Find the Innocent (15 page)

It had come a little too quickly for her.

“I will, if I can,” she said.

So she was anxious to keep Jill Aspland out of it! Might mean little or much—he would know in a day or two. He rose to go, his eyes appreciating her hands. Steady! It was too early in their relationship to keep on looking at her. He gave her no chance to offer a handshake.

“You've helped me a lot, already, Sir Edward!”

“It is—and it will be—a great pleasure to help you.” He said it so well that the cliche was given the quality of a confession blurted out with incaution.

He heard the little catch of her breath and guessed that he had been meant to hear it. He had no illusions about his own irresistibility. But experience had justified the belief that he was cleverer at love—in the early stages, anyhow—than most of the women he desired.

When he had gone, Veronica walked about the flat in the afterglow—to be interrupted within a minute by a light tap on the knocker.

She opened the door to a tall man who contrived to look overdressed in a lounge suit of poor material but good fit. He was carrying an attache case. He lifted his hat as one who rarely has occasion to do so.

“Could I have a word with you, Mrs. Brengast?” he asked in a provincial accent and added: “I'm Mr. Roach.”

“I'm afraid I don't know you, Mr. Roach, nor what you want.” Veronica was puzzled—the man looked respectable and even seemed shy.

“From Renchester,” he explained. “I've made this little trip in my own time and paid my own train fare. I was just coming up here when I saw you get out of that car with a gent, so I waited about a bit. Trouble is, I'll have missed the last train but I expect my brother will put me up. On a night shift at Paddington, he is.”

With nervous garrulity, he was adding some information about his brother, while she weighed the fact that he had come from Renchester and prepared herself for emergency.

“The man who was with me just now was my solicitor,” she said. “I can't ask you in because I am alone, but at least come into the hall.”

“Thank you, madam,” he said and stepped over the threshold … “You don't know me from Adam except what I've told you, do you?”

He was opening the attache case: he took out a peaked chauffeur's cap. “Excuse me!” he mumbled and put the cap on. “Doesn't this make all the difference?”

He posed as he would have posed for a photographer. Veronica was amused but, as yet, unenlightened.

“What sort of difference ought it to make, Mr. Roach?”

“Trouble is, there's too much light. We're not giving it a fair chance.” He put his hand on the switch.

“If you'll pardon the liberty!” he said and switched off the light.

Light from the landing dimly penetrated the glass panel in the front door, red being dominant. Veronica recognised the face beneath the peaked cap. She had last seen it by the street lights of Renchester when this man had driven her from the lockhouse to Wheatley Junction. Thank heavens Sir Edward had left the flat before this man turned up!

“I still don't remember ever having seen you before,” she said, evenly. “Will you turn on the light, please, and tell me why you want me to recognise you.”

When he had turned on the light his hand lingered, forgetfully, on the switch. He was deflated and at a loss.

“Trouble is, I did recognise you, Mrs. Brengast.”

Veronica knew better than to rush it. She let a silence hang while he fidgetted.

“Oh! Excuse me!” He plucked off the peakcap and put it back in the attache case.

“We got as far as you saying that you recognised me, Mr. Roach.”

“Peasebarrow lock, where I picked you up. That night of the murder, madam. I only saw you in the dark until we were stopped on the light in Renchester. Then I turned round—I was telling you all about the first murder, if you remember.”

“I don't remember, because I was not in your car and I was not the woman you picked up at the lockhouse. That night I left Renchester by the nine-forty for Wheatley and Salisbury.”

“That puts the lid on, if you'll pardon the expression. If I tell the police I recognised you just now and then you tell them you weren't there, they will say I'm a liar.”

“Oh no, Mr. Roach! They would understand that you have made an honest mistake.”

Mr. Roach glowed with self-satisfaction.

“Come to think of it, it isn't a lie if I say I recognised you, even if it turns out that I was really recognising another lady. A professional driver like myself has to stand well with the police. Trouble is, I don't want to do anything that would make it awkward for you, madam.”

“That's very kind of you, Mr. Roach, but it won't affect me at all because the police have already satisfied themselves that I was in bed at my sister's at Salisbury at the time you were driving that girl from the lockhouse. But I quite understand your position, and I think you're behaving splendidly.”

More sophisticated men than Mr. Roach had believed Veronica when she told them they had behaved splendidly.

“And as you've come up to London entirely for my benefit you must allow me to pay for your fare and loss of time. I absolutely insist. Just a minute!”

She left him and returned with a five pound note, making small work of his protests.

He thanked her. He apologised for taking up her time—for recognising her—for some obscure fault concerned with his hat and his attache case—for having to hurry away because of his brother. He hurried away.

She sighed with relief when the door shut him out. Roach at worst was an honest fool. He would ruin the good impression she had made on Maenton—who had much better not know anything about him.

There remained the possibility that Roach might go to the police. The safest course would be to head him off—spoil his tale by telling it first. At the telephone she asked for a personal call for Inspector Curwen. When he answered from the Red Lion she told him of Roach's call, making much of the business with the hall light.

“He said he recognised me as the woman he had driven from the lockhouse. At the same time, he was quite willing to believe he might be mistaken. He was very polite and considerate.”

“Did he give any reason for coming to see you, Mrs. Brengast?”

“He said he did not want to do anything that would make awkwardness for me with the police. So I paid him his travelling expenses and advised him to report to you. I thought you'd like to know, Inspector. Goodnight!”

Roach was picked up on leaving the building by the man from the detective agency, who elicited only that Roach was a driver employed by The Hollow Tree Garage, Renchester. This fact was promptly relayed to Sir Edward Maenton, who rang Veronica on the following morning.

It was quite a long conversation for a busy solicitor. It gave plenty of openings for Veronica to tell him of Roach's visit—none of which were taken by Veronica.

William Brengast was buried in the family vault in North London, which had been built by his grandfather—a local plumber with ideals, who had died bankrupt.

The secret had been kept by Sir Edward Maenton to the last effective moment—which meant until after the early evening papers had been printed. The Press was present, but not the public, and the photographers created the usual mild disturbance.

Jill Aspland had wavered about attending. WillyBee had disapproved of funerals. “If I mean anything to you, m'dear, there's nothing in that box for you to cry about.” Yes, but he never expected her to act on that sort of thing. His hypocrisy had been a joke which they had shared.

Jill mingled with the party of some fifty directors and departmental chiefs from the WillyBee enterprises. The church still looked like a village church which indeed it had been although it was barely a dozen miles from Westminster. The last to enter was Veronica, escorted by a man whose appearance was vaguely familiar to Jill though she could not remember who he was.

When the ceremony was over Jill observed that this man saw Veronica into a car and then turned back and waited by the lych gate. He waited, in fact, until Jill came out.

“Miss Aspland! My name is Maenton. You spoke to me the other day on the telephone on behalf of Mrs. Brengast. I wonder if you would be good enough to come back with me to my office?”

“Certainly, Sir Edward. I thought I recognised you but was not sure.”

In the car he told her:

“When we last met you were thirteen. You had just done your first term at Cheltenham.”

By the time she was sitting in his office he had established a family atmosphere. She was aware of the smooth skill with which he was combining pleasantries with a proper sense of the occasion and wondered what it was all about.

He spoke of her inheritance of £10,000 and produced a formal document for her to sign, but she guessed that this was window dressing.

“Mrs. Brengast has told me what a tower of strength you have been to her in the nasty little complication of those three men.”

Veronica, of course! Anyhow, there could be no means of dodging WillyBee's solicitor.

“Did she say ‘tower of strength', Sir Edward?”

“No!” He smiled with self-forgiveness. “That was a little flourish of mine. She was in fact very cagey about you, but she made no objection when I said it was urgently necessary for me to get in touch with you.”

“But I'm afraid I can't help. I don't know anything she doesn't know.”

“Quite so! You witnessed nothing but the backwash. It is a little difficult to explain why I am intruding on your time.”

He got up and began to pace the room.

“You are her friend—probably the only one she has, barring professional friends like myself. You know her better than I do. I've met her often at your poor uncle's house, but only in company. To me she is a charming woman—but a sheltered woman, with very little grasp of practical affairs. She can't help painting everything in pleasing colours—she treats her legal adviser as someone who has to be entertained with light conversation.”

He stopped close to Jill's chair, looked at her with expert approval and added: “I want you to tell me everything she was afraid to tell me.”

“That would mean giving her away—perhaps betraying her confidence.”

“Of course it would!” It was not the admission of a conspirator—it was the bold statement of an able man who refuses to shirk realities. “It's the only way you can help her. I sent a man down to Renchester yesterday. He found out one or two things she ought to have told me—for instance about that man who gave her a lift from Diddington. How the devil, my dear Miss Aspland, can I keep her out of court—in the last state, keep her out of prison—if the other side can spring surprises on me, making hay of my plans to protect her!”

That was unanswerable. Helped by his questions she told him all she could—beginning at the flat in Bayswater and ending with Veronica refusing her company for the inquest.

“That wedding ring story!” exclaimed Maenton. “That's very useful. Indeed, in my opinion, it clears Veronica.”

Perceiving Jill's surprise, he added:

“I see you don't agree with me? Then let me ask you a question. What time did Veronica arrive at that flat to meet you?”

“Within, say, a couple of minutes of half past nine.”

“You strengthen my case,” beamed Maenton. “Nobody can prove what time she left Renchester that night. But at least two can prove what time she left Salisbury the following morning. The taxi man who took her from her sister's to the station and the booking clerk who changed a five pound note and, of course, asked her to put her name on the back. That ties her down to the train due in London at nine-eight. Allowing a few minutes from train to taxi and fifteen minutes to drive from Waterloo Station to the flat—and you get nine-thirty. Could she have bought a wedding ring and had it engraved
after
she joined you at the flat?”

“No. But I didn't imagine she had substituted another ring. I was puzzled about it myself. I thought at first that the tale was an invention—then that it could not be—and then that there was some trick in it. But I couldn't see what kind of trick would be any use.”

“No kind of trick could be of any use. Of those two men—Stranack and Canvey—one may have been the innocent man. Or both may have been guilty. In either case, the guilty—it doesn't matter how—got to know that the innocent man had thrown the ring into the river. The guilty man or men stole the story, which was true. It must have been true. The guilty would never have dared to invent a circumstantial tale like that. If you follow me so far, what is your inference, Miss Aspland?”

“I can't draw any. My mind stands still.”

“Why shirk the inference that the innocent man took the ring from the finger of another woman?”

“I don't shirk it. I tried to draw that inference myself—hoping the police and everybody else would do the same.”

“How can anyone escape that inference? Only by assuming that one of the men—innocent or guilty—returned it to Veronica furtively. That would be the greatest absurdity of all, because the man in possession of that ring—innocent or guilty—would have the strongest possible support for his assertion that he was the innocent man.”

Jill felt her thoughts spinning.

“Then the ‘Mystery Girl' really exists!” she exclaimed. “But why should she tear up Veronica's photo and hide the pieces?”

Maenton contrived to look as if he had hoped she would ask that question.

“We don't have to find an answer,” he pronounced. “Nevertheless, that torn photograph, I admit, is just the sort of thing a jury enjoys. We must not run away from it. Have you any theory as to who did tear it up—and hide the pieces in the sofa?”

“None whatever!”

“Not even the theory that it was—Veronica Brengast?”