The Massingham Affair Part 7

Suppose-this seemed the most Likely explanation-suppose she had made up her quarrel with her uncle and had returned under his wing, only too anxious to forget that she had ever made a statement or called on a solicitor? The letters could be lying at the house in Pelegate. There at least was something which could be settled, and that evening, ignoring the inner prompting that told him he was making a fuss over matters which did not concern him, he set off to see.

Forty-seven was the number. There were two numbers to each house, an upstairs and a downstairs, which in turn would be subdivided, making a perfect warren of the place. They had not been bad houses once. Someone who had not given particular thought to it, but had been bred in a tradition, had built them and arranged the gentle curve of frontages that followed the line of the street as it led uphill under the moor. There were no gardens. It had been an age that had prized symmetry above everything: ten houses to a row, six rooms to a house: no one had thought of privies, which had proliferated in the yards behind among the rabbit hutches and chicken runs.

Justin approached the house, from the rear of which came the sound of hammering and of a woman berating a child. The whole life of the street seemed to pa.s.s out of sight of it in a kind of limbo that the pa.s.ser-by on the respectable side, the blind side, could never witness. He knocked, hearing the reverberations in the apparently empty building. No lights shone behind the grimed net curtains. A strange sort of desert. He was reminded of tales he had read of explorers along the Amazon seeing no one, conscious of being watched, of a minute surveillance, of life going on around them just out of sight. He looked up. From a window on the top floor the head and shoulders of a man projected like a gargoyle from a battlement, gazing down at him. For a moment he did not know what to say, he was so much taken by surprise and felt so much at a disadvantage, as the watched always feel; then he called out an enquiry whether Miss Binns lived there.

"What do you want?"

He raised his voice. "Does Miss Binns live here? Miss Margaret Binns?"

"In gaol," the voice very laconically replied. "You're Mr Deny, aren't you? The solicitor?"

"That's right."

"I telt her not to see you," the man said.

"What do you mean? What's she done?"

The head was withdrawn; the window came creaking down; but before it shut he caught the last words, uttered in a tone of great contempt and disparagement: "Ask Blair or Geordie Sugden. Diwen't bother me."

Justin returned to his office very thoughtful. He made certain enquiries. And when he had the answers he took Miss Binns's folder from his safe and set out to call on the Reverend Walter P. Beaumont Lumley. It was the decisive step of his life.

Ill The Reverend Mr Lumley, Vicar of St Bede's, was a well-known figure in Smedwick at that time, where his compact person with its bouncing step, suggesting one of those rubber b.a.l.l.s that are always ricocheting in violent motion from place to place, was often to be seen rushing out from his hideous red-brick vicarage on some errand of mercy or exhortation. Everything about Mr Lumley suggested enthusiasm. His hair was luxuriant, standing up eagerly from his forehead in a quiff above rather staring eyes bright with excellent intentions, and his voice was bell-like, as though he were sounding a constant message of good cheer. Most people liked Mr Lumley, but they preferred to do it at a distance.

Justin bearded him in the vicarage study: a room with Gothic windows looking out over a shrubbery of laurels and a lawn which had once been a croquet lawn but had reverted in nature's vengeful way. Group photographs of whiskered young men in att.i.tudes that had been fashionable in the 'eighties lined the walls, and on the mantelpiece, among an array of tobacco jars in college and club colours, stood a print of Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World' in a steel frame. Books and sermon paper were strewn over the table, which was covered with a red cloth and lit by an oil lamp with a Sheffield plate stem and gla.s.s bowl; while on the periphery, ebony tables, whose legs were carved in oriental shapes featuring elephants, were scattered haphazard about the room, loaded with magazines and old clothes for distribution to the poor of the parish. In the heart of this chaos the Vicar himself was to be seen, dressed in a Norfolk jacket and high collar-not a clerical collar, which Mr

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THE Ma.s.sEKGHAM AFFAIR.

Lumley only wore on Sundays and in Lent-suggesting a man of excellent health and appet.i.te, fresh from his daily exercise of wrestling with the Devil.

"My dear Deny, pray come in, come in. What a pleasure! How good of you to call, how very good. You'll take a cup of tea? Rose"- this to the parlour-maid whose cap sat on the top of her head like a halo-"Rose, my dear, will you see to it that Mr Derry has some tea?"

While uttering these words, the Vicar had taken his guest by the arm and urged him towards a very tall chair whose back was covered in a tapestry of St George slaying the dragon or Don Quixote and the windmills-no one had ever been able to determine which.

"Sit down, my dear sir, sit down. If you'll just wait while I remove these papers. Ha! Rose must really clear these away some time. And how are your dear good sisters? Well, I hope. What we should do without them both I can't imagine. You are doubly blessed, my dear sir. And now if you'll tell me what brings you so agreeably?"

So Justin told him of Miss Binns's visit, of Miss Kelly and what had happened since, and Mr Lumley listened. Even when listening he seemed to be the more active of the two: leaning forward in his chair, hands gripping his knees, inclining his trunk forwards and stretching out his neck as though he were about to launch himself on top of the story as a cat pounces on a mouse. At intervals he made clicking noises with his tongue against his teeth, which were not his own and not of very perfect fit. People sometimes found it an ordeal to tell Mr Lumley things. They never had to complain of his zeal or sympathy, however.

"So it comes to this, does it not?" he rushed in as soon as his visitor had finished. "You believe that two innocent men are serving prison sentences at this moment?"

"It seems possible."

"They are not my parishioners, you understand. They are Papists, I believe. Not that it matters in the least, since if they are innocent it is our plain duty to help them, no matter who they are. Are they innocent?"

"It would appear they may be."

The Vicar smiled. It was a pleasant smile, yet oddly enough the wrinkling of the lines around the eyes made him look a much shrewder person. "Now come, Derry, is it your certainty you're bringing me or your doubts?"

"My opinion, for what it's worth."

"How you gentlemen of the law hate to commit yourselves. A good fault, my dear sir, and I could certainly profit from it myself. Your opinion is worth a good deal, and you think an injustice has been done."

"Not only to Milligan and Kelly."

"Ah! You are suggesting that it was because she made a statement that poor Miss Binns has been arrested, quite falsely, for importuning in the street. And that your man at the window (who was Mr Green the roadman, also a witness) fears the same treatment from the Police and won't have you in the house?"

"That's what I'm suggesting, certainly."

"I am getting you into a dangerous state of candour, Derry, you must beware of me. Now am I right, are you suggesting that the Police were mistaken in the case they brought eight years ago and are defending their mistake?"

"I have a strong suspicion of it."

"A suspicion, yes. Forgive me examining you in this way, and most incompetently by your standards, I feel sure. But tell me this. Does Miss Binns's statement satisfy you that this man Sugden, my parishioner, was in the Rectory that night?"

"I believe her statement."

"And do you feel that legally what she says is strong enough to give you something to work on, some basis of fact?"

"Not without Sugden's help."

"You must mean his confession."

At this point in the discussion there came a knock at the door and Rose entered with a tray on which reposed the enormous silver teapot embossed with scrolls that was usually required to calm the nerves of the parochial church council. Mr Lurnley did the honours with hearty benevolence, committing the solecism-and it was a solecism in those days-of putting the milk in first: it would not have happened at the Deverels'. While he poured he talked.

"Do you take sugar, Derry? You don't? Neither do I. It has sometimes occurred to me that the decadence of civilisations is not unconnected with what is nowadays called 'the sweet tooth', a patent symbol of decay. I fear I have a tendency to labour the point a little, but to my mind ripeness is not all; it is too much, if I may be permitted an aphorism. We have gone too far from simplicity."

His voice had fallen into the booming cadence which his congre-

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gation had known and admired for a decade. Perhaps from long habit he had come to think that all those to whom he handed cups of tea must be parishioners, whose pleasure it was to listen and go away edified. But when he actually handed the cup to his guest he recalled himself.

"You were saying, my dear sir?"

Justin had been saying nothing for some time. But he had taken the measure of his host and replied at once: "My point was that Miss Binns's statement is of only limited importance. One might think of it as a kind of bait, if you'll forgive the term."

"To catch Sugden with, you mean?"

"Not 'catch'," Justin said, detecting the first note of reservation in his host's voice. "'Catch' is quite the wrong word, as I perceive that 'bait' was. I don't want to trap Sugden or do anything improper. But if it should be that he was one of the real criminals of that night, then it follows that two innocent men are suffering because of rumor one at least-and that is wrong."

"Most wickedly wrong," came the resounding chime of Mr Lum-ley's voice.

"And I think, subject to your judgment, Vicar, that Sugden should be told of this statement and know what is being said. It might affect him. Don't they say confession is good for the soul?"

"Laymen say it, Deny. And priests know it. But it is not a thing to be forced. A layman and his spiritual guide are in a special relationship, you must understand. We are on dangerous ground."

Looking at the zealous face on the other side of the teapot, Justin knew that he was indeed on dangerous ground: if he was not careful the Vicar would remove the whole case into the realm of dogma and ascend with it out of sight. The a.s.sumption must be challenged at once. "You will forgive me," he said in his most legal voice, "but I think we are in danger of misunderstanding one another, and that would be a pity."

"A great pity," echoed Mr Lumley, reaching out to refill his guest's cup.

Justin suffered it, though in fact he disliked tea, and the Vicar's Mothers' Meeting brew more than any other. "May I explain my point, Vicar? I would naturally not dream of interfering in any relationship of a confidental kind between you and Sugden. But I used 'confession' in a wider sense as meaning this: that he possesses certain knowledge that may help to right a gross injustice, and I see nothing sacred in that knowledge and nothing wrong in going to him as man to man to question him. I came to you because you know him better than I do; in fact I don't know him at all."

But Mr Lumley was shaking his head. "No, you are wanting me to ask the questions," he said. "And then you will be wanting to hear the answers."

"Only if Sugden agrees I should hear them."

"Suppose he refuses? Would you be satisfied with that refusal?"

"In so far as the matter of your enquiries was concerned, I'd accept it."

"And then what would you do?"

"Why, Vicar, I'd go to him and make some enquiries of my own."

Mr Lumley burst into laughter-a loud booming laugh that seemed to originate in the region of his belly and rolled upwards till his face with its pendulous cheeks was shaking with it. Mr Lum-ley's laugh was famous but a rare effect: many parishioners had never heard it.

"My dear sir, that is most frank," he managed to get out, "most refreshingly frank. What you are proposing seems to me an alliance of a quite novel kind, but pray don't think I'm rejecting it out of hand. Nothing should be allowed to blind us to an injustice. You are on the side of the angels, though you will forgive me if I tell you that your arguments sound quite satanically inspired. Well now: suppose I accept this unholy alliance?"

"That would please me very much."

"You won't ask too much of me? You'll try and understand my position?"

"I'll do my best."

"Well then, Deny, let us seal the bond."

And he poured out two more cups of tea.

IV.

Some days later Justin had a case to prosecute before the magistrates. It was a poaching' morning, which had brought a goodly number of gentlemen in tweeds and mutton-chop whiskers on to the bench under the chairmanship of Colonel Deverel. On a table to the left were the remains of three c.o.c.k pheasants and the ingenious contraption of pole and wire that had been used to charm

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them off their perches in the night; all in charge of a police constable by the name of Pugh, at whose elbow sat Superintendent Blair, a shade more solid and constabulary, if that were possible, than at the trial in the Moot Hall eight years earlier. Below the bench, facing the clerk who had read the charge and taken the plea, sat the accused man, Peel, in a velveteen jacket with a whisk of hair brushed up on his forehead like a c.o.c.katoo's.

When the preliminaries were over and it was his turn to begin, Justin rose to present his case in the concise manner favoured by Rees, who had often practised in that court. He saw the prisoner sitting with bowed head, the Superintendent's glazed appraising stare, Colonel Deverel's darkening countenance as the atrocities committed on the pheasants were outlined.

"Call Joseph Henderson."

Immediately there was a stir in court and the chairman demanded in a troubled voice: "Henderson? Joseph Henderson? Is he a witness for the Prosecution?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is he the . . . ? Oh yes, I see the man."

Justin turned to face the stalwart fellow who was marching into the box. He too had been surprised to learn that the most famous of the Smedwick poachers had turned gamekeeper, and he hoped that the bench would enjoy the experience of listening to him.

"Your name is Joseph Henderson?" he began.

"Aye, sir."

"And I think you are a gamekeeper employed by Mr John Car-michael of High Eals. Forgive my asking you this, but you will not wish to deceive the court: it is true, is it not, that there are convictions against you for poaching offences in the past?"

"Quite a canny few, sir."

"But now you're otherwise employed?"

"And better paid, sir. More regular."

There was laughter in which the magistrates joined, some more heartily than others. What a cool customer the fellow was, thought Justin. It was on him that the Police had called early on the morning of the burglary at Verney's, and there were other things about him, other tales, if only he could remember. . . .

When it was over, after an hour's argument in the course of which he had demolished one of the long and involved alibis beloved of poachers, he hurried out of court almost into the arms of Blair, who appeared suddenly from the vestibule, with P.C. Pugh behind him bearing the remains of the pheasants in a wooden box. Justin made to pa.s.s by; then thought better of it and fell into step as they went out into the wintry sunlight gleaming on the bare trees of the park and the castle walls beyond.

"You fettled Peel right, sir," the Superintendent remarked with satisfaction as they went down the steps. "He led us a dance, that chap, and no mistake. But you showed him up, sir."

"I think your witness helped."

"You mean Henderson?" The Superintendent chuckled over the name a great deal more cheerfully than the magistrates had done. "We have to take what comes our way, sir."

"I'm sure you do."

"He made a good witness, sir."

"Almost an expert, wouldn't you say?"

Blair laughed loud and long at that. "Expert? Well, he was a poacher, sir, admitted. Beggars can't be choosers, sir. We can't pick all our witnesses."

"I expect not. And how's Miss Binns?" said Justin in the same conversational voice he had been using all along.