The Massingham Affair Part 21

THE Ma.s.sIXGHAM AFFAIR.

so baffled poor Sugden, and one gathered that on the whole he thought well of it. A model witness.

Under this treatment the court itself relaxed. After the tensions of Sugden's evidence, with its undertones of tragedy, Henderson brought such a comfortable humour to bear on everything, even his own afflictions. That they had been richly deserved he left little doubt in anyone's mind. But being without self-pity, he absolved others from the need of feeling pity and enlisted their sympathy instead. Without playing for comedy, he achieved it. Perhaps his best moment was his handling of his old gun, the one he admitted firing at the Verneys, but one forgot the crime in the affecting nature of the scene. Not even fear of the judge's displeasure could prevent the laughter that rippled over the court as these companions of old poaching days were reunited, but it was kindly laughter, and significantly the judge made no attempt to check it in spite of the shocked expression on Jessop's face. It came as an astonishing thing to Justin to see how his 'Other Man', the dark shadow that had brooded over his thoughts for so long, could bring light and humour with him.

As for Henderson's evidence in general, it followed the confession with only minor variations, describing how he and Sugden had been poaching in the woods near Ma.s.singham when the suggestion had been made to 'try the priest's'.

"Well, Geordie and me ganned roond bi the plantation and ower the medders tae the back o' Mr Verney's hoose. We'd a muckle bag made of owd poke ... of sackin' as ye might say . . . and we tore it up and put it roond us boots."

"So your boots were covered. Are you sure of that?" enquired Gil-more, holding up his hand.

"Aye, sir: gay sure."

"It is important. Please go on."

"In a byre we finds a bit chisel. "The verra thing,' says Geordie. He'd a rare eye for things had Geordie."

"Keep to your story," warned Gilmore, detecting a restless movement on the bench.

And keep to it he did, with a relevance surprising in so untutored a man. Perhaps an interpreter would have been an advantage at times, but there could be no other complaint against the witness, at least from the Crown's point of view. Breaking-in, theft, arrival at THE TRIAL: IO99.

Verney's, scuffle, escape, dawn search by the Police-everything was in order and accounted for with a rare candour.

It was this that chiefly seemed to exasperate Jessop when he rose to cross-examine. "What you have been giving is a catalogue of crimes," he remarked bleakly. "You have been telling us how you plotted to break into an old man's house by night to steal, how you took his goods, nearly killing him in the process, how you escaped and allowed other men to suffer for what you say you did. Does that describe it?"

"Aye," admitted the witness cheerfully.

"It seems to amuse you very much."

"Wouldn't say that, sir."

"But 7 am saying it and the jury can see you for themselves. It amuses you. You have been basking in the limelight. Isn't this an act you have been putting on?"

"It's truth, sir."

"Haven't you just been repeating a part you've learnt by rote?" Henderson shook his head with a smile of incomprehension on his face, and Jessop burst out furiously: "Don't smirk at me, man. Respect the court."

"I hope my friend will respect the witness," put in Gilmore with a dutiful glance at the judge.

"Certainly, when he merits it," replied Jessop, standing his ground. "I don't feel obliged to tolerate his insolence and prevarications though. I was suggesting to him that he had learnt a part. And he had some props, I think. Take a look at this exhibit, please. Is that the eagle and ruby seal you stole?"

"That's 'er, sir."

"What did you do with it?"

Justin was suddenly aware from Jessop's voice and manner that the little man was becoming violently excited.

"I give it away to someone," the witness said.

"To someone. You have not said to whom, you have never said to whom. May I suggest to you that you have been so constantly evasive about it because you never gave it to anyone, because you never had it to give?"

"I give it like I telt ye."

"No, wasn't it Kelly who gave it?" said Jessop, suddenly very still. "Didn't he give it to his fiancee, Amy Dodds, who took it to Mr Coates the jeweller. I will be calling him. Mr Coates remembers now."

There was a stir of movement and voices rising and dying away like the wash and hiss of a wave against the sh.o.r.e, and into the trough that followed, Jessop said: "Were you at Ma.s.singham that night?"

"Aye, sir, I were, and Geordie too."

"Then there were four of you. You and Sugden as you confess. And Milligan and Kelly, as the jury found."

Justin heard the voices and the sound of people craning forward in their seats. Part of his mind was very clear and a.n.a.lytical. If Amy Dodds had had the seal, then in all probability she had got it from her fiance, Kelly, which meant that Kelly had been at Ma.s.singham, and Milligan too, and therefore Blair was innocent and he had been on a fool's errand. It was too hard a thought to bear. There was a buzzing in his ears. The court had begun to go dark, though he could see shapes moving in the gloom, and words came to him from a long way off, mixed up with other voices, Amy Dodds's among them, trying to tell him something . . . perhaps about the seal. Someone was saying loudly, defiantly: "All right: I give it 'er: not Kelly: yon's the truth." And suddenly his senses cleared and he knew who had spoken and what a hostage to fortune it was.

"My dear fellow, are you all right?" he heard a voice whisper urgently in his ear.

"Of course I am," he answered testily. He had not known that Mr Lumley was in court that morning.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"You went so pale. If you'd only come outside for a while and take a rest. This constant strain ... so bad for you."

People were rebuking them from behind. Jessop himself had glanced round at them, and it was interesting to see how his petulant glare was transformed, as he swung back towards the witness, into an incredulity that spoke louder than words. "Come Henderson," they heard him say, "you are not seriously telling us now, after all this time, that it was you who gave Miss Verney's seal to Amy Dodds! Why should you give it her?"

"She were my la.s.s," the witness said.

"Not Kelly's?"

"Aye, she had binn."

"I suggest to you that you had never even spoken to the girl?"

"That I had, sir."

"Can you prove you knew her?"

"Just me word, sir."

"And nothing else! Your word! Why didn't you mention her before?"

"An tell on the la.s.s!" cried Henderson. "To ye an' a'!"

Far up in the public gallery there sounded a burst of delighted laughter, instantly stilled as the judge glanced up. No one had laughed below. Justin saw the intent jury and Jessop's face registering his long-suffering endurance of the witness.

"Of course to 'tell', that is to tell the truth, even to me, is what you have sworn on your oath to do," the insinuating voice reminded them. "I hope you understand that."

"Aye, I do."

"Why couldn't you 'tell' on Amy Dodds?"

"It would ha' made her a receiver."

"But she was dead."

"Aye, the puir la.s.sie."

"You were protecting her memory? One respects that. So you said nothing about her in your statement to Mr Derry. Or in your proof of evidence. Or when my learned friend examined you just now. Is that right?"

"Aye."

"Then why are you saying she was a receiver now? I mean, what has changed?" enquired Jessop with the air of a man who deeply desires to be instructed. "What can have made you betray those refined emotions of chivalry and honour in the protection of a lady's name? Will you enlighten us?"

"Ye axed me a question," the witness said.

"No: I told you something that surprised you-that the seller of the seal to Mr Coates was known to us. So you panicked and you lied. Why did you lie? Why did you deny that Kelly was at Ma.s.singham that night?"

"He niwer were."

"And Milligan?"

"He niwer."

"Why did you claim as mistress a girl you never knew except by sight? What are the reasons, Henderson? Indeed I might ask you- I will ask you: "Why did you confess at all?"

195.

III.

Justin returned that night to Smedwick hugging a grain of comfort to his heart. Jessop had miscalculated with a question. When he had asked why Henderson had confessed, he had probably had in mind the affecting study he might draw of the witness in the role of Sidney Carton sacrificing himself for others, and indeed it would have made a beguiling and ludicrous picture if only he had been able to get Henderson to sit for it. However, the man had answered, as Justin could have answered for him, that he had confessed because he had been caught red-handed in the act of recovering stolen goods and because he had feared that Sugden might turn Queen's Evidence, leaving him alone to face the music and perhaps a charge that he had tried to murder Verney. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, had moved him. The witness had been quite frank about it. He had been 'catched' and 'took short a bit'. He had thought that 'they'- meaning Justin and Longford-'kenned arl aboot it'; more than they did, in fact; and this he had acknowledged with the rueful aside that after all he had 'ainly gotten five year'. Indeed Jessop's question had miscarried altogether, as it had deserved to do.

But there the comfort ended. For to know that Henderson had been at Ma.s.singham was no longer an answer to the insidious thought that Milligan and Kelly might have been there also. It was true that Jessop's 'four man' theory supposed that the Police had found the need to frame (and Sugden to save) not innocent men but guilty ones, two of the most unlikely things imaginable, but other unlikely things had been advanced that morning, not least Henderson's evidence which had filled Justin with a profound distrust. He felt sure that if the man had been protecting anyone by his silence over Amy, he had been protecting himself, and had some personal motive for keeping the connection dark-a.s.suming it existed. For the most likely explanation of his behaviour was simply that he had lied to Jessop in the box, never having known Amy except by sight; which threw the possession of the seal squarely back on Kelly and suggested that the 'four man' theory might be true.

As the train rattled northwards in the moonlight he faced the possibility of an appalling error. His pride rebelled at the thought. He remembered Pugh and the other witnesses to the Police con- spiracy, and it seemed almost inconceivable that they could have been lying or that Sugden and Henderson could have misled him at such fearful cost to themselves. Yet there were times when he imagined that perhaps all this had happened and he had been caught in a web of deceit and double dealing. At such crises Mr Lumley was a great standby. He saw things so much more clearly, perhaps because he had ceased to feel any emotional involvement once his 'innocents' had been released and a comparatively lenient sentence had been given to his penitents', as he was apt to call them. "What are you worrying about?" he demanded from his corner seat in the tone he used at sickbeds to those who were unreasonable enough to dislike translation to another world. "You know what Pugh and Piggott are going to say. Even a legal ignoramus like myself can see that the conspiracy is being made out against the Police."

"But suppose Henderson was lying just now?"

"Then he was lying about a very small and unimportant matter, my dear chap. Why are you so hypnotised by this business of Coates and the seal?"

"Simply because it points to the fact that Kelly might have been at Ma.s.singham."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried the Vicar quite heatedly. "The poor girl took the seal to Coates long after Kelly went to prison, so how can you deduce anything from that? She got it from Henderson, of course, just as he says."

"If he could only prove it."

"How do you know he can't prove it? People may come forward. And even if they don't, no sane person would argue that there were four men at Ma.s.singham when everything else suggests there were only two. I don't know why I have to tell you these things. Surely you are not so set on having poor Blair convicted that you jump at shadows?"

Justin understood that, left to himself, the Vicar would have released all parties, in gaol or custody, with a blessing on everyone, coupled with a pressing invitation to subscribe to some worthy charity. But he felt heartened all the same. His problem seemed smaller and more manageable by the time he had got out of the train at Smedwick and set off homewards through streets that were ankle-deep in slush. Yet that night, in spite of his joy at Miss Verney's surprising kindness and the hopes that sprang from it, his dreams were dark and troubled. They were vivid dreams between periods of 197.

THE Ma.s.sENGHAM AFFAIR.

waking when he imagined he could see a pattern connecting them with Ma.s.singham and his adventures on the quest, though the settings were different and even the actors had changed ident.i.ties in the most baffling way. There was a voice-he thought a woman's- explaining something in a room, and in the background the suggestion of some brooding but unseen presence. Then he saw the sky, in which a bird was wheeling against a screen of woods, and there was the sound of running water and he saw someone struggling in the current while another watched from the bank. As he woke to see the sun shining through his window the idea occurred to him that the watcher by the river had been Henderson and that he too had been the unseen presence in the house where Amy Dodds had lived. The waking was rather worse than the dream.

That was the Sat.u.r.day morning, with the week-end stretching interminably ahead and no Miss Verney to cheer him. He spent it quietly, hardly aware of mealtimes or of Flo's anxious face watching him from behind the teacups and the chinoiserie. All his thoughts were concentrated on the moment on the Monday morning when at five past eight the whistle would blow, a green flag would be waved and the Belcastle train would pull out of Smedwick with its cargo of witnesses and spectators bound for the last act of the drama', as the Mercury had confidently named it.

It came at last, and with Mr Hicks for company he travelled down through a countryside almost awash in the thaw. In Belcastle the rain was teeming down, drumming on the gla.s.s roof of the station and on the fine cla.s.sical portico where the hansoms waited, huddled together out of the wet; streaming in torrents in the forecourt of the Moot Hall on glistening umbrellas and the coats of cab-horses as drenched as seals.

Inside, in the stone-flagged hall and on the stairs rising towards the Grand Jury Room, chaos had arrived out of the rain, smelling strongly of damp worsteds and mackintoshes. Justin found himself between a squad of Police keeping the doors of the court and a mob of folk clamouring for their rights as witnesses and relations of witnesses, while clerks dodged about like rabbits and a voice from the stairs besought everyone to be calm.

"You've heard the tale the odd-job fellow of Verney's-Bell-brought me about the boots?" he heard someone ask out of the scrum, and another answer: "Yes, I have."

"I can't call him. Too unreliable. Can't pin him down."

"Too bad."

"They've brought our prize one back, I hope?" the first voice said.

"He's down below."

"You're sure? Must have him back. Essential."

Turning, he saw Gilmore and his Junior in earnest consultation some yards away. He wanted to ask how Bell came into it and who their prize one' might be, but the pressure of the crowd was too great, and he found himself driven through the Police cordon into court, and across it, along the pa.s.sageway that ran behind the dock to the comparative peace of the benches under the gallery on the jury side. Hardly had he got into his seat, however, than he was aware of Hicks bearing down on him with the insufferably primed and knowing look of a Greek chorus- "Mr Derry, have you heard? Have you heard the news, sir?"

"I can just hear you as it happens-just."

Indeed the noise was deafening. Mr Hicks came closer and hissed through the uproar of voices and shuffling feet: "They're recalling Henderson. Seems that it's true he knew Miss Dodds. They've found a photograph."

"What photograph?"

"Of him and Amy-on Scarboro' prom, I think."

Justin sat back and closed his eyes. He was rid of a nightmare. Mr Jessop's 'four man' theory had dissolved into air. And in its place arose another, not so clear, not clear at all: made up of a dream, the memory of a woman's voice with sounds in the house around her, a figure glimpsed at the corner of a street. He said to himself: 'She meant to tell me something. Suppose Henderson was in her house that night and guessed? Suppose he murdered her?'

IV.

That morning Gilmore called evidence of the actual conspiracy charged.

First Piggott. There had been some fear that the old man might be too alarmed or stupid to understand what he had to do, but in fact he made an admirable witness, far better than Mr Verney. Emphatically he denied ever having owned the chisel 'found' by Pugh 199.

and Mathieson in his house. He had never even seen it before, but had admitted to its ownership out of fear of 'getting into trouble. The coat handed to the Police by Amy Dodds had been his, however. He had never lent it to Kelly; had indeed been wearing it when Kelly set out on his poaching expedition. There had been no sc.r.a.p of paper in its lining, so far as he knew, and he himself had certainly never been inside the Rectory at any time.

Bulwer the tailor followed to swear that the rent in the trousers the Police had shown him must have been caused by some sharp instrument such as a knife or pair of scissors, not by 'a window-ledge or suchlike'. He had told Blair so at the time and Blair had answered: "Think again, man." But he had not thought again. (Much laughter.) Three witnesses testified to seeing Milligan and Kelly with their dog by the Duke's Wall under Bridewell Moor at dawn. A lady (Miss Kelly) had asked them to give this evidence at the a.s.size court, but there had been no money for their fares. One had approached the Police with his story and Blair had said to him: "Ye leein' bogger! I'll mind yer name."

Next came P.C. Pugh in uniform, standing very erect and never once looking at his old colleagues in the dock. He spoke of the 'ruse' of the chisel carried out on Blair's instructions. He (Pugh) had had a bad conscience about it at the time, and worse since. Because worse things had happened. The coat for instance. He himself had searched that coat and found nothing. He had heard Blair say it would be Tielpful' if something happened to be found in its lining, and then something was found. "Providential", the Superintendent had remarked.

"Were there other 'providential' things?" Gilmore asked the witness at this point.

"Aye, sir, the trews, yon trews o' Milligan's." The witness had seen 'ni slit in 'em'. And then P.C. Moffat had gone to Ma.s.singham, a month after the burglary, and had produced a b.u.t.ton and a bit of cloth, and these and the trews, 'aa cut aboot', and been shown to the tailor.