“Over everything was the reminder of Mad Tom Wynne. Justice Fielding knew (and said) that my father, Jeffrey Wynne the elder, was irresponsible too. If it was Mad Tom’s son who took his mistress, there would have been reason for Mad Tom to commit suicide. If also you were Rebecca Bracegirdle’s daughter, you might be my half-sister by a common father. Though I would have denied this, I greatly feared it. And yet —legally or no, half-sister or no—I was resolved to have you despite the devil and the altar. Such clouds were only fancies and phantoms, Peg; they had no existence; you must not be shocked by them. But at least you have the answer about my feelings.”
“Shocked?” Peg breathed. “Shocked? Oh, no! I am so very glad!”
“What’s that?”
“Glad, I said. And I am only sorry, so truly sorry, I said all those spiteful things; and indeed I did not mean them.” Peg broke off. “Oh, dear! You are the one to be shocked; you’ll be more so if I say I don’t care who I am or what I am, or if the whole world should learn. You are the one who is shocked; you double your fist as if you could not endure it. Is this so?”
“Well—no.” Jeffrey spoke after a pause. “That was only the customary sign in dealing with you. Come and join our club of demoniacs.”
The bluish flame swayed in its bowl at the end of the passage. Draughts ran across the floor like rats. Jeffrey addressed the outer door.
“This scheme,” he added, “could be altered even yet But it must not be altered! You are in a humour again. Your humour will be different tomorrow; it will be vastly different. And besides …”
It was his turn to stop. Running footsteps pounded up to the inn. Deering, the dark-lanthorn in one hand, flung the door open and showed a wild face in the aperture as though not believing he had found Jeffrey.
“Sir,” he said, “what a-God’s name’s a-keeping you?” He looked again. “Oh, ay! Well! Even if it’s the young lady I think it is, don’t delay a second longer. The quarry’s there.”
“Yes. I ask your pardon, I—”
“Lad, lad, bestir yourself or we lose ’em! Do you think they’ll be there forever? Or they’ll take long a-cleaning the rest of the loot from that chest?”
“Who is there?” Peg seized Jeffrey’s arm.
“The last two members of our club. But only one of them is the murderer. Only one of them, or so I hope, knows a murder was done at all.”
“Lad, for the last time …”
“Yes; agreed. Deering, escort Miss Ralston to her home and secure her from more mischief. You’ll not be required longer.”
“Hark’ee, is that wise? If it turns nasty, and you need help?”
“Let’s hope it won’t. This must be done alone. Have they a light?”
“How should I know? They’ve locked ’emselves in with the skeleton key. They’re sure to have a light, maybe; but how can I tell?”
“Give me the dark-lanthorn, then. That’s all.”
He had a last glimpse of Peg’s eyes, struck to terror again, before he ran down the hill. There was no need to go quietly, with so many street-signs a-creak and the shrewd blowing of the wind. There was no need on London Bridge either.
Nevertheless, once he had gained the entrance-arch and glanced left towards the window of the guard-room, Jeffrey moved at a soft, quick walk. Thirty seconds later, in a lane of half-gale noises above the river, he stood again outside the houses whose patchwork in black beams and discoloured plaster leaned their storeys out above him with the weight of centuries.
He shifted the dark-lanthorn to his left hand. It was blazingly hot, despite the wooden grip to its handle. With a fingernail he hooked the shutter partway open, and turned its beam on the door he sought.
Locked again, as Deering had said.
Jeffrey moved back, directing the beam outwards and upwards. The front window of the dwelling-premises, on the floor just above the street, had both its casements shut into place. One casement gaped where he had smashed the glass with his fist. But some kind of curtain, apparently like the one he had torn down, again blocked the window from inside.
He put the key into the lock, and turned it slowly. The snap of the lock, the creak from leather hinges, might go unheard under other noises. Still …
‘Gently!’ he thought
Then he was inside the passage, door closed behind him. He did not trouble to lock it inside, or to put up the wooden bar. On tiptoe, with the shutter of the dark-lanthorn closed to all except a crack, he moved towards those steep ledge-like stone stairs.
Again there was a thin gleam of light through the trap-opening above.
Somebody moved there. The floor above was too solid for him to hear any footfall, but a shadow passed across the light
Jeffrey stood still, breathing damp mustiness.
With all outside noises closed off, you could hear now. A woman’s voice spoke, and a man’s voice answered. But they spoke briefly, in short low-voiced syllables, as though not wishing to speak at all.
Again Jeffrey moved forward. The faint thread of light from his dark-lanthorn, playing across the floor ahead of him, found spots of dried blood—Hamnet Tawnish’s blood from a skewered wrist—before that light touched the stairs.
He went up softly, lanthorn in left hand, at precarious balance as though walking ledges without a handhold. He had almost reached the trap-opening when betrayal occurred. The nerves he tried to repress, as always, overtook him as he neared an encounter that must be faced. Without warning, without apparent sense or reason, his knees began uncontrollably to shake.
And then it happened.
The metal of the lanthorn clinked audibly against a stone step. His right hand darted across to steady it. Pain from glowing metal burnt him from fingers to wrist; and both hands opened as he clutched at the stone for balance.
The lanthorn fell with a crash to a step a little way below, bounced off that, and struck on the floor in noise which burst like a grenade as its light went out.
From the room just above him the woman’s voice cried out. But it was her companion, the man also unseen, who moved and ran. Jeffrey was close enough now to hear incautious footsteps, a man’s heavy footsteps, run across the living-quarters to the door of the bedchamber. The woman stood still.
Again infuriatingly, as usual, every trace of nervousness had left Jeffrey Wynne when the time for waiting was past He sprang up through the trap-opening. He looked at the woman, standing beside a closed window and an open chest, who had turned round to face him.
“My compliments, madam,” he said. “This time the crime can be proved.”
There was no change in Lavinia Cresswell’s lofty, imperturbable look.
“Do you truly think it can be proved?” she asked, and lifted one shoulder.
“Perhaps, madam, we don’t speak of the same crime.”
Mrs. Cresswell was holding, as though disdainfully, a flamboyant bracelet of gold links set alternately with rubies and emeralds. Again a wax-light burned in the blackened silver dish, which was now placed on a stool drawn near the open chest. It threw glitter and shadow up across the bracelet and across the woman’s face.
If she felt emotion at all, it showed only in pinched nostrils and slightly quickened breathing. She seemed almost sombre. Her hat was an old-fashioned bonnet, her black gown severe and widow-like except for the customary low square-cut bodice which pushed her breasts upwards.
“If you mean robbery, dear man, there has been no robbery. Besides, you would need more witnesses than yourself.”
“Not necessarily more witnesses, this time. But I don’t mean robbery.”
“Then what are you thinking of?”
“At the moment I am thinking of how fetching a charmer so many men have found you, from an impressionable clergyman in his forties to a blustering baronet in his middle fifties. And they are right to think so; nobody can blame them.”
“La, sir, how exceedingly kind! I must curtsy, must I not? Still! If you don’t accuse of robbery …”
“No
, madam. I accuse of murder.”
“Murder? I know of no murder!”
“No, I don’t think you do. But your husband does.”
Nobody moved.
Jeffrey did not turn his head, he did not even turn his eyes, to look sideways towards the doorway of the bedchamber. He was conscious of a man waiting there, little more than a bulky outline with humped shoulders, crouched and waiting just beyond reach of candlelight.
Instead Jeffrey looked into Lavinia Cresswell’s eyes.
“It is true,” he said, “that the penalty for housebreaking and robbery is the same as the penalty for murder. I venture to correct you: robbery could be proved. A small fortune in jewels still remains in that chest; I left it here yesterday when I baited the trap. Will you look at the window just behind you?”
“Have done with this! I fail to see—”
“If you won’t look, I will tell you. The window has two leaves or casements. They are secured by a small metal catch on a hinge, which is upright when the window stands open. When it is closed, the catch falls sideways into two metal slots and holds it locked. This can be done from inside, by twisting the catch. It can also be done from outside, by one who stands on the ladder of beams and jerks both leaves together. When they slam, as is usual with such windows, the catch drops into its sockets and the window is locked.
“Madam, that is what I did yesterday when I left by way of the window. I did so after removing stuffed rags which kept one casement propped open. Any visitor afterwards must enter by the door below-stairs.
“You used bad judgment, madam. If you and some companion crept in here to steal jewels, using a key cut for your companion by a locksmith in Cheapside, and if you were seen to do so by any officer of the law—”
Mrs. Cresswell’s eyes seemed to have grown paler and shallower.
Candlelight glittered on rubies and emeralds in her hands. She half turned, as if she would throw the bracelet into the open chest; but she swung back again.
“Bad judgment? Steal jewels? As God is my judge, until late yesterday afternoon I had not so much as heard of any jewels!”
“Perhaps not,” Jeffrey said. “But the murderer had.”
There was a short, slight movement from the direction of the doorway on his right Still he did not look round. His left hand dropped to his sword-hilt and eased it back.
“It is also true,” he continued, “that you yourself have few scruples as regards murder. This is so if you can persuade someone else to act for you so that you need not be implicated, when your malice or your fears have been roused too far.”
“Malice? Fears?”
“Sometimes one, sometimes both. On Friday night you sent Hamnet Tawnish—”
“My brother?”
“Not your brother. You sent Hamnet Tawnish to follow me when I followed Peg, so that he might fetch her back. He was to disable or kill me in a clean duel if I interfered.”
“Come! Can any woman be held accountable for men’s duels?”
“No. On Saturday morning, when certain blandishments in your bed-alcove failed and you feared I had guessed of one living husband if not two—”
Mrs. Cresswell drew back her arm as if she would fling the bracelet at his face.
“This time,” Jeffrey said, “you sent Major Skelly to the waxwork that afternoon. He was to dispose of me, also by clean swordplay which could not implicate you, and terrify Kitty Wilkes to silence should she know too much. But he thought me a better swordsman than I am—Hamnet Tawnish had told him so since Saturday morning—and Major Skelly tried an assassination which failed.”
Jeffrey paused.
“These things, madam, show a tolerant attitude towards murder. But I don’t stress them. Possibly they can’t be proved, certainly they needn’t be proved. The murder of Grace Delight, in which you have now entrapped yourself as accessory, is a different matter.”
“Grace Delight? The old astrologer-woman? She was frightened to death.”
“Oh, no.”
“I must refuse to hear such absurd—”
“Not absurd. Most persons believe she was frightened to death. At the beginning,” Jeffrey said bitterly, “I duped myself into believing this, and so did what the murderer desired. We had better see how he killed her.”
Lavinia Cresswell stood with elbow out and arm still back as if to throw. The fair hair and blue eyes, the face grown death-pale under the shadow of a widow’s black bonnet, shrank in contrast to the ruby-and-emerald bracelet glittering near her head.
“Now, madam, you shall answer me. There is only one reason, I am told, why fashionable ladies ever come nowadays from St. James’s to London Bridge. And this is to buy wares of the pin-and-needle makers, whose shops are as numerous as they are famous.”
“I—I have heard so.”
“You have heard so? Don’t you know so?”
“I know so.”
“‘Build it up with pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles; built it up with pins and needles, my fair lady.’ There must be few persons alive who have not heard that verse from the chant concerning London Bridge.”
“Rhymes for the nursery, God save us, come with singular inappropriateness at a time of sober earnest!”
“Do you believe this, madam? Have you observed the shop-signs across the road from here? They may be seen easily from the front window of this room.”
Ignoring everything else, he turned his back on her and strode to the front window. Across it, on a different rope, had been hung the same rotted sacking he had torn away before. Again he tore it away, revealing a window with one casement gaping in shattered glass. The wind had dropped a little, but a metallic creaking still swayed outside.
“It is too dark for proper observation. But I would show you a shop-sign almost directly across from here, as the lanthorns lighted it on Friday night.”
“Shop-signs? I am not in the habit of remarking shop-signs!”
“You should have remarked this one already. It is called the Knitting-Needle.”
And he strode back to face her again.
“Now give me your hand, madam. Submit with good grace; give me your hand; and I will show you how the murderer struck her down.”
Mrs. Cresswell flung the bracelet at his face.
She threw it awkwardly, elbow out and forearm rigid, so that it flew wide past his head and clattered on the floor. Then, too late, she knew the gesture of spite had freed her right hand. Jeffrey leaned out, seizing that right hand with his left He pulled her forward and partway round, her back almost towards him and her body between him and the doorway to the bedchamber.
“Let us suppose,” he said, “you are not wearing that fine gown of widow’s black. Let us suppose you wear only a smock of loose-woven linsey-woolsey, as Grace Delight did, without stays or jupes beneath it.”
“Release me! I will not suffer this!”
“You will suffer it. Let us finally suppose this flesh of yours is not the firm flesh it will remain for at least a few years longer, but the flabby hide of a fat old woman I mean to kill. Don’t struggle, madam.”
The face she had turned across her left shoulder, enraged and yet elusive with a kind of coquetry under the eyelids, held a very different look when she saw what he had taken from inside the breast-pocket of his coat.
“This is a knitting-needle,” he told her. “An ordinary steel knitting-needle, save that one end is sharpened to a very fine point and a length has been cut from the other end to make it shorter. Holding it thus like a dagger, if I were minded to do so …”
“Let me go, or I shall die! Oh, Christ aid and pity met I shall die!”
“Holding it thus like a dagger, I could drive it under your left shoulder-blade and strike through to the heart. Don’t struggle, madam, or I may be tempted to do this in reckoning for all the harm you have done.”
“Harm? Harm? I?”
“And there are worse ways to leave this world. Death would be violent yet near to instantaneous.
At my leisure, then, I could push the needle home with my fist or thumb so that the rest of the steel disappeared into flabby flesh.
“The wound, so deep and thin, would be all but invisible. There would be no bleeding on the outside. No mark or cut would be left through the loose-woven fibres of a linsey-woolsey smock. It would bear the appearance, as near as fallible human agency could produce, of accidental death from fright However, the betraying signs—”
And he released her hand.
Lavinia Cresswell staggered forward towards the wooden chest under the window. Her bonnet and hair were disarranged; her forehead shone blotchy pink above the shallow-looking eyes. Yet lithely she kept her balance and whirled round.
“Who did this?” she screamed. “Who did it?”
“Your husband, dear lady: your first and legal husband. Even if you are surprised, pray don’t affect such horror at the deed. He is a poor devil who had to have you, an emotion others have felt for other women, and he could win back your flesh only with the money you called for. In precision, regarding who did it …”
Jeffrey strode towards her, but veered and put down the knitting-needle on the stool which held the candle-dish. Picking up the light, he went to the doorway of the bedroom and held the light high so that it fell on the face of the man inside.
“You did,” he said. “You did, Dr. Abel.”
XVIII
The Walker of the Crooked Mile
TOWARDS ONE O’CLOCK IN the morning in that same room, when most of what passed was finished except for some long dying, other faces were there—and other rages as well.
Fully half a dozen wax-lights, unearthed from a store under the hearthstone in the bedchamber, now burned here: two in the black dish on the joint-stool, two in a platter on another stool from the bedroom, two stuck in their own grease to the floor on either side of the trap-opening. The old room was brighter than it had ever been in its history, or than it ever would be until it vanished before workmen’s axes into dust.
Justice John Fielding sat with seeming placidness on the closed lid of the chest, switch in hand. Several times, during many repetitions of questions, he had gone so far as to lose his pontifical temper and shout at Jeffrey, who shouted back. His dignity had been regained, but his persistence did not cease.
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