The Attic Murder Part 1

The Attic Murder.

by Sydney Fowler.

Chapter I.

I'M afraid I can't give you references. I'm a stranger to London. Perhaps I'd better pay a week in advance?" His hand went boldly to his empty pocket. It was time he wanted -- time at whatever cost. He could hear the police-whistles outside.

The old woman looked at him doubtfully. She had asked forty-five shillings, and would have taken half the amount.

"Have you got any luggage, Mr. --" she began.

"Edwards," he answered. "Henry Edwards... Yes. I shall bring my luggage this evening. Perhaps you could let me have some tea now, and a wash?"

He did not develop his proposal to pay in advance, and the old woman did not press it. He had a face and manner that inspired confidence. Had not Counsel for the Crown turned even this circ.u.mstance against him, and had not the soft-tongued Judge, with his tone of measured impartiality, supported the argument with a deadlier ingenuity? "You may regard the younger prisoner," he had said, "as having been under the influence of his more hardened companion. The impression which he will have made upon you while in the witness-box may not have been entirely unfavourable, even though, as men of the world -- as men of common sense -- you may observe the improbabilities of the tale he told you. But, if you are satisfied of his guilt, you must not allow such an impression to deflect your judgement, nor to cause you to forget the oaths you have taken. It is inevitable that men engaged in such crimes as that of which the prisoners are accused should be of sufficient address and plausibility to draw their intended victims into their clutches. The question of the prisoners' previous records (so far as they can be properly weighed against this cla.s.s of criminality) will receive due and separate considerations, should you decide that their guilt is proved."

He had gone on to impress the jury with the gravity of the crime of which the confidence trickster is guilty, its increasing prevalence, and the reluctance of its victims to prosecute. All of which was true enough, but utterly irrelevant to the question of his guilt or innocence, and could only dispose the jury to convict him without too scrupulous weighing of the defence he had offered.

After hearing the summing-up, he had had no doubt of what that verdict would be. His most active resentment had been against the tone in which he had been told to stand up to hear the judgement delivered. Tony Welch had had five years. Well, he supposed he deserved it. And for him there had been fifteen months in the second division.

Before that, he had been asked whether he had any reason to offer why sentence should not be pa.s.sed upon him. He knew that it was nothing more than a mockery of formula, but he had looked at the jury as he answered: "It only shows how useless it is to tell the truth," and he had seen one of them drop his eyes uncomfortably.

That had been an hour ago. Barely that. And then he had been hurried from the dock, and there had been a moment's confusion when the Inspector had knocked over the carafe in the room below, and -- he had walked out. It had been as simple as that.

It must have been observed in five seconds, and his liberty would have been of the briefest, had he not noticed the street door standing unlatched, and the card APARTMENTS in the window, as he had turned the corner at a quick walk, which did not dare to seem hurried -- and, at the moment's impulse, he had stepped inside and closed it.

No one had noticed. The street had been too full, and too busy.

He had stood in the little hall, after closing the door, and knocked on the table there, till the landlady had come up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. "I couldn't make your bell ring, and the door was open," he had said pleasantly, and she had accepted his explanation without suspicion.

Half an hour later, he sat eating a stale egg, and drinking some ill-brewed tea, while he reviewed his position.

After all, it was largely his own fault, even apart from the impulsive folly which had involved him with August Garten, and made him so maddeningly easy a catspaw in a game which he did not guess. He could, perhaps, have defended himself more easily had he given his own name, and enabled the police to establish an ident.i.ty which would have made it at least improbable that he had been more than a recent and casual acquaintance of the major criminal. But the thought of Marian! His sister-in-law's outraged respectability, and his brother's jeers -- no, he had been right to conceal it, at whatever cost.

But, that having been so, why should he not now go boldly back to his own ident.i.ty? He considered the possibility only to discard it. There was the time of his absence, which would coincide so exactly with that during which he had been awaiting trial -- above all, there were the fingerprints. What a fool he had been to allow them to be taken! But it had been done so suavely, and it was true that its first result had been to show that he was innocent of any previous charge.

It had seemed best not to object at the time -- and now he had rendered his identification absolute and undeniable so long as his life should last, unless his hands should be lopped away. It was as though he walked the world with an indelible brand... And he would always be a convicted criminal: always liable to be arrested and subjected to the unserved sentence: always liable to the blackmailing activities of any who should discover his ident.i.ty.

Was there no way out? There were three, two of which he was unwilling to face, and the third was a forlorn hope at the best.

There was suicide. Always that. But to those who are young and healthy of mind it is a way that does not appeal: to those who have courage it is the way of cowardice and shame. He dismissed it at once. A theoretical road of escape, but one which he knew he would never take.

There was the way of submission. He might surrender himself to the blind omnipotence of the law, serve the sentence imposed, and return to his own ident.i.ty with some invented excuse for his silent absence; and with at least something less to fear from exposure or blackmail than must be his lot while he continued to evade the penalty his conviction brought.

But he saw this also as an impossible choice. If he should be recaptured, he must submit to a power against which he had no strength to contend; but to do so by his own choice was beyond any resolution that he possessed. He had experienced too much already of the physical indignities, the degradations of enforced routines, which have subst.i.tuted a spiritual persecution for the cruelties of neglect and dirt which were the prison horrors of a previous century. Beyond that, he had a natural, if somewhat illogical feeling that to make such a surrender would be to accept the judgement of the court, as though he himself admitted guilt, and accepted the sentence which an impartial justice had imposed upon him.

The third road of escape was of a less sinister but more difficult character. He must obtain such evidence as would demonstrate his own innocence, and enable him to gain remission of the penalty. He knew too little of law to understand what obstacles of procedure there might be for one in such a position, already condemned, and avoiding the infliction of the allotted punishment; nor did his mind go so far ahead as to concern itself with such possibilities. The first part of such a programme presented sufficient difficulties for immediate consideration.

And -- more urgent still -- if he were to endeavour to obtain evidence that he were not the accomplice of organized fraud which twelve of his fellow citizens had declared him to be, he must consider how his immediate necessities could be supplied, and either this or another hiding-place be rendered permanently secure.

For the short moment he might be safe. Probably no one had seen him enter the house; and its proximity to the court would make it an unlikely place for the police to suspect. But there was no lasting comfort in this, when he considered the emptiness of his pockets, and that the luggage of which he had spoken would not arrive.

He had a well-founded fear that the police, being human, would give an amount of attention to such an escape disproportionate to any importance it might have to impartial eyes. It was certain that the a.s.sistance of the press would be invoked: that his description would be promptly circulated with the full and accurate details that the police cords would supply.

He had, of course, worn his own clothes in the dock. He was not embarra.s.sed by prison garb. But there was little comfort in that while they could describe not only his appearance in every detail, but every garment that he had on. And he saw that, if he should go out after the next edition of evening papers had reached the street, not the police only, but every man he met would be his potential foe.

In imagination, he ran from pursuing crowds: he heard police whistles rousing those ahead to obstruct his way: he jumped walls: he trod deeply in garden dirt: he was horribly cornered in cul-de-sacs: he crouched in corners, hearing voices that became louder with the sound of approaching feet.

And to avoid such ends he must think -- think and plan -- in the short hours of security that were his, while the search spread past him, and outward on every side. As he got up from the table, and moved to a fireside chair, leaving a well-cleared tray -- for what certainty was there as to where or when his next meal would be? -- he even had a faint transient smile for that abortive search on which he rightly guessed that so much energy was being wasted, while he had been taking a quiet meal almost within sight of the door out of which he walked.

Chapter II.

AS Francis Hammerton reflected thus, Mrs. Benson came in to clear.

He knew her name already from inspection of a business card that occupied a prominent position among the heterogeneous mantelpiece ornaments, and as he now parried questions to which accurate replies would have been of too startling a character, and a.s.sured himself with some difficulty that they were prompted by nothing more than a natural curiosity, he looked, with concealed anxiety, at the woman who might hold his fate in her hands in the next hour.

He supposed that she would be likely to indulge herself with an evening paper. It was less probable that she would go out to buy it. It would be pushed under her door. That might be any time now. Or she might prefer to have the final edition, two -- even three hours later than this.

If she should have it earlier, it might not be read till she had finished her washing up, and got other evening tasks off her mind. But, sooner or later, she would be certain to pick it up. Very soon she would see that headline: PRISONER ESCAPED FROM -- -. It was the kind of thing she would be certain to read. The financial news -- the semi-final at Bolton -- the trouble in Abyssinia -- any of these she might be very likely to miss. But the escape of a prisoner in the next street! No, she would not overlook that.

Equally certain was it that she would guess who her new lodger was most likely to be. She would remember how he had let himself into the hall. She would calculate the time of his arrival, comparing it with that at which Harold Vaughan had escaped. She would read his description, and recognize some convincing detail.

Probably she might make excuse to come up, and refresh her memory, after which she would go or send to the police.

Should he give her time to do that? No, at the first sign of suspicion, he must make a quick bolt from the house. His over-excited imagination saw her obstructing him, attempting to hold him till the police should arrive. He struck at her clutching hands. He pushed her roughly away. She fell, and her head struck that sharp edge at the base of the table-leg, showing under the untidy table-cloth that drooped too far on this side. She lay still. He broke from the house, perhaps a hunted murderer now. She had to repeat her question of whether he would like macaroni for his evening meal, with a nice bit of plum-tart she had over from the midday dinner, before he heard it...

He decided that she might not be a bad woman with whom to deal -- almost certainly of a harmless type in normal circ.u.mstances but that if she guessed who he was she might betray him for half-a-crown.

Yet, was betrayal a fair word? He had come to her with a false name and a lying tale, and had bluffed her with a gesture of offering money he did not possess. And the crime of which he had been convicted was not of a pleasant kind... No, he could not blame her should she decide that inclination and duty pointed in the same direction.

Then should he leave at once, before suspicion could be aroused? He debated this, after she had withdrawn from the room, and it appeared in no better light.

He would be penniless, shelterless with the knowledge that every policeman he pa.s.sed would be looking, with a sharp eye, for just such a one as himself; and that to apply for a lodging anywhere within walking distance would be to invite suspicion of who he was. And with no money -- no luggage -- what possible resort could he have that would avoid starvation, and would not lead to instant arrest?

Pondering thus, he resolved that the risks of the open street could not be less than those of the precarious shelter that he had found, and from this decision he saw further that he might have a better chance if he should himself reveal his ident.i.ty, rather than to leave it to the almost certain discovery of the next hours.

By doing so, he could at least a.s.sert his innocence; could tell his tale, perhaps, so that it would rouse the sympathy of his auditor, and avoid the prejudice that his deception would naturally excite, should she learn of it by other means.

Deciding this, he had to consider what proposal he could make for discharging the cost of his lodging.

If he could win the woman's sympathy, he might remain there in almost absolute security, so long as he should not venture outside the door. And after a time he might walk boldly out, at least in the darker hours, trusting that the keenness of the first search would have relaxed, and that wherever it might be pursued, it would not be most active around the place of his conviction, with the immediate vicinity of which he had had no other connection, and to which it might seem particularly improbable that he would return.

But to remain in hiding thus would give him little opportunity of engaging in any occupation of a remunerative character. He could not hope for a sympathetic hearing if he should add to the fact that he was a convict dodging arrest a proposal that he should be fed and boarded free for an indefinite period, or until he should be recaptured by the police, and disappear for that which his sentence required.

This consideration naturally turned his thoughts to the I money that was his, in his true name, and which he could obtain tomorrow by the simple process of cashing a cheque, if he should be prepared to face the risk of a walk through the streets, or of boarding a 'bus in the daylight hours, and of entering the bank, where he would be known, with the vague improbable risk that the police would have ascertained that Harold Vaughan and Francis Hammerton were the same, and be on the watch for him to enter so well-baited a trap.

He was not sure how he would attempt to reach it, but it was the thought of that available money that gave him courage for the present purpose he had in mind. He would tell the woman just how he was placed: would admit that he had lied about his luggage and other things. But he would add that he could get funds from his bank in the morning, and that he would then pay her in advance as he had first proposed; and she might well prefer, even if her sympathies remained unstirred, to take the money of so quietly-disposed a lodger, rather than have the barren satisfaction of turning him out.

Anyway, it could be tried, on the proverbial argument that a poor chance is better than none at all... If he should be dissatisfied with her response, he would walk out at once to the street where already the twilight fell... He need not delay to pack!

With these thoughts, being of a nature to challenge fate rather than dodge its blows, he went out to the hall and descended the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, down which he had heard Mrs. Benson's steps recede after she had cleared his table.

He was guided by the sound of a woman's voice along an ill-lighted pa.s.sage to the door of her private retreat, and was about to knock when he was deterred by the words which he could clearly hear.

Chapter III.

FRANCIS HAMMERTON, if we are to think of him by his true name, had not considered the probability that Mrs. Benson might not be the sole occupant of the house, his mind having been concentrated upon aspects of his position which threatened more definite hazards.

Actually, the woman whose voice he heard was a next-door neighbour, Miss Janet Brown, who had looked in with no further purpose than to return a borrowed flat-iron. But it happened that she was already informed of the exciting incident of the afternoon, and when Mrs. Benson detained her for a cup of the tea which could be cheaply obtained by adding fresh water to the leaves in the lodger's teapot, and naturally mentioned the good fortune which had walked in less than two hours before Janet was quick to see the connection between the events.

"Edwards?" she asked scornfully. "You call him Mr. Vaughan next time you go up, and see how he'll jump, or else answer his name without noticing how he's giving himself away which would be just as good proof."

"I don't think I shall try that," Mrs. Benson answered doubtfully. She was sensibly trembling between the disappointment at the prospective loss of a most promising lodger, and vaguer fear of what so cunning and unscrupulous a character might be doing among the dowdy dining-room furniture. "I suppose," she concluded, "I'd better let the police know."

Miss Brown, a fair-haired angular woman, who showed her half Scottish ancestry only in her bony figure, and the practical shrewdness with which she faced a difficult world, considered this proposition, and p.r.o.nounced against it.

"There'll be a reward offered, if you wait, more like than not. It might be a hundred pounds! You'll be a fool if you let them know before that. Keep him close, I say, till you see how the cat jumps."

Mrs. Benson wavered miserably between the prospect of such wealth, and the shadow of a great fear. She was a woman who prided herself upon her respectability, which meant, among other things, that she came of a family who had no dealings with the police.

Even for a criminal to be arrested beneath her roof would tend to taint her with the stigma of an undesired and undesirable notoriety. It was not at all the kind of thing which her deceased parents would have approved. It might not be quite so disgraceful as being behind with the rent (which had actually happened three years ago, though, by the combined mercies of Heaven and Mr. Clay, it was known to none but herself and the landlord's agent), but it was not the kind of thing that should occur in the house of a woman whose uncle was a builder's merchant, and whose brother-in-law had once sat on a Rural District Council.

But, far worse than that, suppose that, by not giving information at once, she should "get in trouble" with the "I don't know," she said, "what I ought to do. Not rightly. He might clear off before then."

The last sentence was spoken in a tone between hope and fear. Had she heard the front door bang at that moment, her first sensation might have been relief, rather than regret for a lodger lost, or the romantic shadow of reward faded away.

But Miss Brown put the suggestion aside. "Not he," she said. "If you don't let him see you suspect. He'll be lying too snug for that... You'll find he won't stir out of the door, more likely than not... You can just wait till the reward comes out, and walk round the corner to pick it up."

"Suppose they say I ought to have told them before?"

"Told them what? Your lodger's a different name, isn't he? How can you tell that as you don't know? Even then, you won't do more than a guess.

"You don't read the papers much. You're too busy for that, with all our lodgers to feed, and to wash and mend, and the house cleaning from attic down... But you see the bills. 100 Pounds REWARD! Anyone'd stop to read them. -- And you go straight round on the chance."

Francis Hammerton, having heard the most part of this conversation, or at least Janet's part in it, for Mrs. Benson had a voice of less penetrating quality, did not wait to hear more.

He had heard sufficient to conclude that he would not be immediately denounced, and to see that he would increase his peril by confessing an ident.i.ty already guessed. Janet's last statement led him to conclude that there were most probably other lodgers in the house, and he saw that this must increase the risk of discovery while he remained listening at Mrs. Benson's door.

Even in a less compromising position, he would have had no inclination to make himself known to the other occupants of the house, or to give occasion for his presence to be narrated to them. He went back while he safely could.

Chapter IV.

WITH some trepidation, only partially controlled, Mrs. Benson brought up the supper.

It was a condition of which her lodger might have been less observant had he not already heard the suspicions which had been suggested to her. He had resolved that he would say nothing to confirm them, but rather aim to confuse her with a doubt as to whether her neighbour's accusation might be no more than a baseless guess, and he was therefore careful to give no sign of observing her agitation. He talked in a casual manner of trivial indifferent things, as one who had the leisure of an unoccupied mind.

The evening had turned wet as the dusk fell, and now the rattling of the ill-fitting window-frame, and the beat of heavy rain on the gla.s.s, gave him a good excuse as he said: "I don't think I'll go out to fetch my luggage tonight, Mrs. Benson, if you don't mind... I shall have to go to the bank in the morning, and I can do everything at the same time... I daresay I can manage somehow till then... And I'll settle up tomorrow for the first week We're strangers to one another as yet, so I'd rather have it that way, though I hope you'll get to know me better before long."

Mrs. Benson was flutteringly acquiescent in her replies. "Yes, sir. It's for you to say, sir... Yes, sir. I hope you will. If there's anything that I could do. Would you like the paper, sir, if as how you'll be sitting quiet? There's no one else coming in tonight till the last thing... Yes, sir, thank you. I wouldn't ask, but the truth is I've been doing that bad since Mr. Michaelson left... But I'll bring it up if you'll be wanting something to read."

The last offer, which had had its birth in Janet Brown's livelier brain, was brought out, and repeated, in nervous haste, like a lesson learned. But Mr. Edwards still appeared to notice nothing strange in his landlady's manners or speech. He said pleasantly that he should like to see it, if it wouldn't be robbing her. And when she came up, half an hour later, to clear the table, and bringing the final edition of the Evening News, he restrained the half-fearful desire he had to see the published account of his trial and subsequent escape, turning to the sporting page in a desultory manner, until the table was cleared, and she had left the room.

The report itself was not long, the detailed interest of the case having been the news of the previous day, when the evidence had been heard. It consisted mainly of a skilfully condensed summary of the Judge's address to the jury, the time during which they had been absent from court, and other similar details with which he was already too familiar to give them more than one swift comprehending glance, which went on to where, in bolder type, was the news of his own escape.

It gave him a thrill of exaltation, overcoming for one brief moment the misery that possessed his mind, to realize the extent and energy of the futile search which was being made while he remained within two hundred yards of the head-quarters of the baffled power of the law.

But the feeling changed to a greater depression with realization of the desperation of his position, as he went on to read the accurate description of himself which the police had been prompt to communicate to the Press.

He saw a portrait also, which might have been more exact had the artist not thought it necessary to give him a cunningly ingratiating expression, less natural to himself than to the character which the jury's verdict had fixed upon him.

But for that overheard conversation, he would have walked out at once, trusting to darkness and rain, and regardless of all beside under the urgent fear that the hunted have. As it was, he wondered with what object the newspaper had been brought. If it had been meant as a test, he thought that his demeanour must have puzzled the woman, though, with that detailed description to support suspicion already formed, it could hardly have had a more negative result.

Was it possible that it had been brought up in simplicity and goodwill, without previous reading of the exposure which it contained? Remembering what he had heard, he put the idea aside. The improbability was too great.

But the issue of all his doubts was to resolve that it would be a less risk to remain in his present quarters till morning came than to wander penniless in the rain through the midnight hours.

He went up to a better bed than the jail authorities would have provided, with little expectation that sleep would be quick to come, and was conscious of nothing more till he saw the light of the winter dawn invading a dingy room.