Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

”

“Oh, no!” Marion said, in passionate protest as her eye fell on the picture of The Franchise.

And then there was unbroken silence while the two women absorbed the contents of the inner page.

“I take it,” Mrs. Sharpe said at last, “that we have no redress against this sort of thing?”

“None,” Robert said. “All the statements are perfectly true. And it is all statement and not comment. Even if it were comment – and I’ve no doubt the comment will come – there has been no charge so the case is not sub judice.

They are free to comment if they please.”

“The whole thing is one huge implied comment,” Marion said. “That the police failed to do their duty. What do they think we did? Bribed them?”

“I think the suggestion is that the humble victim has less pull with the police than the wicked rich.”

“Rich,” repeated Marion, her voice curdling with bitterness.

“Anyone who has more than six chimneys is rich.

Now. If you are not too shocked to think, consider. We know that the girl was never at The Franchise, that she could not—” But Marion interrupted him.

“Do you know it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Robert said.

Her challenging eyes lost their challenge, and her glance dropped.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“If the girl was never there, how could she have seen the house!.. She did see it somehow. It is too unlikely for belief that she could be merely repeating a description that someone else gave her….

How could she see it? Naturally, I mean.”

“You could see it, I suppose, from the top deck of a bus,” Marion said. “But there are no double-decker buses on the Milford route. Or from on top of a load of hay. But it is the wrong time of year for hay.”

“It may be the wrong time for hay,” croaked Mrs. Sharpe, “but there is no season for lorry-loads.

I have seen lorries loaded with goods as high as any hay waggon.”

“Yes,” Marion said. “Suppose the lift the girl got was not in a car, but on a lorry.”

“There is only one thing against that. If a girl was given a lift on a lorry she would be in the cabin, even if it meant sitting on someone’s knee. They wouldn’t perch her up on top of the load. Especially as it was a rainy evening, you may remember….