The Judas Window

the way the lines swing in John Peel

"From a find to a check:

from a check to a view:

from a view to a kill in the morning."'

'Well, good luck to you.'

'You could help,' roared H.M. suddenly, wishing to get this off his chest. 'Help?'

'Now, shut up, dammit!' insisted H.M., before! could say anything. 'I'm not playing any games now, or gettin' you thrown into gaol. All I want you to do is take a message, which won't compromise you any, to one of my witnesses. I can't do it myself; and I've got a suspicion of telephones since I've heard what they've done in this business.'

'Which witness?'

'Mary Hume ... Here comes your soup, so eat and keep quiet.'

The food was excellent. At the end of it H.M.'s tension had relaxed, and he was in such a (comparative) good humour that he had fallen to grousing again. There was a good fire in the dingy grate: H.M., with his feet on the fender and a large cigar drawing well, broached the subject with a scowl.

'I'm not goin’ to discuss this business with anybody,' he said. 'But if there's anything about it you'd like to know that won't concern what the defence knows or has had the gumption to find out - meanin' me -'

'Yes,' said Evelyn. 'Why on earth did you have to bring this business to court? That is, of course, if you could show the police -'

'No,' said H.M. 'That's one of the questions you can't ask.'

He sniffed, staring at the fire.

'Well, then,' I suggested, 'if you say Answell isn't the murderer, have you got any explanation of how the real murderer got in and out of the room?'

'Burn me, I should hope so, son! Or what kind of a defence do you think I'd have?' asked H.M. plaintively.

'Do you think I'd be such an eternal blazin' fat-head as to go chargin' in without an alternative explanation? I say, it's a funny thing about that, too. It was the girl herself -this Mary Hume - who put the idea into my head when I was dead stumped. She's a nice gal. Well, I was sittin' and thinkin', and that didn't seem to do any good; and then she mentioned, that the one thing in prison Jim Answell hated most was the Judas Window. And that tore it, you see.'

'Did it? What's the Judas Window? Look here, you're not going to say there was any hocus-pocus about those steel shutters and locked doors, are you?'

'No.'

'What about the door, then? Are they right in saying that the door really was bolted on the inside; and that it was a good solid door,, so that the door couldn't be and wasn't tampered with in any way from the outside?'

'Sure. They're quite right in sayin' all that.'

We all took a drink of beer. '1 won't say it's impossible, because you have been known to pull it off before. But if this isn't some kind of technical evasion -?'

Some inner irony seemed to appeal to H.M.

'No, son. I mean exactly what 1 say. The door really was tight and solid and bolted; and the windows really were tight and solid and bolted. Nobody monkeyed with a fastening to lock or unlock either. Also, you heard the architect say there wasn't a chink or crevice or rat-.hole in the walls anywhere; also true. No, I'm tellin' you: the murderer got in and out through the Judas Window.'

Evelyn and I looked at each other. We both knew that H.M. was not merely making mysteries', he had discovered ·something new, and he turned it over and over in his mind with fascination. 'The Judas Window' had a sinister sound. It suggested all sorts of images without a definite one emerging. You seemed to see a shadowy figure peering sin; and that was all.

'But damn it,' I said, 'if all those circumstances are true, there can't be any such thing! Either there is a window or there isn't. Unless, again, you mean there was some peculiar feature in the construction of the room, which the architect didn't spot -?'

'No, son, that's the rummy part of it. The room is just like any other room. You've got a Judas Window in your own room at home; there's one in this room, and there's one in every court-room in the Old Bailey. The trouble is that so few people ever notice it.'

With some difficulty he hoisted himself to his feet. He went to the window, his cigar fuming, and scowled out at the clutter of roofs.

'But now -' continued H.M. soothingly. 'We got work to do. Ken, I want you to take a letter to Mary Hume in Grosvenor Street: Just get an answer yes or no, and come back straightaway. I want you to hear the afternoon sittin', because they're first going to put Randolph Fleming in the box, and I've got some very searchin' questions to put to him - about feathers. Fact is, if you will follow very closely the testimony that has been given and will be given in court, you'll see just where I want to get my witnesses, and why.'

'Any instructions?'

H.M. took the cigar out of his mouth and contemplated it. 'Well ... now. Considerin' that I don't want you to get into any trouble, no. Just say you're an associate of mine, and give the note I'll write for you to Mary Hume. If the little gal wants to talk about the case, go right ahead and talk, because your knowledge is pretty limited. If anyone else tackles you about it, let your tongue rattle freely, and it wouldn't do any harm to spread an atmosphere of mysterious disquiet. But don't mention the Judas window.'

It was all I could get out of him. He called for paper and an envelope; he scribbled a note at the table - and scaled it. The problem seemed to be one of words as well as facts, in those three words of the Judas window. When

I went downstairs I had a confused idea of thousands of houses and millions of rooms, piled into the rabbit warren of London: each respectable and lamp-lit in its long line of streets: and yet each containing a Judas window which only a murderer could see.

V

'Not an Ogre's Den'

THE taxi-driver who set me down before Number 12 Grosvenor Street eyed the house with interest. It was one of those narrow dun-coloured places in whose windows there are nowadays many To Let signs, set up from the street inside a little paved patch of yard with an iron railing round it. A narrow paved passage separated it from the house on the left. I went up the steps to the vestibule, out of a raw wind that was raking Grosvenor Street at the turn of the afternoon. The trim little maid who answered the door-bell began to close the door before the words were out of my mouth.

'Sorry-sir-can't-see-Miss-Hume-ill -'

"Will you tell her I have a message from Sir Henry Merrivale?'

The maid darted away, and the door wavered. She had neither invited me in nor closed it on me, so I went inside. In the hall a great grandfather clock looked at you with a no-nonsense air, and seemed to rustle rather than tick. By an agitation of draperies on an arch to the left you could follow the maid's flight. There was a slight throat-clearing inside, and Reginald Answell came out into the hall.

Seeing him now face to face, an earlier impression was confirmed. His long-jawed and saturnine good looks seemed to give him a darkish tinge which did not go well with his light hair. Under a long slope of forehead his eyes were a little sunken, but completely straightforward. Though subdued, he was not now bowed down by that thick humility-before-death he had shown on the stairs of the Old Bailey, and I judged that ordinarily he would be engaging enough.

'You're from Sir Henry Merrivale?' he asked.

'Yes.'

He lowered his voice and spoke with some intensity.

'Look here, old chap: Miss Hume is - not very well. I've just come round to see about it. I'm a - well, I'm a friend of the family, and certainly of hers. If you have any message, I could easily take it.'