"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement.

Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of “Velvet and Steel,” "The Prisoner's Sister,” etc.)

CHAPTER 111. (Continued). “But Keith said he would be ruined if we were sued! I’ve never borrowed a penny from anyone before or since. And how was I to know that Keith was going to defraud Mr Goring?” She came to realise that lawyers regard eternal suspicion as the price of liberty. At home her mother’s attitude was only an exaggeration of what it had always'been. Mrs Haye was an older, fairer, vaguer edition of Christabel, and always in a state of hazy anxiety about the opinion of Mr Haye. She had always regretted her early marriage to Glen Collet, and as his child Christabel belonged to a period of Mrs Haye’s life that she wanted to forget. She had another girl, a Roedean, and a boy nearly grown up, at Sandhurst; Mr Haye was nearly mad about the scandal; and Mrs Haye was incapable of following the simple instinct which told her that Christabel was her child also, and that therefore she must do everything possible for her at all costs. However, they did their best. Mr Haye cabled to a brother of Glen Collet in Australia, who was Christabel’s godfather; and he cabled back instructions to brief the best counsel available and spare no expense. The solicitor advised them to brief Sir Ross Barnes, famous as one of the most brilliant advocates at the Bar. Christabel met,Sir Ross Barnes; he questioned her, and listened attentively though she was not reassured by the hurry he appeared to be in. "Tell the truth, Mrs Milsom,” he said. "That is all you have to do. And wear something quiet—black, of course, because of your loss.” He questioned her very closely about Henry Goring, and the terms on which she has been with him. “He was just a friend. He was always very kind and I liked him. I can’t understand !” “Nothing more than that?” “Nothing—in the slightest.” The mere question made her feeloutraged, even though it was inevitable that Sir Ross should ask it. She had seen Henry Goring in court when she was charged, and he had looked shame-faced, but hostile. But Miss Goring, probably, was very bitter about her, and Henry’s conscience, no doubt, was bad. About ten days before her case came up for trial she was inattentively turning over a newspaper when she came on a headline that caught her eye: "Counsel’s sharp exchange.” Law cases naturally interested her just then, and she saw that the column had something to do with Sir Ross Barnes she read it attentively. It seemed that Sir Ross had had some sort of mild dispute in court with an opposing counsel, Mr Grant Hewitson. K.C. The judge had upheld Sir Ross Barnes.

A photograph of Mr Hewitson, K.C., appeared in the middle of the column. She did not pay much attention to it, except to notice that, unlike Sir Ross Barnes, who was stout and middle aged, Grant Hewitson appeared to be young and good looking. But she remembered his name, and the case in the paper immediately, when the solicitor told her that Mr Hewitson, K.C., was to appear againsl .herself and Craigie for the Crown. Mr Grant Hewitson?” she said. •‘Yes; a very brilliant young man," 'said the solicitor, and added, rather dubiously. “He and Sir Ross are inclined to be at loggerheads when they meet in court.” Christabel, in the state when every nerve is exhausted by the strain of facing intolerable facts, felt the inconsequent interest that a little thing can arouse at such a time. She considered apathetically, the fact that the prosecuting counsel at her trial would be young and interesting. What never entered her head was that such a serious issue—her reputation her liberty, her whole life —could be effected by a. trivial antipathy between two lawyers. She told herself that it was impossible that she should be guilty; innocent people are never convicted. And when, with a physical sickness of reluctance, she surrendered herself to the police again, she took comfort from the saying: “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.” CHAPTER IV. It was autumn ana the court was cold; cold, that was what she felt immediately. Her blood felt slow and frozen. The rows of faces, the rows of black-gowned counsel, the judge in his red robes, all looked oddly unreal. She was in the dock. “The accused!” she thought. There was Thomas Craigie, standing his trial with her, he looked neither ribald nor benign now; only pale, and furtive, and decrepit. The court was crowded, partly with the general public, partly with members of the legal profession who were interested in an encounter with Grant Hewitson and Sir Ross Barnes. Her mother was not. in court, but she saw her step-father, looking nervous and angrily aloof, as though he wanted to disown the whole business. She saw Henry Goring, pale and uneasy; and Miss Goring, prim and resentful, staring at her stonily. And there was the prosecuting counsel, Mr Hewitson, K.C. She recognised him because of the newspaper photograph, and because she was looking for someone handsome, and he stood out immediately among juniors who seemed older and less fresh than he was. When he stood up he was tall, and his flowing silk gown hung from a noticeably masculine width of shoulder. His lean, thoughtful face, was alive with intelligence. ; It did not occur to Christabel that het was to be viewed as an enemy, even

though chance had made him counsel for the Crown.

As the Associate nad read out the charges, Hewitson’s junior rose to outline the circumstances of the case; and then Hewitson himself rose to put forward the case for the prosecution. Christabel herself was fascinated, just as the rest of the court was fascinated by his manner, as soon as he began to speak; nothing could have been more convincing than the nice balance between warmth and logic in his tone. To a great extent Christabel had been been in the dark as to what had really .happened about the house in Ealing. Hewitson put clearly enough now. It seemed that a few days after Henry Goring had mentioned to herself and Keith that he wanted to buy a house, Keith had met Craigie—by chance perhaps—in an hotel bar in Chancery Lane. Presumably either Keith or Craigie had suggested the fraud, for on the following day, August 2, Craigie had gone to an estate agent in Ealing and asked to see some houses, as he was trying to find one for his sister, “who wanted to live in Ealing so as to be near her son, who was at a London public school.” Craigie, as a matter of fact, had no sister; but he saw some houses, and found out that the owners of the one in Bligh Road were away in Jersey, for the summer. Keith and Craigie were known to have had another interview, shortly before Keith had suggested to Christabel that she should tell Henry about the house owned by “Mr West.” But proof that she mignt have conspired with Craigie herself was contained in the fact that Henry had found her in the flat with Craigie and Keith the same evening, and that she had introduced Craigie to Henry as “Mr West” —when Craigie had talked about wanting to see his house because it was too far from London.

Henry Goring decided that the house was cheap at a thousand pounds, even though “Mr West” wanted cash for it. On August 22 Keith went to Henry with documents which poor Henry understood to be the title deeds of the house; he handed over a cheque made out to Keith. Keith immediately put it through his own bank account, got it cleared by the following afternoon, gave four hundred to Craigie, and kept six hundred himself.

A bad point against Mrs Milsom, because if she were not a witting party to the conspiracy, why was not the money divided fifty-fifty between Milsom and Craigie?”

Craigie went to Birmingham, and took a room there under a false name; Keith bought a passage to Rio de Janeiro for himself and Christabel, on a passport on which he had altered their name to “Lorraine”; and exchanged the rest of Henry's money for foreign curency at several different travel agencies.

Henry, meanwhile, was kept happy, with a letter from “Mr West” acknowledging the receipt of the cheque, and promising to send the keys on the following day. But the whole thing fell through because the police already had their eye on Craigie as a suspected character, and early on the morning of August 24, a detective called on Henry Goring to make inquiries. Craigie was arrested in Birmingham, and Keith and Christabel were traced to the “River Plate”; and by a piece of fast work on the part of the police they were arrested off' Dungeness later in the day. By the time the prosecution was half-way through its case, it was obvious that there was going to be no difficulty in proving the fraud; what was not so easy to prove was the actual fact of conspiracy between the two accused.

In evidence Thomas Craigie admitted that Keith Milsom had told him that Mrs Milsom could “twist Goring round her little finger,” and that she would be the best person to put the proposition to the plaintiff. But that was as much as Hewitson could get out of him. Craigie was not going to be made to talk. He did not know by what technical legality he might be pinned down on the actual point of conspiracy. He was going to be sentenced on what they could collect in the way of facts, and not on anything they could get out of Thomas Craigie. Opportunity to have conspired was proved. Sir Ross Barnes’s defence of Mary Christabel Milsom was that the conspiracy had been between Keith Milsom and Craigie alone; Craigie’s counsel hoped to get his client off on the same technical point with Christabel as the conspiring party. The case resolved itself, finally, into a dispute over Mary Christabel Milsom’s character; whether she was a witting party to the conspiracy, or an innocent tool in the hands of her husband—a strong plea in view of the fact that it was what the court tended to assume.

But she was up against a relentless prosecution.

It was a gradual, but devastating revelation to Christabel, as the case dragged on, to realise exactly how relentless the prosecution was. This man, this Mr Hewitson, K.C., didn’t regard her as a human being at all; in spite of the fact that his face and his manner had appealed to her at first, he was her implacable enemy; implacable, because he was so utterly indifferent. Afterwards they told her that he had come into court with the intention that Sir Ross Barnes should not get out of it without a smashing defeat: which accounted for the fact that, as a person, she herself hardly entered into the contest. (To be Continued.)