The Massingham Affair Part 10

"Have you her address?"

"Five Clay Yard. I telled the lad."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"Seen her about, sir. Now and then like."

Justin asked no more questions. Clearly a coldness had developed between the two women, but it was about the last thing to surprise him and in any case it was none of his business. He did not want

91.

to be involved in jealousies that had probably been present from the day Kelly had brought his clever, domineering sister and pliant mistress together under the same roof. Even in the witness-box at the Moot Hall when their interests had been identical the difference between them had been striking-Miss Kelly all fire and independence; poor Amy a calamity. He wondered what had become of her. 'On the game', most probably, which would account for the distaste her name seemed to arouse in his formidable and Puritanically minded client.

Yet if Number 5 Clay Yard was a 'gay' house, he thought, then words had lost their meaning. A derelict shack in an alley off Pele-gate, it stood between a barn and a stretch of waste land through which meandered a stream choked with rubbish. In the gathering twilight he could see stone steps drunkenly askew, the blank face of a window with drawn blinds, a door with a bra.s.s knocker green with age.

Just then he saw movement behind the blinds in the upper room and guessed that someone had heard him and was having a peep. Was the correct response to knock? To take off one's hat? The thought that Mr Lumley would surely have known rebuked him. But after a while he heard sounds upstairs, then footsteps coming down, and the door opened.

His first thought was that she had not changed at all. The same pinched face with big frightened eyes was staring at him from the shadows of the pa.s.sage, giving him the same oddly pleasurable shock of recognition that he had known when old Verney had gone into die pulpit at Ma.s.singham.

Once inside in the parlour in the lamplight he could see that in some ways there had been changes. She had put on weight, which became her, as did the quieter clothes she wore, and her hail was glossier and no longer crimped and curled into a mop. Even the pathetic sticks of furniture had had care lavished on them, though the effect seemed inexpressibly forlorn against the damp patches on the walls and the flaking plaster from the ceiling where the slats showed through. There was a rug whose pattern had all but vanished, a table covered with a cloth on which stood a vase of dried flowers, two devotional pictures, a horsehair sofa with cushions woven in rainbow coloured wools. It was more, he reflected, than 5 Clay Yard deserved; more than the whole community (himself included) deserved that allowed such things to happen.

Very gently, doing his best not to alarm her, he began to explain why he had come, keeping his own expectations of her at a minimum. The most he could look for was that she might have some piece of knowledge, small in itself, which would enlarge the pattern he had been building up or give him a lead to some other witness, perhaps even to the elusive friend who had made the rendezvous at the Griffin Bridge. But there he drew a complete blank. He saw at once that she had no knowledge of any such person. And when he went on to sound her about Sugden's guilt and the ident.i.ty of the other man who had been at Ma.s.singham he sensed in her an immediate distrust, something defensive and resentful, as though after years of waiting she had ceased to hope and didn't want to be bothered any more.

The moment he spotted this he changed tack. Since the future had not drawn her, he would try the past. It made him feel a confidence trickster to be exploiting grief, but he told himself as people do on such occasions that it was for her good. And once they were back beyond the Moot Hall trial into the shadowy world of Piggott's house, with the evening of the crime before them, the sheer fascination of the thing took hold of him and he became engrossed by the tale that only she could tell him-of how Kelly had looked, and what he had said, and how he had gone out to Milligan on the first stage of his journey into darkness.

First, his clothes.

Breeches, boots, a 'newish grey tweed jacket'-his only one. Every detail was in place and vividly recalled. It had been some time after ten when Kelly had gone out with his snares in his pocket saying he was going 'to the Moor', his favourite hunting-ground, clear of the keepers who infested the estates in the plain below. The last she had seen of him that night was at the corner of the street, where Milligan had joined him, and they had turned off into Gilesgate, going north, with Matt the terrier trotting at their heels.

While she had been speaking something had stirred in the back of Justin's mind, just out of reach. It was infuriating being unable to catch hold of it. But he did not like to stop her on the brink of the hour when Kelly had come home for the last time in the grey morning light. "I got 'im into bed, sir. But then these Poliss come, sir, and pulled 'im out, not savin' what they was wantin' or what 'e done. They got 'is shoes, sir, and the breeches, which was damp but they

93.

telt 'im to get into 'em. Then they spots this old coat of 'is, sir-and so I give it 'em."

"But wasn't it a 'newish' coat that he'd been wearing?" said Justin softly, and the wayward thought had clicked into place in his mind. 'A newish grey tweed jacket'-weren't those your words?"

"Was they, sir?"

"How did a newish grey tweed coat manage to turn into that greasy old horror the Police swore to as being Mick Kelly's at the trial?"

She was staring at him wide-eyed. "Don't understand, sir."

"I think you do. Why did you say old coat' just now?"

"It were just a word, sir. Just slipped out like."

"Were the Police lying when they produced that hideous old coat as the one you handed them?"

No answer.

"Which coat did you hand them, Amy?"

There was a long silence and then she said: "The old-un. It were one o' Piggott's. I'd burnt the ither."

The intoxicating feeling that he had broken through at last swept over him like a wave. If she had told the truth and the jacket which he had seen in court and in which the compromising sc.r.a.p of paper had been found by Dr Higson had not been the one Kelly had been wearing on the night of the burglary, then it followed that either the half-blind Piggott had been wearing it at Ma.s.singham (which was absurd), or some third party had borrowed it, or else the Police had deliberately torn the large sheet of paper found in the Rectory and planted a piece of it for Higson to find in the lining of what they had believed was Kelly's coat. This last scarifying notion did not alarm him as much as it would have done in Rees's day: he was more hardened to human frailties and thought it was probably the truth. But he could see one great objection to it. Neither Amy nor Miss Kelly had said a word about it at the trial when they had had every reason for speaking out and saying whose coat it was. Could there be an explanation of such silence?

A moment later and he had hit on it himself. They had not spoken because if they had no one would have believed them, even if Piggott had been sane enough to be called or Kelly himself had had the legal right to go into the box. They had no other coat to produce. Amy had burnt it.

The wind had got up and for some time the house had been full of those oddly furtive sounds so suggestive of visitors on a winter's night whom one may not wish to see. It was the same at 'The Laurels', where there was a cupboard on the landing with a varied repertoire of groans and loud e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns that had scared him out of his wits as a boy and still woke him sometimes with uneasy memories. But this time it sounded different-softer and more purposeful, as though someone had come in through the back door and might be moving in the pa.s.sageway beyond. He glanced across at Amy, but she seemed to have noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

"Why did you burn the coat?" he said, deciding that he had imagined things. "You can tell me, you know, I'm on your side. You won't remember me, but I was always on your side. I was with Mr Rees the solicitor at the trial."

"I know that," she remarked surprisingly.

"You mean you remember me?"

" 'Course I do, sir. There was you and Mr Rees-that was the old gentleman-and a young gentleman in a wig."

"Mr Gilmore."

"I remember all right," she said. "You done your best, all of you. We all done our best."

"The coat," he reminded her gently, touched by her acceptance of him.

"The coat, sir?"

"Yes, listen: I think I know how it happened that you burnt it and never told the court. You knew that Mick had been poaching."

"He telt me, sir."

"So that when the Police came you all thought they wanted him for poaching?"

"That we did, sir. They telt us nothing."

"And did the coat have blood on it?" He saw her trusting smile turn suddenly cold, as though she had glimpsed an enemy and not the friend of Kelly's he had pretended to be. "I meant rabbit's blood of course," he added quickly.

"Don't know, sir."

He shook his head, trying his best to rea.s.sure her. "I'm afraid you must have misunderstood me, Amy. Don't you see that if you thought they wanted him for poaching, and you found rabbit's blood on the coat and perhaps rabbit's fur in the pockets, that explains why you burnt it and gave the Police the other jacket? You must see that."

95.

"Should I, sir?"

"And that in turn explains why you couldn't risk telling the court the truth of what you'd done. It would have looked as though you'd burnt it because you thought that Mr Verney's blood was on it or something to connect the coat with Ma.s.singham. Don't you see that it explains it all?"

Above the gusts of wind that buffeted the house he thought he heard again the sound of stealthy movement near the back door, something like the raising of a latch, and this time she seemed to have heard it too. She was glancing around her with the closed, hunted look that he remembered from the Moot Hall, but whether there really had been someone in the house who had now gone or whether it was him she feared, the hidden enemy who had tried to trap her and Kelly with fair words as they had trapped her long ago with their sc.r.a.p of paper, that iniquitous lying sc.r.a.p of paper, he could not tell. He only knew that she had closed up against him. Only at the door, as he was going out into Clay Yard, did it seem to him that her att.i.tude had changed again and that there was something she wanted to tell him, something urgent that concerned him and perhaps the present more than the past. But though he waited she said nothing, and he decided he must have been wrong.

Outside it was a wild night but the visibility was good. He had just turned into Pelegate when he heard footsteps ahead and in a patch of lamplight saw the hurrying figure of a man. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but the distance was too great for him to be sure. He met no one else on the way home.

VIII.

The following afternoon, while he was still puzzling over the problem of Amy and the affair of Piggott's coat, he got word that Sugden's condition had worsened and that Mr Lumley was proposing to make an emergency call that night with food and medicines.

Most desirable. You can ceitainly count on me. Will be with you at the Vicarage at six.

he scribbled on a sheet of office paper and sent Spinks off with it at once. It was always as well to present his ally with a fail accompli or something that looked like one on such occasions, where otherwise he might go rushing off on his own, forgetful of the gentleman's agreement between them.

He expected some resistance, after what the Vicar had said on the subject of dying declarations. But when at six precisely he rang the Vicarage bell and was shown into the study he found Mr Lum-ley in one of his most practical moods. "You can help with the parcels," were the words that greeted him.

There were a great number of them. Deeply laden, carrying amongst other impedimenta an oil stove which the Vicar continued to insist was portable, they set off along Gilesgate for the tenement in Bewley Street. Near its door they met two figures hurrying down the hill towards them-a man and a woman remarkably like Miss Kelly and her fiance Longford, thought Justin, who called out a greeting to them as they pa.s.sed in the gloom. He got no answer. There was no wind, but it was bitterly cold, and there was no fire in the room where Sugden lay in the double bed with an old quilt drawn up around his scrawny neck. From the other bed the eyes of the children followed them as they came in-the elder girl's bright with fever, bright as Sugden's own-and behind them hovered the figure of a woman dimly seen in the shadows. The man's face was like parchment, a muddy yellow with a scurf of grey bristles; the hands scaly and dry, gripping the coverlet; the mouth open to show broken and discoloured teeth. Justin found himself observing this quite clinically. His compa.s.sion was not an inexhaustible well like Mr Lumley's, and though he was sorry for what he saw lying on the bed, his thoughts were with the innocent and with the child Mary a few yards to his left, whose shallow breathing alarmed him far more.

"Now, George, I've news for you," came the Vicar's comforting voice at his ear. "I'm bringing a doctor for you and the little girl, and he'll be coming tonight. You won't be stubborn about it, I'm sure."

"You shouldn't have done it, sir."

"But I have. I know your good wife will see it my way, won't you, Martha?"

"So I will, sir," a small frightened voice responded.

"There you are, George! You surely know better than to quarrel with both of us at once. Besides, we must think of Mary. And you are to have no qualm about payment or anything of the kind, for that will be attended to. Would you care for a little broth? Martha will light the stove. It can't do you any harm if you fancy it."

The Vicar had already begun to unpack his bag, which was seen

97.

to contain a variety of articles including three balloons which he solemnly inflated in front of the children's eyes. There was also a bracelet for the further beautification of the doll Carmen, and this the Vicar put in place, having carefully lifted the gla.s.s dome under which she lived. He had some difficulty in fastening it and had to call on Mrs Sugden, perhaps for some other purpose also, for Justin heard the anxious murmur of their voices across the room. Glancing down, he saw Sugden's eyes watching him, but whether their expression was of encouragement or fear or some other emotion, he could not tell.

"So you came back, sir?"

Justin replied drily: "As you see."

"It were good of you, sir. Don't know what I done to deserve it, I'm sure. The Vicar-he's a good friend to me, sir, and always has been. He'll say a good word over me when the time comes."

"Should you be talking so much?"

"But you'll be wantin' me to talk, isn't that it? You'll be wantin' it. That's funny that is, sir."

It seemed to Justin that he had at last identified the expression in the eyes, and for so sick a man it was a remarkably ironical one. But at that moment a fit of coughing racked the invalid.

"What's the matter, George?" enquired the Vicar, arriving hot foot at the bedside with a bottle and a spoon which Martha had given him.

"Nothin', sir. Me and Mr Derry's been havin' a little chat like."

"You'd do better to conserve your strength."

"So the gentleman was sayin', but it's all right, sir, I likes company. It was kind bringin' the balloons. You've always been kind, sir."

The Vicar clearly did not know how to reply to this and silence fell, shattered by a sudden banging sound from downstairs and voices raised in dispute.

"You might give them to the bairns, sir," Sugden said, propping himself up on one elbow.

"Isn't it rather late? I don't want to excite them, as I know Martha will agree. They shall have them in the morning. And you yourself can do the honours."

"If I'm here."

"Of course you'll be here," declared the Vicar in a voice that had become decidedly testy, for he was an ardent disciple of Self Help and did not exempt even the dying from keeping cheerful about their prospects. "We'll soon have you up and about. You take a little of this medicine for your cough, and Martha shall make the broth, and when the doctor comes he'll bless me for sure for bringing him out to you on a night like this. That's more like it"-for the ghost of a smile had appeared on the man's gaunt and hollow face. "I never saw such a patient in all my born days-up one minute and down the next. And talkative too."

"You like a good crack yourself, Vicar."

"So I do. It's my job, isn't it? How would it be if I just stood around and gouped at you? You're not all that handsome, eh, Martha?"

She had come to the bedside and Justin saw her properly for the first time: a small woman with a look of defeat about her, as though she had long ceased to hope for anything.

"Martha knows better than that," the Vicar said, seeing that she was not going to respond. "And so should you, George Sugden. Not be here indeed! If I'd thought you'd talk that way, bless me if I'd have come. Is that broth ready yet?"

"Be a while yet, sir."

"We'll get it into him and then he can sleep till the doctor comes."

"When you've asked me the questions like," said George.

"What questions?"