Scandal at High Chimneys (6 page)

“I have. At Mr. Damon’s instructions, we are locked in for the night. Now be off.”

The lamp-flame trembled amid weights of shadow as the green-baize barrier opened and closed. Burbage watched his daughter go. Then, austere and slow-moving and sandy-whiskered, he turned round.

“You must forgive her, sir. You really must try your best to forgive her. She has been under a great strain.”

And he opened the door of Matthew Damon’s study.

A
USTERE, TOO, WAS MATTHEW
Damon. He stood in starchy evening-clothes behind the flat-topped desk, with papers and a decanter of brandy in front of him. His height and bearing remained impressive. But on his sunken face, as the eyes moved round sideways towards Clive, was a look of illness which might even have showed a touch of madness.

“Come in, Mr. Strickland. Be seated.”

“Mr. Damon, may I ask—?”

“No; one moment. Burbage!”

“Yes, sir?”

“You have looked to my instructions, Burbage?”

“Yes, sir. All of them.”

“Thank you,” said Matthew Damon, and dismissed Burbage with a gesture. He waited until the heavy door had closed, and footsteps moved away. “One moment, I say, before you sit down. This afternoon, you may recall, I sent a telegram from Reading.”

“Yes?”

“I telegraphed to a Private Inquiry Bureau operated by a former officer in the Detective Branch of the Metropolitan Police. Forgive me for my secrecy about this. I shall visit Mr. Whicher at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Can’t you ask him to come here?”

“I can, but I will not. This matter must be kept strictly secret, except in one event. If anything should happen to me in the meantime—”

Those deep-set eyes had already given Clive a shock. Mr. Damon raised his hand sharply, forestalling comment.

“If anything should happen to me, however,” he went on, “you will visit him in my place and tell him what I propose to tell you. Do you understand?”

“I understand, yes.”

“The address of the office,” and Mr. Damon picked up a paper from the desk, “is given as ‘347 Oxford Street, beside the Pantheon.’ You should find it without trouble.”

“Yes; everybody knows the Pantheon.”

This room, heavily curtained, smelt stuffy and musty. Clive still stood just inside the closed door. In the wall opposite him, between two windows, a fire burned between the bars of an arched grate under a low wooden mantelpiece. Matthew Damon, his back to the rear wall of the study, faced across towards a second closed door—the door to the library—in the front wall.

But he was not looking ahead of him. His eyes, turned sideways towards Clive, were kindled from underneath by the light of a student’s lamp, a lamp with a green-glass shade, shining up from the desk.

“Number 347 Oxford Street!” repeated Mr. Damon, and dropped the paper. “As I have good reason to know, it is just across the road from the Princess’s Theatre. Should it become necessary, will you promise to undertake this?”

“Look here, sir—!”

“Will you promise?”

“Very well; I promise. But whatever it is, whatever has been troubling you for so long a time, it can’t possibly be as bad as you think!”

“Perhaps not,” agreed the other with sardonic courtesy. “Yet I think it bad enough, if I may state an example. You are not married, young man?”

“No; you know I’m not.”

“Would
you
care to marry the daughter of a vicious murderess?”

“
Who
is the daughter of a vicious murderess?”

“Sit down, Mr. Strickland.”

The fire crackled and popped amid shifting gleams. Matthew Damon indicated a padded armchair, covered with shabby red velvet, just in front of his desk. Clive sat down as his host stretched out a hand for the decanter of brandy.

“You are concerned with sensationalism, Mr. Strickland. You may read the law-reports. Are you familiar with the name of Harriet Pyke?”

“No, except that you mentioned it.”

“
I
mentioned it? When?”

“In the train this afternoon.”

“Ah, yes! Yes, I believe I did!” The barrister, after speaking almost at a shout, controlled himself and smiled agreeably. “But there were certain matters I could not possibly have discussed in the presence of my wife.”

“Well, sir?”

“Well! It will be known to you that there are certain areas of London, St. John’s Wood for instance, in which men of means and substance are accustomed to establish their kept women? Each in her own handsome villa? Or that there are thoroughfares north of Oxford Street (Berners Street, Newman Street for example?) where a pretty anonyma may be set up in her own expensive rooms? It is so now, and it was so nearly a generation ago. Harriet Pyke was such a woman.”

Clive did not comment.

Lifting the decanter of brandy, his host removed the stopper and poured a tumbler about a quarter full. Perhaps it indicated his state of mind that he made no offer of drink to his guest, nor did he add soda-water from the small bottle.

There was a clock ticking somewhere in the study. Matthew Damon lifted the tumbler, drank, and then whacked down the empty glass on the desk.

“Mr. Strickland, do you think I don’t know what they say of me?”

“Sir?”

“I am no stranger to the lusts of the flesh.”

Outside in the hall, firm footsteps approached the door on that side. Knuckles rapped lightly on the door. Matthew Damon broke off, twitching his head round, as the door was opened.

“I say, Damon—” began a man’s voice, and also stopped.

In the doorway, altering both his tone and his bearing as he saw Clive, stood a portly gentleman with a short brown beard.

“Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland,” said Matthew Damon in a repressed voice, “may I present Mr. Clive Strickland?”

“Your servant, sir,” said the doctor with much formality.

“An honour, sir,” replied Clive, rising and bowing.

Whereupon Clive, as his nerves crawled, became aware of two things.

Mr. Damon’s eyes glittered with rage at the interruption. And, as Celia had said, there was a storm coming outside. Thunder shocked low down on the sky: not loudly, but as though approaching. A rising breeze swept round High Chimneys.

“Yes?” inquired Mr. Damon.

“My dear Damon,” said Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland, “where is your wife?”

“My wife? So far as I am aware, my esteemed wife should be in her own sitting-room upstairs. That is where she usually is, at this time.”

“The lady is not there.”

“Then why not ask her maid? Or ask Burbage?”

“Tut, my dear sir! You seem to forget your own rigid rules and time-tables. The servants all have their evening meal together between six-fifteen and six-thirty. That’s not much time, I have always said, when
we
begin at seven and take two hours. I scarcely like to disturb the poor devils.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Damon, and snatched up his brandy-glass. “Let me applaud your consideration for others.”

Thunder struck again.

With the door wide open, swinging inwards to the right as you entered from the hall, air prowled in the hall and a draught whipped through. The lamp-flame wavered; two papers fluttered up from the desk, and Matthew Damon struck them down with the flat of his left hand as though killing a fly.

Already Dr. Bland’s eyes had narrowed. His manner, which combined the bluff good-nature of the general practitioner with the soothing stateliness of the specialist, congealed into medical watchfulness.

“Damon!” he said sharply.

“Since you are so familiar with my rules, sir, I might remind you of another. Even when I am not studying a brief, it is my habit to occupy this room alone from tea-time until dinner-time.”

“So I believe.”

“I am on no account to be disturbed except at my own request. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear.” Dr. Bland’s colour was high; but his eyes, a very bright blue, watched the other with attention. “I shall beg leave for a word with you later.”

A last draught whirled through. Heavy brown-rep curtains, on both the windows, swayed with it. Clive saw that more than doors had been locked and barred here; heavy wooden shutters, on full-length windows, were folded together and barred on the inside.

The door to the hall closed.

Matthew Damon, putting aside the brandy-glass, sat down in the chair behind his desk and closed his eyes.

“Mr. Strickland, I am growing old. What was I saying?”

“The lusts of the flesh,” answered Clive. “And Harriet Pyke.”

“Ah, yes.”

Trees seethed in the wind outside. Mr. Damon opened his eyes.

“At the time I speak of, this woman was twenty-three. It will be unnecessary to mention the name of her latest protector. He had installed her, together with a maid and a private carriage, at a villa in St. John’s Wood. Harriet Pyke was then at the height of her beauty and wantonness. But she had an unpredictable temper, especially in drink. Nor, for all her dainty appearance, could she conceal the strength of her arms and hands.”

He looked at his own hands, and clenched them.

“One night towards the end of ’46, after much amorousness at that villa, there was a quarrel, a threat, we cannot say what. Two murders were committed. Harriet Pyke’s lover was shot through the abdomen with a revolving pistol, or so-called revolver. Afterwards the five remaining bullets were fired at him, though only one struck him. The villa was isolated; no person heard the shots except this woman’s maid. But, because the maid might be a witness, she was seized and strangled to death.”

Ugly images flowed out and filled the study.

Clive glanced over his shoulder at the other closed door, the door to the library, behind his back. Then he sat down again facing Mr. Damon.

“A revolving pistol?” said Clive. “Nineteen years ago?”

“Yes. Do you think the weapon is new?”

“Not new, it may be—”

“I do not refer, Mr. Strickland, to the revolver with metallic cartridges.
That
is new; that is most recent; I have one in my desk here, against would-be thieves.”

“Steady!”

Matthew Damon had reached out towards a drawer, but he did not open it.

“The evidence seemed clear. The authorities wished an example to be made of this woman. I was briefed for the Crown. Her defence consisted only of a denial that she had been at the villa that night. Well, where had she been? She would not say. Brazenly she insisted that this protector of hers must also have seduced her maid-servant; that these two had quarrelled; that the maid had fired the bullets, and must have been strangled by the man before he died. An unspeakable tale, you must allow; the authorities would have none of it.

“It was not a happy time for me. My wife, my first wife, had recently died. But I was young then, as men of the law are accounted; my duty was to make the jury disbelieve Harriet Pyke’s account of what happened; and I did so.

“It was only after the verdict …

“Had I exceeded my duty? Had I shown too much zeal? Had my grief for my wife been poured into the bitterness of the prosecution?

“When I went to visit this woman in the condemned cell, I do most firmly deny that I was in any way influenced by her physical charms. Throughout the trial she had watched me steadily, as though possessing some secret knowledge of me; I can still see her flaunting bonnet and her eyes in the dock.

“Later, in the condemned cell, she indeed proved to have some knowledge of me and my life. She professed to have read it. But there was little time to reflect on this. For she went down on her knees and told me a different story of the murders.

“Harriet Pyke had borne a child, of much the same age as my own babies: so much proved to be true. When her latest protector installed her in the villa, she left this child to be cared for by a sempstress and saw the child when she could: that also was true.

“On the night of the double murder, Harriet Pyke told me, she had been with her baby. The sempstress, she said, would confirm this. And yet, if she had stated as much in open court, there would be no chance for that child to grow up into a decent life.

“Now the accused was in mortal terror. The sempstress
did
confirm her story. But the sempstress was of dubious character, and a fallen woman too; the Secretary of State for Home Affairs would not believe her. And, when I failed to obtain a reprieve, Harriet Pyke was carried screaming to the gallows.”

Matthew Damon paused.

He was sitting bolt upright, his hands flat on the desk, face almost without expression.

“Then what she told you was true!” said Clive.

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Damon.

“It was
not
true?”

“Except for the points I have indicated, not one word,” retorted the other. “But
I
believed it. Mark that!
I
believed it, and went on believing it for nearly two decades: until I learned the truth three months ago.”

He stared at the green-glass shade of the lamp as emotion grew inside him.

“A daughter of Harriet Pyke would have been born to sin in any case. As it was, however, I hoped to avoid the worse eventuality. There would have been problems in any case; as, for instance, the necessity of telling the truth when
any
of the three married. None the less, if only she had been innocent …”

“Mr. Damon!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forgive me, but what are you talking about? And how does this concern your own daughter?”

Again Matthew Damon sat up straight, but his nostrils were dilated. Over his face went a look so richly sardonic that it seemed almost a sneer.

“Oh, come!” he said. “You are an intelligent man. Pray don’t pretend you misunderstand?”

Clive did not misunderstand, but it was true he wished to misunderstand. Mentally he fought the images that crowded round.

“I should have questioned Whicher all those years ago,” said Mr. Damon, “when he was a young sergeant of the Detective Branch. But no. It was my conscience, my conscience, my conscience! An innocent woman, or so I believed, had been hanged because of me. I have prosecuted many criminals since then; but never with the unscrupulous violence I used towards
her.
And I feared God’s judgment unless I made atonement.”