The Massingham Affair Part 12

"Both much better as it happens. Thank G.o.d for it."

"Somehow I always thought he was a surviving type. An artful dodger, so Mamie says. I've been re-reading his statement, by the way."

"I don't want to stop you, but shouldn't you be looking after Miss Deverel?" enquired his friend.

She was leaning over the piano, her elegant blonde head very close to Mrs Deverel's immense coiffure, and Justin watched them, fascinated by the contrast and the likeness that he saw there. "Oh, Georgina's all right. She was a bit on edge, but she's got over it. Besides, I'd only be in the way up there. Now about that statement."

The Vicar sighed resignedly. "Very well: go on, my dear fellow, if you really think you should. Is the statement what we require?"

"Up to a point. It contains some significant and important things. But there are grave omissions. The Other Man isn't named. Miss Verney's watch and seal aren't properly accounted for. In fact, there's very little in the statement that you can really get your teeth into; that can be put up against known facts and checked. And without definite proof . . ."

107.

THE Ma.s.sIXGHAM AFFAIR.

"People won't listen."

"They won't listen; they'll think the man's a crank or up to some dodge. When I say people', I mean of course official people, those in the ministries whom we'll have to move if we're to get the case re-opened. But there are others who might listen."

"Go on."

"The Verneys, to begin with. If they saw that confession they might help. If they were to think again about their evidence in the light of what Sugden says, then we'd be on altogether firmer ground, with something really good to show the Lord Chancellor or the Queen herself. Are you a Radical?"

"What's that you're saying, my dear fellow?" exclaimed the Vicar in astonishment.

"Just a pa.s.sing thought. I don't suppose we're going to be exactly-loved for this ... by the powers that be, I mean. Subversive: is that the word?"

"Our host would say so, certainly."

"Why our host particularly?"

"Didn't you know? Because he was the committing magistrate: it was he who sent Milligan and Kelly to the a.s.sizes," the Vicar said.

X.

Sxow lay over the countryside. As they crested the hill they saw the valley below them, piebald where the ribs of walls and rocks showed through, but further north the fall had been heavier and the flanks of The Heriot looked as smooth as a crystal globe. In the foreground lay the village: castle and church by the stream; the zig-zag of road climbing the hill past the rambling bulk of the Rectory, more piebald than the rest in its grove of trees. "It would do for a bishopric," Justin found himself murmuring aloud. "Let us hope that Verney has a stipend to match. Has he?"

"I believe Ma.s.singham is a good enough living."

"One you'd fancy for yourself?"

"My dear chap!" Mr Lumley's expression was one of dismay as he gazed over the pony's ears at the hamlet and scattered farms. Where were the souls to be saved? Where were the paris.h.i.+oners to be dragooned into good works? In such a place, after a few dinners with the gentry, the poor man would have died of discouragement or started an agrarian revolution.

On foot, leaving the trap at Merrick's bothy at the bottom of the hill, they reached the Rectory gates and came immediately on Mr Verney shovelling snow. Flakes glistened in his beard and in his long white hair; he had on mittens, and goloshes so thick with slush that he seemed to be wearing a pair of enormous clogs; and in his wake the fruits of his toil showed in a beaten track from the gates to the front door along which the Vicar of St Bede's advanced, hand outstretched, rather like the explorer Stanley on a similar occasion.

"My dear Mr Verney!" He seemed to be finding it an affecting moment. "Mr Verney, will you forgive this intrusion into your labours? I hope you are not overstraining yourself. You know Mr Deny, I believe?"

"I do, sir."

The old man leading, they went into the hall, having the drawing-room on their left, from which came the sulky crackle of a wood fire. Ahead of them a baize door opened. "My dear, we have visitors," Mr Verney called out into the gloom. "You know Mr Lumley, of course. And Mr Deny: but I don't think you've met Mr Deny."

It was a narrow hall, not suited to social occasions. Justin, who had only seen her once, at the Moot Hall, could barely see her now, but he could hear her-the rustle of whalebone and satin coming towards him over the linoleum.

"I fear we have intruded," he heard his ally say.

"Not at all. If you'd go into the drawing-room."

A scrimmage developed of the kind usual where several people are urging one another to go through a door, and at the end of it they found themselves, as the Ma.s.singham burglars had done, in a pleasant squarish room, much beset by furniture which projected at unlikely angles, forming a kind of obstacle course. There was the table in the middle of the room, and the desk the 'man' had rifled, and on the mantelpiece the tripod on which Miss Verney's watch and seal had hung. It was all as Sugden had described it: so exactly, that the critic in Justin's mind awoke and began to ask questions. Was the statement in his pocket really the memory of something seen across a gap of eight years, or had Sugden seen the Rectory more recently? Was it possible that the Verneys never moved their furniture? They had certainly not carried out repairs to the dining-room door where the shot had struck; which might argue poverty, 109.

or carelessness, or even a perverse kind of sentiment, for the burglary had, after all, been a great event, perhaps the most memorable of Mr Verney's life.

He was suddenly aware that his friend, with no such speculations to comfort him, had found himself in an exposed position between the Rector of Ma.s.singham and Miss Verney, both breathing an intimidating hospitality.

"A gla.s.s of wine?"

Mr Lumley did not drink: he had been known to describe strong liquor as an abomination.

"Will you not take some refreshment? You have come a long way in this hard weather."

"And there will be more snow coming," her father said, wagging his beard at them with lugubrious relish.

"Papa!"

"My dear, there will be. Tom was saying so this morning and you know what a nose for weather he has. This winter reminds him a little, as it reminds me, of the beginning of . . . my dear, you won't remember what year it was when even the mail could not get through?"

"If as you say it is to snow . . . ," Mr Lumley tried to interrupt with a kind of desperation.

"It has begun already."

Indeed a white cloud had swept down over the moor, and flakes like small hailstones were whirling against the window panes.

"Then we must hasten our business, I fear, if you will forgive my abruptness, seeing that we have such a long journey in front of us."

"Your business. Most certainly."

"It concerns something that happened a long time ago. The Ma.s.singham burglary in fact."

"The Burglary!" exclaimed Mr Verney, clearly astonished by this remark. "But how can the Burglary concern . . . ? I don't understand."

"Perhaps if you were to let Mr Lumley explain, Papa."

"Gladly, gladly. I was not aware that he was involved in any way, that's all."

"Then he will tell us."

Mr Lumley suffered this colloquy and then said in a diplomatic voice: "I was not concerned at the time at all, except that of course I shared the general sense of outrage that you should have been subjected to so dastardly an act."

"But that was eight years ago," Miss Verney said. "We have had time to forgive and forget."

He turned towards her. "Could we say the same of the two men who have served those years in penal servitude? A life sentence-very disproportionate to the crime, bad though it was, as your father in his goodness of heart saw at the time, even had Milligan and Kelly committed it."

"But there can be no question that they committed it," said Mr Verney, looking around in perplexity. "The jury found them guilty; and how just that verdict was both my daughter and I know well, seeing that we both saw the men at work, most flagrantly at work in this very house. Is that not so, my dear?"

"Let him explain, Papa."

"Thank you," Mr Lumley said. "I beg you not to think me impertinent: there is too much at stake. It's no easy thing to come here and say what I must. But I have read the reports of the trial, and I have had the invaluable benefit of Mr Derry's recollection of it, and it is clear enough that in your anxiety to be fair you never claimed on oath or at any other time to have seen the faces of the accused."

"We saw them-those men themselves."

"No, Miss Verney, forgive me, you did not. You never saw Milligan and Kelly for the simple reason that they were miles away on Bridewell Moor. You saw two fellows very like them in the semi-darkness and excitement of the moment."

"It is kind of you," came the supercilious, cutting voice, "to tell us what we saw. We are obliged to you."

"Must you take it like that, Miss Verney?"

"How would you have me take it? You come here-for no clearly disclosed reason that I can see-and you tell us that my father and I went into court and perjured ourselves."

"No, I never said that. No." There was distress in Mr Lumley's voice; his face had gone very pale and his eyes stared out from it, bright with appeal to tender and compa.s.sionate emotions. "It was the very last thought in my mind. If I had thought it for a moment I would never have come here, never, I beg you to believe that. You told the court what you believed you saw."

She gave a shrug of the shoulders, infinitely contemptuous, and replied: "If you can see a distinction there, you have a truly ingenious mind. You are saying our evidence was false."

"Mistaken, my dear young lady-no more than that."

"How can you even voice such an opinion? How are you qualified to do it?"

"I am qualified," said Mr Lumley very slowly, "because I have seen, and we have here with us, a confession signed by one of the two men who were in your house that night."

"What next! A confession indeed!"

"My colleague has it in his pocket. If you will produce it, Deny."

Justin did so, unfolding the folio sheets and holding them out towards their host, who showed some inclination to accept them until arrested by an imperious movement of his daughter's hand.

"It is a perfectly genuine confession," explained Mr Lumley in his most conciliatory voice. "If you will look at it you will see the man's name, which I ask you to treat as confidential for the time being."

"We don't wish to see it."

"And you will find there a full and meticulous description of everything that happened, from the moment the men broke in to the time of their return to Smedwick."

"I said we didn't wish to see it."

Mr Lumley took a step towards her, his hands clasped in appeal as Justin had often seen him in the pulpit of St Bede's. "Miss Verney, I have been unkind; I have not prepared you as a wiser man would have done. I recalled to you a very terrible moment, and I did it clumsily, with too little thought for you both. It has come as too great a shock and I beg your pardon for it."

She did not answer, but stood watching him: a small withdrawn figure in a satin dress that matched the dark hair drawn across her brow. In the background the old man was moving uneasily but she paid no attention to him.

"Will you not say you forgive me, dear young lady, now that I acknowledge my fault? I have no desire to prolong something which is so distressing to you. We could leave the statement with you, and perhaps later . . ."

"No," she interrupted him, "no, you must take it."

Surprise was on Mr Lumley's face and sounded in his voice as he said: "But Miss Verney, you will surely not dismiss it quite in that way? Here is a statement which in my opinion, and that of my col- THE QUEST: 1899.

league who has experience of such things, is a true and detailed confession to a crime for which two other men are suffering at this moment. We have examined it closely and it bears every mark of truth. At the very least it surely deserves to be examined attentively and with an open mind-not now perhaps, not at this instant, but later, when the shock I so misguidedly forced upon you has pa.s.sed. That is why I ask you to accept it."

"We shall do nothing of the kind."

"Do you distrust our interference so much?" said Mr Lumley sadly. "You have every reason to complain of the way I have carried out my mission."

"That is certainly part of it."

"But the statement itself? You surely cannot refuse to read it?"

"I do."

"And you, sir?"

He had swung away from her towards the old man, but she came between them and he saw the light of pa.s.sionate resentment in her eyes. "Nor will you trouble my father with such things. You have no right."

"I have the right to expect justice," said Mr Lumley, not without dignity.

"Justice for what? For some lying scrawl! No, Papa, I will speak out"-for he had tried to restrain her. "A tissue of falsehoods, made up for what reason? I am sorry to say it in my father's house, but you should not have come, you should not have listened to lies so credulously. For lies they are. We know it. We don't need to read that paper-which you may put away, you'll find no use for it." Her voice had risen and rang out shrilly in the high-ceilinged room. "For we will never read it. You will never persuade us we were wrong."

XI.

The Verneys had failed them and he must try another line. Yet no problem of detection, reasoned Justin in the privacy of his own room, ought to be very hard. Something either exists or it is chimerical. If it exists in human shape it leaves traces of itself, has friends. If one could deduce a man's character from the company he kept, one could equally deduce that company from the man: indeed, so far from existing in a vacuum, Sugden's 'Other Man', whom it now behoved him to find, must have certain characteristics that were individual and unlike anything to be expected of the average Smedwick citizen. Suppose, to begin with, a friend of Sugden's but with more violent inchnations: the kind of man who would use a gun; which in its turn supposed a person who had already used one. In the background of his mind was the memory of a crime earlier than the Ma.s.singham affair. Miss Kelly might remember it; she or Longford; he could look to them for help because they were the most directly interested of the Pelegate folk and perhaps the nearest approach to clients he possessed in 'In Re Milligari, as the case had been listed in his files.

They made a quaint pair as they sat facing him in the tall-backed chairs: the thin, rather pretty but fading woman and the loutish man in his shapeless breeches and tweed coat. He felt sorry for them both, and grateful too, because they had not vexed him lately with endless visits and questions. They had their curiosity, however: "What happens next, sir?"

He began to explain as discreetly as he could, choosing each word with scrupulous care. "Nothing's settled. There's still a lot to be done. But certain facts have come to light which will be pa.s.sed to the authorities, and if a certain view is taken of those facts we may expect some kind of enquiry and perhaps the arrival of a Commissioner to take evidence-from you among others, I expect."

"And from George Sugden, sir?" she asked.

"If he gets well, as I think he will. If he'll oblige and give it."

"Why shouldn't he give it? He give it you, sir."

Justin sighed and answered as soothingly as possible: "I'm sure he'll be helpful. But as to what he said or didn't say to me, that's something I'm not free to tell you."

"Though I'm Mick Kelly's sister, sir?"

She had begun to bridle; her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright, as though she had sensed an enemy. A brave, quick, determined young woman. He felt a real admiration for her.

"Now see here," he said gently. "I have to keep faith with people who trust and confide in me, you must see that. But don't be anxious. Things are moving at last. I feel quite sure that he's in the mood to be helpful if only he doesn't get frightened by the thought of punishment, of prison."

"He deserves worse, sir. He might get it too."

"What do you mean, Miss Kelly?"

She hesitated and then turned to him, trembling with the force of her emotions. "What do I mean, sir? That some of us have waited and waited and we want something, sir-justice-and we want it done: but there are others, sir, that don't want it and they might take steps, sir."