At SHORTLY past one o'clock, when the court adjourned for lunch, Evelyn and I went downstairs gloomily. The Old Bailey, full of those shuffling echoes which are thrown back from marble or tile, was crowded. We got into the center of a crush converging at the head of the stairs to the Central Hall.
I voiced a mutual view. “Though why the blazes we should feel so much prejudiced in his favor I don’t know, unless it’s because H.M. is defending him. Or unless it’s because he looks so absolutely right: that is, he looks as though he’d lend you a tenner if you needed it, and stand by you if you got into trouble. The trouble is, they all look guilty in the dock. If they’re calm, it’s a bad sign. If they’re wild, it’s a still worse sign. This may be due to our rooted and damnable national belief that if they weren’t guilty they probably wouldn’t be in the dock at all.”
“‘M,” said my wife, her face wearing that concentrated expression which betokens wild ideas, “I’ve been thinking...”
“It’s inadvisable.”
“Yes, I know. But do you know, Ken, while they were stringing out all that evidence, I kept thinking that nobody could possibly be as loony as that chap seems to be unless he were innocent. But then along came that business of his having taken no sleeping drug at all. If they can prove that by medical evidence...well...unless H.M. will try to prove insanity after all.”
What H.M. wished to prove was not apparent. He had subjected Dyer to a singularly long and singularly uninspired cross-examination, directed chiefly to proving that on the day of the murder Hume had been attempting to get in touch with Answell by telephone as early as nine o'clock in the morning. H.M.’s one good point concerned the arrow with which the crime had been committed, and even this was left enigmatic. H.M. called attention to the fact that half of the blue feather attached to it had been broken off. Was that feather intact when Dyer had seen the arrow on the wall before the crime? Oh, yes. Sure? Positive. But the piece of feather was missing when they discovered the body? Yes. Did they find the other half anywhere in the room? No; they had searched as a matter of form, but they could not find it.
H.M.’s last attack was still more obscure. Were the three arrows hung flat against the wall? Not all of them, Dyer replied. The two arrows making the sides of the triangle lay flat on the wall; but the base of it, crossing the other two, had been set out on steel staples about a quarter of an inch.
“And all that,” Evelyn commented, “H.M. asked as quietly as a lamb. I tell you, Ken, it’s unnatural. He buttered up that little butler as though he were his own witness. I say, do you think we could see H.M.?”
“I doubt it. He’ll probably be having lunch at the Bar Mess.”
At this point our attention was forcibly called. Who the man was (whether he was someone attached to the courts or an outsider with a thirst for imparting information) we never learned. With an effect like a Maskylene illusion, a little man thrust himself out of the crowd and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Want to see two of the Ones in the Big Case?” he asked in a whisper. “Just ahead of you! That there on the right is Dr. Spencer Hume, and that there on the left is Reginald Answell, ‘is cousin. They’re right amongst us, and they’ll ‘ave to go downstairs together. Ss-t!”
Back went the head. By the convergence of the crowd on the big marble stairs, the two men he indicated were swept to a stiff march side by side. The bleak March light showed them not too favorably. Dr. Hume was a middle-sized, rather tubby man with graying black hair parted and combed to such nicety on his round head that it gave the effect of a wheel. He turned his head sideways for a brief look; we saw a nose radiating self-confidence, and a gravely pursed-up mouth. He carried, incongruously, a top-hat, which he was trying to prevent being squashed.
His companion I recognized as the young man whom I had seen sitting at the solicitors’ table, and to whom Dyer had given a sign of recognition. He was a good type: lean, with a fine carriage of the shoulders and sharply defined jaws. The tailor had done well by him, and he was absently hitting the edge of his hand on a bowler hat.
The two took a quick look at each other, and descended with that shuffle-fall which is the march of the Old Bailey. They decided to notice each other’s presence. I wondered whether the atmosphere would be hostile; but, as they spoke, they appeared to decide. The atmosphere between them, palpable and sticky as glue, was hypocrisy.
Reginald Answell spoke in that tone exclusively reserved for funerals.
“How is Mary taking it?” he inquired in a hoarse whisper.
“Pretty badly, I’m afraid,” said the doctor, shaking his head.
“Too bad!”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
They descended another step.
“I didn’t see her in court,” observed Reginald out of the side of his mouth. “Are they calling her as a witness?”
“The prosecution aren’t,” said Dr. Hume in a curious tone. He looked sideways. “And I notice they’re not calling you?”
“Oh, no. I’m not concerned in it. The defense aren’t calling me either. I couldn’t do him any good. I only got to the house after he—you know, fainted. Poor old Jim. I thought he was made of stronger stuff than that, big as he is. Mad as a coot, of course.”
“Believe me, I quite appreciate that,” murmured Dr. Hume, looking quickly over his shoulder; “and I myself should have been only too willing to testify—But there seems to be some doubt on the part of the Crown, and he himself, you know, says—” He stopped. “No hard feelings?”
“No. Oh, no. There is insanity in the family, you know.”
They descended nearly the whole flight.
“Nothing much, of course. Only a touch, a few generations back. I wonder what he’s eating?”
The doctor was sententious. “Ah, that’s difficult to say. I expect ‘He’s drinking bitter beer alone, the Color-sergeant said.’”
“Why the hell,” asked the other quietly, “do you bring up the army?”
They stopped.
“My dear fellow, it was only in a manner of speaking! Besides, I didn’t know you were any longer connected with the army,” Dr. Hume told him, with an air of concern. They stopped under the great rotunda and dim mural paintings of the Central hall; Dr. Hume became gravely kind. “Now let’s face it. It’s a sad business. I’ve lost a brother myself, you know. But there it is: the world must keep on, and men must work, and women must weep, as they say. So the most sensible thing to do is to get this unpleasant matter off our minds and forget it as soon as possible, eh? Good-by, captain. I’d better not be seen shaking hands with you; it wouldn’t look seemly, under the circumstances.”
He bustled off.
For they’ve done with Danny Deever; you can hear the
Dead March play;
The regiment’s in column, and they’re marching them away—
There is something about the atmosphere of this place which impels people to moralize in just the way those lines were going through my head. It was dispelled in a moment by the surprising and welcome spectacle of Lollypop, H.M.’s blonde secretary, pushing her way through the crowd towards us. Evelyn was beginning to say, “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here—” with her very attractive face flushed, when she stopped.
“Hooray!” said Evelyn, expelling her breath.
“It’s H.M.,” said Lollypop, rather unnecessarily. “He wants to see you.”
“Where is he? What’s he doing?”
“At the moment,” said Lollypop doubtfully, “I should think he was breaking furniture. That’s what he said he was going to do when I saw him last. But by the time you arrive I expect he’ll be eating his lunch. You’re to go to the Milton’s Head Tavern, Wood Street, Cheapside—just round the corner, it is. Oh, dear.”
H.M.’s extensive knowledge of obscure eating houses is due to his extensive knowledge of obscure people. Everyone seems to know him, and the more disreputable the better. The Milton’s Head, tucked up into a crazy little alley off Wood Street, looked as though it had not had its little-paned windows cleaned since the Great Fire. There was now a great fire burning in the taproom against the raw March cold, and artificial geraniums in the windows emphasized that cold. We were directed upstairs to a private room, where H.M. sat behind an immense pewter tankard and a plate of lamb chops. With a napkin tucked into his collar, he was chewing at the side of one lamb chop in that fashion which popular film tradition attributes to King Henry the Eighth.
“Ar,” said H.M., opening one eye.
I waited, to see which way the mood would go.
“Well,” growled H.M., only half malevolently, “I suppose you’re not goin’ to keep that door open all day? You want me to die of pneumonia?”
“In the past,” I said, “you’ve got out of some almighty tight places in the face of evidence. Is it possible that you can get out of this one?”
H.M. put down the lamb chop and opened his eyes wide. Over his wooden face crept an expression of amusement.
“Ho ho,” he said. “So you think they’ve got the old man licked already, hey?”
“Not necessarily. H.M., is this fellow guilty?”
“No,” said H.M.
“Can you prove it?”
“I dunno, son. I’m goin’ to have a very good try. It depends on how much of my evidence they’ll admit.”
There was no raising of defenses. The old man was worried, and almost showed it.
“Who’s instructing you in the case?”
He rubbed his hand across his big bald head, and looked sour. “Solicitor? There’s no solicitor.{*} Y’see, I’m the only feller who’d believe him. I got a fancy for lame dogs,” he added apologetically.
There was a silence.
“What’s more, if you’re lookin’ for any dramatic last-minute eruption of the hidden witness bustin’ into court and causin’ a row, get it out of your heads. You’d no more cause a row in Balmy Bodkin’s court than you’d find one on a chessboard. It’s all goin’ to be on the table all the time—and that’s how I want it. One quiet move to another. Like chess. Or maybe like hunting. You remember the way the lines swing in John Peel? ‘From a point to a check: from a check to a view: from a view to a kill in the morning.’”
“Well, good luck to you.”
“You could help,” roared H.M. suddenly, wishing to get this off his chest.
“Help?”
“Now, shut up, dammit!” insisted H.M., before I could say anything. “I’m not playing any games now, or gettin’ you thrown into jail. All I want you to do is take a message, which won’t compromise you any, to one of my witnesses. I can’t do it myself; and I’ve got a suspicion of telephones since I’ve heard what they’ve done in this business.”
“Which witness?”
“Mary Hume....Here comes your soup, so eat and keep quiet.”
The food was excellent. At the end of it H.M.’s tension had relaxed, and he was in such a (comparative) good humor that he had fallen to grousing again. There was a good fire in the dingy grate: H.M., with his feet on the fender and a large cigar drawing well, broached the subject with a scowl.
“I’m not goin’ to discuss this business with anybody,” he said. “But if there’s anything about it you’d like to know that won’t concern what the defense knows or has had the gumption to find out—meanin’ me—”
“Yes,” said Evelyn. “Why on earth did you have to bring this business to court? That is, of course, if you could show the police—?”
“No,” said H.M. “That’s one of the questions you can’t ask.”
He sniffed, staring at the fire.
“Well, then,” I suggested, “if you say Answell isn’t the murderer, have you got any explanation of how the real murderer got in and out of the room?”
“Burn me, I should hope so, son! Or what kind of a defense do you think I’d have?” asked H.M. plaintively. “Do you think I’d be such an eternal blazin’ fathead as to go chargin’ in without an alternative explanation? I say, it’s a funny thing about that, too. It was the girl herself—this Mary Hume—who put the idea into my head when I was dead stumped. She’s a nice gal. Well, I was sittin’ and thinkin’, and that didn’t seem to do any good; and then she mentioned that the one thing in prison Jim Answell hated most was the Judas window. And that tore it, you see.”
“Did it? What’s the Judas window? Look here, you’re not going to say there was any hocus-pocus about those steel shutters and locked windows, are you?”
“No.”
“What about the door, then? Are they right in saying that the door really was bolted on the inside: and that it was a good solid door, so that the bolt couldn’t be and wasn’t tampered with in any way from the outside?”
“Sure. They’re quite right in sayin’ all that.”
We all took a drink of beer. “I won’t say it’s impossible, because you have been known to pull it off before. But if this isn’t some kind of technical evasion—?”
Some inner irony seemed to appeal to H.M.
“No, son. I mean exactly what I say. The door really was tight and solid and bolted; and the windows really were tight and solid and bolted. Nobody monkeyed with a fastening to lock or unlock either. Also, you heard the architect say there wasn’t a chink or crevice or rat-hole in the walls anywhere; also true. No, I’m tellin’ you: the murderer got in and out through the Judas window.”
Evelyn and I looked at each other. We both knew that H.M. was not merely making mysteries: he had discovered something new, and he turned it over and over in his mind with fascination. “The Judas window” had a sinister sound. It suggested all sorts of images without a definite one emerging. You seemed to see a shadowy figure peering in; and that was all.
“But damn it,” I said, “If all those circumstances are true, there can’t be any such thing! Either there is a window or there isn’t. Unless, again, you mean there was some peculiar feature in the construction of the room, which the architect didn’t spot—?”
“No, son, that’s the rummy part of it. The room is just like any other room. You’ve got a Judas window in your own room at home; there’s one in this room, and there’s one in every courtroom in the Old Bailey. The trouble is that so few people ever notice it.”
With some difficulty he hoisted himself to his feet. He went to the window, his cigar fuming, and scowled out at the clutter of roofs.
“Now, now—” continued H.M. soothingly. “We got work to do. Ken, I want you to take a letter to Mary Hume in Grosvenor Street. Just get an answer yes or no, and come back straightaway. I want you to hear the afternoon siftin’, because they’re first going to put Randolph Fleming in the box, and I’ve got some very searchin’ questions to put to him—about feathers. Fact is, if you follow very closely the testimony that has been given and will be given in court, you’ll see just where I went to get my witnesses, and why.”
“Any instructions?”
H.M. took the cigar out of his mouth and contemplated it. “Well...now. Considerin’ that I don’t want you to get into any trouble, no. Just say you’re an associate of mine, and give the note I’ll write for you to Mary Hume. If the little gal wants to talk about the case, go right ahead and talk, because your knowledge is pretty limited. If anyone else tackles you about it, let your tongue rattle freely, and it wouldn’t do any harm to spread an atmosphere of mysterious disquiet. But don’t mention the Judas window.”
It was all I could get out of him. He called for paper and an envelope; he scribbled a note at the table—and sealed it. The problem seemed to be one of words as well as facts, in those three words of the Judas window. When I went downstairs I had a confused idea of thousands of houses and millions of rooms, piled into the rabbit-warren of London: each respectable and lamplit in its long lines of streets: and yet each containing a Judas window which only a murderer could see.