"How lovely. That is just what she is like. Is that the little man you wanted to push us off on to, that first day?"
"That's the one."
"I am so glad that I refused to be pushed."
"I hope you will still be as glad when this case is over," Robert said, suddenly sober.
"We have not yet thanked you for standing surety for our bail," Mrs. Sharpe said from the back of the car.
"If we began to thank him for all we owe him," Marion said, "there would be no end to it."
Except, he thought, that he had enlisted Kevin Macdermott on their side-and that was an accident of friendship-what had he been able to do for them? They would go for trial at Norton little more than a fortnight hence, and they had no defence whatever.
18
The newspapers had a field-day on Tuesday.
Now that the Franchise affair was a court case, it could no longer provide a crusade for either the Ack-Emma or the Watchman -though the Ack-Emma did not fail to remind its gratified readers that on such and such a date they had said so and so, a plain statement which was on the surface innocent and unexceptionable but was simply loaded with the forbidden comment; and Robert had no doubt that on Friday the Watchman would be taking similar credit to itself, with similar discretion. But the rest of the Press, who had not so far taken any interest in a case that the police had no intention of touching, woke with a glad shout to report a case that was news. Even the soberer dailies held accounts of the court appearance of the Sharpes, with headings like: EXTRAORDINARY CASE, and: UNUSUAL CHARGE. The less inhibited had full descriptions of the principal actors in the case, including Mrs. Sharpe's hat and Betty Kane's blue outfit, pictures of The Franchise, the High Street in Milford, a school friend of Betty Kane, and anything else that was even approximately relevant.