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‘If you will take my card to her,’ said Mr Mayherne quietly, ‘I am quite sure that she will do so.’
The woman looked at him doubtfully, wiped her hand on her apron and took the card. Then she closed the door in his face and left him on the step outside.
In a few minutes, however, she returned with a slightly altered manner.
‘Come inside, please.’
She ushered him into a tiny drawing-room. Mr Mayherne, examining a drawing on the wall, stared up suddenly to face a tall pale woman who had entered so quietly that he had not heard her.
‘Mr Mayherne? You are my husband’s solicitor, are you not? You have come from him? Will you please sit down?’
Until she spoke he had not realized that she was not English. Now, observing her more closely, he noticed the high cheekbones, the dense blue-black of the hair, and an occasional very slight movement of the hands that was distinctly foreign. A strange woman, very quiet. So quiet as to make one uneasy. From the very first Mr Mayherne was conscious that he was up against something that he did not understand.
‘Now, my dear Mrs Vole,’ he began, ‘you must not give way –’
He stopped. It was so very obvious that Romaine Vole had not the slightest intention of giving way. She was perfectly calm and composed.
‘Will you please tell me all about it?’ she said. ‘I must know everything. Do not think to spare me. I want to know the worst.’ She hesitated, then repeated in a lower tone, with a curious emphasis which the lawyer did not understand: ‘I want to know the worst.’
Mr Mayherne went over his interview with Leonard Vole. She listened attentively, nodding her head now and then.
‘I see,’ she said, when he had finished. ‘He wants me to say that he came in at twenty minutes past nine that night?’
‘He did come in at that time?’ said Mr Mayherne sharply.
‘That is not the point,’ she said coldly. ‘Will my saying so acquit him? Will they believe me?’
Mr Mayherne was taken aback. She had gone so quickly to the core of the matter.
‘That is what I want to know,’ she said. ‘Will it be enough? Is there anyone else who can support my evidence?’
There was a suppressed eagerness in her manner that made him vaguely uneasy.
‘So far there is no one else,’ he said reluctantly.
‘I see,’ said Romaine Vole.
She sat for a minute or two perfectly still. A little smile played over her lips.
The lawyer’s feeling of alarm grew stronger and stronger.
‘Mrs Vole –’ he began. ‘I know what you must feel –’
‘Do you?’ she said. ‘I wonder.’
‘In the circumstances –’
‘In the circumstances – I intend to play a lone hand.’
He looked at her in dismay.
‘But, my dear Mrs Vole – you are overwrought. Being so devoted to your husband –’
‘I beg your pardon?’
The sharpness of her voice made him start. He repeated in a hesitating manner:
‘Being so devoted to your husband –’
Romaine Vole nodded slowly, the same strange smile on her lips.
‘Did he tell you that I was devoted to him?’ she asked softly. ‘Ah! yes, I can see he did. How stupid men are! Stupid – stupid – stupid –’
She rose suddenly to her feet. All the intense emotion that the lawyer had been conscious of in the atmosphere was now concentrated in her tone.
‘I hate him, I tell you! I hate him. I hate him, I hate him! I would like to see him hanged by the neck till he is dead.’
The lawyer recoiled before her and the smouldering passion in her eyes.
She advanced a step nearer, and continued vehemently:
‘Perhaps I shall see it. Supposing I tell you that he did not come in that night at twenty past nine, but at twenty past ten? You say that he tells you he knew nothing about the money coming to him. Supposing I tell you he knew all about it, and counted on it, and committed murder to get it? Supposing I tell you that he admitted to me that night when he came in what he had done? That there was blood on his coat? What then? Supposing that I stand up in court and say all these things?’
Her eyes seemed to challenge him. With an effort, he concealed his growing dismay, and endeavoured to speak in a rational tone.
‘You cannot be asked to give evidence against your own husband –’
‘He is not my husband!’
The words came out so quickly that he fancied he had misunderstood her.
‘I beg your pardon? I –’
‘He is not my husband.’
The silence was so intense that you could have heard a pin drop.
‘I was an actress in Vienna. My husband is alive but in a madhouse. So we could not marry. I am glad now.’
She nodded defiantly.
‘I should like you to tell me one thing,’ said Mr Mayherne. He contrived to appear as cool and unemotional as ever. ‘Why are you so bitter against Leonard Vole?’
She shook her head, smiling a little.
‘Yes, you would like to know. But I shall not tell you. I will keep my secret …’
Mr Mayherne gave his dry little cough and rose.
‘There seems no point in prolonging this interview,’ he remarked. ‘You will hear from me again after I have communicated with my client.’
She came closer to him, looking into his eyes with her own wonderful dark ones.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘did you believe – honestly – that he was innocent when you came here today?’
‘I did,’ said Mr Mayherne.
‘You poor little man,’ she laughed.
‘And I believe so still,’ finished the lawyer. ‘Good evening, madam.’
He went out of the room, taking with him the memory of her startled face.
‘This is going to be the devil of a business,’ said Mr Mayherne to himself as he strode along the street.
Extraordinary, the whole thing. An extraordinary woman. A very dangerous woman. Women were the devil when they got their knife into you.
What was to be done? That wretched young man hadn’t a leg to stand upon. Of course, possibly he did commit the crime …
‘No,’ said Mr Mayherne to himself. ‘No – there’s almost too much evidence against him. I don’t believe this woman. She was trumping up the whole story. But she’ll never bring it into court.’
He wished he felt more conviction on the point.
The police court proceedings were brief and dramatic. The principal witnesses for the prosecution were Janet Mackenzie, maid to the dead woman, and Romaine Heilger, Austrian subject, the mistress of the prisoner.
Mr Mayherne sat in the court and listened to the damning story that the latter told. It was on the lines she had indicated to him in their interview.
The prisoner reserved his defence and was committed for trial.
Mr Mayherne was at his wits’ end. The case against Leonard Vole was black beyond words. Even the famous KC who was engaged for the defence held out little hope.
‘If we can shake that Austrian woman’s testimony, we might do something,’ he said dubiously. ‘But it’s a bad business.’
Mr Mayherne had concentrated his energies on one single point. Assuming Leonard Vole to be speaking the truth, and to have left the murdered woman’s house at nine o’clock, who was the man whom Janet heard talking to Miss French at half past nine?
The only ray of light was in the shape of a scapegrace nephew who had in bygone days cajoled and threatened his aunt out of various sums of money. Janet Mackenzie, the solicitor learned, had always been attached to this young man, and had never ceased urging his claims upon her mistress. It certainly seemed possible that it was this nephew who had been with Miss French after Leonard Vole left, especially as he was not to be found in any of his old haunts.
In all other directions, the lawyer’s researches had been negative in their result. No one had seen Leonard Vole entering his own house, or leaving that of Miss French. No one had seen any other man enter or leave the house in Cricklewood. All inquiries drew blank.
It was the eve of the trial when Mr Mayherne received the letter which was to lead his thoughts in an entirely new direction.
It came by the six o’clock post. An illiterate scrawl, written on common paper and enclosed in a dirty envelope with the stamp stuck on crooked.
Mr Mayherne read it through once or twice before he grasped its meaning.
Dear Mister
Youre the lawyer chap wot acks for the young feller. if you want that painted foreign hussy showd up for wot she is an her pack of lies you come to 16 Shaw’s Rents Stepney tonight. It ul cawst you 2 hundred quid Arsk for Missis Mogson.
The solicitor read and re-read this strange epistle. It might, of course, be a hoax, but when he thought it over, he became increasingly convinced that it was genuine, and also convinced that it was the one hope for the prisoner. The evidence of Romaine Heilger damned him completely, and the line the defence meant to pursue, the line that the evidence of a woman who had admittedly lived an immoral life was not to be trusted, was at best a weak one.
Mr Mayherne’s mind was made up. It was his duty to save his client at all costs. He must go to Shaw’s Rents.
He had some difficulty in finding the place, a ramshackle building in an evil-smelling slum, but at last he did so, and on inquiry for Mrs Mogson was sent up to a room on the third floor. On this door he knocked and getting no answer, knocked again.
At this second knock, he heard a shuffling sound inside, and presently the door was opened cautiously half an inch and a bent figure peered out.
Suddenly the woman, for it was a woman, gave a chuckle and opened the door wider.
‘So it’s you, dearie,’ she said, in a wheezy voice. ‘Nobody with you, is there? No playing tricks? That’s right. You can come in – you can come in.’
With some reluctance the lawyer stepped across the threshold into the small dirty room, with its flickering gas jet. There was an untidy unmade bed in a corner, a plain deal table and two rickety chairs. For the first time Mr Mayherne had a full view of the tenant of this unsavoury apartment. She was a woman of middle age, bent in figure, with a mass of untidy grey hair and a scarf wound tightly round her face. She saw him looking at this and laughed again, the same curious toneless chuckle.
‘Wondering why I hide my beauty, dear? He, he, he. Afraid it may tempt you, eh? But you shall see – you shall see.’
She drew aside the scarf and the lawyer recoiled involuntarily before the almost formless blur of scarlet. She replaced the scarf again.
‘So you’re not wanting to kiss me, dearie? He, he, I don’t wonder. And yet I was a pretty girl once – not so long ago as you’d think, either. Vitriol, dearie, vitriol – that’s what did that. Ah! but I’ll be even with em –’
She burst into a hideous torrent of profanity which Mr Mayherne tried vainly to quell. She fell silent at last, her hands clenching and unclenching themselves nervously.
‘Enough of that,’ said the lawyer sternly. ‘I’ve come here because I have reason to believe you can give me information which will clear my client, Leonard Vole. Is that the case?’
Her eye leered at him cunningly.
‘What about the money, dearie?’ she wheezed. ‘Two hundred quid, you remember.’
‘It is your duty to give evidence, and you can be called upon to do so.’
‘That won’t do, dearie. I’m an old woman, and I know nothing. But you give me two hundred quid, and perhaps I can give you a hint or two. See?’
‘What kind of hint?’
‘What should you say to a letter? A letter from her. Never mind now how I got hold of it. That’s my business. It’ll do the trick. But I want my two hundred quid.’
Mr Mayherne looked at her coldly, and made up his mind.
‘I’ll give you ten pounds, nothing more. And only that if this letter is what you say it is.’
‘Ten pounds?’ She screamed and raved at him.
‘Twenty,’ said Mr Mayherne, ‘and that’s my last word.’
He rose as if to go. Then, watching her closely, he drew out a pocket book, and counted out twenty one-pound notes.
‘You see,’ he said. ‘That is all I have with me. You can take it or leave it.’
But already he knew that the sight of the money was too much for her. She cursed and raved impotently, but at last she gave in. Going over to the bed, she drew something out from beneath the tattered mattress.
