133.

THE Ma.s.sENGHAM AFFAIR.

"So we do, my dear fellow. How happy she will be to have it back again."

That was on the Wednesday. Justin had a court for the following morning which would be bound to last for hours, but on the Friday, as soon as he had dealt with his appointments, he hurried to the livery stables and rode over the moor to Ma.s.singham.

A glow of satisfaction warmed his heart through the chill of the winter afternoon as he thought first of Sugden and then of this new pointer to his theory. The log jam of doubt was breaking up at last, allowing him to feel the sweep of the current bearing him along towards the truth, and there seemed such a pleasing irony in the thought that the girl who had dashed his hopes over the confession must help him now, that it was with affection that he saw her come into the Rectory drawing-room and held out to her the little trinket he had found.

"Pray where did you get this?" she demanded, holding it uncertainly in her hand.

For some reason he had expected with Mr Lumley that she would be pleased, and the grudging way his prized exhibit was accepted disconcerted him.

"You say it was in Coates's window?"

"Actually in one of the showcases," he replied.

"Then someone has treated it very badly. Do you see the way the wings are bent? And some of the links are missing from the chain. It was kind of you to restore it, however. We are obliged to you. I know my father would wish to join me in that thought."

She had glided towards the bell-pull which hung beside the mantelpiece, with the evident intention of ringing for the parlourmaid to show him out. How to frustrate such a manoeuvre? It was in no book of etiquette. No gentleman would even wish to know how to force his attentions on a lady. The lack of practical counsel in such important matters and the thoroughly unfair balance of the s.e.xes, which had never troubled him much before, affected Justin with a sense of grievance and injustice too hard to bear. "Miss Verne y . . . ," he burst out.

"Yes?" she enquired, looking at him in surprise.

"I know you must regard this as an importunity."

"Certainly not," she interrupted him severely. "We are under an obligation to you, as I said."

"But coming so soon after our last visit . . . which was so unfortunate and ill-timed. My dear Miss Verney, you can't surely have thought that we relished saying what we did?"

"No gentleman would do that."

"Oh, I agree," he said earnestly. "No man of feeling would deliberately hurt the feelings of another, particularly of someone of your father's age. Mr Lumley was most deeply distressed about it: he can't forgive himself for coming."

"So you ventured all alone this time."

'Bless me if she doesn't think of me as Daniel in the lions' den,' thought Justin, seeing the hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes and astonished by it, for a sense of humour was the last thing he had allowed her. When she looked like that she was decidedly attractive. Indeed, if only her hair wasn't dragged down over her ears, and if she would smile oftener and wear more dashing clothes to display her small but most seductive figure, there was no knowing what ideas a man might not get of her. "Quite alone," he said. "On my head be it."

"You are excused, as it happens, seeing you brought the seal."

"Timeo Danaos, Miss Verney. Shouldn't you fear the Greeks when they come bearing gifts? After all, we're on opposite sides, however regrettable that may be-and I for one regret it deeply."

"Not more than I."

They were the first encouraging words she had used to him and their effect was all the more intense. The small objectives with which he had come were submerged under a wave of feeling far more emotional and disturbing than he had ever bargained for. "My dear Miss Verney . . ." He had come much closer to her, looking down into eyes that had become clouded and uncertain. "You are generous . . . too generous. I have done nothing to deserve it-only caused you pain by questioning your story. . . ."

"But you still question it."

"Dear Miss Verney, don't you question mine? We have this division between us-though it's not of our choosing and you have just shown me by example how little it should count when both of us are really only wanting to get the truth. Couldn't we help one another there?"

"You didn't see those men," she said, "as I did."

"Just as you never heard Sugden or Miss Binns. One of us is wrong -from the best of motives, but wrong. It could be me, and I admit it freely. I only ask you to consider . . ."

135.

"Whether I am wrong?"

He shook his head. "To consider the evidence, Miss Verney. On the one side yours and your father's . . ."

"And all those others," she broke in.

"Yes. Including Sugden and Miss Binns. And now this seal."

"How does my seal come into it?"

"Because Sugden described it in his statement, though that was never done in court or in the newspapers, as far as I remember. Doesn't that suggest that he was here that night and saw it stolen?"

She thought for a while, smoothing her finger against the eagle's damaged wings, and then replied: "He could have got his facts from someone: oh, from Mrs Milligan or a dozen others-they'd all be in it. They could have described the seal to him."

"Why should they describe it? Why should Sugden listen if they had, much less put it down in a confession?"

"I don't know. He'll have some reason."

Soon afterwards he took his leave, accepting failure. Yet he felt no resentment as he mounted his horse and rode off past Merrick's bothy at the bridge. Respect, compa.s.sion, understanding and something warmer-they were very strange feelings to have towards one who for the second time had wrecked his hopes. He had a sudden impulse to turn back; and the thought of what Georgina would have said to this notion and to the excitement pa.s.sing through his mind was the last thing that weighed with him as he rode off through the deepening twilight. T might almost be in love with her,' he thought desperately. The whole thing's a lot of witchery. She's probably sailing past me on a broomstick at this moment to make up a coven down at Sugden's and laughing fit to burst.'

In fact, the wind had risen and the night around him was full of sound and movement not altogether rea.s.suring to a townsman's ear. Some beast was roaring in the valley down by the ruined castle and the noise of it pursued him as he galloped along the gra.s.s verge of the highway, going rather faster than he need and half expecting some uncouth shape to manifest itself over his shoulder. At the top of the hill he stopped and glanced back. He could see the pinpoints of the Rectory lights in the darkness, but there was no other sign of habitation in that cold, desolate world over which the wind came tearing, rustling the bent-gra.s.s of the moor. Some Scots pines appeared ahead in silhouette against the sky. He had admired them under snow from the dogcart when he had last come to Ma.s.singham, THE QUEST: 1899.

but by night, with the gale moving in their branches, they took on shapes from which it was pleasanter to avert the mind. Beyond them lay the flat top of the moor, and he crossed it at a smart canter, the wind behind him billowing his cloak around him till he felt that he was on some airborne and forbidden journey.

The pace quickened. He sensed the slope of the ground away from him and knew himself on the Smedwick side of the divide, where a belt of woods closed in towards the road before it began the long descent into the town. Soon he would see its lights below him. About a quarter of a mile ahead a bridle track came in from the left, and he reined in his horse, remembering that the road was bad hereabouts, with potholes on which he had remarked from the dogcart when he had last pa.s.sed that way. Leaning forward in his saddle, patting the mare's neck companionably, he rode on. He was accustomed to the darkness now. He saw the white blur of the signpost at the entrance to the bridle track, and beside it a shorter, bulkier shape-a shape that moved towards him across his path.

XV.

It was too late to turn. He had no more than a sudden awareness of danger very close. And in the same instant a voice spoke urgently out of the darkness: "Mr Derry? Is that you, sir?"

He felt a wild desire to laugh, curse, drive his horse forward at the shadow confronting him as it took shape and he recognised the solid figure of P.C. Pugh, which he had first seen at the Moot Hall and, more recently, following in Blair's steps like King Wenceslaus's page with a brace of stinking pheasants.

"Mr Derry, sir," the voice repeated. It was no illusion. The man was indisputably there. He could see the Minerva shape of the helmet and the truncheon hanging from the fellow's belt. "What the deuce! Scaring the wits out of me!" he grumbled, approaching the apparition which grew more solid with every moment.

"Beg pardon, sir."

"And well you might! What the devil d'you mean by it? Did Blair send you after me?"

"The Super? No, sir."

"Then why? And how did you know I'd come this way?"

"Just guessed it, sir. I knew you was at Verneys', sir."

Justin came closer to him, leaning forward in the saddle. The possibility that there might be others waiting for him in the darkness of the bridle path had not escaped him, but he had become excited by the man's voice and manner which suggested something that had been dimly in his mind for days. "So you've been watching me," he said. "Was it you who left a note for me at my house one night by any chance?"

"That's right, sir."

"Telling me to meet you by the Griffin Bridge?"

"Right again, sir. But P.C. Moffat come up on the beat-wantin' company, he said-and I durstn't shake him off."

"Now see here," said Justin, "let's get this straight. You want to see me for some reason-very well-though I must say you choose some quaint spots to do it: on that bridge and this blasted heath. What are you up to?"

"Been wantin' to tell you somethin', sir."

"Go on."

"About the burglary at Ma.s.singham. Remember Piggott?"

"The old man Kelly and his sister lived with?" Justin said, containing his excitement. He remembered Piggott well.

"Right, sir. He's in the workhouse now."

"It's coming back. Didn't the Police find a chisel in the Rectory after the crime? Didn't they call on Piggott to show it him, and he identified it as one he'd owned?"

"No, sir."

"Surely that was the way it went in evidence," said Justin in his official voice. "It was in Piggott's deposition!"

"It was in his deposition right enough. But what happened was this. Some days after the crime the Super sent for us-for me and Inspector Mathieson. He shows us that chisel from the Rectory. And he tells us to go down to Piggott's house and plant it on him."

"Plant it?"

"That's right, sir-only of course he put it different. Workin' a ruse, he called it. So Inspector Mathieson and me goes down there. Piggott, he'd been a receiver, sir-done a bit of it in his time, but he was gettin' old and almost blind by then. 'Let's see your tools, Piggott,' the Inspector says, Piggott bein' a carpenter by trade. So we turns out the cupboards, and Mathieson slips in the chisel with the rest, then hauls it out and says to him: 'Piggott, is this yer chisel? There's been a burglary done at Stope and a man claims he lost a chisel the spittin' image o' this. Is this yer chisel, Piggott? If it is, it can't be stole from Stope, now can it?' And Piggott, bein' nervous of us like, thinkin' otherwise we'd fix a burglary on him, identifies the chisel right away. It's mine,' he says. 'Been mine for years that chisel has.'"

There was a long silence, and then Justin murmured almost to himself: "And you lent yourself to that!"

"It's been on me conscience, sir," Pugh said. "I've been wantin' to tell someone. And then you come along, sir, makin' enquiries about Ma.s.singham, so I heard. 'There's me man,' thinks I. 'There's the man I can go to if I can get him alone like when no one's watchin'.' It wouldn't do if they was, sir."

He was glancing around uneasily in the darkness, and the mare, as though aware of this, began a series of small restless movements, raising and lowering her head.

"What do you mean? Wouldn't do if who was here? Blair?"

"Best be off, sir," the constable said. "It's a bit outby, like, but you get folk around sometimes."

"Will you make a statement? Here, come back!"

But he got no answer. Pugh had turned away into the gloom, and a few seconds later the clatter of hooves sounded along the bridle path that led downhill in an arc towards the town by Benton Moor.

XVI.

Next morning the inquest on Amy Dodds opened in the Lawnmar-ket. It was surprising what little furore the death had caused, even among the Bewley and Pelegate folk. Apart from officials and a handful of spectators, among whom he recognised Miss Kelly, Inspector Mathieson and Mr Hicks from the Mercury, the court was empty when Justin went in soon after ten o'clock, to see the jury of seven reluctant citizens herded into their places, coughing and spluttering in the fog-laden air that had crept in from the streets. Only Mr Hicks seemed to have much stomach for the occasion. "You interested in this case too, sir?" he enquired, twisting round to greet the new arrival. "Pretty universal taste for crime you seem to have. Will the Beverend Gentleman be coming?"

The first evidence went to identification and was given by a neighbour of the deceased called Adams, who had last seen her alive on 139.

THE Ma.s.sIXGHAM AFFAIR.

the late afternoon of 18th February, five days after Justin's visit to Clay Yard. It had been bitter weather, and as she had set out towards town she had been 'arl m.u.f.fled up', with 'a bit scarf like' round her head and wearing clogs.

From that moment she had disappeared from view, though one of the girls in Preston's bakery in Hewitt Street believed she had caught a distant glimpse of her at dusk, headed towards the Bew-shaugh meadows and the river. Next morning a forester employed by Sir Miles Curvis of High Crags had been cutting timber near the Red Mill pool when his attention had been drawn to something in the river below the weir-he had thought it was a small tree-trunk with some pink material attached, till he had come down on to the path and seen the half-submerged body entangled in driftwood and rushes about six yards from the bank.

There the Police had seen it later that morning. Afterwards they had searched the bank for footprints or any signs of a struggle, but the frost was iron hard and they had found nothing. Nor had Dr Higson discovered any bruising on the corpse beyond what might be expected from a sudden fall. "I think she went into the water some time between four and nine o'clock," he told the court. "From the general condition, and in particular from the mud under the finger nails, I incline to the view that she made a determined effort to reach the bank. That of course is consistent with her having fallen in by accident. But it is also consistent with the act of suicide. That is a crime people sometimes have second thoughts about," he added grimly.

Last into the box came a retired pitman by the name of Snell, who at dusk on the day of Amy's disappearance had been exercising his whippets in the fields at Bewshaugh. He had just turned for home, he said, and had whistled up his dogs, when he had heard voices in the woods near the Red Mill pool. There was a man's voice and a woman's and they had seemed to be arguing. No, he had not recognised them or caught any definite words-they had been too far away from him: perhaps two hundred yards. Nor had he seen anyone in the gathering darkness. But he felt sure they had been angry voices: 'the la.s.s's much the louder'. His dogs had heard them too and had run towards the sound till he had called them back. They were obedient dogs.

"No doubt," the Coroner remarked tersely at this point. "The fact is, isn't it, that you were coursing them?"

"On Bewshaugh, sir!" It appeared from Mr Snell's virtuous disclaimers that there were no hares left in that somewhat over-hunted meadow at Pelegate's back door.

"At all events," the Coroner persisted, "the attention you paid these voices that you say you heard was cursory. You didn't investigate them or report them?"

Mr Snell had 'niwer thowt on it'.

"Quite. The impression that they made on you was simply of a quarrel, not the first you have heard perhaps. You had no cause to apprehend that any criminal or homicidal act was likely."

"They was just arguin'."

"So you called your dogs off and went home?"

"That's right, sir. To me tea."

When the Coroner came to address the jury he dealt caustically with this evidence. "How much it may be expected to help you is most debatable," he remarked with a sour glance at Mr Snell. "Whether the man was coursing game or not-and you may have formed your own opinions as to that- what is certain is that he paid only the vaguest attention to anything else that afternoon. That two people were talking in the wood we may accept, but beyond that all is surmise. Gentlemen, I must tell you that there is not a scintilla of evidence to show that it was the deceased's voice in the woods. Of course it may have been. That the body was found next day near the spot is suggestive, but no more than that. Still more definitely must I direct you that the fact that an unknown man's voice was heard in argument with an unknown woman is no indication whatsoever that anyone murdered Amy Dodds, whom no one, so far as we have heard, had cause to fear or threaten. You might just as well accept the obedient activities of those dogs of Mr Snell's as being probative and helpful; and indeed one can be a great deal more certain of what they and their master were about that evening.

"Now, gentlemen, free of these beguiling but quite misleading thoughts . . ."

Of course, the Coroner was perfectly right, and by the standards of proof demanded by the law there could be no question of the jury finding anything but Misadventure or, perhaps more appropriately, an Open Verdict. But as he went back to his office, leaving them still deliberating, Justin was remembering Mr Snell and the raised voices in the twilight by the weir. He felt quite sure that one of those voices had been Amy's. What had taken her through the 141.

Red Mill woods? The riverside path, which had been used as a right-of-way by Smedwick folk for generations, was a notorious place for lovers, and though Amy had not put on her best clothes, and the weather had been arctic, the possibility of some rendezvous must be the most likely explanation of what had drawn her there.

But the Red Mill path was also a convenient short-cut between Pelegate and the streets on the Warbury side of the town-including for that matter Laburnum Road. 'If she had been coming to "The Laurels" to see me,' he thought, 'she might well have come that way' -and checked suddenly as an idea obtruded itself into his mind: certainly the most unpleasant he had had to live with since the beginning of the Ma.s.singham affair. Amy's words to him in Clay Yard, the furtive sounds behind the walls and the hurrying figure in the lamplight all seemed to merge with the voices in the wood to form a pattern, part of a wider pattern which he began to glimpse. It might not be true to say, as the Coroner had said, that no one had had cause to fear or threaten the dead girl. It might be the very reverse of the truth. Her evidence about Piggott's coat could have become a very pressing danger to some people. Her willingness to talk, and perhaps to say far more than she had done already, need only have been overheard that night by someone who felt threatened by it, for a powerful motive of fear to have arisen. And who better than the Police to have had such a motive? Far more directly than the guilty men who had broken in at Ma.s.singham, Blair and his subordinates had been threatened by Amy's words with an exposure which if proved would ruin all of them. Now it could be proved no longer- unless Miss Kelly had also known about the switch of the coats, or Piggott himself could be winkled out of his sh.e.l.l in the munic.i.p.al workhouse.

See Miss K-Piggott-statutory declaration in both cases, he scribbled on his memo pad, having dodged guiltily into his office through the private door in the irrational hope that Harris would imagine he had been there for some time. He had no sooner opened the nearest file in sight, however, than there came the faint rap at the door and his clerk entered with the expression winch only Flo had developed to a more poignant pitch of suffering.

"Colonel Deverel is in my office, sir."

He shot up from the desk, appreciating from the tone in which these words had been uttered that Harris was not reproaching him, and that in itself was alarming.

"Has he been here long? Why didn't you show him in? Did you tell him where I was?"

"Viewing the locus in quo, sir-of a conveyance, sir."

Justin began to breathe more easily. "Miss Georgina isn't with him?"