Into the Valley of Death (5 page)

So, after all, Miss Unwin did find Mrs. Steadman to beg a
glass to drink her ale out of. And while she was doing so, she asked if she would speak in private to the former Scotland Yard detective.

Upstairs, she ate the rest of her supper and drank her beer while the interview was taking place below. Cold and a little greasy though the remains of her chop had become, she forced herself to consume it to the last morsel. Somehow she felt that if she did what was her duty over that, the outcome of the talk she had arranged so much on the spur of the moment would be favourable.

But all the same, with the logical part of her mind she doubted that it could be. Mr. Heavitree was not a person to be won over by impressions, and it was only an impression after all that had converted her to Mrs. Steadman’s cause. The evidence, the hard evidence, was all against. And it had been evidence that Superintendent Heavitree had dealt in all his working life, and would not be able to prevent himself from dealing in still.

Then at last the door of the sitting-room was opened by Vilkins, who poked her head in and spoke in a decidedly huffy manner.

“Mrs. Steadman asked me to show this gentleman up,” she said, putting fearful emphasis on the word
gentleman
.

“Yes. Yes, thank you, my dear. You recognised him, I suppose?”

“And I recognised her,” Mr. Heavitree said. “The young hussy who got herself locked up in your place in a police cell while you went and solved a murder case.”

But he spoke with a smile, and Vilkins melted.

Before she had time to comment, however, Miss Unwin burst out with the question she had waited to hear answered all the while that she had masticated the cold remains of her chop.

“Mr. Heavitree, what do you think?”

The former detective officer stood looking down at her as
she sat at the table in the middle of the neat little sitting-room.

“I would never have thought it of myself,” he said at last. “I never would. But, yes, Miss Unwin, I believe that dear good creature. She tells me her husband could not have shot that man because the shot came from behind, and here am I, a seasoned old police officer who thought he’d learnt never to trust a single soul, and I find that I believe that he never did.”

Miss Unwin jumped from her chair and had to restrain herself from clasping her old adversary in a warm embrace.

“But what I believe and what I don’t believe doesn’t alter the facts, you know,” Mr. Heavitree said. “Jack Steadman had Mr. Serjeant Busfield for him at the assizes, and in London Serjeant Busfield was an advocate we never liked to have against us up at the Old Bailey. He brings out the facts in favour to the very last drop, and always did.”

Miss Unwin sank back onto her chair again. “Yes. Yes, I know how strong the defence was,” she answered. “And how unsuccessful. But, Mr. Heavitree, there is one thing your belief, my belief, in Jack Steadman’s innocence does alter. I was saying as much to my friend here not an hour ago.”

“And that is what?”

“That once you begin to look at the matter from the point of view of Jack Steadman’s not being the murderer of Alfred Goode, you see the situation in a very different light.”

“To tell the truth, my dear, I have hardly begun to do that as yet. But, yes. Yes, now you say it, I see that if Mr. Steadman did not commit that terrible crime, then some other person must have.”

“And there is something more,” Miss Unwin said.

Mr. Heavitree thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said again, “something more there is. Look at it in your way and it’s plain that Jack Steadman has been set up, as we say, for this business. The murderer, whoever he is, could have killed Alfred Goode and left him so that no one could tell who had fired that shot. But he did more than that. Worse than that.
He arranged matters so that Steadman was bound to be suspected—suspected, tried, and hanged at the last. That blow to his head must not have been inflicted in an accidental fall.”

“Quite right,” Miss Unwin answered. “And another consideration came to me while you were talking with Mrs. Steadman.”

“I shall be interested to hear any consideration you have had, my dear.”

“Well, then, ask yourself, as I have asked myself, why this murderer should want to kill two men at the one time and, further, why he should have been content that one was to die instantly while the other was left to be killed—and that is what it must amount to—to be killed by the due process of the law.”

“I see that you’ve a good question there,” Mr. Heavitree replied slowly. “But I’m not at all sure I can see what answer there must be to it.”

“An’ no more can I,” Vilkins said. “An’, come to that, I ain’t so sure as I understand the question.”

“Well, let me tell you what I have thought,” said Miss Unwin. “And then you can tell me what you think of my reasoning.”

“Well, cough it up quick, do,” Vilkins begged.

“It is this, then. Why should anyone wish to kill two men who were so different? The one a vicious drunkard, the other from all I have heard of him as fine a fellow as you could wish to meet? Well, I think the answer must be that each one knew in some measure some secret that the murderer wanted at all costs to stay a secret.”

“Blackmail,” said the former Scotland Yard man. “Yes, I dare say you’ve the right of it there, Miss Unwin, now I come to look at it. It is strange, very strange, that two men so different in almost every way should need to be murdered. When it was just a matter of Alfred Goode being done to death, why, then there were reasons enough, since from all that’s beer said he was plainly about as bad a lot as you could
wish to find. But to want to kill both him and that decent chap Jack Steadman, well, blackmail seems your only answer.”

“But there’s more still,” Miss Unwin said.

“More?”

“Yes, sir. Think. Surely blackmail, so you call it, must mean one other thing.”

“It don’t mean more to me than what it is,” said Vilkins. “Just about the nastiest thing one ’ooman bein’ can do to another.”

“Yes, you’re right, my dear. As always, when you speak from your heart. But this is what, perhaps, you have not thought of about that particular crime: that it means there must be a person who can be its victim, someone who has a secret worth money to the man levying the blackmail. And that means one thing more.”

“A toff,” said Mr. Heavitree. “A swell.”

“Exactly. Someone who has something to lose, a great deal to lose, enough to make him break the Sixth Commandment in order to preserve his secret.”

“The Sixth Commandment,” Vilkins said.
“Thou shalt not kill
. I had that dunned into me at the end of the beadle’s cane. Remember that, Unwin?”

“I remember.”

“And I’ll add yet another thing,” Mr. Heavitree said, “though I dare say you’ve thought of it for yourself.”

“That this toff of yours must be a toff from not very far away,” Miss Unwin answered.

“That’s it, my dear. From round about here, or otherwise the murder would not have happened in Hanger Wood.”

“The Vally o’ Death,” said Vilkins. “An’ now it’s my turn to put in me pennyworth.”

“Yes, my dear?”

“An’ it’s this: ’Ow are you going to nose out all the swells round about? ’Cos there’s a good few of ’em, I’ll tell you that. But, what’s more, I’ll give you your answer straightaway.”

“But how, Vilkins dear? How can you answer that, which, yes, did puzzle me at once. How, in the terribly short time we have, can I go about seeing for myself all Alfie Goode’s possible victims?”

“Simple,” said Vilkins. “Easy as easy. Today’s Sunday, all right? Well, tomorrow night as ever is up at the Hall there’s General Pastell’s annual ball, an’ every single gentleman in the county’ll be at it.”

Miss Unwin’s heart leapt up at Vilkins’s announcement. As she had sat eating her gluey-cold supper, thinking over all she had learnt in her reading of the newspaper accounts of Jack Steadman’s trial and fearing that ex-Superintendent Heavitree would never concur with her belief in his innocence, she had felt minute by minute an increasing despair. Yes, she did not waver by a hairsbreadth in her conviction that Jack Steadman had not killed Alfie Goode. But, as strongly, she thought of the appallingly short time there was before Jack Steadman was to be hanged. Four days only. Four short days.

But now, not only had Mr. Heavitree unexpectedly backed her, but there had been put before her a way in which she could at least get a glimpse of all the possible alternative suspects within the course of a single evening. Next evening.

She half began to think that she had been meant by a higher power to achieve the almost impossible task that faced her.

It was to Mr. Heavitree that she turned now.

“You have been frank enough to declare, sir, that you believe despite yourself in Jack Steadman’s innocence,” she said. “And you have done more. You have helped me to clear my mind about the true aspect of the affair. But I am going to ask you now a very great deal more. You know that?”

“My dear Miss Unwin,” Mr. Heavitree said, “you do not have to ask. Here am I, supposedly enjoying a life of quiet retirement, but in truth fretting away with each day that
dawns. No, the old warhorse scents battle. What I can do to help, I will. All day and every day.”

“Thank you. I felt I could expect that answer. But to hear it spoken aloud gives me new hope.”

Mr. Heavitree inclined his side-whiskered head in acknowledgement.

“Now, I’ll tell you one practical step we might take,” he said. “From what I have heard from Mrs. Steadman and what I recollect of the trial, there seems to me to have been one witness whose evidence was crucial.”

“Arthur Burch,” said Miss Unwin.

“ ’Oo’s ’e?” Vilkins asked.

“He, my girl,” said Mr. Heavitree, “is a certain tenant farmer who was in this very house on the evening before the murder. In court he stated he heard Alfred Goode call out to Jack Steadman as he left here in his drunkenness some such words as
Don’t you forget, you and I are to meet again tonight.”

“No,” said Miss Unwin. “That is nearly right, but I think the words were a little different.”

Rapidly she turned the stiff leaves of Mrs. Steadman’s pasted-in old account-book. She found what she wanted in a moment.

“Yes. Yes, look here. Two newspapers giving the same words:
lam going now. But do not you forget the night is not over yet
. Yes, that piece of evidence from Mr. Arthur Burch cannot but have told heavily.”

“Well,” Mr. Heavitree said, “I remember Arthur Burch at the inquest. He spoke up, and spoke up well. But something in his manner did give me at the time a moment’s doubt. I put it down then to my own over-suspiciousness, the detective officer’s vice. But if the evidence against Jack Steadman is to be challenged anywhere, there it’ll have to be. So, as early as may be tomorrow—I must get home to my sister now or she’ll be worrying—I shall do myself the honour of having a word with Mr. Burch.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Miss Unwin said. “I hardly think I myself would have much success there, not even in the guise I have already adopted of a lady magazine writer,”

“Well, I dare say not. So I’ll bid you good night, and I’ll come here to tell you anything I can as soon as I learn it tomorrow.”

Then, when the former detective had gone thudding down the inn’s wooden stairs, Miss Unwin turned to her friend and helper of old. “Well, Vilkins dear,” she said, “the ball that’s to be held tomorrow night will give me a fine opportunity. But there is one problem still. How am I to gain entrance to the Hall to see it?”

“Yeh. I been thinking. An’, Unwin, you’re not going to like this.”

“What am I not going to like? If I can help poor Mrs. Steadman, there will not be much I will baulk at.”

“Not stepping downwards in the path what you gone up?”

“Stepping down?”

“Well, only a couple o’ days ago Mrs. Perker, the ’ousekeeper at the Hall, was bemoanin’ to me that she wouldn’t ave enough elp for the evening of the ball. ‘Where am I to get another lady’s-maid from, Vilkins?’ she said. Tell me that.’”

“A lady’s-maid? Back to being a lady’s-maid again?” Miss Unwin said.

She found the prospect plainly daunting. She had risen up from kitchen skivvy, rank by rank, in the house where she had been placed after her workhouse days till she had become indeed maid to the daughter of the family. But at last she had been encouraged to make the leap across that great barrier dividing gentlemen and ladies from the rest of the world and to become a governess. The distinction she had achieved was precious to her. Once beyond that barrier, the whole world lay open to her talents. Could she bring herself to go back down through it again, even if it was only for one night?

Yes. She must.

“If Mrs. Perker still wants an extra lady’s-maid, my dear,” she said to Vilkins, “I am willing to be that person, through and through.”

“Then first thing tomorrow,” said Vilkins, “you’d better go across to the Hall an’ try your luck.”

Miss Unwin, in a little pretty bedroom under the eaves of the Rising Sun, did not sleep well. She had too much on her mind.

Try as she might, she could not prevent herself every now and again, as she lay tossing and turning, from regretting her decision to play the lady’s-maid. Alone in the dark, she was at times convinced that somehow, once a uniform was on her back again, she would never be able to get it off. Someone would assume that she had never been anything other than a maidservant, would order her imperiously to take service at some house or other in the neighbourhood, and she would be incapable of refusing.

When the thought became too oppressive, she sat up in bed and told herself roundly that it was nonsense.

But in another half hour, after lying there trying, for want of being able to get to sleep, to puzzle out who could possibly have played that devilish trick on honest Jack Steadman, she found that once again she was caught in the waking or half-wakeful nightmare. Condemned never again to live as a lady and to have those open opportunities before her.

She did sleep at last. But when she finally woke, with the noise of birdsong loud in her ears, she felt by no means ready to go and offer her temporary services over at the Hall.