by Julian Gloag
June sat and looked at Jordan. She didn’t cry. He was hell’s own grateful she didn’t cry.
He said, “She must have been a very courageous woman. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I do blame myself. For what she did. But I blame myself even more for not knowing what was going on in her mind. Don’t you see, I should have known that? You see, she couldn’t trust me. She couldn’t tell me what it was like, that she couldn’t bear it any longer. Because I would have stopped her and she was helpless. But I keep thinking if I’d been a real daughter to her, she would have told me and … and I’d have helped her. That’s what I’m sorriest for, Mr. Maddox. She couldn’t trust me to understand. And she was right. I wouldn’t have understood. Not then. I had to keep pretending that everything was alright, when it wasn’t alright. I had to pretend that she wasn’t just going to get more and more helpless, have more and more pain…”
“It’s alright now, June. We can’t all have that sort of courage. Like your mother. We can’t blame ourselves for all the ifs. We can just try again next time. That’s all.”
“I keep telling myself that, Mr. Maddox, but it doesn’t seem to help much somehow.”
“Yes, I know. I’m afraid I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
“Oh, I didn’t upset you, did I, Mr. Maddox? I am sorry, I didn’t—”
“Good lord no. I was thinking of you. There ought to be a sort of magic password that would—would help to put everything in perspective. But of course one can never find the password, that’s the trouble.”
“You’ve cheered me up a lot, Mr. Maddox. Just talking, as you said, helps. Doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s a good way of getting it out of the system.” He took a deep breath, hoping that she would not notice. It was nearly over now. “I think we could do with another drink.” He felt the thinness of his joviality—an Uncle Colin manqué. “One needs something to cling to.”
He took a large swallow of his new martini and shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“Just a goose over my … grave.” He laughed feebly.
June sipped her drink and smiled. And Jordan felt the earth tremors recede. Poor kid, she’d had a rotten time.
“There are compensations for this beastly weather, I suppose. Being comfortably inside—with a drink and the prospect of food and, er, charming company.”
June put her head a little to one side. “I think that too. I always love it when it rains cats and dogs.”
“The nesting instinct, I imagine. We ought to be thinking about food.”
“I’m not really very hungry.”
“I’ll bet you will be when you begin. All that exercise running from the taxi.”
And she was hungry. It pleased Jordan to see her tucking into pâté and roast spring lamb and a horrible pineapple confection. He had ordered a bottle of Moselle, and he drank most of it himself. He suddenly found it easy to talk to June—he had struck the right vein. He started telling her about the history of Woodley Hall, and from that to royal palaces, Hampton Court, Sheen, Nonsuch.
“A damned shame they pulled it down. Surrey isn’t very distinguished architecturally. Nonsuch was a magnificent curiosity. Charles II gave it to one of his mistresses, Duchess of Portsmouth, I think. No, I’m wrong—Cleveland, Duchess of Cleveland, and she didn’t have much use for it. Built by one womaniser, destroyed by another…”
He sketched Nonsuch on June’s napkin. She was a good listener. He could never talk like this to Willy. She would be bored to death. For someone who worshipped tradition and convention and never wanted to see anything change, she was oddly immune to history. But that was probably the reason—it was vaguely blasphemous to investigate one’s deities.
The alcohol expanded him. He ordered a brandy. He could afford that tonight. There would be no disapproving frown awaiting him at home. The empty house and the empty bed. He wouldn’t even have to bother to clean his teeth. And tomorrow there would be a faint and enjoyable haze between him and the world. And that other pleasure of the mild hangover—the constant desire, so easily satisfied, to stretch the limbs and yawn.
He took June home in a taxi and, as he let her out and she thanked him, he thought how really very odd it was that she didn’t have a boy friend. Perhaps she did have one but there was something peculiar about him—in prison or married or something.
29
“Your evidence has been a model of clarity, Mrs. Ardley. There is in fact very little left for me to ask you.” Bartlett spoke with unsmiling respect. Respect the landlady had already revealed as the touchstone of her existence.
And yet was this not verging on flattery—something which Mrs. Ardley would uncompromisingly reject? Jordan listened with great attention, for there was a quality about Mrs. Ardley that he had heard in no other witness. A quality or an attitude? He wasn’t sure.
She was exactly the same as she had been that day at Sarah Street—the same dull clothes, the same hat, the same flourish of tiny orange feathers, the righteous face, the same unfaltering precision: “This is the man.” She was indeed clear—her quiet description of June’s room, of the placing of June’s possessions, of June’s body, had carried the conviction of a scholar’s lovingly accurate footnotes. Jordan’s attentiveness was mingled with a curious excitement.
“But there are just one or two questions.” Bartlett frowned, as though the very idea of interrogating such a witness was distasteful. “I should like you to cast your mind back to the day on which you first met June Singer. When was that?”
“December the fifteenth.”
“She came in answer to your advertisement of a vacant room?”
“Yes.”
“And she took the room. Now, what impression did you form of her at that time?”
Mrs. Ardley was obviously vexed at the generality of the question. “She seemed respectable.” Unwillingly. Large opinions and sweeping judgements were not carelessly bandied about in Mrs. Ardley’s world. “But she did not take the room at that date.”
“Why not?”
“I do not rent rooms without investigating references.”
“What references did Singer give to you?”
“Miss Delmar of the Delmar Secretarial School and Mr. Maddox of Sutlif and Maddox, her employer.”
“And these references proved to be satisfactory?”
“Yes.”
“And that is why you gave her the room?”
“Not just for that reason. There were other applicants with equally good references.” Mrs. Ardley was not permitting simplifications. No matter what, thought Jordan, she would be accurate—accurate even in her lies. She reminded him of someone.
“Ah, she was a preferred candidate. Why?”
“Her references were excellent. I did not know at the time that Mr. Maddox—”
“No no, Mrs. Ardley, that was not quite my question. Why did you give the room to Singer rather than to another applicant with equally good references?”
Jordan was certain that she had not misunderstood the question. She was being obstinate.
“She told me about her mother.”
“I see. You felt sorry for her?”
“I—I appreciated her position.” It was the landlady’s first hint of hesitancy.
“Oh come now, Mrs. Ardley, compassion is nothing to be ashamed of. You were sorry for her, were you not?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ardley, as though she were admitting to adultery.
“And you considered that Singer would be a good tenant?”
“I saw no reason to believe that she would not be.”
“Did you later have any occasion to alter that opinion?”
The court was still. And although the landlady remained quite silent, it was as if some disdainfully crystalline voice had answered: A respectable person would not permit herself to be murdered in my house.
“Mrs. Ardley—did you later have any cause to alter your opinion that Singer would prove a good tenant?
”
And then Jordan remembered. Implacable in the rectitude of a mind filled with unspoken, perhaps unspeakable, thoughts, the landlady was cousin to Miss Lawley. The Law did not suffer frailty kindly, and least of all her own. And Mrs. Ardley was now being asked to admit that she was frail, that she had made a mistake, that her judgement had erred.
“You must answer the question!”
Then Mrs. Ardley muttered. It was a shocking act, coming from those precise lips.
“What did you say? Speak up, Mrs. Ardley.”
“I said—” she braced herself—”that I did not know at the time what was going on.”
“You did not know what was going on? What was going on?”
“She was having her fancy man in, right under my nose. Mr. Maddox there—”
“Mrs. Ardley—”
“Just a moment, Mr. Bartlett, just a moment if you please.” The judge touched his teeth with the end of his pencil, as if to steady them. “Mrs. Ardley, are you suggesting that Maddox was in the habit of frequenting Singer’s flat?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that this was so?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He must have done so.”
“There is no must about it, Mrs. Ardley. Apart from the day of the murder, did you ever on any occasion see Maddox entering or leaving your house?”
“No.”
“Or inside your house?”
“No.”
“Did Singer ever speak to you of Maddox visiting her?”
“Of course she wouldn’t.”
“Did she or did she not?”
“No.”
“And did any of your other tenants ever speak to you of Singer receiving a male visitor?”
“No.”
“Then your reply to Mr. Bartlett was pure supposition, was it not?”
“Yes, but—”
“There are no buts, Mrs. Ardley. You are under oath. To say that you have knowledge where you have none is a very serious matter. A very serious matter indeed. You know what perjury is?”
“Yes.”
“Be careful then, Mrs. Ardley. Members of the jury, I direct you to disregard Mrs. Ardley’s reply to counsel. Put it out of your minds. Very well, Mr. Bartlett.”
“All the same, I know what I think,” Mrs. Ardley said sharply.
“Mrs. Ardley, you must behave yourself,” snapped the judge, “or I shall hold you in contempt.”
I know what I think—and she had looked at Jordan with savage judgement. And he also knew what she thought. It was no game to her, as to Mr. Grand; no simple duty, not just another item on the list, as it was to Superintendent George. She believed him guilty. He had murdered June Singer, and there was no doubt about it. She was ruthlessly certain.
For the first time since Sarah Street, Jordan felt something resist his touch. All things had yielded, all dissolved, but here was something firm-cast and steady. The suspension of judgement, the reasonable doubts, the tactics, the worried frowns, the soothing tattle, the wise smiles, the not-quite-straight looks—threads in a shielding curtain, yanked now momentarily aside.
“Let us try again, Mrs. Ardley. Leaving aside all suppositions, did you, at the time when Singer rented the flat from you, and later, did you consider her to be a good tenant?”
“I didn’t know—”
“Did she pay her rent on time?”
“She was prompt, yes.”
“Did she cause any disturbance—too much noise, rowdy behaviour, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Did any of your tenants complain in any way about Singer?”
“No. She didn’t have much to do with the other tenants.”
“Did you, at any time, have any complaints whatsoever about her conduct as a tenant?”
“Not—no.”
“It would be fair to say then that you considered her a satisfactory tenant?”
“Yes.”
“Not the sort of girl, you would have said, who would be capable of carrying on a secret liaison under your roof?”
“I haven’t been a landlady for thirty years without learning human beings are capable of anything. No matter what they may seem to be.”
Slowly, as Bartlett probed the habits of the house, it became evident that Mrs. Ardley was the guardian at the gate. From a special frill-curtained living-room window which looked out onto the hall and the front door, she observed the goings out and the comings in. There was not much she missed, and never the doorbell. She went out occasionally in the afternoons—the cinema, a walk in the park, a trip to the shops—but she was always back by half-past five and at her post.
It was not the pleasure of gossip, nor the satisfaction of curiosity, which moved her, but moral vigilance. Appearances were deceitful, she knew, unless stitched firmly to the fabric of conduct. No men visiting women. No women visiting men. No visitors after nine. No parties except by permission. No secret drinkers. No jobless wastrels. No laughing on the stairs. Low rent, clean rooms, plain living. No debts, no duns, no delays granted.
“Mrs. Ardley, you told my learned friend that the front doorbell can be heard from anywhere in your flat.”
“It can.”
“Good. Now let’s refer again to the layout of your flat, just briefly. As you enter the living room, on the wall directly facing you are two doors, one, on the right, to the kitchen, and the other, a little to the left, leading into the bedroom. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“The bedroom is at the back of the house, and leading off it, to the right, is a bathroom and lavatory, one room. Now, Mrs. Ardley, when you are in the bedroom, with the door closed, you can still hear the front doorbell. Correct?”
“I never close the door of the bedroom. It is always open.”
“I see. You keep it open so that you can be sure of hearing the doorbell?”
“I could hear the bell with the door closed.”
“Then why do you keep it open?”
“To hear it better.”
“To be absolutely sure that you do not miss it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you also keep the door of the bathroom open when you are in the bathroom?”
The landlady opened her mouth, then shut it grimly. “Of course not,” she said.
“And could you hear the bell when you were in the bathroom with the door closed?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Ardley, you have just testified that there is an element of doubt in your mind as to whether you would always be able to hear the bell from the bedroom, if the bedroom door was shut. But the bathroom is further away from the front door than the bedroom is. So would not the same element, indeed a rather stronger element, of doubt exist about your ability to hear the doorbell from the bathroom, with the door shut?”
“I would be likely to hear it.”
“Likely—but not certain, Mrs. Ardley. You would not be certain to hear it, would you?”
“I’ve never missed it yet.”
“Are you stating that, if you hear nothing, there could be nothing to be heard?”
“I would hear the bell.”
“Mrs. Ardley, when you run the bath water, that makes a considerable volume of sound, doesn’t it?”
“Well, it makes a noise, yes.”
“And flushing the lavatory—that makes a noise too, doesn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Let us suppose that you are in the bathroom with the door shut. The bath water is running, or the lavatory has just been flushed. At that moment, the front doorbell rings. You would not be likely to hear it, would you?”
“I suppose I might not.”
So on that particular morning, the morning of the murder, at about nine-fifteen, what was Mrs. Ardley doing? Drinking a third cup of tea and reading the Daily Telegraph, as she did every morning. But was it not possible that she went to the lavatory? Bartlett embarrassed, uneasy, accusing a maiden aunt of prostit
ution. And Mrs. Ardley hesitated; for only the second time, she was uncertain. But of course, thought Jordan, Mrs. Ardley knew; she would be, of all people, regular. A timetable, a schedule—perhaps it was nine-fifteen, perhaps that was the exact time. Whether or not he had rung the bell and, hence, whether or not he had a duplicate key to No. 27 Panton Place—and if he had, the presumption of his guilt must be strong—all this, beyond a reasonable doubt, hung upon Mrs. Ardley’s bowel movement.
She was looking straight at him. As he looked back, he smiled faintly. He knew, of course, that she had been in the lavatory. There was no other explanation. And she knew it. For a moment, they exposed their joint knowledge. But she also knew that Jordan had killed June Singer. To be honest, she might be letting justice, his conviction for murder, go by default. To be just, she would have to lie.
But it was more than that. She had taken June in; through pity she had allowed herself the weakness of trust. And June had betrayed the pity, and the trust. Or, not so much June as Jordan Maddox. He had been oblivious of, he had mocked, Mrs. Ardley’s pity. Just as, in his stupidity, he had mocked June. He had murdered the vestigial humanity that had lingered in the landlady’s heart. Just as he had murdered June.
He nodded—a fractional movement of his head, but Mrs. Ardley caught it. She had every right; and only the weak make the excuse of humanity not to exercise their rights.
Mrs. Ardley looked at Bartlett. “No,” she said decisively, “there is no doubt. I did not go to the bathroom. I was in the living room from the time the postman came at half past eight until the milkman rang just after eleven. I could not have missed hearing the bell—had it been rung.”
Bartlett would not let go. There could be no expectation now that Mrs. Ardley would relent, confess to temporal error or domestic negligence. From the day it had been put in, the stair carpet had been as fixed and rigid as, from the hour he is born, man is doomed to sin. The object now was to show Mrs. Ardley brutal in her righteousness, callous, wilful, small-minded, foolish—untrustworthy where her pride was touched.