“Can I see Lenthall?”
Meadows hesitated.
“Yes — I think it could be managed. The Home Office is rather friendly with you, isn’t it?”
Friendly enough, apparently. By noon Leon Gonsalez was on his way to Wilford Prison, and, to his satisfaction, he went alone.
Wilford Prison is one of the smaller convict establishments, and was brought into use to house longtime convicts of good character and who were acquainted with the bookbinding and printing trade. There are several “trade” prisons in England — Maidstone is the “printing” prison, Shepton Mallet the “dyeing” prison — where prisoners may exercise their trades.
The chief warder whom Leon interviewed told him that Wilford was to be closed soon, and its inmates transferred to Maidstone. He spoke regretfully of this change.
“We’ve got a good lot of men here — they give us no trouble, and they have an easy time. We’ve had no cases of indiscipline for years. We only have one officer on night duty — that will give you an idea how quiet we are.”
“Who was the officer last night?” asked Leon, and the unexpectedness of the question took the chief warder by surprise.
“Mr. Bennett,” he said. “He’s sick today, by the way — a bilious attack. Curious thing you should ask the question: I’ve just been to see him. We had an inquiry about the man you’ve come to visit. Poor old Bennett is in bed with a terrible headache.”
“May I see the governor?” asked Leon.
The chief warder shook his head.
“He has gone to Dover with Miss Folian — his daughter. She’s gone off to the Continent.”
“Miss Gwenda Folian?” and when the chief warder nodded, Leon continued, “Is she the lady who was training to be a doctor?”
“She is a doctor,” said the other, emphatically. “Why, when Lenthall nearly died from a heart attack, she saved his life — he works in the governor’s house, and I believe he’d cut off his right hand to serve the young lady. There’s a lot of good in some of these fellows!”
They were standing in the main prison hall. Leon gazed along the grim vista of steel balconies and little doors.
“This is where the night warder sits, I suppose?” he asked, as he laid his hand on the high desk near where they were standing: “and that door leads—”
“To the governor’s quarters.”
“And Miss Gwenda often slips through there with a cup of coffee and a sandwich for the night man, I suppose?” he added, carelessly.
The chief warder was evasive.
“It would be against regulations if she did,” he said. “Now you want to see Lenthall?”
Leon shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” he said quietly.
“Where could a blackguard like Letheritt be singing in church on Christmas Day?” asked Leon when he was giving the intimate history of the case to his companions. “In only one place — a prison. Obviously, our Miss Brown was in that prison: the governor and his family invariably attend church. Letheritt was ‘not staying with us’ — naturally. ‘It was at the end of’ — his sentence. He had been sent to Wilford for discharge. Poor Meadows! With all his faith in fingerprints gone astray because a released convict was true to his word and went out to get the letters that I missed, while the doped Mr. Bennett slept at his desk and Miss Gwenda Folian took his place!”
Cornell Woolrich (William Irish)
The Earring
This novelet is an almost perfect example of the work of Cornell Woolrich and William Irish at his combined best — powerful in its atmosphere of terror and suspense and with a final whiplash of surprise that will remind you (if you needed reminding) of the subtle craftsmanship that Woolrich builds into his best Irish stories, and vice versa.
And we are reminded of a small anecdote that illustrates the narrative grip that Woolrich-Irish can exert on his readers: quite a few years ago we attended a literary luncheon (we forget for whom, or what the particular occasion was), and sat next to the charming Mildred C. Smith, at present Editor-in-Chief of “Publishers’ Weekly.” Mildred Smith, a reader of EQMM since its inception, told us that “The Earring” was one of two stories in EQMM that had made the most lasting impression on her memory — for reasons she could never figure out, the story simply haunted her.
Maybe the clue can be found in something one of the characters in “The Earring” says: “I was just thinking how funny life is. Whatever this play is about that we’re going to see tonight, it can’t match real life for its thrills, its ups and downs, its crazy, unbelievable quirks”...
The latchkey jammed, and I had to stand there shaking as if I had St. Vitus dance before I could get it to work right. My wrists shook, my arms shook, my shoulders shook, trying to force it around. And above all else, my heart shook with the terror.
I was shaking so, it even made the empty milk-bottle standing outside the door sing out. I’d accidentally touched it with the tip of my shoe, I guess. The day maid had a note for the milkman curled up in the neck of it, in the shape of a little paper funnel.
I took the key out, drew a deep breath, and tried again. This time the door opened like pie. There hadn’t been anything the matter with the key; I’d been holding it upside down, that was all. I sidled in, eased the door silently closed again behind me — and Mrs. James Shaw was home.
The hall clock chimed four times. They say you can only die once, but I died four times, once for each chime-strike. Not that I wasn’t supposed to be out. I could have even rung the doorbell, and saved myself all that wrestling with the key. But I couldn’t face anyone, not even Jimmy, just then. Even if he’d just said, “Have a good time at the night club with the Perrys?”, even if he’d just looked at me, I would have busted down and tried to crawl into his lapel. I needed to be alone, I needed time to pull myself together.
He’d left the light on for me in the hall. He was still up, working away in the library on his income-tax report. He had the door dosed, but I could tell by the light shining out under the sill of it. He always waited until the last minute, like most taxpayers do, and then he had to sit up all night to beat the deadline on it. That was why he’d had to miss the party, send me out with the Perrys alone.
It was just a coincidence, but I could thank my lucky stars he’d had to finish it tonight.
That was just about the only thing in the whole mess there was to be thankful for. That at least there wouldn’t be any trouble between Jimmy and me.
I tiptoed down the hall toward our bedroom, slipped in, closed the door behind me. I gave it the lights and took a couple of deep body-sobs that had been ganged up in me for the past three-quarters of an hour or more.
The glass showed me a golden wreck staggering across the room toward it. All glittery on the outside: gold-sheath dress, diamonds everywhere there was room to hang them, around my neck, around my wrists, swinging from my ears. Not so glittery on the inside: plenty scared.
I sat down in front of the glass, held my head with both hands for a minute.
When I got my second wind, the first thing I did was open my gold evening pouch and take out — what I had in it. The style ran to big evening bags this season, and that was a good thing for me. I’d needed a lot of room tonight. The letters made a bulky packet. And the little gun I’d taken along, just to be on the safe side, that took up room, too. The ten thousand dollars in cash didn’t take up any room, because I hadn’t brought that back with me, I’d swapped that for the letters.