The Assize of the Dying Read online

  Sir Robert Wyvern had conducted his last prosecution, and the second of the four accused was on his way to the Assize of the Dying.

  Mr Justice Manton went down the hollowed stone steps at a feverish, light run, along the more deeply shadowed side of the mews beyond and into the narrow street. This also was hardly more than a passage between the rear of a block of houses and a high garden wall, but at the far end on the left there was a lamp bracketed to the wall, and by its light he saw a man’s figure just turning to the right and disappearing. The soft brown hat and the fawn raincoat were all he had time to see; and though this was, in fact, the first time he could be said to have seen them at all, they already appeared familiar to him, and were identifiable at a glance.

  He began to run once again, on his toes, in long, soft steps, like a hunting animal; and when he reached the corner the figure was still in sight, moving out now into the quiet square where a few cars stood and an occasional late taxi cruised. The man was too far away to hear or suspect the pursuing footsteps, too distant to have much detail about him; but he was unmistakably the man. In the raincoat pocket reposed the gun which had just killed Sir Robert Wyvern, the silenced gun which had made so tiny a punctuation mark in the churchyard quiet and so irreparable a hole in the sick heart. But the murderer was walking with a leisured composure, firmly and jauntily, as though he had been at a symphony concert at the Albert Hall, and was playing over the music again in his own mind on his blameless way home.

  As for the body, it would not suffer from the rain, or from being left alone a little while. Mr Justice Manton had left his friend with regret, but he had other duties. Besides, by all accounts he was very soon going to rejoin him. This other, this one who walked ahead of him, was the companion he must not lose.

  It was not at all difficult to keep him in sight without drawing near to him, for here an occasional stroller was passing, and late theatre-parties making their contented way home. Besides, the man was superbly sure of his solitude. He was in reality leaving the scene quickly and purposefully, but all with an air of security and calm which showed that he had no idea of there being any witness. The Judge thought by how happy a chance Margaret had been swept off the scene, and hoped she was in good hands.

  He had leisure to think as he walked, his eyes always upon those variable glimpses of the figure ahead. What he did not know was how Margaret had obtained the information which had enabled her to bait this trap. What he did know was that the bait itself had been Zoë’s jewels, those speedwells which Robert had once given to her to celebrate her successful entry into her own world; and with them, inseparable from them, some dangerous information involved in their little blue stones. Now that he considered again the girl’s intent interest in the advertisement of last night, her questions about Robert’s reaction to it, her obvious excitement over tonight’s answer, and her appeal to this young man of hers to join her in keeping the appointment, all these slight accumulations of suspicion became practical certainty that the hand behind the rendezvous was hers. She had found a way of causing the murderer to break cover. The disasters she had launched in the act were not really hers; sooner or later someone would have released them, since justice must be vindicated.

  No, it was not Margaret’s fault that she had caught more in her trap than she had bargained for. The young man Malachi – Mr Justice Manton’s thoughts engaged with him almost pleasurably now, as though in these later stresses he had fallen into place and was no longer incomprehensible – obviously he had shared enough of Margaret’s knowledge to understand the purport of her advertisement, without being aware of its origin. Those two innocents had cancelled each other out. The train to which they had set light would never do them any great damage.

  But Robert had also known enough to recognise the connection of that ‘Personal’ with the dead Zoë and the gift he had once given her. Whoever feared revelations about those stolen trinkets feared them because they would bring the murder home to him. It had not been so difficult for Robert to come to that conclusion, because he was already obsessed by the conviction of his own part in the miscarriage of justice and had come to the point of full acquiescence in the price he must pay for it. So he, too, with Zoë and Louis Stevenson heavy upon his heart and mind, had come to keep the appointment and see the face of the man to whom he owed his ruin.

  What he had intended then the Judge did not inquire of himself or anyone. He had seen his friend come openly, and openly wait for the guest not he, but another, had invited. He thought that Robert had not come with the intention of dying, but he was fairly sure that he had come with the possibility in his mind and with a great indifference to the result. It was not only the guilt for Stevenson; there was also the emptiness where Zoë had been. Above all, he had come because he must know. That was something the Judge understood perfectly; for he also had come in quest of the same destroying knowledge. Truth was truth, and justice justice, if it killed them both, as they had been assured it would.

  And the last person who had understood the advertisement was the murderer himself, the active shadow under the trees ahead, threading the quiet streets with such a resolute step. And he had come in the expectation that the threat was genuine, that there really was one person in the world who had information which brought him into danger. He had come assured that there could be only one such person; and he had come not to buy it, not to steal it, only and simply to wipe it out. He had killed almost immediately, as soon as the man waiting for him in the porch identified himself with that word ‘speedwell’. He had come to kill. Silence is expensive to buy. Killing is cheaper and more permanent.

  He began to hurry, because his quarry was almost out upon the Cromwell Road and he could not risk losing him now. There was a cab rank near this corner, and often it was not deserted until past midnight. His premonition was well-founded, for the man in the raincoat lifted a hand as he came to the edge of the pavement, where the lights spilled over him yellowly, and the brightness of the black under his feet, glazed by the rain, redoubled their gleam with its baffling reflections. Here the Judge might have caught a glimpse of his face had he dared to come nearer, but instead all his attention was engaged in signalling up the next cab as soon as his quarry was in the act of opening the door of his.

  ‘Please follow that taxi that just drove off,’ said Mr Justice Manton to the indifferent ear that inclined to him from under a tilted cap.

  He felt an odd sensation of distaste and self-consciousness, as though this rôle of hunter came too near to light fiction for his dignity and thrust him still more painfully out of his nature. The driver, too, slanted at him one of those looks of tolerant curiosity about the eccentric in which the Londoner is expert, and complied soothingly but contemptuously, with a heave of resigned shoulders, like one humouring a difficult child.

  Now that he was back among a steady stream of traffic and lights, and the pavements had their fair number of people walking, he felt more acutely than ever the nightmare nature of his pursuit. When he looked back at his long and distinguished public career it appeared to him unreal and distorted, as though it had fallen out of focus, or he himself had become warped, and some monstrous transmutation would be needed ever to fit him into that background again. He kept his eyes fixed upon the car they were following, but no suspicion of pursuit seemed to have entered his quarry’s mind, and there were taxis enough threading the back streets to keep his own inconspicuous.

  So intent was he upon his own inner experiences that the part of London through which he was being led made no impression upon his mind. They had left the Cromwell Road, moving east towards Sloane Street through quiet squares and residential streets, and were just drawing into one more dignified green square of trees exactly like the rest, when he thought with a shock of amused recognition: ‘He’s taking me past my own door!’

  At that moment they were met by another taxi, just driving round from their right and leaving the square by the way they were entering. The Judge recognised t
he number-plate with an exclamation of surprise, and deeper within him a convulsion of foreboding.

  ‘They’re doubling back!’

  ‘No, sir. ’E’s empty. ’E’s dropped ’is fare.’

  The driver pulled up, looking round for further instructions. Beyond the clump of trees, on the other side of the square, a front door closed crisply. Mr Justice Manton sat still, gazing in the direction of the sound, while the quietness of Clevely Square came back to rest slowly, like birds after a rifle shot. Then he said calmly: ‘That’s all right, thanks. I’ll get out here.’

  He paid off the taxi, and walked without hesitation round the railed garden to his own front door. The face of the house was dark, and as he let himself in there was no sound but that of the cab driving away. No light on the landing, no rustle of movement on the stairs. He went up in the dark, one flight, two flights, three. On the left, Margaret’s room, empty and dark and neat. On the right, Charlie’s.

  He went in without knocking, and switched on the light. A startled little grunt from the bed greeted the sudden brightness, and Charlie’s tousled head rolled on the pillow. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth soft like a sleepy child’s. He parted his eyelids a little, protestingly, and muttered and blinked, rubbing the back of a hand over his eyes, then heaved himself over and buried his face in the pillow again to shut out the light. He looked unbearably young, and rash, and innocent.

  The Judge looked from his tumbled bed to the accustomed untidiness of the room, the dinner-jacket hitched askew over the back of a chair, the socks and shoes shed over the carpet, the tie coiled upon the hearth-rug. It was all exactly as it always was; the boy had always defied anyone to reduce him or his works to conventional order.

  His father, watching his sullen and charming sleep, thought: ‘Perhaps, after all, I’m wrong!’ He crossed the carpet gently, and Charlie sighed and opened his dazzled eyes again resignedly and muttered: ‘What’s the matter?’ Then, consenting to awaken by degrees: ‘Oh, hullo, Dad! What’s wrong?’ He yawned, rubbing his cheeks, and lay blinking lazily, and after a moment fell gradually into a dreamy smiling.

  Mr Justice Manton stooped and picked up one of the discarded shoes. The sole was dark with moisture. He put his hand into the shoe and felt the toe, and the warmth of Charlie’s foot was still there, the warmth of his own blood.

  Charlie’s head remained quiet upon the pillow, but now his dark eyes had flared open to their widest and were following this gesture with extreme and motionless intelligence, and the smile had gone from the brilliant, tender, self-willed mouth.

  The Judge dropped the shoe, and going to the wardrobe, opened the door. A soft brown hat rolled out at his feet. Beneath it lay a dark fawn raincoat, hurriedly bundled together, still damp with the soft rain. He picked it up and shook it out, and the right-hand pocket sagged heavily with the weight of the revolver.

  When he turned back to the bed with the thing in his hand, Charlie was sitting up and putting back the disordered covers from him. His crumpled shirt, without collar and tie, opened upon his handsome brown throat. He swung his trousered legs out of bed, and sat there calmly, looking at his father. He no longer looked a child, much less a sleepy child. In the long, dark cheeks the familiar shadowy hollows quivered strangely with implications of both laughter and sorrow. The half-smiling lips drooped now, eased of any necessity for deception, a little tired, a little spiteful, a little affectionate.

  ‘You would know!’ he sighed, between chiding and sympathy. He reached out towards his jacket a hand which was almost perfectly steady, and took out his cigarette-case. ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked, curious even in this moment, when respect and regret for the old man oppressed him almost as much as his weariness.

  Mr Justice Manton crossed to the door, and carefully closed it. Then he came back to the bed, moving slowly and laboriously, suddenly a very old man. Groping clumsily, he laid the revolver upon the turned-back sheet beside his son’s hand.

  Charlie looked down at it for a moment, and then lifted to the stony old face above him, ravaged with grief, a soft, indulgent smile. He said with a slight shake of his head: ‘I shan’t need that.’ He reached up a hand, and pulled gently at the Judge’s sleeve. ‘Sit down, Brutus!’ he said comfortingly. ‘There’s no hurry now, I’m not going to run. Sit down, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  Charlie came into Margaret’s room in the morning, while she was still asleep. She awoke to the touch of lips upon hers, infinitely soft, and lay smiling with her eyes still closed, thinking of Malachi, and convinced that she was still dreaming. But when she finally looked up, the reluctant lids rolling back slowly from the dazed dark blue of her eyes, it was her cousin’s face that was bending over her. He was smiling, and the only thing she found unusual about him was that he should bother to pay her such a visit at all, even if he was, as he said, going out of town. He was already dressed for travelling, and had his brief-case under his arm.

  ‘Are you going to be away long?’ she asked, frowning up at him through her sleepiness.

  He said, the spark of wry mischief coming and going very briefly in his eyes: ‘Not long. I shan’t be back tonight, probably, but you may be hearing from me before the day’s out.’

  ‘And when you do come home, you’ll rush in just in time to snatch a bath, and change, and rush out again as usual!’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, smiling at her with a curious, intent gentleness, ‘I promise you the next time I come home it’ll be to stay.’ He twisted his fingers in a curl of her hair, and tugged at it softly. ‘You should talk! I heard you come in at nearly three o’clock this morning. No wonder you’re still sleepy.’

  ‘What brought you awake at three in the morning?’ Filled with her own joy and longing to share it, she caught at his hand and clung to it for a moment. ‘Charlie, something wonderful happened last night. You’ll wish us luck, I know – I’m going to marry Malachi!’

  ‘I’m not a bit surprised,’ said Charlie sagely. ‘I saw it coming.’ He stooped and kissed her again, lightly upon the cheek. ‘Congratulations! I hope you’ll both be very happy.’

  He looked back from the doorway as he was going, and said: ‘Good-bye!’ and it did not seem to her that the word had any unusual overtones, nor that anything of the Charlie she knew was missing from his light movements or his gay smile. Then the door closed on him, and she heard, from the contented margin of sleep, the sound of his footsteps as he ran down the stairs.

  That was the last she ever saw of him.

  The telephone call came early in the afternoon. Margaret was out with Malachi, and the Judge was alone when he took the call, which was as he would have chosen. He listened with a controlled face, and said at the end of the brief message: ‘Thank you for telling me at once. I understand. I am coming down there myself, immediately.’

  When he had replaced the receiver he sent for the housekeeper, who had been with him for many years. She found him already pulling on his greatcoat and gloves, and his authoritative manner had not changed in the least as he said to her:

  ‘Mrs Platt, I have just had bad news. Mr Charles has had a crash with his car, on the road to Hastings. I am going down there straightaway, and when Miss Margaret comes in I don’t want her to know that there is anything wrong. I’ll talk to her myself when I come back, but until then I don’t want her to worry. You had better tell her simply that I’ve been called away, and don’t expect to be back until late this evening. I know I can leave her quite safely in your hands. Oh, and, Mrs Platt – if you could keep the evening papers out of her sight, it would be better.’

  She might ask for them, of course, but he did not think it likely. Margaret’s interest in the papers would not be very great tonight. The rendezvous was already past and fruitless in her eyes, and the presence of the young man Malachi would occupy all her thoughts and energies. The Judge had seen the print of last night’s revelation in the radiance of her face. Everything else must have become very pale and far away; not ev
en death can compete with love. No, Margaret would surely be safe.

  The housekeeper, hovering, said distractedly: ‘I hope Mr Charlie isn’t badly hurt?’

  Mr Justice Manton looked through her with fixed but quiet eyes, and said: ‘Charlie is dead. It seems he crashed the car at high speed into a stone quarry beside the road. I’m going down there now to arrange about the inquest, and about bringing his body home.’

  He sat bolt upright in the car behind his chauffeur throughput the journey; and when he came back, at about nine o’clock in the evening, his back was as straight and his voice as firm as ever, only his face had drawn itself into tight lines of strain, as if flesh and skin had shrunk upon the bone, as if months of hunger and pain had been compressed into the few hours of his ordeal. His eyes had eaten half his face, and burned their way deeply into his head in great, gaunt hollows, but their expression was such that no one dared try to utter a word of condolence. They said afterwards that they had never guessed he thought so much of the boy.

  He asked after Margaret, but she had gone out again with Malachi and was not yet home. The Judge, staring into a future he could no longer bear to prolong, felt a rush of relief and gratitude at not having to face her. He had meant to wait until Charlie was buried, but now he knew that he had not the strength to fulfil his obligations to Margaret, not face to face with her, never aloud. It was the first time in his life that he had admitted to himself that a plain duty might yet be something which could not be borne.

  He shut himself into his study, sat down at his desk and began to write three long letters. The one for Margaret was the shortest of the three. There was so much to be explained, and courtesy demanded that no detail should be overlooked, to torment some equally meticulous mind later on.

  Margaret and Malachi were in the St James’s Theatre, hand in hand in the darkness and invulnerably happy in each other. In the porch of St Lucian Martyr in Kensington, another pair of lovers had just happened horribly upon Sir Robert Wyvern’s body. Mr Justice Manton sat at his desk, punctilious to the last, drawing together the strands of the Stevenson case, his patrician profile so worn and shrunken with pain that he might have been already a dead man. The last hours of his life he spent upon his passion, which was justice.