The Assize of the Dying Page 6

  Margaret had closed the door after her in order to give herself time to open the paper in the hall, and search the ‘Personal’ column for her advertisement. It was there, with the usual half-dozen others. It looked so unobtrusive that she wondered if anyone would really be jolted into attention by it, and bother to answer. Sir Robert might well be a fair test case, for he would certainly open at once to this page, since it was here that the few bare paragraphs on the Stevenson case were deployed for the evening, under unjustified headlines: ‘Assize of the Dying: Latest Developments.’ What the item actually stated was that there were no developments since the identification of the broch, already reported in the dailies. Mr Fredericks’ name and address had been kept out of print; but for the accident of his inheritance they would certainly never have been confided to Malachi.

  Beneath the smaller type of the column, the capitals she had insisted on for ‘SPEEDWELL’ stood out well. She felt a little encouraged. Readers to whom the name meant nothing might easily slide past it and never recognise what they had read, but a man whose mind was on that ear-clip should not, surely, miss its significance. She refolded the paper carefully, and took it in and gave it to Sir Robert.

  He opened it, as she had expected, to the page from which his accepted curse confronted him, and read impassively. His only comment was a quiet sigh.

  ‘Nothing new? I’m not surprised. It will pass, diminuendo, as these things do.’

  There was a sudden sharply indrawn breath, like the acknowledgement of a stab of pain. Sir Robert was sitting erect, the paper spread in his hands, his gaze frozen and still.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh – nothing new! This – oh, no, it’s no more than a queer coincidence, just a word that cropped up out of context. Do you ever catch an echo from years ago, like a bell ringing?’ He read out slowly, incredulously, Margaret’s advertisement. ‘Speedwell! It’s years since I saw the word printed, even – probably not since the programmes. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  He read and re-read the single line, his broad brow gradually drawn down into a shadowy and painful frown. Margaret could see his lips stirring strangely upon the words, and she received from him, as it were through the charged air, a sensation of almost unbearable agitation and sadness. When he finally put the paper aside and looked up at them, his eyes were hollow and dark, staring at something far beyond and apart from the cream-and-rose walls of the Clevely Square drawing-room. She felt as if she had approached a mirror, and encountered face to face a reflection which was not her own. He had seen and noticed her message, if a test was what she had wanted; but what was it he had seen? Nothing she had written into it, but some fantastic recollection of his own, something from the remote past.

  Afterwards, when he had left them, she asked her uncle: ‘Why was he so disturbed by that notice? What did the word “speedwell” mean to him, to upset him so much?’

  Mr Justice Manton looked at her for a long moment in silence, and when he spoke his voice was deceivingly calm and untroubled.

  ‘Robert’s in a low state just now, and has this case very much on his conscience. I’m afraid everything that can conceivably be linked up with Zoë Trevor leaps automatically to his eye – whether it has anything to do with her or not. He knew her very well at one time. It was before your day, of course, and the show’s never been revived, so the title’s dropped out of remembrance these days. Speedwell was the musical comedy in which she made her first London success. She was seventeen then, and Robert was – old enough to know better, but he didn’t.’

  ‘He was in love with her, too?’ said Margaret.

  ‘He was engaged to her, for a short time. She had good sense, and was fond of him in her way, and she broke it off. He took it very hard. It’s no wonder, really, that the word hit him hard tonight.’

  He flashed a glance at her face, and stopped abruptly there. Old men reminisce too much, but why involve the young unnecessarily? He thought: ‘We’re all becoming obsessed by this affair. Even Margaret is infected.’ And he was firmly silent, with that quality of silence which she knew better than to disturb. What was the use of elaborating? Robert had had some small articles of jewellery made for his darling, in the form of germander speedwells, to commemorate her success. What were they – dress-clips? – ear-rings? He had forgotten details. There remained only a recollection of loss, not to be shared with the young. The young would be recalling their own losses only too soon.

  In the morning, before she left the house to meet her friend, Margaret rang up Malachi’s hotel, but he was already out, and had left a message for her to the effect that he had gone to the house in Hampstead with the solicitor who was handling Zoë’s estate, and expected to be involved in legal matters most of the day. She felt a distinct stab of disappointment which had nothing to do with the necessity for carrying the weight of her secret all day alone, but was somehow more intimately tangled with the sound of Malachi’s voice in her ear, and the dark, level look of his disturbing eyes. To spend a whole day away from him was now curiously damaging to her equilibrium, as though she moved in a continual slight danger of vertigo. The day, however, passed. London and shopping and her friend’s conversation revolved brightly round her, until she saw Maeve off at King’s Cross, and took a taxi back to Clevely Square.

  Charlie was in the bathroom, singing lustily. She banged on the door and adjured him not to be long, for it was already after six o’clock.

  ‘Fine time to come home!’ shouted Charlie, breaking off in the middle of ‘La Donna è Mobile’.

  ‘You should talk, staying out all night! When did you get in?’

  ‘Came home for lunch. I went straight to the office when I got into town this morning.’

  ‘You’re going to be out again tonight?’ She had recognised all the signs of one of his total exits, when a trail of strewn garments, wet towels and slammed doors marked his passage through the house, and almost before she could greet him he had kissed her lightly and gone again. ‘You don’t live in this house,’ she cried, thumping her palm against the door, ‘you only haunt it.’

  ‘You go and fetch your things, I’m coming out in a tick.’ And by the time she was back from her bedroom he was just emerging, flushed and tousled, and plunging head-down for his own room to dress. In mid-flight, when it seemed they would pass with only a wild exchange of smiles, he caught her for an instant in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Everything all right, Meg?’ He smiled at her, his thin, long cheeks dimpling tenderly.

  ‘Of course, idiot! Why not?’

  He swung her on into the bathroom, and fled. All she saw of him afterwards was a wave of the hand from the front doorway, and a valedictory smile, as she came down the stairs dressed and refreshed, to look for the evening paper. It was early to expect an answer, her own notice had appeared only in the late editions, but she trembled with mingled eagerness and reluctance as she picked up the crumpled early Gazette which Charlie had just thrown down. The door, slamming loudly upon his spruce departure, made her start as at a pistol-shot. She drew breath deeply, steadying her heart against too much anticipation.

  But it was there, first in the brief column, leaping to her eye instantly when she folded back the page:

  ‘LIGHT FINGERS: St Lucian Martyr, south porch, eleven tonight. SPEEDWELL.’

  As soon as she read it she knew that she had never really believed in it. She had speculated and dreaded, foreseeing all the strange meeting-places the unknown might have appointed her, but even the fear had been an imaginative fantasy; for now that she read the message and knew it for a reality, the fear was gone. She found herself chilled but calm, her mind moving upon practical necessities with a methodical deliberation. Eleven o’clock – a churchyard somewhere not very far from the Albert Hall. She would have to look it up on the map to be quite sure of its position, but she thought she remembered it. A rather large churchyard, with graves, and a lot of trees, its railings down si
nce the war, its tower roofless and hollow, another of London’s ghosts; and on either side of it, close but quiet, the discreet and deserted back streets of Kensington, more silent than forests, lonelier than country lanes.

  She had thought at first, what a curious place to choose, and wondered if he might not be a little mad, to want to have his rendezvous surrounded so closely by blameless people and law-abiding homes; but now some curious characteristic of the whole invitation, the combined threat and bravado of the suggested hour, the unexpectedness of the place, with its cover of audacity and its many potential exits, filled her with a fear no longer imaginative and enjoyable, but sane, calculating and shrewd. He knew what he was about, this man; it was up to her to match him, and if she could, to think before him.

  With the paper still clutched in her hand she lifted the telephone receiver, propped it between hunched shoulder and cheek, and dialled the number of Malachi’s hotel. This time he was in. He sounded tired and a little on edge.

  ‘Oh, hullo, it’s you!’ the strained voice warmed. ‘Have a nice day? You’re at home now?’

  ‘Malachi,’ she said directly, ‘I want you to come out with me tonight. Come and call for me after dinner – about nine, and I’ll explain all about it. Please, it’s important, I’ve got something to tell you—’

  He cut in so brusquely that she broke off in astonishment, letting his voice bear down hers: ‘I can’t! Not tonight! It isn’t possible tonight, Margaret. Look, do something for me! Tomorrow morning let me come and see you, but tonight stay in and forget all about this damned business, for God’s sake!’

  ‘But, Malachi—’

  She was about to tell him that tomorrow would be too late, that she needed him tonight, that the whole case might break tonight. She was about to say all the things she had instinctively wished to keep for his private ear and his presence, with which the telephone was no longer quite to be trusted. But she never began the recital. The step on the stairs was light as a young man’s; when she heard it, and swung round wildly with the paper in one hand and the receiver in the other, Mr Justice Manton was half-way down the stairs, and watching her steadily as he came.

  Exactly why she should, without any question, have taken it for granted that nothing could be confided to her guardian’s ears, she never really knew. It was not that she did not like him, not even that if she had taken him into her confidence he would have found a way of preventing her from acting in the matter. It was purely instinctive. She simply was not on terms of confidence with him; it would have been like trying to translate herself into a different culture, and her story into an unfamiliar language. She covered herself at once, sounding casual and cool: ‘Well, I rather specially wanted to see you. Couldn’t you manage it? It really is quite important.’ But her voice kept so jealous a composure that he could hardly be expected to believe in the urgency of her preoccupations, even if he had not been wrestling hard with his own.

  ‘I’ve told you, I can’t – not tonight. Have a night off, Margaret – go to bed early, don’t think about sensations, don’t even dream about them. I wish to God I’d never started you on this thing at all.’

  ‘You didn’t, it was my own doing. But listen, I—’

  He had hung up. For a moment she could not believe it, she hung on the line waiting for him to speak again and he did not. She replaced the receiver slowly, and raised to her uncle a mechanical and arduous smile. She was walking away into the drawing-room when he said mildly: ‘If that’s the Gazette, Margaret—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, a little confused, and handed it over without unfolding it from the tight, small folds into which she had pressed it. ‘I’ve finished with it.’ She had certainly read the only item of any interest to her. When she had escaped into the drawing-room from the old man’s sight, she flew to the mirror to see how much her face might have betrayed. That look of shock and anger, as though a door had been slammed on her, startled even herself. The Judge was a subtle observer, with a trained eye for agitation and nervous tension, even the kind that kept itself well in control, with admirable colour and calm. She composed herself fiercely, moderated the wide stare, relaxed the lines of her face with troubled, flexing fingers. The south porch of St Lucian Martyr, eleven tonight—

  Mr Justice Manton, finding the ‘Personal’ column folded outward, read down it quietly, and found what he was seeking. Margaret at the telephone, incandescent with still excitement, had provided more than enough light for him to read by. Robert’s instinct had certainly been sound. The speedwell was one of Zoë Trevor’s trinkets, the deal to be completed ‘to our mutual advantage’ was a deal in silence; and who had need of silence about Zoë stolen jewellery, except the man who had killed her? He did not know who Malachi was, Malachi whom she had wanted to go with her tonight, and who had declined so abruptly. But then, there were so many things he did not know. He no longer knew, it seemed, who had murdered Zoë Trevor. It was the first time in his adult life that he had ever consented to relinquish a conviction upon such inward evidence, but it had happened; his superb certainty was gone, and the beginning of disintegration was already vibrating in him where the mainspring of his being had lain.

  He was pleased with Margaret. If she had to keep so dangerous an appointment, at least she was going about it wisely. She had come well before the hour, approaching quietly from the darkest side of the churchyard, where the trees leaned against the high rear wall of a block of houses, and only a passageway and flight of steps came up between the buildings from the lower level of the next street. She had made a circuit of the church, keeping always within the shadows of the untrimmed trees and stepping softly through the long, tangled grass; and then she had taken her station in a thicket of bushes close to the low wall on the south-east side, from which the sawn-off inch-long ends of railings protruded sadly. From there she could see into the south porch, and she had two ways of escape open to her, over the single foot of wall into the broad, deserted cul-de-sac behind the tall houses, where a few garageless cars stood draped and ghostly, or back down the steps by the way she had come. She could hardly have found a better place, unless, of course, she had joined Mr Justice Manton inside the broken shell of the church itself.

  He had gone there before her, so that she might have no reason to suppose that she was followed; and no doubt she had accepted with relief his early retirement to his room, and believed him to be there still. He spared a thin smile for the irony of an uncle telling so old a lie to evade the watchfulness of his niece, and getting away with it! He had climbed over a broken section of wall to enter the deserted church, and then taken care to provide a quicker and easier exit by unlocking, with considerable labour and noise, the vestry door, which had been left with the key in the lock within. The door swung well, considering its neglected state, with very little sound.

  Now that the hour was drawing near, and from the empty windows he had seen Margaret dissolve herself into the darkness of the trees and grow purposefully still, he began to rehearse his exit. Only when someone approached the porch would he leave the shelter of the walls and take to the trees. He must see the man’s face, and that was all he needed.

  He had come as much for that as to look after Margaret. If she had been the only consideration, he could as easily, and far more safely, have confronted her with what he knew and what he guessed, and kept her from the meeting by force, if necessary. Instead, he was here. He had come for the man. Since the bait was so plainly Margaret’s, there would presumably be only one man; and he would be the murderer.

  Strange that so intact and intense a quietness could live in London. The churchyard, perhaps three-quarters of an acre of it, made its own forest, old trees above, long grass and leaning stones below, utterly unlit: an olive-green darkness, deeply opaque, within the clearer dark of the night. On three sides, but distant, the curtained and shuttered faces of large, quiet houses, their gates giving upon the broad cul-de-sac and two narrower through streets, little used by any traffic except the
cars of the residents and, by day, the delivery vans of those who served them. On the fourth side, the high wall and the blank backs of those other houses between which the hollowed stone steps slid away to the passage and the mews below, furtive and shadowy. Nowhere here was there much light. One lamp at the end of the cul-de-sac, another at the most distant corner of the churchyard, where the two streets crossed. Occasionally, somewhere within call, a footstep, once even the steps of two people, and the attenuated threads of their voices. Then silence and loneliness again.

  He continued to watch the formless darkness in which Margaret stood concealed, and presently in the silence he was aware of a movement which certainly did not emanate from Margaret. It was infinitely soft and slow, a faint rustling in the grass, the snap of a twig as it scraped across a sleeve. Margaret’s bushes stirred once as she parted the branches to see more clearly.

  Everything seemed to become more warily still. Then, shadowy among the trees, the Judge saw a man’s figure grow out of the obscurity, moving step by step towards the church. He had come from the direction of Kensington High Street, and stepped over the wall into the grass to approach without sound. He was tall and young, and the brim of a soft hat was drawn low over his face, so that he had no identity. The Judge’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness by now, but even in the build and movements of this figure he found nothing to recognise or note.

  Margaret had a nearer and clearer view of that large young form. She made an unwary movement, and the bushes quaked once, no more than a shudder, but the quick ear caught it. He sprang round on her, and for an instant was absolutely still, sensing rather than seeing her. She cried suddenly, in a gasp of frantic disbelief: ‘Malachi’ and then, breaking from her hiding-place, ran to the low wall, and flung herself over it into the wide, blind street, and ran wildly along the pavement towards the distant lamp.