Find the Innocent (23 page)

The men were startled by her cutting in. Curwen looked hurt.

“I neither assert nor deny it,” answered Eddis.

“Better leave the questions to me, Miss Aspland,” said Curwen stiffly.

“I'm sorry, Inspector. I felt I had to butt in because I
know
the wedding ring story is true. Veronica deceived you with a trick. And I thought you knew that the innocent man is Mr. Stranack.”

Jill had wrecked Curwen's plan. He believed she had been at least partly in Veronica's confidence, and he could not ignore her unequivocal statement. Also, she had puzzled the three men into silence.

Stranack was the first to adapt himself.

“I say, Jill—you've rather torn it, you know! I appreciate it more than I can say—I mean your speaking up on my behalf. You believe I am the innocent man because I told you so—in circumstances in which you were ready to accept my version. But neither you nor I can prove anything. It sounds ungrateful to say it, but you're only hampering the Inspector and not really helping me at all.”

“I'm the one to say whether I'm being hampered or not!” rasped Curwen. “I've put up with a good deal from you three men. I've tried to treat you with every consideration and you've used it to chuck your weight about. Just get this into your heads—all three of you! I'm in charge here. You'll speak when you're spoken to. Start playing the fool and you'll get some rough stuff and see how you like it.”

“I agree with every word the Inspector has said,” proclaimed Eddis.

Curwen opened his mouth then decided to shut it. He turned to Jill.

“If you have any evidence, Miss Aspland, I am surprised that you did not offer it earlier.”

“Because I wasn't certain until just now. Weighing things and deciding what is evidence is an expert job for which I am not qualified. May I tell you about it in my own way and leave you to sort out the evidence?”

“That would be the best. Wouldn't you rather tell me without the others being present?”

“I think it would be better to let them correct me if they wish to do so,” said Jill thoughtfully. “To begin with, I know—as I think you do—that Veronica was here that night. I was greatly impressed by Mr. Stranack's demonstration this afternoon, with me pretending to be Veronica. I felt that he was—living a great experience over again. After the first few seconds, when he looked at me, he looked through me. At another woman. A woman he loves.”

“That may be so,” said Stranack. “But while I was going through the motions of kissing you I was thinking of Inspector Curwen.”

“More than that,” continued Jill, “I know Veronica very well. The words Mr. Stranack used dovetailed with the words she would have used. He did suggest to me that he was talking to her. I had to restrain myself from answering in her idiom.”

“That's not evidence!” Stranack laughed. “You're merely recording your own impressions.”

“They were my impressions only, Inspector, but they altered the perspective of the facts I knew. They gave me a new view of Mr. Stranack. I began to remember very vividly what happened that night at the Red Lion when he was doing some trick—as I thought at the time—with her wedding ring. I thought that he offered her a ring as hers—that she refused it and that he took it back.”

“It wasn't a trick—it happened just like that!” interrupted Stranack. “I was trying to bluff her into telling the truth.”

“That's a different tale,” said Curwen, to Jill. “He told me, later on, that he had given her the ring and that she did accept it.”

“I think he did give her the ring and that she did accept it.”

Curwen thought it over.

“Then she lied to you and me about it? Have you any ground for saying that, Miss Aspland?”

“I have. When you made your first call on us, Inspector, you noticed, I think, that she was not wearing a wedding ring?”

“Correct.”

“After you had gone, I pointed out that it was most unfortunate that she had not been wearing the ring—that the police would wonder about it, and so on. Twice in the next hour or so—each time when she was in her bedroom—I reminded her to put the ring on and not take it off again. She made such silly excuses that I thought she had left it in her London flat. She was not wearing it when Mr. Stranack came. But a minute or so after he had gone she went into the bedroom and returned wearing the ring.”

“Impressions and Opinions of a Modern Girl!” scoffed Stranack. “All of that could have a simple explanation—that she found it in her sponge-bag, or something.”

Jill ignored him.

“She was wearing that ring, Inspector, when you came back shortly after Mr. Stranack had left.”

“That's right! I examined it and took a note.” Curwen was being laboriously fair-minded. “You're not suggesting that the ring I examined had been given back to her by Stranack half an hour previously?”

“Yes, I am! I know it was.”

Her tone was so positive that Curwen hesitated. “That's a very important statement, Miss Aspland!”

Eddis tapped the table.

“I feel sure you would wish me to point out, Inspector, that Miss Aspland's statement—even if it can be verified, which I doubt—has little bearing on the question of Stranack's innocence. It would merely prove that he recovered the ring on the following morning. If you remember, he was swimming in the lock when you arrived.”

“You needn't have bothered yourself!” grunted Curwen. Before working on Jill's statement he turned to Stranack.

“If you fished out the real ring, Stranack, why didn't you bring it to me?”

“Why indeed, Inspector!” Stranack shrugged, excessively. “It would have proved half your tale—it would have proved that Mrs. Brengast was the woman at the lockhouse.”

“That is why he did not bring you the ring,” put in Jill. “He wants to prove that he is the innocent man. But he does not want to prove that Veronica was the woman in the case. He has been doing everything he could to keep her out of it.”

Stranack laughed loudly.

“Dammit, I wish I could stammer out that Miss Aspland has guessed my secret. You see before you, Inspector, a man who has given up all to save a lady's name. The lady being our Veronica. Or don't you? I'm afraid you don't. It's very charming, Jill, but it's awful nonsense. Here's my answer, Inspector. I offered Mrs. Brengast a dummy ring, which she refused. And I lied to you about it—for tactical reasons.”

Curwen had already worked that out for himself.

“Have you anything to say to that, Miss Aspland?”

“There's no need to say anything to it,” answered Jill. “He is still trying to protect Veronica. I think it is very noble of him, but it's also a great nuisance, because it obliges him to contradict everything I say—”

“But have you any evidence? He says he offered her a dummy ring—”

“I don't know anything about a dummy ring,” Jill revealed impatience. “But I know about Veronica's ring—as you do—that it is engraved on the inside with an individual inscription. How could he know what the inscription is if he had never had the ring in his possession?”

“Exactly!” cried Stranack. “I haven't the least idea what the inscription is. You see what she is doing, Inspector. Using impressions as if they were facts.”

Jill held herself in check, hoping he would say more, but it was Curwen who spoke.

“Are you sure you're not just supposing he knows the inscription because you feel so certain about his innocence?”

“I suppose he knows the inscription, Inspector, because he repeated it to me correctly in this room yesterday.”

“It didn't happen, Inspector,” said Stranack, quietly. “Jill, dear, I'm afraid you're adding hallucination to impression.”

Jill looked Curwen full in the face and was amused.

“I have the hallucination that you will find that inscription noted in Mr. Stranack's pocket book.” She added sharply: “Get that pocket book, Inspector.”

“I don't even possess a pocket book,” said Stranack.

It was Jill's lack of anxiety that convinced Curwen.

“Turn out your pockets anyway.”

Stranack scowled.

“I have no wish to have the contents of my pockets examined. Don't you have to have a warrant before you can search a respectable citizen?”

“Yes, but I'm going to break the rules. There's Benjoy here and three men outside who'll probably help me if I ask 'em.”

“All right!” Stranack glared at Jill. “It isn't a pocket book—it's a diary.” He took it out, found the place and handed over the diary.

Curwen produced his note book, placed the open diary beside it.

“My note of that inscription reads ‘Vevey-stroke-Piggy sixth of the sixth five-six'. And the note in your diary reads—‘Vevey stroke-Piggy sixth of the sixth five-six'. This proves half your statement—that Mrs. Brengast was at this lockhouse. And you proved most of the rest with your demonstration—to say nothing of your dabs on the bottles! Good enough to go into court!”

He nodded to Benjoy, then spoke to the others.

“Canvey, Eddis—I'm arresting you both. You can pack a suitcase. Benjoy and I will come with you.”

“No comment!” said Eddis.

Canvey was looking at Jill.

“I thought you believed—”

“I did,” interrupted Jill and walked out of the room.

Jill was fleeing from Lyle Canvey, from Stranack and even from Inspector Curwen also. Actually she was walking very slowly and absently, as if in a dream—for the first time the cliché took meaning for her. There was the sense of walking towards the weir, to avoid complications with the guard—practical and realistic. Added was the dreamlike feeling of moving outside time and space—particularly time. She was living in the moment before she had taken the decision to proclaim Stranack as the innocent man, which, strangely, came after the moment when Lyle Canvey had reproached her.

Added was the sense of being pursued by the Furies—the slow-footed ones, not the ones on horseback. The waking part of her translated this into human footsteps behind her.

She turned and faced Stranack. He was frowning at her, looking like a schoolboy who wanted to start a fight.

“You dirty little crook, Jill!”

The illusion of the waking dream vanished

“For proving your innocence for you?” When he merely repeated his charge, she added: “Why are those two men helping Eddis—and Canvey—to do their packing? It's to see they don't commit suicide, isn't it?”

He was puzzled and suspicious.

“What are you getting at now?” he demanded.

“You! And I'm not going to stop. Question number one, Arthur. Did you creep up behind WillyBee and bash him to death?”

Stranack stared down at his feet.

“I gave you a hint that it was some ghastly kind of accident. I'm damned if I know exactly how it did happen.”

“Nor does Canvey, does he? But Eddis knows. Do you think he will let Canvey go for trial? Out of loyalty to you?”

“There'll be millions of questions like that, even if you don't ask them. How can Eddis prevent Canvey from going for trial?”

“By denouncing you, of course!”

He looked along the river, then at Jill as if he intended to throw her in.

“You're the methodical, planning kind of woman. You think everybody will fall in with your plans, and they won't. Eddis has been denouncing me ever since he first asserted that he was alone in the lockhouse that night, with or without a woman. If he was alone here, I could not have been.”

“But if he admits he was in Renchester and that you were with him?”

“Another thing is that you think you know such a lot. You don't even know that a man's confession is evidence only against himself.”

“It ought to be evidence in his favour.”

He turned his back on her and sat on the upstream bollard. The three bollards were spaced out the length of the lock. His childish petulance made Jill hopeful.

He swivelled round.

“Eddis and I didn't work out this balance of law and evidence by which everybody's statement cancels out everybody else's—which you have upset. We floated into it. All we did was to hang on.”

“You hung on!” echoed Jill. “And you enjoyed every minute of a gorgeous game of robbers-and-cops. It helped you to forget about—WillyBee. And now you are ashamed and frightened because you have won the game and Canvey has to pay forfeit.”

He did not answer. Presently he got up, gripped her by both arms and sat her on the bollard.

She was confident now that he would take her lead.

“That's all slop,” he said. “I know what you want. You want me to confess. Because you've fallen for Canvey.”

“Yes, I want you to confess for his sake—and a little bit for your own. Also for Veronica's—she will go to prison if they have to drag her in.”

He nodded—he had forgotten Veronica as a person.

“I can't understand a man wanting to marry you. I think you're a loathsome type. You do much more damage than do people like Veronica.”

Jill smiled up at him.

“Hate me, if it helps you. You need a spot of help just now. I don't hate you. I shall howl when you are convicted.”

He turned and looked at the house as if he thought the packing was taking a long time.

“I wish you would go away.” His voice was almost a whimper. “I hate the sound of your voice.”

“I'll go away, then,” said Jill, rising from the bollard. “But be very careful, or you'll hear my voice every day of your life —sneering at your honesty, your courage, your manhood. You will put dreadful words in my mouth—and in time you will come to believe them.”

“All right, then!” He took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of his voice.