The Back Passage

by James Lear

  After we had polished off a cold chicken, half a ham, the best part of a jar of pickled onions, plus large quantities of bread and cheese—everyone had an appetite that night—Belinda went to look after her father, leaving the rest of us to hear Rex’s extraordinary narrative of the last two days.

  “It was Mother’s idea to do away with Reg Walworth,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “I can’t bear to say it, but I hope that the law will catch up with her and make her pay for what she’s done. Walworth was a wretch, but he did not deserve to die, and I can never forgive my mother for plotting his murder. It’s true he was blackmailing Father, and trying to bust up my wedding plans—if only he’d known what a favor he was doing me!—but his crimes were nothing compared with what Mother planned. Leonard introduced her to Sergeant Kennington, a corrupt policeman he’d met at some club in London, who was prepared to do the dirty work for a vast sum of money that would guarantee his silence. I believe it was his plan to blackmail Father in his turn after the event, but that will emerge at his trial.”

  “Where is he now, Rex?” I asked. I’d last seen Kennington unconscious on the housekeeper’s floor, covered in my spunk.

  “I don’t know. He’s disappeared. I suspect he’s with Mother. I suspect they’ll try to flee the country; may already have done so. They’ll be found.”

  “And how did Walworth die?”

  “Strangled with a belt.”

  I rubbed my neck, remembering Kennington’s predilection for asphyxia. How close had I come to losing my life?

  “The murder took place in Leonard’s room, just as he told you, Mitch. But the rest of it was lies. There was no sex party going on. Charlie was present for a while, but only to serve tea before the crime was committed. Poor Walworth; he thought he’d pulled off the coup of his career, and got himself accepted in a family that would set him up for the rest of his life. Little did he know that the tea and sandwiches and polite conversation were a prelude to him being lured off by Kennington and throttled. The body was dragged to a cupboard—and the rest you know.”

  “But why was Charlie arrested?”

  Rex placed his hand over Charlie’s. “They’d wanted Charlie out of the way for ages. The number of times Mother and Father tried to fire him—but either I stood in their way, or Burroughs did. In his own quiet way, Burroughs was courageous—though now we know that behind that polite facade he was exploiting the situation in the most dangerous way. Imagine the scandal if photographs of Charlie and me had started circulating in London!”

  “Don’t worry about that, Rex. You can keep hold of the film now.”

  “Finally, however, they found the perfect pretext for getting Charlie out the way for good, by blaming him for Walworth’s death and counting on Kennington to block any attempt at exonerating him. It’s amazing how quickly and quietly you can dispose of a human life; all you have to do is whisper the words queer and murderer, and an innocent man will go to his death. It was Leonard’s idea to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ as he put it: to get rid of Reg Walworth, and then to use that crime as a way of getting rid of Charlie. With both of them taken care of, there were no longer any obstacles to my marriage, and the many financial benefits dependent on it.”

  “But if you knew all this was going on, why didn’t you try to stop it?”

  “I didn’t know. Oh, I had my suspicions for a long time about Father’s friendship with Reg Walworth—but I had no idea he was blackmailing him. And it was only during that dreadful tea party that I learned of the murder plot. I tried to stop them, but what could I do? Kennington hinted that any interference on my part would lead to a prosecution, and disgrace, and prison, for both me and Charlie. And so I kept my mouth shut, for which I will be eternally ashamed.”

  He hung his head. Charlie put an arm around Rex’s shoulder and kissed his blond hair.

  “You can’t blame yourself, Rex,” Morgan said. “You did what you did for good reasons.”

  “And then I left them, because I couldn’t stand what they were doing, and I tried to forget it all in Charlie’s arms. That’s where I was when Kennington killed Walworth, as you know, and as Burroughs saw. I left him to go and join in the game of Sardines, and make everything look as normal as possible—but then Belinda found the body, the police were all over the house, and before I knew it Charlie was in the back of a van being taken into the village. I tried to take the car and follow him, but Hibbert was under strict instructions to keep the garage locked. And so I ran to the village and demanded his release—but I might as well have been talking to a stone wall. The desk sergeant even denied he was there.”

  “Brown.”

  “Exactly. I tried to get past him, to find Charlie, but there was nothing I could do—and when Kennington came out to threaten me again, I ran out of ideas. And so I got the first train to London.”

  “That’s just what I don’t get, Rex,” Morgan said. “Why on earth did you run away like that? Looked so damn suspicious.”

  “I needed bargaining power, because as long as they had Charlie, and the threat of exposing me, they held all the cards in their hands. But I knew that if I came up to London and found Walworth’s lodgings, I would be able to procure proof of the very thing that they were trying, above all, to wipe out. I’d seen the blackmail notes that Walworth had sent to Father—complete with his address in Bethnal Green. I got to London by dinner time, went straight to the address, praying that Kennington’s cronies hadn’t got there before me. I was in luck; the landlady knew nothing of her tenant’s disappearance, and was obviously used to ‘posh gents,’ as she put it, turning up at all hours of the day and night. For a small consideration of a five-pound note, she gave me a pass key to his room and said she’d ‘turn a blind eye.’

  “Walworth’s lodgings were grim; he hardly had a stick of furniture, and there was one very shiny suit hanging in the cupboard with a couple of shirts—all the clothes he owned, apart from the ones he died in. Oh, he must have dreamed of wealth and comfort, the poor bastard. And he thought Father would pay for all that, in return for... Well, you know what. I can’t blame Father. He was a handsome kid, a year younger than me, part-time stevedore, part-time boxer, but too lazy to put his mind to anything that would really give him a chance to better himself. Too addicted to easy money and easy pleasure. Bad luck that he fell in with a bad lot who showed him the way to make money out of his good looks.”

  “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Walworth was a very busy boy, very industrious in all the wrong areas. There were letters—not just from Father, but from half a dozen other men of wealth and influence, some of whom I know personally. I would never have guessed that the foreign secretary was... Well, anyway, I took everything I could find and I will return it all to its rightful owners. It’s amazing what a man will put down in writing in the heat of passion. Reg Walworth had certainly inspired some flights of fancy—and Father was mad about him. Well, poor Dad must be suffering now.”

  “Don’t worry, old chap,” Morgan said. “Billie’s looking after him.”

  “I think, in his way, he hoped for a real friendship with Reg. He had plans for him. He was paying for accountancy classes at a business college. But of course all the money was squandered.”

  “So all those payment for decorating and building work...” West said.

  “Yes. Presents, patronage, whatever you want to call it. Father was always generous with his money.”

  “And Walworth just got greedy,” I said.

  “I’m afraid so,” continued Rex. “That’s the danger of relationships between the classes, where money is involved. Thank God nothing like that has ever come between me and Charlie.”

  “I don’t want your money, Rex,” Meeks said. He spoke rarely but to the point. “I just want you.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes—Rex’s were dark blue, surrounded by dark lashes and eyebrows that contrasted strikingly with his wavy blond hair, while Meeks’s wer
e soft and brown and deep—and I have never in my life seen a look of such true love pass between two men. I almost felt we should leave them alone.

  “It was too late to come back up to town last night,” Rex said, “so I stayed at the club and didn’t get a wink of sleep. I was so worried about what they might do to Charlie in the police station. I can’t stand the idea that they hurt you and I wasn’t there to protect you, Charlie. I would have given my life...”

  “There’s no need for that now.”

  Rex took a deep breath, contained his emotion, and continued. “In the morning, I telephoned Father and told him that unless Charlie was released today, I myself would continue Walworth’s work of blackmail and would send his letters to every newspaper in the country. He refused to listen, and kept telling me that it was all for the best. He had lost someone, I suppose, and wouldn’t hear reason. Then I said I would break off my engagement with Diana, and tell her family the reason why I was doing it, that I loved Charlie and would rather live with him in honest poverty than carry on living a luxurious lie. That stung him, I think, and he slammed the receiver down. Every time I rang after that I was told that Sir James was out.”

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Eagle,” West said. “I was instructed not to put through any calls.”

  “I don’t blame you, West. I’m glad I didn’t speak with him, because I would have said terrible things. Instead I went to my solicitor’s house in Kensington—and he wasn’t too delighted to see me on a Sunday morning, but the Eagle account is worth a bit of inconvenience, or used to be—and deposited all the papers with him, instructing him that he was to send them out to certain editors if he didn’t hear from me by tomorrow morning. Don’t worry—I called him before dinner and told him all was well. The letters will be returned to the men who wrote them.

  “He also advised me to go straight to Scotland Yard with my allegations about Kennington’s part in the affair, and thus effect his removal from Drekeham. When they catch up with him, Kennington is in for a very nasty time of it indeed.

  “That done, I caught the train back down to Drekeham as fast as I could—but you know how slow the Sunday service can be, and it was teatime before I arrived. I went straight to the police station—and again I was refused entry, or access to Charlie. But this time, as I was leaving, I met a young policeman—”

  “Shipton.”

  “Yes. You know him, Mitch?”

  “I do.” I think I must have blushed.

  “Well, thank God, he turned out to be an honest copper, and he told me that he didn’t like what was going on in the police station and that, if we were quick about it, we’d be able to overpower Brown while Kennington was out of the way. Kennington was back here, of course—and he’d been sent to deal with you, Mitch, and Morgan. Shipton seemed very distressed about this. You must have made a big impression on him.”

  “Oh, he’s just crazy about Americans.”

  Morgan looked sidelong at me and groped me under the table.

  “Shipton pretended that we were having a fight, Brown came outside to sort me out, and we turned on him. He was easy to overpower, and we left him locked up in the cell. The rest of the station was unguarded; it was Piggott’s day off, can you believe. So we found Charlie, and I was so glad to see him alive that I didn’t realize how badly he’d been hurt.”

  “I’m all right,” Meeks said, his face still badly marked. “Though I must say that some of your kisses were a bit painful.”

  I thought it best not to mention the treatment I had seen him getting from Piggott and Kennington, who had presumably been abusing him all weekend. Little wonder Piggott needed his day off. And he’d need all his energies for “interrogating” Leonard on Monday. I imagined that Leonard would approve of his methods.

  “Well, I like a happy ending,” I said, with a pang of jealousy. Rex and Charlie were so sure of each other; I was less certain of Morgan, who, despite being crazed with lust, was still speaking with great enthusiasm of his forthcoming marriage to Belinda.

  “We’d never have done it without you, Mitch, and you, Morgan,” Rex said. “If you hadn’t uncovered Leonard and Mrs. Ramage...I shudder to think what might have happened.”

  “Speaking of Mrs. Ramage,” I said, “whatever happened to her—or should I say him?”

  “I saw her running out of the house and across the lawn from my room, where Sir James had sent me,” West said. “He’d told me to stay there and not come out until I was called for. But there was so much noise and confusion in the house that when I saw Mrs. R screaming like a lunatic and heading for the cliffs, I thought I’d better follow. Fortunately, she’s a large lady, and she can’t run very fast, whereas I used to be rather good at track events at Cambridge...”

  “Go on, Vince.”

  “Well, I caught up with her on the other side of the rhododendrons and tried to stop her—but she punched me in the stomach and winded me. She may have looked like a woman, but she punched like a man. By the time I’d picked myself up she had reached the edge of the cliff and was calling her brother’s name. Her hair had come down from its bun, and there was a huge bald patch on top of her head. She started ripping off her clothes, and of course most of it was padding. I wonder how long she’s lived like that?”

  “We may never know.”

  “I managed to pull her to the ground before she could do herself any more mischief, and then I did something I’m rather ashamed of. I hit a woman.”

  “She’s not a woman, Vince,” I said.

  “Well, in any case, I punched her lights out and then carried her all the way back to the house in a fireman’s lift.”

  “My God,” I said, looking at West in a new light, “you’re stronger than you look.”

  “Well, I had to take quite a few breaks,” he said, modestly. “I put her in the kitchen and called the doctor. They’ve taken her away to hospital. I think she’s gone completely mad.”

  “I hope they look after her,” Rex said. “She may have been strange, but she was a jolly good housekeeper.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Morgan said, “is why she was so desperate to protect Sir James. Why would she involve herself in a murder that had nothing to do with her? She was only an employee.”

  “That’s the saddest thing of all,” Rex said. “It was loyalty of a kind. Loyalty is a good, fine thing, but when it goes bad, and turns to blindness, it’s a terrible danger. Mrs. Ramage worshipped Father and Mother—and now that we know her secret, perhaps we can understand why. Here, in Drekeham Hall, she was safe, and she was a woman. Anything that threatened to turn her out...”

  “I see,” Morgan said. “Dashed funny family I’m marrying into.”

  Eventually we drifted off to our own rooms for our final night at Drekeham Hall—but not before one final revelation.

  I planned to return to Cambridge the following day, while Morgan was taking Belinda and Sir James to London, ostensibly to look for Lady Caroline, but more, Morgan said, “to have a bit of a jolly after all this misery.”

  “I’ll get Hibbert to drop you all at the station in the morning,” Rex said. “Unless you’d like to take the car, Boy?”

  “Oh, that would be fun,” Morgan said, “if Hibbert doesn’t mind.”

  “I’ll ask him,” Rex said. “By the way, has anyone seen him this evening?”

  Nobody had.

  A quick search of the servants’ quarters revealed that he, too, had flown the coop—much to the chagrin of Susie, the kitchen maid, to whose savings he had helped himself before leaving.

  “Where on earth has he got to?” Rex said, furious.

  “I imagine he’s with Lady Diana,” I said, nervously.

  “Why on earth... Oh. You mean they were...”

  “I’m afraid so, Rex.”

  “Well, rather him than me. I’ve got what I want. Good night.” And with that he took Charlie Meeks to his room and, for the first time, they were together without fear or concealment.

  My night was
less happy.

  As soon as we were in our bedroom, Morgan pounced on me and started ripping my clothes off, but I pushed him gently away.

  “What’s the matter, Mitch? Gone off me?”

  “Of course I haven’t. It’s just that, after tomorrow, things are never going to be the same again.”

  “’Course they are. Think of all the fun we’ll have in Cambridge next term.”

  “You’ll be getting married, and before you know it you’ll be leaving college and starting work, and I won’t have you any more.”

  “Come on, you chump. Don’t be gloomy. I told you from the start that I was crazy about Belinda, and I still am. We’re going to have a proper family, not like this lot. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t be my best pal.”

  “But I want more than that.”

  “I can’t give you more than that, Mitch.” He took my hands and placed them on his ass. “You can have this any time you want it. And this...” He put his mouth over mine, and kissed it. “And this...” He stepped back and pulled his hard cock out of his fly, waving it at me.

  “But what about this?” I laid a hand over his heart, which was beating hard through his shirt, making his prick pulse.

  He stepped back. “That belongs to someone else. I’m sorry, Mitch. But that’s the way it is.”

  We stood and looked at each other.

  “We were a good team, Boy.”

  “We’ll always be that.”

  “Will we?”