Beyond this place (8 page)

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attacking his defenceless paramour, the mother of his unborn child, then fleeing headlong to hide himself in a foreign land ... I tell you it was masterly. The jury, open-mouthed, hung on every word.

"The speech by the prisoner's counsel was useless beside this performance. The financial resources of the defence were negligible, counsel was an oldish man, draggingly slow, with a thin voice, and he was uninstructed on many points. In particular he seemed quite unaware of evidence likely to be favourable to Mathry.

"Well, it was soon over. Guilty. The prisoner's protests of innocence went through me like a knife. But he was dragged away and everybody was well pleased. The £500 reward offered for conviction was paid out to Collins and Burt. God knows they had earned it."

The sick man's strength seemed at last to fail him, he lay back, and, in an exhausted voice, declared that he could not continue.

"Come again in a day or so. You'll hear the rest then."

There was a long, a terrible silence in the narrow room. Silently, Boulia got up, poured some water into a glass and put it to Swann's lips. He swallowed, without moving. All this time, Paul sat dazed, his head supported in his hands, a storm of emotion sweeping him. A string of questions trembled wildly upon his tongue. But he knew he could not put them, that the session for today was ended — Swann had closed his eyes, completely limp, beyond all further effort. As Mark tip-toed from the room Paul rose unsteadily, pressed the sick man's hand between his own, then followed through the door.

CHAPTER XI

COULD it be that an innocent man had been buried alive for fifteen years? Uncertain and confused, swayed this way and that, Paul scarcely dared frame that frightful question. Swann had as

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yet offered no concrete proof, only an attitude of mind. The thing seemed inconceivable. Yet the mere possibility of such a monstrous injustice inflicted upon his father was enough to drive Paul frantic. He must not think of it. Determinedly he strove for command of his emotions. He realized that now, above all, he must be calm, practical, and resolute.

His first step was to write home asking for a parcel of fresh clothing, his next to find a permanent lodging which would afford him more freedom of action than the Y.M.C.A. After some searching he discovered a cheap attic on the fifth floor of a rooming-house in Poole Street — a frowsy but respectable thoroughfare in a loop of the Sherwood Canal mainly given over to inferior boarding houses, which lay south of the traffic-infested channel of Ware Street. The landlady, Mrs. Coppin, a spare little woman with a penetrating voice, showed him upstairs, gave him soap and a coarse clean towel. The advance payment on his room almost exhausted the small store of money he had brought from Belfast, and, when he had washed, he set out to find some means of supporting himself.

Wortley was a humming city, a vast hive of activity, embedded in flat farming country, but, like its neighbours Coventry and Northampton, its industries were highly specialized, devoted mainly to the manufacture of china, cutlery, and leather goods — trades demanding a technical training and skill which Paul did not possess. Also, he had no union membership card, no references which he cared to produce, and of course he was not yet fully qualified as a teacher. When two days had gone by without result he scanned the "situations vacant" columns of the newspapers with increasing anxiety.

But on the following morning a stroke of real luck came his way. As he came out of his attic room and walked along the crowded pavement of Ware Street to the cabman's shelter, where he had discovered that he could lunch for a few pence on a sausage roll and coffee, he observed, pasted on the window of a large store known as The Bonanza Bazaar, a notice:

Pianist Wanted.

Apply Mr. Victor Harris, Manager, within.

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After a moment's hesitation, Paul entered the shop. It was one of those emporia selling all sorts of everyday goods, from hardware and cosmetics to underwear and children's toys, lavishly displaying its merchandise upon a series of open counters — a local replica of the transpontine five-and-ten-cent stores. The manager, a man of about thirty with marcelled hair and a smoothly efficient manner, took a brisk look at Paul, then led the way, in his striped double-breasted suit, his flowered tie blowing in the breeze of the electric fans, to a section of the store where an upright piano stood amongst a display of sheet music. Taking a piece at random, he placed it on the instrument and said briefly:

"Play!"

Paul sat down and ran his fingers over the keys. He could read perfectly at sight, even difficult music, and this popular waltz before him was simplicity itself. He played it through, repeated it with some variations of his own, then picking up several other sheets, he played these over too. Before he had finished, the girls at the adjoining counters were listening and Mr. Harris was beating time approvingly on the counter with his rhinestone ring.

"You'll do." The manager nodded his decision. "You're hired. Three pounds a week and a sandwich lunch. Only see you keep going. No slacking or you're out on your ear. And use the loud pedal. Make the customers buy."

He gave Paul a patronising smile, showing the gold in his teeth, then, with a frown towards the other assistants for wasting their time, he moved easily away.

Paul kept on playing all day. It was no sinecure. He began freshly enough, but as the hours wore on his muscles ached from sitting, unsupported, on the hard piano stool, and when the ill-ventilated store filled up, the crowd milling and pushing around him, breathing down his neck, jogging his elbows, almost silting on the keyboard, became unbearably oppressive. His mind, too, was in a turmoil, torn by thoughts of his father, by half-formed plans and projects, by the need for deciding upon a definite course of action.

Towards one o'clock Harris swaggered out for lunch and

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after a few minutes the girl in charge of the cafeteria brought over coffee and a plate of sandwiches to Paul. Glad of a respite, he got up, stretched himself, and, with a smile, asked her name. She told him, flatly, Lena Andersen. But although he had thought to exchange a word with her, she moved off immediately to another part of the shop. There was nothing uncivil in this reserve; yet beneath the surface of her manner he sensed a constraint which, through his troubled mood, stirred his curiosity. And later, when she returned to the cafeteria across the way, almost instinctively he glanced towards her before beginning once more to play.

She could not have been more than twenty years of age and seemed to him a Scandinavian type — tall, with blond hair, and long limbs. Her features were regular and, though marred by a fine white scar running down from her high cheek-bone, would have been attractive but for a deep melancholy concentrated between her brows. Indeed, in repose, her face was unusually sad, her expression distant, intent, and serious. Several times that afternoon, despite himself, Paul's gaze was drawn towards this tragic young Amazon. He noticed that she wore her uniform quietly, with good taste. Although she appeared on good terms with the other assistants, she kept herself apart, and was restrained with all but a few of her regular customers. What sort of person was she? He tried her with a glance, inquiring and friendly, but it passed unanswered. Instead she lowered her gaze and turned away.

The afternoon dragged on. He closed his eyes while his fingers hammered out on the keyboard a melody already so sickeningly familiar he knew it by heart. Six o'clock came at last and, with a sigh of relief, he was free. Hurrying from the store, he made his way directly to the infirmary, and after some difficulty, again gained admission to Swann. The sick man seemed worse, and in a low and brooding mood was disinclined to talk. Indeed, it was as though he regretted having spoken so freely on the previous occasion. But as Paul sat patiently by his bedside, not pressing him in any way, he gradually relented. He did, then, turn his head, gazing at the young man with a kind of pity.

"So you came back?" he said at last.

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"Yes," Paul answered in a low voice.

"I warn you ... if you go on with this it'll change your whole life ... as it did mine. And once you've put your hand to it, there'll be no turning back."

"I won't turn back."

"Then how do you propose to begin?"

"I thought if I typed out a statement and you signed it, I could take it to the authorities . . ."

Swann could not laugh — but a short, sardonic tremor passed across his pale lips.

"What authorities? The police? They're already fully informed — and quite satisfied with the situation. The Public Prosecutor, Sir Matthew Sprott? From personal knowledge of that gentleman, I advise you not to meddle with him." Swann paused, taken by a long fit of coughing. "No. The Secretary of State, in Parliament, alone has the power to open up the matter, and you wouldn't get within a mile of him with your present evidence. The delirious ravings — that's what they'd call it — of a dying, discredited ex-policeman would carry no weight whatsoever. They'd simply laugh at you."

"But you believe my father is innocent."

"I know he's innocent," Swann answered, with a trace of brusqueness. "In his summing up the judge called the Spurling murder a vile, brutal, monstrous crime, for which the extreme penalty of the law was too light a punishment. And yet they reprieved Mathry. Why, I ask you, why? Maybe they weren't quite sure, after all, that the man they'd convicted was guilty and so, out of the generosity of their hearts, they didn't swing him up quick, they gave him slow death instead — life imprisonment in Stoneheath."

Paul sat, silent and appalled, while the sick man struggled to regain his breath.

"No," Swann said presently, in a dry, totally different tone. "There is only one way to force them to re-open the case. You must discover the real murderer."

Taken unawares, Paul felt a chill traverse his spine. Hitherto he had considered only his father's innocence, the thought of the

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actual assassin had scarcely entered his head. It was as though a new and formidable shadow had fallen across his path.

"The man Rocca," he ventured, after a prolonged silence. "What about him?"

Swann shook his head contemptuously.

"He had nothing to do with it —hadn't the guts. He only wanted to save his own skin. But speaking of skin," the sick man's lips drew into a grimace, "we come back to the purse that was found by the body. Believe it or not, that unidentified purse was made of the finest leather in the world . . . tanned human hide."

A moment of absolute silence.

"So you see," Swann resumed in that same vein of bitter satire, "you've only to lay your hands on a character perverted enough to possess such an article, link him up with a few other pieces of evidence that got mislaid — and you have the killer." Again that sardonic facial tremor. "After fifteen years ... it should be relatively easy."

"Don't!" Paul said. "For God's sake. I need your help . . . all you can give me."

Swann's expression changed. He gazed at Paul almost despairingly.

"Well, if you must ... let me tell you more about the two main witnesses — who identified the wrong man, not the right one — Edward Collins and Louisa Burt.

"When Burt and Collins came to headquarters to claim their reward I was on duty. Now as I've told you I had my serious doubts about this pair —not so much Collins, who was a soft mark with good enough intentions, as Louisa Burt, who, for a seventeen-year-old girl, seemed to me . . . well, a character worth watching. I put them in a side room to wait and while they waited I was next door working at my desk and, because of an acoustic arrangement we had, was able to hear everything they said. I wrote it down too. At first they didn't say much. Then Collins, who sounded scared, said: 'Will we get the money?' We'll get it, Ed, don't worry,' Burt answered, cool as you please, and she added: We might do even better.' What do you mean?' he said. She laughed. 'I've got something up my sleeve that might sur-

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prise you.' That seemed to bother Collins. He didn't speak for quite a while, then, in a kind of parrot voice, as though he'd repeated it often before, he said: 'Mathry was the man, wasn't he, Louisa?' 'Shut up, will you,' she came at him. 'It's too late to back down now. We didn't do no harm. With all that evidence they would have done for Mathry anyhow. And after all he didn't get hung. Don't you understand, you fool, it don't pay to go against the police. Besides, things may come out of this better than you ever dreamed. I've 'ad a notion them last few days,' she went on in a kind of far-away voice. I'll live like a lady yet, Ed, maybe like a queen, with servants to wait on me and wash the dishes and empty the slops. Just let me take my chance and I'll spite the whole world and never iron another shirt.'"

Swann paused for breath. When he resumed he looked straight at Paul.

"That was the end of the conversation. But I'd heard enough to confirm my worst suspicions. Burt, out of her own mouth, had given the show away. She had seen the murderer and come out with his description. When this didn't quite fit Mathry, she obligingly shifted her position. There would be a lot of probing and cross-questioning at headquarters and it suited her to fall in with it — for everything pointed to Mathry being the guilty man. Then she wanted to stand well with the authorities, to be the little prima donna, right in the front of the picture, and of course to get the reward. It was her influence that swung Collins. Maybe she actually persuaded herself it was Mathry she saw ... it can happen with that type. And then, when it was all over, headlines, publicity, praise, the whole peepshow, and she had time to think, she began to wonder about all the things that hadn't come out at the trial and to ask herself if, after all, it wasn't somebody else she had seen, a vaguely familiar figure, that she'd noticed around Eldon on her way to and from the laundry. Suddenly it came to her ... a possibility of who this man might be ... a chance . . . and with it a sense of golden opportunity.