The Judas Window

lines were going through my head. It was dispelled in a moment by the surprising and welcome spectacle of Lolly- pop, H.M.'s blonde secretary, pushing her way through the crowd towards us. Evelyn was beginning to say: 'For God's sake, let's get out of here -' with her very attractive face flushed, when she stopped.

'Hooray!' said Evelyn, expelling her breath.

'It's H.M.,' said Lollypop, rather unnecessarily. 'He wants to see you.'

'Where is he? What's he doing?'

'At the moment,' said Lollypop doubtfully, 'I should think he was breaking furniture. That's what he said he was going to do when I saw him last. But by the time you arrive I expect he'll be eating his lunch. You're to go to the Milton's Head Tavern, Wood Street, Cheapside - just round the corner, it is. Oh, dear.'

H.M.'s extensive knowledge of obscure eating-houses is due to his extensive knowledge of obscure people. Everyone seems to know him, and the more disreputable the better. The Milton's Head, tucked up into a crazy little alley off Wood Street, looked as though it had not had its little-paned windows cleaned since the Great Fire. There was now a great fire burning in the tap-room against the raw March cold, and artificial geraniums in the windows emphasized that cold. We were directed upstairs to a private room, where H.M. sat behind an immense pewter tankard and a plate of lamb-chops. With a napkin tucked into his collar, he was chewing at the side of one lamb- chop in that fashion which popular film-tradition attributes to King Henry the Eighth.

'Ar,' said H.M., opening one eye.

I waited, to see which way the mood would go.

'Well,' growled H.M., only half-malevolently, 'I suppose you're not goin' to keep that door open all day? You want me to die of pneumonia?'

'In the past,' I said, 'you've got out of some almighty tight places in the face of evidence. Is it possible that you can get out of this one?'

H.M. put down the lamb-chop and opened his eyes wide. Over his wooden face crept an expression of amusement.

'Ho, ho,' he said. 'So they think they've got the old man licked already, hey?' 'Not necessarily. H.M., is this fellow guilty?' 'No,* said H.M. 'Can you prove it?'

'I dunno, son. I'm goin' to have a very good try. It depends on how much of my evidence they'll admit.'

There was no raising of defences. The old man was worried, and almost showed it.

'Who's instructing you in the case?'

He rubbed his hand across his big bald head, and looked sour. 'Solicitor? There's no solicitor.* Y'see, I'm the only feller who'd believe him. I got a fancy for lame dogs,' he added apologetically.

There was a silence.

'What's more, if you're lookin' for any dramatic last-minute eruption of the hidden witness bustin' into court and causing a row, get it out of your heads. You'd no more cause a row in Balmy Rankin's court than you'd find one on a chess-board. It's all goin' to be on the table all the time - and that's how I want it. One quiet move to another. Like chess. Or maybe like hunting. You remember

*As a rule, counsel for the defence may appear at the Old Bailey only on instructions from a solicitor. But there are two exceptions to this: 'legal aid' cases, and 'dock briefs'. In legal aid cases, counsel is appointed by the judge for a prisoner having no money to employ it. When no legal aid is granted, it becomes a 'dock brief', or 'docker'; the accused has the right to be defended by any counsel, sitting in robes in court, whom he may select. In Answell's case there was, of course, no question of a lack of money. But since Answell -as will appear - refused to have anything to do with anyone except H.M., it became technically a dock brief. I am told that this procedure, though unconventional, is strictly legal. The ordinary dock brief is one of the best features of the impartial Central Criminal Court. Any counsel, however eminent, must serve if selected; it is a point of honour that he must put his best efforts into the defence; and his fee must be - neither more nor less - ?1 3s. 6d.

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.'