of avoiding finger marks on the cash-box while he pried it open; at any rate, a microscopical examination made subsequently showed no traces of finger marks on the japanned surface, which was admirably adapted to receive them.”

“That looks as if the murderer were a person of intelligence.”

“It does. But the prisoner is not, according to what I am told.”

“He may have read something about finger marks leading to detection, and taken precautions in con¬ sequence.”

“That might account for it. No other positive indications were gathered on the premise^. But there were negative indications of value. There was no sign that anything had been taken except the con¬ tents of the cash-box. Apparently, on entering the house, the burglar had gone straight through the kitchen into the hall and upstairs to the bedroom used by Mrs. Sutlin; and when he had finished his work, straight out again. Nothing in any other part of the house had been disturbed, and the bedroom had not been searched. Mrs. Sutlin’s clothes were lying neatly folded on a chair, as it may be supposed she left them. There was a small sum of money in the skirt pocket. Articles of jewellery lay on the dress¬ ing-table—a gold watch, worth two or three pounds; a gold brooch, worth about thirty shillings; and a rolled-gold bracelet of the same value. Everything had been ignored except the money in the cash-box.

“Now, the indications, as I see them, point to rob¬ bery having been planned by someone in the village who was familiar with Mrs. Sutlin’s habits, and whom she knew well, but who was not of her class.”

“I don’t see how in the world you get all that.”

“The inference that the criminal was a local resi¬ dent arises partly from the out-of-the-way situation of the place and the fact that no stranger had been seen there for some weeks; also, except for one per¬ son, no one who did not live in Frey would be likely to know that the adjoining house was vacant. As to her habits, the criminal knew that she kept her money in her bedroom, and exactly where in her bedroom. He went straight to the drawer after killing her— I think that is a fair deduction from the blood and brain matter,in the cuts in the wood and the fact that nothing else in the room had been disturbed. Third, the position of the body, and the fact that it was clad only in a nightdress, show that Mrs. Sutlin was killed while trying to get out of bed. It looks as if she had been awakened by some sound, perhaps the opening of the bedroom door, and was struck imme¬ diately after. Had the burglar been a stranger to her, and on entering her room found her getting out of bed, he might have taken the risk of trying to silence her, and killed her as the result of a struggle; but she was attacked on the instant, and with the most determined savagery.”