"I f-forget. I applied for legal aid, and they gave me an elderly man. They said he was a soup, or something."
"My darling, you need say no more! I have the whole picture!" Timothy said. "This is the first time in my legal career when I've wished I'd chosen to be an Old Bailey Tub-thumper! If only I could have defended you - !"
"Oh, Timothy! Oh, Timothy!" Beulah sobbed into his shoulder. "It wouldn't have been any use! I was such a little fool! No one believed me - I didn't think anyone ever would believe me! I couldn't bring forward anything to prove I hadn't done it, and that when I went to that office after hours, it was because he rang me up, and asked me to go there, and get that envelope out of the safe! He said he'd forgotten it, and he'd get into trouble with his uncle, and I was to post it to him - but it was only my word against his, and though I did think that man on the Bench half-believed me, the jury didn't, and if they didn't, why should anyone else?"
Mr.. Harte made no attempt to unravel this. Producing a large handkerchief, he mopped Beulah's cheeks with it, and said: "You shall tell me all about it, my pet, once we're through with this mess. Now, you sit up, and stop soaking me to the skin! We shall have my-friend-the Sergeant, alias Chief Inspector Hemingway, here at any moment, and you don't want him to find you in floods of tears! And don't run away with the idea that he'll arrest you for murder just because you were once convicted of embezzlement: he's far too downy a bird to do anything of the sort."
"I haven't told you the whole of it," Beulah said, apparently determined to make a clean breast of everything. "Birtley isn't my name! At least, it is, but not all of it!"
"Give me a moment to steel myself!" Timothy begged. "Because if it's Spooks, or something like that -"
She gave a shaky laugh. "No, no! It's Meriden!"
"And what could be nicer than that? Apart from the fact that the only Meridens I ever heard of are a rather stuffy Warwickshire family, full of Good Form and inhibitions."
"That's them," Miss Birtley said, into his coat.
"What you mean, my girl," said Timothy, "is Those are They. I'm sorry, but our engagement is Off! Half your value for me lay in the fact that you weren't cluttered up with that kind of relation. Kindly get off my knee!"