Trial and Error (34 page)

“I do indeed,” said Mr Todhunter earnestly. “And I'm exceedingly grateful to you. But please don't distress yourself. I'm not worried at all.”

“I really don't believe you are,” said the governor wonderingly. He hesitated. “Well, there it is. We all hoped the other thing would get you first, but it hasn't. So we've just got to go through with it. . . . I'll come back with the others, the sheriff and so on, you know, at nine o'clock.”

“Certainly,” said Mr Todhunter amicably.

He sat down at the table and wondered whether there was really nothing else that ought to have gone into his will. It seemed queer that it was too late to alter it if there was.

“Dear me,” said Mr Todhunter, “I feel as if I were catching a train and had got to the station too early. How do they usually fill up the last half hour, Birchman?”

“Well, sir, they often write letters,” suggested the warder uneasily.

“That's a good idea,” said Mr Todhunter. “I'll write to a friend of mine.”

He sat down and wrote a short letter to Furze; but after he had explained that he could not explain his feelings because he had none beyond a sort of expectant emptiness, there was nothing more to say. So he thanked Furze again for all he had done and found that a bare five minutes had been consumed.

“Are all the other convicts locked in their cells now?” he asked suddenly. Birchman shook his head. “No, we don't do that now. They'll be mostly in the workshops and so on, on the other side.”

Mr Todhunter nodded and yawned. He had dressed this morning, for the first time for nearly a month. They were his own clothes for a man is not hanged in convict dress.

“Well, we'd better have a game of something,” he said languidly. “Dear me, I never expected to be bored this morning, but I am. Just bored. How very odd. Can you explain it?”

“Yes,” said Fox. “It's because you're not afraid.”

Mr Todhunter looked at him in surprise. “I never knew you were a psychologist, Fox. But you've hit the nail on the head, I think. This waiting is just like any other waiting because I don't mind what's coming. In fact it's not even as bad as waiting in the dentist's room. I wonder if many of the others have felt like this?”

“Not many, I dare say,” said Birchman, putting the cards on the table. “What would you like to play?”

“Bridge,” said Mr Todhunter promptly. “It's the only game after all. I wouldn't at all mind a final rubber. Can we get the chaplain to make a fourth?”

“Shall I ask him to come back?” suggested Fox, though a little doubtfully. Mr Todhunter had got rid of the chaplain soon after breakfast, afraid that he might become intense if given his head. Mr Todhunter was sufficiently public school to have a dread of intensity.

“Call him,” Mr Todhunter nodded.

Fox went to the door and spoke to someone who must have been waiting outside.

Within two minutes the chaplain was in the cell. Whether he approved or not of Mr Todhunter's method of spending his last minutes on earth, he was a good fellow and said nothing. They cut for partners, and Fox dealt.

Mr Todhunter picked up his hand and cackled. There was a grand slam in spades in it.

He got the grand slam.

At two minutes to nine there was the sound of footsteps along the concrete passage outside.

“They're here,” said the chaplain in a low voice.

He looked at Mr Todhunter, then suddenly leaned across the table and gripped his hand.

“Good-bye, Todhunter,” he said. “I know you dislike sentiment, but I'd like to say this. I'm humbly glad to have know. you. Whatever you've done, you're a better man than me.”

“Do you really think so?” said Mr Todhunter, astonished and gratified too.

As the cell door opened he stood up. To his pleasure and somewhat to his surprise, his heart did not seem to be beating any faster than usual. He glanced at his hands: they were quite steady.

A little procession entered the cell: the governor, the deputy governor, the doctor and two strangers. Of the strangers one, Mr Todhunter knew, must be the sheriff; the other. . .

The other detached himself, a squat, powerful man, and came forward at a quick shuffle. He held things at which Mr Todhunter looked with curiosity.

“It'll be all over in a few seconds, old man,” said the executioner in kindly tones. “Just put your hands behind your back.”

“One minute,” said Mr Todhunter. “I'm intensely interested. May I see these—what do you call them? Pinioning straps?”

“Now, don't make things difficult, old man,” begged the executioner. “We've no time, and—”

“Let him see them,” interrupted the governor abruptly.

The executioner hesitated, and Mr Todhunter had an opportunity to look at the light strap he was holding.

“Much less cumbersome than I'd thought,” he commented. His curious gaze travelled up to the executioner's face. “Tell me,” he said, “has anyone ever hit you on the chin when you came in here to do this job?”

“Why no,” said the executioner. “They usually—”

“Well,” said Mr Todhunter, “here's one you won't forget,” and with all his strength he drove his bony fist at the other's face.

It caught the man full on the chin and knocked him backwards onto the floor. Mr Todhunter fell on top of him.

Instantly all was hubbub. The warders leapt forward, the executioner picked himself up.

But Mr Todhunter did not move.

The doctor dropped on his knees and felt hurriedly under Mr Todhunter's waistcoat. Then he looked up at the governor and nodded.

“He's gone.”

“Thank God,” said the governor.

EPILOGUE

Mr Chitterwick was lunching with Furze at the Oxford and Cambridge Club.

It was just a week after Mr Todhunter's death, and Furze was telling Mr Chitterwick of the letter he had received from him.

“He felt no fear, I'm certain. But why should we, after all? Death isn't terrifying. It's only our imaginations that make it so.”

“I hope he had an easy passing,” muttered Mr Chitterwick, “He was a fine man, and he deserved one, I would like to know just what happened in the cell.” It had been stated in the newspapers that Mr Todhunter had never been hanged; he had died from natural causes while resisting the executioner.

Furze, who always knew any official secret, told him.

Mr Chitterwick was delighted.

“How very characteristic,” he crowed. “He must have intended it all the time. Dear me, I feel so privileged to have been able to help him.”

Furze looked at his guest.

“Yes, you did help him, you and Sir Ernest Prettiboy. But one can't blame Sir Ernest.
He
did it unconsciously.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” asked Mr Chitterwick nervously.

Furze laughed. “It's all right. You needn't be alarmed. But I think we'd better have this out.”

“Have what out?”

“Why,” said Furze frankly, “the fact that both of us know perfectly well that Todhunter never killed the Norwood woman.”

It was Mr Chitterwick's turn to stare.

“You know that?”

“Of course. I've know it since halfway through the trial. How long have you known it?”

“Since . . . since he began to manufacture evidence,” said Mr Chitterwick guiltily.

“When was that?”

“The day we first met Sir Ernest in his garden.”

“Yes, so I imagined. You spotted it then, did you? What made you suspicious?”

“Well,” said Mr Chitterwick a little uncomfortably, “he'd said he'd only been there in the dark, but he knew the way far too well. Then the gaps in the bushes were too plain, and the footprints, too; the scoring on the fence was too fresh, and the twigs too newly broken. . ..”

“He'd prepared the way?”

Mr Chitterwick nodded. “After I left him the evening before, I imagine, just as the police suggested.”

“And that second bullet?”

Mr Chitterwick blushed. “Counsel for the police explained that at the trial, too, didn't he?”

“You mean, the explanation was correct?”

“I'm afraid it was.”

“In fact,” said Furze,”every single thing that counsel said was correct. The police were right in their ideas about our friend in every single particular?”

“In every single particular,” confirmed Mr Chitterwick unhappily.

The two men stared at each other.

Then suddenly they simultaneously laughed.

“But they couldn't convince the jury?” said Furze.

“No indeed, I'm glad to say,” said Mr Chitterwick.

Furze took a sip of claret.

“Well, I must say, Chitterwick, you've got a nerve. I wouldn't have thought it of you.”

“In what way?”

“Why, faking evidence yourself. And getting away with it. That wrist watch . . . masterly! Did you have much trouble in persuading Mrs Palmer to agree?”

“None,” admitted Mr Chitterwick. “She—she'd already been very helpful in the matter of that bullet in the flower bed, you see. Er—Todhunter himself arranged that.”

“Fired it, you mean? But no, the police had the revolver.”

“Oh, it had been fired right enough, but a very long time before. Mrs Palmer merely dated it later. And the bullet being lead, you see, hadn't rusted; so no one could prove her story untrue.”

“Most reprehensible thing, perjury.”

“Oh, I'm sure she didn't commit perjury,” said Mr Chitterwick, rather shocked. “There would have been a mental reservation.”

“And the wrist watch. I suppose you scratched the initials?”

“No, Mrs Palmer did. We thought her hand would be lighter. Er—of course Miss Norwood had never given it to him.”

“Of course not. And then you hid it. Well, I repeat, I wouldn't have believed it of you. It was a terrible risk.”

“Yes, but I had to, you see,” Mr Chitterwick explained earnestly. “The man was innocent. It was terrible. I do believe they'd have kept him there all his life. And he couldn't speak, any more than Todhunter could. Besides, it would have been a shocking thing if Todhunter had had to die with the knowledge that his sacrifice had been largely in vain and that Palmer would have to spend his life in prison.”

“Todhunter knew Palmer was innocent?”

“Oh yes. That was what worried him so.”

“He knew who really did it?”

“I think he must have done. And I'm sure he admired her for it.”

“The empty punt,” said Furze thoughtfully.

“Yes, that's how she went. And I think she must have had on a pair of trousers. I believe,” said Mr Chitterwick diffidently, “that trousers are quite a usual article nowadays in the feminine wardrobe.”

“How many people know the truth?”

“I think only three, besides ourselves. Mr and Mrs Palmer, and of course—”

“Palmer did know, then?”

“Oh, he must have done. From the beginning. There was the question of the revolver, you see.”

“Yes, I always thought there was something fishy about the revolver. I still don't see why Palmer took it round to the flat that morning.”

“Oh, but he didn't.” Mr Chitterwick leaned across the table in his earnestness. “He'd taken it round there several days before. He didn't know he'd done so, though. You see, what happened was that Mrs Palmer began to feel very upset and anxious about the complications with Miss Norwood. She knew her husband was a man of—er—a somewhat violent disposition, and she thought it best to get the revolver out of his way, just in case. So she rang up her sister and asked if she would take charge of it and then did it up in a parcel and sent it round by her husband, telling him that it was some unimportant domestic article. It was only when the news arrived that Miss Norwood had been shot that he looked for it and found it missing. When he heard where it had gone, he hurried round to the flat at once.”

“Oh, that's why he went there so early?”

“Yes indeed. And I think he knew then who had shot Miss Norwood. Luckily he didn't lose his head, and just told his sister and mother to hold out at all odds that they had been together in the flat all Sunday evening. As it turned out, the police accepted their story.”

“And Todhunter tried to exchange the revolvers in order to get hold of the really fatal weapon and leave the Farroway family with the innocent one, just as Bairns said?”

“Exactly; though of course he could not explain that to Palmer. Dear me, I'm afraid Palmer sadly misjudged him. Naturally he thought Todhunter an interfering busybody. It was not until almost the end that he realized what our friend had really been doing.”

“And on that visit Todhunter established some sort of understanding with Mrs Farroway?”

“Undoubtedly he must have done so. Indeed, she had intimated as much to me. She knew he was trying to help, though of course she did not know till much later that he was ready to go to such lengths.”

“Why was Palmer allowed to stand trial?”

“Well, really, no one thought he would be convicted. And it was his own wish. After all, he realised that it was his own foolish conduct which had been responsible for Miss Norwood's death, and he was very properly determined to shield the true assassin well, right up to the hilt, I suspect. . . Not,” added Mr Chitterwick, “that she was at all willing to be shielded. I think the family must have had a great deal of trouble to induce her to stay silent. Her one idea was to come forward with the truth. Er—I had a very difficult scene with her myself.”

“You?”

“Yes indeed. I visited her one evening. I had to tell her plainly that I knew the truth and that she must let Todhunter do as he wished. I'm afraid I had to put it on very highfalutin grounds,” said Mr Chitterwick guiltily, “before I could get her to agree. I—er—I think I said something about his having set his heart on doing more good by his death, in saving a valuable life for the service of others, than he had ever been able to do alive. Even so, it was touch and go.” Mr Chitterwick sighed heavily in recollection of that awkward half-hour.

“Well, well.” Furze twiddled the stem of his wineglass. “I suppose we shall never know the whole truth of it. That detective sergeant, for instance. I was quite sorry for him in the box. I suppose he was perfectly right? When he examined Todhunter's revolver, it never had been fired?”

“No, of course not. Dear me,” said Mr Chitterwick, “there's no doubt that bluff can pay. Our friend put up a quite incredible one; but he got away with it in the end.”

“Thanks to a sentimental jury. He wouldn't have done, if I'd been on it,” Furze smiled. “By the way, he really did throw away the fatal bullet?”

“Oh yes. That was the only suggestion Bairns made that was incorrect. He threw it into the river that same evening. That action, of course, saved the whole situation. If the bullet had been found, there would never have been any doubt as to which revolver killed the woman. Luckily Todhunter realised that at the time; though he didn't, of course, know then who the killer had been. It was most fortunate.”

“You approve then,” Furze asked quizzically, “of Todhunter's action? You think it right to cheat justice?”

“Oh dear, but what is justice?” Mr Chitterwick looked very uncomfortable. “They say murder can never be justified. But can't it? Is human life so valuable that it is better to preserve a pestilential nuisance alive rather than bring happiness to a great many persons by eliminating one? We discussed something like that at Todhunter's dinner that night, you know. It's a difficult question. A terrible question. Todhunter did not shirk it. I can't say I don't think he was right.”

“But do you believe that he really would have shot the woman himself, when it came to the last, final, irrevocable moment?”

“Who can say? I think myself that he probably might not have done. But it all depends. If one can so believe in the justice of one's intentions as to work up into a kind of exaltation . . . I suppose that's how these things are done . . . for they
are
done . . . Huey Long . . .” Mr Chitterwick broke off, looking much distressed.

“Chitterwick,” said Furze, “who
did
shoot Ethel May Binns?”

Mr Chitterwick started violently. “God bless my soul, don't you know?” he asked, horrified. “I thought . . . dear me, I must have given things away . . . betrayed confidences . . . oh dear.”

“I won't say I haven't got my ideas,” Furze answered slowly. “But no, I can't say I
know.”

“Well, neither do I,” Mr Chitterwick answered with defiant untruth. “It would be best not to know, don't you agree? We may have our views of right and wrong, but if anyone ever deserved to die, it was Jean Norwood; if anyone ever did have a right to kill, it was the person who killed her, and if ever a death was justified by results, it was that one. And we are the only people who suspect the truth. Don't you think that's how we should leave it—at unvoiced suspicion?”

“I think,” said Furze, “that you're probably right.” Mr Chitterwick drew a deep breath of relief. Felicity Farroway's secret must surely be safe now.