Stumbling in my haste and silently upbraiding my carpet-bag, which had struck me as eminently light and manageable upon the outward journey, but had now turned into a heavy and cumbersome burden. The short trip to Dublin passed quickly, but I missed the connection to Dun Loaghaire, and thereby the last steamer of the evening. The employees behind their counters looked upon me with sympathy as I tried to explain that I must return to England instantly. There was a steamer at seven in the morning, they told me. That was sufficiently early, was it not? I fretted and fumed, but there was nothing for it, so I took the last train for Dun Loaghaire, and dined late in a small hotel near the dock, where the lady was kind enough to give me a room for the night and promise to send a maid to call me at six. Of course I woke up one thousand times during the night to look at my watch, but was sleeping soundly when the rap came on the door at first light. I had to hurry madly to call for hot water, prepare myself and purchase my ticket, and finally flung myself onto the gangplank at the last possible moment; it was removed for departure almost from under my very feet as I rushed up it. I dropped exhausted onto the deck and wondered why time seemed to alternate continually between rushing headlong and stopping altogether. The morning rose bright and beautiful as we moved out over the water. It seemed forever until we reached Holyhead, and I hastened to the ticket window, then stood in a long queue, and finally asked the man the quickest way for me to get back to Cambridge. He took out a book of timetables and made some calculations.
‘You wouldn’t necessarily think it, ma’am,’ he said finally, ‘but you’d do best to take the Day Mail to London and go from there. It leaves at twelve-thirty, and will get you into Euston Station before six o’clock. You’ll have to take the Circle Line to Liverpool Street – you won’t find a cab available at that hour – and catch the train up to Cambridge.’
I couldn’t possibly arrive before the evening! I grimaced with annoyance, then smoothed out my face and purchased my ticket with as pleasant a face as I could muster. It was the knowledge I now held which gave me such distress, such tension and such a need for hurry: the knowledge, and my enforced silence. Even though I knew that a few hours of delay could make but little difference, I felt that I could not bear the knowledge all by myself; I was driven by the need to share it without delay, in order to remove some of the dreadful burden from my shoulders.
Just thinking about Julian Archer caused me to burn inside. He had been disporting himself cheerfully for weeks since the murder, smiling and gay, apparently, even on the very night of the murder, and every further minute that he spent in liberty now struck me as a debt he owed to Death itself.
A debt which could no longer be left unpaid.
I believe I have never felt a horror or enmity for any human being as powerful as that which I felt for Julian Archer, while I sat motionless, my teeth clenched, hour after hour on the rhythmically shaking train. Every smile, every laugh, every dashing gesture or pleasant word I had seen or heard from him became tainted, in hindsight, with the horror of cold-blooded murder. I hated him and I was angry with myself for having thought him quite likeable. I remembered the first time I had seen him, when I stepped into Heffers full of my question about the old gentleman with the silver-topped cane. I remembered noticing his kindness and courtesy as he helped the customers, and thought that Ivy was already dead, and his heart already full of the secret horror. For the first time in my life, I desired to see a man arrested, tried, and condemned.
Not one man, but two. A father and son as diabolical as the mind can contemplate.
My mind turned over and over these thoughts with the persistence of a nightmare, till I ended by dozing off. I was awakened by the sound of bustle and argument about me. The passengers in my compartment were in the process of being told by a conductor with a most deprecating expression on his face that no specific duration could be given to the delay, which was due to a technological problem.
‘We’ll be going when they’ve mended it,’ he was saying for the fourth time as I came fully to myself. ‘No, ma’am, I cannot tell you when that will be.’
A glance out of the window told me that we had stopped at Rugby. So near Cambridge – a mere sixty or seventy miles, I thought – and yet so far! Oh, why was there no direct train from Rugby to Cambridge?
Like the other passengers, I descended onto the platform and took to walking up and down, trying to get some idea of the progress of the work that a group of men were engaged in about the locomotive. Nearly an hour passed as I fumed and fretted, and then something happened. The stationmaster was hastening along the platform, holding something out – to me? No, to a woman standing near me, in the grip of an impatience as frenetic as my own.
‘An answer to my telegram?’ she said, snatching it from his hand and reading quickly over the contents. ‘Oh, thank God!’ And she hastened towards the barrier, while I followed her, curious to see what she had arranged.
She waited for some moments at the barrier, and then a couple arrived, and came towards her, nearly running.
‘Oh, I think the train has stopped forever!’ she moaned.
‘It’s all right,’ said the man, ‘everything is arranged. We’ve got as good a pair as you could wish for to start off with, and my man is arranging the relays as we talk. We’ll have you there sooner than you could have arrived by train to Cambridge and then the carriage afterwards.’
She flung her arms around his neck with a sob. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, ‘I am so frightened, so frightened of arriving too late! Oh, you are so good to me. How can I thank you enough? But it’s such a long way to go there and come back. How will you do it?’
‘We’ll leave you in Huntingdon and spend the night in Cambridge, with friends,’ said this blessed gentleman, as she gave up her ticket and passed through the barrier to join his wife and him. ‘It’s nothing, my dear. Don’t put yourself out. Richard is ill, and of course we’ll do anything we can to get you to him quickly! Come along outside now. We ought to leave this very minute.’
‘Wait!’ I cried in a panic, giving up my ticket and swinging past the barrier to run up behind them as they moved quickly away. ‘Wait, please! Are you really going to Cambridge? Can you take me with you, please? I’m in the same situation as you are – I must get there tonight!’
Their natural reluctance to suddenly adopt a total stranger for a journey of several hours in necessarily rather intimate conditions was, I believe, shunted aside by their own preoccupation and haste. It would have taken them longer to explain politely to me why this was not possible than it did to simply accede to my request. In less than two minutes, therefore, I found myself seated in a handsome brougham, assenting with almost excessive eagerness to the gentleman’s explanation that he must leave his sister at the house where her husband lay grievously ill, and that our arrival in Cambridge would necessarily be somewhat delayed. After some discussion of our relative destinations, they agreed to drop me at my home, and I settled into my corner and remained more or less silent for the remainder of the journey, while the sister, sister-in-law and brother analysed and prognosticated over the symptoms of the sick man. At any other time, such a conversation would have held much to interest me, as do all human affairs. But under the present conditions, Richard’s inflammations were as foreign to me as if he were suffering from them in far-away China. I was walled up within myself, and had to force myself to make what friendly conversation I could, as we stopped various times to change the horses, and once, rather late in the evening, when our host insisted absolutely on his wife and his sister taking some dinner at the inn. At any other time, such a pleasant and unusual adventure would have been most delightful to me, and the succulent dishes which were laid before us a welcome variation to our usual fare. But images of the dead girl filled my mind, and I saw the hours pass, and evening blend into night, with increasing dismay. I had thought we might arrive in Cambridge in some six or seven hours, but I had counted without the lengthy halts for the relays and the dinner, the detour to Huntingdon and the time spent there in farewells and taking news of the sick man. Long before our journey’s end, I was annoyed with myself for not having waited for the mail train to be repaired. But I knew that in the absence of any certainty as to when that might be, I should probably always act the same again.
It was the darkest part of the night when we finally reached Cambridge, and I was deposited in front of my house with the kind wishes of my benefactor. The night was black as pitch: black, and utterly still. There was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal; the only sounds were those of the breeze sighing through the leaves, and the occasional gentle whush of what might have been a small animal. I thought of Ivy, who had walked this very street, that other night, filled with joy and thankful anticipation, unaware of her mortal danger. I wondered painfully if she had realised what was about to happen to her when she saw Julian entering the bookshop, and how many of the last minutes of her life were spent in fear and anguish.
When I entered the house, I found it as silent as though it were utterly uninhabited. Unlocking the door with a feeling of relief, I tiptoed inside, removed my boots and hat, and hurried upstairs into the bedroom to reach the safety of Arthur’s arms. Quickly, I removed my jewellery and the pins from my hair and dropped them on the dressing table, then turned towards the bed, visible as no more than the darkest patch in the darkness. It was only then that I became aware of the complete silence in the room. There was no sound of breathing; no sound of anything at all.
I moved to where Arthur should have been lying asleep, and felt with my hand. The bed was empty. Startled, I felt for the matches, lit the bedside candle and looked around me. The bed was not unmade, but not perfectly smooth. It looked as though he had lain down on it without undressing. He must have been taking his surveillance of Jenny seriously enough to be too worried to go peacefully to bed.
I hurried out into the hall: the two doors on the opposite side leading into the twins’ room and the nursery, and the door next to ours leading to the spare bedroom were all closed. Jenny should have been in the guest room, but all of my instincts told me that she was not. I hesitated a moment, then opened the twins’ door and let a little glow from the candle shine in. They lay in their cots, their cheeks flushed with sleep. The door communicating directly with the nursery was open, and Sarah was sleeping there near the door. I could not see her, but I heard her stir and quickly closed the door. Then, in a quick gesture, I opened Jenny’s door.
Nothing. She had gone, of course. There was no other possible explanation for Arthur’s absence.
If events of such importance had occurred earlier in the day that the two of them had not come home at all, then his bed would not have been disarranged. Yet I could not believe that he had allowed her to go out at such an hour, or accompanied her purposely. I could only conclude that she had pretended to go to bed and then slipped out, and that Arthur, lying prepared for such a possibility, had heard and gone after her.
Where would she have gone? To find Julian Archer, of course. She wanted revenge; she meant to kill him. She was quite mad.
In my haste, I ran straight out of the house in my stockinged feet, my hair falling down, then dashed back and tugged on my boots, ignoring the buttons. On an impulse, I snatched up a box of matches and thrust it into my dress, then hastened straight down the path to the gate.
It was while I was feeling in the blackness for the latch that I thought of the Darwins’ bicycle. I had found it difficult to take the quaint-looking toy seriously enough to want to purchase one for myself, and could not really imagine myself riding it around in public. But the thing had become all the rage amongst young people recently; both men and ladies had taken it up as a sport. Our neighbours, always on the crest of the wave of fashion, had enthusiastically made the purchase for their large family of youngsters, and I had frequently seen them wobbling up and down Silver Street upon it, practising riotously. I was tempted.
I had noticed the bicycle in their garden when I was at their house; they kept it leaning against the old granary, just within the street gate. To run there was a matter of a few short minutes; to hurry on foot all the way to the centre of town would be much longer. I hesitated no longer, but hastened down my lane and up the Newnham Road in the darkness until I reached Silver Street, my eyes growing progressively used to the dimness around me. I soon made out the large square of the gate set in the dark mass of the high garden wall, unlatched it, and felt around tentatively within – there was the bicycle! I dragged it out carefully and closed the gate, hoping that I would be able to put it back without mishap before the night was over. But if I could not, the explanation for my act would be, I believed, sufficient to justify it.
By the time these thoughts had gone through my head, and I had emitted a nervous gurgle of laughter at the mental picture of myself trying to explain why I was doing what I was doing, I had balanced myself upon the machine, hair wild, skirts hitched into a bundle to free my ankles, and was pedalling unsteadily over the bridge and on up Silver Street, then left on King’s Parade. It was fortunate that I was the only vehicle on the road, and even more fortunate that I did not happen to encounter any rock or obstacle over which I should certainly have taken a spill. But the road was smooth and silent, and glided away beneath my wheels, which turned faster and faster as I grew used to the rhythm of the movement. I was driven by fear; I do not believe I could have learnt nearly so quickly or so well if I had been doing it for pleasure.
Not five minutes later, the dark shadows of the Cambridge buildings loomed against the slightly paler sky sprinkled with tiny stars.
Once I perceived something like a delivery cart moving along ahead of me, and once I heard something coming up the road behind me. I dismounted in a tumble, and stood waiting silently and tensely at the side of the road until the vehicle had passed far enough ahead to pose no further risk of collision. Then I sprang back onto the machine and pedalled swiftly onwards.
I stopped the bicycle just before turning into Petty Cury, half-fell off it, leant it silently against a wall, and stood still, listening and peering down the street as best I could. I perceived neither sound nor movement at first, and began to wonder if I had made a mistake by coming here. Then I became aware of muffled noises. Quickly and silently, I crept towards them.
As I approached Heffers, I realised that the sounds were actually proceeding from across the street, in the narrow alley separating two neighbouring buildings where I had waited and watched secretly just yesterday. Confused grunts were interrupted by a whispered imprecation, and diverse sounds of a struggle could be heard, as well as heavy breathing. I hastened to the opening, pulled out my box of matches and struck one.
In its momentary flash and glare, I made out three human figures cramped in the tiny space. Two were stretched full length upon the ground. The flame illuminated Jenny’s body as she lay unconscious, a dark mark across her throat, while a figure whom I identified as none other than my very own husband was kneeling on the back of a man lying on his stomach, his body half over hers. Arthur had planted his knee in the small of the man’s back and was pressing him down by the shoulders, while the man was struggling violently. At the flash of light from my match, Arthur looked around, and Julian Archer took advantage of his second of inattention to writhe violently foward, throwing Arthur off balance.
‘Be careful!’ I cried, stepping forward.
The match burnt my fingers and I dropped it and reached for another, which I lit in time to see Julian struggling away from Arthur’s grasp, reaching out his arm, stretching it out to its full length, away from me, towards Jenny’s head which lay beyond him – no, not towards her head, but next to her head. I held the match out over him and perceived a metallic gleam.
‘The knife!’ I screamed. Arthur lunged, and grasped Julian’s arm, pulling it back. They struggled for a few long seconds, Julian gaining inches towards the knife, which I had suddenly and incongruously recognised as one of our very own best kitchen knives, much approved of by Mrs Widge. It lay well out of Arthur’s reach, but only just beyond Julian’s fingers. If he once grasped it, death lay in his hands.
I dropped the match, hurled myself over the two of them, a tangle of bodies and arms and legs, landing in a completely disorganised heap on the other side. Julian Archer swore as my skirts covered his head, Jenny’s body and the knife. But I disentangled my arm and and felt for the blade in the darkness, where I thought I had seen it. His fingers reached it just as mine did, and I snatched it out of his reach and scrambled back. Then I lit another match.
He looked up at me, recognised me and unexpectedly burst into a short, barking laugh.
‘Why, Miss Duncan,’ he said, ‘you here, joining this little party? At such an original hour, too. What might you be doing here, I wonder? Joining in the attack, perhaps? This lady here rang at the bell, woke up my servant and had me called out of the house, then pulled me in here and tried to stab me! Just as I was fending her off, this other ruffian came and jumped on me from behind. I thought it was some kind of robbery. Can you be connected with it all? What on earth is going on here?’
‘He was strangling her,’ said Arthur quickly.
‘Nonsense, man – she was trying to stab me, the vixen! I was just holding her off!’
‘We need the police,’ I said.
‘No, no,’ said Julian Archer quickly, and I heard his smile preserved in his voice as the match once again flickered out, leaving us in darkness. ‘There’s no need for the police now. This woman has not been badly hurt, I hardly touched her. If this person could just get off my back, we can have a look at her and set her back on her feet, and then perhaps we can all be on our way without any further disturbance.’
I struck another match. Arthur looked at me questioningly. I looked back at him, willing him to remain where he was.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We must summon the police at once.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Archer with a show of annoyance, ‘I must say that I don’t see how you’re going to manage to get them here. I intend to shake off this fellow and get up; I’ve had quite enough of the dust, thank you very much.’
‘Don’t get up,’ I said, and grasped the knife threateningly.
‘My dear girl, that knife in your dainty little hand doesn’t frighten me in the least! A little bluff, a little feminine drama; it makes me laugh! Go on then, get the police, if you can manage it without going anywhere!’ And he attempted to roll over, but Arthur made himself heavy, and because of the extreme narrowness of the alley, he could not escape to one side or another.
I well knew that I would be utterly incapable of stabbing him, yet his words provoked me to an indiscretion.
‘Oh,’ I said coldly, ‘I can get the police here very quickly without going anywhere. I could do it quietly, if I had a nice little wireless machine. But as I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll have to be a bit noisy about it.’
His eyes swung to my face, his jaw dropped. I believe he truly understood only at that moment what was at stake. It might have been safer to keep him in ignorance – but his reaction nailed the lid to my certainty. Fixing my eyes on his face, I inhaled deeply and forced myself to produce an extremely long, loud scream.
It was not an easy thing to do, in that dark city street, at that dark hour. If one has never tried it, one cannot know that it is necessary to overcome an immense, almost overwhelming inhibition. In fact, in order to do it at all, one must gigantically overdo it. My scream turned into a wild, primeval, unstoppable ululation.
‘Poliiiiiiiiiiiiiiice! Heeelp!!!!! Poliiiiiiiiice!!! Murder!!!!!!!’ I shouted and screeched into the darkness.
Lights flickered on in windows up and down the street. Some of the windows opened, and heads peered out.
‘Help! Call the police! Murder!’ I shouted again and again.
A man wearing a nightcap on his head emerged from one of the nearest houses, carrying a candlestick in one hand and a weapon of some kind in the other. I saw him start towards the sound of my voice; then he was overtaken by a horse and cart which came clopping up the street and pulled to a stop just in front of Heffers. Totally ignoring the man with the candlestick, the lights and heads at the windows, and my continuing cries, an elderly man climbed down from the cart, slowly extracted a key from his pocket, and proceeded to fit it into the door of the bookshop.
Startled, my attention was momentarily distracted by this man, and I missed Julian Archer’s swift movement. With one violent lunge, he freed his arm from Arthur’s grasp and snatched the knife out of mine. Then he was on his feet facing Arthur.
‘Get out into the street,’ he snapped. Arthur moved back three or four steps, and Julian followed him, threateningly. By now two or three people had congregated at the entrance to the little alley; we heard them gasp as they saw him emerge, the knife in his hand.
I stood up to follow, then stooped down and quickly laid my hand on Jenny’s breast. She was breathing; her eyes fluttered as I touched her. I left her there and followed Julian onto the street.
‘It’s all right,’ Mr Archer was saying tranquilly to the shocked, startled neighbours. ‘I was attacked by the crazy woman in there, but I managed to seize her weapon and all is well.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Mr Archer, sir?’ asked the man with the candlestick, and I realised that obviously all these people were his neighbours; they were well acquainted with him and would certainly take his part rather than ours.
‘Quite all right,’ replied Mr Archer calmly. ‘I’m not sure why this gentleman attacked me; I thought he was together with the woman, but I suppose he just saw me defending myself and leapt on me, believing I was harming her. Quite understandable, I’m sure, and I’m very sorry we conflicted,’ he added, lowering the knife and stretching out his hand to shake Arthur’s.
‘No!’ I cried, hurrying forwards. Arthur’s steady gaze met mine, then Mr Archer’s, and he did not lift his hand. Mr Archer drew his own back, and turned to stare at me inimically.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he snarled in a low voice.
Ignoring him, I crossed the road and addressed myself directly to the delivery man, who was now engaged in stolidly removing labelled and addressed crates of books from the interior of the shop and loading them onto his cart.
‘Do you come here every morning at this time?’ I asked him.
‘No miss,’ he replied, attending calmly to his work as though it was perfectly normal to be surrounded by people wearing caps and nightgowns at four o’clock in the morning. ‘Only Mondays and Thursdays or when I’m asked for special.’
Ivy’s corpse – the dark box. It was all so devastatingly plain; Ivy’s strangled corpse had been placed into a crate, casually prepared beforehand by the manager in the interior of the shop and placed amongst a number of other crates ready for delivery, surprising no one…and all picked up and taken away by a man with a cart, early, early on the Wednesday morning, when the usual delivery man would not be there. This one would be a different man; no other than Mr Archer senior, I could no longer doubt it; Mr Archer senior dressed in a working man’s overalls and cap after bidding goodbye to his elegant guests…driving slowly into the centre of town with his gardener’s cart and pony, lifting and packing the crates, taking away the corpse in full view of any chance nocturnal passers-by without arousing the slightest suspicion, while his son rested peacefully in his camp bed upstairs, enjoying his perfectly organised alibi. Delivering the boxes, and above all, the last one – delivering it first, when no one would be walking through the Lammas Land for pleasure; driving straight there and emptying the contents of the box into the river, then clopping calmly away to the next place. Completing the other deliveries, if there were any, then returning home and burning the unwanted crate on the refuse heap at leisure. Just an old crate of books from the shop.
The dark box! The bride, the bride will never see the church!
Had it been Ivy’s voice, then, that I had heard? Can such things ever have any rational explanation?
I turned and looked at Julian Archer. He was staring at me, shaken by my question to the driver, following my mention of the wireless. His mouth was twisted strangely and his lips were dry. He moved towards me and I felt danger approach as thick as electricity in the air of a storm. Yet surely he would not stab me in front of all these people – would he? How strange to stand watching, wondering, as though someone else’s life was at stake. He was approaching me, his face was leaning into mine.
‘Just who are you and what do you want?’ he whispered.
Arthur came up beside me and took my hand in his.
‘This is my wife,’ he replied, addressing Julian, but speaking clearly enough to be heard perfectly by the assembled group of neighbours. ‘And I believe that she is preparing to level a grave accusation against you. You would do well to listen.’
Julian’s glance shifted rapidly to Arthur and then back to me. As he realised that the situation was more complex than it had seemed, his sense of his own danger increased, and from being defensive he became aggressive.
‘You poor sod,’ he said, ‘if you knew what your wife does when you’re not there to see.’
‘I do know,’ replied Arthur coldly. ‘She makes a practice of detecting criminal activities.’
His words confirmed what the murderer had already begun to understand. A hunted look flashed across his face; for a moment I feared he might run away, and wondered if the neighbours would give chase if he did. I wanted to keep him there, just a few minutes, just a minute longer.
‘My husband is quite right,’ I said steadily, capturing his eyes with mine to hold him.
‘You just be careful what you say,’ he said, his lips curling back. ‘People like you are easy victims. Easy. You know that, don’t you?’
The threat was spoken low, but it was overhead – by Jenny, who had come to her senses and now flung herself suddenly out into the street. Her dark hair seemed lit around the edges by the flicker of the candles held by the people standing behind her. Ignoring them, she approached him and pointed a finger directly at his chest.
‘You rotten criminal,’ she said, causing him to jump and turn around suddenly, ‘you pimp, you murderer, I’ll get you yet!’
The gathered neighbours drew in their breath in a collective gasp of shock.
‘This woman is a slut; she’s raving,’ cried Julian Archer.
‘Yes, I’m a slut,’ she shouted. ‘I’m a slut, and who made me one? Who makes sluts of girls like me? Men like you, who take our money and keep us down in the filth while they get rich! Yes, that’s what he does,’ she went on, her voice rising, and she turned towards the onlookers and advanced towards them, thrusting out her chest so as to provide them with the full benefit of her shocking manners and appearance. And indeed, her height, her pose, her loud voice and her dark, tangled hair, her wild face, her torn clothing and the bruise on her throat caused the white-clad group to shrink back from her with hushed horror.
‘Go away,’ said a bearded man harshly. ‘We don’t want women like you here, with your shrieks and your hysteria and your lies and your immoral habits. We don’t know what you’re doing here and we don’t want to. Go back to wherever you came from!’ He gave her a sharp push. She shrieked.
At that moment came a sound I had been hoping and waiting for, a sound which was music to my ears.
‘Now, now, what’s all this?’ said a strong, authoritative voice, and a police officer came loping up the street. ‘I heard screaming down this way just a couple of minutes ago. Was that from here? Who screamed? Just what is going on here?’
I was about to answer, when Julian stepped in front of me, took the candlestick from his neighbour, and faced the constable openly and directly. By the light reflected on his face, I perceived with astonishment that he had erased all traces of disturbance from his features. Truly, this man possessed aplomb beyond measure. Putting on an air of dignity which has been offended by the sight of vulgarity, but which remains above the fray, he spoke.
‘I have been attacked, Officer,’ he said. ‘These two women have insulted me publicly, and one of them tried to stab me with a knife, causing me to have to defend myself and take it from her. Here it is, Officer. I am of course extremely sorry to have had to lay hands upon a female, but I trust I did her little harm. These women should not be here, disturbing our quiet streets.’
‘Arrest them, Officer!’ said the angry bearded man, playing nicely into Mr Archer’s hands.
‘Is this true, ladies?’ said the policeman, glaring at us severely.
‘Yes,’ cried Jenny, her eyes flashing. ‘He’s a murderer and a filthy pimp, and I pulled the knife on him and I’ll do it again! It’s him you should be arresting!’
‘Now, now,’ said the constable, ‘I think you’re going to have to come along with me, miss, and stop bothering this gentleman. And you gentlemen and ladies should all get back to your beds. There’s nothing to see here,’ he added with a nod towards the assembled group of onlookers and a complete and obvious disregard for the truth. ‘Come on, then,’ he went on, addressing both Jenny and myself. ‘You ladies should not be here. Leave this gentleman alone and come along to the Station where we will try to untangle whether you have been guilty of nocturnal breach of the peace or more serious illegality.’
I saw, or thought I saw, a tiny little look of triumph flash through Julian’s eyes. If we went with the officer now, he would be out of the country in a matter of hours.
‘No!’ I cried.
‘What do you mean, no? You can’t talk to me like that,’ said the policeman. ‘Otherwise it’ll be the handcuffs on you. Now you be careful how you behave.’
‘I’ll just be going back home, now, Officer,’ said Julian with a courteous nod. ‘I live right here. I will be available in the morning, of course, should you need me for anything.’
‘Don’t let him go!’ I said, grasping the officer by the arm. ‘He’s a murderer!’
‘Ah,’ said Julian, in a tone of weary, half-intolerant impatience, ‘there they go again.’
‘Now, miss,’ the officer scolded me, ‘be careful what you say. You can’t go throwing around accusations like that.’
‘I am not throwing around accusations,’ I replied, and taking a leaf out of Mr Archer’s book, I drew myself up to my full height, pushed back the worst of the catastrophically half-unpinned hair which was falling into my face, and assumed my most distinguished accent.
‘I accuse him formally of murder,’ I pronounced firmly. ‘Inspector Doherty is in charge of the case and fully cognisant of all details. He should be called as soon as possible. This man strangled Ivy Elliott, the young woman whose body was found in the Cam on the morning of the 22nd of June. Don’t allow him to return inside his house – he will destroy important evidence!’
The police officer’s face changed; he stared at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Let me answer that,’ replied Arthur, whose quiet distinction covered me like a protective blanket. ‘My name is Weatherburn, I am a don of the University, and this is my wife, Mrs Weatherburn. She is a private detective who has been investigating the murder of the girl named Ivy Elliott. Inspector Doherty is fully aware of her activities in the matter. Please allow me to repeat her suggestion that he be summoned at once.’
Calm masculine tones succeeded where feminine efforts failed. The constable turned to the delivery man, who had finished his work of loading crates and was standing motionless, watching the scene. ‘Go straight to the police station on St. Andrew’s Street, my man, and tell them to fetch Inspector Doherty here as fast as possible,’ he snapped sharply. ‘Now, and don’t lose any time about it! Do you hear?’
‘Yes sir,’ said the delivery man, climbing into his cart and clopping off with no sign of emotion.
During the time it took us to convince the officer, Julian had once again slipped towards his own door; as the cart rolled down the street, I saw that he was about to enter, and feared that he would lock it behind him and make his escape while we waited for Inspector Doherty. I saw with dismay that the house door already stood open, and I jumped forward, determined to try to prevent him from closing it behind him. But he did not enter; indeed, it was not he who had opened the door, but Philip; Philip, who stood motionless, framed in the darkened doorway, listening. How long had he been there? After a moment’s hesitation, Julian made as if to push past him.
‘Wait,’ said Philip, barring his way. ‘I heard everything she said.’
‘It’s rubbish, Phil,’ said Julian quickly, warmly. ‘That woman’s mad. You know as well as I do that I was with you the entire evening that Ivy was killed.’ He tried again to squeeze past, but Philip dropped his crutches and opened his arms to grasp the doorframe with both hands.
‘I know that you were,’ replied Philip, but his look was as cold as stone. ‘That is exactly why she should be allowed to speak. Stand aside.’
Standing on the doorstep raised above the level of the street, he was as tall as his brother; their eyes were at a level, and locked into each other in what seemed a duel of silent wills. His crooked, deformed body obviously had difficulty remaining upright without the crutches, yet so steady was his look and so strong was the impression of power that emanated from his stance and his gesture; so strong, perhaps, also, the ingrained habit of respect – and perhaps even pity – for his handicap, that Julian did not dare to use violence to pass him. And I, watching, was awestruck by Philip’s act, for he knew exactly what he was doing. If Julian could once enter the house, his destruction of the evidence, and even his escape out of some back window, were practically certain. There was nothing passive in Philip’s unmoving stance. Without words, it said clearly that if his brother had murdered his beloved, he would deliver him up to justice with his own hand. It wrenched me that he should be forced to do this, this, to the brother with whom he had grown up. Yet it could not be avoided; it was the only way. I began to worry that as the seconds passed he would begin to doubt, and yield. I turned to him and spoke.
‘He strangled her here, in the bookshop,’ I said. ‘He placed the body into a crate of books, and your – er – his father came dressed as a delivery man in the early morning and carried the body away. It took him no more than a few minutes to hurry down to the bookshop to kill her, since he already knew exactly when she would be there – because your father sent her from Chippendale House directly to Heffers with some story or other about putting money back into the cash register there, and sent a message to Julian by wireless transmitter, informing him of the exact time at which she had left the house. So he didn’t need to watch for her coming. He knew to within a couple of minutes when she was going to arrive.’ I felt a peculiar sensation as I spoke these words; it was strange to be so completely sure of myself, while having no real notion of what a wireless transmitter might actually be! Neither, apparently, did anyone around me.
‘What did you say? What is that?’ asked Philip.
‘It – it is a machine with a wire,’ I said. ‘I don’t know exactly how it works, but I know that it can send messages silently, directly and instantaneously through the air from one house to another over quite a long distance. It is a recent invention, but your father knows all about it. He invests in the company which created it. I have not been into Mr Archer’s rooms here, but I will guarantee that there is a machine there, with a wire running upwards, probably out of the window. I have already noted the existence of such a wire in a tree in the garden of Chippendale House.’
‘Is it true?’ Philip asked Julian. ‘Do you have such a machine upstairs?’
‘I have a machine with a wire,’ he said, ‘but this young lady doesn’t understand what it is used for.’
‘Show it to me,’ said Philip.
By this time, the police officer had advanced towards the brothers; he was now standing directly behind Julian. And the other spectators had followed him, so that we were all grouped around the doorway where Philip still stood. As though in a strange procession, we entered and mounted the stairs, preceded by Philip, who climbed with excruciating slowness, one painful step at a time, then Julian, then by the police officer (who was now holding the knife he had removed opportunely from Julian’s hand), myself, Arthur, Jenny, and the other neighbours. We stopped after the first flight, and entered into a room which was obviously Julian Archer’s sitting room. It contained nothing out of the ordinary. We crossed it and entered his bedroom, which looked out over a miserable little lane to the back. There, on a large table in front of the window, sat two peculiar machines, one at each end of the table, separated from each other by nearly two yards. They were quite large, and one of them was equipped with two white buttons, connected by wires to a kind of jar. The machine was completed by a large brass rod bent nearly into a circle, at the ends of which were fixed two brass balls facing each other, separated by no more than a tiny space. The other machine was fitted with a glass tube containing what seemed to be a little pile of metal filings. Something looking like a small spoon lay over this tube, and a wire went up from this machine, through the crack at the bottom of the window, and outside. This machine was also connected by one short wire to an ordinary electric battery, and by another to a tiny printing machine with an inker and a long, thin roll of paper. The glass tube formed a kind of hole in the electrical connection between the battery and the printer.
‘This is it,’ I asserted.
‘What does this apparatus do?’ asked the policeman, addressing Julian.
‘It’s scientific,’ he replied coldly. ‘It’s difficult to explain to a layman.’
On an impulse, I reached out and pressed one of the round white buttons with my forefinger.
There was a crack of electricity, and a spark jumped between the two brass balls. Instantaneously, the metal filings in the glass tube on the other machine seemed to come alive, leap up from the bottom of the tube and cohere into a single mass, exactly as though they had been suddenly attracted by a magnet. This newly formed metallic link completed the path of the electric current, connecting the battery to the tiny printer, which immediately purred into action and inked a small dot on the roll of paper, which then advanced by a quarter of an inch. The spoon then suddenly leapt up and lightly tapped the glass tube. The metal filings fell away into a little pile of powder again; the current was broken, and the printer fell silent.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the police officer.
‘It’s for Morse code,’ I cried, remembering what I had heard in Kingstown. And reaching out again, I pressed down the other button. The spark flew as before, the metal filings cohered, the printer printed, the tapper tapped, the connection was again broken. But this time the printer had printed not a dot, but a short segment.
‘You see?’ I said. ‘These two machines are separated by the whole length of the table. No wire connects them to each other, yet by pressing a button on one of them, I can transmit a message which is printed in Morse code on the other.’
‘And you claim that this machine can send a message to another one situated a mile away?’ asked the police officer doubtfully.
‘Over ten or twenty miles. I have seen it with my own eyes,’ I replied.
‘This is a miracle,’ said the police officer.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is a stroke of genius.’
‘He’s a devil!’ shrieked Jenny suddenly. ‘I’ll kill him with my own hands! Let me! I want to kill him! I want to kill him!’
She tried to throw herself on Julian, but many pairs of hands held her back. The attitude of the people, however, had changed completely. She was held away protectively, while Julian now stood abandoned in the centre of the room like a loathsome serpent.
‘I think you had better come along with me, sir,’ said the policeman to Julian, taking out his pair of handcuffs.
I saw his eyes dart – backwards, forwards, to the sides. There was no chance of flight, no chance of escape. Already people were stepping forward to come to the assistance of the officer in his duty.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ he snarled suddenly, turning to me.
‘No. You will pay,’ said Philip to him, and his low voice contained a vibration of bitterness beyond description. ‘You and father. You will pay between you for a life destroyed.’
‘You fool,’ said his brother, ‘this is all your fault. If you hadn’t taken the grotesque idea into your head of forcing a beautiful girl to marry a snivelling runt like you just because she was in trouble, none of this would have happened.’
‘That’s a lie,’ cried Jenny suddenly, ‘he didn’t force her – you did! You forced her beyond bearing, and then you killed her, not even for money, just for nothing – nothing at all! What did you care? She wasn’t even a person to you. She wasn’t a person to anyone, I think. Men thought she was too beautiful – she was Ophelia – she was a whore – she was an idol – she was less than dirt, and all the time she was just a girl, an ordinary girl, who had the right to life like everybody else – and you took that from her. And now you’re on your way to Hell where you belong. Go burn in Hell! Burn! Burn! Burn in Hell!’
‘Hell?’ said a voice on the stairs, and Inspector Doherty arrived, looking just as disorderly and half-dressed as the rest of us, clearly fresh from his bed. ‘What’s going on here? Do I understand that some new evidence has appeared in the case?’
‘It’s incredible,’ said the police officer to Inspector Doherty. ‘This young woman has shown us how that machine over there can send an instant message through the air without a wire.’ He hesitated a moment, then reached out and pressed one of the buttons himself. The printer immediately obliged. Both policemen stared. Inspector Doherty ran his fingers over and under the tables, searching for a wire.
‘It’s Morse code,’ breathed the constable admiringly. ‘This machine sends and that one receives. And she says it’ll work even if they’re miles apart.’
Inspector Doherty was not slow to understand. The officer’s description too clearly corresponded to the missing link in the case against Julian Archer that we had discussed at such length. He glanced at me, raising his eyebrows. I gave a quick nod towards Julian. His eyes followed my look.
‘The body?’ he asked.
‘The father,’ I answered at once. He hesitated no longer, but turned to Julian Archer, taking the handcuffs from the constable as he did so.
‘You are under arrest for the murder of Ivy Elliott,’ he said. ‘You will accompany me to the police station at once.’ And the two policemen hustled Julian out of the door. ‘I’ll thank you to join us there as soon as you can, Mrs Weatherburn,’ the inspector threw back at me over his shoulder as he disappeared. ‘We will need your statement.’
The street door banged below, and an odd silence established itself in the dim bedroom. Then the neighbours began leaving, gathering together and disappearing little by little down the narrow stair with the fluidity of a stream. Arthur and I remained together in the darkness. I looked around for Philip, but he was gone; I heard his steps going up the stairs to his own rooms, creakingly, wearily. Thump, drag, pause. Thump, drag, pause. Thump, drag, pause. There was a little swish, and a quick step suddenly followed his. Perhaps Jenny could find some peace in those rooms upstairs, darkened by the mourning that she shared.
I let my head sink onto Arthur’s shoulder. He made a gentle attempt to restore some symmetry to my hair.
‘I don’t want to go,’ I said.
‘You must finish what you began,’ he replied. ‘They need to know what you know, Vanessa. What about the other man, the father? Where is he?’
‘He’s on a yacht,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you arrest a person on a yacht.’
‘They watch all the ports,’ he said.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it,’ I said, ‘that until today one might have thought that it was absolutely impossible to communicate with someone on a boat. This machine will change all that – it will change the world around us more than we can imagine. It is the most modern thing I have ever seen.’
I reached out and pressed the little round button one last time. Together we watched the flash of the spark, and the reaction of the other machine as the invisible wave crossed the air. The metal dust flew together, and the little printer stolidly grunted out its single dot. The spoon tapped, the dust fell, and all became quiet.
‘This truly marks the end of an era,’ I said.
‘Come along,’ said Arthur, touching my elbow. ‘We must go.’
‘You’re coming with me, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ he answered, linking his arm through mine.