The Noose

by Philip MacDonald

  Anthony, Lucia at his side, paused just within the door. The change from brightness to this illuminated dark took for a moment his eyes by storm. He frowned his sight into submission, and just as clarity of vision came, there came too, to his ears, Lucia’s voice. It said:

  ‘My husband is here, Mrs Bronson. Quicker than I thought he could possibly be … Anthony, this is Mrs Bronson … I think I’ll leave you together …’

  There was a little rustle beside Anthony, and the ghost of a scented breeze. And then the click-clock of the heavy door’s closing.

  Anthony went forward. To meet him there came, rising from a low chair by the crimson fireside, a tall shape. A hand came out. A long hand and strong, which clasped his with a strength which would have been surprising in many men, but which itself, when felt, was in no way like a man’s; and this despite the muscularity of the grip and the roughness—the slight but undoubted roughness—of the skin.

  He found himself shaking hands with a woman whose eyes were nearer to being upon a true level with his own than any feminine eyes which in the passage of his adult lifetime he could remember. Even in this half-darkness those eyes impressed upon him not only their intrinsic beauty but an impression of strength and … and … in his own mind he groped for the word … of oddity; of queerness. But of an oddity and a queerness which had nothing to do with irrationality. Rather a difference like the difference between the eyes of a woman and a Maeve. He said, suddenly:

  ‘D’you mind, Mrs Bronson, if we have more light?’ He turned at the inclination of her head and walked back to the door and pressed one of the switches beside it.

  The big bowl-shade hung from the ceiling’s centre sprang into soft radiance. The room expanded, gained shape; lost mysterious corners and imagination-giving sudden blanknesses; took on a mellow matter-of-factness.

  Almost immediately beneath the light the woman stood. Anthony came back towards her. His idle-seeming eyes were busy. He saw her now.

  His first feeling was of checked breathing. He was always to remember that. Only two other women in his life—and Lucia was one—had ever done this to him, and from far different causes. As he drew close to this woman now, his mind searched for a word to fit her. ‘Magnificent’ came first—and remained to oust the others which came crowding. He never found a better, and yet that never satisfied him.

  She was very tall, but her height, for her, was neither overpowering nor grotesque. She was built upon the grand scale, but the grandeur was simple and restrained. There was about her stillness some great urgency; it was as if, not needing voice, the whole woman spoke to him; cried out—not weakly but from one strength to another strength—for aid.

  She was hatless, and now, as without speaking he set her chair for her and she sank back into it again, he saw that her hair was of that pale yet vital burnished gold which is purely Scandinavian. He said, wishing to hear her speak:

  ‘It’s useless to offer sympathy, Mrs Bronson. Whether or not I can offer anything else remains to be seen.’ He smiled at her; a friendly smile which lightened, almost astonishingly, his dark, lean, rather sardonic face. ‘It’s you to move,’ he said.

  She replied at once. Her voice was low, and perfectly under control. Yet there was about it a kind of hard, metallic clarity which he would have wagered was not there when she was free from strain. She said:

  ‘My husband is in prison. He has been tried for murder. He has been convicted. He has—what do you call it?—appealed, and this appeal has been rejected. People—ten thousand people—have signed their names on a Petition. This Petition has been rejected by the Authorities. Today is Thursday. On the day after next Monday’—she drew in her breath with a little gasping hiss, immediately controlled—‘he will be hanged … unless something is done. They tell me there is nothing to be done.’ She broke off here, abruptly. The silence seemed to hold a lingering echo of that controlled, vibrant voice, with its armour of hardness and its definite but unplaceable foreignness.

  Anthony became astonished at himself and his own emotions; for he found himself speaking merely for the sake of breaking silence. He said:

  ‘They seem to be right. If, of course, we could find any way of casting doubt …’

  He ceased speech. With a single, soundless movement, the woman had risen. He found her standing over him as he lay back in the deep, leather chair. He rose himself and stood to face her. On a level, her eyes of blue fire blazed into his. He saw that, motionless as she seemed, the whole of her was shaking. She said, in a voice so low that barely did it carry to his ears, yet so pregnant with force that every word buried itself like a soft-nosed bullet in his brain:

  ‘Colonel Gethryn, there is only one thing that is to be done. Dan did not kill Blackatter. If there can be found, before … before … before the morning after next Monday morning, the man who did kill, then …’ Her voice ceased; a gesture finished her speech.

  Anthony, as straight as she and as rigid, said softly:

  ‘You say your husband did not kill the man Blackatter. You know?’

  ‘I know,’ said the woman. There seemed no emphasis on the words. There was no raising of that low, hard voice. But Anthony nodded. He said:

  ‘I see. And you have no thought as to who the killer really was?’

  ‘None,’ said the woman.

  ‘It was not,’ said Anthony, ‘yourself?’

  ‘No,’ replied the woman.

  The tension, instead of tightening, eased at that. For a moment there flickered across that mouth of hers which, thought Anthony, when not set to still its trembling, must be a beautiful mouth, the wan ghost of a smile.

  Anthony smiled too. A grave smile, but a smile. He said:

  ‘Sit down again, won’t you?’

  She sat. He remained standing. He stood, hands thrust deep into his pockets, looking into the redness of the fire beyond it. In his mind logic was receiving its death blow from instinct.

  The woman spoke. She said:

  ‘You have believed me, that I know Dan did not.’

  It was a statement, this, more than a question. But Anthony said:

  ‘I believed you. And I shan’t change.’ A sudden smile twisted the corners of his mouth. He became more like himself. ‘But why,’ he said, ‘I believe, I couldn’t tell you. Don’t know myself …’

  ‘It is the strength of my believing,’ said the woman.

  ‘And,’ said Anthony to himself, ‘of yourself …’

  III

  So Anthony once more found himself out in the yellow fog, jolting through it in a crawling taxi. Experience told him that, in fogs, the slowest cab is quicker than one’s own car. Up to Hyde Park Corner crawled the lurching little motor, and into St James’s Park and across it, and up Bridge Street and round the corner into Scotland Yard.

  Up many flights of stone stairs climbed Anthony and knocked upon a door and, getting no answer, walked through this and across a small room to another door. At this he tapped. A murmur ceased; a voice bade him enter. He pushed his head round the door’s edge and looked.

  ‘Busy?’ he said. ‘I can wait.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Mr Egbert Lucas. ‘Look who’s here! Come in, man, come in!’

  Anthony entered. ‘Hullo,’ he said to all. ‘Lucas, how are you? And you, Pike?’

  ‘Worn,’ Lucas said. ‘Worn.’ His smile was cheerful, even affectionate; his grooming as careful as ever.

  The lantern-shaped face of Chief Detective-Inspector Arnold Pike creased with his wide smile. He said:

  ‘I’m very well, sir. How are you, sir?’

  ‘Full of fog,’ said Anthony, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’d forgotten what fogs tasted like. I could have borne not to ’ve remembered. I’m also in a bad temper—so I want to worry you all. I …’

  Lucas exhibited alarm. He looked at Pike; at his superior Pike looked back, expressionless. Lucas said:

  ‘Gethryn; if you as much as mention the name of Smethwick to me, I’ll …’

  Anthony grin
ned. ‘Don’t know him,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to. What I do want is this.’ He told them what he wanted.

  Pike pursed his lips as if at any moment he might so far forget himself in an Assistant Commissioner’s room as to whistle. Lucas sat back in his chair and scratched his head.

  ‘All the stuff we’ve got,’ he said slowly, quoting Anthony’s words, ‘about the Bronson case … Sure you mean Bronson?’

  Anthony looked at him.

  ‘I see,’ said Lucas. ‘You do mean Bronson. Well, well. It was all done by the County Police, but we should have copies of their stuff.’ He looked at Pike.

  ‘We have, sir,’ Pike said. He seemed as if he were about to speak further, but suddenly closed his mouth—so tightly that his lips disappeared.

  Lucas was looking at him. Lucas said:

  ‘Very discreet, Pike, I’m sure. Gethryn, he wants to ask questions but won’t. I will, though. What is all this?’

  Anthony put back his head and blew a cloud of smoke ceilingwards. ‘Only,’ he said, ‘that Bronson didn’t kill Blackatter.’

  The two policemen looked at him. In silence for a moment. Then the silence was broken; for, this time, Pike did whistle; a long low note, forced out of him by astonishment. Lucas, still staring at Anthony, twice opened his mouth to speak, twice changed his mind, and at last said:

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘You think,’ said Anthony, ‘that I’m mad. And so does Pike. Before we go any further, I may as well tell you, quite dispassionately, that you’re probably right.’

  ‘But what …’ began Lucas.

  ‘You’ve been away, haven’t you, sir?’ Pike spoke with the eagerness of a man who believes that inspiration has shown him, in a flash, the true solution of a problem.

  Anthony brought his eyes back from the ceiling at this. He looked first at Lucas, still scratching his head; then at Pike, still eager. He laughed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’re both funny. Yes, Pike, I have been away. But I know Bronson’s position all right.’

  Lucas snorted. ‘Position. Hardly a position, is it? I mean, he’s breathing and eating, and all that; but no man so near the gallows can be called alive.’

  ‘That,’ said Anthony, ‘is the trouble. What’s the one thing that could save him from the nine o’clock walk?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lucas. ‘Man’s dead to all intents and purposes. And quite right, too. Nasty, messy, treacherous job that was. And not a shadow of doubt about it. Eh, Pike?’

  But Pike pursed his lips, and a worried frown drew his eyes together. They looked, these eyes, at Anthony.

  Lucas exploded. ‘Good Lord, man! Just because Colonel Gethryn comes in here trying to pull our legs …’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Anthony interrupted. ‘That’s too easy, Lucas. I was serious. See it wet and dry.’

  Lucas was obstinate. ‘My dear man, you can’t be. Not you, of all people. There never was a clearer case. Never. Why, Bronson left his card all over the place! It took only the County Police twenty-four hours to get him inside. It’s all too …’ He broke off suddenly, and sat up with a jerk, gazing at Anthony with sudden intentness. ‘Unless,’ he said slowly, ‘unless … you’ve hit on something that never …’

  Again Anthony interrupted. ‘I haven’t. But I want to. I want to badly. Look here, let’s get this straight. I’ll tell you how mad I am, and then you needn’t worry your heads with me any more. I’ve been away. Instead of my wife joining me, she sent me a cable which told me to come back. So I came back. I found, this afternoon, that with my wife was Bronson’s wife. Foolishly enough, my wife had allowed the woman to persuade her of Bronson’s innocence. I didn’t scoff aloud, being an intelligent husband, but I scoffed all right. I then had half an hour with Mrs Bronson. And now I’m not scoffing any more. I’m having half an hour with you, being convinced myself—’

  He got up and crossed to Lucas’s table and dropped his cigarette stub into Lucas’s ashtray. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is the true and rightful history of my madness. Very sad, you know. Decline of a great intelligence. But there it is. Now d’you think, peaceably to rid yourself of the raving guest, you could let me have that dossier?’

  There was a silence. Lucas looked at Anthony; Pike looked at Anthony; Anthony looked at the steel-engraving over Lucas’s head. Lucas was the first to speak. He said:

  ‘Tell me this, Gethryn. What was it Mrs Bronson told you that gave you this conviction?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Anthony. ‘She told me, with her voice, that she knew Bronson hadn’t done it. She told me, with herself, that if she believed this, this was so.’

  Lucas lay back in his chair. He made a little helpless gesture with his hands. ‘May Jupiter,’ he said, ‘aid me! I need aid.’

  Pike said nothing. He looked still at Anthony, and his right hand rubbed at his smooth, almost rectangular jaw.

  Lucas tried again. He said, his tone pleading:

  ‘What is this, Gethryn? Damn it, if it was anyone but you I’d just laugh or send for a doctor. But … but …’ Again he made that helpless gesture.

  Anthony took his eyes from the picture. He smiled suddenly and said:

  ‘I’m worrying you. And it’s a shame. But you mustn’t be worried. I’ve told you everything. Nothing up my sleeve nor concealed beneath the ’anging covers.’ He got to his feet with a movement, for him, curiously jerky. He began to pace up and down between window and door. ‘The best thing for you people,’ he said, ‘is to give me the papers I want and forget all about me until you hear of my certification … Why worry your heads?’

  At Pike Lucas glanced, shrugging his shoulders. Pike said, looking at Anthony:

  ‘Speaking for myself, sir … and possibly for Mr Lucas’—Lucas nodded with a sort of wearied agreement—‘we’re worrying our heads because it’s you, sir. As Mr Lucas said just now, if anybody else …’ He shrugged, and his shoulders spoke his contempt. ‘But with you, sir, it’s different. We’ve got into a kind of way up here, as you might say, of thinking you can’t be wrong. Not even if you were to try …’

  Lucas sat up. ‘Good, Pike! That is it. Since the Hoode show and then the Lines-Bower business, you’ve got us on velvet. You’re a sort of ju-ju.’ He almost groaned, shifting uneasily in his chair. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if you’d anything to base this preposterous belief of yours on. You see, if you had, we might come in with you. Give you an official blessing, anyhow; but as it is we can’t—how could we? We’re Bobbies here, not mediums! And what’s giving me a pain in the tummy’s the truly dreadful thought: suppose, by some appalling coincidence, A. R. Gethryn was right! It’d come out, you know, that the Police had done nothing. You wouldn’t say so, but it’d come out. And it wouldn’t be a bit of use telling ’em you just had a hunch and that we’re not here to back hunches …’ His voice trailed off, a little querulously, into silence. Perhaps he had realised that he was complaining without exactly knowing what his complaint was.

  Anthony ceased his pacing. He halted in front of the table, so that he directly faced Lucas, and at Lucas he stared, smiling.

  ‘The trouble with you,’ he said, ‘is that you’re too much of a man to be The Perfect Bureaucrat and too nearly The Perfect Bureaucrat to be a man. You want, you know, jam on both sides of the pancake. You want to be out of this if I am mad, and in it if my apparent madness should turn out to a sort of super-sanity.’ His smiled robbed his words of any but the mildest sting.

  Lucas glared for a moment, then suddenly laughed. ‘You’re an irritating devil!’ he said ruefully … ‘Well, I’ll let you have the Bronson file. But more I can’t do.’

  ‘Nobody,’ Anthony murmured, ‘asked you, sir, she said.’

  Lucas looked at Pike. ‘Could the file be got at now?’

  Pike nodded and was gone. Anthony and Lucas smoked and chatted. But the pleasant small-talk of Lucas was a trifle wandering; and the eye of Lucas, though obviously against its owner’s will, was not free from a worried, speculative look. Anth
ony, noticing this look, interrupted suddenly his own discourse upon the less oily type of Spanish cookery. He said:

  ‘You don’t trust me, you know. And it occurs to me that there is one small fact I’ve not mentioned …’

  ‘Ah!’ Lucas sat up at once. His fingers drummed upon his blotting-pad. ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘Just,’ said Anthony, ‘that it wasn’t the idea of her Dan’s killing a man that Mrs Bronson scouted. It was that her Dan should kill a man that way—by stealth and treachery, from behind—that was what made her know this was no work of Dan’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lucas’s tone was flat again. Once more he sank back into his chair. ‘Oh—ah. Yes. Quite. What almost any hitherto happily married wife ’d say, isn’t it?’

  Anthony replied with another question. ‘Ever met Mrs Bronson? Ever seen her even?’

  Lucas nodded, with a little less apathy in his manner. ‘Yes. She’s been here. Magnificent creature …’ His tone changed. ‘But they all come here, you know. Poor devils. What they hope from it, God knows!’

  ‘If,’ said Anthony, ‘you’ve met the woman and talked with the woman and yet see no significance in what I’ve just told you she said, there’s nothing more for me to say.’

  Lucas once more sat upright. His open hand came down with a slap on the table-top. ‘Look here, Gethryn,’ he began; then ceased abruptly as a knock came upon the door and, hard upon the knock’s heels, Pike.

  Under his left arm Pike bore a bulky foolscap envelope from the open end of which protruded the edges of an orange-hued folder. He came to Anthony and presented this burden. He smiled as he handed it over, but his glittering brown eyes were sharp with a curiosity at once avid and restrained. He said:

  ‘That’s the lot, sir.’ And turned to Lucas as if awaiting orders.

  Lucas lifted his eyes. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He glanced at the small clock upon his desk. ‘Better be getting off, hadn’t you? Don’t want to miss that train. If you do, something might turn up to stop you again.’ He said to Anthony: ‘Pike’s got leave. And about time, too. Hasn’t had a holiday for two years. Pike, buzz off!’