Take No Farewell - Retail (54 page)

‘He’s on the trail of one now,’ said Windrush. ‘Dan Irving, the Labour member for Burnley, died recently. Henderson’s up there trying to make sure he wins the by-election. It’s to be held on the twenty-eighth of this month. Until then he won’t want to rock any boats. Of that you can be certain.’

‘And I know his Under-Secretary of old,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Sir John Anderson is a strict and inflexible man. He won’t even think of recommending clemency.’

‘Then … what you’re saying is …’

‘They’ve fixed a date, Staddon,’ said Windrush.

‘When?’

‘Thursday the twenty-first. One week before the Burnley by-election. Thirteen days from now. At nine o’clock that morning, the sentence of the court will be carried out.’

I stared at him dumbly for a moment, then looked at Sir Henry. ‘She … Consuela knows?’

‘The prison governor informed her last night.’

‘How … Have you seen her since?’

‘I was present at the time, Staddon. So was Windrush. She took it with the composure she has displayed throughout this sorry affair. She is … a remarkable woman.’

‘But … What can we do?’

‘Very little. We shall plead the case for clemency with all the eloquence at our command. And Mrs Caswell’s friends should be urged to write to the Home Secretary supporting our plea. Beyond that, I have nothing to suggest.’

‘Nothing?’

‘The press are against her,’ put in Windrush. ‘Foreign, Catholic and guilty – as they see it. It’s no good hoping for a campaign in that quarter.’

‘Even if every editor in Fleet Street were on our side,’ said Sir Henry, ‘I doubt they could achieve anything. Sir John does not like to be pushed. It merely hardens his heart. And his legal advisers have made it clear to me that they see no grounds for clemency.’

I looked from one to the other of them. ‘You believe this hanging will take place, don’t you?’ In the silence that followed, their answer was delivered.

Suddenly, Sir Henry cleared his throat and rose from his chair. ‘I must have a word with my clerk before he goes home. Excuse me, gentlemen.’ With that, he bustled from the room, leaving Windrush and me staring at each other across a carpeted waste of shadows.

‘She’s quite resigned to it,’ Windrush said after a moment. ‘I believe she has been ever since she was charged. Unlike we
cynical
Englishmen’ – he smiled faintly – ‘she never expected to be spared on account of her innocence.’

I said nothing. There seemed then as little to say as there was to do. Beyond the exhaustion of our last resource lay only a wilderness of despair.

‘She asked me to tell you of the arrangements she has made for Jacinta. Her daughter’s future has been her principal concern of late. She has been anxious to ensure that the girl does not remain with her father. Some weeks ago, I submitted a request to Caswell’s solicitor on her behalf. To my surprise, it’s been granted. Caswell has agreed to let Jacinta be adopted by her maternal uncle, Senhor Francisco Manchaca de Pombalho, a coffee merchant in Rio de Janeiro. The fellow’s quite wealthy, I believe – though not as wealthy as Caswell. Be that as it may, a new life in a distant country seems altogether the kindest provision to make for the girl. She’s young enough to put this … horror … behind her, don’t you think?’ He waited for me to respond. Then, when I did not, he continued: ‘We’ve had a cable from Brazil. Jacinta’s uncle is on his way. He’s bringing his wife with him. They’ll take Jacinta into their custody as soon as they arrive. Three return passages to Brazil have been booked aboard a steamer due to leave Liverpool on the twenty-second, the day after …’

We have no words, I thought as he broke off – no trite and conventional phrases – to cater for situations such as this. Whether Windrush understood why Consuela wanted me to know what was to become of Jacinta – whether I understood myself – seemed now a matter of no significance whatever. ‘I’d like to see her,’ I said, as expressionlessly as I could contrive.

Windrush raised his hand and began massaging his brow with the tips of two fingers, as if to relieve a headache. ‘I’d hoped to avoid telling you this, Staddon. The fact is that she’s quite emphatic about refusing to see you. She’s asked me to make that abundantly clear.’

So, the embargo was to remain in force. The gulf I had
opened
between us thirteen years before was not be closed even in death.

‘I’m sorry, Staddon.’

‘So am I. But sorrow doesn’t help, does it?’

‘No.’

‘I wish …’ But wishes, like hopes and prayers and every unavailing effort, were useless now, worn out and wasted on ears that would not listen and minds that would not bend. Darkness, beyond the window, between our words, within our minds, was rushing and rising around our future. Darkness. And the worst – that could never be prepared for. I rose, my wish unspoken, and left, stumbling in silent confusion out into the night.

Chapter Nineteen

ONCE, IN THE
foolishness of my youth, I took part in a séance. It was during my first year at Oxford, in the rooms of a student with whom I shared a landing. Late at night, with lexicon cards and an upturned glass, seven of us, drunk, frightened and trying not to show it, embarked on a clumsy and sniggering attempt to communicate with the dead. It worked. At all events, it seemed to. The glass moved and spelt out answers to our questions. Later, Parkhouse claimed he had pushed it, which we were all happy, not to say eager, to accept. What each of us truly believed is another matter. In my case, I am no surer now than I was then. At first, it was harmless fun. The month of one fellow’s birth. The maiden name of another chap’s mother. On such a light-hearted level it would doubtless have remained had one of our number not insisted on asking to be told the year in which he would die. At that, the glass ceased to move, the spirit (if it was a spirit) declined to answer and the séance dissolved amidst suddenly humourless recriminations.

Why, I have often wondered since, did I ask such a question? What possessed me to do it? For who – when it came to the point – would ever really want to know such a thing? Uncertainty is what renders mortality bearable. Death is a caller whose visit is only tolerable because it is unexpected. And yet, for a crazy instant, I had tried to discover when that visit would occur. How would it have felt
to
be told? What would it have seemed like to know? Thank God I never found out.

But Consuela found out. She, who did not ask the question, was given the answer. Nine o’clock on the morning of Thursday 21 February 1924: the time and date of her execution. The condemned prisoner’s unique privilege is foreknowledge of the moment of death.

I spent the weekend following my meeting with Windrush and Sir Henry at Sunnylea, where Imry was now on the mend. We shared every stray thought our despair inspired and found in the process some scant form of consolation. One such thought, bursting unbidden into my mind, recalled that madcap séance of more than twenty years ago and posed another question to which I did not want to know the answer. Was Consuela’s death to be the reward for my impudence on that long-ago occasion? Was it her fate I had sealed by tempting mine?

One meagre blessing of this time was the end it brought to secrets between Imry and me. I told him not merely how Rodrigo had died but of the counterfeit money I had found in Victor’s safe. I revealed the fatal reward Malahide’s attempts at blackmail had brought him and the fact that the letter he had sold me was a fake. I confessed every shameful detail of my deception of Consuela all those years ago. I recalled my futile efforts to help Doak and thereby appease my conscience. I even admitted how I had gone about ensuring Imry received none of the credit for the Hotel Thornton.

But no amount of honesty could alter the position in which we found ourselves. Nor could anything it lay in our power to do halt or prolong the expiring ration of days left to Consuela. We would write to the Home Secretary imploring him to let her live. We would write to the Attorney-General, the Lord Chancellor, the Prime Minister, the King himself. But we did not expect – we scarcely even hoped – that any of them would respond. Their minds were made up, set firm in the concrete of their absolute refusal to believe that the law
could
be mistaken. We who were sure that in this case it was, could do no more than stand together and bear witness.

Thursday 14 February. St Valentine’s Day. The first day of what the law had decided was to be the last week in the life of Consuela Caswell. The false spring had faded and a cold east wind was blowing, bringing snow to the streets of London. I was on a tube train, halfway between Chancery Lane and St Paul’s, when the hands of my watch showed nine o’clock and the same hour, one week ahead, seemed to toll within my head. Time, measured in ever smaller and more agonizing fractions, overshadowed all thought and action. According to Sir Henry, a reprieve – if there was to be one – would come before the weekend. If it did not, even the slenderest hope would cease to be sustainable.

At Frederick’s Place, Doris was blushing and giggling over a Valentine she had received from her fiancé, whilst Kevin was lamenting the recent form of Chelsea, the football club he insisted on supporting. They might as well have been speaking a foreign language – or inhabiting a different country – for all the affinity I felt with their trivial preoccupations.

I retreated to the sanctuary of my office, closed the door and sat down at my desk. Then I leaned forward, lifted the small plate numbered 13 from the desk-top calendar, turned it round to show 14 and dropped it back into its slot, calculating as I did so that I would perform the same action just five more times before to do so would seem pointless, before all counting and calculation would be ended by the springing of a trap-door bolt in another part of this city I shared with thousands like Doris and Kevin – but with only one Consuela.

A pile of correspondence awaited my attention, but I gave it none. Instead, I stared at the telephone and wondered if it was too early to call Windrush for news. (He had been accommodated at Sir Henry’s chambers since the failure of the appeal.) When I looked at the clock and found that it
was
not yet half past nine, I decided any such call would be premature. I rose, took off my hat and coat, hung them up and paused at the window to light a cigarette.

A stocky middle-aged man in mackintosh and homburg entered the place from Old Jewry as I gazed out and began walking down our side. I did not recognize him and assumed he was bound for the merchant bank or Mercer’s Hall. It was a mild surprise therefore when he turned in at our door. But it was nothing less than a shock when a couple of minutes later, Reg came in to announce that he was Detective Chief Inspector Wright of Scotland Yard and that he wanted to see me.

He had a round, somewhat rumpled face, with a large nose and a ready grin. All in all, he looked more like an indulgent sweet-shop owner than a sharp-witted policeman, an impression compounded by the effusiveness with which he thanked me when I helped him off with his mackintosh, offered him a chair and ordered some coffee. But his manner made me suspicious. I could not help thinking it was intended to plant in my mind an unjustified sense of superiority.

‘As I expect you’re aware, sir, I’m the officer in charge of the Caswell murder case.’

I was right, it seemed, to be suspicious. His opening remark left me uncertain whether to admit or deny a close knowledge of the case. I chose to prevaricate. ‘I rather thought enquiries in that regard were over, Chief Inspector, following the recent trial.’

‘Indeed, sir. But there are some rather puzzling loose ends. You are, I believe, a friend of Mrs Caswell?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The list of those who’ve written to the Home Secretary urging him to commute Mrs Caswell’s sentence isn’t a long one, sir. Your name’s on it. As is your partner’s, Mr Renshaw.’

‘You’ve come here because of letters we’ve written to the Home Secretary?’

‘Good Lord no, sir.’ He broke off – a smile fixed on his
lips
– as Doris entered, delivered the coffee and left again. Then he resumed. ‘The police don’t interfere with a citizen’s right to petition his elected representatives. Perish the very thought.’ He dipped his digestive biscuit in his coffee and bit off the soggy portion.

‘Then why are you here?’ I tried to make the question sound as neutral as possible.

‘You
would
describe yourself as a friend of Mrs Caswell?’

‘Well … In this context, yes.’

‘You believe her to be innocent of the crime she was convicted of?’

‘Yes, I do.’

He nodded, immersed the remainder of his biscuit, then swallowed it. ‘Were you acquainted with her late brother, Senhor Rodrigo Manchaca de Pombalho?’

‘I … I met him on a couple of occasions, certainly.’

‘What sort of occasions, sir?’

It was clear to me now that I had to force him to show his hand. ‘Inspector, I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to ask you to explain the purpose of these questions.’

‘Not at all unreasonable, sir, I agree.’ He paused to sip his coffee. ‘You’re aware of Senhor Pombalho’s recent death, I take it, and of the circumstances in which he died?’

‘Yes.’

‘Speaking unofficially, I dislike verdicts of justifiable homicide. They make me uneasy.’

‘I understood it to be a clear case of self-defence.’

‘Indeed, sir. So the jury concluded. But I’m not entirely satisfied that all the relevant facts were put before them.’

‘Really? Well, I wouldn’t know.’

‘Senhor Pombalho was staying at the Green Man, Fownhope, at the time of his death. It’s a quiet village inn and gets precious few overnight guests, particularly during the winter, so Senhor Pombalho – and his companion – were remembered by the landlord quite distinctly. But they didn’t leave their names and Senhor Pombalho’s companion hasn’t come forward, so we don’t know who – or where – he is.
We’d
like to know, of course, as you can imagine. He might be able to tell us whether the account given to the coroner by Mr Caswell was completely accurate.’