by AJ Wright
Brennan leant forward and, with clenched fist, began to pound rhythmically on the door, ignoring for the moment the less arduous appeal of the heavy brass knocker. After a fusillade of blows, he stepped back and invited Jaggery to make the more conventional mode of announcing one’s presence, which he did with gusto.
‘You see, sir,’ Brennan went on when Jaggery had finished with the Davy lamp, ‘it struck me as rather odd that someone should stand here with a letter in his hand, a letter which had to be read immediately otherwise the strategy wouldn’t work, and for some reason refuse to use the door knocker. It’s heavy, and it does the job it’s supposed to do with literally alarming efficiency. So why not use it?’
Jaggery, who had not been privy to the sergeant’s exposition to Captain Bell, merely scratched his head. Thumping, knocking – what was the bloody difference?
But the chief constable nodded in understanding.
The door swung open, and a rather irate-looking Isaacs stood there and performed the perfect butler’s trick of glaring submissively at these unexpected visitors. When he recognised the chief constable, however, his demeanour altered and the hostility in his eyes retreated.
Once they were inside the hallway, he asked if they would mind waiting there while he went to find the mistress.
Jaggery, unwrapping his thick muffler, took the opportunity to ask a question.
‘Are you saying there were two people at the door, Sergeant?’
Brennan shook his head. ‘I assure you, Constable, there was only one person standing at the door when the hammering was heard.’
‘Who was it then?’
Before he could respond, Isaacs reappeared and escorted the three of them into the drawing room where they should make themselves comfortable until the mistress was ready to receive them.
But five minutes later, it was Ambrose Morris, accompanied by his nephew Andrew and his sister-in-law Prudence, who entered the drawing room.
‘My sister-in-law insisted on coming, Alexander, although I told her not to concern herself.’
Ambrose had naturally addressed his remarks to the senior policeman.
‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Captain Bell with a slight bow.
Brennan noted how easily she was moving now – the pain she had been under for so long seemed to have eased a great deal. The lingering smell of arnica had also vanished.
‘It must be important to bring you out on a night like this,’ Ambrose remarked as they all waited for Prudence to be seated.
‘Yes, Ambrose. It is.’
There was a melancholy resonance in the chief constable’s voice.
Andrew seemed to have caught the tone of his words. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat before standing up and moving to the fireplace. Out of the corner of his eye, Brennan watched him carefully, noting the nervous way he placed one arm on the mantelpiece and stared at the series of landscapes he himself had painted. In particular, he was examining the wintry scene, where the solitary young man was still sitting by a frozen stream, his hand pressed flat against the hard ice.
‘Well then. Make it snappy, can’t you?’
A distinct note of irritation had entered Ambrose’s voice. ‘We have a great deal of unfinished business – family business – to attend to.’
Brennan wondered what unfinished business they had interrupted.
‘And I really do have to be back in London by tomorrow night.’
‘Sergeant Brennan will explain things.’ Captain Bell raised his chin, as if he were ready to inspect the troops.
‘This is all rather mysterious!’ Prudence Morris said, and glanced at her brother-in-law with annoyance and curiosity in equal measure.
‘What I have to say, ma’am,’ said Brennan, ‘will not be pleasant.’
‘Then wouldn’t it be better if my mother were removed from the room?’
There was a note of rising panic in Andrew’s voice.
‘Removed?’ she snapped back. ‘Like a salver of half-eaten scones?’
‘Sergeant!’ the chief constable hissed impatiently. Get this over with, his tone demanded.
‘I’m afraid we need to return for a while to the night your husband was found in Scholes, ma’am.’
‘Really, Alexander,’ Ambrose Morris began, but he was met with a stony expression.
‘Go on, Sergeant.’
Brennan took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Cox and yourself remained in the dining room while your husband and Mr Cox moved into the smoking room?’
‘That is correct.’
‘And Mr Morris here had left the room to get some cigars from his room.’
‘Cubans,’ Ambrose added inconsequentially.
‘Quite. While you were out of the room, Mr Morris, a hammering of fists was heard at the front door.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when the maid answered the door, you were halfway down the stairs with your cigars and you say you saw a figure lurking in the bushes.’
‘Yes. Though it was very dark and …’
‘Nevertheless, you pointed this figure out to the maid.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who thought she saw someone but wasn’t sure.’
‘Correct.’
‘Still, putting that to one side for a while, the result was a letter that had been dropped into the post basket behind the letter box.’
‘Yes.’
‘Addressed to Arthur Morris. And your brother-in-law opened it and reacted angrily, did he not?’
Andrew pushed himself away from the mantelpiece and moved towards Brennan.
‘Do you intend merely to go over old ground, Sergeant? Do you realise how distressing this must be for my mother?’
‘Yes, sir. And I’m very sorry for it.’
Suddenly he turned and faced Prudence Morris. ‘For how many years had your husband been physically abusing you, Mrs Morris?’
There was uproar. Andrew almost screamed his protests, Ambrose made an immediate and impassioned plea to Captain Bell to foreclose this outrage to decency at once, while Prudence Morris lowered her head and clasped her hands gently together. The chief constable had a depth of compassion on his face that Brennan feared might erupt into anger, but mercifully he kept silent.
Brennan, meanwhile, remained steadfast, his gaze never leaving her.
At last, she spoke. Her voice was barely a whisper, but there was steel there, a quality Brennan had recognised in her on a previous occasion. ‘Arthur was a man who used physical strength to assert his authority.’
Andrew made a step towards her but she held up a hand to forestall him.
‘No, Andrew. Please. Let me finish.’
She looked up at Brennan and smiled feebly. ‘He was a brutal man, Sergeant. But only in private. He would never mistreat me in full view of our son. Never. There was always a discretion in his violence towards me.’
She presented that lamentable fact as evidence for the defence, Brennan reflected, and thought of a time when Morris was seen. By a kitchen maid named Bridie Hanlon.
‘Which is why,’ she said quietly, ‘I am amazed at the acuteness of your observation. How did you know?’
‘Your maid told me you never let her assist you when dressing. You never allow her to apply arnica, for your rheumatism. It has its own aroma, does it not?’
‘It does.’
‘But arnica is used to treat bruises, rather than rheumatism.’
‘It can be used for rheumatism.’
‘I’m assured that any reputable physician would recommend some concoction involving camphor oil, soap and opium. Not arnica.’
‘And that was your only evidence?’
Brennan hesitated slightly. He had the testimony of two people: the cook, Mrs Venner, who compared Arthur Morris with Jekyll and Hyde, and Bridie Haggerty, who not only saw him on one of the rare occasions he let the domestic mask slip, but who also suffered first-hand his penchant for brutality. But he said nothing. No good would be served by referring to either woman now th
at the truth was exposed.
‘So,’ he went on, ignoring her question, ‘you had suffered a great deal. Your son appears never to have seen this side of his character.’
‘Never!’ said Andrew firmly.
‘Yet you saw his intransigence when he discovered your relationship with Molly Haggerty.’
At the mention of her name, and the painful memory of his father’s outburst, he bit his lip.
‘Violence manifests itself in different ways,’ Brennan said softly to Andrew. ‘What he threatened you with I have no idea, but he made it perfectly clear you were to break off your dalliance with her, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. So we have a situation where your mother is systematically abused over a period of many years; we have a situation where you are in danger of losing the girl you are deeply in love with; and we have a situation where the whole town is haunted by the spectre of starvation conjured up, many believe, by your father.’
At this point he reached into his pocket and took out the filthy envelope with its equally filthy contents that were found on Arthur Morris’s body.
‘It struck me as odd, you see, the circumstance of this letter.’
‘Why?’ Ambrose Morris asked, staring at it in confusion.
‘The maid and yourself, Mrs Morris, said that the letter that dropped into the post basket was a clean white envelope, and that the letter your husband extracted was equally pristine, or at least unremarkable.’
‘So?’
‘Three things: one, how did it come to be in this state?’
‘It was a filthy night, Sergeant,’ Ambrose interposed. ‘Perhaps my brother took it out and examined it while on his way to Scholes.’
‘Perhaps. Which brings me to my second point: how did he know where to go? There’s no address on the letter, no indication whatsoever as to who sent it.’
‘You said it contained some clue.’
‘Ah yes, the acronymic reference to Scholes: “Strike causes hell – O Lord end suffrin.”’
‘There you are then.’
‘Where are we, sir? The reference to Scholes is clear, but where in Scholes?’
‘Perhaps my brother recognised the reference and acted accordingly.’
‘Well I think you’re partly right, sir. I think he recognised something, but not the reference. I think he recognised the name of the sender of the letter.’
Both Ambrose and Andrew laughed out loud at that.
‘But there is no name in that letter!’ Ambrose cried out in exasperation.
‘No, sir, but there was a name in the letter your brother received that night.’
‘What? You speak in ridiculous riddles, man!’
Prudence Morris’s voice was low but carried an air of authority. ‘You must explain the conundrum, Sergeant.’
‘The letter your husband received was not the one we found on his person.’
‘I beg your pardon? How can that be?’
‘Mrs Morris told me that she was quite capable of recognising her husband’s name on the front of the envelope. Arthur Morris. But the letter we found on his person was addressed simply to “A. Morris”. A mistake. If you’re going to substitute one letter for another, at least make them superficially the same.’
‘This is nonsense!’ Andrew cried out.
‘If the letter your father opened contained his full name – and your mother stated that it did …’
Prudence Morris gave a sharp nod and stated firmly, ‘It most definitely had his name, “Arthur Morris”, on the envelope.’
‘Then he wouldn’t have hesitated to open it. Whereas “A. Morris” could be Andrew, or Ambrose. It is my belief that the letter that dropped through that post basket also contained a name and an address. I believe it contained a threat that so enraged Arthur that he would inevitably respond the way he was expected to – with anger and with impulse. He would go to Scholes at once and have it out with the person who supposedly wrote it.’
‘Who was that?’
Brennan shrugged. ‘I can only guess the writer claimed to be Mrs Haggerty, or perhaps the popular agent for the Miners’ Federation, Frank Latchford. Someone he had had angry dealings with in the past. Neither of those two know anything about this, of course.’
Andrew cleared his throat. ‘You mean you don’t have this supposed letter? The one that was taken from my father’s body and that left in its place?’
‘I don’t have it, sir, no.’
‘Then you can say what you like about it, can’t you? You can speculate to your heart’s content! Why, it could have contained a recipe for strawberry jam for all you know!’
‘True, Mr Morris, but a recipe for strawberry jam would hardly send your father up to Scholes in a furious temper.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Andrew went on. ‘Someone comes all the way to Standish to post a letter – with a name and address – and then returns forthwith to lie in wait for my father on the off-chance he responds?’
‘Not quite, sir. Nobody “came all the way to Standish” as you put it.’
‘Well then, he sends a messenger who posts it for him.’
Brennan shook his head.
‘Well how in God’s name …’
‘The one who was standing at that front door with the letter to post was already here.’
‘This is ridiculous!’ Ambrose exclaimed with a raising of his arms as if both contained order papers and he was fulminating across the despatch box.
‘No it isn’t, sir. It’s quite simple. Someone hammered on the door with his fists instead of using the heavy door knocker.’
‘Why didn’t he use the knocker?’ asked Andrew.
‘Because he couldn’t.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘The man standing at the front door couldn’t possibly use the knocker or post the letter because he was inside at the time.’
‘What nonsense!’ Ambrose almost yelled.
‘No it isn’t, sir.’
Brennan turned fully to face the Member of Parliament now and spoke in sombre, heavy tones.
‘You couldn’t risk opening the door and using the Davy lamp knocker in case you were seen. Besides, opening the door on such a night would have brought a flurry of snow on the hall carpet. Difficult to explain, I would have thought. Far simpler to hammer on the inside of the door with your fists after you’d dropped the letter in the basket, again from the inside, thus ensuring someone would immediately find the letter. If not, it may have lain there unnoticed for the rest of the evening.’
‘What is this?’ Prudence whispered in horror, her hand moving to her mouth.
‘Your brother-in-law, Mrs Morris, then moved quickly back to the stairs where he gave every appearance of coming down rather than rushing back up when the maid dashed out to see who was at the door. Then, when she flung the door wide open, he persuaded her that he had seen a dark figure in the bushes. His forceful insistence was nothing more than the power of suggestion. Therefore she said she saw it too.’
At that moment a strange sound was heard in the room. Ambrose Morris was clapping his hands together.
‘Bravo, Sergeant. Masterful performance. But deep in the realms of speculation. I see no proof of any of this wildness.’
Brennan could see that the man wasn’t a politician for nothing – he had that outer shell of confidence bordering on arrogance, and the absolute conviction that anyone involved in the making of laws could also be involved in manipulating them.
Suddenly there was movement, unexpected and shocking. Prudence Morris stood up and moved quickly to where her brother-in-law was standing, and then she threw herself into his arms.
Andrew gasped to see his mother and uncle in what appeared to be an embrace of passion and fear. Even Captain Bell appeared shocked to his very core. Yet when Brennan spoke, his voice was low, and calm, and certain.
‘That’s where the masterful performance can be found.’
He nodded towards Ambrose and
Prudence. He was holding her in his arms and she had her head buried in his chest.
For Andrew, this was in the realm of fantasy. Never, in all his life, had he witnessed anything but a tolerant distance between the two of them. Now they were embracing as lovers.
‘It isn’t true!’ she said, her voice muffled and cracked. ‘Ambrose was here when Arthur was killed. In this very house! He was found asleep in the smoking room, Ask Isaacs. He’ll tell you! How can he be in two places at once? Tell him, Ambrose.’
‘Uncle Ambrose?’
Ambrose looked at his nephew and touched Prudence’s head, a gentle, loving gesture. But he remained stolidly silent.
Brennan went on. ‘You hired Theodore Bragg, did you not? Paid him a handsome sum to get rid of your brother.’
Ambrose slowly shook his head. ‘Speculation, Sergeant Brennan. Merely speculation. In a court of law …’
At that point, Brennan held up a notebook.
‘What is that?’ Ambrose asked, his voice losing a little of its equilibrium.
‘It’s Theodore Bragg’s insurance policy. Or rather, his notebook with an account of how much you paid him for his work that night. It was sent over from Manchester this morning.’
But again, Ambrose shook his head. ‘Numbers scrawled on a page, Sergeant? Really! I never even met the man.’
But Brennan went on, ignoring the man’s calm protestations. ‘I have a sworn statement from James Cox that you not only knew Theodore Bragg but you availed yourself of his services on more than one occasion.’
‘Nonsense!’
At this, Prudence detached herself from his arms and moved a few steps back, surveying him closely.
‘Mr Bragg was a man who lurked in the darker corners of society, Mrs Morris. Men like him are necessary, sometimes, when men like your husband need unpleasant or discreet services carried out. I’m aware of Mr Cox’s arrangements with the man, and I can guess that your husband used him to gather whatever information he could on his enemies, members of the Miners’ Federation, rival businessmen, and so on, including finding out all he could about your son’s relationship with Molly Haggerty. But your brother-in-law used him in quite a different way. According to the sums he received from you, Mr Morris, he performed very great services for you. Such as murder.’
