Charles Palliser (165 page)

There was a silence.

Then she went on: “You waited until he had passed into the library and then crept towards the back of the house. I know now that you went to lock the back-door in order to trap him inside the house, though I did not guess that then. You spoke to my husband and left the door to the dining-room open so that he would see Clothier as he tried to get out through the back-door. Then you came back here and passed into the plate-room. And as I later knew, you went from there into the library through the door which you had left locked to prevent Clothier from going into the plate-room. And you had a very good reason for not wanting him to do that, hadn’t you? Meanwhile I came down the stairs.”

I could hear her voice coming nearer again.

“I retrieved the key from the top of the clock and laid it by the vestibule-door. Why did I do that? From sheer deviltry, wishing simply to interfere with whatever design you were attempting to carry out. After a few minutes I saw Clothier come to the door. He had discovered that the back-door was locked and therefore that he could not leave the house. But now he found the key where I had put it and so he broke a pane of the vestibule-door — cutting himself in the process — and let himself out. Then I went back upstairs to the drawing-room and waited. After a few minutes you raised the alarm. How surprised and angry you were when, after naming Clothier as the murderer, you discovered that he had escaped from the house when you intended him to be caught on the premises with Huffam’s money — and his blood — upon him! Then you changed your story and spoke of an intruder, didn’t you? But there was no intruder.”

I understood what she was suggesting. And surely she was right! Peter Clothier was innocent and had been the unwitting dupe of a plot to incriminate him which had gone wrong because of her own interference. Everything she said provided a satisfactory explanation of the hitherto puzzling facts of the crime. But was it true or was she saying all of this merely in order to intimidate the old man? Suddenly I realized that her voice was getting much closer to me. I moved round the staircase but she kept on coming.

“No intruder,” she repeated. “And Huffam was dead before young Clothier even entered the house.”

The footsteps were approaching. I hurried back into the plate-room. Then my heart nearly stopped. The others were coming in here! I crossed the room and pulled at the door into the library but found that it was locked. I was trapped! Suddenly I knew what to do. I went to the plate-cupboard which stood open and concealed myself inside it, pulling the door to so that only a crack was left through which I could see a little.

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I was just in time for they entered the room at that moment. I could not see them but their candles lit up the part of the chamber that I was able to observe.

“There
was
an intruder, there
was,”
the old man was insisting.

Clearly, he had convinced himself that this was the truth.

“No,” Mrs Sancious said gently. “For even before Clothier re-entered the house, you came in here with the sword, didn’t you? Huffam had unlocked the strong-box, hadn’t he?” In a caressing whisper she urged: “Show me now.”

The old man, moving as if he was sleep-walking, came into my line of sight still carrying the cruelly curved sword and with a candle in his other hand. He placed both of them on top of a large chest on the floor below the window and then knelt down, pulled up a section of the floorboard and removed something. A key! Still kneeling he opened the chest. Then he looked towards another part of the room as if dizzy and confused.

“He took something out,” came the gentle voice.

“Yes,” the old man muttered, and reached into the chest.

“After thirty years you saw it again,” the voice went on cajolingly. “Unless you could get it back to the Mompessons, Huffam would regain the estate after all. Your revenge against his family would be undone. And, moreover, you might lose this house since the will disinherited you. From the moment he had told you that someone — in fact, it was that mad old creature, Lydia Mompesson — had undertaken to restore it to him, you had begun to plot. You knew Sir Perceval would pay almost anything to have it back.

You had planned it all so that Clothier would be blamed: the son of your old enemy.

What sweet revenge! Just as you came in Huffam pulled out the package that my husband had given him, didn’t he? And perhaps he opened it and when he saw that it was indeed what he had hoped to find, he said something that goaded you past enduring, something like: ‘Last throw wins all. The estate is mine’.”

The old man turned towards the voice, muttering: “No, no, it wasn’t like that at all.”

“It took no more than a few seconds to do what had to be done. Now all you had to do to get your revenge and put it out of the power of the Huffam family ever to enjoy the estate, was to take the will from the package and hide it somewhere in this room. Then spread blood on the codicil and the letter that Huffam had written that evening and on some of the bank-notes from the chest, and put them all into the package. Then lock the door to the library so that young Clothier could not get in from there when he arrived.

Then go out into the hall as I have already described and take steps to ensure that he could not escape. So he never knew that when you gave him the package in the library, Huffam was already lying dead a few feet from him in here. And when he had left the library all you had to do was come back in here, smear some of Huffam’s blood on your forehead, and raise the alarm.”

The old man got to his feet and stood dumbfoundered. “No,” he muttered. “You’ve invented all that.”

Sancious now came into my line of sight and bent over the strong-box as Mr Escreet had before. He began to search through it. As I watched him I thought about what I had just heard. Was it true then that Peter Clothier did not kill my grandfather? How could I be sure since the old man was denying it? Was certainty to elude me even now?

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At that moment Sancious raised something in one hand and exclaimed: “I have it.

The estate is mine!”

Instantly I knew what was going to happen. I stepped from my place of concealment, calling out: “Watch out behind you!”

Unfortunately, Sancious was so surprised by my sudden appearance that he turned towards me rather than to face the source of danger behind him, and at that instant Escreet drove into his back the sword which I believe he had used to kill John Umphraville nearly sixty years before. I saw a look of astonishment on the attorney’s face, but whether at the blow or at my sudden manifestation I could never know. He looked as if he was trying to speak to me, but his face became twisted so that his eyes seemed to be starting from their sockets. Then he fell to his knees, his head sank against the chest, and without a word he collapsed to the ground and lay still.

Mrs Sancious and I stared at each other. The old man, as if he did not see us, crossed to the door of the library and locked it. Then he took the will from the lifeless hand of his victim, reached into the strong-box to take out a bundle of bank-notes, went to a bureau by the window and placed them inside a drawer.

All the while I looked at Mrs Sancious. She was now staring fearfully at the corpse of her husband. This was the woman who had allowed Peter Clothier to suffer for a crime of which she knew him to be guiltless, who had betrayed my mother to her death, who had sent her young nephew to die, and who had tried to encompass my end, too. I believed now that Peter Clothier was innocent and my doubts about the truth of what she had said had gone, for by his action Escreet had surely confessed to the murder in a manner more impossible to retract than any words.

The old man left the room, presumably in order to wait for the arrival of Peter Clothier by the back-door from Charing-cross.

As I came forward Mrs Sancious looked at me fearfully: “I did not mean it,” she stammered. “I only intended to goad him into giving us the will.”

What was she saying? Simply that she had not meant this to happen? Or that she had made her story up? Or had merely guessed at what she had not seen? There was no time to ponder these things now.

“He might be dangerous,” I said in a low voice and, because she seemed frozen, I seized her forearm with the intention of hurrying her away before we found ourselves trapped inside the house.

“The will,” she muttered, and, wrenching herself free, she crossed the room, stepping around the body, and removed it from the bureau.

Her self-possession was remarkable.

Taking care to avoid the old man, I hurried her into the lobby and out through the vestibule. In a moment we found ourselves in the mean little yard in absolute darkness for though the storm had quite abated, the blanket of cloud hung dark and heavy.

“We must go to the authorities,” I said. “The old man must be taken up before he harms anyone else.”

Then I almost said: “It must all be told. How you suppressed the evidence that would have freed Peter Clothier. What you and Bellringer did to Stephen.” But I saw that she was shivering and could not find it in me.

“Come,” I said, and we began to cross the unlit court.

Suddenly, as we reached the jutting angle of the next house, a shadow moved in the corner of my eye and instantly I felt a hand across my mouth and I 766 THE

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was seized from behind. My first thought was that the old man had somehow pursued us but then a voice that I knew too well rasped in my ear:

“Has he got it, mum?”

Barney! I knew that the moment of my death had come. Mrs Sancious now had the will and she only needed me — the sole person who knew of her nefarious acts down the years — to die, and she came into the estate. She had known all the time that Barney was here! So she was only pretending to surrender so meekly for she knew he was waiting for us to come out ! He must have come to the house with her and Sancious.

“What are you doing here?” she exclaimed.

So that surmise at the least was wrong!

Barney held me from behind so that I could see her but not him.

“Why, mum,” he began pleasantly, “I had my company out watching for him like the genel’man arst, and Jack seen him come in at the Golden-Cross not two hours back. He dodged him here and then come and found me. Does he have the dockyment?”

“No,” she said. “I have it.”

“All the better. Where’s the genel’man?”

“He’s still inside the house,” she said flatly.

“Well now, mum, you’d best leave me and I’ll do the job. It ain’t fit for a lady to watch.

There ain’t no-one about now. This place will do as well as any other.”

What could I do or say to save myself ? Then I thought of something. His mention of Jack had given me my clew for I had assumed they had parted company long ago. Sally must have kept her secret! I struggled to speak but could say nothing with his hand clamped across my mouth.

Mrs Sancious stayed where she was and seemed about to speak, but just then Barney removed his hand from my mouth in order to be able to reach into his jacket for something.

I had an instant and was able to cry out: “Jack’s your traitor!”

He covered my mouth again with his hand which was now holding a knife. “Sing low,” he enjoined.

Then he removed his hand just enough to let me speak with difficulty.

“It was Jack that plotted with Pulvertaft, not Sam,” I gasped. “I know because I saw him there that night at Southwark when Jem was killed.”

It crossed my mind that in revealing this I was condemning Jack to death, but I recalled what he had done to Sam and felt no remorse.

“You’re lying,” he snarled.

He listened, however, as I told him how past events known to him in one form should be re-interpreted by substituting Jack for Sam as the traitor. He must have seen that this version better explained what had occurred for he began to look perplexed and asked me several questions which I was able to answer without hesitation. And all the time Mrs Sancious stood a few feet away watching us curiously.

“Sally told you that she’d seen Sam talking to a bald man with a wooden leg, didn’t she?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“But Jack got her to say that,” I explained.

“Why would she do that?” he asked, looking at me thoughtfully. “She was soft on Sam.”

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“Don’t blame her,” I cried. “She didn’t understand that it meant his death. She didn’t know it was a description of Blueskin!”

He saw how the trick had been worked and gave a cry of rage and thrust me back against the wall. He believed me now, but what a fool I was to think that this would save my life. He was so angry he would take out his rage on me.

He raised his knife and I closed my eyes.

Suddenly Mrs Sancious said: “Don’t!”

I opened my eyes and saw that she had stepped forward and put her hand upon his arm.

“What do you mean?” he said, almost indignantly. “It’s what you and the guv’nor paid me for, ain’t it?”

“He’s dead,” she muttered.

“Is he?” Barney looked alarmed for a moment. Then he said: “But I must be paid same as if I’d done it. I’ve spent a lot of time watching out for him. Me and the others.”

“You will be paid.” She opened her reticule and flung a handful of sovereigns on the ground. “Now be off.”

Barney released me to stoop and pick the money up, watching us both warily as if he suspected a trick. He had to run his hands over the dark cobbles for there was little light there.

While he was doing this I stared at Mrs Sancious in amazement: “Why did you do that?”

She merely shook her head.

Was she in a state of shock? Had the killing of Sancious so upset her that she had acted in a way she would later regret? I found that I wanted to think so for otherwise I would have to try to feel gratitude towards her. And then I would be cheated of my right to hate her.

Barney straightened now, counting the coins. “It’s been a pleasure to do business with you,” he said. “I’ll be very happy to obleege you agin. For I like to keep up a connexion that’s been established to mutual advantage.”