A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  Nicholas Blake

  A

  TANGLED

  WEB

  To

  A. D. PETERS

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1. Last Scene But One

  2. Lovers Meeting

  3. A Happy Time

  4. Evening in Maida Vale

  5. Enter Jacko

  6. The End of Innocence

  7. An Intellectual Tea-Party

  8. “He’d as soon be in Prison”

  9. Journey through the Underworld

  10. Tragedy at Southbourne

  PART TWO

  11. The Morning After

  12. “We’ll Get Him”

  13. “I Only Want to Help”

  14. The Kiss of Death

  15. An Arrest in London

  16. Fair Enough

  17. The Second Betrayal

  18. From Evidence Received

  19. Daisy Consults a Solicitor

  20. Trial and Verdict

  21. Last Scene of All

  A Note on the Author

  This story follows in broad outline a criminal cause célèbre of the early years of the century. The colour, detail and interpretation, however, are largely my own, and the characters are wholly imagined.

  N. B.

  Part One

  1. Last Scene But One

  “Why did he do it? Why did he do it? I just can’t understand.”

  Daisy Bland’s lover, the father of her child, had been sentenced to death for wilful murder; but it was not her lover whom she referred to. The tears were flowing down her cheeks, welling up from an inexhaustible misery; yet in a way, thought Bruce Rogers, they did not seem to belong to her—they were like rain streaming down the face of a statue. The most beautiful face he had ever seen. She cried easily. She was a creature who would cry easily, laugh easily, make love easily—a child of nature. Even now there was a sort of luxury in her desolation.

  For the hundredth time in these last months, Bruce Rogers felt out of his depth. His eye roved round the familiar office, seeking for reassurance, normality. The files, the deed-boxes, the papers on his desk contained a wealth of human emotion, but abstracted—dehydrated, as it were: they could not shake the heart with this almost intolerable compassion, or cause it to shrink into itself, hiding away from its own inadequacy. It was humiliating, he thought, that tragedy should make one shrivel when one met it face to face.

  “How could anyone be so wicked?” Daisy said. “How could he do it?”

  A spasm of irritation shook Bruce Rogers. Women! Always asking rhetorical questions which nevertheless they expect you to answer. Emotion for ever running molten into words. And that question of all questions! God damn it, he thought, I am neither a psycho-analyst nor a priest—nor am I William Shakespeare. I am a solicitor, whose business is conveyancing, testaments, briefs, not the exposition of the morbid psychology of an Iago.

  “Now, my dear, you must try to be brave, for Hugo’s sake,” he heard himself saying, and was at once nauseated by the feebleness, the futility of it.

  At the sound of her lover’s name, the tears ran free again.

  “They won’t let him off, will they? I know they won’t,” she wailed. Yet her face was still calm, undisfigured by grief. Bruce had an instant picture of his own pretty wife’s face, when she wept over some trivial setback—swollen, blotched, grimacing. He was still young enough to be horrified by the disloyalty of the comparison. He felt an appalling impulse to say to this girl Daisy, No, they won’t let him off. And it was through your evidence, and your evidence alone, that Hugo will hang.

  Poor girl, he thought, as if you don’t know it! You’re not particularly bright in the head, but you know that all right.

  “We must hope for the best,” he said. “Sir Henry is convinced that there are sound legal arguments for—good reasons why the appeal should be successful.”

  “It’s like a game,” the girl unexpectedly said.

  “A game?”

  “Two sides playing with a man’s life. In court, I mean. Scoring clever shots off each other, with a man’s life. And so solemn about it, like men playing cricket.”

  Bruce opened his mouth, then shut it again. What was the point in trying to vindicated to this girl the workings of English justice? the beautiful firmness and flexibility of the Law? Three months ago he might have attempted it; but he had lost his starch on the battlefield of the Chesterman case. Had he lost, too, his belief in the Law? Even if Hugo Chesterman had shot the police Inspector, there was every doubt in the world—even the unsentimental Sir Henry proclaimed it—whether Justice would best be served by hanging him. At the Court of Criminal Appeal to-day, Bruce suspected, Law and Justice were fighting on opposite sides.

  He glanced involuntarily at his wrist-watch, then at the telephone on his desk. To his tired mind its impersonal, vulcanite mouthpiece became the mouth of the Lord Chief Justice, opening to give the Court’s ever so learned, ever so impersonal judgment. The telephone lay there, like a time-bomb, between them. Any time now it would ring—Daisy’s hands were already clenched, as if against the imminent shock of an explosion—and Sir Henry would tell them how it had gone.

  “I’ve always hated the telephone,” said Daisy Bland. “In the shop I tried not to answer it—people were so rude on the telephone—you can’t imagine.”

  How can she chatter like this, thought Bruce resentfully; but at once he realised she was doing it to ease the strain, for both of them. A wonderful girl. A nonpareil girl. No wonder that bold young spark, Chesterman, had fallen for her. For her, he might even have gone straight—only she was so madly in love with him that she did not really care whether he went straight or not.

  In the Magistrates’ Court, and later at the Assizes when she was in the last weeks of her pregnancy, this girl’s beauty had magnetised the onlookers. It, and the Raffles-like character of the prisoner had made a cause célèbre of a sordid, commonplace story. Beauty in distress—more beautiful in distress. The shining blue of the eyes (speedwell? forget-me-not?), deepening with a change of mood or of light to violet; the tumble of corn-coloured hair; the glow on mouth and cheek which even her extreme distress could hardly quench: Bruce took them in again now while she talked, sitting upright on the edge of the black leather arm-chair as if she were being interviewed for a job. The voice, with its rough, boyish, countrified tone—he had heard it, in and out of Court, for so many hours; heard it give the evidence which condemned her lover, heard it so dramatically retract this evidence.

  As she talked now about the enormities of the customers at the shop where she had served, keeping up conversation like a ring of fires to hold at bay the worse things prowling in the darkness beyond, Bruce was struck again by her lack of resentment. Even when she had exclaimed, “How could anyone be so wicked?” there was no bitterness in her voice, only a kind of sad curiosity. Daisy Bland, he judged, was a passive character: it was both her weakness and her strength—the weakness that abominable man had played on, and the strength, the yielding, accepting strength which would bring her, more or less whole, through this last ordeal.

  On an impulse, he interrupted: “You’ll make a wonderful mother, Daisy.”

  She turned the shining, sad blue eyes upon him. “Yes, perhaps I will,” she said slowly. “I could have made a good wife too, Mr. Rogers.”

  “Think of the baby. It’s a marvellous baby.”

  “Oh, he’s all right. He’s got ten of everything,” the girl listlessly replied. Shading her eyes from him, she turned to the window.

  “Where’s the harbour?”

  “The harbour? Well, you can’t see it from here. Over to the right. About half a mile.” Bruce was flustered again. Wherever one stepped, it led to dangerous ground. The harbo
ur: the sea: the beach: the revolver buried under the pebbles and dug for by Daisy in full view of the plainclothes man on the esplanade: the unescapable, unforgivable trap into which she had been led.

  “We were so happy here,” murmured Daisy, her face turned towards the distant sea. “It was romantic.”

  The purity of her feeling redeemed even that cheap, soiled word. Bruce made another effort.

  “It’s something to remember. The happiness. They can’t take that—”

  “Yes, they can,” she said strenuously. “It’s gone. I can only remember I was happy. I can’t remember what it was like, feeling happy. All I know is, one moment we were on top of the world; and then he came back, half an hour later—I was still sitting on the front, like he’d told me—and I knew somehow it was, well, the end of the world. For me.”

  “You feel like that now.”

  “I’ll always feel like that. Unless—” She could not go on. Her eyes, avoiding the telephone, sought refuge anywhere. “What a lot of books! Have you read them all?”

  “Yes. A fair time ago—some of them. For my examinations, you know.”

  A thin finger, wearing the wedding-ring to which it was not entitled, rubbed along the top of one row.

  “Oof, they’re dusty. Haven’t you anyone to clean up this place for you?”

  “Yes, my dear, but—”

  “Got a duster?”

  “I—a duster?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bruce, rather bemusedly, rummaged through the drawers of his desk till he found what she wanted.

  “But really, Daisy, you mustn’t—”

  “Oh, don’t you see?” she broke out, in a tone of passionate desolation that Bruce was never to forget. “Don’t you see? I must be doing something. For someone.”

  She was vigorously dusting the tops of the books when, three minutes later, the telephone bell rang. In one swirling movement she had dropped the duster, turned, was standing by the desk, her hand outstretched. Then, with a little renunciatory gesture, infinitely pathetic, she took back her hand, leaving it all to him.

  Bruce Rogers reached for the receiver….

  2. Lovers Meeting

  It was on a spring day, some twenty months before, that Hugo and Daisy had first met. The pavements were wet after the night’s heavy rain, and flowers of cherry blossom, shaken down by the storm, lay stuck to them like pink paper rosettes. Now the morning was calm and fresh. Along the St. John’s Wood terrace pear blossom, cherry blossom, prunus sent up their coloured spray, and white clouds bloomed in the sky. A country-bred girl, who had only come to London the previous autumn, Daisy Bland sniffed the Maytime air, feeling a waft of excitement stronger than the home-sickness which such a scene might have been expected to provoke. In the country, one hardly noticed the flowers and the decorated branches. It was only a few minutes’ walk from the bus stop to Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe’s house, and Daisy had no complaint against Madame Ramon for not sending her by taxi, urgent though her errand was. The other girls at the milliner’s shop would have nattered about Madame’s notorious meanness. Daisy swung along, with her free country stride, dangling the hat-box by its ribbon and enjoying the fresh smells, the exhilarated colour of trees and gardens.

  A blackbird whistled a phrase overhead; as she turned the corner, Daisy was looking up into a tree, from which the crystal notes came, and collided heavily with a man walking fast the other way. The hat-box was knocked out of her hand, its ribbon slipped, and as the box rolled away, the lid came off and the hat slid out on to the wet pavement.

  “Oh lor’,” said Daisy, clapping her fingers to her mouth.

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “You’ve done it properly.”

  The young man was already retrieving the hat with one hand—even at this disastrous moment she was able to notice how fast he moved—and had thrust out a foot to stop the hat-box rolling into the gutter.

  “Just a speck or two of mud,” he said, brushing Madame Ramon’s fancy creation vigorously on his sleeve. Daisy snatched it from him before he could do any more damage.

  “Oh, it’s ruined. What will she say?”

  “Ruined? But surely—”

  The young man broke off. In the flurry, he had not looked at her properly till now, not taken her in. Daisy was conscious of his eyes upon her. The consternation went out of her as she returned his gaze. Something flashed between them, like magnesium, and in that instant he was printed on her memory for ever—the thin, swarthy face, the mouth arrested in a half smile, the eyes brown, alert, ready to dance, with a sort of wildness asleep behind their steady gaze. A poacher’s face, she said to herself. She might as well have said an angel’s, the way she was transfixed in a pure passion of astonishment: an angel’s, or a fallen angel’s—she was never to care which.

  They stood, facing each other over the ridiculous hat for a few seconds, for long enough to form their destiny.

  “Oh dear,” he said at last, “your new hat. Is it really—?”

  “It’s not mine. It’s—I was bringing it to Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe.”

  “Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe? What an appalling name! It’s an outrage that anyone called Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe should wear a hat like this. I shall certainly not permit it.”

  “But—”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Daisy Bland.”

  “Ah, that’s better. Daisy. It would suit you.” And the astonishing young man removed the hat from her grasp, placed it on her head, and stood back to study the effect.

  “No,” he said, “I was wrong. Not with all that lovely hair. It looks like a tatty old bird’s-nest perched on a waterfall.”

  He removed it, and stood contemplating her, twirling the hat on the point of his middle finger. Between tears and laughter, she exclaimed:

  “Do be careful. I’ll get into such trouble—”

  “I’ll buy Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe another one like it.”

  “Oh, you don’t understand. It’s a model—Madame made it specially for her. And she’ll be wild if she doesn’t get it this morning.”

  The young man sucked in his lower lip, then cocked his head at her with a glance of pure mischief.

  “Well, let’s deliver this object to the repulsive Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe. Where does she live?”

  “Number 39. A few doors away.”

  He replaced the hat in the box, and secured the ribbon.

  “Come along, Daisy Bland. You’re from Gloucestershire, aren’t you? My father used to—” He broke off, frowning a little. “My name’s Hugo Chesterman, of no fixed address. Now we’ve got all the relevant facts.”

  It was, perhaps, Daisy’s capacity for accepting things, for not fussing or deprecating or playing coy, which, after her vernal beauty, won Hugo’s heart. She, for her part, followed his lead as if in a trance: she had not begun to think about him yet: she just, fatalistically and with a sensation of utter felicity, let him take command.

  They rang the bell, they were admitted into the hall, and presently Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe, a plump, overdressed woman with a discontented face, waddled towards them.

  “Miss Bland, isn’t it? You’re very late. I was promised my hat an hour ago.”

  Daisy began to explain that a slight accident had befallen it. The woman cut her short and, throwing open the hat-box, took out its contents. Her face went red and she began to gobble, shaking the flimsy hat in Daisy’s face.

  “It’s insufferable. The thing’s ruined. Look at it, you clumsy girl. Do you expect me to wear this?”

  Hugo gave one glance at Daisy’s flushed cheek, then, turning to the woman, said:

  “Certainly not, Madam. It is too young for you.”

  “How dare you!” Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe rounded upon Daisy, panting with outrage. “Who is this—this creature? You ruin my hat with your bloody carelessness, and not content with that you bring your—bring this insolent person into my house—”

  “Madam, the misadventure to your hat was entirely my
fault,” cut in Hugo imperturbably, “and I came with Miss Bland to explain it. May I introduce myself? I am the Reverend Chesterman, Rural Dean of Amberley; and I must ask you to moderate your language out of respect for my cloth.”

  “You don’t look like a clergyman to me.”

  “I am in, ah, mufti. A brief surcease from my pastoral labours, Mrs. Smith.”

  At this point Daisy gave vent to a lamentable giggle. The woman turned upon her, jowls quivering.

  “I shall telephone instantly to your employer, and demand your dismissal. And now,” her voice rose to a scream, “get out! Get out!”

  Hugo was replacing the hat in the box and tying the ribbon again.

  “I take it you don’t want the article of apparel?”

  “Put it down instantly, and GET OUT! And take this sniggering little bitch with you!”

  Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe had the front door open, and was trying simultaneously to push them out and to wrest the hat-box from Hugo. At her last words, he went quite rigid, and a look came into his face so dangerous that Daisy shrank back for a moment, torn between fear and a delicious excitement.

  “I wouldn’t use that word, if I were you,” said Hugo. Then, turning his back contemptuously, he took five quick, short, running steps, and punted the hat-box high into the air. It landed among the branches of a big laburnum. Before Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe could find her voice, he called out:

  “Go climb a tree, Madam. Take off some of that superfluous fat.”

  Grasping Daisy’s elbow, he walked her quickly but not hurriedly down the street.

  For Daisy, that was the beginning of a period when her life moved with the automatism of a dream. After such an opening, nothing could greatly surprise her any more. Once you had accepted as a fact a young man with a poacher’s face, who came upon you out of the blue of a May morning and kicked hat-boxes into laburnum trees—once you accepted this extraordinary proposition, everything else followed with the inevitability of dream logic. So it was almost as a matter of course that Daisy found herself, an hour later, lunching with Hugo Chesterman at the Berkeley.