by Roy Lewis
Crow hesitated. The old woman was shivering in real terror and he felt that to question her further would distress her, but the picture still confused him, even though the suspicion grew with every word he heard, the suspicion that he was now close to the real motives for Martin Evan’s confession.
‘Mrs Jenkins,’ he said, ‘you’re telling me this—’
‘I told you, I didn’t want to talk about it and I promised not to but with you it’s different, because you know it all, don’t you?’
‘Promised? Promised Mrs Parry, you mean?’
The brass knocker on the door downstairs was hammered loudly and Lily Jenkins started up in the bed, lean hands clutching the covers. Her blue eyes were wide now, the terror plain to see.
‘Promised her, and promised him after I told him!’ She glared wildly around her. ‘I didn’t want to tell him, but I did, because I had to, didn’t I!’
The knocker sounded again and Mrs Jenkins leapt up in bed, drawing her knees up under her, cowering against the bed head.
‘That’s not the man, is it? He said he wouldn’t come again, not after I told him and promised to stay quiet after. He said he’d leave me alone then. But if that’s him downstairs you got to take me before he comes up because I’m afraid of him. I know you, seen you lots of times, and your eyes are kind but I’m afraid of him. Don’t let him come, not before you—’
‘Mrs Jenkins!’ Crow leaned forward, put his hand on the old woman’s shoulder, and shook her gently. ‘It’s all right. No one will come unless I allow them to come. Be quiet, be peaceful. Everything will be all right.’
‘I told him,’ she mumbled, calming somewhat under Crow’s touch. ‘He made me tell him, first time I ever told secrets. Told him about Sarah Parry’s secrets.’
‘Tell me, Mrs Jenkins,’ Crow said quietly, but urgently. ‘Tell me about her secrets, and tell me about this man.’
The hammering below started again, insistently.
* * *
The queue for seats at the hearing before the Crown Court had begun to form in the early hours of the morning and when Crow arrived it already extended far down the street. He made himself known to the policeman at the doors and he was allowed in immediately.
He found Warlock and the prosecuting counsel, Weir in the chamber beyond the robing-room. As Crow came in Warlock looked up doubtfully, but Weir rose with an impatient grimace.
‘Have you got the papers?’
Crow nodded and handed the file he carried to Weir.
‘I’m sorry I was held up. But I’ve carried out all the necessary checks. I think we could prove all we now suspect.’
Jason Warlock tapped his fingers on the table in front of him, and squinted down his long nose.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Crow. We’ve met before, I believe. Across a courtroom once or twice. But never in such. . .ah. . .intriguing circumstances. All most mysterious. My friend Weir asks to see me here before the jury is empanelled, but declines to say why.’
Weir waved the file after his brief inspection of it.
‘Fact is, we want a postponement. Want you to agree to our request to adjourn for further investigation.’
Warlock’s eyebrows rose. Icily, he said, ‘You must be mad. To start with, Mr Justice Carroll is unlikely to agree to it, but I certainly could not. Damn it, Weir, you’ve had long enough to prepare your case against Martin Evans. You came into the magistrates court ill-prepared for the preliminary enquiry, but I’m damned if I’ll now give you assistance in making a better case than the one you’ve got, by agreeing to adjournment. I presume that is why you’re asking for more time — to plug yet more gaps in your case?’
‘Not quite that simple,’ Weir said grumpily. ‘More facts have now come into our possession, and they place a slightly different complexion on the case. They don’t detract from Evans’s guilt, as I see it, but they do bring in a complication we need to sort out. About motive.’
‘If you have any information,’ Warlock said coolly, eyeing the file, ‘you are duty bound to make it available to the defence.’
Weir handed him the file without speaking. Warlock smiled, read it through quickly, then went back and read it again with more care.
‘All verified?’ he said sharply when he had finished his perusal.
‘All verified,’ Crow said in a firm tone. ‘The source of much of the information will be in a position to testify, having made a remarkable recovery now she knows she is not in fact going to die and I am just a policeman, not the Old Reaper himself.’
A glimmer of amusement appeared in Warlock’s eyes but he did not smile. He handed the file back to Weir, thinking hard.
‘I think we should go see my client,’ he suggested at last.
* * *
Martin Evans looked pale. There were dark patches under his eyes that suggested he had not been sleeping well and he seemed thinner. He was still polite and reserved in his greeting, however. Crow noted the anxiety that lurked at the back of his eyes nevertheless.
‘Martin, we’ve had some rather . . . ah . . . interesting information which puts rather a different complexion on things. What I want you to do. . .’ Warlock paused, looked at Crow, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Perhaps it would be more fitting if it came from you,’ he suggested.
Crow inclined his head and looked carefully at Martin Evans. The anxiety was there, so he decided to come straight to the point.
‘We know the truth, Martin.’
Martin Evans stiffened, but said nothing.
‘We know the truth about your motives, and it could be it will change the situation considerably. On the other hand, it may not.’
Martin Evans coughed, cleared his throat. Coldly, he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Crow sighed.
‘We’ve got the facts, Martin, but to persuade you this is no trick I’ll go over them. The thing started, as you well know, just after you were born. Your father, Alan Stark, and your mother Jean were friendly with Fred and Annie Williams, who had a daughter, Ceinwen, a few years younger than you. After the Starks took you to Canada they continued to write for a couple of years and then it died away. Fred and Annie got divorced, Fred died, Ceinwen was brought up by her grandmother Sarah Parry, you grew up in Canada. When your father died you came looking for Ceinwen to give her the legacy your father had left her in his will. You found Ceinwen in London, fell in love with her, married her.’
Martin Evans leaned forward, his eyes hard. ‘I don’t know why you’re going over all this again. What’s the point?’
‘The point is, when you came to the Rhondda to meet Gran Parry she saw your father in you. And she broke up your marriage.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘You and Ceinwen didn’t break it up by quarrelling or discovering you were incompatible. It broke up the day you met Sarah Parry. She told you the truth, told you what Annie Williams had told her before she went to America. She told you that you and Ceinwen should not have married. . .ever.’
‘Damn you, I—’
‘She told you that Ceinwen was your half-sister.’
* * *
It was all there in the papers on his knee, the statements, the affidavits, the reasons. Annie Williams had always been a girl of an accommodating disposition; she had been pregnant when Fred Williams married her but the baby had been stillborn. She and Fred had been friendly with Alan and Jean Stark. Alan was a handsome man, and when Jean Stark had been at home with the baby Martin there had been occasions when Alan had been able to slip away to meet Annie. When Ceinwen was born, Fred thought he was the father. Annie knew otherwise.
She had told her mother, Sarah Parry, before she went triumphantly to the States. Ceinwen was Alan Stark’s child.
Martin and Ceinwen had the same father.
It was not until 1942 that Fred had learned the truth: he had divorced Annie but he had not turned away from Ceinwen. He had loved the child too much to discard her at that point, and h
e had looked after her as his own until he died. But he was never in contact with the Starks after he learned the truth.
Alan Stark had certainly been aware that Ceinwen was his daughter. He and Jean had had only the one son, and perhaps he had always longed secretly for a daughter; it would have accounted for the fact that his will named her as a beneficiary. But it also promoted the fateful meeting between two young people who were closely related but did not know it — until they married, came back to the Rhondda for a grandmother’s blessing and then discovered the shattering truth.
‘We were stunned,’ Martin Evans said woodenly. ‘Gran Parry sat there with a face like iron, as though she blamed us for doing something evil, but how could we have regarded it as evil? We were married, we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. We were so happy — and now we were crushed by the realisation that we could never marry legally, never be . . . lovers. But we were in love!’
He sat in front of Crow and the two silent lawyers. His face was marked with suffering and frustration, past and present, and his eyes were clouded.
‘I wanted to blame someone, you know what I mean? I wanted to blame Gran Parry for telling us, for if she had remained silent who was to know about it? I wanted to blame my father, for being Ceinwen’s father in the first instance, for never telling me later. But again, where was the need for him to tell me? She was to all intents and purposes merely the daughter of a friend. I looked at Ceinwen and saw the agony in her face, the fearfulness because we had done wrong — unwittingly perhaps, but we had done wrong — and Gran Parry herself, she emphasised it with all her strict, strait-laced views, she drove it home. . .I almost went out of my mind.’
He shook his head. ‘But then, when I calmed down I knew there was only one thing to do. I had to leave, I had to get away from there. So I went back to London, Ceinwen came up a few days later, we talked it all over calmly and rationally and we agreed what had to be done. That was it, then. I went up to Newcastle, took a post with a firm of solicitors, and after a while Ceinwen went back to the Rhondda.’
‘And then you met Donna?’ Crow asked.
Martin Evans nodded. His craggy features were ashen.
‘When I look back it’s as though I was dogged with evil luck. Of all the women to pick — Donna! But I was lonely, she was a good-looking woman and she could charm the birds off the trees. She was working there in the office, I took her out and . . . well, she wanted marriage and so we got married.’
‘But you never got an annulment of the first marriage to Ceinwen Williams.’
‘God, man, can’t you see what it would have meant?’
Anger flushed Evans’s cheeks as he glared at Crow and the two barristers.
‘I couldn’t go to court and ask for an annulment on the basis of my blood relationship to Ceinwen! They would have crucified her, in the Press, in the valley, it could never have been kept quiet! I didn’t even dare ask for a divorce, or ask her to petition for one, because again there was always the chance that the real reason for the divorce would emerge. It was an impossible situation, so I took the easy way out . . . I lied to the Registrar, I went through a ceremony of marriage . . .’
‘But you were still in love with Ceinwen,’ Crow suggested.
The anger that had flared in Evans’s face died again. He looked down miserably at his hands.
‘That was the problem, right from the beginning. It’s easy to blame Donna for what happened, but I can’t do that, not entirely. It may be that if I’d been able to give her the love she wanted, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone off the rails again, wouldn’t have started affairs, and wouldn’t have got involved with that man Klein. But I wasn’t able to give her love, not even affection. I could give her little, for as soon as I married her I felt resentful. It should have been Ceinwen who was with me, not Donna. I felt guilty about being with her because I loved Ceinwen, I felt guilty in loving Ceinwen, my whole life was a mess and I drifted, until suddenly Donna was leaving me, the Klein papers were missing . . . Again, I could have blamed Donna, pointed out she’d probably taken them, but I was too low, too dispirited, too unhappy. And I wanted to be near Ceinwen. I couldn’t bear to be parted from her any more. So I accepted my partners’ arguments about negligence, left the firm, used what money I had left to buy Morgan and Enoch and I started in business as an estate agent, under the name Martin Evans. Then I asked Ceinwen to come work for me.’
‘That must have been playing with fire,’ Crow said quietly.
Martin Evans shook his head.
‘Not really. Gran Parry certainly saw it that way but Ceinwen understood. She knew I loved her as she did me: she knew I’d do nothing to hurt her, and she knew that at least this way we’d be together much of the time. It would hurt, of course, but it was more bearable than the hurt we felt being apart. And that’s the way it’s been these years. Together, and yet not together . . . but it was the best we could make of our condition.’
‘Until Donna appeared. And she spoiled it all?’
‘I’d never told Ceinwen about Donna,’ Evans said fiercely. ‘You’ve got to remember that. I never told her because she would have been unhappy at the thought of me having lived with someone else, having gone through a ceremony of marriage, and that’s all I’ve wanted to do — protect her. She could never have taken the gossip if the truth had come out.’
Crow understood. He thought of Ceinwen Williams, small, shy, nervous, diffident, the kind of woman scandal would sear. He understood Martin Evans’s motives.
‘So when Donna wrote to me—’
‘She wrote to you?’
‘The envelope you found in my desk — it contained a blackmail demand. Pay two thousand pounds or the story of my bigamous marriage and incestuous relationship with Ceinwen would come out. And then she phoned me. She said she was coming to the valley, wanted to speak to me.’
Warlock stirred uneasily. He moved forward as though to position himself nearer Martin Evans. Crow ignored him.
‘The envelope you received-when did it arrive?’
‘End of May, I think. I’m not exactly sure’’
‘And Donna sent it?’
Evans frowned.
‘I suppose so. I mean, there was nothing to suggest it was her; I mean, it was made up with pieces of words cut out of newspapers, even the address on the envelope itself. But when she came along later and made her demands I assumed it was her letter. Anyway, she arrived that night—’
‘When?’
‘June the 6th. She didn’t come to the office, I didn’t want her to be seen, so I arranged to meet her on the track, at the back of the office, leading up to the Bwylffa Pit. She was waiting there, we began to walk up the track—’
‘I think that will do, Martin.’ Warlock smiled coldly towards Crow and Weir. ‘I think that’s as far as we need go now. I assume you have what you wanted?’
Martin Evans seemed suddenly startled, as he was made aware he had been talking too much. Crow saw the lawyer in him take over from the lover and he cursed under his breath.
‘There are a few more questions I’d like to ask,’ Crow said stiffly.
‘But not now, not of my client,’ Warlock replied. ‘I do not consider it in his best interests to answer such further questions as you may have until I have first consulted with him. We do not want a repetition of the first occasion, when a confession was obtained by doubtful means.’
“The means were in no way doubtful,’ Crow said, ‘and I assure you, if I can ask just a few more questions which are in no sense incriminating of your client I should be able to—’
‘To clearly tie up loose ends for the prosecution,’ Warlock interrupted. ‘I can’t allow that, Inspector.’
‘What about the adjournment?’ Weir asked fiercely.
Warlock smiled; it was a wolfish smile, mocking in its air.
‘Well, now, it’s as I said before. The question is hardly one I can answer. It’s up to the judg
e. But it does seem to me that the problems are all yours. Now we know more clearly the motives of my client—’
‘Now we know his motives,’ Weir interrupted, ‘it makes much stronger the case for murder!’
‘I disagree,’ Warlock said, exchanging a quick glance with Martin Evans. ‘His motivations were of the highest. He wanted to protect Ceinwen Williams from scandal; he would have done anything to save her from valley gossip. Even face a charge of murder. All right, if you now want to remove the reason for his protection of her, by exposing the incestuous union, or the bigamous marriage, in open court, you also remove his necessity to face that confession. For the defence can show — and I’ll plead it hard, believe me — that the confession was worthless, motivated as it was by his situation. I don’t know a jury that wouldn’t be moved by the plea, do you?’
‘Warlock—’ Weir began warningly, but Crow interrupted him.
‘I think the matter may be capable of solution in another way,’ he said. ‘I can ask someone else the questions I have in mind.’
‘Be my guest,’ Warlock said, still smiling. ‘Ask your questions of anyone, except my client Martin Evans. I’m not yet quite ready to throw him to the lions!’
* * *
The witness-room was sparsely furnished and guarded by a uniformed constable who stepped aside smartly to admit John Crow. The witnesses for the prosecution, in spite of the fact they had all appeared at the preliminary hearing and were now known to each other, retained a separateness that emphasised they were thrown here together by chance, rather than by inclination. James Klein stood completely aloof, staring out of the window towards the civic buildings. Jack Scales stood near the far window, smoking nervously. Of the others, only the enquiry agent Edward Skene and the fish-fryer Dai Davies seemed to have found something in common, something to talk about. They sat side by side at the table, talking in a desultory fashion. John Crow walked across to them, drew a chair up, sat down beside them.