The Durham Deception

by Philip Gooden

  It was true. The previous year Tom had spent an unhappy night in a cell in the county gaol in Salisbury when he too had fallen under suspicion for a crime he did not commit. Helen had visited him in that place, just as he was now visiting her in this one. Tom wondered if there was some malign or mischievous fate subjecting each of them to a parallel experience of prison.

  Tom released his wife and took his first careful look at the cell. With its curved ceiling, it was like a vault or the interior of a compartment in a train carriage. The flaking walls were whitewashed. A few feet above the bed there was an unglazed and barred window which allowed in small quantities of light and air. At the moment a stray draught was bringing in the ghost of summer to the cell. In the winter it would be bitterly cold. Apart from the bed, the only covering for which was a coarse blanket, there was a wooden chair and a three-legged stand for a washbasin, a ewer of water and a thick glass tumbler. A bucket was lodged under the bed.

  Helen had gone back to sit on the bed. She saw Tom looking round.

  ‘As you can see, there is not much to note down. Not much to distract the mind or lift the spirits. Thank goodness I had my diary tucked away. They didn’t have a searcher to hand and so they did not discover my diary.’

  ‘A searcher?’ said Tom.

  ‘A woman who is employed to search female suspects. I already have a grasp of the police jargon, you see. I must say I will be glad to get out of here. I need to change my clothes.’

  She glanced at the bloodstains on her dress. She looked at her hands. She shuddered.

  ‘I must have touched him. I got too close to the . . . to the body. I have washed my hands several times over but I have not been able to get my clothes laundered in this place.’

  She gave an odd laugh. Tom came to sit beside her and felt the bed give under their weight. He put his arm round her. After a while, he asked Helen to tell him what had happened. Did she want to talk about it? How had she come to find Eustace Flask?

  As Tom knew, she had gone out that morning to look at the shops – a rather un-Helen-like thing to do but she needed to get away from Aunt Julia who was preoccupied with the fate of Eustace Flask after his disappearance at the Assembly Rooms. Every few minutes over breakfast it was, ‘I wonder what’s become of dear Mr Flask?’ or ‘I do hope he’s all right’ or ‘Do you think we should tell the authorities?’ Tom noticed that even Septimus Sheridan’s patience was wearing thin. He excused himself to go and look at the notes on the Lucknow Dagger which Sebastian Marmont had written up for him, and to try to make sense of a rambling, disjointed narrative.

  Helen described how she had walked to the Market Place and then lingered over the shop windows in Silver Street. It was a fine morning and she wanted to stretch her legs. She walked down the cobbled slope to Framwellgate Bridge, across which they had driven on their arrival in Durham. She paused and looked casually down at the river. Below her was the path where she and Tom had strolled the previous day. She walked to the far side of the bridge, the western end. There was a similar riverside path running below here.

  She gave a start to see below the gentleman they had encountered yesterday, the one who had claimed to be returning her handkerchief. It was him, she was sure of it. The same loping stride, the same shabby coat. Perhaps, she thought, he goes up and down the river paths in search of discarded handkerchiefs.

  But Helen was much more surprised, even shocked, to see a similarly tall figure emerge from the shadow of the bridge and move off in the same direction keeping the castle and cathedral to his left. There was no doubt in her mind about his identity. That stride which was mincing rather than loping, the rather fine attire, the pale red hair escaping from under his hat. It was Eustace Flask.

  Her first reaction was, oddly, disappointment. So it was a trick after all, he hadn’t been made to disappear in the Perseus Cabinet. Her next was, Aunt Julia will be relieved that he is back. Then curiosity got the better of her. What exactly had happened last night? How had Flask been made to disappear? Why, come to that, had he now chosen to reappear? Where was he going?

  Before she was really aware of what she was doing Helen Ansell found herself descending the steep stone steps leading from Framwellgate Bridge down to the river level. By the time she reached the path Eustace Flask was in the far distance. Helen couldn’t bring herself to shout or run after him. She set off at a regular pace, now thinking better of the idea of accosting Flask and quizzing him. What business was it of hers? To talk to the medium would give him the idea she was somehow interested in his welfare, whereas she wanted nothing more than that he should stop fleecing her aunt and leave Durham. There were other walkers on the riverbank, and a group of boys was fishing in the dirty water with makeshift rods and lines. She paused for a time to admire the view of the cathedral in its western aspect.

  ‘I decided to walk for a few more minutes and then go back to Framwellgate,’ she said to Tom. ‘I had almost forgotten about Mr Flask. As I drew nearer to the mill on the other side of the river I heard the thud of the hammers and smelled the stench of the – what is it they use? – yes, of the ammonia. There is a second mill on this side and a couple of workmen outside were unloading sacks of wool from a wagon. The path skirts the mill and I walked further so as get a clear view of that handsome bridge where the river curves round on itself.

  ‘This is quite a deserted stretch of the riverbank, I suppose because it is more distant from the town or because of the noise and smell of the mills. I don’t know why, Tom, but I grew suddenly alarmed when I rounded the loop of the river. The sun vanished behind a cloud and it turned gloomy. Even the river seemed to take on a blacker hue. I looked round and saw no one though I could hear the sounds of wood being chopped and sawed. I was about to retrace my steps when a figure burst from the slope of trees ahead of me and ran away. He did not see me. I cannot be sure but I think it might have been the man I noticed earlier, the one who tried to hand me a handkerchief.’

  Helen paused at this point in her story. Tom looked up and saw a whiskery cheek and a single eye staring at them through the shuttered peephole in the cell door. The half-hour according to Perkins must be up. Tom mouthed the word ‘later’ and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger as Helen had done. The segment of face withdrew, apparently satisfied. Helen, absorbed in what she was saying, observed none of this.

  ‘I was foolish, Tom. I should have turned back there and then. I should have remembered that there is always, always, a penalty to be paid for curiosity. I suspected something was amiss and I ought to have summoned help. But I walked on until I came to the point where I had seen the man running from the shelter of the trees. I waited, listening to the wind in the branches and the rushing of the water and the distant sounds of saws and axes. The sun had come out again, which fortified me. Then I heard a different sound.

  ‘It was one that made my skin crawl. Something between a groan and a gurgle and coming from among the trees further up the slope. More animal than human. There was a kind of track leading uphill. What drove me to follow it and discover the source of the sound, I do not know. It is a strange thing but I remembered then what that poor medium, Mr Smight, said to you – or what your father’s spirit said to you – that there was danger in the woods and near water. It was a warning to me not to you.’

  ‘It must have been,’ said Tom, his skin crawling.

  ‘Is it not strange,’ persisted Helen, in a musing way, ‘strange that we are not always governed by the instinct for self-preservation and will run our heads into the noose? The noose? What am I saying?’

  Helen stopped once more and gulped several times. Tom poured water from the jug into the glass and gave it to her.

  ‘You don’t have to say any more, Helen. I heard about what . . . what happened next. Do not distress yourself by living over the details again.’

  ‘I cannot escape the details anyway, Tom. Everything is like a terrible dream – there was Mr Flask – for I recognized him straightaway – I went close
– and there was blood welling from his neck and he seemed to shake and quiver where he lay on the leaf-mould – and the sunlight was dappling the ground like gold coins and the birds were still singing in the trees without a care in the world. I must have shouted and screamed. I know I opened my mouth with the intention of doing so. At last some men in labouring clothes came into the clearing but they would not approach me and one said something under his breath and another ran off and then he returned with a constable and there were whistles blown and other police appeared and one of them who is a superintendent, I think, he spoke quite kindly to me and then they took me away and led me to this place and to this cell and, oh, Tom, what is going to happen to me?’

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to you, my darling. I will do my utmost to protect you.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  They embraced awkwardly on the prison bed. There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock and Tom mentally cursed Perkins for being a greedy, heartless intruder. But it was Superintendent Frank Harcourt who was standing on the threshold of the tiny chamber.

  ‘Mr Ansell and Mrs Ansell, my apologies for disturbing what was obviously a, ah, delicate domestic moment but I would like you to accompany me.’

  Tom got up reluctantly. He thought he detected a different tone in the policeman’s voice, more deferential, less assured. Helen stayed where she was, sitting on the bed.

  ‘Both of you, if you would be so good. I said that there had been a new development in the case, and I would like to discuss it with you.’

  They left the cell. Perkins was standing outside. He had his palm artlessly extended as if to show the way and, as Tom passed, he slipped another half-sovereign into it while the Superintendent’s back was turned. Perkins touched his blue cap to Helen.

  ‘A pleasure seeing a real lady in here,’ he said.

  ‘Enough of your guff,’ said Harcourt over his shoulder.

  They retraced their path along the walkway and down the spiral stairs. Perkins unlocked the barred gate and the doors on either side of the bare vestibule. They crossed the walled yard and re-entered the Crown Court and so went along drab passages and up bare stairs until they came once more to the office where Tom had first talked with Harcourt. There was a constable inside, the same one who had knocked while Tom was first with the Superintendent.

  ‘You can go, Humphries,’ said Harcourt.

  ‘Very good, sir. I’ve been keeping a careful watch.’

  When the three were alone Harcourt gestured at the single additional feature of the room. This was the item over which Humphries had been keeping his careful watch. A yellow cardboard box about a foot long and six inches wide had been placed in the centre of the desk. Brown paper wrapping and a length of cut twine lay next to Harcourt’s clasp-knife. The Superintendent picked up the brown paper and handed it to Tom who showed it to Helen.

  ‘There,’ said Harcourt. ‘It was sent to me by name at the police-house. Knowing I was at the court building they brought it straight here.’

  Printed in red ink and in rather straggling characters was: ‘FRANK HARCORT, POLIS HOUSE, CORT LANE’. Above the address in the same script was a single word: ‘URJENT!’

  ‘My name is misspelled as are the words “Police”, “Court Lane” and “urgent”,’ said Harcourt unnecessarily. ‘Would you open the box, Mrs Ansell?’

  ‘I will open it,’ said Tom.

  ‘No, sir. I would prefer your wife to do the honours. It won’t bite. Look at the lid first, Mrs Ansell.’

  There was a pale rectangle on the lid where a manufacturer’s or shopkeeper’s label must have been pasted. The label had been torn off although unidentifiable fragments still adhered to the top of the box.

  ‘Someone didn’t want you to know the source of the box,’ said Helen.

  ‘Just so,’ said Harcourt. ‘Now open it if you please.’

  Holding the box with one hand, Helen removed the lid with the other. Tom was standing too far away to see what she could see. She gazed at the contents of the box and then her hands flew to her cheeks in horror. Tom was beside her in a second. He looked down. Nestling on a piece of fabric inside the box was a knife. He recognized it as the Lucknow Dagger. The multi-armed figure of Kali, goddess of death and destruction, trampling on the fallen figure and surrounded by skulls, was clearly visible. But even that sinister image could not distract Tom’s eyes from the bluish steel of the blade which seemed to have taken on a yet darker hue.

  The last time he had seen the Dagger it had been in the possession of Sebastian Marmont. Should he say so? He was about to speak out but something prevented him. Not yet. Not until he had had the opportunity to confront Marmont who was, after all, a client of his firm. Of course if the Major did not have a credible story then it would be Tom’s duty to report what he knew to the Durham police.

  While all this was spinning round in Tom’s head, Superintendent Harcourt had been watching Helen closely. ‘Sit down, Mrs Ansell,’ he said. ‘I can see the sight of the knife has given you a turn.’

  Helen had gone pale. She slumped into the seat by the desk.

  ‘That was deliberate,’ said Tom, his anger rising. ‘You had no need to subject my wife to this ordeal, Harcourt.’

  ‘On the contrary, sir, it all goes towards confirming her innocence. You should be pleased. Moreover, you should be especially pleased with this.’

  He fumbled in his pockets and brought out a folded sheet of white paper which he passed to Tom. There was some writing on it which was in the same red ink, the same style of capital letters, as the address on the brown wrapper. Tom took it round to where Helen was sitting. He placed the paper on the desk and they read it together.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Helen.

  Tom turned away to look out of the window at the bulk of Durham Gaol. The sun shone on the slate roofs of the prison wings but he felt chilled. He picked up the sheet from the desk.

  It read: ‘THE LADY DID’NT DO THE DEED COZ I DID THIS HOMISIDE FOR PRUFE PLEASE FIND THE KNYF I USED’

  ‘It’s a facer, isn’t it,’ said Harcourt, pleased at the effect of the knife and the note on the Ansells. ‘That appears to be the murder weapon. It does not look English to my eyes.’

  ‘No,’ said Tom, ‘it is not English.’

  ‘And the note is obviously written by a person of small education because of the spelling.’

  ‘Or by someone who wants you to think he is not educated,’ said Helen. Her initial horror over, she peered again into the box which contained the knife. She pulled out the piece of fabric and dangled it by a corner. It was a handkerchief. Though smeared with blood, the delicate lilac colour showed through. Helen caught Tom’s eye but she said nothing and hastily put the cloth back. Something else about the cardboard box must have attracted her attention, though, for she put her face close to the knife and handkerchief as if to scrutinize them even more closely.

  ‘Well,’ said Harcourt, ‘I think we can say that this exonerates you, Mrs Ansell. These items, taken together, have opened the door of your cell.’

  ‘Who delivered the parcel to the police-house, Superintendent?’ said Tom.

  ‘My sergeant says a dirty-faced urchin ran into the station and dropped it like a hot coal before running out again. By the time he got to the door, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Whoever did it probably gave him a couple of pennies for his pains.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be worth trying to find the boy? Whoever paid him those pennies was most likely the murderer. You might get a description of the person.’

  ‘Very true, Mrs Ansell. But there are plenty of scruffy children in this city who’d do more for twopence than deliver a package. I do not propose to go in search of them. Please do not let me detain you any longer though.’

  Once he’d ascertained that they were staying in town a little longer and that Helen would be available to make a formal statement in the next day or so, he showed them to the door. As he stood there he said, ‘I hope you do not think any the
worse of me, Mrs Ansell, but you will understand that we had no choice but to apprehend you, given your proximity to the body and the fact that there was no one else in the immediate neighbourhood. No hard feelings, eh?’

  ‘Not at all, Superintendent,’ said Helen. ‘But I will take more care in future not to be found in the region of the dead.’

  When the Ansells had gone, Superintendent Frank Harcourt went to examine once more the items which had been delivered to him. First he picked up the letter and read it for what must have been the tenth time. She was clever, Mrs Ansell, no doubt about it. Clever to have understood that the writer might wish to pass for being only half-educated rather than really being so. Astute in her suggestion that if they could get hold of the boy who’d dropped off the parcel, they might get a description of the person who’d given it to him in the first place. Harcourt hoped that his declared reluctance to go searching for the boy had sounded plausible.

  He studied the knife in the box. Yes, it was definitely foreign – and valuable. He would leave it as it was, with its bloodied blade, but place the box in the safe in the police-house. He folded up the brown paper with its crudely written address and rolled up the length of twine. He placed them both inside the cardboard box, along with the letter. He slipped his clasp-knife back into his waistcoat pocket.

  Once he had deposited the package in the station at Court Lane, he would set about investigating the murder of Eustace Flask. He would make a show of activity. He would question people and take statements. He would satisfy the Chief Constable, Alfred Huggins, who had so recently been demanding that action be taken against Flask. He would be rigorous, a model of professionalism. Yet, even so, the murderer of Eustace Flask might never be found. It happened from time to time. Despite the best efforts of the police, people occasionally got away with murder, didn’t they?

  The Perseus Cabinet

  It was fortunate in one way that Helen Ansell had been taken to the gaol even if it was only for a few miserable hours. Fortunate because Aunt Julia’s distress and outrage at this completely eclipsed any disturbance she might have felt at the news of Eustace Flask’s murder.