The Maze

by Philip MacDonald

  It may have been a minute; it may have been half an hour before enough of what we may call sanity returns to her and she sees what she has done. She may have knelt by the body; she may not. I think not. I think that, realising dully—her mind is just a painful numbness—she goes away from that room. Probably she makes no effort at silence and therefore, as is the way, is at least so silent that no one hears her. Certainly no one sees her. She goes straight from that place and straight back to her own little place …

  And then, when Harrison and the policeman come to wake her, she is in a state which is not so much sleep as a stupor of the mind …

  And because she has the protection of this mental state, her speech and actions seem in no way unusual—in no way unusual, that is, in an utterly unimportant servant girl whose doubtless small mind is only able to compass the thought that ‘something awful has happened—the master’s dead!’ She may seem dazed—quite natural! She may seem so frightened as to be stupid and to be unable at first to answer questions properly—quite natural! All quite natural.

  And then the days between death and the beginning of the coroner’s inquest. During those days some of the numbness wears off. Now she can once more order her own thinking, and, ordering her own thinking, she comes to a return not, indeed, of that awful hunger for the man who is dead—that, although she does not know it, could easily be transferred to practically any male human—but to a return of the searing envy of that other woman who has, although after all she is only a woman, everything that a poor girl lacks. This envy becomes, growing hour by hour, day by day, night by night, an obsession even greater than had the other obsession been. It grows until it turns into a wish; and the wish is for the extermination of this other woman, this lucky woman, this woman who has everything. And then comes the realisation that maybe there is a means by which this other may be not only exterminated but made to suffer in the course of her extermination.

  Here, the thought runs, if someone were to tell that Mary Lamort had been in the study that night? No one except Violet knows yet. But why should they not know it? Why should not Violet say? That’s the beginning. From there the steps are easy and quick. But still the obsession clouds the thought processes and spoils them. Spoils them so that in the end their expression cancels itself out. These thought processes went, I think, something like this:

  Must tell them about her. But be careful! Don’t tell them about her at the time when she was there; because if at that time anyone happened to know that you were out of your room, then danger for you! Tell them about her at another time; make it up! Say that you did leave your room at this made-up time and that you saw her go into the study. It won’t matter what she says; she knows she’s been to the study. She knows she hasn’t told anyone. She’ll behave so that it’ll come out and they’ll think that she did it. And I believe she did see him after! I believe she did go back the way he asked her to. So, if you tell properly about that made-up time … Anyhow, it’ll make them think she did it! …

  Something like that, the thoughts went, but the poor, muddled, sick little mind couldn’t be bothered with details like time of death and how long the body had been dead when it was found. It couldn’t cope with that sort of thing, and that is why there was that super-oddity—the oddity, Lucas, which was really my starting point in this thing—of Mary Lamort’s accuser being at the same time Mary Lamort’s deliverer. If, for her lie, Violet Burrage had chosen a time which would have fitted in with the doctors’, then Mary Lamort would have been in grave danger. Luckily for Mary Lamort, the little mind could not be bothered …

  There you are, sir. That’s my reconstruction. I’m not—however much I may appear to the contrary—unduly conceited, but I would bet half my income to a tin of bull’s-eyes that that reconstruction, if wrong at all, is wrong only in detail. In essence it is right—must be right!

  But I can hear you beginning to moan. You are wanting, now that you have had the ‘how,’ the full, real ‘why.’ A good deal of it, of course, if not all of it, appears in my description of the ‘how,’ but to tidy this long, but I hope not too rambling, statement up properly, I will set out the motive for you. Briefly, like this:

  Violet Burrage is one of those unhappy young women with an abnormally unpleasing exterior, an abnormally uninteresting personality, a subnormal education so rudimentary that her mind can find no solace for her bodily troubles, and an abnormal sex impulse. She is, in short and in the vulgar tongue, a woman whose very existence is repulsive to men and a woman whose very existence is centred on the desire to be attractive to men. What her mental condition was before she took service in Brunton’s house it is impossible to say, but I should think that already, young girl though she was, her mind was beginning to become obsessed with the sex idea, probably owing to her complete failure to achieve even the occasional society of any male.

  The effect of the atmosphere of the Brunton household can have done nothing but exacerbate this condition. (If it did not exacerbate it, it started it and made it grow, but I think exacerbate is right.) She does not, in her position, of course, see much of the Family or the Master, but she hears things. She cannot help hearing things. She is in touch with Bocquet, for one thing, and although Bocquet may not have anything to do with her, she has to do with the Jenningses, and Bocquet talks to the Jenningses. And to what Bocquet says to the Jenningses and what the Jenningses say to Bocquet, Violet listens. Soon the atmosphere of ‘easy love’ begins to seep into her mind …

  And that mind is already distorted …

  From this point to that scene which I have tried to reconstruct for you above is one step and, if you think about it, a very short step. The whole tragic, unhappy business is only difficult to understand, is only hard to believe, if one does not think. If one thinks, it is easy. An obsession can make madmen of us all. An obsession made a madwoman of Violet Burrage. It was her obsession which took her on that preposterous visit. It was her obsession which threw the weapon that killed Brunton.

  I don’t think there’s anything else for me to say. As I pointed out at the beginning—and as you must by this time agree—there is no chance of bringing Violet Burrage to trial on this statement of mine. I know she did it. You, I think, after reading this, will also believe she did it. But we both know that good old roast-beef, brussels-sprouts English law will not listen to such stuff. It would merely murmur the word ‘psychology’ and shy across the road. In only one way is it a pity that Violet Burrage cannot be tried, and that is, that that seems the only way to have her treated at a stage when a cure is possible. She could not be hanged. She could not be given penal servitude. All that could happen would be mental treatment, and that might save her from ultimate actual lunacy.

  Yours ever,

  A. R. GETHRYN

  APPENDIX

  I

  LETTER AND ENCLOSURE DATED 20TH AUGUST,

  193– FROM SIR EGBERT LUCAS TO COLONEL

  ANTHONY RUTHVEN GETHRYN

  SCOTLAND YARD,

  20th August, 193–

  MY DEAR GETHRYN,

  First of all, officially, I have to convey the thanks, appreciation and admiration of the Commissioner for the really brilliant bit of work contained in the letter you sent us dated 6th August. Secondly and unofficially, I have to pat you on the back myself. You will never do anything better—largely because, or so it seems to me, that that would be impossible.

  I read your document first, not once but three times. Then I took it to Charters, and, for the whole of the day following, we argued. He went away apparently convinced that your reasoning was too clever to be solid, but, by the following day, he had turned right round and was as convinced that you were right about the girl Burrage being the author of Brunton’s death as you appear to be.

  We took the document round to the D.P.P. We left it there—and that, I’m afraid, is that. No, we couldn’t move Marshall an inch. He, too, was quite convinced that you were right, but he was equally convinced that, as you said, it would
be a hopeless task to try and convict on the evidence. The reason Charters and I are so sick about the business is that we feel, not so much that the wretched Burrage needs any more punishment than she is likely to have in her own mind, but that it seems so damned hard on the decent members of the Brunton household. I am afraid it is inevitable that they will go through at least the next ten years of their lives with a great many people looking askance at them as possible murderers. C’est la vie! We can’t do anything to avoid this or you can take it that we would.

  Once more with my very heartiest congratulations and thanks and with very best wishes to your wife and son.

  Yours very sincerely,

  E. LUCAS

  P.S.—Pike sends his respects. He is very downcast. He has read your opus and the incredible has happened—his veneration of you has actually increased, a thing I had thought impossible! He is walking about with a face as long as a mule! The trouble is, from his point of view, that here is your best case and it is never going to be acknowledged. I pointed out to him that this would probably actually please you, but he is still inconsolable.

  II

  LETTER, DATED 21ST DECEMBER, 193–, from SIR EGBERT

  LUCAS TO COLONEL ANTHONY GETHRYN

  SCOTLAND YARD,

  21st December, 193–

  MY DEAR GETHRYN,

  You remember l’affaire Brunton? Well, an end has come to it after all. And it is an end which you ought to be extraordinarily pleased about. Before it came, however much we may have said, we agreed with you, you had no real proof that you were right. Now, as you will see from the enclosed cutting from last night’s Planet, you have.

  At eleven o’clock yesterday morning the Inspector in charge of the Blackfriars Road Station was told that a young woman wanted to see him. She refused to state her business to the sergeant at the desk, but insisted on seeing the Inspector. Not being busy, he had her in. Never having had anything to do with the Brunton business, he did not recognise her. He asked her for her name, which she refused to give. What she did give him, however, was a very full foolscap envelope. It was addressed to ‘The Head of the Police.’ The girl, of course, was Burrage. The Inspector got nothing out of her. She steadfastly refused her name, and, equally steadfastly, refused to say what this envelope was that was to go to the ‘Head of the Police.’ In his report he states that: ‘in my opinion, the young woman was mentally afflicted.’ He was doubtless right. He eventually humoured her and accepted the envelope, having, of course, when he accepted it, no more intention of forwarding it here than of sending it to the man in the moon. Unfortunately—or should I say fortunately?—he put the envelope on one side and forgot about it for nearly twenty-four hours. When he read it he altered his mind very quickly. In fact he was round here, so they tell me, in something under the previous record time! I cannot, I’m afraid, send you a copy of this amazing thing just yet. I have read it myself, but as yet am not able to send it to you. I will do so as soon as I possibly can. I am sending this letter by air mail. You may, of course, have seen the papers before you get it, but, knowing your habits, I think this is unlikely.

  Yours in haste,

  E. G. L.

  CUTTING FROM THE Evening Planet.

  ISSUE DATED DECEMBER 20, 193–

  BRUNTON MURDER REVELATION

  SERVANT GIRL’S SUICIDE

  FULL CONFESSION

  How she killed Maxwell Brunton, and why, was the subject of an astonishing human document received this morning by the police from Violet Ethel Burrage, whose dead body was found in the Thames at Blackwall last night.

  Thought it would drive her mad

  In the confession—which, the Planet is able to state, is fully accepted by the police—Burrage states that, although she knew she was safe from detection, her conscience was too strong for her. She says, ‘I can’t stand it any longer. I think I’m going mad.’

  Astounding Revelations

  A representative of the Planet called this afternoon on Dr Howard Ellington, the famous alienist. Dr Ellington admitted that Burrage’s confession had been forwarded to him by the authorities at Scotland Yard.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Dr Ellington explained, ‘that I am naturally not in a position to divulge the specific contents of this extraordinary document. Nor,’ he added, ‘can I. I am afraid, discuss it, beyond stating that it is one of the most poignant revelations of the turmoil which may ravage the human soul that it has ever been my lot to see.

  ‘This poor girl was not a criminal.’ Dr Ellington paused here and added: ‘Perhaps when our civilisation becomes more enlightened than it is today such tragedies will be averted. Much could be done for the Violet Burrages of this world if our educational system were not the futile and puerile thing that it is.’

  Baffled Scotland Yard.

  So ends one of the most extraordinary murder cases of the past decade. For weeks and weeks before, during, and after the fruitless coroner’s inquest the police worked day and night to elucidate the mystery. They were, in fact, still engaged upon the apparently hopeless task when, like a bolt from the blue, the extraordinary confession burst upon them.

  III

  LETTER AND ENCLOSURE DATED 12TH JANUARY, 193–

  FROM SIR EGBERT LUCAS TO COLONEL ANTHONY

  RUTHVEN GETHRYN

  SCOTLAND YARD,

  12th January, 193–

  MY DEAR GETHRYN,

  Many thanks for your letter of last Monday. I am glad to hear that you and your family are in such fettle, but equally depressed to hear that it will be another four months or so before you will be back in London again.

  I am afraid it is not a bit of good reviling me on account of your name having got into the papers in regard to the solving of the Brunton case: I am not guilty. Neither is Charters. So far as knowledge is concerned, I cannot say that any one here is guilty … and, anyhow, what are you grumbling about? There’s many a film star would pay through the nose to get half of what you’ve been having!

  You’re an odd person, but for once I can understand your feelings. It must have been extraordinary for you to have done that work on the Brunton Case without ever having even seen any one of the dramatis personæ. In order to fulfil your request to know what has happened to the players since the final ‘person or persons unknown’ of the Coroner’s Jury, I should imagine that I have squandered quite a large amount of government money. Pike has been in charge of the job. Being a job for you, he has expended even more than his usual energy. The results of his inquiry have been tabulated and I send you a copy of the table herewith.

  Please don’t forget to let me know immediately you return to England.

  Yours very sincerely,

  E. G. LUCAS

  ENCLOSURE

  Private and Confidential

  REPORT RE MEMBERS OF BRUNTON HOUSEHOLD

  I append hereunder a précis of the result of my investigations into the affairs of the various members of the household of the late Maxwell Brunton.

  PRÉCIS

  1. Sidney Foljambe Harrison, private secretary to deceased.—For two weeks after the conclusion of the inquest, Harrison remained at 44 Rajah Gardens. He then left, in a hurry. The time he left coincided with the return from Cornwall of Mr Adrian Brunton. Mr A. B. had not been in the house more than ten minutes when Harrison left. The incident was reported to L.I. Division Headquarters by P.C. L.I. 428 Hardcastle. Hardcastle was going by 44 Rajah Gardens on his beat when the door opened and ‘a man landed flat on his face on the pavement. He was immediately followed by a couple of suitcases and a trunk. Both the suitcases burst open.’

  It is understood that Mrs Brunton was too ill to get rid of Harrison. Mr A. B. seems to have lost no time.

  For a while Harrison was without work, and at one time, it is understood, was nearly destitute. He is now employed at the headquarters of the Society for the Promulgation of Reformation. He is in charge of the records department of the women’s section. Pay: £2 15s. per week. Address: 34 Little Moscow Street, S.W.1
8.

  2. and 3. Arthur Jennings and Sarah Jennings.—Arthur Jennings was re-arrested immediately after the conclusion of the inquest—before he had left the court-room. He was sent to Park-hurst.

  Sarah Jennings went into service, under her maiden name of Carpenter, at Stoke Manor, Fettering, Nr. Greyne.

  Jennings had two years of his original sentence to serve with an extra year added after the charge of breaking prison. Recently, however, there has been a petition upon his behalf, and, although the decision of the Home Secretary has not yet been made public, it is understood here that he will be released, on special ticket-of-leave (contingent upon his good behaviour) within the next few weeks.

  4. Marie Jeannette Bocquet.—It was difficult to trace this woman. She returned to Rajah Gardens after the inquest; but only for as long as it took her to pack her baggage. When this inquiry started it was found that we could pick up no trace of her during two months immediately following the inquest. After that period, however, she came again to the notice of the police. She was interested in the operation of a night club known as the Tag and Bobtail. At that time she was living with the proprietor of that club—Romano Forsitelli.

  Bocquet left Forsitelli a few weeks ago, having taken up with Archibald (known as ‘Doggie’) Freeman—a third-class confidence man recently out after a term of four years.

  Bocquet is under close observation, and it is the general opinion here that it will not be long before she is taken up.

  5. Mary Elizabeth Lamort.—As has been notified in the Press, Miss Lamort was removed to hospital two days after the conclusion of the inquest, suffering from complete nervous prostration. She was in the Duchess of Falmouth’s Nursing Home for seven weeks. She then proceeded to the South of France for a period of convalescent treatment which lasted seven or eight weeks, and has since removed to Los Angeles. It is understood that Miss Lamort is seeking film work in Hollywood. She has publicly announced that her intention is to ‘try and forget England.’