He was sitting propped up in his cushioned chair one August evening; the western window still showed a faint bar of chrome that marked the sunset. The fire on the hearth burnt low, for the day had been sultry. The women-folk, with the exception of Steven’s wife, were spending the night at Dunsley. There were to be great rejoicings at the little port next day; the swing-bridge that spanned the harbour mouth had been lengthened, and it was hoped that once again the slips up the river might send ships to the sea.
The tangled skein of events that had gone to make up his life slipped slowly through the fingers of his memory as the evening deepened into night. He scarcely thought of himself as the same man as the chief actor in the ghastly tragedy that had taken place in the room nearly seventy years before, any more than the fire on the hearth was the same. He had felt the gnawings of remorse, but remorse, too, had grown old along with him. The ill use his family had made of the money was as much a cause of grief as the ill means by which it had come.
Down the road came the soft whirr of cycles; a man and girl passed by; he watched the soft glow of the lamps as they breasted the opposite rise. The sound of the girl’s laughter put him in mind of Mary; she at least would raise the fortunes of his house. The voice of Steven’s wife, hard and coarse, could be heard in the bar. She was talking about him.
‘He can’t last much longer,’ she said. ‘It’s not to be hoped that he will. The old man’s seen over many days to be happy. It’s a wonder that he’s still got his wits; he never babbles like my old father would.’
Aislaby smiled to himself. He had certainly never babbled. They were talking again. Steven’s wife was speaking. ‘So you’ve heard about Mary?’ she said. ‘We only knew a couple of days ago. Yes, she’s going to marry a lawyer from Yorborough, though I have my doubts whether it will ever came off. His mother and family are all against it.’
‘I don’t see why they should be,’ said the woman she was talking to. ‘You’re as well known as any in these parts. They’ve only to go to yonder fire if they want a character,’ and she laughed.
‘It’s easy to laugh,’ said Steven’s wife, ‘but folk like that don’t care to have a lot of new relations they know naught about. It’s my belief at the least excuse they’d get him to break it off.’
And still Aislaby in his chair by the dying fire smiled the same foolish smile. They were talking again:
‘And we shall put out another window in the kitchen,’ said Steven’s wife. ‘It’s a good room, and we could let it of a summer to strangers. There’s a deal that wants altering about the place, I can tell you. Why, only the other day we found that what we took to be a stone at the back of the kitchen chimney was a great beam, crumbling with the dry rot; if it had been winter, the house would have been on fire before now. Once the old man is gone, it will have to come down, and the hearthstone be pulled up into the bargain.—What was that?’
‘Only a sheep coughing on the moor,’ said the woman. ‘They’re terribly human at times.’
In the dark of the kitchen Thomas Aislaby had sunk helplessly to the floor. He tried to call out, but the cry never reached his throat. He tried to move; the whole of his right side was helpless. His brain tingled as if lanced by a hundred needles, yet his thoughts were marvellously clear, clearer than they had been for years. They were only waiting for the fire to die. Up danced the flames. Again he read the old familiar words on the mantel. ‘I remember as boys,’ someone seemed to whisper in the shadow, ‘we used to read our future in the embers’. Whatever happened the fire must not go out; better the house were burnt than that. With his left arm he tried to draw his body along the floor to where the peat stood stacked in the corner. He could not move. Up darted the flame again, but fitfully. Then it sank and all once more was darkness. Were those steps outside? If only he could speak.
‘Goodnight, father,’ said Steven’s wife. She had scarcely opened the door. Each step of hers on the creaking stair seemed another mile between her and him; when he heard her footfall on the floor above, he knew that she had already gone out of his world. For his world had narrowed down to one twinkling point of light. It changed each moment of the long hours that he lay there on the stone; now it was the face of the stranger of seventy years ago, with the shifty eyes and miserly mouth; now the face of his dead wife, as he had first seen her in the East Riding village. Each picture faded away to be succeeded by another, smaller and fainter. The fire was dying. The moon had risen, and in its clear white light the floor seemed colder. Gradually a numbness crept up from his ankles to his knees, from his knees to his thighs. He made one last effort to reach the fuel, but the fire on the hearth was dead.
There came a double knock at the door that he remembered as well as if it had been yesterday. A window up above was thrown open.
‘Who is there?’ said Steven’s wife, and her voice sounded loud and shrill in the silence of the August night.
Aislaby knew who it was; with a cry of mortal terror he half-raised himself on his arm, and then fell heavily with his head on the cold hearthstone.
PETER LEVISHAM
I HAVE just finished reading Sinclair’s book on Peter Levisham. It is a thoroughly competent monograph, written primarily from the legal point of view, and is a worthy addition to the series in which it appears. It is a pity that no mention is made of the three years Levisham spent in the States, as it has been suggested that it was there that he acquired his knowledge of anatomy and pharmacology. And there is no real evidence to show that he was connected with the Dumbarton Case, cited on page 280. The bibliography at the end of the volume is an admirable bit of work. I see that there are at least half a dozen books and articles that are new to me and that curiosity will impel me to read.
I suppose it is only natural that I should be interested in Levisham. As a young man I was once briefed for his defence, and to this day believe that he was innocent of the crime with which he was on that occasion charged. But the real source of the interest that I have in everything appertaining to his life and career centres around the story which Daniel Crockett told me. Crockett’s name is, of course, familiar to all students of the trial. He is referred to in Sinclair’s book as a chance acquaintance. Crockett himself would never have used the phrase.
Prior to his appearance in the witness-box I had never seen Crockett, but I met him shortly afterwards, when I attended my first board meeting of the Crippled Children’s Holiday Homes, and again later when he was Northcote’s guest at one of the quarterly dinners of the Addison Club. It is from that evening that I date our friendship.
Crockett was a remarkable man. His business was connected with the Baltic trade. He was a liveryman of more than one City company, a man of high integrity, reserved in manner, and with a stiff, old-fashioned courtesy. He lived with an invalid sister in a large house at Dulwich, one of the most peaceful homes I have ever entered, and in perfect keeping with his character. If a fairy were to turn Daniel Crockett into a chair or table, you felt that it would be just such chairs and tables as you found at Ventnor Place.
But why was he remarkable? I have often tried to find an answer to the question. There were three distinct sides to the man’s life, Mark Lane and the City, his library and the Johnson Club, his pocket Greek Testament and the corner seat he occupied in the ministers’ gallery in the Friends’ Meeting House. Yet the three, with all their activities, though distinct, were congruous.
We were seated one evening in the library at Ventnor Place, when the conversation turned on Peter Levisham. I spoke of my first meeting with him, and I remember expressing regret that my advocacy had been the means of his acquittal. A verdict of ‘Guilty’ might have spared so many innocent lives, might, indeed, have kept him innocent and spared his own. Crockett was silent for some minutes; I could see that he was deeply moved.
‘I should like to tell you the story of my relations with Levisham,’ he said at last. ‘My sister knows the facts, and at times we speak of them together; but she is the only person to whom
I have confided them. Thirty years ago, on the evening of the first Friday in November, I was walking down Bishopsgate after attending a committee meeting. I had occasion to cross the road, and had almost reached the opposite pavement, when I was nearly run down by a rapidly moving dray. I had just time to jump aside and to clutch hold of a man who was closely following me.
‘ “If you don’t look where you’re going, you’ll lose your life one of these days.”
‘Before I knew what I was saying, the words had come from my mouth. The man looked at me with a puzzled expression, laughed, thanked me, and was gone. It was the most trivial incident, and yet one which disturbed me. I am, as you know, somewhat slow of speech, and though the occasion called for haste and agility, comment was unnecessary. There was something contentious about the remark. It was not perhaps impertinent but it was unnecessary, and I felt that I should have resented it had I been in the stranger’s place.
‘Eleven years later, two days before Christmas, I was driving in a gig over a lonely road in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a district I knew from boyhood. The night was still and frosty and an unclouded moon showed every detail of the landscape. At the top of a low rise I overtook a man who was carrying a heavy burden on his shoulder. I asked him if he would like a lift. He accepted my offer and climbed up beside me. He told me that he was an American and that he had been visiting some relations. He was bound for Driffield, where he hoped to pick up an early morning train for York. I told him that he had far to go, but that I would gladly put him five or six miles on his way. The time passed quickly. He was an excellent talker, a shrewd observer of men and things. I stopped at the Driffield cross-roads and explained to him how, by taking a certain short cut, he could lessen his journey. He thanked me and bade me goodnight. I touched the mare with the whip and shouted one final instruction: “Remember to take the stile through the wood and, whatever you do, leave the Gallow-tree Oak behind you.” I had hardly spoken, when I realised how meaningless my words would appear. Gallow-tree Oak was familiar to me since boyhood, but I had made no mention of the spot in the directions I had given to the stranger. I had told him to avoid a place he did not know. And why had I spoken so emphatically? Even if he took the wrong turning by the Oak, it would only mean that he would join the high road again and lose little more than half an hour. I was both annoyed and perplexed, but the incident was for the time being forgotten.
‘I pass on to the summer of 1891, when I was staying with friends at Porlock. It was the last Saturday in September. I had been for a long walk, and had sat down to eat my sandwiches by the roadside at a point where a footpath led into a plantation of larches. A notice-board, recently painted, called attention to the fact that the woods were private property, and that trespassers would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. I sat with my back against the post, and did not see the man who came down the path from the wood until he was climbing the stile. He was of middle height, bearded, aged perhaps fifty. From his dress I took him to be a Nonconformist minister. He wished me good day and then, as he read the notice, burst out laughing.
‘ “How typically British,” he said. “Here have I been walking for an hour through the wood with no one to say me nay, only to find on gaining the high road that the path is private and that I am subject to the utmost rigour of the law! Why could not they have put a notice-board at both ends of the path? Isn’t it just as reasonable to approach the road from the wood as the wood from the road? The warning, like most warnings, has come too late.” As he spoke, a curious sensation of fear seemed to come over me; I felt cold; my limbs began to tremble.
‘ “You are not well,” he said. “What is the matter?”
‘While he was speaking, I knew that he was the same man whom I had met on the two occasions I have described to you. I rose to my feet. The bull-terrier, the companion of my walk, had been investigating a rabbit-burrow, but seeing that at last I was moving, he trotted up to me; round the bend of the road came a wagon loaded high with corn.
‘ “I don’t know your name,” I said, “but I have met you twice before, once in the traffic of Bishopsgate, and once on a winter night when I spoke to you at the Driffield cross-roads. I beseech you to listen to this warning before it is too late and see to your ways.”
‘He turned round on me in a flash with a dark scowl on his face, and burst into a torrent of vile abuse. I believe he would have laid hands on me but for the dog, and the fact that the wagoner was within fifty yards of us. It was in the company of the wagoner that I walked back to Porlock. The stranger followed us in the distance for about a quarter of a mile, and then turned off down a lane that led to Minehead. I still remember how I hesitated that night before leaving my bedroom door unlocked.
‘Those were the three occasions on which I met Peter Levisham prior to the trial. The 12th of November of that year was a Saturday. It is our custom at breakfast to read a portion of Scripture. I had closed the book and we were sitting for a few moments in silent meditation, when I felt it borne in upon me that my presence was required in London. Three or four times in my life I have had similar leadings. I have felt the presence of an impelling power, bidding me go I knew not whither to do I knew not what. It is a terrible experience, and I believe a very dangerous experience, one that no one should seek and which should be wrestled with in prayer to see whether it is of God. I retired to my own chamber, and then saw my sister and cancelled the engagements I had made for the morning. I travelled by train to Charing Cross, where I got out. Standing on the pavement in the Strand, I watched the stream of buses pass. I did not know which one to take. I did not know where I was going. While waiting, my attention was called to a blind man, who stood quite alone, and who seemed unaccustomed to the London traffic. I asked him if I could be of any assistance, and he handed me a slip of paper on which was written an address in the City. I told him that I would go with him, and we got on to a bus together. After seeing him to his destination, I walked a little way farther up the street, until I was accosted by a flower-woman, who stood immediately opposite a large block of offices. She was a cheery, importunate soul, and eventually she persuaded me into buying one of her roses. It was while I was speaking to the woman that I felt for the first time a strong conviction that I had rightly followed the leadings of my guide. I entered the block of offices, read the list of names in the lobby and, disregarding the lift, began to climb the stairs. I climbed to the very top of the building. On my right hand was a door marked “Mivart, Dixon & Co”, on the left a door marked “P.W. Foster”. I knocked at the latter and, as I did so, I heard the clocks strike the hour of eleven. There was no reply, and I knocked again. After waiting for a moment I opened the door and walked in. The room was empty.
‘I confess that I was surprised. I sat down on one of the two chairs that the office contained, and looked about me. The room was sparsely furnished: an old roll-top desk, a table, a tear-off calendar, two or three directories, a safe, two large iron boxes with the name “P.W. Foster” painted in white letters, and over the mantelpiece a large framed photograph of the International Congress of Philatelists, taken at Berne in 1889.
‘I sat in that room for an hour and no one came. Twice I rose to go, but on each occasion I was prevented by the strong conviction that I was doing what I was sent to do, that my presence was required there. I spent as little time as I could in speculation, trying to keep my mind quiet and passive. When the bells chimed twelve, the luminous cloud that seemed to have been present with me all morning lifted, and I left the room. As I walked down the stairs, I remembered that the tear-off calendar in the office showed the date as the 12th of November, and so would presumably point to the occupier having called there that morning. The flower-woman was still standing opposite the door of the building. “Well now, sir,” she said, “if you haven’t gone and left your rose behind you. And, as luck would have it, I’ve just another one left, a lovely rose, gentleman. It’s just gone twelve and you’re in a hurry to get home to dinner, b
ut buy one for the lady!” I gave her a shilling and left the flower with her. I am not used to flowers, and I suppose that was the reason I mislaid the other in Foster’s office.
‘Most people, in considering my conduct that morning, would say that I acted foolishly on a foolish impulse. I had been of some slight service to a blind man and a flower-woman. That was all that could be set off against the hour I had wasted sitting in an empty room.
‘It seems strange, on looking back, that until the time of the trial I never thought of connecting what I did on that Saturday with Peter Levisham. I do not as a rule read the criminal news in the papers, and so knew nothing of the murder of Mendelsohn, the Jew, in Bloomsbury, and the subsequent hue and cry that led to Levisham’s arrest. The trial had actually begun before I was aware of it. I saw a reproduction of a photograph of the accused man and recognised him at once. There remained the awful problem of what I was to do. You will remember the strong circumstantial evidence that pointed to the crime being committed between the hours of eleven and twelve. I read how the defence was an alibi, that Levisham, who was then passing under the name of Foster, declared that he was in his office in the city. I learned how the porter had seen him enter the building between ten and eleven; how he was prepared to swear that he had not passed out until half-past twelve, when Levisham had made some remark about a horse which both had backed for a certain race. All this is, of course, familiar to you, with the fact that the man was a past master in the art of disguise. There was, too, some other piece of corroborative evidence, that slips my memory.’
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