“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 February 1940, Page 12

“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

PETER BENEDICT.

CHAPTER VI. (Continued.) But all through lunch Catherine’s mind burrowed among the dead and musty records of the Court family. There were sources she might tap. There was the vicar, who had been for thirty years attempting to compile a readable history of the parish, and though he had never satisfied himself yet with so much as one chapter, none the less he had a fund of information at his finger-ends. There was the tiny museum reading-room, where the old records of the village were kept, though she doubted if the joke about the Holly Lane field had ever been sufficiently public to reach them. There was Massingham in Stanchester, of course, but the same doubt held there. On the whole, the vicar was the best hope.

Early in the afternoon she went to him, and found him poring over a very old. annotated Caesar in his study, and making some quaint and typical notes in his own edition, since the relic was borrowed from a fellow-enthusiast in London. He was a small, dried, brisk man hidden behind glasses of particularly wide and square rim, more the popular idea of a lawyer than of a cleric. Catherine told him her errand, but not the urgency which informed it in her mind, so that he believed he was sitting opposite an unexpected enthusiasm kind red to his own. “Mm. let me .see!” he said, stroking his chin. “The Holly Lane fields, at the upper end at any rate, were Council property until a week ago, when I believe this man Probert bought them. The Council had them, I think about five years ago - , from Kerwin, at the Home farm. Now if there is anything in this sale, it must obviously be much older than Kerwin; and before him the farm belonged to the Green family —-had done for several generations. I say it’s among the Greens we should have to look. As luck will have it, I bought up all the old family books I could lay my hands on at the Green sale, before Kerwin came in. Mind you, I don’t say there is any reference; I certainly don’t recall any but of course. I’ve never read with that idea in mind. We’ll have a look through them together, shall we? And if that fails, I fear I’m a broken reed.” They looked through them. ’ There were not many. The Greens had been farmers, not book-lovers. Many of them were old manuscript accountbooks full of past records of business, several elderly dogs-eared volumes of “The Miscellany,” full of virtuous stories and curious patterns for still more curious garments, and instructions for making various articles in knitting and crochet.

One was a massive family Bible whose records went back over two hundred years, one an account of the picturesque career of Bampfylde Moore Carew, the king of the beggars, one a manual of the wonders of the world, many of them taller by inches that any authenticated cases warranted, one —they came to in towards the end of their researches —a small and very old pocket diary punctuated with the changes of the moon, details of crops, tides, fairs, and markets. The fly-leaf at the end of it was torn unsteadily -across the middle, and the lower half was missing: but on the upper half there was some writing in blunt pencil, not easily to be deciphered, but clear enough to invite the effort.

Catherine turned back to the titlepage, and found the year of the book to. be 1864. She bent her eyes closely over the faded writing, and it seemed to her that only careful cherishing had kept it readable at all, or decreed that the book should be preserved. No doubt there had been many such yearbooks, and none of them kept but this one. The answer to the riddle was there under her eyes. She made it out with great difficulty: Agreement of sale betweene Richard Poole and Joseph Green, concluded June 7, 1865. Concerning field at upper ende Hollye Layne, the hedge thereof between field and layne throughout, together with ground within same hedge, namely ten yards in width throughout, said length of hedge, to pass to above Richard Poole in consideration one hundred guineas to be paid to said Joseph Green. Grazing rights or other over said ground to be shared equally betw. said parties, (sig.) RICHARD POOLE, JOSEPH GREEN “Now what, on earth,” said the vicar, “can have induced any man in his senses to pay a hundred guineas for the privilege of owning ten yards by two hundred of useless grazing, from which he hadn't, even the right, let alone the facilities, for keeping someone else's cattle, and in which he couldn’t possibly graze his own for fear of straying them into another man's property? He must have been mad.” “Or drunk," said Catherine. "What's that, my dear?”

,“Or drunk; they were noted for it. You know all about the Poole family, surely. The Grange was theirs once. It came to my husband's father through his mother, whose name was Anna Poole; and she was the only surviving child of Richard Poole, who was more or less of an official wild man to the valley. You must know the stories of some of his escapades. He did the maddest things. I daresay he was drunk as a lord when he signed this; in fact, I should say he must have been; but as there's no one to prove it, the document is legally binding, isn't it?”

“I suppose so, Mrs Court, that is, if the question ever arose.”

“May I borrow this book for a week or so?" asked Catherine, not too eagerly, for she was afraid yet to be too sure of her ground. “Of course, for as long as it’s of any service to you. I’m glad we were able to find it.” She took it away with her through the sunlight of mid-afternoon to her cottage in the hills, and there, pausing only to write a brief letter to Perry Dunstan’s mother in London, changed her dress and set out to catch the 3.30 train to Stanchester. CHAPTER VII. Mr Massingham, so far from being the accepted idea of a family solicitor, was fat and blonde, and not very old, with the expressionless solemnity of a stage comedian; but his eyes, behind the tinted glasses, were bright and clever, and his mouth was like a rattrap for strength of a relentless kind. He sat hunched over the edge of his desk, and looked at Catherine Court. She was smiling at him in a chilly, calculating way, and there was an eagerness in her for which she was at a loss to account. She had a little diary and Joan Dunstan’s letter in her hands. "Well, what do you say? Have we got a case?” she asked. "It could bo." said Mr Massingham gently, and continued ‘to look at her as if he had never seen her before, but witli a guileless lack of interest, too, as was his way. "This subject is hardly new, you know. Your nephew has been hot on the trial ever since the desecration began, but without. I admit, finding any scent. You certainly seem to have hit upon something. If only we could find some independent link —a contemporarary reference. This diary scrawl is all very well; you’ve a witness to where it came from and how you got it. which does away with all doubts of its authenticity as far as you are concerned ” “You mean I didn’t forge it,” said Catherine, with a smile. “No, much more important than that; I mean it will be useless your opponent trying to say that you forged it. That’s a considerable argument for you. But I wish we had some other outside mention of it.” “It wasn’t, I think,” she said, thoughtfully frowning, “the sort of transaction about which either party would be likely to brag to other people.” “Since it proved one of them a rogue, and the other a fool. Quite! But the agreement is not witnessed, unfortunately.” “Does that make it void?” asked Catherine, and her eyes were anxious, for that was the one point on which she had doubts.

"No, not necessarily; there are hundreds of agreements unwitnessed and still binding, provided the signatures are beyond doubt. Is there any chance of getting some more of Joseph Green?”

“Yes,” she said, immensely relieved, “as much as you like. His account books, his family Bible, and several other books with his name in them are where I got this —in the vicar’s library.” The light of battle began to gleam behind the tinted spectacles. He sat forward over the desk with a gusty sigh, as one who squares his shoulders to a job not altogether unwelcome. “Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. The other man should be easy. The name Poole used to crop up fairly often in old Pullen’s day. when your husband’s father came in with the Court Brandon gossip. That was before my time, of course, but I remember hearing him talked about at home when I was quite a kid. His solicitors were a Stanchester firm, too. Corfield and Hart; they consist largely of a couple of Irish brothers O’Reilly now, but there's still a Hart, son of the former one, and an old man himself now. The business of the Pooles is wound up long ago, but I see no reason why they should grudge us a little help in establishing his signature.” "I know their office," said Catherine. She did know it, and very well, for they handled the affairs of Lyddon Strang. "I can approach them through a client of theirs.” “It would be helpful. If they come up to expectations; if, in particular, they have any recollection of hearing the affair so much as mentioned —it can only be one generation back for Hart — well, I'll admit you've got a case, and I'll go so far as to say you've got a cast-iron case, as far as it goes; but there are points to be considered before you plunge into it. It will bo too late afterwards." Catherine sat back and looked at him under the brim of her very smart hat. a hat which Adam Probert would have regarded with the distant admiration lie had given to her in Court Brandon Council Offices. "You're thinking that he can plead ignorance, and that it will be true." "Partly that, which will cut down a jury's righteoup indignation against him, of course; and partly that, the witness you have is so involved that a clever opponent will ,be able to quibble hero and there like a dog worrying, without perhaps doing much damage to your case in the end, but putting the end a long way off. The fact that he didn't know he was doing you any injury can’t, of course, get him off; and in the end we’ll get our damages; but seriously, Mrs Court, from your own point of view, is it worth it." (To be Continued.)