Prince of Secrets (20 page)

‘Walter Ffolliot?' she whispered to Dinah. ‘What the devil had
he
got to do with anything?'

It was the first time that Dinah had heard of young Ffolliott's involvement, and so she told her sister.

Violet said nastily, ‘Has Cobie told you nothing about this wretched business, Dinah? Even I seem to know more than you do.'

‘Why “even I”?' whispered back Dinah as coolly as she could. ‘You know I dislike gossip, Violet, and this whole wretched business makes me dislike it more than ever.'

She did not say that she thought that Sir Ratcliffe might yet get away with his preposterous case, if the four defendants were bent on committing suicide—not that she could imagine Cobie doing any such thing.

But Rainsborough was a known lightweight, and Dagenham, though a sound man, had never been subjected before to the kind of pressure which had broken Kenilworth—whom previously, along with Cobie, had been considered one of the bulwarks of the case against Sir Ratcliffe.

Sir Darcy was on his feet again. ‘M'lud, I must protest at counsel's demand. The defendants in this case, who
signed the paper to which Sir Ratcliffe chose to append his signature admitting guilt, are all before you. There is no need to call on anyone further.'

Lord Coleridge's expression grew, if possible, even more supercilious. ‘I cannot agree with you, Sir Darcy. Like Sir Halbert, I, too, wish to know how Mr Walter Ffolliot can be called a prime mover in this accusation, and yet his name is not mentioned until the third day of this action. Let Mr Walter Ffolliott be subpoenaed to appear tomorrow. Continue, Sir Halbert.'

Sir Darcy sat down. He had interviewed all four principals, as he had thought, exhaustively, and not one of them had mentioned the name of Walter Ffolliott to him. He was compelled to listen to Sir Halbert dragging an admission from Lord Kenilworth that young Mr Ffolliott had been dropped from the affair because of his extreme youth.

‘The older and more responsible of us were of the opinion that he should not be exposed to any possible consequences where his inexperience might be a detriment to our case.'

‘Or was it rather,' commented Sir Halbert, with a derisive grin, ‘that he might not be able to remember exactly what he ought to be saying?'

Lord Kenilworth said angrily, turning to the judge, ‘M'lud, I do protest…'

Sir Halbert said swiftly, before the judge could pronounce, ‘M'lud, I withdraw that remark seeing that we shall have the benefit of hearing Mr Ffolliott in court tomorrow. I have no further questions for Lord Kenilworth.'

Sir Darcy re-examined his witness only briefly, merely asking him again to confirm that he had witnessed Sir Ratcliffe cheating, and had no doubts about what he had seen. In a private room outside the court he confronted all the defendants, saying testily, ‘I fail to understand why, if this whole business started with Mr Walter Ffolliott, not one of
you saw fit to mention his name to me! I should like an explanation. Lord Kenilworth, perhaps you would care to provide one.'

Kenilworth bowed his head. Minister of the Crown he might be, but he was well aware that he had, in his own words, let the side down. All along they had been prepared for poor Rainey to commit some
bêtise
, but not even the cynical Cobie had expected that when the
bêtise
came, it would be Kenilworth who would commit it!

‘I must ask you all to allow me to apologise to you,' he said humbly, ‘particularly to you, Grant, since it was my mentioning your name inadvertently which caused the damage. That damned mountebank out there had my head spinning. Moreover, Sir Darcy,' he continued, ‘Grant is not, I believe, aware of young Ffolliott's role in this.'

Cobie agreed that this was the first he had heard of Walter Ffolliot's involvement, and, ‘Young Ffolliott?' queried Sir Darcy sharply.

‘Yes, he is only twenty-two. He came to me most distressed because he had seen Sir Ratcliffe cheating. I spoke to Dagenham, my brother-in-law, about this, and he, too, was dubious about Heneage's honesty. We decided to keep watch on him ourselves and we called in Grant, who said that, like us and Ffolliott, he also thought that Heneage was cheating.

‘We dropped young Ffolliott from the whole business because we thought that an inexperienced young man might be challenged on the very grounds of his inexperience. Mr Grant was asked to be one of the observers because of his remarkable memory—as has already been explained to you.'

He stopped. ‘My folly has brought the boy into this, and I am afraid that Sir Halbert will make mincemeat of him.'

Sir Darcy was brisk.

‘No good crying over spilt milk, but I must ask you gen
tlemen to be as brief as you can be when giving evidence. Say the wrong thing, try to correct yourself—and you see what will happen. A moment's inattention, and we are in deep waters. The jury is sure to believe that your omission of Mr Ffolliott's role throws a sinister light on the conduct of you all. Do I need to say more? Is Mr Ffolliott in London?'

Lord Kenilworth nodded miserably. ‘He was in court today. I shall hardly know how to apologise to him for dragging him into the witness box.'

Sir Darcy sighed. ‘So we can expect to see him in the witness box—and untutored. No matter. Mr Grant, you will be called last and your evidence is vital. You are ready for whatever may be thrown at you?'

Cobie, who had so far said nothing while the other three had said everything, merely stood before Sir Darcy, the very picture of elegant attention. He wondered what Sir Darcy would say if he knew what might be thrown at
him
.

‘I am well aware,' he said carefully, ‘that to say too much is a mistake. But in the witness box we are, as you must well know, Sir Darcy, at the mercy of our interrogator.
He
may say what he pleases,
we
are constrained and limited by the rules of evidence. No such constraints exist for him, other than the occasional intervention of the judge. I think we had all better remember that.'

‘He'll not get more than yes or no from me,' promised Rainey fervently.

Cobie believed him. In a case like this, he thought sardonically, a fool might do better than an innocent, wise man!

What a cunning bastard used to performing magic tricks might do was quite another thing—but it behoved him to stay humble. In this case counsel was the magician and the
witness the poor stooge called on to the stage, to exit like PC Alcott, wearing a booby's hat on the occasion when Cobie had entertained the poor children with his magic tricks!

Y
es, Sir Ratcliffe was the winner at this stage in the action, no doubt about it! The papers said so. The Prince was pilloried again, and Kenilworth's admission about Walter Ffolliott was pounced on with glee.

‘Who is Walter Ffolliott?' one of them demanded in deep black headlines. The Education Act of 1870 had resulted in a literate working class, the newspapers had changed to accommodate their supposed taste, and since popular taste leaned towards the lurid, the lurid was what they were increasingly being given.

Sir Ratcliffe's defence pleased all the malcontents inside society and outside of it. The fickle mob, given to cheering Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, one minute, was also given to pillorying him the next. An underground Press had grown up in which cartoons of the Prince showing him as a ravening debauchee, unfit to become King, were frequently featured. It was eagerly read.

In this atmosphere, with a noisy crowd gathering outside the court, to cheer Sir Ratcliffe, and boo the Prince and the four defendants, it was possible that anything might happen.

‘Did you know about Walter Ffolliott's involvement, Cobie?' Dinah asked him later that night after their game
of cribbage was over, and they were preparing for bed. ‘Violet seemed to think that you did.'

Cobie shook his head. ‘No, my dear, I only became involved after young Ffolliott had voiced his suspicions. I was asked to bear witness because of my memory and my knowledge of cards. And now I must ask you a question.'

‘Must you?' smiled Dinah. ‘After today and yesterday I am a little sick of questions—even if I did ask you one. Particularly since none of the questions asked seemed to be connected with finding the truth—rather they obscured it.'

‘That's why QCs command such high fees, We must hope that our QC's questions have more effect on the jury than his—or perhaps I ought to say the answers they receive. And now for my question: are you quite well? You look, as my old nurse used to say, “a little peaky” these days.'

‘Oh, as well as can be expected,' replied Dinah apparently carelessly, and not quite truthfully. She thought, rather ruefully, that she was becoming as devious as her husband. ‘I shall feel better when this is over. That is one thing I am sure of. If poor Walter Ffolliott can hold off Sir Halbert more successfully than Lord Kenilworth, that is.'

The next day Mr. Walter Ffolliott was called to the stand.

It proved yet another turn-up for the book!

Cobie thought, listening to Ffolliott's eager, ingenuous and truthful answers to Sir Halbert—answers which didn't help Sir Ratcliffe at all—that Kenilworth might have done better to have left him as one of the group signing the paper. After all, he
had
started the whole thing. If anything, he damaged Sir Ratcliffe's case more than Lord Kenilworth had unwittingly helped it.

Asked by Sir Darcy, on cross-examination, what he thought about being left out of the enquiry into Sir Ratcliffe's guilt, he replied eagerly, ‘I thought it damned bad
form. I mean, there I was, sticking my neck out when I had seen him cheating as plain as plain, and then I was left out of all the fun. Other fellows got the credit for exposing a damned cheat. Sorry, my Lord,' he said, turning his shining face on the judge.

‘Do not embroider your answer, Mr Ffolliott,' the judge reprimanded him. ‘Stick to the plain facts. Your opinions are not wanted.'

‘Oh, indeed, m'lud. Yes, m'lud. But he did ask me what I thought, and that was what I thought. I saw him cheat on the other nights, too,' he added helpfully, before Sir Darcy could as much as ask that question.

Sir Halbert predictably bobbed up again. ‘M'lud, I ask you to instruct the witness not to answer questions which have not been asked.'

‘Oh, indeed,' said my Lord drily. ‘But he's your witness, Sir Halbert. You insisted that he be present to be questioned. Continue, Sir Darcy.'

‘And what did you see on the other nights on which you played baccarat, Mr. Ffolliott?'

‘What I've already told you,' returned young Ffolliott irrepressibly. ‘He pushed his counters on to his cards when he was winning, and pushed them off when he lost. He used his pencil to do so. He even did it when he was supposed to be teaching Susanna Winthrop how to play—which I thought was damned bad form.'

Asked if he wished to re-examine, Sir Halbert declined the honour. Which was sensible of him, more than one spectator thought. Young Ffolliott's ingenuous honesty made him a match for any man.

Someone at the back of the court began to clap when he left the witness box, causing Lord Coleridge's expression to grow even more supercilious. He threatened to have the court cleared unless the spectators behaved themselves.
There had been a lot of appreciative laughter during young Ffolliott's evidence. Violet, to Dinah's amusement, made her approval of him quite plain.

Later, the defendants were all agreed on how well he had acquitted himself.

Dagenham said ruefully, ‘There we were, smug in our maturity and wide experience of life, dropping him because we thought that he might be irresponsible and let the side down, and he scores in court, and so far, we haven't. Sorry to say that, Kenilworth, but that's the truth. Not that I shall necessarily do any better.'

He didn't. Trapped in the witness box, he did well enough with Sir Darcy leading him—as Sir Halbert frequently complained. ‘M'lud, counsel is leading his witness
again
, pray ask him to refrain!'

When Sir Halbert rose to cross-examine him, it was not that, like poor Kenilworth, he committed a
bêtise
, but that he was so hesitant, he sounded unsure.

No, he could not tell Sir Halbert on which cards Sir Ratcliffe had cheated. Yes, he agreed that the defendants had met together to write the paper for Sir Ratcliffe to sign. No, no undue pressure had been put on Sir Ratcliffe to sign, but yes, Sir Ratcliffe might have thought so! No, there was no conspiracy, but yes, they were all trying to protect the Prince of Wales.

Was that, then, why the accusation was made? No, but of course the Prince's interests were paramount. Over those of Sir Ratcliffe's? Yes, no. Why was the whole matter so hugger-mugger, Sir Ratcliffe being hanged, drawn and quartered, so to speak, in private? To save the Prince, Dagenham muttered at last.

He grew more and more hunted, and by the time his cross-examination was over, Sir Ratcliffe's cause looked bright again.

Surprisingly, like Walter Ffolliott, it was Rainey, poor unsophisticated Rainey, who had gambled away house and lands, whose career had never shone like those of Kenilworth and Dagenham, who came off best of ‘the three noble peers', as the Press persisted in calling them.

Remarkably, as he had promised, he managed to make nearly all his answers monosyllabic, offering both counsel a simple Yes or No. He walked out of the witness box smiling happily at his fellow-defendants.

‘Nothing to it,' he proclaimed. To his brother-in-law Kenilworth he remarked kindly, ‘Can't imagine why you made such heavy weather of it all, old fellow.'

To his other brother-in-law, Mr Jacobus Grant, with whom he had long ago come to terms, since the arrangement which Cobie had made of the Freville estates had relieved him of responsibility whilst allowing him a sufficient sum to maintain his lifestyle, he also kindly offered some informed advice. ‘Say as little as possible, and you can't go wrong. But you know how to keep mum when the chips are down, I'll be bound.'

Which was all very well, Cobie thought privately the next day when his own ordeal was about to begin, but the devil frequently took a hand in these things, and chance, being a fickle mistress on whom one could not depend, might arrange matters to no one's liking—including his own.

‘Mr Jacobus Grant,' the usher bawled before he made his elegant way into the witness box. His name, said aloud like that, always amused him by its pomposity.

Once in the box he could, at last, see everything and everyone, including Dinah who was, he was sure, a little worried for him.

Sir Ratcliffe's eyes were avid on his face. There was
something there which warned the feral man who lived inside Cobie to be careful.

Nothing of this showed.

‘An American,' one of the reporters present muttered to his companion. ‘You'd never guess it,' and when he began to speak, his beautiful unaccented voice, the one which he had carefully developed for English society, betrayed nothing of his transatlantic origins.

Sir Darcy was cautious with him. He had been told, nay, he knew, that Mr Grant was clever out of the common run, but clever men—like Lord Kenilworth—frequently tripped themselves up in the witness box.

He took Cobie slowly through what had happened at Markendale in that fateful week when the Prince of Wales was there. Cobie's answers were short and to the point, with no embroidery.

‘Why were you asked to be of the small party which was to watch Sir Ratcliffe, Mr Grant?'

Cobie said, ‘I had observed Sir Ratcliffe engage in cheating, but as an American I said nothing of it at first.'

‘Then how was it you became involved?'

‘Lord Kenilworth, who is married to my wife's sister, asked me if I had observed anything untoward in Sir Ratcliffe's play.'

Sir Halbert jumped up. ‘Instruct the witness not to engage in hearsay, m'lud.'

The judge so instructed. Cobie bowed, said, ‘I had seen Sir Ratcliffe cheat, and was able to remember the exact way in which he had done it, and the cards on which he had moved his counters, increasing them if he won, decreasing them if he lost. I was a useful witness on that account.'

‘And you joined in preparing the document which Sir Ratcliffe was asked to sign and appended your signature to it.'

Cobie bowed again. He was, Dinah thought, the very picture of charming and graceful elegance. ‘Yes, to both questions.'

‘Let me take you through that again, Mr Grant. You say that you were—and still are—able to remember what the other witnesses could not. That is, all the cards played in the game which you watched, and all the counters moved, either forwards or backwards. And that having seen that, you are prepared, with that knowledge, to swear on oath, that Sir Ratcliffe cheated.'

‘I am, sir.'

The court buzzed at this statement.

‘Just one moment, Sir Darcy.'

It was the judge intervening before a purple-faced Sir Halbert could.

‘Am I to understand that Mr Grant claims to be able to remember every card and every counter moved by Sir Ratcliffe Heneage in a game played nearly three months ago?'

‘Exactly, m'lud. He has just so testified. It was his evidence which was the final clincher so far as Sir Ratcliffe's guilt was concerned.'

Sir Halbert was now on his feet. ‘Thank you, m'lud. I was about to protest this so-called evidence. Mr Grant's claim is so large as to be impossible.'

During this interchange Cobie remained his usually calm, slightly aloof, self. His self-control was beginning to impress the spectators, if not the judge and jury. He made no effort to defend his outrageous claim but left his counsel to battle for him.

Sir Darcy said, ‘I am instructed, m'lud, that Mr Grant is willing to have his memory tested in court. If you will so allow, he is prepared to have a baccarat game laid out, counters pushed forward or backward during it, all the moves
recorded by a clerk, and then tell the court exactly what passed during the game,
after
the cards have been removed.'

There was uproar again. Walker, hidden from view, laughed to himself. ‘So, Mr Dilley is willing to do his magic tricks in court. What happens if this one fails? What magic trick will he perform to get out of
that
?'

Sir Halbert was in a dilemma. If he refused to allow Grant to be tested, he might be considered to have conceded that Grant's memory was reliable—and he was the only one of the defendants who claimed to have remembered the exact cards on which Sir Ratcliffe had moved his counters.

If he let the test go ahead, however, and Grant failed—then Sir Ratcliffe was home and dry. But what if Grant succeeded? Everyone would believe that he had remembered truly. Even the surprise which Sir Halbert had up his sleeve for the charmingly handsome and civilised semi-aristocrat in the witness box might not be able to wipe out the memory of his trick proving Sir Ratcliffe to be a cheat. He had to take the risk—and hope that Grant would fail.

He therefore rose again, saying, ‘I am willing to agree that Mr Grant be tested—with the proviso that the packs of cards which will be used are supplied by officials of the court, and that officials of the court, not his counsel, will carry out the test. To that end I ask your lordship for an adjournment to arrange the matter, during which time Mr Grant will speak to no one.'

Oh, how wise, murmured Walker to himself. To put the magician in quarantine so that he cannot rig the game. Where is his shill, his accomplice? Is it possible that some of his tricks are real magic?

Sir Darcy agreed.

Cobie had nodded in the direction of the judge and the jury when this condition was made and agreed to by the judge. Nothing could have suited him more. He needed to
order his mind, to concentrate on nothing, so that when the test began, he could concentrate on something. Talk would have been a distraction.

He could see Hendrick Van Deusen in the spectators, a curiously smug expression on his face. Well, he hoped not to let him down—or his co-defendants. He was aware, as everyone in the courtroom was, that the result of the action might turn on what came next.

An usher led him into a room, where, once the door was closed on him, he lay down on a strip of carpeting before a roaring fire, closed his eyes, and willed himself into nothingness—where he remained for some time until he heard footsteps. The usher, come to call him back, found him seated in an armchair, a book from a crowded bookcase in his hand, as though he had been studying it in the hour which had elapsed.