Flowers For the Judge (30 page)

Number Eighty-seven was a dishevelled building. Its windows were dirty and uncurtained and here and there patches of plaster had chipped away, showing the brick beneath. One of its immediate neighbours had been taken down and huge wooden joists supporting the structure along one side did not add to its distinction. Altogether it was not a likely sister for the elegant Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard.

The explanation, of course, was the old one. Like hair-dressing and hotel-keeping, publishing is forced to be class conscious, and just as front-rank restaurateurs are sometimes known to have smaller, cheaper establishments tucked away in the back streets, where, under less dignified names, money is made and odds and ends are used up without waste, so sometimes distinguished publishing houses have humbler sisters where less rare but equally filling mental dishes are prepared and distributed.

Messrs Paul Jones, Ltd, published children’s picture-books, light love stories of the cheaper sort, translations, and a vast quantity of reprints, and were kept alive by the possession of some twenty or thirty copyrights of the great Fairgreen Fields’ earlier works, which they republished at three and six, half a crown, one and three, one shilling, ninepence, sixpence, and fourpence simultaneously, and over a period of years without ever, apparently, overlapping or saturating any of that fine ‘blood’ writer’s many markets.

The firm was owned by Messrs Barnabas, without being
in
any way affiliated to them socially, and was run by a separate staff.

The taximan pulled up outside the dilapidated doorway and Mr Campion got out. The dirty transom showed a faint light in the entrance hall, and as soon as he knocked the door was opened by a woman as untidy and disheartened as the house itself.

‘Me husband’s hurt his foot,’ she said before he had time to open his mouth, ‘and I said for him not to move himself now he was got comfortable. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’

She looked up at him with a confiding leer which showed gappy teeth in pale gums.

A wail from the lighted doorway at the far end of the passage indicated that she was not in attendance upon her husband alone.

‘I’m coming!’ she shouted in a voice surprisingly raucous after her husky conversation tone. ‘See to ’im, Dad, do!’

Mr Campion gave her his card, and she took it under the bulb to read.

‘That’s right,’ she said, with idiotic but ingratiating surprise. ‘Campion. That was the name Mr Widdowson said. Shall I keep this, sir? D’you know where to go? It’s room Forty-five, right at the top of the ’ouse.’

She glanced abjectly at the dusty wooden staircase and back again.

‘I can turn on the ‘all lights from ’ere,’ she added, and rubbed her hands on the back of her skirt.

Mr Campion looked down at her.

‘How long ago did your husband hurt his foot?’ he inquired unexpectedly.

‘Week last Monday. One of the van-boys let a box down on ’im – clumsy young monkey! Mr Widdowson said surely it was well by now. I didn’t ’alf tell ’im off over the phone. “Well,” I said, “’e’s not an idol, Mr Widdowson.”’

She spoke without heat or humour, and her tired face turned towards the stairs again. In the back room the baby roared.

‘I’ll come up with you if you like,’ she said.

Suddenly Campion laughed.

‘Don’t bother. Is the door locked?’

‘Oh no, sir. We’re always here, you see. There’s only this entrance and the one at the back which we use. Nobody could get in. You’ll go up, then?’

‘I will. I’ll see you when I come down.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He saw her quick hopeful smile and she wiped her hands again. ‘I’ll just turn on the lights.’

The beautiful staircase, which had been a Georgian housewife’s pride and responsibility and was now a danger trap to van-boys and caretakers, was flooded with dusty light as Campion set foot upon it.

The premises at Eighty-seven were even less attractive inside than out. The two lower floors were used as a warehouse and stretched out behind over what once had been a garden in vast ramifications of the book-producer’s trade. The very air was thick with dust and the sweet, acrid smell of ink.

Campion went up slowly, his hand on the Webley. In spite of his conviction that the idea of attack was absurd, he took no risks. His senses were alert and he walked with quiet springy steps.

He was not disturbed. The rows of greasy doors on each landing were silent and no creaking board, either behind or above him, answered the tread of his own feet.

It was a long way up. He climbed steadily on, pausing only once to look down the well to the hall, small and far away below.

The fourth floor was a little cleaner than the rest of the house. One or two of the doors had been freshly painted, throwing the shabbiness of the walls into painful prominence, and there was a strip of floor-covering of sorts down the centre of the passage.

Outside room number forty-five he paused and stood for a moment, listening. The silence was everywhere. Very gently he tried the handle. It turned easily and the door swung open, revealing an apartment only faintly lit by the light from the street lamps below.

With his left hand, his gun in his pocket, he shone his
torch
round the room. It was unoccupied and appeared to be in normal order.

A glance at the light fixtures assured him that there was nothing untoward in that direction, and he turned over the switch.

It was a big room, comfortably furnished with that particular brand of red Turkey carpet which is to the City office what the bowler hat is to the City clerk, a bookcase, a few chairs and the desk of which John had spoken. The walls were covered with show-cards, book-jackets and galleys of advertisements.

Mr Campion looked for the cupboard door and saw two, one beside the desk, the other behind it. They were both used as notice-boards, the wooden panelling being particularly suitable for the reception of drawing-pins. This miscellany hanging there told him little more than the date, several publication fixtures for books of which he had never heard, and the details of the train service to Chelmsford.

He did not hurry. In the back of his mind something was warning him of impending danger. Looking about him, the instinct seemed ridiculous, and he remembered that he was tired and probably jumpy.

He went over to the desk unwillingly and pulled open the first drawer on the left-hand side. It contained at first sight nothing more remarkable than a tin of biscuits and a pair of gloves, but after removing these cautiously he saw a key with a piece of string through the ring lying half under the paper with which the drawer was lined.

He took it out and looked at it suspiciously, but it was quite ordinary and of no particular interest in itself.

Feeling foolish but still puzzled, he carried it over to the door behind the desk.

It fitted the lock, but he did not get the door open until he realized with a wave of self-dislike that it opened outwards and was not even locked. He thrust it open and stepped back, taking out his torch once more.

The cupboard proved to be a cloak-room containing an incredibly dirty wash-basin and a row of clothes hooks,
upon
one of which a dilapidated umbrella hung dejectedly.

He came out and went over to the other door. Once again as he fitted the key in the lock, the old sense of danger assailed him, and he swung round to face the landing, but all was silent and dirty and ordinary as before.

Then, from far below, he heard a little angry sound, thin, high and furious. Mrs Jenkinson’s baby was protesting violently at some parental indignity. It was too much. Mr Campion cursed himself for his hysteria, his cowardice and his approaching age. He turned the bolt over and pulled the handle.

The jamb did not move and he remembered it probably opened outwards. He tried it gently, but it was stuck and he drew himself back to throw his shoulder against it.

That miraculous sense which is either second sight or the lightning calculation of the subconscious mind, which nothing escapes, arrested him, and, changing his mind on the instant, he pulled his gun and kicked the door open, police fashion.

For a moment it still stuck and then shattered open sickeningly and he stood overbalancing, shuddering horror fighting with the realization of a certainty.

There was nothing there at all; only the wide sky threadbare with stars and fringed with a million chimneypots, and far, far below him in the cool darkness, the jagged stone foundations of the house that had been next door.

MISS CURLEY CLEARED HER
throat, pushed her hat a little further on to the back of her head, and wondered rather helplessly if the truth could be any more apparent after five days’ talk, when it seemed to be so hopelessly hidden after one and a half.

At her side Gina sat immobile. All through the day she had preserved the same aloof expression. Her eyes were no longer dazed, but had assumed instead a settled coldness. Miss Curley was anxious about her.

In the luncheon recess she had taken the girl to a city restaurant and had made her eat, but she had done so without interest and had not talked.

Even John’s absence, the non-appearance of Ritchie, and the unaccountable desertion of Mr Campion had passed her by as unworthy of comment and only once, when Mike had been brought back into the dock, had she shown by a single quickening glance the least sign of interest in the proceedings.

Miss Curley’s other neighbour, on the contrary, was evidently not only following, but enjoying the case. He had reappeared at the morning session as eager as a child at a play, and Miss Curley, a patient, tolerant woman, had gradually become used to his muttered commentary.

The afternoon was very warm for the time of the year, and the sun shone on the dome, making the court comfortable and bright. Lord Lumley leant back in his high leather chair, his scarlet robe catching the sunlight and the colour flickering on the lenses of his eye-glasses. Before him the eternal bustle of the court continued.

Cousin Alexander sat in his place, his silk gown shining and his eyes eloquent, ready at any moment to leap up and pounce upon a witness.

The first three sessions of the inquiry had established much of the Crown case and the Attorney-General had reason to be pleased with the way events were shaping. The jury now fully understood the mechanics of the crime. They had examined the hose-pipe, seen the photographs of strong-room and garage, and had heard the medical evidence.

They had also heard Mrs Austin do her well-meaning damnedest, and Mrs Tripper had repeated her story of the running car engine.

At the moment the red-headed and vivacious Roberta Jeeves, author of
Died on a Saturday
, was giving her evidence,
struggling
between the desire to escape all responsibility and a certain shy pride in having invented a murder which would work.

She had, she said, no idea whether Mr Michael Wedgwood had read her book or not. It did happen sometimes that a publisher did not read every book he sponsored.

Was that not usually only in the case of well-established authors? Fyshe put the question innocently.

Miss Jeeves reluctantly supposed it would be, and Counsel begged leave to inquire if Miss Jeeves considered that she had been a well-established author at the time of the publication of
Died on a Saturday
.

Miss Jeeves confessed with not unnatural irritation that she had no idea.

Fyshe asked humbly if it were true that in view of the complicated mechanics of the device described and the faithfulness with which they had been executed in real life Miss Jeeves had felt it her duty to call the attention of the police to her book.

Miss Jeeves, holding strong views on the subject of coincidence, was fairly embarked upon a dissertation upon them when she was gently and courteously stopped by the Judge.

Cousin Alexander did not cross-examine.

Miss Curley stirred and smiled nervously in reply to her unknown neighbour’s wink and nod of appreciation. She looked round the court again. Until now she had believed that court proceedings were tedious beyond all bearing and that the greatest ordeal participators had to face was one by ennui, but so far the effect of cumulative drama had never faltered and always just in front of her there had been that strong wide back of the young man she knew, who might be going to die.

Others might find the technicalities of doctors and central heating experts dull, but to Miss Curley every word was of vital importance, every point reached her, and every time the jury whispered together her heart contracted painfully.

Miss Jeeves having returned to her seat, there was a
rustle
at Counsel’s table. Fyshe sat down and the Attorney-General rose to examine as Peter Rigget stepped into the box.

His slightly dilapidated appearance was not enhanced by the green reading light which, shining down upon his papers, was reflected up into his face. He looked puffy because of Mr Campion, unhealthy because of the light, and thoroughly vindictive, which was his own affair.

Miss Curley, who knew nothing about his secret self-deploration, had no sympathy for him at all.

‘Strong case,’ whispered the man at her side. ‘Now they’re coming to it …’

Miss Curley wondered if it was her imagination or that a new excitement was, in fact, growing in the big bright room. The Lord Chief Justice looked as placid as before, but there was certainly a rustle among the clerks and the jury leant forward to see the witness better.

It was evident at once that Mr Rigget was aware of his importance. He even permitted himself a sickly nervous smile which was rendered frankly horrific by the green light reflected in his glasses.

Cousin Alexander noticed the little man’s self-satisfaction with grim approval.

Miss Curley glanced at Gina. The girl was very still, her eyes fixed upon the silent figure in the dock. It occurred to the older woman that she was praying.

The Attorney-General began gently in his softest, most ingratiating tone, and Mr Rigget made his opening statement happily.