The Doors Open

by Michael Gilbert

  “That’s a lie,” said Paddy.

  “Quiet, please,” said the Station-Inspector. “Go on, Sergeant.”

  “‘–push Sims on to the line in front of the approaching train. I thereupon seized him by the arm and assisted to detain him until the arrival of the police.’”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Now, Gunner Churchill, have you got anything to add to that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What you’ve just heard is a fair and true account of your recent statement?”

  “That’s right, sir. Perhaps I ought to have said–”

  “Yes?”

  “The prisoner, sir – I mean Mr Carter. He seemed to be in a daze. He didn’t appear rightly to know what he was doing.”

  “All right,” said the Inspector. “We’ll have that added before you sign it. Now read the next one, Sergeant.”

  “‘I am Gunner 1035655 Roberts, P T–’”

  As Paddy looked round the charge room a very strong feeling of unreality took hold of him. The thing was a dream. In a minute he would wake up. The scene would fade and the puppets of this nightmare would disappear. The little bird-like Inspector, the red-necked beefy constables, the two soldiers, the old lady in bedraggled black seated in the corner. Even Nap, more solid and less dreamlike than any of them, with his brief-case and lawyer’s black hat. Jenny was standing beside him, but a new Jenny looking scared and sick.

  The sergeant embarked on his third statement, and this was plainly addressed to the elderly party in the corner, who had recently concluded an attack of hysteria and was fighting hard to control an aftermath of hiccoughs.

  “‘I am Mrs Laura Jane Oliphant of Carmichael Crescent, Camberwell. I was proceeding – I saw Carter strike Sims in the back–’”

  Paddy opened his mouth to protest again, and felt Nap’s hand on his arm. Quite right, better not make a scene. Not now, anyway. After all, it wasn’t as if he had done anything. This was England. It was the twentieth century. He was quite safe. He had only to sit tight and everything would sort itself out.

  The sergeant had finished reading. The old lady signed her statement and retired again to her seat in the corner. There was a momentary pause, a sort of cessation of talk and movement as everyone present looked at Paddy,

  The case of the King against Yeatman-Carter.

  It was the little Inspector who broke the silence which had become uncomfortable.

  “You may make a statement if you wish,” he said, and he contrived, as usual, to turn the words into something halfway between a concession and a threat.

  “The thing’s absurd,” said Paddy again. “I never touched the man until – I mean, I had to try and save him. He was falling and I grabbed at him. If he’d been wearing ordinary sort of clothes I might have got hold of him – his coat-tails or his belt or something. But he was wearing a very tight sort of overalls – you saw them. There simply wasn’t anything to catch hold of.”

  “I see, sir,” said the Inspector. Something in Paddy’s manner had plainly puzzled him. The honesty of the speech was patent. “You say, then, that Sims was actually falling before you put out your hand. Do you mean that he had started to throw himself in front of the train?”

  “No, not really. It’s difficult to explain. If I had been asked I should have said that he might have fainted. It looked more like that. He didn’t exactly throw himself. His knees buckled under him and he fell forward. That’s the best description I can give.”

  “And when you saw him going you put your hand out?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I see.” He turned to one of the gunners. “Be very careful about this, please,” he said. “Does that explanation you have just heard fit in with what you saw?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Gunner Churchill obstinately. “I’m sorry, sir, but I was quite near – as close as I am to you now – and I can only say what I saw. This gentleman put out his arm – his left arm, it was – and gave a push. The other man was taken unaware, that I will swear. He tried to resist, like, but he was caught off his balance.”

  “That’s right,” said the second Gunner.

  The lady in the corner, feeling the eye of the Inspector upon her, gave a moan which could have been taken either for assent or dissent.

  Nap felt that it was time for him to intervene. The Inspector was plainly undecided.

  “As you know,” he said, “I am Major Carter’s solicitor, as well as a personal friend. I will undertake on his behalf that he appears in the morning to answer any charge arising out of this incident – by the way, Inspector, what is the charge?”

  “No charge has yet been preferred,” said the Inspector cautiously. “Very fortunately Sims fell between the live rails into the safety trough. The train didn’t touch him. He’s in hospital suffering from shock.”

  “Well, then,” said Nap, “I expect that if a charge is preferred it will be one of assault. In which case, as you know, you can release Major Carter on my undertaking.”

  “Perhaps–” began the Inspector. He got no further, for at that moment the telephone rang. It was evident from the Inspector’s replies that some considerable authority was talking from the other end. The message, whatever it was, was brief.

  At its conclusion the Inspector turned to Nap and said, “We shall have to keep Mr Carter here for tonight.”

  “On what charge?” asked Nap bluntly.

  “On a charge of attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm,” said the Inspector equally bluntly.

  “I see.”

  “The charge will be heard in the morning. It will be formal of course. We shall ask for a remand until Sims is fit to make a statement. You will be able to make the usual submission for bail–”

  He contrived to imply that he thought it extremely unlikely that it would be granted.

  “Yes,” said Nap. And to himself, “Damn it, I wish I knew what that phone call was about.”

  It was one o’clock when they got out of the police station, and by a stroke of luck, found a homing taxi. Nap looked at Jenny, who was still white and quite silent and said, “I think I’d better see you home, old girl.”

  “Thank you, Nap,” said Jenny.

  In the taxi, a comfortable leather-smelling cave of darkness, they sat looking at each other and Jenny’s panic was hardly decreased by a feeling that Nap was almost as frightened as she was.

  But when he spoke his voice sounded steady enough.

  “Jenny,” he said, “We’re out of our depth. We’re clean out of our class. We’ve got to get help.”

  “Yes,” said Jenny. The terror was plain enough, but there was something more. A note of reserve which had not been there before.

  “Jenny,” he said.

  “Yes, Nap.”

  “Do you believe that Paddy did it. That he pushed that man under the train.”

  There is nothing more brutal than truth. When Jenny at last looked up her face was tingling as if it had been slapped.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t really. Not now. Not when you put it like that. But it did look funny. All those people, so honest and so certain.”

  “What motive on earth could he have had to do such a thing?” said Nap. “It’s crazy. He’d be mad–” He broke off as the unfortunate implication of the words came to him. Then he shook his head. “We’re getting hysterical,” he went on. “I know what’s in your mind, and it’s in mine too. But honestly it isn’t so. It isn’t the truth. Paddy didn’t push anyone – this chap, or Mr Britten either. He’s chivalrous to a fault, and kind and gentle too. It just won’t work. He couldn’t do it. It’s mentally and physically impossible.”

  “War strain,” suggested Jenny half-heartedly.

  Nap laughed and some of the tension went from the atmosphere. “You’re losing your nerve,” he said. “Tell me, do you honestly think a chap like Paddy, a roaring raging extrovert like Paddy, found the war a strain? I don’t say he didn’t see some sticky fighting, but as for suggesting that he’s bo
mb-happy – well, you’re engaged to him, and I live with him. Between us we ought to have spotted it by now. It’s not a thing that you can keep entirely hidden.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Jenny. “I was just being silly. And here we are.”

  Nevertheless, late though it was by this time, and tired though she was, she found it difficult to sleep. It was light before her eyes closed.

  Nap, on the other hand, slept heavily. But before he got into bed he repeated to himself, with great conviction, something that he had said earlier in the evening.

  “We have got to get help.”

  2

  Inland from Blackwall Point and above the Greenwich Marshes and over the railway there lie a few curious streets: streets which rest their eastern or lower extremities in the squalor of Charlton but run out at the western end into the social sunlight of Greenwich; not perhaps quite so aristocratic a district as it was when the houses were built ninety years ago, and the merchants drove their carriages to the City along the Old Kent road. The big, four-storeyed houses had suffered the indignity of subdivision into flats and flat-lets and even into single rooms. The yellow and cream French plaster was dropping from the walls, the bricks were long unpointed, the double window frames peeling, the unglazed fanlights looking out like blind eyes over cavernous doorways.

  With one exception Goshawk Road was typical of such thoroughfares. Ninety-nine of its hundred houses were in the last degree of decayed gentility.

  Number One, however, the most westerly of all, stood a little withdrawn at the junction of Goshawk Road with Maze Hill. It had, as it were, disassociated itself from its surroundings. Its bricks were freshly pointed, its woodwork soberly new, its upkeep immaculate, from the glass in the highest attic window to the shining brass of its dolphin door knocker.

  What this aristocrat of brick and stone was doing among the demi-monde seems to demand an explanation (which will probably not be forthcoming: London possesses hundreds of such paradoxes).

  Nap, climbing Maze Hill at nine o’clock on the following morning, thought, not for the first time, how clearly the character of a man might be read in his choice of habitation.

  He walked up the short flagged path, mounted the two freshly holy-stoned steps, and jerked the massive iron pull.

  Far away in the basement a bell clattered. Slow footsteps advanced along the hall and the door was opened by an ancient white-haired man.

  “Good morning, Clutters,” said Nap cheerfully. “Is Uncle Alfred up yet?”

  “His Lordship breakfasted at hate,” said Mr Cluttersley. Although he would never by any chance omit an aspirate he sometimes conscientiously inserted one. “He is now in the morning-room.”

  Alfred Lord Cedarbrook, eldest son of the aged Marquis of Orso and Trusconnel, is by a long chalk too remarkable a man to be allowed to slip into this account unheralded.

  The standard reference books will supply the facts.

  Born in 1887, educated at Winchester and at Clare College, Cambridge. A Bachelor of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society; an Associate of the Royal Geographical Society, etc., etc., etc. In America from 1911–1912 (operating on Wall Street, though the book does not say so). Polar exploration, 1912. Awarded the Arctic Medal, 1913. Served with the 12th Prince of Wales Own Lancers: 1914–1919 (starting as a Farrier-Sergeant’s assistant and finishing in command of the regiment). Persia, 1920–1923. Russia, 1923–1924. China 1925–1927. Russia again, 1927–1930, and periodically since. Unmarried.

  Those were the bare bones. The living flesh that covered them was even more remarkable.

  “The Last Corinthian,” old Lady Hevers had said. It was an apt description. For in addition to the taste and the elegance and the exquisite standards he also possessed the two most amiable characteristics of the type. Physical toughness, and the ability to get on with all classes. (Your true Corinthian, you will remember, was as easy in the society of lords and ladies as in the no less exacting company of postillions and bruisers.)

  When the Russian position had clarified a little in 1940, both the Foreign Office and the War Office had shouted for Cedarbrook’s services.

  For His Lordship was not only one of the greatest English experts on modern Russia, not only spoke the Russian language and understood the Russian mind as few Western Europeans have ever done; but in addition, as a legacy of long and active years spent in the country, knew personally a very large number of the surviving Russian statesmen and generals.

  He had lived with them, drunk with them, argued with them, quarrelled with them and laughed both with and at them. He had on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion out-drunk in their native vodka five commissars (four male and one female – they went under the table in that order), and on another had lost the top of his left ear in a duel à l’outrance with sabres, his opponent being the notorious Russian journalist Ivan Petrov. An escapade for which he had been publicly censured (and privately thanked) by Comrade Stalin himself.

  “Just our man,” said the Foreign Office.

  “Find Cedarbrook,” commanded the War Office.

  But alas for the vanity of human wishes, Alfred Lord Cedarbrook had disappeared. Enquiries in Goshawk Road had elicited from the imperturbable Cluttersley the information that His Lordship was “from home”. Further pressed, he had added that he “might be absent for the duration of the war. He was really unable to say. His Lordship accounted for his movements to no one.”

  Three more months passed. The Kromisky imbroglio took place. Cripps made his first attempt to cope with a Russian state banquet, and the authorities, in desperation, took a sensible step: a step, indeed, which they might have taken much earlier. They called the family into the search. Young Lieutenant Rumbold, Lord Cedarbrook’s nephew on his mother’s side, was seconded from his regiment, who were having an exciting time manning a road block in Lincolnshire, and was instructed to find his missing uncle.

  By the application of common sense to a knowledge of his uncle’s character he performed this task in three days.

  First of all he visited the nearest recruiting centre and learned that almost the only active unit which would accept direct recruits of above the normal enlistment age was the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps.

  “So long as they’re fit and willing,” said the Sergeant, “we don’t worry too much about birth certificates.”

  Nap had then demanded the locations of all AMPC units in England. No light task, since that tough and spirited corps was apt to be split into small detachments and to go where the job was to be done. Fortune favoured him and at his fifth visit, at Skegness, he had come face to face with his uncle, wearing three stripes, though not much else, and superintending the digging of an aerodrome drainage system.

  The old man had been looking superhumanly fit, his face the colour of beaten mahogany, his blacksmith’s arms wielding a twenty-eight pound sledge as if it had been a tack-hammer; his flow of language, choicely larded with Russian, Persian and Chinese terms, a joy and a revelation to his squad.

  These thoughts and memories passed through Nap’s mind in the few seconds that he stood in the library, listening to Cluttersley’s decorous footsteps mounting the stairs; hearing the mumble of his uncle’s voice; hearing the old man coming down.

  He wondered how best to broach the subject of his visit. Lord Cedarbrook saved him the trouble.

  “Your father has been on the telephone talking about your troubles,” he said. “He gets more long-winded every year. Sit down. What’s it all about?”

  Nap told him the story. When he had finished everything that he had to say, Lord Cedarbrook proceeded to cross-examine him, and at the end of thirty minutes, Nap began to perceive how much he had left out. At the end of an hour His Lordship was apparently satisfied.

  At all events he sat back with a grunt and said, “What do you want me to do?”

  Nap had rehearsed his answer to that one, and it came out pat.

  “I thought, uncle,” he said, “that an independent
judgement on the whole matter and a fresh approach–”

  “You really mean that? You don’t just want me to pull strings and get your friend out?”

  “Good Lord, no. That was the last thing in my mind,” said Nap untruthfully.

  “Hmm. That’s a good thing, because there aren’t many strings on English justice nowadays – whatever the papers may say. Do you think your friend pushed this man in front of a train?”

  “No,” said Nap.

  “Right. That’s something definite. Let’s start from there. It means that at least three people are lying.”

  “The two soldiers and the woman.”

  “No. The two soldiers and the man who was pushed – what’s his name? – Sims. The woman’s neither here nor there. Hysterical. Would say anything. Besides, she says your friend struck the man in the back. Both the soldiers say he pushed him. They’re very precise about it. They both mention that he used his left arm. Significant, hey?”

  “Quite so,” agreed Nap.

  “Now, if the man who was pushed says substantially the same thing, then there will be a strong prima facie suggestion that they were all in it together. Preconcerted story.”

  “But surely,” said Nap, “would anybody take the risk. Being pushed in front of an electric train–”

  “Not much risk really,” said His Lordship callously. “He fell into the safety trough, didn’t he? That’s what it’s there for. People are always doing it. Look in your papers – it happens once a month. I expect he was well paid. Another thing. You noticed how he was dressed.”

  Nap turned up his copy of the deposition.

  “An overall, belted and clipped at the wrists and ankles. Gym shoes–”

  “Precisely. No loose ends to catch on the rails. Rubber-soled shoes. It sticks out a mile, doesn’t it? Now listen. You’re Carter’s lawyer. Can’t you insist on being present when Sims makes his statement?”