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“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

PETER BENEDICT.

CHAPTER XIV. (Continued 1 “She’s not bad-looking,” said the first reporter. Nor was he the only man in court who realised the fact at that moment. Adam Probert's placid eyes were upon her also, and no less intently, for all his seeming indifference. He smiled, and said to himself something about Caterina on the walls of Forli; the conceit pleased him still. “Where did you obtain this document?” Ronald Beresford was asking. He held up the little year-book of Joseph Green in his hand. The judge and jury had already seen it, together with old Mr Hart’s map of the district. “From the Vicar of Court Brandon. “You went to him because you thought that such a paper might exist?" "Yes, or reference to it.” “And why did you go to the vicar to ask about it?” "Because he was a recognised authority on the history of the valley during the last century.” “I see. This book was in his possession, and the pencilled agreement at the end was found by you in his presence. "Yes.” “Did he share your opinion of its significance?” "Yes.” “He accepted it at once as genuine, and as being conclusive proof of Richard Poole’s purchase of this strip of ground?” “Yes. Pending verification of the signatures, ana so on, of course. But we saw several other signatures of Joseph Green among his books, and it was easy to find some examples of Richard Poole’s.” “What did you take next to establish the proof in your own mind?” “I wrote to Mrs Dunstan, and asked if she still had in her possession the letter my husband had written to her, in which he had mentioned what he called the family joke about the field.” “Was she able to produce the letter?” “No, but she found the letter which followed, in which he explained it. She had forgotten the joke, and of course had not understood his reference.” “Is this the letter in question?” He produced it from the litter of papers before him, and it was passed to her. “Yes.” The letter passed from hand to hand along the "jury as Joan Dunstan’s letter had passed; and a murmur, as yet dutiful but not excited, went with it, and returned with it to Ronald Beresford’s place. So far, so good. But the plaintiff looked too much of an Amazon—rather adventurous than pathetic. Still, he had ample time to upset that impression before the case ended. “Now, Mrs Court, assuming that the field, or the part of it in question, did belong to Richard Poole, to whom does it belong now?” “To me. My husband was his greatgrandson.” “Richard Poole had only one daughter, I believe, to whom he left his entire property?” “Yes. His wife was dead before him; he had no other near- relatives.” “And how did Mrs Court leave her property on her death in 1899? “To her only son, Roger Court, without condition.”

“Ah! Now Rogert Court, I believe, was killed in action in 1915. According to the terms of his will, made some days before his leave ended in August 1915, a certain sum of money was set apart for his son Geoffrey? Is that right?’ Catherine inclined her head. “I believe I am also right in saying that your husband, Captain Geoffrey Court, was killed eighteen months ago. Did he make a will?’ “Yes. He wished to make provision for me in case of —such a thing happening as —did happen.” Her voice was steady enough; the pauses were merely a hesitation of words; but Ronald Beresford thanked heaven for an effect whose enonomy a more demonstrative client could not have matched. He looked up at the judge. “Captain Court was killed in a motoring accident, my lord —in which Mrs Court herself was seriously injured.’ He turned back to Catherine. “In this will he left everything to you?” “Yes.” She smiled. “There was very litle to leave.”

“Therefore, though no mention of this strip of land has been made in any of these successive wills, and though no member or your family has taken the possession of it seriously, the actual title to it has passed from Richard Poole direct to you?” “That is the position as I see it,” said Catherine steadily. “Why, in your opinion, had no attempt ever been made to obtain possession of it. or to regain the price paid for it?”

“In the first place, because my husband and all his family, like Richard Poole himself, lacked all sense of the value of money: a hundred guineas lost was nothing to them, even when they had nothing left. Also because they reckoned the matter as a joke against themselves. And most of all, of course, because the land was in any case useless to them under the conditions imposed, and the money could not have been regained without —” She looked round with one brief, comprehensive glafice, and a smile flickered her lips—“without expensive legal procedure.” The court smiled too. And Ronald Beresford, feeling his way through her wayward senses into the minds and moods of the jury, smiled most fervently of all. “In the ordinary course of events,

then, I gather that you would have respected the same scruples?”

“Yes, I would.” “In what way did Mr Probert's scheme to build on the field alter your attitude?” The lines of her face sharpened. She glanced at Adam, and found him watching her with the detached admiration of a devotee standing before a Manet. “I had no objection to the field —the hedge—remaining as it was. The lane was beautiful, and I had as much enjoyment cut of it as anyone else. But when I found that it had been sold to be used for profit, and was to become a building site, I did not see why I should not assert my right to share in the profit. The hedge was torn up, the clump of hollies at one end cut down and sold, and the whole stretch of lane turned from a beauty spot into an eyesore. Why should I let that sort of thing happen, and say nothing?”

“It was not solely the money, then, that you wanted?”

Her mouth curled in that oddly scornful smile whose sincerity no one could doubt, not even the seasoned veteran on the judge’s bench, who had seen many acts put on in this court. “No, but money is the only recompense anyone can offer me, it seems. I would give a good deal of money to have the hollies back in their place again.” And on that"happy note of conviction he saw fit to end her examination in chief. She had made, if not the impression he had wanted her to make, one almost equally notable, and perhaps more serviceable in the end; and he did not think counsel for the defence would get much out of her. He sat down, and relinquished her to the mercies of Adam’s confederate Wyndham, who was some time in rising to cross-examine.

Wyndham was a gentleman leisurely in all things. He rose in a manner half-asleep, and with one long hand stretched out before him, appeared to be admiring the shape of the nails. During the pause the plaintiff, at whom he hardly glanced, looked round her more carefully than she had yet had time to do, and smiled at Lyddon Strang, who had not once taken his eyes from her face since she had left his side. She had a fleeting impression that he was feeling the strain more than she; and some tenderness made her smile very sweet. Wyndham, in the middle of his consideration of his spare and aging hand, looked up casually under his eyebrows into her face, and enquired, as if the idea had only just occurred to him: “Do you want this piece of land?” "Naturally I want it.” “Even now that it is ruined in your eyes?” “Yes. At least, if it is mine, lam not prepared to allow it to be used for building.” “Ah, I see. Yotl don’t want the ground debased by having bricks and mortar raised on it; you prefer it under trees —holly trees. May I ask what gratifying purpose these holly trees serve for you, to make you so fond of them?”

Catherine answered smartly: “They serve the same purpose, Mr Wyndham, which the wig performs for gentlemen of your profession—they make the commonplace appeal' picturesque.” The court lifted up its voice as one man,' and laughed. Mr Wyndham, to do him justice, also laughed, but with reservations which caused reporter number one to remark delightedly to number two: “He doesn’t like her.” “No,” said his neighbour, “but the jury do.” “Thank you,” said Wyndham, when the laughter had died down, “that is very clear. Now, Mrs Court, you have told us that Mrs Dunstan’s letter to your husband was the first thing which suggested to you that the strip of land in question now belonged to you.” “I should put it more vaguely than that,” said Catherine indifferently, “but it suggested the possibility.”

“Were you, until that time, aware of the existence of the family joke mentioned in it?” “I may have heard of it; but I never remember hearing very much about .it.” “Yet one very obscure passage in a letter suggested the whole affair io you —suggested the possibility of bringing this action—in one blinding flash?" He looked up again, with his large sleepy, bored eyes, and smiled at her. “Yes," she said, rigidly smiling back to him. “There had recently developed, had there not, circumstances which made it desirable to your to follow up every such hint? Something had happened which sharpened your senses, and made you clutch at everything which even promised a weapon. Mr Probert had begun to build in Court Brandon. I put it to you that that was the whole cause of your vigilance." “No,” she cried. "Did you, or did you not. resent his presence in Court Brandon at all? Was it not from, a broader grudge against him you seized upon this petty quarrel?” Catherine looked at him steadily, and said: "I resented the effect of his activities upon Court Brandon, yes; I resented his having chosen so beautiful a place for his garden city; there was never any secret about it. But against the man himself I had not and have not any grudge.” “Thank you; the admission of a pub-, lie grudge is enough for my purpose. You desired, then, to combat him with any weapon you could find, and that was the cause of your following up the slender clue contained in the letter the jury have read. Am I right?"

(To be Continued.)

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19400228.2.109

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1940, Page 10

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,805

“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN" Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1940, Page 10

“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN" Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1940, Page 10

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