The Massingham Affair Part 8

"Miss Binns, sir? You mean Margaret Binns? From Pelegate?"

"That's right."

"She's inside, sir; got 'er in the cells. Importuning." The Superintendent gave the word its full flavour, so that one could see respectable gentlemen being affronted in public places. "And attempted larceny from the person. She's a bad one, sir."

"Indeed?"

"One of the worst. One of the sly ones. D'you know her, sir?"

"I do."

"Perhaps you'll call and see her then," the Superintendent said. "She could do with some good advice, sir. Had a bad upbringing that girl. Bein' a niece of Geordie Sugden's. Expect you've heard of him, sir?"

"Yes, I think I have."

"Bad hats the lot of 'em. And as full of tricks as a cage of monkeys. You'd be surprised the mischief a girl like that can do, carryin' tales to folk who might be soft enough to believe 'em. Why, I've seen respectable people-people like you and me, sir-taken in by such tales."

73.

"When can I see her?" interrupted Justin.

"See her? Any time you like."

"This afternoon?"

"That'd do fine. You got those pheasants, Pugh?" the Superintendent called back over his shoulder at the constable who had been following some dozen yards behind.

"Got 'em right here, sir."

"Good lad. Well, back to duty, sir. It was a good turn you did us this morning, a real good turn. Got to stop this poachin': that's been me problem all along." And he marched off with P.C. Pugh.

That afternoon after a hasty lunch, having dodged his Georgina whose elegant figure he had seen on the steps of the a.s.sembly Rooms, Justin made his way to Police headquarters in the Lawn-market and sent in his card with a request to see Miss Binns. There seemed a long delay in fetching her, and he had begun to stamp his feet with cold when he heard the rattle of a key and the girl was brought into the interview room from the cells, still in the brown woollen dress she had worn at their first meeting.

When the constable had left them he drew up a chair for her and sat down opposite, as he had done across the desk in his office. It was no good rushing things, for he could see that she was afraid and remembered how slowly she had started, but how the confidences had come br.i.m.m.i.n.g once she had taken heart and got used to him. Such witnesses were like horses whose trust had to be won by infinite patience, and he was in the mood to give it because she had come to him and he felt responsible for her; she seemed so forlorn and alone.

"How long have they held you, Margaret?"

If he could once start her talking, then the rest would follow. He thought she looked frailer than when he had last seen her, and her rather slanting eyes seemed much larger against the dead whiteness of her cheeks. A strange little face: pear-shaped, with a cleft in the chin, and a certain slyness-yes, the Superintendent had been right in that: a sly little waif from the Smedwick gutters. It was not easy to be patient, with time pa.s.sing and his questions unanswered. She sat there, shoulders hunched, looking absurdly small, like a child who had strayed into that cheerless place.

Then gradually the responses came.

"Are you guilty, Margaret?"

"Yes, sir."

THE QUEST: 1899.

"You accosted a man and tried to steal from him?"

"Yes."

"Shall I defend you?"

"If you want, sir."

"Have you a defence?"

"Defence, sir?"

He took a turn up and down the room, trying to overcome his irritation. "Have the Police been talking to you, Margaret?"

"Talkin, sir?"

"You never did any importuning, did you? That was a Police invention?"

"I done it, sir."

"What have they promised you? Did they promise they'd speak up for you in court?"

"Don't know, sir. Per'aps they will."

"Why will they speak for you? Must you do something in return?"

"Don't understand, sir."

"You'll remember you made me a statement in my office. Was that the truth?"

"I thought so at the time, sir."

He leaned down towards her, so that she could no longer avoid his eyes. "And now? What do you think now?"

"Don't rightly know, sir."

"Was it all lies?"

"Mostly."

"Very well, Margaret," he said in a gentler voice. He had proved something to himself, but he felt no sense of triumph, only a sadness that embraced the Superintendent in his office as much as the girl before him in the drab, shapeless dress. "You can go back now with the constable, and I hope they'll be kind to you, as indeed I think they will be, and I don't believe you'll go to prison. Don't blame yourself for anything. I know you tried to do right, and perhaps it will come out one day."

Back in his office with the curtains drawn against the chill of the afternoon he settled down to his problem, impervious to Harris, as later he was to his sisters' gossip over the fire. He was in a bad mood, they agreed: 'grumpy' was how Flo expressed it to herself as she lay wakeful in bed afterwards, pondering over G.o.d's strange perversity in creating men. And next door to her, in the gaslight which was still shining under his door long after midnight, her brother was remembering Miss Binns, and Blair's jovial words, and reading again the lines in which the Vicar of St Bede's reported on his mission: I have been three times to Sugden and he receives me kindly, but I have not thought the time ripe to speak openly of Ma.s.singham. You must not hope too much or too soon, but know that repentance ripens slowly like all other fruits of G.o.d's goodness and that this has been a sinful man. Yet already he is changing. He is no longer the unregenerate man who broke into Verney's, if he ever was that man. We shall know one day, I think.

1 know it now,' thought Justin fiercely and despairingly of the allies whom fate had wished on him. His excellent common sense had deserted him and had left him a prey to impetuous thoughts which would certainly have scared poor Harris out of Ins wits. Ideas of bearding Sugden alternated with still wilder ones of writing an open letter to the press and even of defending Miss Binns against her will. Next day, of course, these fantasies could be seen for what they were, but an intense, restless curiosity about the case remained, and on his first free afternoon, which happened to be Sunday, he set off across the moor and came down to Ma.s.singham as the sun was setting behind Marbury Forest and the gloomy shape of the Rectory on the hill among the trees.

When he came closer he saw what a barrack it was: absurdly large for a village that was little more than a huddle of houses on the slope and a few scattered farms. The main bulk of the Rectory faced south across a river valley crossed by a hump-backed bridge. But there was also a narrower and more formal front looking west to receive those who came in carriages along the drive, and it was through the right-hand of the two windows in this depressingly Victorian facade that the burglars had forced their way on the night of the crime.

He walked over the bridge and up the hill, a little uncertain of why he had come, but as he stood on the high ground where the fields merged into the moorland that ringed the valley he heard the bells sounding for three o'clock evensong, and the thought occurred to him to 'have another look at them'.

He found a church lit by candles. It was a very old church, far older than the Rectory that loured down on it from the hill. Two candles stood on the altar. There was a tall candlestick by the lectern; a few candles for the choir; one for the organist hidden away behind a screen; one for the preacher. The plain gla.s.s windows had begun to reflect their light when Mr Verney went up into the pulpit, with the candle in its socket throwing the glow directly into his face. He looked no older than at the Moot Hall. He might have been giving evidence again as he set his hands in their flowing white sleeves on the rim of the wood and leaned forward to give out his text, which was from Jeremiah.

From Ins seat in an aisle, almost out of the radius of light, Justin watched him and the congregation between them. It was composed mostly of farmers, their wives and children, all soberly dressed and packing as close as they decently could to the rear of the church, where stood an archaic c.o.ke-burning monster of a stove that gave at intervals a kind of stealthy rumble, as though meditating some heretical act. One would not have said they were apathetic, for it seemed to Justin that they were listening and extracting from the Prophet's words certain truths that in some mysterious way they believed to be applicable to themselves. He found this engrossing and quite different from the relationship between Mr Lumley and his flock of town-bred folk in constant fear of being evangelised and enlisted for some worthy cause, to combat Vivisection or prevent atrocities in Armenia. That Mr Verney and Mr Lumley should be members of the same Church struck him as an odd and at the same time comforting thing, and as the little procession with the Cross went into the vestry he meditated over it and applied the lesson to his problem, which for a moment in that quiet place had ceased to trouble him.

The congregation in the nave began to file out and Justin waited, watching the solid country backs retreating into the semi-darkness by the door. But when he followed them he found that the Rector had come unseen to shake his parishioners by the hand on leaving and to take a tally of them, no doubt. There was no avoiding the man, short of doubling back behind a pillar, though why such a crazy notion should have crossed his mind he could not think, for he had nothing to hide; he had not come to spy on Mr Verney. But just as certainly he had not come to confide in him, and as he arrived abreast of the old man he gave him a formal bow and made to pa.s.s on.

He was arrested by a hand, a gnarled hand, scaly as a gardener's, that reached out telescopically and took possession of his own.

"Isn't it Mr Derry? The Solicitor from Smedwick?"

77.

Justin's family had been in the district for generations, far longer than any Verneys, but he was still young enough to be flattered when he was recognised, and besides, 'solicitor of Smedwick' was exactly how he preferred to hear himself described.

"And what brings you to Ma.s.singham?" Mr Verney said. "We don't often have the pleasure of seeing our good neighbours from the town at our services. Did you ride across?"

"I walked over the moor."

"Indeed! Most health-giving exercise. A beautiful countryside, don't you agree? I know of none finer in any weather. But remote, I fear. I think very few people know of the beauties of nature to be found in this valley."

While he was speaking the old man glanced round the church, in which a sidesman was going the rounds snuffing the candles till only one burned by the font. "You may leave it, Tom, I will attend to it," he called out, and then in a whisper to his visitor: "Young Merrick from the farm. A most helpful and worthy soul." The messenger to Blair on the morning of the crime,' noted Justin to himself, remembering the evidence of the night ride across the moor. "Do you return tonight?" the Rector was saying. "Not on foot, I trust?"

"Why yes, sir."

"In the dark, through this very lonely countryside? My dear boy, is that wise? I speak with some feeling; you may recall the affair, but no matter. If only I could lend you my carriage, but alas! my daughter has it and she is from home."

Justin disclaimed any need of a carriage or of young Merrick's horse, which the Rector was disposed to offer him-"I will see Tom about it. Tom! Oh, he has left, but we could call and soon arrange things. He is my right hand: he and his worthy father. If it had not been for them eight years ago . . ."

The last candle was snuffed and they followed one another out through the darkness lit only by the sulphurous glow of a stove clearly out of its true diabolic element. Mr Verney's hand was again on his as they entered the porch, his voice demanding hospitably: "And now you will sup with me, I trust? At least a gla.s.s of wine? Mr Deny, you may not refuse. You are surely not in such haste to be home as that."

They started up the hill towards the barrack shape of the Rectory in the starlight. After a hundred yards they came to a gate in the wall leading into an orchard of straggling trees among an under- the quest: 1899 growth of couch gra.s.s and brambles. Above, surrounding the house, were lawns and flower-beds, and these too, so far as one could see, had a ragged look, as though the place had become too much for its occupants or in some way unloved. But the inside of the house itself still breathed an air of solid comfort, only slightly fallen from the days when the carriages had come rolling up the drive between the laurels, decanting rural deans and their ladies and even a stray bishop. The effect surprised him, for his whole feeling about the Rectory had been conditioned by what he had heard of the crime-as though an act of violence and darkness could have left its mark on the very air! 'A ridiculous notion,' he thought, glancing around in the narrow hall that stretched towards the stairs, flanked on the left by doors leading into the drawing-room and dining-room; and it was then that he found himself staring at a point level with his eyes where part of a door jamb had been hollowed out, as though someone had struck it with an axe, leaving the edges rough with splinters, and then had painted over it.

"Was this where the shot struck?"

"Yes." Mr Verney had moved forward and was touching the place with his hands. "It was fired from inside the dining-room. It was a curious thing, seeing and hearing it in so confined a s.p.a.ce-I seemed to be watching the myriad colours of it spreading out like a fan, like a woman's jewelled fan being opened in the light. I wrote a description of it to the Smedwick Mercury, you may remember."

Justin did remember: and a very ridiculous letter it had seemed to him at the time. But he was in no mood to laugh now, for there was something touching in the old man's earnestness.

"The main charge missed you, of course?" he said.

"Oh yes, and my daughter too, most providentially. If it had been worse than a few pellets that ricocheted we should have been killed without a doubt ... and then those two unfortunate men . . ."

"I take it, Rector, you've no doubt it was those men?"

The old man was gazing at him with astonishment in his very blue short-sighted eyes. "My dear boy, what can you mean? Didn't we see them in this very room? Didn't they leave their footprints in the lane? Why, if young Tom Merrick I was speaking of had only heard them pa.s.sing and come out he would have caught the pair of them red-handed."

There was a pause and then Justin said slowly: "I thought the Merricks' house was uphill, in the village?"

"So it is, my boy: the farm. But Tom lived in the bothy by the bridge-you must have seen it. That's where my daughter went: straight down Church Lane in their very tracks, the scoundrels!"

"And Tom heard her, presumably?"

"Oh yes, thank G.o.d for it! He heard her coming-stumbling on the road, he said."

Justin drank his wine and went thoughtfully back to Smedwick by the highway, asking himself a question that kept yielding a surprising answer. It was quite driven out of his mind, however, by the sight of the Reverend Mr Lumley waiting for him in the drawing-room of 'The Laurels'.

"He has confessed!" Mr Lumley cried, leaping to his feet in his enthusiasm at sight of his ally. "G.o.d be praised for it." Apparently the great event for which he had been working had occurred some hours earlier, after evensong, in St Bede's Vicarage, to which Sugden had been bidden. "And he has agreed that I may tell you everything," the good man confided in high excitement.

Justin had been told 'everything' before in the course of his professional experience and he had come to distrust the word. "You seem very dubious," said Mr Lumley, noticing this.

"Not in the least."

"You expected it, then?"

"Not that either. I congratulate you."

"It is a matter for rejoicing, certainly," the Vicar reproved him, "but you will remember it is G.o.d's work, not mine. A sinner has come to repentance."

"If belatedly," murmured the solicitor.

"Yes, my dear sir, but he has come, and there is the point of it. He has come. Let me tell you how it happened. We were in my study. He seemed in a mood to submit to G.o.d with humility, acknowledging his sins. Perhaps my sermon had had some part in it. We talked and he said he was a sinful man. So I asked him outright if he had been at Ma.s.singham that night. Well, at that the poor fellow turned the most deathly pale, he literally gasped for breath." The Vicar's moon face seemed to grow even paler and the words came out staccato. " 'Oh sir,' he said, 'you've hurt me, you've hurt me, sir,' and he kept repeating it. He asked for a gla.s.s of water and I gave it to him, I quite feared for him, he seemed so ill. But his colour came back after a while, so I said to him, 'Is it true you were at Mr Ver-ney's?' and he said, 'Oh sir, but I was not the man who fired the shot.'"

"Yes?" said Justin, and waited.

"Implying that he knew that man. That he had been at Verney's at the time and knew him."

"Quite. Did he have anything more to say?"

"No, he didn't."

Justin never gave way to the sense of disappointment and possibly of outrage that some men might have felt at having their expectations let down with such a b.u.mp because he had had no expectations and knew that in the Vicar's shoes he would not have achieved anything at all. "An admirable beginning," he commended him warmly, and meant it.

Mr Lumley looked relieved. "I was afraid that you were going to say something different. I was afraid you were displeased with me."

"However could you think that?"

"Because I should have had it in writing, I suppose. And because it sounds so little when you examine it. Not even a real confession."

"It was a confession right enough."