Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

There was a double tap on the door and Harcourt went to answer it. A police constable stood outside. Without any preamble, he launched into an urgent explanation. The man’s accent was so broad that Tom had difficulty following him but, as far as he could gather, something had occurred which required the Superintendent’s immediate attention, something to do with the delivery of a parcel.

Harcourt came back. He said, ‘You may see your wife if you wish, Mr Ansell. There has been a development in the case.’

‘What is it?’

‘I am not at liberty to say. But if you come with me now I shall direct a warder to take you to Mrs Ansell.’

The Crown Court and the prison occupied the same site. Superintendent Harcourt led Tom down some stairs and along increasingly drab passageways until they emerged into a small high-walled yard. He rapped on an iron-barred door on the far side and, when a wooden panel slid back, grunted a few words to the whiskered face on the other side. There was the clank of keys from within.

‘I’ll leave you with Perkins, Mr Ansell. You are in good hands.’

Tom was thinking not of himself but of poor Helen as the warder escorted him across a chilly vestibule occupied only by a desk, chair and filing cabinet. Half a dozen flat blue caps were hanging from a row of pegs. Perkins took a key from the great bunch which dangled at his belt and, without looking to check whether he had the right one, unlocked another reinforced door. Beyond this was a barred gate which led directly to one of the prison wings. There was same instinctive procedure with the keys. Without saying a word, the warder beckoned Tom to follow him up a spiral metal staircase to the left of the gate and they climbed to the second tier of the building. A row of doors opened off a narrow walkway, echoed by a similar arrangement on the other side.

It was curiously silent, with no sound apart from the thud of the men’s feet. There was an acrid smell, a mixture of food and carbolic and human waste. Perkins halted at the seventh or eight door. This time the warder had to search for a specific key. When he found it, he used it to tap on the door to alert the occupant, before turning the key and swinging open the door in a single smooth action.

Helen was sitting on a bench against the far wall. Her head was bent in concentration and she was scribbling in a notebook. She looked up, blinking.

‘Tom! It’s you.’

‘Helen. You’re all right?’

‘Of course I am all right.’

‘What are you doing?’ said Tom. It was a stupid question but other words failed him. He was standing just inside the cell door.

‘’Fraid I’ll have to lock you in, sir,’ said Perkins, making a show of drawing a pocket-watch from his uniform jacket and consulting it. ‘I will wait outside on the landing. I can give you ten minutes.’

‘I am sure you can give us longer than that,’ said Helen. She glanced at Tom and surreptitiously rubbed her thumb and forefinger together.

Tom gave the man half a sovereign. The coin disappeared like magic.

‘Half an hour, sir, no longer,’ said Perkins. He shut the door and turned the key.

Helen said, ‘Well, Tom, in answer to your question I am writing down the details of my surroundings. An author never knows when these things will come in useful. I might send one of my characters to gaol at some point and, when I do, I will need to know what the inside of a cell looks like.’

Helen spoke more rapidly than usual. Tom noticed that there was some blood on her dress. She snapped the notebook shut — it was her diary, he saw — and placed it neatly beside her. She got up from the bench, came to him and he put his arms around her.

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ he said at last. ‘You are so calm, so brave. Oh Helen!’

‘Now, Tom. Do not be foolish. This is all a silly mistake. I shall be out of here very soon. After all, you have been in the same plight yourself.’

It was true. The previous year Tom had spent an unhappy night in a cell in the county gaol in Salisbury when he too had fallen under suspicion for a crime he did not commit. Helen had visited him in that place, just as he was now visiting her in this one. Tom wondered if there was some malign or mischievous fate subjecting each of them to a parallel experience of prison.

Tom released his wife and took his first careful look at the cell. With its curved ceiling, it was like a vault or the interior of a compartment in a train carriage. The flaking walls were whitewashed. A few feet above the bed there was an unglazed and barred window which allowed in small quantities of light and air. At the moment a stray draught was bringing in the ghost of summer to the cell. In the winter it would be bitterly cold. Apart from the bed, the only covering for which was a coarse blanket, there was a wooden chair and a three-legged stand for a washbasin, a ewer of water and a thick glass tumbler. A bucket was lodged under the bed.

Helen had gone back to sit on the bed. She saw Tom looking round.

‘As you can see, there is not much to note down. Not much to distract the mind or lift the spirits. Thank goodness I had my diary tucked away. They didn’t have a searcher to hand and so they did not discover my diary.’

‘A searcher?’ said Tom.

‘A woman who is employed to search female suspects. I already have a grasp of the police jargon, you see. I must say I will be glad to get out of here. I need to change my clothes.’

She glanced at the bloodstains on her dress. She looked at her hands. She shuddered.

‘I must have touched him. I got too close to the… to the body. I have washed my hands several times over but I have not been able to get my clothes laundered in this place.’

She gave an odd laugh. Tom came to sit beside her and felt the bed give under their weight. He put his arm round her. After a while, he asked Helen to tell him what had happened. Did she want to talk about it? How had she come to find Eustace Flask?

As Tom knew, she had gone out that morning to look at the shops — a rather un-Helen-like thing to do but she needed to get away from Aunt Julia who was preoccupied with the fate of Eustace Flask after his disappearance at the Assembly Rooms. Every few minutes over breakfast it was, ‘I wonder what’s become of dear Mr Flask?’ or ‘I do hope he’s all right’ or ‘Do you think we should tell the authorities?’ Tom noticed that even Septimus Sheridan’s patience was wearing thin. He excused himself to go and look at the notes on the Lucknow Dagger which Sebastian Marmont had written up for him, and to try to make sense of a rambling, disjointed narrative.

Helen described how she had walked to the Market Place and then lingered over the shop windows in Silver Street. It was a fine morning and she wanted to stretch her legs. She walked down the cobbled slope to Framwellgate Bridge, across which they had driven on their arrival in Durham. She paused and looked casually down at the river. Below her was the path where she and Tom had strolled the previous day. She walked to the far side of the bridge, the western end. There was a similar riverside path running below here.

She gave a start to see below the gentleman they had encountered yesterday, the one who had claimed to be returning her handkerchief. It was him, she was sure of it. The same loping stride, the same shabby coat. Perhaps, she thought, he goes up and down the river paths in search of discarded handkerchiefs.

But Helen was much more surprised, even shocked, to see a similarly tall figure emerge from the shadow of the bridge and move off in the same direction keeping the castle and cathedral to his left. There was no doubt in her mind about his identity. That stride which was mincing rather than loping, the rather fine attire, the pale red hair escaping from under his hat. It was Eustace Flask.