Ranklin wondered if he’d been naive in thinking that that was just what lawyers were for. While he was still wondering, Corinna and Noah Quinton arrived.
Corinna, who liked to be called Mrs Finn and thought of as a widow for entirely immoral reasons, was indeed tall and attracted words like “striking” and “handsome”. Or “vivid”, because her eyes and mouth were exaggerated like an actress’s and her hair was very black. With all this, she could carry off strong colours and did, while most of London was wearing pastels and fussy little hats. Today she wore a black matador hat and was wrapped in a cape of purple wool that completely hid, and therefore hinted at, her shape beneath.
Probably it was too warm for the day – a fine Easter was stretching on, with temperatures nearing 60° – but when did being hot or cold affect how a woman wanted to look?
The Commander pre-empted her to the introductions. “I’m Commander Smith and this is Captain Ranklin. Army Captain, of course.”
Corinna smiled. “May I present Mr Noah Quinton?” They shook hands and Quinton said: “And you represent the Government?”
“Whatever Mrs Finn told you,” the Commander said blandly. They all sat down, a watchful waiter hurried up with a fresh pot of tea, and Ranklin poured.
If you had met Quinton anywhere, you would have thought: Ah, a sharp lawyer. But how else was a lawyer allowed to advertise? He was dapper (attention to detail), quick of movement (and thus of thought), and looked you in the eye with a smile (he believed what you were telling him). Actually, between his curly grey hair and small grey beard was a rather ferrety face, which his heavy-rimmed glasses helped humanise, but he was constantly putting those off and on.
“We’re all busy me-people,” the Commander said briskly. “So: I believe you have something you feel we should know.”
“Yes.” Corinna took a deep breath. “My father, Reynard Sherring, is honorary treasurer of a small fund set up by Americans in London to help out American citizens in trouble here. Our consulate passes on people they think are deserving of our help. Last week they told us about a young American in prison over in Brixton. It seems you’re holding him for the French. They want him extradited on an arson charge.”
“What did he burn down?” the Commander asked. “Allegedly.”
“Oh, only a police station-house.” The Commander’s eyebrows vibrated at that “only”, but Corinna sailed on. “It doesn’t seem to have been more than singed, anyhow. So, I run the fund when my father isn’t here, and I was . . . well, I was kind of bothered by something the boy said to our vice-consul and a letter the boy’s mother wrote him. He was bothered, too. The vice-consul. So I asked Mr Quinton to take on the case. Frankly -” she flashed Quinton a searchlight-strength grin to disarm him “- I was hoping the boy would say more to him and he’d pass it on to me, but . . .”
“Without my client’s permission, it would have been quite unethical for me to do anything of the sort,” Quinton said tonelessly.
Corinna said cheerfully: “But it seems he hasn’t said any more anyhow, so our ethics are unsullied.” She could be deceptively feminine and vague when she wanted. In truth, she must have dealt with lawyers in half a dozen countries.
There was a pause, then the Commander said: “Are we going to hear what the chap said?” at the same time as Ranklin’s “Does the lad have a name?”
Corinna chose to answer Ranklin. “Grover Langhorn, aged twenty-three; he worked as a waiter at a cafe in La Villette – the nineteenth arrondissement.” She flicked on a fastidious expression: the nineteenth was the area Paris didn’t talk about, like an uncle who had gone to the bad. All Ranklin knew of it was that it was in the north-east of the city and had acres of abattoirs.
The Commander, who didn’t like coming second, said: “Grover Langhorn?”
“As I’m sure you remember,” Corinna said sweetly, “we had a President called Grover Cleveland around the time this boy was born. And what he told the vice-consul was that if he was going to be sent back to France he’d tell something scandalous about your King.”
Ranklin felt his own expression must be a mirror of the Commander’s: blank puzzlement. Agreed that it would be impossible to top the late Edward VII’s mark for scandalous behaviour, George V didn’t even seem to be trying. His appearance was entirely the opposite: that of a dutiful family man. Could he have told a risque story from his naval days in mixed company? At full stretch, that was the worst Ranklin’s imagination could reach.
Finally the Commander asked: “Is that all?”
“Not quite.” Corinna dug in what she called a “purse” and anyone else would have said was a moderate piece of luggage, and unfolded a sheet of pale violet writing-paper. She passed it across.
18 rue Castelnaudry
Paris 19
April 3erd
Dear sir
My son Grover has been arested by the London police becaus the French say he set fire to the police baracks but I know he did not do this but they will lock him up for ever if he is sent back here becaus of perjery so pleas see him amp; listen very carefuly to what he tells you becaus it is true
yrs faithfuly
Enid Langhorn (Mrs (widow) born Bowman).
“Let me get this quite clear,” the Commander said. “Was this sent to the American Consul here?”
“She was English, and married an American merchant seaman back . . . whenever. And the letter was sent to the American consulate. It was opened by one of the young vice-consuls – a sweet boy, you’d love him – and it was he who saw Grover and then got in touch with me. As he’d sort of handed the case over to me, he gave me the letter as well. He said that it probably wasn’t the sort of thing to leave lying in a file anyhow. Between you and me, I don’t think he feels America should be mixed up in the scandalous behaviour of royalty.
“You can keep it,” she added. “Unless Mr Quinton wants it.”
Quinton shook his head firmly and the Commander, after one last frowning glance, tucked the letter into an inside pocket. He seemed uncertain about what to say next.
So Ranklin said: “Perhaps Mr Quinton would care to say something about extradition procedure – in general, of course, not in regard to this case.”
Quinton’s smile flickered quickly and then he said: “Extradition’s rare, so not many lawyers bother to know much about it. It’s really an uneasy mix of law and international politics. Our courts can decide that a man should be extradited, but then the Home Secretary – although it would really be a Cabinet decision – can overrule them and decide he shouldn’t be. However, not vice versa: if the courts decide someone should not be extradited, that’s an end of the matter.”
The Commander said: “Be a bit of a snub to that foreign government if the Home Sec chose not to extradite when the courts had said he should.”
“Quite so,” Quinton nodded. “Just what I meant by an uneasy mix with politics. And that aspect goes a little further: the court can hear evidence to show that the alleged crime was a political one – something that would be irrelevant in a normal trial – and if they decide it was political, set the prisoner free.”
The Commander frowned. “But suppose-”
“Even if the charge is murder. There was something of a landmark case some thirty years ago, Castioni. He killed a man during the overthrow of the local government in one of the Swiss cantons and fled to England. The judges decided the killing had been a political act and refused to extradite . . . Perhaps I should point out that treason, spying, subversion and so on aren’t even extraditable crimes, of course. Nobody gets sent back to, say, Germany because he’s been doing naughty things to their government.”