Part 10 (1/2)

”Have you her address?”

”Five Clay Yard. I telled the lad.”

”Have you seen her lately?”

”Seen her about, sir. Now and then like.”

Justin asked no more questions. Clearly a coldness had developed between the two women, but it was about the last thing to surprise him and in any case it was none of his business. He did not want

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to be involved in jealousies that had probably been present from the day Kelly had brought his clever, domineering sister and pliant mistress together under the same roof. Even in the witness-box at the Moot Hall when their interests had been identical the difference between them had been striking-Miss Kelly all fire and independence; poor Amy a calamity. He wondered what had become of her. 'On the game', most probably, which would account for the distaste her name seemed to arouse in his formidable and Puritanically minded client.

Yet if Number 5 Clay Yard was a 'gay' house, he thought, then words had lost their meaning. A derelict shack in an alley off Pele-gate, it stood between a barn and a stretch of waste land through which meandered a stream choked with rubbish. In the gathering twilight he could see stone steps drunkenly askew, the blank face of a window with drawn blinds, a door with a bra.s.s knocker green with age.

Just then he saw movement behind the blinds in the upper room and guessed that someone had heard him and was having a peep. Was the correct response to knock? To take off one's hat? The thought that Mr Lumley would surely have known rebuked him. But after a while he heard sounds upstairs, then footsteps coming down, and the door opened.

His first thought was that she had not changed at all. The same pinched face with big frightened eyes was staring at him from the shadows of the pa.s.sage, giving him the same oddly pleasurable shock of recognition that he had known when old Verney had gone into die pulpit at Ma.s.singham.

Once inside in the parlour in the lamplight he could see that in some ways there had been changes. She had put on weight, which became her, as did the quieter clothes she wore, and her hail was glossier and no longer crimped and curled into a mop. Even the pathetic sticks of furniture had had care lavished on them, though the effect seemed inexpressibly forlorn against the damp patches on the walls and the flaking plaster from the ceiling where the slats showed through. There was a rug whose pattern had all but vanished, a table covered with a cloth on which stood a vase of dried flowers, two devotional pictures, a horsehair sofa with cus.h.i.+ons woven in rainbow coloured wools. It was more, he reflected, than 5 Clay Yard deserved; more than the whole community (himself included) deserved that allowed such things to happen.

Very gently, doing his best not to alarm her, he began to explain why he had come, keeping his own expectations of her at a minimum. The most he could look for was that she might have some piece of knowledge, small in itself, which would enlarge the pattern he had been building up or give him a lead to some other witness, perhaps even to the elusive friend who had made the rendezvous at the Griffin Bridge. But there he drew a complete blank. He saw at once that she had no knowledge of any such person. And when he went on to sound her about Sugden's guilt and the ident.i.ty of the other man who had been at Ma.s.singham he sensed in her an immediate distrust, something defensive and resentful, as though after years of waiting she had ceased to hope and didn't want to be bothered any more.

The moment he spotted this he changed tack. Since the future had not drawn her, he would try the past. It made him feel a confidence trickster to be exploiting grief, but he told himself as people do on such occasions that it was for her good. And once they were back beyond the Moot Hall trial into the shadowy world of Piggott's house, with the evening of the crime before them, the sheer fascination of the thing took hold of him and he became engrossed by the tale that only she could tell him-of how Kelly had looked, and what he had said, and how he had gone out to Milligan on the first stage of his journey into darkness.

First, his clothes.

Breeches, boots, a 'newish grey tweed jacket'-his only one. Every detail was in place and vividly recalled. It had been some time after ten when Kelly had gone out with his snares in his pocket saying he was going 'to the Moor', his favourite hunting-ground, clear of the keepers who infested the estates in the plain below. The last she had seen of him that night was at the corner of the street, where Milligan had joined him, and they had turned off into Gilesgate, going north, with Matt the terrier trotting at their heels.

While she had been speaking something had stirred in the back of Justin's mind, just out of reach. It was infuriating being unable to catch hold of it. But he did not like to stop her on the brink of the hour when Kelly had come home for the last time in the grey morning light. ”I got 'im into bed, sir. But then these Poliss come, sir, and pulled 'im out, not savin' what they was wantin' or what 'e done. They got 'is shoes, sir, and the breeches, which was damp but they

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telt 'im to get into 'em. Then they spots this old coat of 'is, sir-and so I give it 'em.”

”But wasn't it a 'newish' coat that he'd been wearing?” said Justin softly, and the wayward thought had clicked into place in his mind. 'A newish grey tweed jacket'-weren't those your words?”

”Was they, sir?”

”How did a newish grey tweed coat manage to turn into that greasy old horror the Police swore to as being Mick Kelly's at the trial?”

She was staring at him wide-eyed. ”Don't understand, sir.”

”I think you do. Why did you say old coat' just now?”

”It were just a word, sir. Just slipped out like.”

”Were the Police lying when they produced that hideous old coat as the one you handed them?”

No answer.

”Which coat did you hand them, Amy?”

There was a long silence and then she said: ”The old-un. It were one o' Piggott's. I'd burnt the ither.”

The intoxicating feeling that he had broken through at last swept over him like a wave. If she had told the truth and the jacket which he had seen in court and in which the compromising sc.r.a.p of paper had been found by Dr Higson had not been the one Kelly had been wearing on the night of the burglary, then it followed that either the half-blind Piggott had been wearing it at Ma.s.singham (which was absurd), or some third party had borrowed it, or else the Police had deliberately torn the large sheet of paper found in the Rectory and planted a piece of it for Higson to find in the lining of what they had believed was Kelly's coat. This last scarifying notion did not alarm him as much as it would have done in Rees's day: he was more hardened to human frailties and thought it was probably the truth. But he could see one great objection to it. Neither Amy nor Miss Kelly had said a word about it at the trial when they had had every reason for speaking out and saying whose coat it was. Could there be an explanation of such silence?

A moment later and he had hit on it himself. They had not spoken because if they had no one would have believed them, even if Piggott had been sane enough to be called or Kelly himself had had the legal right to go into the box. They had no other coat to produce. Amy had burnt it.

The wind had got up and for some time the house had been full of those oddly furtive sounds so suggestive of visitors on a winter's night whom one may not wish to see. It was the same at 'The Laurels', where there was a cupboard on the landing with a varied repertoire of groans and loud e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns that had scared him out of his wits as a boy and still woke him sometimes with uneasy memories. But this time it sounded different-softer and more purposeful, as though someone had come in through the back door and might be moving in the pa.s.sageway beyond. He glanced across at Amy, but she seemed to have noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

”Why did you burn the coat?” he said, deciding that he had imagined things. ”You can tell me, you know, I'm on your side. You won't remember me, but I was always on your side. I was with Mr Rees the solicitor at the trial.”

”I know that,” she remarked surprisingly.

”You mean you remember me?”

” 'Course I do, sir. There was you and Mr Rees-that was the old gentleman-and a young gentleman in a wig.”

”Mr Gilmore.”

”I remember all right,” she said. ”You done your best, all of you. We all done our best.”

”The coat,” he reminded her gently, touched by her acceptance of him.

”The coat, sir?”

”Yes, listen: I think I know how it happened that you burnt it and never told the court. You knew that Mick had been poaching.”

”He telt me, sir.”

”So that when the Police came you all thought they wanted him for poaching?”

”That we did, sir. They telt us nothing.”

”And did the coat have blood on it?” He saw her trusting smile turn suddenly cold, as though she had glimpsed an enemy and not the friend of Kelly's he had pretended to be. ”I meant rabbit's blood of course,” he added quickly.

”Don't know, sir.”