“If you please. My eyes aren’t that good.”
Macdonald read the statement aloud; then he said quietly, “You can’t read, can you?”
She flushed, the dull red covering her lace. “I never had much schooling,” she said, “but Sister, her knew I did my work. Her never found nothing to complain of.”
“You’ve worked for her for over twenty years. That speaks for itself,” replied Macdonald. She took Reeves’s pen and signed her name, slowly and laboriously. Then she turned to the door.
“Please to step this way,” she said. She was obviously accustomed to showing people round the house.
3
“I’ll lay any money Nurse Barrow has been ‘inside,’” said Reeves reflectively as the two men left the house and went through the gate in the clipped yew hedge which divided the Gramarye drive from the park.
Macdonald nodded. “I’m with you. We’ll have to get on to Records. It’s curious how it came out: she made a perfectly spontaneous anecdotal statement: ‘You’re on trial, Hannah.’ That remark had become a joke and she repeated it without thinking and then suddenly became aware of the form of words she’d used.”
“I know. I saw her eyes contract and her jaw tighten as you repeated her words,” said Reeves.
“It’d have been so much in character,” said Macdonald slowly. “Monica Emily Torrington liked to have people about her whom she’d got a hold over. It’s quite possible she got Hannah Barrow through one of the Prisoners’ Aid Societies. Got her, kept her, and dominated her. I can well believe that if Hannah Barrow showed any signs of rebelliousness when she first came here the Warden would just say, ‘You’re on trial, Hannah,’ and the double-edged words became a sort of joke as the years went on. I wonder what she was tried for.”
“For her life,” said Reeves. “It’s over twenty years ago, and when you repeated ‘on trial’ she was shaken to her boots, poor old trout. A little thing like a sentence for petty larceny never kept its terror for twenty years.”
“I think you’re right there, Reeves. I may query your navigation occasionally, but when it comes to a judgment of that kind, you’re more often right than any magistrate I ever met.”
“Old lags,” said Reeves meditatively. “I’ll go out of my way to talk to ‘em whenever I get the chance. And I’ve sometimes felt I’d turn the job in. These high-hats talk a lot of hot air about reform. The system does something to ‘em, but it doesn’t reform them. It drives the devil which possesses them under cover, deep down, and clamps it down with fear.”
Macdonald stopped and stared at the other. “So you feel like that about it?”
“Yes, Chief. So do you. That old trouts worked her fingers to the bone for over twenty years. I wish one of these social-welfare dames had fitted a pedometer to Hannah Barrow’s flat feet and noted how many miles a day she walked in that penitentiary she’s so proud of. Twenty years—and at the end of it the sight of you and me, making her remember, turned her stomach. Oh, I know someone’s got to do our job and it’s a good job by and large, but I often feel we’ve slipped up somewhere when I see the mixture of cunning and fear on an old lag’s lace.”
“Cunning and fear,” said Macdonald reflectively. “Flow much fear was there and what was she afraid of, past or present?”
Reeves stopped by a trail of wild roses, stared at them as though fascinated, and then took out his knife, snipped a flower off, and put it in his buttonhole. “I hardly believe in them,” he said. “There’s something about them. Sorry. About the old trout. I agree the worm may turn. May get suddenly browned off and run amok. I’ve been learning quite a bit about this Monica Emily. Twenty years of her. Twenty years of being alternately sweated and prayed over. Twenty years of saying, ‘She’s wonderful’ and then running amok over some small silly thing. I agree it’s in character. But look at the size of the little cuss. About five feet nothing. She’d have had to stand on tiptoes to reach Monica Emily with a coal hammer. And the old trout puffs like a grampus and her stays squeak with every breath she takes and she sucks her teeth. Likewise she’s sot shocking corns, not to mention bunions, and her evesight’s about as good as a bat’s.’
“All quite true,” said Macdonald, “particularly about the stays. But she could have taken the stays off.
“That’s right out of character.” said Reeves firmly. “Women like the old trout led lost without their stays, and they never realise they squeak because they’re conditioned to it. My grandmother-in law had squeaky stays, but she said they didn’t. My missis told me so.” Reeves suddenly laughed, his thin keen lace boyish in his mirth. “I hand it to you for high class quotes. Chief, to say nothing of the law of the lever and items like radioactive isotopes, but when it comes to stays I can leave you standing. And her coins aren’t irrelevant, either. This path we re on is steep and rough. I bet the old trout never comes down here. It’d be pain and grief to her with those feet. Where do we go from here?”
“To see the Medical Officer responsible for Gramarye,” replied Macdonald.
“Old Dr. Brown,” said Reeves. “He’s highly thought of in the village. This is where I do my silent act. Incidentally, it was pretty snappy of you to spot that Hannah Barrow can’t read. It all adds up.”
“Yes. It adds up—to a portrait of Miss Monica Emily Torrington.”
“Some of the high-ups are going to get a bit of a shock,” meditated Reeves. “Or aren’t they? The person I’m looking forward to seeing is her ladyship,
