George Passant (33 page)

‘You touched on the
Arrow
, did you?’

‘Yes, we certainly did that.’

‘Did you come to the conclusion that Mr Passant ought to try to buy the agency?’

‘I think we did.’

‘Can you recall what you said about its state just then?’

‘That’s a little difficult.’

‘You stated that you did discuss the – condition at that time?’

‘Naturally he was interested in those matters, I told him all I could.’

‘You must have discussed profits and the turnover and the expenses – and the circulation of the
Arrow
, I expect?’ Getliffe was still eager and excited.

‘I think so, I think we did.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got to push on about the circulation. We should all be clearer if you could remember, do you think you can remember? – if you gave him a definite figure?’

‘I may have done, but I can’t be certain.’

‘Is it likely you did?’

‘I should have thought I told him in general terms, so that he could make an estimate of the possibilities for himself. I should have thought that was the most likely thing.’

‘You think you told him that the circulation was, say, large – or in the thousands, or very small?’

‘That was the way. I’m sure that was the way.’

‘Now, Mr Martineau, can you think what indication you actually gave him? Did you say that it was very small?’

‘No, no.’

‘That it was reasonably large?’

Martineau smiled.

‘I think I said – something of that nature.’

‘If you put it in numbers?’

‘I don’t believe we were absolutely exact.’

‘But if you had to, what would “reasonably large” have meant? More than a thousand?’

‘Yes, surely.’

‘Several thousand?’

‘Something like that, perhaps.’

‘You don’t mind repeating that, Mr Martineau?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’re fairly certain that was the kind of number Mr Passant gathered from your discussions?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Martineau,’ Getliffe said. He sat down, and as he took up a pencil to write a note his fingers were trembling. He leaned close to me: ‘That’s something, anyway,’ he whispered.

Porson began in a level voice, spacing the words out: ‘You said you gave up your profession as a solicitor six years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you earning your living at present?’

‘I’m scarcely doing so at all.’

‘You mean, you’ve retired?’

‘No, no, I mean almost the opposite. It’s only since I’ve left that I’ve become active – but that hasn’t helped me much to make a living.’ Martineau smiled.

‘Come, Mr Martineau, where are you living now?’

‘I’ve been living in a little settlement. We try to support ourselves and earn our luxuries by selling what we have left over. But, as I said, that doesn’t always do so well.’

‘You’ve been there for long?’

‘Nearly two years. But perhaps I may not stay much longer.’

‘I think the jury will understand your
temporary
association with the agency if you will tell us something about your movements. From the time you gave up your profession – first of all, you had a short period with the agency, and then–?’

Martineau mentioned his changes: the ‘Brotherhood of the Road’, the solitary vagrancy, some of his humiliations and adventures (someone in the gallery laughed as he mentioned he slept in casual wards; Martineau turned towards him and laughed more loudly), the settlement. He did not say any word about his future. As the story went on Getliffe stiffened into attention. The whole court was tense.

‘Very well,’ said Porson, ‘I suppose we can take it for granted you performed this very eccentric behaviour on religious grounds?’

Martineau nodded his head. ‘Myself, I should call it trying to find a way of life.’

‘Well – you were already trying to do that when you bought part of Mr Exell’s business?’

‘I think I was.’

‘You weren’t entirely interested in it as a business?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Scarcely at all, in fact?’

‘I couldn’t say that.’

‘You had every reason not to trouble to get any accurate knowledge of it at all?’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t true,’ said Martineau. ‘I knew it – pretty well.’

‘You won’t pretend you seriously thought of this paper, for instance – as a business proposition? You don’t deny that you wrote religious articles for it?’

‘I thought perhaps I should find others – well, who were trying to find the way too.’

‘I’m glad you admit that. You’ll also admit, won’t you, that you weren’t in touch with more prosaic things – like its circulation?’

Martineau shook his head. ‘No. I was in touch with them. They were still very close.’

‘I hope you’ll admit, though, that Mr Exell still had something to do with it?’

‘Yes.’ Martineau smiled again.

‘Perhaps even more than yourself?’

‘Very likely he had.’

‘Well, then, Mr Martineau, will it surprise you to know that Mr Exell has given the court exact information upon the circulation of this paper, and his information was very different from that which you remember – you vaguely remember – giving to Mr Passant?’

‘It doesn’t surprise me so very much,’ Martineau said.

‘So I put it to you that you were incorrect in your recollection of your talk to Mr Passant? You told him a figure very much less than you suggested a few minutes ago?’

‘That’s not true. Not true.’

‘You realise you are contradicting yourself? You have told us you were thoroughly acquainted with the state of the firm.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve also agreed that Mr Exell knew it well, as well and better than yourself? I’ve told you that he gave evidence that the
Arrow
at no time had a circulation of more than twelve hundred.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, Mr Martineau, I put it to you that either your recollection of your talks with Mr Passant is untrustworthy or–’

Martineau broke in: ‘No, no, no. Those talks are returning more and more.’

‘In that case, you were never acquainted with the real figures? You’ve been misleading us?’

‘No. I knew them not so badly, not so badly.’

‘How can you possibly justify what you have just said?’

Martineau replied: ‘Because I should have agreed with Mr Exell.’

There was an instant of silence.

‘Yet you said you remembered telling Mr Passant an absolutely different state of affairs? Is it true that you gave Mr Passant to understand that the paper had a large circulation?’

‘That is also true.’

‘While you yourself knew, with Mr Exell, that it was quite otherwise?’

‘That’s true as well. As well.’

‘You’re now saying, Mr Martineau, that you were responsible for telling a dangerous lie. You realise you’re saying this?’

‘I do.’ He smiled. ‘Naturally I do.’

The judge coughed, and said quietly: ‘Would you mind telling us whether you actually knew the position of your paper in detail at this time?’

‘Yes.’

‘On the other hand, you gave Mr Passant a different estimate, a very much larger figure?’

‘I think I never gave him a figure exactly. I’ve said before, I don’t remember too well. But I let him get an impression of something much larger. I certainly let him get that impression.’

‘Can you explain why you did that?’

‘I think so. I’ve already said, m’lord, that the little paper contained some of my plans to find others on the same – well, “exploration” as myself, and it wasn’t always easy in those days to confess how unsuccessful I had been.’

The judge pursed his lips into a smile of recognition (not his friendly smile), inclined his head, and made a note.

Porson kept on, his tone angrier and more hectoring.

‘Was there any reason why a man who had apparently given up something for his beliefs should go in for indiscriminate lying?’

Martineau said: ‘I’m afraid I found there was.’

Could he expect the jury to believe this ‘extraordinary thing’? It was not part of his ‘new religion’ to damage and mislead his friends? The lie might make it more possible to obtain money from his friends, but that was scarcely likely to enter his thoughts? Was the only explanation that Martineau could offer for his ‘completely pointless lie’ simply his own ‘vanity and conceit’?

It was commented on as the bitterest cross-examination which the trial had so far seen; Porson seemed full of personal antipathy. Many people in the court felt pleased at the tranquillity with which Martineau answered. He was still calm when Porson asked his last questions.

‘In fact, your
way of life
has made you a person with no respect for the truth as the jury and all honest men must understand it?’

‘I don’t feel that’s true.’

‘You’re aware, of course, that if the jury believe this story of your lie it may be of some slight advantage to your friend, Mr Passant?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no more reason for them to trust you now than Mr Passant had – according to your story?’

‘I hope they will trust me now.’

When Porson sat down, Martineau rested a hand on the box. Getliffe asked him the one question: ‘You can say for certain, Mr Martineau, that you gave Mr Passant to understand that the circulation was a largish number, in the thousands?’

‘I’m certain,’ said Martineau, in a full, confident and happy voice.

Two more witnesses were called before the judge rose. I stayed with Getliffe in the robing-room after Porson had gone out, leaving us with a loud laugh and a goodnight. Getliffe sat on the edge of the table.

‘Old Martineau did us proud,’ he said. I nodded.

‘You’re lucky to have known him,’ he said with a warm, friendly smile. ‘He’s the sort of man who sometimes makes me want to do something different. You can understand my wanting that, can’t you?’ He was speaking with great eagerness.

‘I knew you would,’ Getliffe said. We took up our cases and walked through the empty hall. Suddenly Getliffe took my arm. ‘I knew you’d understand,’ he said. ‘You pretend not to be religious, I know that, of course. But you can’t get away from your own nature, whatever you like to call it. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. It’s something we’ve got in common, isn’t it?

‘I don’t mean we’re better people in one way,’ he went on. ‘You know I’m not. You’ve seen enough of me. I can do – things I’m ashamed of afterwards. You can too, can’t you? I expect we can both do more bad things than people who’ve not got the sense of – “religion”. In many ways I’m a worse man than they are. But somehow I think there are times when I get a bit further than they manage to. Because I want to, that’s all, L S.’

He laughed. ‘Take Porson, for instance. I know what they say about his morals; I’m not taking any notice of them. If you rule that out, he’s a better man than I am. He’s more honest, he wouldn’t have to watch himself as I do. Yet there isn’t a scrap of anything deep in him. I’ll swear there isn’t. He’s never prayed. He’s never wept at night.’

As we walked on through the street, crowded with the first rush of the evening, Getliffe said: ‘What happened to old Martineau, anyway? Did he lie to Passant or did he think of that later?’

‘I think he lied to Passant,’ I said. I told him of the entry in George’s diary: and of that inexplicable chicanery over Morcom’s flat years ago – when George had protested, angrily and loyally, that Martineau could never do a dishonest act.

Getliffe said: ‘I don’t know. He’s not got much to lose now, of course – and Passant might gain a good deal. He liked Passant, I could tell that. Anyway, it’s given us a chance. With our friend Porson going all out after that set of figures on paper. He never ought to have made so much of it. But as for Martineau – you know, he might have invented it for Passant’s sake.’

‘It’s difficult to believe,’ I said. ‘He was always fond of George Passant – but personal affections mattered less to him than anyone I’ve ever met. His own story–’

‘What about it?’

‘You believed him last night?’

‘I fancy I did,’ said Getliffe. ‘It went just as I told you. It was all a long time ago, he said. He did just remember talking to Passant, but he hadn’t any recollection of what they said. He never knew much about the agency or the paper. He had forgotten the little he ever knew. He obviously wasn’t going to make any effort to remember, either.’

‘Was that all?’

‘That was all I got him to say. Once or twice I did wonder whether he really had forgotten. He seemed to be making it too vague altogether. But I tell you, L S, I’m certain of one thing.
Last night he hadn’t the slightest intention of saying what he did today
. I don’t believe he had any intention of doing it – until he got into the box. It just came to him on the spur of the moment. I should like to know whether he invented it.’

‘I’m certain he lied to Passant,’ I said. ‘Of course, if he did, Passant would believe him. He would never be suspicious of a friend, particularly of Martineau–’

‘I don’t think I should have been,’ said Getliffe. He smiled at me. Because of these last hours, we were on better terms than we had ever been.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You might have believed him for the moment, but as soon as he went away you’d have taken care to find out.’

‘We’ve got to remember,’ said Getliffe, ‘that Passant himself must have had his suspicions. He’s too able a man not to have seen some snags and – they must all have
known
for certain there was something wrong. Very soon–’

‘When?’

‘We can both make our own guess, can’t we?’

Before the money was borrowed, he was thinking. But his imagination had been caught by Martineau.

‘The old chap must have gone through a good deal,’ he said, ‘getting no one to believe in his faith, at that time. I know you will say this is all too cut and dried, L S – but I fancy there is one thing he held on to longer than most. That’s his self-respect. And I fancy his performance today had something to do with that.’

‘You mean, he might have been trying to free himself – even from self-respect?’