Into the Valley of Death (20 page)

So there is a link, she thought. And Alfie Goode had been a soldier, too, an Army farrier. It was more than possible that he had been there at the time as well. And something that had happened during the short period the three of them were all within the same small area must have given vicious Alfie Goode his hold. No doubt, he had been unable to take advantage of his knowledge until circumstances had, after a lapse of twenty years, unexpectedly brought him face-to-face with his victim here in the Valley of Death.

“You’ve found it.” Vilkins’s loud, almost accusing voice broke in on her thoughts.

She roused herself. “Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’ve found what, I am all but certain, must be the link.”

“Never mind your old links. ’Oo’s the feller? That’s what I want to know.”

Miss Unwin put a finger against the name on General Pastell’s housekeeper’s list.

Vilkins bent over the sheet till her big blob of a nose was almost touching the paper. Miss Unwin could see her lips
moving as she puzzled out the spelling. Then at last she looked up.

“So it ain’t that Captain Brackham, arter all,” she said. “An’ I was certain sure it was going to be. Specially arter you a-telling me ’e’d skipped the blooming county.”

“Ah, yes,” Miss Unwin said. “But his doing that, I think, we owe to Mrs. De Lyall.”

“The Spanishy one? But ’ow’s she come into it?”

“Well, you told me that, in fact, when you told me what you’d overheard from the conservatory on the night of the ball.”

“I said that was important. Vital, I said it was.”

“Well, so in a way it was. It told me that Mrs. De Lyall was ready to go to great lengths to help the man who had killed Alfie Goode.”

“Captain Brack— But you’re saying it weren’t ’im.”

“No. You see, Vilkins, dear, I think you must have mistaken that voice you heard. You never actually saw the man talking with Mrs. De Lyall, did you?”

“No, but ’e come into the conservatory straightaway arter, that Captain Brackham.”

“And that was what caused you to make your very natural mistake, my dear. No, Captain Brackham was never clever enough to plan this very clever murder. No more brains, my little friend Phemy Pastell said to me, than she had in her boot. He was only fit to be used by Mrs. De Lyall to create a kind of diversion.”

“To throw you off the track, Unwin? But she ain’t smart enough to do that, not ’er, she ain’t.”

“Well, she did not,” Miss Unwin said.

And then she sat in silence, no longer seeing the list and its heavy covering of writing in the clerk’s neat hand and Mrs. Perker’s generous rounded one.

When she had thought with care for as long as five minutes, she turned again to Vilkins, standing steadily scratching behind her left ear.

“There’s something I want you to do for me,” she said.

“Just ask me.”

“It’s not difficult, but I’d rather you did it than I. I don’t want to be put in the position of having questions put to me.”

“Well, if they’re put to me, that’ll be all right. ’Cos I don’t know any blinking answers.”

“Yes, that’s a decided advantage.”

“All right, then. What’s this I got to do?”

“It’s to deliver a note I am about to write.”

“I could do that all right, I ’ope. ’Oo’s it to?”

“Why, to the Chief Constable, of course. Who else?”

“Well, if that’s what you want,” Vilkins said. “Just tell me where I can find ’is Majesty.”

“I imagine he’ll be at his house. I gather he spends most of his time there and expects Inspector Whatmough and his other officers to go out and see him. It’s a place called Monkton Towers, on the other side of the Valley of Death.”

“Far, is it? Will it take me long on me own two feet?”

“Well, it is a good long walk, my dear. But I’d rather you did go on foot. I don’t want to make my note seem too urgent.”

“Just as you like, Unwin. I don’t mind walking, not ’owever far it is. Not in a good cause, like.”

“Well, this is a good cause, dear. As good as ever there has been.”

There was an inkwell and the wherewithal for writing on the mantelpiece, tucked behind the biggest china dog, and in a drawer underneath the table Miss Unwin found some sheets of letter-paper. She sharpened the quill pen she had found with the penknife that had been beside it and began to write, hardly hesitating now over the choice of her words.

“What you said, then?” Vilkins asked when she saw the note being signed. “That is, if you wants a girl to know.”

“Oh, yes,” Miss Unwin replied. “You don’t think I would keep secrets from you, do you?”

“Only if you thought it was better for me to wallow in me ignorance.”

Miss Unwin laughed. “No, I have never thought you were ignorant, my dear.”

“All right, then, what you said?”

“Just this.
Dear Major Charteris, With reference to our conversation yesterday, I write now to let you know that I am able to ascertain the identity of the man who has gone under the name of Sutter. I remain, yours faithfully, Harriet Unwin.”

“That ought to bring ’im running, if that’s what you wants,” Vilkins said.

“Yes, my dear, that’s exactly what I want. And if all goes well, I begin to think now that poor Jack Steadman has a glimmer of hope, after all.”

“ ’Ere, don’t say it. It’ll bring bad luck.”

“Well, it might,” Miss Unwin conceded as she lit a taper and melted some wax to seal her letter. “And it is only a glimmer. So don’t let’s either of us say a word more.”

“Cross me ’eart,” said Vilkins.

And she did. Only, Miss Unwin saw, she got the wrong side.

Miss Unwin knew that now she must simply wait with what patience she could for a response to her note to Major Charteris. There was little to be done in the interval. She did, however, as soon as Vilkins had set off, beg from Mrs. Steadman, now even less able to give attention to anything with her husband’s death not as much as twenty-four hours away, a boy with the inn’s tax-cart to go over to the Fox and Hounds to inquire how Mr. Heavitree was faring. She even accompanied the lad as far as the turning to Farmer Burch’s cottage. Mrs. Burch, weeping and broken after her son’s death, had been on her conscience.

“Gallows Corner,” the boy said to her cheerfully as he set her down.

“Gallows Corner?”

“Aye, ’twas here they strung up the sheep-stealers and all, in the old days.”

“Just here? Where the oak spreads all over the road?”

“Just here. Strung ’em up high as high.”

Miss Unwin was unable to repress a shudder as she set off along the lane.

When she got to the ill-kept farm, she found the cottage deserted. She shrugged. No doubt the neighbour she had seen on the morning of the death had taken the old woman home with her.

She made her way back to the Rising Sun as quickly as she could.

The gruesomely inclined boy with the tax-cart returned from his errand not long after Vilkins had trudged back from
the Chief Constable’s. But the news about Mr. Heavitree was not what Miss Unwin had hoped for. He was still unconscious. The surgeon remained optimistic, however. It was, he had repeated, just a question of time. When his patient came to, he would soon be as good as ever.

But Miss Unwin knew time was not on her side.

She wanted nothing more than counsel, and the old detective was the only one who could give it to her. But if he was not there to help, he was not. She would have to act on her own—and trust that the risks she feared she would have to take did not bring disaster.

Oh, if only I had just one day more, she said to herself. Just one day. One day more.

But she did not have that extra day. Jack Steadman was to be hanged next morning.

Then at last, just after midday she had persuaded Mrs. Steadman to drink a little tea and eat some dry toast by way of dinner, she heard coming along the road—she had seldom been far away from the window that overlooked it—the sound of a trotting horse.

She wanted to run to the window, thrust it open, and lean right out. But she restrained herself. If this was, as she hoped, the Chief Constable himself coming to find out just how sound was her information about the mysterious Mr. Sutter, then too much eagerness on her part might well lose her the respect she had worked to gain.

But by the time the horse had reached the inn itself, standing well back from the window she was able to see that, yes, instead of sending Inspector Whatmough or any other policeman, the Chief Constable had come in person.

Hastily, she took Mrs. Steadman to her bedroom so that the interview between Major Charteris and herself could take place in privacy.

Hardly had she got back to the sitting-room than she heard steps on the stairs. Then Betsey, still looking infuriatingly well and unconcerned, put her head round the door.

“Miss, miss,” she said. “It’s—it’s Major Charteris, and he do want to see you yourself and no other.”

“Then let him come—”

But the door was thrust open and the Major himself strode in, riding whip in hand, heavy moustaches hanging ominously.

“Well, miss,” he said, banging the door closed almost in Betsey’s face, “what is this? You say you know who that Sutter fellow is. Let’s hear.”

“Ah, sir,” Miss Unwin answered, forcing herself not to quail before this assault, “I fear you have misinterpreted my note.”

“Misinterpreted? What the devil do you mean? It seemed clear enough to me. Short enough, too, for a female. But clear.”

“I think you will find, sir,” Miss Unwin replied, “that I said only that I had a good idea who our ’Mr. Sutter’ is, not that I could give you his name.”

“Same damn thing, ain’t it?”

Miss Unwin would dearly have liked to rebuke the use of such language to a lady. But if she were simply the female detective she had allowed the Chief Constable to assume she was, then perhaps strong words of that sort were to be expected.

“Well, sir,” she said, “it is not, if you will excuse me, quite the same thing. Perhaps my note, after all, was not as clear as it ought to have been. I meant only to say that I have been lucky enough to find a way in which the gentleman can be brought to book and seen for what he is, for who he may be.”

“I trust, miss, you have not brought me riding all the way here on a damned wild-goose chase.”

“Oh, I think not, sir. I know not, indeed.”

“Well, then, suppose you explain yourself.
Try
to explain yourself, I should say.”

“Very well, sir. You may well blame me for what I am about
to tell you, but after much consideration I find I can do nothing else.”

“Damn it, woman, what’s the fellow’s name?”

“Sir, I believe I do know it. But—but, to tell the truth, it is so unbelievable that he … Well, sir, what I propose is this: I was out this morning at Farmer Burch’s cottage again. I had gone there to see if all was well with his old mother, but I found that she had left.”

“I dare say, I dare say. Very commendable, and all that. But what’s your charitable disposition got to do with who murdered Burch?”

“Just this, sir. That while I was at the cottage I came upon something, an object. Sir, I am not even going to tell you what it was. But it indicated to me, almost beyond doubt, who was the man who had occupied that well-furnished bedroom at the cottage with a lady and who, I am quite certain, murdered Mr. Burch.”

“Not tell me? Why the devil not? Listen to me, my fine miss, my patience with you is not very far from running out.”

“I know it must be, sir. But nevertheless I ask you to trust me just a little further. That name— Sir, that name is to me incredible. But, sir, I am convinced that the person, the gentleman who left that tell-tale object at Farmer Burch’s, will almost certainly go back for it. And he will go tonight. He cannot go very much longer without missing it, and as soon as he has realised it must be at the cottage, as he cannot have done before this, he is bound to attempt to retrieve it under cover of darkness.

“Retrieve it, eh?”

Into Major Charteris’s somewhat bloodshot eyes there had come a look of sharp shrewdness.

“Yes, sir. And I venture to think that you have already understood what can be made of that. Sir, if you will instruct Inspector Whatmough to assemble a dozen of his best men and have them lie in wait in the darkness round the cottage, then our man will come walking into a trap. I am certain of it.
And I intend to be there myself in hiding, sir, to verify that he is who I believe him to be. Then, if my suspicions prove correct, if you would be so good as to supply me with a police rattle or a police whistle, I can spring the trap and the business will be done. In time to telegraph the Home Secretary, sir, and save John Steadman from the hangman’s rope tomorrow morning.”

Major Charteris stood looking down at her pensively, the riding whip in his right hand slapping rhythmically on his boot.

“Very well, then,” he said at last. “I’ll accept your conditions, Miss Unwin. Ridiculous though I believe them to be. But I make one condition of my own.”

Miss Unwin felt the elation that had blazed up in her with the Chief Constable’s agreement die suddenly away. To be replaced by an acute anxiety.

What would this condition be?

“On one condition,” Major Charteris repeated.

“Yes, sir?”

“That I myself come with you to Burch’s cottage tonight.”

“You, sir?”

“Yes. You ask me to trust you. Well, I have agreed to do so. But trust goes just so far. I want to be there myself to see your famous Mr. Sutter come into the place exactly when you do. To see him with my own eyes.”

“If that is what you insist upon.”

“It is.”

“Then, sir, let us meet, shall we say, an hour after sunset, at the cottage. And I will leave it to you to make all the arrangements with Inspector Whatmough. I hardly need emphasise, I am sure, that his men should be placed so that there is not the least chance of any intruder being frightened off.”

“You can count on that, Miss Unwin.”

Vilkins, when Miss Unwin told her what had been arranged, was outraged.

“Unwin,” she said, “you ain’t going to do it.”

“My dear, I must. You must see that. I have explained the state of affairs. There is only this way to go about it. Remember, Jack Steadman dies at eight o’clock tomorrow morning unless the Home Secretary receives a full account by telegraph before then.”