"What is this—a Dying Declaration?"
"The man may have thought he was dying," he replied.
"But you knew better, eh? Was it made voluntarily?"
"I don't say we didn't have to fish for it a bit at first, but yes, it's voluntary."
"We?"
"I was working with the man's vicar—Mr Lumley, you may know him."
"Indeed I know him. Who doesn't? Can you tell me how the statement came to be made?"
"Sugden's bad conscience, I suppose."
"No threats or inducements?"
"You might call them exhortations. There were a few of those."
Gilmore allowed a bleak smile to appear on his face as he answered: "Exhortations—yes, that has a definite sound of Mr Lumley. Have you checked the statements made here?"
"Yes, and the result's impressive. The interior of the Rectory is still exactly like he says. You see he even describes Miss Verney's seal—the little gilt eagle with the ruby in its claws—though that was never mentioned in detail at the Moot Hall; it was just called 'a seal'. Significant, I feel."
"Most interesting," Gilmore said, handing back the confession and taking out his watch, which was a very handsome hunter in a gold case worn thin with age. "Most interesting," he repeated, glancing out of the window to see how near to the station they had got.
"I'm glad you think so."
"Oh, I do, most certainly. If I'd had that evidence eight years ago . . ."
"You have it now."
"In a sense that's true."
"Then you'll take up the case?"
"Now, my dear Deny, whatever are you talking about?" Gilmore said, "What case? I know of none. You have shown me a statement, and very interesting it is. It is always interesting to see how people tiy to incriminate themselves, but as to why they do it . . . ?" He shrugged his elegant shoulders. "How should I know? Perhaps he's mad. People often are: far more than the public realises or the Lunacy Commissioners can take to their bosoms. Perhaps he has a rage to impress himself on the folklore of the district, or just be anxious to please. What he says may even conceivably be true, but suppose it is, what can one make of it after all these years?" He broke off and remarked as he replaced his watch in its chamois-leather pouch: "He's made excellent time, this fellow."
They got down. The train was already standing at the platform, belching its importance in clouds of steam. The stationmaster bustled up in a top hat noticeably less glossy than Gilmore's to conduct the great man to his seat, while Justin followed, suppressing a desire to commit some memorable atrocity. He had not given up, however, and as the Q.C. turned in the doorway of the carriage and held out his hand, he said to him: "It's true, you know. I'll prove it one day. I'll find this other man."
"That might be helpful," Gilmore said.
The engine gave a hoot, and far down the platform the guard was brandishing his flag. Justin came to the window, looking up into the face above him which in these last moments had seemed much more
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THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
like that of the junior in the stuff gown who had fought Garrowby on that distant afternoon. "You mean you'd take it then?" he said.
"I might. Your lunacy is quite infectious. Faith. Hope. Don't expect Charity from your neighbours, by the way, as I expect Mr Lumley's told you. You're a bold fellow."
The train had begun to move, and though Gilmore was still speaking Justin could hear no more above the hiss of steam and the clanking of couplings. He felt bold no longer. He had just remembered his Georgina marooned with a collecting box in a rapidly emptying hall.
He returned as fast as he could to town—not to his office, for he rather imagined that Georgina might be there, but to St Bede's Vicarage, in the hopes of finding a cleric more or less in one piece. Nor was he disappointed. The Vicar had survived the morning, if hardly in his usual state of health, to report on his stewardship:
"My dear fellow, your dear sister was kindness itself to me, but I fear Miss Deverel was not pleased. It was not easy to explain why you should have dashed off like that without warning, and then of course there was the carriage."
"What about the carriage? I know it leaked."
"My dear fellow, it did not come. We were left waiting at the door, and the weather being most inclement, we were marooned there until Mrs Deverel, who must have guessed our plight, came back in her carriage to take us off."
"Never!"
"Well, that is what happened," said the Vicar mildly. "I won't pretend that Miss Deverel was as grateful as I was. Apparently she had been asked originally to accompany her mother but had chosen to go with you instead, and I fear she found me inadequate as a substitute for either of you."
"Was anything said?"
"Well, yes," admitted the Vicar truthfully. "Things were said, though I don't think they were intended. In the throes of disappointment I find people often say things they don't really mean, and that would even be true of young ladies. A peace offering, howev( r, might not come amiss."
Justin had already thought of that. 'Flowers. Masses of them,' he said to himself, remembering successes in that line at other fateful moments in his relationship with Georgina. There was a flower shop
in the market-place not far from his office, and with a few heartfelt words of thanks to encourage his ally, he hurried off through the rain.
Facing him at the entrance to the market-place was Coates's jeweller's shop.
He walked past it; stopped; walked on a few paces; then gave a sigh as he recognised the need to think extravagantly, and turned back to gaze through the window at the rings in their satin- and plush-lined boxes. Coates's was the most fashionable jeweller's shop in Smedwick. Georgian teapots stood armorially inside the door. Small silver porringers awaited the arrival of godparents bidden to Christenings. There was an array of coffee-spoons, salvers, clocks, necklaces, tiepins, brooches, watches and chains with sinuous, richly glistening links, worth £20, some of them, though surely there was a limit to what bad conscience could do to a man. A locket? That was more his weight. There was one in the glass display-case directly ahead of him as he went in. The ticket said £-5. And next to it was a ruby in a gold clasp beneath a tiny gilt bird with outstretched wings.
XIV
"You mean it has been there all this time!" cried the Vicar in amazement.
"Since '93. It was brought in about two years after the crime. Coates had no means of knowing it was stolen. Perhaps he didn't enquire as closely as he ought. It was in the window for some months —yes, actually in the window, where Miss Verney must have passed it dozens of times—but no one bought it, and Coates was thinking of having it reset and wearing it on his chain."
"Astonishing! Quite astonishing! What a strange Providence led you there. And the person who brought it?"
"Coates can't recall who it was. Thinks it may have been a woman. He's trying to remember."
The Vicar was standing by the window turning the seal over and over in his hand. "A pretty thing," he observed over his shoulder. "A very pretty thing. Who is the owner of this very pretty . . . ?"
"We know that, fortunately."
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THE MASSENGHAM AFFAIR
"So we do, my dear fellow. How happy she will be to have it back again."
That was on the Wednesday. Justin had a court for the following morning which would be bound to last for hours, but on the Friday, as soon as he had dealt with his appointments, he hurried to the livery stables and rode over the moor to Massingham.
A glow of satisfaction warmed his heart through the chill of the winter afternoon as he thought first of Sugden and then of this new pointer to his theory. The log jam of doubt was breaking up at last, allowing him to feel the sweep of the current bearing him along towards the truth, and there seemed such a pleasing irony in the thought that the girl who had dashed his hopes over the confession must help him now, that it was with affection that he saw her come into the Rectory drawing-room and held out to her the littl
e trinket he had found.
"Pray where did you get this?" she demanded, holding it uncertainly in her hand.
For some reason he had expected with Mr Lumley that she would be pleased, and the grudging way his prized exhibit was accepted disconcerted him.
"You say it was in Coates's window?"
"Actually in one of the showcases," he replied.
"Then someone has treated it very badly. Do you see the way the wings are bent? And some of the links are missing from the chain. It was kind of you to restore it, however. We are obliged to you. I know my father would wish to join me in that thought."
She had glided towards the bell-pull which hung beside the mantelpiece, with the evident intention of ringing for the parlourmaid to show him out. How to frustrate such a manoeuvre? It was in no book of etiquette. No gentleman would even wish to know how to force his attentions on a lady. The lack of practical counsel in such important matters and the thoroughly unfair balance of the sexes, which had never troubled him much before, affected Justin with a sense of grievance and injustice too hard to bear. "Miss Verne y . . . ," he burst out.
"Yes?" she enquired, looking at him in surprise.
"I know you must regard this as an importunity."
"Certainly not," she interrupted him severely. "We are under an obligation to you, as I said."
"But coming so soon after our last visit . . . which was so unfortunate and ill-timed. My dear Miss Verney, you can't surely have thought that we relished saying what we did?"
"No gentleman would do that."
"Oh, I agree," he said earnestly. "No man of feeling would deliberately hurt the feelings of another, particularly of someone of your father's age. Mr Lumley was most deeply distressed about it: he can't forgive himself for coming."
"So you ventured all alone this time."
'Bless me if she doesn't think of me as Daniel in the lions' den,' thought Justin, seeing the hint of amusement in her eyes and astonished by it, for a sense of humour was the last thing he had allowed her. When she looked like that she was decidedly attractive. Indeed, if only her hair wasn't dragged down over her ears, and if she would smile oftener and wear more dashing clothes to display her small but most seductive figure, there was no knowing what ideas a man might not get of her. "Quite alone," he said. "On my head be it."
"You are excused, as it happens, seeing you brought the seal."
"Timeo Danaos, Miss Verney. Shouldn't you fear the Greeks when they come bearing gifts? After all, we're on opposite sides, however regrettable that may be—and I for one regret it deeply."
"Not more than I."
They were the first encouraging words she had used to him and their effect was all the more intense. The small objectives with which he had come were submerged under a wave of feeling far more emotional and disturbing than he had ever bargained for. "My dear Miss Verney . . ." He had come much closer to her, looking down into eyes that had become clouded and uncertain. "You are generous . . . too generous. I have done nothing to deserve it—only caused you pain by questioning your story. . . ."
"But you still question it."
"Dear Miss Verney, don't you question mine? We have this division between us—though it's not of our choosing and you have just shown me by example how little it should count when both of us are really only wanting to get the truth. Couldn't we help one another there?"
"You didn't see those men," she said, "as I did."
"Just as you never heard Sugden or Miss Binns. One of us is wrong —from the best of motives, but wrong. It could be me, and I admit it freely. I only ask you to consider . . ."
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THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
"Whether I am wrong?"
He shook his head. "To consider the evidence, Miss Verney. On the one side yours and your father's . . ."
"And all those others," she broke in.
"Yes. Including Sugden and Miss Binns. And now this seal."
"How does my seal come into it?"
"Because Sugden described it in his statement, though that was never done in court or in the newspapers, as far as I remember. Doesn't that suggest that he was here that night and saw it stolen?"
She thought for a while, smoothing her finger against the eagle's damaged wings, and then replied: "He could have got his facts from someone: oh, from Mrs Milligan or a dozen others—they'd all be in it. They could have described the seal to him."
"Why should they describe it? Why should Sugden listen if they had, much less put it down in a confession?"
"I don't know. He'll have some reason."
Soon afterwards he took his leave, accepting failure. Yet he felt no resentment as he mounted his horse and rode off past Merrick's bothy at the bridge. Respect, compassion, understanding and something warmer—they were very strange feelings to have towards one who for the second time had wrecked his hopes. He had a sudden impulse to turn back; and the thought of what Georgina would have said to this notion and to the excitement passing through his mind was the last thing that weighed with him as he rode off through the deepening twilight. T might almost be in love with her,' he thought desperately. The whole thing's a lot of witchery. She's probably sailing past me on a broomstick at this moment to make up a coven down at Sugden's and laughing fit to burst.'
In fact, the wind had risen and the night around him was full of sound and movement not altogether reassuring to a townsman's ear. Some beast was roaring in the valley down by the ruined castle and the noise of it pursued him as he galloped along the grass verge of the highway, going rather faster than he need and half expecting some uncouth shape to manifest itself over his shoulder. At the top of the hill he stopped and glanced back. He could see the pinpoints of the Rectory lights in the darkness, but there was no other sign of habitation in that cold, desolate world over which the wind came tearing, rustling the bent-grass of the moor. Some Scots pines appeared ahead in silhouette against the sky. He had admired them under snow from the dogcart when he had last come to Massingham,
THE QUEST: 1899
but by night, with the gale moving in their branches, they took on shapes from which it was pleasanter to avert the mind. Beyond them lay the flat top of the moor, and he crossed it at a smart canter, the wind behind him billowing his cloak around him till he felt that he was on some airborne and forbidden journey.
The pace quickened. He sensed the slope of the ground away from him and knew himself on the Smedwick side of the divide, where a belt of woods closed in towards the road before it began the long descent into the town. Soon he would see its lights below him. About a quarter of a mile ahead a bridle track came in from the left, and he reined in his horse, remembering that the road was bad hereabouts, with potholes on which he had remarked from the dogcart when he had last passed that way. Leaning forward in his saddle, patting the mare's neck companionably, he rode on. He was accustomed to the darkness now. He saw the white blur of the signpost at the entrance to the bridle track, and beside it a shorter, bulkier shape—a shape that moved towards him across his path.
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It was too late to turn. He had no more than a sudden awareness of danger very close. And in the same instant a voice spoke urgently out of the darkness:
"Mr Derry? Is that you, sir?"
He felt a wild desire to laugh, curse, drive his horse forward at the shadow confronting him as it took shape and he recognised the solid figure of P.C. Pugh, which he had first seen at the Moot Hall and, more recently, following in Blair's steps like King Wenceslaus's page with a brace of stinking pheasants.
"Mr Derry, sir," the voice repeated. It was no illusion. The man was indisputably there. He could see the Minerva shape of the helmet and the truncheon hanging from the fellow's belt. "What the deuce! Scaring the wits out of me!" he grumbled, approaching the apparition which grew more solid with every moment.
"Beg pardon, sir."
"And well you might! What the devil d'you mean by it? Did Blair send you after me?"
"The Super? No,
sir."
"Then why? And how did you know I'd come this way?"
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
"Just guessed it, sir. I knew you was at Verneys', sir."
Justin came closer to him, leaning forward in the saddle. The possibility that there might be others waiting for him in the darkness of the bridle path had not escaped him, but he had become excited by the man's voice and manner which suggested something that had been dimly in his mind for days. "So you've been watching me," he said. "Was it you who left a note for me at my house one night by any chance?"
"That's right, sir."
"Telling me to meet you by the Griffin Bridge?"
"Right again, sir. But P.C. Moffat come up on the beat—wantin' company, he said—and I durstn't shake him off."
"Now see here," said Justin, "let's get this straight. You want to see me for some reason—very well—though I must say you choose some quaint spots to do it: on that bridge and this blasted heath. What are you up to?"
"Been wantin' to tell you somethin', sir."
"Go on."
"About the burglary at Massingham. Remember Piggott?"
"The old man Kelly and his sister lived with?" Justin said, containing his excitement. He remembered Piggott well.
"Right, sir. He's in the workhouse now."
"It's coming back. Didn't the Police find a chisel in the Rectory after the crime? Didn't they call on Piggott to show it him, and he identified it as one he'd owned?"
"No, sir."
"Surely that was the way it went in evidence," said Justin in his official voice. "It was in Piggott's deposition!"
"It was in his deposition right enough. But what happened was this. Some days after the crime the Super sent for us—for me and Inspector Mathieson. He shows us that chisel from the Rectory. And he tells us to go down to Piggott's house and plant it on him."
The Massingham affair Page 15