Into the Valley of Death (18 page)

“Very well,” she said. “Wait here. I will walk.”

She pushed open the door of the fly—it stuck—and got
down. The day was still hot and the sun struck directly onto the lane. But she put up her parasol and marched firmly off.

Nevertheless, by the time she got to the door of Major Charteris’s new grey stone house, all turrets and arched windows, she knew that she was not looking her best. Her face, she was certain, must be very red, if not sweat-streaked. And she had an acute longing for a glass of cool water.

But she would not let herself delay and reached forward and gave the big bell-pull a determined tug. Were she to spend time preparing herself for the interview ahead, she knew, she might very well lose heart.

A pretty, pert maidservant in a lavender dress and white cap and apron answered her ring.

“Is Major Charteris at home?”

The maid looked her up and down. “The Major’s at home,” she said, “But he don’t see just anyone as comes to call. You got a visiting card?”

Miss Unwin cursed herself for lacking this essential instrument for polite visiting. But then her visit was not one of politeness.

“Will you tell the Chief Constable,” she said, “that Miss Harriet Unwin, whom he met at Mr. Burch’s farm early this morning, wishes to see him on a matter of urgent business?”

The girl seemed quelled by the firmness of that. With an assurance that she would deliver the message, she invited Miss Unwin to wait in the hall.

Indoors it was delightfully cool after the walk up the steepness of the hill. Miss Unwin was not unhappy to wait for as long as the Major kept her.

She looked round. The house had evidently been built to take full advantage of a taste for the ancient and monastic, which seemed odd in a retired military man. A long, narrow stained-glass window sent a chequered light onto the wide oaken-planked floor. The doors leading out of the hall were deeply panelled, and each was framed in a pointed arch. The
newel-post of the stairs leading to the upper floors was in the shape of a bald monk’s head.

It came to Miss Unwin at last as she waited that the man she was here to see must be desperately concerned to establish his respectability. No doubt, she realised, he had been one of those Army officers who had not had the wealth or family connections to purchase, stage by stage, his promotions. He must have had to wait for years as a lieutenant, then as a captain, and at last as a major while young men of good family and few abilities rose up over him to command regiments.

No wonder he had a reputation for insisting on the utmost rigours of discipline. What was it that Inspector Whatmough had said to Mr. Heavitree?
All shouted orders and parades and marching
.

A man like that would hardly be inclined to break with tradition and give a female detective, or, worse, a mere governess passing as a female detective, much of a hearing.

The pert maid came clattering down the wide wooden stairs.

“The Major will see you now,” she said.

Miss Unwin followed her up the stairs—it was plain she was deliberately setting a cracking pace—along a wide corridor hung with undecipherable paintings of respectable country views, up another narrower twisting staircase to the single door at its head.

The maid opened it and popped her head inside.

“The lady that called,” she said with more familiarity than Miss Unwin thought proper.

She remembered the pale woman with the headache who had asked her for a composing draught at General Pastell’s ball. That had been Major Charteris’s wife. So, did the Major like to have pretty and pert maidservants in his house, and let them be rather more familiar than maids ought to be? If it was so, then his attitude to herself was likely to be all the more contemptuously masculine.

“Come in,” a voice barked from the other side of the door.

Miss Unwin entered. She found herself in a circular room, evidently the top floor of the most imposing of the turrets of the house. At the far side, in front of a wide window, its panes diamond-shaped and framed in lead, stood a large desk, at which the Chief Constable sat, as if secure within a redoubt defending Sebastopol, an intransigent Russian. Round the walls here, now emphasising the Major’s military past, were hung crossed sabres, banners, and ancient muskets.

Miss Unwin advanced unhesitatingly under the fire of the Chief Constable’s fixed glare.

“Well, madam,” he said when at last she reached the desk, “what can I do for you?”

There was a chair beside the desk, tall-backed and with a hard horsehair seat. Though she had not been invited to sit, Miss Unwin took it. Then, placing the point of her closed parasol neatly between her feet and leaning slightly forward with her hands crossed on its handle, she addressed the man she knew she had to win over.

“Major Charteris, I will come straight to business. When we met this morning, I did not have an opportunity of telling you what was the purpose of my visit to Arthur Burch.”

“A lady magazine writer,” Major Charteris said dismissively. “Had the curiosity to inquire of my Inspector Whatmough.”

“But you were misinformed,” Miss Unwin said. The Major jerked up in his chair.

“Yes, misinformed, sir. I have come to Chipping Compton to rectify a gross injustice. John Steadman, who is to be hanged on Friday for the murder of Alfred Goode, is not guilty of that crime. And I am here to find the man who is.”

There was a grim silence.

Miss Unwin wondered whether the Major was not about to slam a large red hand down on the domed brass bell she saw on his desk and request his pert parlourmaid to escort her from the building.

The Chief Constable’s hand remained, however, where it was, laid flat and squarely on the leather-topped surface of his big desk. And, after letting the brooding silence go on for what seemed to Miss Unwin many minutes, he spoke.

“You are aware, madam, that the man Steadman was investigated by members of my own force, notably Inspector Whatmough, under my close personal supervision?”

“I had supposed as much, sir.”

Miss Unwin hesitated. Then she rushed on. “But the best of use can make mistakes, sir. When I was asked to look into this business myself, I will confess that after I had studied the particulars, it seemed to me almost certain Mr. Steadman had indeed killed Alfred Goode.”

“And it seems to me still quite certain.”

“But, sir—”

“And you say you were asked to look into the matter. Who was it who asked you?”

Miss Unwin’s spirits sank. How could she say to the Chief Constable of the county that she, a mere governess, had been asked to investigate the case his men had declared open-and-shut by, of all people, a housemaid?

She bit her lip. “I am afraid, sir, I am not at liberty to divulge that without the prior permission of my principal.”

“Hm.”

But the Chief Constable’s grunt seemed to be an acknowledgement. Evidently he respected a “principal” of such social importance that permission had to be sought before the name could be disclosed. Miss Unwin thanked her lucky stars
that she had by chance replied to the Major’s query in such high-sounding terms.

“Sir,” she began again, feeling bolder, “let me continue. When, as I say, I first looked into the case, it appeared to me that John Steadman must be guilty. But, after taking into consideration certain factors not available to Inspector Whatmough, I decided the matter was worth at least some further inquiry.”

Again she trusted that fine words would conceal from the Major that the “certain factors” unknown to Inspector Whatmough had been no more than the fervent belief of the accused man’s wife that he could not have killed anyone in a cowardly fashion, backed up by a handful of character references from such persons as a midwife and the town beadle.

“And what were the results of these further inquiries you were pleased to make, madam? What results did you achieve? If any?”

“A sad result indeed, sir. The death at someone else’s hands of Arthur Burch.”

The Chief Constable sat back with a sharp jerk.

“You connect Burch’s murder with the other affair?” he said slowly.

“Of course, sir. I had talked to him about the evidence he gave at the assizes. Mr. Heavitree, who is known to you and who has agreed to assist me, had also questioned him. We both came to the conclusion that he lied in that evidence, and that he was beginning to be unhappy at having done so. This morning when you met us we had gone to the farm in order finally to persuade him to admit his error, something we were convinced that he would do.”

“I see. And you believe that whoever it was who killed Burch got there before you?”

“That would appear to be the logic of the matter.”

“Logic, eh?”

The Chief Constable darted her a sceptical look from under his shaggy eyebrows. Logic, from a woman.

“Yes, sir, logic,” Miss Unwin answered firmly. “I do not think that you will be able to fault it.”

Major Charteris did not take up the challenge.

“Well,” he said, “I grant that there may seem to be a case for linking these two affairs. But let me tell you that what you have alleged is by no means proved. Who do you think murdered Burch? Can you put a name at all to the man?”

“Yes, sir. I can.”

Miss Unwin saw Major Charteris’s large hands grip the edge of the desk in front of him.

“But, sir,” she said hastily, “it is no discredit to you or your men that I can do so. And the name I can give you is, I am almost certain, only an alias.”

“An alias?”

“Yes, sir. I comforted old Mrs. Burch during a period of nearly two hours after her son’s death, and she eventually gave me particulars she had been afraid to disclose to anyone earlier.”

“And these particulars were …?”

“That for some time past a man and a woman, a gentleman and a lady whom she had never seen, had been meeting in secret at night in the cottage. They had even furnished a bedroom for themselves there.”

“And you believe this old woman’s tale?”

“She told me not a little about the circumstances, sir, and I did not detect any inconsistencies in her account.”

“Hm?”

The Major grunted again. But this time there was a good deal more doubt in the sound.

“And you say she gave you a name?” he asked. “Was it the gentleman’s, if gentleman there was, or the lady’s?”

“It was the gentleman’s. The name was Sutter.”

“Sutter? Sutter? I can recall no one of that name in the county.”

“No, and none of the inquiries I have made have produced anyone of that name either.”

“So, what you have been telling me is a heap of suppositions.”

“Suppositions backed by firm evidence. There could scarcely be any evidence firmer than that dead body you and I saw this morning.”

“I dare say.”

“So, sir, this is what I have come to you to request: the full assistance of the men of your force in running to earth the man who masquerades under the name of Sutter. Their utmost exertions.”

The Chief Constable sat and pondered.

“You know that what you are asking is that public servants should spend time and money attempting to show that a man who has been tried for murder and found guilty, a man whose appeal the Home Secretary himself has rejected, is not guilty of the crime for which he is to be hanged on Friday.”

“It is because he is to be hanged then that I am requesting your assistance.”

The Chief Constable gave a grunt of stifled irritation, or worse.

“Very well,” he said, “I shall order Inspector Whatmough to make inquiries to discover who your mysterious Mr. Sutter may be. I shall press him to do his utmost. There you are.”

Miss Unwin rose from her hard horsehair chair. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

She thought it wise to leave as soon as the promise was hers. Further questions from the Major were to be avoided. The last thing she wanted him to learn was that she was no more than a governess. If he came to know that, perhaps the firmness he had shown in giving her his pledge would melt away. And if she was forced to go farther and tell him that the governess’s assistant investigator was her good friend, Vilkins, at this moment engaged in wheedling information illegally out of clerks from the War Office, all hopes of enlisting co-operation must instantly vanish.

“Good day to you, sir,” she said.

And she left.

Walking back to where the feeble fly-man and his battered old fly waited, she began violently to wish that by the time they reached the Rising Sun she would find that Vilkins had got back. What if, when she scanned that list of military guests at General Pastell’s ball, she found that somewhere at some time Jack Steadman had been in company with one of the officers on it? Then a hitherto hidden link might be revealed. Perhaps, too, it would become apparent why Jack Steadman had to die, even if it was through knowing something unknown to himself though brought to light by the mole-pryings of Alfie Goode.

She sat in the decrepit old fly—there was a large rent in the worn leather of its seat, and the stuffing was oozing out—and fretted with darting impatience every yard of the way. And the old horse was very much slower going home, climbing the steep slope at the other side of the Valley of Death, than it had been on the journey out.

At last, however, Chipping Compton came into sight. Again Miss Unwin abandoned the vehicle in favour of walking on her own two feet. She might not be able to go much faster than the wretched horse, but at least she would not try to halt at every tempting patch of grass.

She arrived at the inn. Without waiting to mount the stairs, she plunged into the kitchen behind the bars.

But there was no sign there of Vilkins.

So, toilingly at last, she went upstairs and looked into Mrs. Steadman’s sitting-room. The little landlady was perched in her husband’s big chair under the mantelpiece with its cheerful array of china dogs and bright fairground figures, looking as if she had not stirred from the position Miss Unwin had left her in more than two hours before.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she exclaimed, “would you not be better perhaps in bed? I could send out for a sleeping draught. You ought to get some rest.”