A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  She had told two irreconcilable stories, one before the Magistrates, and the other in this Court. The original statement, made to the police, told against the prisoner. How the police had induced her to make it, was not clear. The jury would naturally dislike the idea of this young woman’s being in any way trapped—even into telling the truth: but they might well wonder what possible inducement or coercion the police could have employed which would make such a woman tell a false story against the man she loved. In this Court, Miss Bland had retracted her original statement, and given evidence supporting the prisoner’s alibi. It was for the jury to decide which of these two stories was the more credible.

  Miss Bland had referred to the accused several times as her “husband,” though she was not in fact married. The Judge warned the jury to dismiss from their minds any prejudice they might have against the prisoner for leading an irregular life with Daisy Bland. On the other hand, they were entitled to take into consideration the letter which the accused had written to her, proposing marriage: bearing in mind that a wife must not give evidence against her husband, they might or might not draw certain conclusions from the prisoner’s having made this proposal when he did, a few days after the murder.

  The Judge proceeded to remind the jury, at considerable length and with complete impartially, of the various other points of evidence. But, in Sir Henry’s view, the case was already lost; for Mr. Justice Prentiss had given no ruling that the jury must disregard Daisy’s deposition before the Magistrates: that he had not done so would give every justification for an appeal; and Sir Henry, detaching his mind from the Judge’s measured and droning exposition, applied it to the legal arguments he would bring up at the Court of Criminal Appeal.

  The jury were out for only a quarter of an hour. They returned a verdict of Guilty. The prisoner once again protested his innocence. Then sentence of death was passed.

  21. Last Scene of All

  Hugo Chesterman awoke, sweating and trembling, from a nightmare. It was a nightmare which had been familiar to him since his term of imprisonment shortly after the war: perhaps it went further back—to boyhood reading of a story by Poe; or perhaps the dream had its source in the rigid and intolerable oppression of his father’s personality, or in some remote, buried memory of the womb and the struggle for birth. He had dreamed that he was in a cell, whose iron walls and ceilings began to constrict, moving in upon him with minute and remorseless jerks. He tried to push them away, but they were irresistible: ever so slowly he would be crushed.

  “Daisy,” he childishly whimpered, “I’ve had an awful dream!” But Daisy was not there—only darkness, and an acrid fog of anxiety within, and someone snoring. Daisy never snored. So Hugo came fully awake, to the realisation that he was indeed in a cell—the condemned cell. And it was not dark: there was always a dim light burning here: and it was his own heavy breathing he had heard—the warder on duty did not go to sleep.

  Another panic flooded his mind. Was it this morning? Then he remembered: the execution was fixed for tomorrow; and he smiled wryly at the absurd sense of relief which swept over him. As if twenty-four hours made any difference. But of course they did. Twenty-four hours more of being alive, though the appeal had failed and there was no hope now of a reprieve, meant something all right. A man could live without hope, he realised: he could live simply on the wholesome and nourishing fact of not being dead. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” he found himself muttering.

  “Anything you want, old man?” asked the warder.

  “No thanks. Just reciting beautiful poetry to myself.”

  They weren’t bad chaps, these warders, as warders went. And, considering it was a copper he’d shot, they treated him pretty well. Though why the hell I didn’t shoot that all-time low bastard Jacko instead, God alone knows, he thought: even the cops go white round the edges when they mention him: had to smuggle him out of the country immediately after the trial. I suppose he wanted Daisy. What a hope!

  The thought of Daisy sent anxiety swarming over him again. She’d be visiting him to-day, with the baby, for the first time since before the trial, and for the last time. He must say something to comfort her. It was she who’d have to go on living. But what on earth was there to say? He dreaded this interview more than he dreaded the brief interview he would have next day—with the prison Governor, the chaplain, and the hangman. Ever since that morning at Southbourne, there had been a question behind Daisy’s eyes, and Hugo knew that he must not leave her without answering it. But with the truth, or with a lie?

  He lay in bed now, facing a moral problem. For many years, such problems had meant nothing to him. But he loved Daisy, and once you really loved someone you began to worry about what was best for that person, and this soon got you tangled up in speculations about right and wrong. Hugo knew that, if he swore to Daisy he was innocent, she would believe him; she could go through life assured that little Thomas was not the child of a murderer. But then she would for ever carry the terrible burden of having given the evidence which had hanged an innocent man. So might it not be better to tell her the truth, even though it destroyed her illusions about him—darkened, perhaps, for her the memories of their love?

  Hugo’s mind, turning away from this insoluble problem, drifted back to the events which had caused it. He was with Daisy again in the pub near the harbour, overhearing that conversation about the Princess and her jewels. He was walking slowly past the Princess’s house next day, running his eye over its possibilities, but in a disinterested way; for at that time he almost believed in his intention of going straight, though he realised now that it had never been in his nature to do so. But then his luck betrayed him—led him beautifully up the garden path, only to desert him. Hugo had the criminal’s superstitious belief in luck: when things went wrong, he held it solely responsible and cursed it as a savage curses the wooden god who has let him down. It was just my bloody luck, he thought now, that I should have met Joe Samuels in the bar at the Queen’s and been given the tip for that ropey horse. And it was just my bloody luck that the Princess should come into the bar and I should happen to overhear her mention the dinner date. That’s one coincidence Mr. Brownleigh didn’t know about. The bar was fairly full and the old girl obviously didn’t notice me, or she’d have been able to pick me out at the identification parade. Then I have to go crazy—put all our money on that horse and lose it. There was nothing for it then but to lift the old girl’s jewels.

  Hugo remembered it all with appalling clarity—Daisy’s despair, and his own reluctant decision. He could see now that something within himself had resisted the plan, confusing his mind, undermining his nerve, leading him into idiotic mistakes. What on earth had induced him to take the rope and then leave it in Daisy’s keeping? He had had some vague notion, he remembered, that if he should fail to clamber up on to the porch top, the rope might come in useful for an attempt to break in at the back of the house. But then, when he left Daisy on the esplanade, he changed his mind—for no apparent reason—and handed her the parcel. It had all been so fumbling, so indecisive and amateurish. On top of which, he had to go and mistime the whole operation, arriving on the porch top only to discover that the Princess had not yet left for her dinner-date.

  It seemed to him now that his heart could not have been in the job: certainly his mind had failed to concentrate upon it. While he lay on the porch top, waiting for the Princess’s bedroom light to go out, he was haunted by something tragic and ominous he had seen in Daisy’s face. She had called to him to come back: or was it a voice in his own heart? what his father used to be eternally nattering about—conscience? Well, Daisy was the nearest thing to a conscience he’d had for many years. The web of deception, which he’d spun round her life with him, entangled his own feet now, so that his actions dragged and floundered like the feet of a man in a nightmare.

  No less vacillating and half-hearted, he could see now, had been his conduct after the crime. Throwing away the parcel, sending for his brother
and Jacko, hiding the revolver, failing to work out an alibi with Daisy, walking into the arms of the police—there had been something more than panic behind all these childish mistakes. The enemy within, the Accuser within, had taken away his strength. Behind his bravado on the day after the murder, behind his fatalistic courage in court, there had been a terrible hollowness: guilt had eaten away his will to live: he had gone through the motions of self-preservation, but feebly and perfunctorily, like a dying man who knows he is better dead.

  For Hugo viewed his deed now without self-deception, and its consequences without self-pity. That night on the porch, when Inspector Stone had called to him to come down, he had fired the first shot blindly, not aiming, intending only to frighten the man off for a moment so that he could make his escape. But his luck had sent the bullet into the man’s body, and the second shot was fired in sheer panic at the visible result of the first. Over and over again, since, he had asked himself how he came to lose his head and fire that first shot. It had happened in a mindless flash. But his claustrophobic horror of prison, his reckless contempt for the police and the society they represented, together with the idea of Daisy bearing his child in poverty and solitude, Daisy deprived of his presence when most she would need it—these, it seemed to him now, were the motives which had touched off that act of blind desperation. Fear and love between them had pulled the trigger.

  Hugo considered coldly the man who had fired the shot, not seeking to exculpate him or find excuses for him. One can hardly say that he felt remorse: vexation, perhaps, at the way he had botched the whole job; but for his victim he felt no more pity than for himself—the Inspector was dead, and to-morrow he himself would be dead, and there was no point in wasting tears on either of them. If you killed a man, and they pinned it on you, they had a right to take away your life in exchange. But it ought to stop short at that: the evil a man did should not live after him: the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children. It was not the murder, but what it would mean for Daisy and their child, which filled Hugo now with a sickening despair. He had not known the true meaning of love till he met Daisy, nor been acquainted with the burden of responsibility which true love imposes.

  When he was taken out to see Daisy, however, a few hours later, the problem which had given him so much anxiety solved itself. He knew suddenly that at this, their last meeting, nothing mattered but the truth. During the earlier stage of their relationship he had deceived her, partly at least through fear of losing her love: and later he had lied to her, though not often. Now, even if it spoilt her image of him for ever, the truth must be told.

  “Daisy, love,” he whispered through the grille which separated them, “I must tell you. I did it. I did shoot the Inspector.” Anxiously he searched her face. There was shock there and sadness, but no revulsion. “Will you forgive me, Daisy?”

  “I’ve nothing to forgive, sweetheart. You were always a good man to me.”

  The gentleness in her voice broke down his defences, thawing the tough ice which had lain for so long at the centre of him. “I’m sorry,” he said, and realised that he was sorry—not for Daisy only, but for his deed, and its victim. “He’d done me no harm. He was a good chap, they say.”

  Somehow the air was cleared. This interview, which he had so much dreaded, was nothing worse than sad. Daisy held up the baby for him to see.

  “He’s just like you,” she said.

  “Did you have a bad time, love?”

  “No. Just a few hours.” Her lip trembled: then she said bravely, “I’m glad I’ve got him, my darling.”

  “That’s a good girl. You look after him well. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be glad to get it over. I’m not frightened—you get used to the idea after a bit.”

  At that, she started to cry, but quickly checked herself. Each of them had courage, and was trying to give it to the other. Presently, like an old married couple by the fireside, they were talking quite calmly, with no barriers between them, about everyday things—Daisy’s reconciliation with her mother, her plans for the future—and about the happy times of their past together. There was much to say, and little time to say it: but what needed saying most did not need words—their speaking eyes exchanged messages of love and gratitude.

  “Three minutes more,” said the warder.

  Daisy went deathly pale. Three minutes—and beyond them a waste of years to live through. “I’d have waited for you,” she muttered, hardly knowing what she said.

  “Yes. But it’s best this way. Look, Daisy, you marry some decent chap. Young Thomas’ll need a father. Don’t spend the rest of your life brooding about me.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was submissive and faint. She bowed her head, and the fingers of one hand stroked the grille between them. She had Hugo back now: there was no withdrawing from her, no barrier, as there had been during their interviews in prison before the trial. Though physically they could not touch, Daisy was aware of strength flowing into her from him: she had come here to give him what help she could, but it was she who was being supported.

  “And listen to me, Daisy—you’re never to worry about the evidence you gave. It’d have made no difference,” Hugo said urgently. “I had it coming to me. Forget it.”

  “All right, my dear,” she answered, knowing she could never forget it, but feeling now that one day she might be able to remember it without an agony of self-recrimination.

  “It’s you who’ve got the forgiving to do,” he said. “I messed up your life.”

  “You were my life,” she passionately exclaimed. “And you always will be. No girl was ever so happy.”

  Daisy’s emotion communicated itself to the baby in her arms, who awoke and began to cry.

  “There, there, my little love,” she said.

  “Is he hungry? Does he feed well?”

  “He’s a good baby—aren’t you, my precious?”

  The warder said, “I’m afraid time’s up, missus.”

  “Can I say good-bye to him?” asked Hugo.

  The warder hesitated for a moment; then, taking the baby from its mother, he gave it to Hugo. Hugo held it in his arms, kissed it, gazed down at it with a sort of gentle incredulity.

  “He’s my first, you know,” he said to the warder. “My one and only. Fine little chap, isn’t he?”

  “Champion.”

  Hugo opened the baby’s fist and put into it a small piece of prison bread which he had been holding in his left hand. “There you are, Tom,” he whispered. “Now nobody can ever say your father has never given you anything.”

  THE END

  A Note on the Author

  Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of poet and author, Cecil Day-Lewis, used primarily for his mystery series.

  Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (1904 - 22) was a British poet from Ireland and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.

  Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis and Kathleen Squires. After Day-Lewis’s mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. Day-Lewis continued to regard himself as Anglo-Irish for the remainder of his life, though after the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1948 he chose British rather than Irish citizenship, on the grounds that 1940 had taught him where his deepest roots lay. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927.

  Discover books by Nicholas Blake published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/NicholasBlake

  A Tangled Web

  A Penknife in My Heart

  The Deadly Joker

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,

  London WC1B 3DP

  First publi
shed in Great Britain 1956 by Collins

  Copyright © 1956 Nicholas Blake

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  eISBN: 9781448209651

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