AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know.” Daniel stood as well. “But if he hasn’t enough to pay us, then he hasn’t enough to pay anyone else either, so he’d be very grateful to accept us.”
“Pitt, sometimes I think you are a complete ass!”
Daniel had no answer to that. He tried to think of a rationalization and failed.
“Well, come on!” Kitteridge said, standing in the doorway. “Ass or not, you can’t imagine I’m going to Marcus with this by myself!”
Daniel realized he had been imagining exactly that. His mind was
preoccupied with the thought that he needed Kitteridge, not only because he was an extremely good trial barrister, but because he was honest, completely so. He had no wish to tell a lie, and no imagination to think of one, or a series of them, on his feet. That had annoyed Daniel, because at times he was tedious. And occasionally Kitteridge missed the truth when it seemed absurd. But he also had the ability to accept it, even when it was against him, even when he had to backtrack and eat his own words. That was a quality Daniel admired without reservation. He feared he had yet to acquire it with any grace. “No, no, of course not!” he exclaimed.
“That took you awhile,” Kitteridge said with a twisted smile. All the same, he’d given Daniel time to hesitate.
Three minutes later, they were outside Marcus fford Croft’s office door. He was the founder and head of the firm, and his office reflected that. Kitteridge knocked, not giving either of them time to think any longer and lose courage.
It was answered immediately and they were invited in to sit in the client armchairs. Kitteridge obeyed; Daniel remained on his feet. Marcus was of an indeterminate age, somewhere between his late fifties and seventy. He was portly and not very tall. His hair was white, thick, and at the moment looked like a haystack in the middle of a good tossing. He wore a velvet waistcoat over his mauve shirt, and a bow tie that might have been straight when he dressed in front of a mirror, but was very much turned in a counterclockwise direction now.
“Well?” he said with interest. “What have you? Not another will or contested land boundary, I hope. I am so bored with bequests, I could paper the Sahara with them! Speak up, Kitteridge! What have you brought Pitt for? Moral support?”
Kitteridge sat up perfectly straight. “No, sir. This is his affair, and he has asked me to take part in it, as…as a more experienced trial barrister.”
“Hard to be less,” Marcus said drily. “Well, are you going to tell me about it? Or did you just come to hold the door for him?”
Daniel could see Kitteridge’s muscles tighten all the way to his scalp as he spoke.
“I will tell you myself, sir, but you may well wish to question him, as to further details.”
“No doubt. Details of what, exactly?”
“Of a case that began in Washington, in America, and has traveled across the Atlantic, for us to clean up.” Kitteridge went on too quickly for Marcus to interrupt, although from the look on his face he had clearly intended to. “A theft and assault occurred in the home of a distinguished American family. The daughter was robbed in her bedroom, in the middle of the night. The father says he saw and recognized the intruder. It was a young diplomat, Philip Sidney, stationed at the British Embassy in Washington.”
Marcus was clearly fascinated, and furious, but he did not interrupt.
Kitteridge swallowed. After five years in these chambers, he had earned his place, but Marcus still overawed him. Maybe he always would. Kitteridge was clever, and he worked hard, but he was a scholarship boy, socially awkward and unable to forget it.
Daniel wondered whether to say anything himself. If he did, he would obviously be rescuing Kitteridge. He did not want to acknowledge that it was necessary.
“He invoked diplomatic immunity,” Kitteridge went on after a moment. “And fled back here.”
“Guilty,” Marcus said, in such a tone that Daniel did not know if it was a question or an answer.
“It would all be irrelevant, at least to the law,” Kitteridge continued, “if he had not now been charged with embezzlement from the embassy while on his tour of duty in America.”
Marcus sat bolt upright. “And arrested? They’re going to try him? Why, for God’s sake? Take the money back and keep their mouths shut! Do they want the whole world to know we employ such…wastrels…to represent us abroad?”
“I’m afraid Tobias Thorwood will not permit that,” Kitteridge went on. “And more than that, neither will the American policeman who wanted to charge him with robbery and assaulting Miss Thorwood—”
“What? Who did you say? What the devil has he to do with it?”
“He’s over here in London, visiting with his English wife’s family…”
“Kitteridge, is this your idea of an elaborate joke?” He turned to Daniel. “Pitt! Why are you standing there like a bloody footman?”
“The American policeman concerned is my sister’s husband, sir. That is how I came to know about it. Patrick, my brother-in-law, wants to see the robbery and assault come out during the course of the embezzlement trial.”
Marcus looked at him narrowly. “Are you skirting around what I think you are, Pitt?”
Daniel breathed in deeply. “Yes, sir.”
