2
There is a theory that a man attracts to himself those qualities, occurrences, and fortunes with which his thoughts are most constantly engaged. Miles had never held such a belief; never, indeed, considered the subject. Yet, shortly before the trial, he was unexpectedly drawn from his comfortable insignificance, and confronted with a situation that was to tax to the uttermost his integrity and his personal feeling. He was working at his desk one morning when his clerk came in to say that a young woman wished to see him. The young woman had given no name, saying he would not recognise it.
“Tell her I must have a name, that I don’t see anonymous clients,” said Miles, accustomed to the army of deranged men and women with appalling imaginary grievances, who are anxious to occupy, gratuitously, so much of a lawyer’s professional time.
Edwards returned to say that the young woman called herself Teresa Field, but said she did not suppose Mr. Amery would remember the name.
“Remember it?” repeated Miles thoughtfully. “No. She’s quite right. It conveys nothing to me. I wonder who she is.”
“I’ll bring her in, sir?”
“Yes. Bring her in.”
Edwards ushered in a very neatly dressed young woman of about four-and-twenty. She had the square, rosy appearance of the country girl, and was tidily dressed in black, with fabric gloves and sensible square-toed shoes, extremely well polished. Her manner was deferential without being in any way fawning or eager. Her expression was quiet, her eyes clear. She took the chair Miles offered her, sitting with the straightness of those unaccustomed to lounge in the presence of superiors. Miles decided she was a shop assistant or some kind of servant in an upper-class establishment. Her features were vaguely familiar, though he could not place them, and this vexed him, since he was apt to pride himself on his memory of the individual.
She spoke, in a soft clear voice indigenous to the county whence she was sprung.
“I’m sure I’m sorry, sir, if I’ve done wrong in coming to see you, but this is the kind of thing that’s never happened to me before, and I didn’t know what to do. No one could tell me anything for certain, and I remembered you were a legal gentleman, so perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me.”
“Telling you what?”
“What I ought to do. I know you must be busy, what with this dreadful affair about Mr. Gray…”
He remembered her then as one of the servant-girls at the Manor House.
“Of course. I saw you there at Christmas, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you there still?”
“Well—not exactly, sir. It was about that I wanted to tell you. Now that Mrs. Gray and Miss Gray have gone, of course there isn’t any need for us to be there. A new gentleman has bought the house, they say. Mr. Richard said he never wanted to live there now.”
Miles, who had known that already, deflected her on to the line of her own dismay. She spoke sensibly and clearly and answered his questions without hesitation, gently smoothing a little fawn-coloured tippet over her knee as she spoke. After the break-up of the household, she said, she had applied to Mrs. Cochrane, the housekeeper, who was acting as caretaker till the new gentleman moved in, for a reference for a better-paid post in the neighbourhood. The new lady seemed quite satisfied, provided her references were good. To Field’s amazement, Mrs. Cochrane refused to say a word for her. Miles remembered the woman, tall, sour-visaged, with a tight mouth.
“She told me she wasn’t the fool some people took her for,” Field continued, “and she hoped she was a Christian.”
“That’s only another way of spelling trouble,” Miles assured her.
“I asked her what she had against me, seeing I’d been three years and no complaints up at the Manor,” continued the girl earnestly. “At first she wouldn’t speak. Then she said she knew what she knew, and she’d been against it from the beginning.”
“Been against what?”
“Me coming to the Manor, sir. Everybody knew about my sister, she said, and these things run in families.”
“What did she know?”
“There wasn’t anything against Betty really, only she was a bit silly, through being so bright and fond of a bit of fun. But folks talk, whether there’s anything to talk about or no, so she didn’t stay down at Munford, but came up to London and got work as a chambermaid in a big hotel. Married now, she is, with a baby, but, of course, Mrs. Cochrane said that didn’t make any difference.”
Field had pressed for explanations, definitions, something concrete, and after much trouble the story had resolved itself into an accusation of misbehaviour at the gardener’s cottage by the big gates on Christmas Eve. Another servant had reported to the housekeeper that a young woman from the servants’ quarters had been seen creeping out of the cottage into the house at two o’clock in the morning. She, the servant in question, had had severe toothache and had been applying laudanum. From her window she had a good view of the gardener’s cottage, and she had seen the young woman emerge, and steal up the drive, and in by a side door.
“She says it was me, sir,” Field told Miles, in evident distress, yet displaying an admirable amount of control that compelled his immediate interest, “but that isn’t true. Even if I’d take that kind of risk, which I wouldn’t, I—I mean to say, that sort of thing wouldn’t interest me.”
Miles supposed she meant she had a regular follower, but she negatived that, saying, “No, sir, it’s just that I don’t care about that kind of thing. It doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Miles observed reasonably that it led to a home and family.
“I meant, sir, it doesn’t lead anywhere that I want to go. I’ve got two married sisters, and I’ve stayed with them both. Well, it’s all right for them, because they like it, but it’s shown me that isn’t what I want.”
“Do you know what that is?”
“Oh, yes, sir. But if I don’t get this situation there’s nothing to show I’ll get any other. It ’ud be bound to come out that I hadn’t got a reference. And then I’d never get anywhere.”
“What is this ideal job of yours?”
She was too ardent to feel any embarrassment at describing her vision. “To be a housekeeper myself, sir,” she explained, her eyes bright, her expression warm and hopeful. “To have my own room, and a big house, with me responsible. To go through the linen cupboard of a Friday and see all the towels and the napkins and the table linen in piles, all perfect, and me responsible.”
Miles was carried away by her enthusiasm. She spoke as pilgrims speak viewing the promised land, as artists have spoken all down the ages, seeing herself the servant of this beautiful and gracious house of her imagination, walking in finely appointed rooms, perpetually serving. A certain kindling vitality informed the most commonplace phrase that she employed. To her, that house of perfection was the flawless poem, the astounding canvas, the actual work of art.
Miles let her talk. She recalled to him a friend of his own, a man of delicate perception and artistry who occupied himself in designing suburban houses, in violent contra-distinction to the mass of jerry-builders who were defiling the countryside from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Cornwall. He made them beautiful, these little surburban villas, that would be regarded by their owners purely from the points of view of cheapness and convenience. There was, he saw, the same root in all these people, lowly or ambitious, a root he had long since discovered in Brand.
Field continued, “As a matter of fact, sir, I couldn’t have been with the gardener, as Morton says, between twelve o’clock and two, because I was in my room, thinking about the sort of house I’d have one day, and thinking, too, about Christmas. Christmas always meant a lot to us at home, and we never had a Christmas without a tree and a party and a bran pie, and a dance at the Town Hall. And, of course, down at the Manor, you couldn’t call it gay exactly. It’s one of the between houses.”
Miles, intrigued, asked what that meant. Field explained seriously that poor people, the sort who did not mind the Grays, for instance, describing them as common, were gay, because they saw no objection to exhibitions of animal spirits. And rich people and high-born people were gay, also because it would not occur to them that they could be criticised, or that it would be of any consequence if they were, but that people like the Grays were solemn, because they did not desire to identify themselves with the uncontrolled lower orders, and were not sufficiently sure of themselves to be immune from criticism.
Then she went on, “I didn’t go to bed when I got into my room. I had the sort of excited feeling I always do get at Christmas. I’d had my home letters and parcels, but I hadn’t opened any of them. I thought I’d wait till it was really Christmas Day, as we always did at home. And I liked the idea that, though we couldn’t be together, we’d all be opening our presents just about the same time. So I waited up till after I heard the clock strike, and then I began opening things; I had quite a lot, because we always send one another something, if it’s ever so small, and there’s nine of us. When I’d read all the letters twice over, I went on sitting by the window and just thinking. I felt I couldn’t go to bed yet. This was going to be all my Christmas. Afterwards it would be all hurry and bustle, getting things done in time, with heaps of extra people in the house. Of course, at home we all went to church of a morning, and we’d hurry out after the service and all the Christmas hymns and holly and cottonwool and red berries on the windows and round the pulpit, and dish up the dinner. After I went into service, that was what I missed most, and it didn’t seem to get any easier as time went on. It’s five Christmases now since I’ve been home, and each year I keep wondering whether anything’ll happen so that I can go back, though there isn’t so many of us left now, only mother and my two sisters and a married brother and his wife, and their little girls that always go over. And now and again one of the others can come. Well, as I say, I sat by the window and looked out at the snow, and was glad about it, because it made it seem more like Christmas; and I didn’t think much about the people downstairs or sleeping each side of me, till of a sudden I saw a light spring up in one of the windows to the right. You know the way the house is; kind of L-shaped; and so I knew it was one of the ladies or gentlemen of the house coming to bed, and I thought, ‘They’ll see I’ve got the light on still, and it’s two o’clock nearly, and if they say anything to Miss Amy, there will be trouble.’ I knew it was one of the visitors. Mrs. Gray and Miss Amy and Mrs. Devereux, they sleep further along. Then a man came across to the window and stood at his, like I was standing at mine, and he opened it at the bottom and looked out. And I saw it was Mr. Brand. I could see quite clearly, where I was, and his face looked so different from most of the people at the Manor that I stopped for a minute where I was, just to look at him. He was so—so full of life, if you know what I mean, as if he saw his housekeeper’s room just ahead of him. He looked so glad I felt a sort of warm feeling, as though there was someone else in the house that knew the way I felt, though he didn’t know I was feeling it. Then the clock struck two, and he turned his head and looked straight at me. I’d pushed aside the blind to look at the snow; and then I felt a bit silly, and thought he might be wondering what I was doing there. Things, you know, that seem sensible enough when you’re alone seem all different when there’s people watching you. So I turned out the light and undressed in the dark, and hoped he wouldn’t tell on me. For, of course, if Mrs. Cochrane had known I was keeping the light up all that time, there would have been trouble.”
Her face had been warm and eager during these last few minutes, but now her eyes clouded again. “I don’t know whether any of that would help, though. I suppose some folk might say I wouldn’t have had the light up if I hadn’t had reason, and they wouldn’t believe mine. But I wanted to know, sir, if there’s anything I can do.”
Miles asked if Brand had been fully dressed as he stood at the window, and Field said confidently, yes, in a blue suit. He had stopped there for some time; because, even after she was undressed, she had not at once been able to sleep; she had been too happy in her tranquil solitude, and it had been some time before he left the window and prepared for the night.
3
Miles left the office, his brain in a turmoil of excitement and dismay. This sudden new light cast on the proceedings disturbed him, even angered him. For he had no desire to play any prominent part in the coming trial. He walked along the river-bank towards Westminster. He had an engagement to dine with a client to-night, but he felt so much disturbed and bewildered that he paid no heed to clocks. The oily water moved sluggishly, with a slow, deliberate swell that set all the moored boats and barges rocking. A German trading-vessel, with coloured bands round her funnel, sailed by, with a squat dignity; some time later came a trail of barges, linked together by ropes, in a long straggling line. On the first sat a man, smoking idly, and staring into the early February dusk; the second flew the pennon of a line of washing, pink shirts and a blue pinafore, elongated vests, socks, and a shapeless nightgown, ballooning a little in the cool breeze; on the third, a girl in a pink flannel blouse and bare legs boiled a kettle on a small stove; in the fourth, an enormous blowsy woman was combing her hair. Miles stood still to watch them go slowly by. Other elbows beside his own rested on the worn parapet; some of their owners were watching the blazing electric signs of whiskey, flour, and cigarettes on the opposite bank. The sturdy outline of cranes and dredgers stood out smoke-grey against a pearl-coloured sky, one of those dark pearls, he thought inconsequently, that Ruth admired so much. Shy lovers stood close together, whispering and touching hands; girls carrying attaché-cases went briskly past; astounding, the nervous capacity of these trim slender bodies, that they should look so fresh at the end of a day’s work in warm, noisy, ill-ventilated rooms. Young men, looking less alert, moved along the crowded pavements, talking of electricity and speed, the age’s God. At the kerbstone a woman was offering jaded bouquets of chrysanthemums; further down an old man peddled studs and bootlaces. The long array of Green Line buses was rapidly filling. Miles overheard snatches of talk, fragments of indecipherable conversations, confessions, doubts. They were far too inadequate ever to present a complete situation, yet they aroused in him the instinctive curiosity that made all life a rich and brilliant pageant, and this affair of Brand, after all, only an incident in a crowded canvas.
“And if there’s no room in the pit, we’ll have to go to a movie. I can’t run to five-and-nine to-night.”
“What about the Croon at Victoria Station? I know they’re not quick, but they do you a good Welsh rarebit for a shilling and it’s not so noisy as most.”
“What he wants is an automatic machine. Put in a shilling and you get so many letters. You can kick it, too, and it can’t kick back, so you’re quite safe. That’s what he wants for a secretary.”
“My dear, you never saw anything like it—pyjamas and a vest and the most awful toothbrush.”
“Peter’s offered to lend me fifteen pounds, if I can rustle the other ten. Of course, it isn’t what you’d call smart, but who cares? We’re not going to take a lot of girls about in it. But, I say, think of Sundays, going off when you please and where you please, no crowding for the hikers’ train, or standing in a queue for a bus—and going where they damn well like to take you.”
“And evenings in the summer, old man—there’s a bathing-pool near Leatherhead…”
The young excited male group passed on. The air all about Miles was heavy with the fumes of petrol, of cheap cigarettes, of face powder and the scented artificial bouquets the women wore pinned into their coats; but it was vibrant, too, with life. Miles re-experienced a familiar sense of being part of some tremendous circus, full of lights, voices, adventure, risk, and enchantment. That thought brought another, inevitable, in its wake. Eustace—who, in his own calculating way, enjoyed life, though he saw little enough of i
ts colour and shifting, elusive beauty. For the lawyer in Miles prevented his accepting Ruth’s passionate, “But he’s a murderer a dozen times over,” or Isobel’s candid, “What right has a man like that to live?” Eustace had, by the law of the land, as much right to live, provided he was not Adrian Gray’s murderer, as the most ardent of his traducers.
“The point is,” argued Miles restlessly, walking towards Westminster Bridge, where the laden omnibuses passed and repassed one another, and bicycles, carts, motors, lorries, and trams clattered and rang and flashed against a background of the Houses of Parliament and the darkening night sky, “the point is, am I compelled to come forward? I can prove nothing, except that Brand didn’t stick entirely to the facts. I can’t prove that he had anything to do with his father’s death. I can’t clear Eustace. I might be able to stir up a lot of mud and start a new theory. But would it lead to anything?”
He examined the problem from every aspect as he swung abstractedly into Victoria Street, making his way towards Sloane Square, where he had his engagement. The unpleasant notoriety that would attach to his name weighed lightly with him; lawyers early become hardened to obloquy.
“Of course, it is significant that Brand should falsify the hour of going to bed,” he told himself, “and that he should further cover himself by saying he saw Eustace on the stairs. And it does seem rather unlikely that Eustace would deny seeing him, if he’d really been there. And he did deny it from the start. Just as Brand said he went to bed before midnight, before officially any of us knew anything about the murder. His story is precisely the kind of thing you would expect if he were guilty. Let’s follow on from this new scrap of evidence. Allow that Brand was downstairs, in the library, at two o’clock. Where does that lead us? Romford said that Gray was killed in the early hours, probably between one and two, but possibly later, as the open window would induce rigor mortis unusually early. It’s easy to assume that there was a row. But what about the cheque? Why should Brand want to quarrel with his father when he had got the one thing he came down for? And would he be likely to strike out because of some chance insult, when, for the first time for years, he had an opportunity of shaping his life according to his own desire?”
Portrait of a Murderer Page 18
