Into the Valley of Death (2 page)

“Well, yes, but isn’t there someone to carry it?”

“Don’t talk daft, Unwin. Not you as ’as known me from the very beginning. You think I can’t carry a bit of a luggage the like o’ that?”

And, her brawny arm bared to the elbow, Vilkins snatched up the carpet-bag and turned to march off with it as if it was no more than a basket of eggs.

Miss Unwin followed her, even more full of doubts than when she had got out of the train.

The Rising Sun proved to be not much more than a hundred yards distant from the station on the road leading out of the town. It appeared to Miss Unwin to be a well-kept place, barring the fact that its painted sign looked more like a picture of a mustard plaster than that of King Sol emerging over the horizon, and her doubts about allowing Vilkins to take her to such a place began to dissolve.

Until she remembered what the porter at the station had said to her in that Oxfordshire accent she had found hard to understand.
Now landlord’s been took away to be hanged
. If this was really a public house whose landlord deserved to be hanged, she was not at all sure that she did wish to enter it after all.

But Vilkins was not giving her any opportunity to stay outside. Still swinging her bag by its handle as if it had nothing at all in it, she marched in at the open door and tramped along a passageway giving access to the taproom on one side and the private bar on the other. At the far end there was a broad flight of stairs, and at its foot she turned round.

“The missus’s sitting-room’s upstairs,” she said, “an’ she’s kept it empty for us special.”

Miss Unwin, feeling happier, followed her friend up the stairs and into a room above the private bar. It was a good deal more comfortable than she had expected, with a bowl of country flowers on the round table in its middle, a sofa under the leaded window, and a pair of easy chairs on either side of the fireplace, where in the grate stood a neat folded paper ornament until summer should be over.

“You sit down there,” Vilkins said, “an’ rest yourself, an’ I’ll fetch a pot o’ tea.”

“No, Vilkins dear. First, for heaven’s sake, tell me what all this is about.”

“I will not. Tea you’ll be needing after being in one o’ them nasty trains all the morning, an’ tea you’ll get.”

And, since with those words Vilkins had marched out, Miss Unwin did have to sit on the sofa where she had been put and be as patient as she could manage.

Well, she thought, I have come here as Vilkins asked. But is this the Valley of Death? It hardly seems like it. To begin with, the town is not in a valley as far as I can see, and there certainly does not seem to be any odour of death about this nice, neat-looking little room.

And, true enough, a cup of tea would be more than welcome.

She turned and tried looking out into the road beneath to see if it held any clue to the mystery Vilkins had put before her. But the road was as quiet and deserted under the tranquil sunshine as any other in all England. The only sign of life she saw—and that was not until several minutes had passed—was a yellowish dog with a black tail that came out from the shadows of the house and walked slowly across the dusty road to lie down again on the far side.

But then at last she heard Vilkins’s familiar clumping tread, accompanied by the loud clink of cups on a tea tray. A
moment later, pushing the door wide with her hip, her friend of old came back in again.

“And now,” Miss Unwin said with all the determination she could muster, “you must and shall tell me all.”

Vilkins set down the tea tray with a loud clatter on the round table in the middle of the room. Miss Unwin saw that on it, besides a large brown teapot and cups, saucers, and plates, there was a big, partly cut fruit-cake, its interior gleaming with raisins, currants, and walnuts. She felt a sharp pang of hunger, but thrust it aside.

“He’s going to be ’anged, that’s the thing,” Vilkins said without preliminary. “An’ it ain’t right. It ain’t right at all.”

She snatched one of the teacups and banged it down on its saucer, as if this inanimate object was the cause of whatever it was that had stirred her to anger.

Miss Unwin jumped up from the sofa and almost seized her friend by the shoulders to shake her. “Vilkins, who? Who is to be hanged? Is it the landlord here? Was that what the porter was telling me?”

“Why, in course it’s him,” Vilkins answered. “Don’t you never see the papers up in London now? Don’t you know nothink?”

Miss Unwin, in fact, seldom did see a newspaper. Ever since once, accused of murder herself, she had been pilloried in the letters columns of
The Times
, she had had a sort of horror of all newspapers.

“No. No, my dear. I’m afraid I know nothing of what you are saying. Tell me about it all from the beginning, if you please.”

“Oh, Lord,” Vilkins said. “There’s so much to tell, if as you ’onestly don’t know a blessed word about it. I’d better pour this tea first, or it’ll be stone cold afore I’ve ’alf done. An’
you’d better ’ave a nice piece o’ this cake what Mrs. Steadman baked with ’er own ’ands an’ sent up special.”

“Well, yes, dear. I am hungry, I confess. But Mrs. Steadman, who is she? Is she the landlady of this place? Is it her husband that you say is to be hanged?”

Vilkins, splashily pouring tea into their cups, looked up. “Now who’s asking to ’ave it all back to front?” she said. “No, you wait until I gets me breath, an’ then I’ll tell you proper.”

So Miss Unwin sat back again on the sofa and took her cup of tea and the generous slice of cake Vilkins had cut for her.

“All right,” Vilkins said, plonking herself down on an upright horsehair chair at the table. “I’ll tell it you right from the beginning.”

She took a noisy sip from her cup.

“It all started,” she said, “on a day in May last. Or rather it was a night. An’ Jack Steadman—’im as is landlord ’ere, or was, if ’e ain’t still—well, there ’e was out after a rabbit in the woods a mile or so from ’ere, what the General allows ’im to shoot in though them is what they calls ’is preserves.”

“Vilkins, stop. I’m utterly confused already. Was it day, or was it night? And the General, who is he? And why does he allow Mr. Steadman to shoot in his preserves?”

“Well, that last I can answer,” Vilkins replied. “That’s along o’ Mr. Steadman being Corporal Steadman as was.”

“Vilkins dear, I am as much at a loss as ever. More so.”

“Oh, Unwin, don’t you start being stupid. It’s as clear as day. General Pastell, ’im as what I works for up at Monkton Hall, naturally when ’e ’ears as what Jack Steadman’s left the Army at last, ’e finds ’im this nice pub to keep, an’ ’is woods being near ’e lets ’im shoot a rabbit or two for the pot whenever it so ’appens as the fit takes ’im.”

“All right. Now I begin to understand. But, you say, Mr. Steadman is to be hanged? Did he commit a murder in those woods that night?”

“You got it, Unwin. I knew as you would, you being clever as any monkey, only more so. But yet you ain’t.”

“I haven’t?”

“No. ’Cos, you see, the ’ole of it is that Jack Steadman couldn’t no more of killed Alfie Goode nor what I could, an’ I ’adn’t never set eyes on either of ’em when it all ’appened.”

“Vilkins, I’m getting confused once more.”

“Well, it’s easy to tell. When they come an’ arrested Mr. Steadman, in course the General got to know at onct. An’ being the man ’e is, what is the best o’ gentlemen alive, ’e straightaway thinks o’ poor Mrs. Steadman ’ere, an’ ’ow will she manage without ’er ’usband. So what ’e done is ’e what ’e calls temporary detaches me.”

Miss Unwin grappled with all that for a moment. “The General is good enough to send you, one of his housemaids, down here to assist Mrs. Steadman, the landlady of the Rising Sun?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

“Well, so far I have it clear. But, Vilkins, why did you send me a telegram? And what is the Valley of Death where I am supposed to have come?”

“Well,” Vilkins answered, “it ain’t the Valley o’ Death really in a manner o’ speaking. In course it ain’t. ’Ow could it be?”

“Then why did you call it so?”

“ ’Cos that’s what it is. That’s what it is to a T. I mean, what’s them woods called? The Hanger, ain’t they? Hanger Woods. An’ up at the top beyond ’em what did they ’ave not so long ago but a gallows? So what else will the countryfolk round ’ere call that valley where Alfie Goode met ’is end but the Valley o’ Death? It’s Monkton Vale proper, so Mrs. Perker, the ’ousekeeper at the Hall, once told me. But to one an’ all round ’ere it’s the Valley o’ Death, an’ so it ought to be.”

“Yes. Yes, I understand that now. But, Vilkins, why me? Why did you send for me?”

“That’s easy, Unwin. That’s as simple as ABC, not but what that ain’t so simple to me. It’s you what’s got to get ’im off. An’
’e’s to be ’anged on Friday morning, you know. ’Anged in less nor a week.”

Miss Unwin sat back and took a deep breath. “Vilkins,” she said hesitantly, “I think I begin to see what it is that has been happening down here. And I think, too, I begin to guess why you asked me to come. You think that, because twice in my life I have been caught up in cases of murder and that on both occasions it so happened I was able to point to the actual perpetrators, that—that I am somehow possessed of extraordinary powers. But, my dear, I am not. I am not indeed. And —and there’s more. If your Mr. Steadman is really to be hanged in a week, then he must have been brought to trial and found guilty. Well, my dear, I suppose that there have been innocent men hanged before now, but I do not think it happens so often. So if Mr. Steadman has been tried and found to be guilty, then it is almost certain that guilty he is.”

“But ’e ain’t,” said Vilkins.

Miss Unwin sighed. “Did you say you knew him?” she asked. “I can well understand that it’s hard to believe a person one knows, and who perhaps has treated one with some kindness, can be guilty of a heinous crime. But such sometimes must be the case. Try to see it, dear, try to put it all from your mind.”

“But I said,” Vilkins replied, “I ain’t never set eyes on Jack Steadman. Yet I knows ’e ain’t guilty. I knows it as well as I knows it’s you, Unwin, what’s sitting there in front o’ me.”

“But why, Vilkins, why? How can you know such a thing so firmly?”

“ ’Cos o’ Mrs. Steadman, in course. ’Cos of ’er an’ no one else.”

“Mrs. Steadman?”

“Why, yes. Yes. Ain’t she the soul o’ goodness? Ain’t she as honest a woman as ever I met? Ain’t she one as would say, an’ say straight out, if she thought that a ’usband of hers ’ad done somethink bad? But she don’t, Unwin. She don’t. It’s just the opposite what she says. She says as ’er Jack couldn’t never of
done it, an’ I believes ’er, an’ so will you onct you sees ’er. That you will.”

Miss Unwin sat and thought. And at last she spoke.

“Well, my dear, I think there is only one thing for it. I will see Mrs. Steadman. I will ask her to tell me why it is she thinks her husband, who is to be hanged in less than a week, cannot be guilty of what he has been charged with. And then I will make up my own mind.”

She rose from the sofa and went across and laid her hand on her friend’s bony shoulder. “But, my dear,” she said, “you must not think that it is really likely that I shall find myself agreeing with you and with her. And even if I do, what will there be that I can find out that the police and the lawyers for the defence and the assizes judge in his wisdom have not looked into before me? And in less than a week. From Sunday only till Friday, till Thursday if I am to be in time.”

But Vilkins turned her large red globe of a face towards her and gave her a look of pure, warm belief. “You’ll do it, Unwin,” she said. “You’ll do it, ’cos you’re you.”

Then she leapt up, half upsetting her chair, and blundered out. And less than two minutes later Mrs. Steadman opened the door.

She was a very small person, barely five feet in height. But she stood upright as a ramrod. And her little round face was, Miss Unwin thought, red and bright as an apple.

Then she corrected herself. Not red as an apple. But red and brightly sharp as a crab-apple.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she burst out before her hostess had had time to speak a word. “Mrs. Steadman, I have just learnt of the terrible situation in which you find yourself. Let me say at once, whatever the rights or the wrongs of it, that I feel for you. I wish— Oh, I wish that it could all be otherwise.”

“But it ain’t,” said Mrs. Steadman. “It just ain’t, and that’s got to be faced up to, the same as I faced up to all the dangers and hardships when I was with my Jack all round the whole wide world, when we was wet and weary in Ireland, when
we was hot and thirsty in India, when my poor lad was missing nigh on a month after the Battle of the Alma. I faced up to it then, and I’ll face up to it now.”

Miss Unwin could at once see her facing those hardships and those dangers, and facing them with unabated cheerfulness. Resolution and brightness radiated from that small upright form, that battered but bright-cheeked face.

“I suppose my poor, good friend has told you something of myself,” Miss Unwin said. “And I am sadly afraid she will have told you more than the simple truth. Yes, she knows that I have, twice even, unravelled mysteries that were deep indeed. But, believe me, Mrs. Steadman, I am no miracle worker. I chanced before to see in the end the logic of what was there to be seen, but I could do no more. And—and— But perhaps you should tell me the circumstances of your trouble. Dear Vilkins has hardly done that.”

“Let’s sit down, me dear,” Mrs. Steadman answered. “You take the chair there under the china dog on the mantel and I —I’ll sit where my dear Jack sits of a Sunday when we’re at leisure, and I’ll tell you all that’s to be told.”

Miss Unwin went and put herself in the chair over which there presided a bright brown-and-white china dog with a collar of gold paint. Her hostess sat, a small fierce figure, in the big chair opposite.

“There’s not so much to tell,” Mrs. Steadman said, “when it comes down to it. And black against my Jack the telling makes it, as I well know. But kill that Alfie Goode he did not, for all that the man deserved to be killed if ever man did.”