Into the Valley of Death (3 page)

“I know hardly anything of the circumstances,” Miss Unwin said.

“You know that it happened in the place they call Hanger Wood, down in the valley not much more’n a mile from the house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there early one morning, at the beginning of this
May as ever was, a keeper in General Pastell’s employ found as he walked the woods two bodies lying in a glade.”

“Two bodies?”

“Yes, two. One with the back of his head shot away, dead as mutton. And the other lying there as if dead, but, when the keeper came to touch him, well alive, though he had struck his head on the stump of an oak and was senseless to the world. My husband, my Jack. My Jack with a shotgun, his own blessed shotgun, by his side and, as the keeper soon found, discharged.”

“And what is supposed to have happened?”

“They said at the inquest and again at the trial—and you shall if you want ’em see the newspapers that printed near every word that was uttered at either—they said that my Jack had shot that man, who he had quarrelled with, as I well know, had shot him, and then in the dark, seeking to leave the place, had stumbled and by chance had struck his head on that oak stump and had lain there for all the world to see him in his villainy.”

“And Mr. Steadman,” Miss Unwin asked, “when he had come to his senses, what had he to say?”

“Why, that he had done no such thing as they said of him, of course.”

“But how did he account for the circumstances? They look black on the face of it, as you must know.”

“He told them that he had been walking in the woods, as he often did of a night when we had closed the doors of the house, to get some air, and that something—he knows not what—struck him on the head and that afterwards he knew no more.”

“And he could offer no other explanation?”

“He said he had told the truth and that should be enough for anybody. And so it should, Miss Unwin, because if Jack said it, it is God’s own truth and that alone.”

Little Mrs. Steadman sat so upright in the big armchair that belonged to her husband and looked so steadily and truly
at her from a pair of the brightest and bluest of eyes that Miss Unwin knew then that she was indeed being told the pure and simple truth.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she said at once, “I cannot, of course, see how those black circumstances can be other than they seem. But, yes, I will take your word for it that they are. If you tell me your husband is guiltless, I will believe it.”

“And guiltless he is,” Mrs. Steadman replied. “Alfie Goode was shot, as I told you, in the back of the head. If my Jack ever had to shoot a man—and in battle he has done that, God forgive him—then he would do it face-to-face. Face-to-face as he met the Indian hordes and the Russian Cossacks in their might.”

“He fought in India and in Russia,” Miss Unwin said, “and yet you believe that he did not kill that man in Hanger Wood?”

“I do. I believe it as certain as I am sitting here in his chair. I shall believe it to my dying day. But—but there’s one more thing you must know. One more thing that looks more damning than the rest.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“Why, in my Jack’s pocket when they came to search him they found a note.”

“A note?”

“Yes, from that villain Alfie Goode. And, Miss Unwin, it was a note in Alfie Goode’s own hand, as was proved and proved twice over. A note saying to meet him in Hanger Wood that night.”

“And what does your husband say to that?”

“That he never set eyes on it in his life. That and no more.”

“I see. And, let me ask once again, you still believe him to be innocent?”

“As a new-born babe. Still I believe it.”

Miss Unwin, sitting there opposite her, thought then that somehow, battered old woman of more than fifty summers though she was, she too was a new-born babe for pure innocence.
She could not lie and deceive. She would not have lied and deceived to save her husband, precious to her though he was, if she knew him to be other than guiltless of the charge against him.

And he was to be hanged on Friday.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she said, “what I can do I will do. As heaven is my witness it must be little enough, and there is little enough time to do it in. But to the best of my powers all that I can do to prove your husband innocent, that I will do.”

For all the fierce belief in Jack Steadman’s innocence that Miss Unwin had gained from little, blue-eyed, crab-apple-cheeked Mrs. Steadman, the power of logical thought she had inherited from one or the other of her unknown parents was as strong in her as ever.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she said after they had sat in silence for more than a few moments, “though I have come to believe every word you have said about your husband—that he is indeed a man incapable of shooting another in the back—yet there is still something, I find, that I must do before I begin so much as to think how, in the terribly short time we have, his name can be cleared.”

“You do what you think right, me dear,” Mrs. Steadman answered. “You do that.”

“Then as quickly as may be I must talk to some other people who know your husband. I must find for myself an unclouded view of him. Do you see that? Then, if they confirm what you have told me, and I don’t doubt that they can, I will do all that I may though I do not sleep from now till next Thursday night.”

“Yes, that I understand,” Mrs. Steadman answered. “And I can give you names by the score as’ll vouch for my Jack. Why, there’s General Pastell himself up at the Hall for a beginning.”

“No,” said Miss Unwin.

“No? You’re not afraid o’ asking to see the General, are you? There’s no need. He’d do anything to see justice for Jack. He got up a petition, you know.”

“A petition? And it has been presented?”

Mrs. Steadman, bolt upright in her big armchair, gave a puff of a sigh that had in it more of exasperation than of sadness.

“Presented it was,” she said. “To the Home Sekertairy himself. And rejected it was. Out of hand. ‘Nothing in the evidence,’ he said. ‘Nothing in the evidence.’”

It was Miss Unwin’s turn to sigh now. “Yes,” she said, “you must face this, Mrs. Steadman. There hardly will be anything in the evidence that has been found so far to give us a chance of gaining a reprieve. There cannot really have been.”

“I know it, I know it,” Mrs. Steadman answered.

Looking at her sitting there, eyes straight to the front, facing what had to be faced as she had no doubt faced all the hardships of a soldier’s wife in cantonment and campaign, Miss Unwin saw her as every bit as brave as her husband or any of the soldiers of that last war peaceful England had fought. She saw her, indeed, as one of those gallant Six Hundred charging the guns in the Valley of Death.

Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell …

But she hardened her heart.

“No,” she said. “No, Mrs. Steadman, I must not go to anyone you recommend to me. I must go to those I find for myself.”

She left then and went quietly down to the entrance passage of the house. There she looked about her, first into the private bar, then into the taproom. There she thought she saw what she wanted.

On this sleepy Sunday afternoon the room was nearly deserted, but for a maid, a big-boned, buxom fresh-faced creature, lazily sweeping sawdust onto the brick floor ready for the evening’s customers.

Miss Unwin stepped in. “Good afternoon,” she said.

The girl turned to see who had spoken. And when she saw Miss Unwin, a deep, dark blush spread up suddenly all over her sturdy neck, blue-white as fresh milk, and up onto her rosy cheeks.

“You may be able to give me some help,” Miss Unwin said to her. “Tell me, have you lived here in Chipping Compton all your life?”

The girl looked puzzled. The deep blush began slowly to fade.

“Why, yes, miss,” she answered in a twangy Oxfordshire accent. “That I have. Twenty-two year come Michaelmas.”

“Good. Then I expect you will be able to tell me what it is I want to know.”

Miss Unwin advanced farther into the room and pushed its heavy oak door partially closed.

“You know what a situation Mrs. Steadman is in, of course?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Yes, miss, I do. And Mary Vilkins a-telling me, like as a secret, that you come down special to get Mr. Steadman off”

Inwardly Miss Unwin winced. She would much have preferred it if Vilkins had told no single soul the purpose of her visit, especially before she had made up her mind that there was anything that she could do. But the damage had been done.

It must have been the knowledge of the shared secret, she guessed, that had brought up that deep blush on the girl’s cheeks.

“Yes,” she said to her, “I am here at Mary’s request to see if there is anything yet to be done. And you can perhaps help me.”

The deep-red blush came up again on the rosy face.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Miss Unwin hastened to say. “What I am asking is simple enough.”

The blush retreated.

“All I want from you,” Miss Unwin went on, “is to be told of some two or three people in the town who have known Mr. Steadman well. Do not tell me, if you can avoid it, of those who especially liked him. Tell me even the names of people who have not much cause to sympathise with him, if you can.”

A look of slow thought planted itself on the girl’s face.

“Why,” she said at last, “there’s Parson, o’ course. He’s been parson o’ the parish, they say, for forty year an’ more, and he hasn’t got no special cause to like Mr. Steadman, Mr. Steadman being what they calls in church a publican and sinner.”

“Good. The parson. What is his name?”

“Oh, ay. That be Reverend Dr. Clarke.”

“Good. Now, who else?”

“Well, if you be wanting the one as has known Jack Steadman longest of all, then there’s no one better nor old Mrs. Orridge.”

“Mrs. Orridge. And who is she that she should have known Mr. Steadman so long?”

The girl gave a gurgle of laughter. “Why, she be midwife what brought ’un into world, she be.”

Miss Unwin smiled in her turn. “Yes, no one better. And don’t bother your head too much, but is there perhaps one other?”

Again the girl stood leaning on her broom, a picture of slowly churning thought.

“Why, no,” she said at last. “No, I can’t think— Why, why, yes, there be.”

“And who is that?”

“Mr. Sprunge, o’ course. Old Mr. Sprunge what’s been
beadle o’ the parish nigh on as long as Dr. Clarke’s been parson.”

And at the mention of Mr. Sprunge’s office Miss Unwin’s heart sank. A beadle was to her of all mankind the one she could not do other than hate and even fear. Parish orphan herself until she had been lucky enough to be sent as kitchen-maid to a good home, a beadle was for ever a figure of dread in her eyes. She had suffered, suffered time and again, at the hands of the beadle of her parish, and she could not but think of anyone holding such an office—in charge of workhouse discipline, responsible for keeping order in church—except with real fear.

Yet if anyone here could tell her of Jack Steadman’s true character, was it not likely that it would be the man who had been beadle since Jack was a boy?

She asked the girl, whose name she learnt was Betsey, where she could find first Mr. Sprunge, then Mrs. Orridge, and finally the parson.

Then without delay she set out into the sleepy Sunday streets of the little town, their quiet disturbed only by the lazy cooing of the occasional pigeon from the deep green depths of the still trees.

The beadle lived, as had the beadle who had made her own early days a misery, in a cottage next to the parish workhouse, and it was the necessity of visiting Mr. Sprunge there that added yet more to her almost sick feeling of revulsion. But from Mr. Sprunge she was likely to hear what she must know if she was to help Mrs. Steadman. So without hesitation she marched along till she came to his cottage.

At its door she forced herself to tap at once with the brightly polished brass knocker, and only thought that in her time she had been the one often to have rubbed and rubbed at such a knocker and to have been punished unfairly often enough when after her work was done something had blemished its shine.

The door was opened almost at once by the beadle himself.
Miss Unwin saw that he wore just such a fine coat with gold lacing on cuffs and collar as she had dreaded seeing in her childhood. But at least the man inside it was not as fat and puffed-angry of visage as the beadle she had known. He was tall, evidently grave, with a settled, cone-shaped face that even had something of an air of benevolence.

“Mr. Sprunge?”

“Madam?”

“Mr. Sprunge, I must ask you to forgive me for intruding upon you on a Sunday.”

Mr. Sprunge gravely nodded his large head once in acknowledgement of this politeness.

But in her anxiety about the encounter, Miss Unwin had failed to prepare any excuse for asking about Jack Steadman. In the heat of the moment, however, words came to her.

“I am a representative of the
Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
,” she said boldly.

“Indeed, madam.”

“Indeed. And it has come to the notice of our editress that there has been in your town a case of murder of considerable interest. She has for long wished to see in the magazine’s pages an article on the position and feelings of the wife of a man of some respectability who is under sentence of death, and she has commissioned me now to come here to see what I can find.”

“Indeed, madam,” Mr. Sprunge said, even more gravely than before, if that were possible.

Miss Unwin plunged on, hard though she found the going.

“Yes, sir. And I am anxious first to acquaint myself with more of the circumstances before I approach Mrs. Steadman —is that the name?—before I approach Mrs. Steadman herself.”

“Indeed, madam?”

“Yes.”

Miss Unwin drew a weary breath. “Yes, sir. So I have come to you as being, I understand, the person in the town most
able to give me an account, not of the case itself, the details of which I have learnt from the newspapers, but of the man who has been found guilty of the crime.”