‘And you would bring her the local newspaper and answer any questions she had about what was happening at home, in Salisbury, that is.’
He scowled at me suspiciously. ‘You know all about everything, don’t you?’
‘Not everything, no. I’m waiting for you to explain to me. Was she not surprised you knew her address in London?’
‘I explained I had it from Mrs Bates. In a manner of speaking, I did, so it was not a complete untruth,’ Jennings added earnestly.
I should have been more professional in my approach, when Colby and I called on Bastable, I thought ruefully. I should have insisted on speaking to Mrs Bates without her employer present, even if Bastable had objected. As a respectable citizen, he could not, in the end, have refused. I might have learned some of this much earlier and been set on Jennings’s track. I consoled myself by reflecting that Mrs Bates probably had no idea that she had done anything wrong. She could not have anticipated that her harmless gossip had resulted in sending a deadly visitor to Emily in London. She might not even have remembered Jennings speaking to her at the chapel.
‘And what next? Did Emily reply?’ I asked the fellow. My voice sounded weary to my ear. I felt I knew the rest, but I had to hear him tell it.
‘Yes, she did,’ said Jennings proudly. ‘She wrote to me asking that I not come to the house because she didn’t want gossip among the servants. She said there was a door into the garden, in the street wall. She would open it up on Sunday evening and let me in. I kept her letter.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Your lodgings in Salisbury have been searched. Inspector Colby telegraphed me this morning to let me know they’d found her letter to you.’
‘That letter is mine!’ Jennings shouted, his self-control evaporating. His dark eyes glittered and his pale face turned scarlet. ‘You have no right to read it. It is private.’
Biddle rose halfway to his feet. Morris had stepped forward. I signalled him to go back and Biddle to be seated.
‘It is evidence, Jennings, like the boots and the wooden lasts. So, from the letter, I know that what you have told me today, so far, is true.’
‘Well, then,’ snapped Jennings. ‘You will know that’s what happened. I took the newspaper up to London. I met her in the garden and told her all the news from home, because she looked on Salisbury as her home. She was very happy to hear it all.’
That must be true, I thought. Lady Temple had told me Emily had spoken of Salisbury in a way that suggested she had been homesick.
‘You were seen,’ I said.
‘Who saw me?’ snapped Jenkins. ‘No one in London knows me.’
‘The butler saw you. He was returning from Evensong and saw you walking ahead of him and knocking at the garden door. He did not know your identity, of course, but you wore a long black coat and bowler hat, did you not? As you did at Emily’s funeral?’
Jennings had been disconcerted. He began to chew his thumbnail. I didn’t want him falling into another sulk.
‘You made a regular thing of it, didn’t you? Calling on the young lady?’ I prompted.
As I watched I could read the struggle in his mind. He wanted to be careful, but he still wanted to boast. As I had hoped it would, the boasting won.
‘I went up again each of the following Sundays until – until the last one. Each time I met Emily in the garden. But it was very cold and damp there, so we went into the little garden shed. Emily was afraid we’d be seen from the house, too. She said the butler was always looking to see what everyone was doing. Now you tell me he did see me. Well, he never said anything to her about it!’
There was a silence. Jennings again appeared to be sinking back into that sullen reverie I remembered in Salisbury.
‘Tell me about the last Sunday visit you paid her,’ I said gently. ‘What happened the last time you saw Emily, in that garden shed?’
‘We talked about Salisbury. She was pleased to have more news. Then I left and set off back home.’ His dark eyes stared into mine. ‘She was alive when I left.’
‘I know a doctor here in London,’ I told him. ‘He is by way of being an expert on bloodstains. I intend to have him examine that black coat of yours.’
Jennings was shocked and couldn’t hide it. ‘Don’t believe you!’ he said.
‘Believe me or not, Jennings, if there is the smallest stain on that coat, the doctor will find it.’
‘And what if I say I cut my hand, the last time I was working in the shop?’
‘You don’t wear your Sunday best on Fitchett’s premises, do you? That won’t work as an excuse.’
I knew a jury might think differently, but the more confidence I showed, the more confused Jennings became. He was rattled.
‘Now then, let’s return to that last conversation you had with Miss Devray. Wasn’t she surprised at the regularity of your visits? Every Sunday evening, there you were! Didn’t she find that puzzling?’ I asked him.
‘Why the devil should she?’ shouted Jennings. ‘Why shouldn’t I call on her?’
‘She must have begun to ask herself why you did. Did she indicate to you that she wondered what prompted this attention?’
‘I was courting her, wasn’t I?’ he snarled.
‘Courting her? Good grief!’ I exclaimed. ‘Did Emily Devray realise that was what you were doing?’
There was so much emotion, so many conflicting desires, in the man’s face, it contorted physically into grotesque grimaces. I thought of those old competitions where a rustic puts his head through a horse collar and makes himself look as fearsome or strange as he can. I waited patiently. At last, Jennings spoke in a stiff, tortured voice that seemed to be squeezed out of his throat. ‘I made it perfectly clear. I asked her to marry me.’
‘To marry you? When?’
‘That last time,’ Jennings said sullenly.
‘I am sure, Ezra, that she was very taken aback at that. You may have decided in your own mind that she realised you were courting her. For my part, I really can’t believe she did.’
An ugly dull red slowly suffused his pale face, creeping up from his neck to his hairline. He glowered at me. ‘Why not? You shouldn’t be so surprised, and neither should she have been! I had been calling on her, after all.’
‘So she was surprised, then? She hadn’t thought you were courting her! Let’s face it, Ezra. You surely don’t think meeting a few times in a garden shed is quite the same as calling to— to advance your suit.’
‘Well, I could hardly go knocking at the front door. That spying butler you were talking of, he wouldn’t have let me in!’
‘Yes, yes, I understand that,’ I hastened to say. ‘You had to meet in secret. But, well, you were hardly like a suitor. Perhaps she thought you were a kind friend. But marriage…’
Ezra leaned forward, his eyes now burning with passion in his pale face. ‘I told her I had good prospects. Mr Fitchett said I was the best he’d ever had as an apprentice. I meant to set up on my own. She could come home, come back to Salisbury and live there, where she wanted to be.’
I waited until the echo of his shouted words faded. ‘And she declined your offer, Ezra?’
‘Yes,’ he muttered sullenly.
‘She rejected it – and you – out of hand?’
‘Yes!’
‘And you were very angry?’
He looked defiantly at me. ‘I had a right to be angry. I had made her a respectful offer. She would not even consider it!’
‘When, at Stonehenge, you were angry with me, you attacked me,’ I reminded him. ‘When you were angry with Mr Fitchett, because he wanted to burn the wooden lasts, you attacked him. Tell me, Ezra, did you attack Emily when you were angry with her?’
‘I had a right,’ Jennings repeated. ‘She insulted me. She said cruel things. I may be only a bootmaker, but I am an honourable man, and I had made her an honourable offer! She could have said, at the very least…’ His voice choked and he struggled to control it. ‘She could have replied that she would
consider it and write to me with her answer. But she…’ Jennings’s features contorted once more, this time into a terrible expression of agony. ‘She laughed at me. I loved her. But she laughed at me.’
Oh, Emily… I thought. That laugh was your death warrant. ‘Then you were very angry, weren’t you? What did you do, Ezra?’
‘I took hold of her shoulders, and I shook her, shook her hard, to stop her laughing, and to teach her a lesson. She needed to realise she couldn’t treat me like that. Well, she did stop laughing. She was afraid of me then. I was glad of it.’
Jennings gave a cold little smile at the memory. ‘She began to struggle, to get free of me. But I had her; I had her in my power. I wanted her to know it!’
‘And?’ I prompted because he fell silent and sat with that cold smirk on his face. He looked up at me and I saw the calculation in his eyes.
‘I let go of her, because suddenly the touch of her was— unpleasant to me. I gave her a good shove to get her away from me…’
This time I waited.
‘And she fell,’ said Jennings. ‘She hit her head on that contraption for cutting grass. She didn’t get up. I thought she was faking. You know, playing about, pretending. So I stooped over her and pulled her to her feet.’ His voice had become very quiet and I had to strain to catch the words. ‘She seemed to stare at me for a moment, just a moment. Then the life faded out of her eyes. She was dead.’ He frowned and seemed puzzled. ‘I don’t know why. If she’d behaved herself it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to go and seek help?’
‘What for?’ said Jennings. ‘She was dead. Didn’t you hear me?’ He leaned forward and I could see he had begun to sweat. The pitch of his voice rose; that glow returned to his eyes. Morris, moving quietly for such a big man, positioned himself behind Jennings and was ready to restrain him. But Jennings was paying no attention to him, and perhaps did not even realise the sergeant was there.
‘She ought not to have died!’ Jennings screamed, his voice echoing around the small room. ‘I only pushed her away. I did that because she laughed. She had no business to laugh, to torment me so! It wasn’t my fault she fell. It was her fault. And it was her fault she hit her head and— died like that!’ He leaped to his feet.
For a moment only, I saw again that crazed creature, towering over me atop the ancient stone monolith on Salisbury plain, ready to launch himself at me. But whereas then I had seen a soul crazed by grief, now I only saw a piece of theatre.
Morris had him by his shoulders, and thrust him back down into his chair. Jennings squirmed briefly in the sergeant’s powerful grip and then relaxed. He began to cry, real tears running down his cheeks. No theatre now, but an agony of self-pity.
‘It wasn’t my fault: it was hers! She brought it all on herself!’ he sobbed.
‘You know, Ezra,’ I told him, ‘you sound just like any outwardly respectable fellow who, in his own home, is a wife-beater. Or any bully boy who routinely assaults his woman and thinks himself entitled to black her eye. They do it either because they enjoy inflicting pain, or because they’re drunk, or because they feel the world outside their own house does not appreciate them, as you felt Emily did not appreciate your offer of marriage.
‘They have a dozen reasons, none of them excusing what they’ve done. Then, one day, they strike a blow too hard and the woman is dead. Afterwards they sit there, like you, and weep and tell me it was all the girl’s fault.’
‘Well, it was her fault,’ said Jennings sulkily. ‘She scorned me!’
‘And what did you do next?’
He shrugged. ‘First I dropped her, just threw her down. But she looked untidy, so I pulled her up again. Her head was bleeding and if there is blood on my coat, you will say it was from that. But it seems to me you know too many clever doctors! Anyhow, I propped her against the wall of the shed in a more respectable, sitting position. Then I left her there. There was nothing else to be done, was there?’
‘How did you leave?’
‘The way I’d come, of course. I went out into the garden, through the door into the street, and went home… to Salisbury. No one saw me leave the house. Not even that snooping butler. It was very dark, and foggy. Terrible fog you get up here in London. That alone should make anyone want to leave and go back to Salisbury.’
He had been looking down at the tabletop as he spoke the last words. There was a few minutes’ silence, broken only by Biddle’s pencil scratching on the paper. Somehow I did not like to interrupt Ezra’s thoughts. It was a sad story, but so many tales of crime are sad. That does not make them the less evil.
Then Ezra Jennings looked up and leaned forward as one about to make a confidence. ‘I did make one mistake, you know.’
‘Really?’ I inquired. ‘What was that?’
‘Obvious! You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? Can’t you work it out for yourself? I should have taken the boots off her feet before I left her there, in that garden shed. I could have taken them with me back to Salisbury. You would not have known where to look for them. You would not have come to Fitchett’s shop; and I would have kept the boots safe. I could have held them in my hands.’
He crouched over the table, a terrible look of cunning appearing on his face. ‘I could have taken them to the stones. You’d have been none the wiser, neither you nor that fellow in Salisbury, Colby. You would not have chased after me to the stones and interrupted things. She would have come back. I am sure of it. The lure of the boots themselves would have been even stronger than that of the wooden lasts.’
‘Do you still really believe that?’ I asked incredulously.
I had to admit I was shaken. I was also aware that, in the corner, Biddle had stopped writing and was listening eagerly. When I gave him a severe look he hastily took up his notepad and pencil again. Only Morris had remained impassive.
‘Oh, I see you do not,’ Jennings told me with a touch of scorn. ‘No one else believes it. But that does not matter. I believe it. That’s what would have happened. And this time, she would have been in my power. Because I had brought her back, she would be mine completely. She would have had to behave as I wanted.’ He gave a little giggle. ‘If she didn’t, I would have sent her back again! It would all have been all right.’
He fell back in his seat, sullen again. ‘But you spoiled everything: the police, old Fitchett, every one of you!’
Then his manner changed once more. His expression of resentment cleared and the look of cold calculation returned. He even gave a superior smile.
‘They will not hang me,’ he said confidently. ‘I am mad, you see.’
I was stunned. I rallied sufficiently to tell him, ‘You were examined by a well-known expert in the field of insanity and he declared you not to be mad.’
‘Oh, that fancy fellow with the diamond studs in his shirtfront.’ Ezra dismissed Dr Lefebre. ‘I don’t know where you found him. He wasn’t like any doctor I’ve ever seen. Pleasant enough chap, mind, and he didn’t scorn what I said, not like you. Well, anyway, they will get another mad doctor to examine me here in London. Any judge is bound to do that. And another doctor will find me mad. You can be sure of it.’
* * *
‘A very odd business indeed,’ said Dunn, when he had read Ezra’s confession and listened to what I had to say. ‘Tell me, Ross, do you think the fellow a lunatic? Never mind what Lefebre said. What’s your opinion?’
‘John Colby at Salisbury is certain of it. But I am not,’ I told him. ‘I do believe him obsessed and what Lefebre described as deluded, but also what his employer described as “sharp”. Jennings is artful, a clever chap in his way, quite an actor. His defence will insist another doctor examines him. Jennings is right in that. Now he has time to plan what to say, he may be able to fool another expert.’
‘Hm,’ said Dunn. ‘That business at Stonehenge… It does suggest he’s, well, “deluded”, did you say was the word Dr Lefebre used? Does he really believe that nonsens
e about the wooden lasts calling back her spirit?’
I hesitated. ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s possible. But then, as Dr Lefebre said, Jennings is free to believe it if he wishes. People believe all sorts of things. They are not necessarily mad because what they believe is unusual or strange. Perhaps Jennings is not so very different from those who attend spiritualist séances, except that he didn’t sit at a table in a respectable parlour, with a medium summoning the departed on behalf of those present. Instead, he went it alone. He took himself off to Stonehenge to carry out a ritual of his own invention.’
When Dunn looked singularly unimpressed by my argument, I added briskly, ‘Emily Devray died at his hands. Tobias Fitchett remains very frail following a savage attack. If anyone commits a crime of violence, it is for us, as officers of the law, to track them down and arrest them. It is not a question of what they believe. It is a matter of what they have done.’
Dunn sighed. ‘The newspapers will love it,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty
I walked out of Scotland Yard and into the fog. It had returned in all its malign strength, a London Particular. Out there, hidden in its smoky dank folds, who knew what evils were being perpetrated? The police would eventually learn of some of them. Others would never become known. London is full of secrets. So is the human heart. Many of those secrets never come to light, either.
It took me a good while to find my slow way home to my own fireside where Lizzie waited anxiously.
‘I am glad this investigation is over,’ she said, when I had told her what had happened. ‘I haven’t liked you being involved in this case from the start. There has always been something unnatural about it. I know you don’t think Jennings is insane. But perhaps others will, and he won’t hang. They’ll lock him away in some asylum. They might even let him practise his trade there.’
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