The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Thought your pal was home and hosed, Cassie,’ Willoughby said as they wandered the streets outside after the jury had retired. ‘Now I’m not so sure. Old fool’s gone and directed them to find for assisted suicide exactly as one feared he might, and he couldn’t have made his wishes known more clearly to the jury. Not over bar a fall by a long way, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yes, but surely, given the climate of opinion nowadays, Willy,’ Cassie argued, ‘as well as the quite considerable amount of precedent, as you were saying—’

  ‘Nothing on the statute book as yet, old girl. Far as the law goes, with the exception of a proper directive being given to turn off life support, yes? As far as the law goes, taking a life even in mercy is still agin it.’

  ‘Only technically, surely?’ Cassie asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice. ‘In a case like this, even if the jury follows its instructions and finds against the defendant, surely the judge is only going to impose a suspended sentence? Leastways that’s the way cases like this have all been going in the last few years.’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens, old girl,’ Willoughby returned. ‘As far as the law goes, don’t count your chickens until they’re cooked and on the table. Particularly not as far as old booby Bower’s concerned.’

  The jury were out for just under two hours. While they were waiting Willoughby went to pay some courtesy calls to some old colleagues who were in attendance at the Law Courts while Cassie, leaving word where she was going, found a nearby betting shop and watched two races from Cheltenham on SIS. The clerk Willoughby had deputized to act as their runner came to tell her the jury were on their way back in as the runners for the Gold Cup were leaving the parade ring. Cassie and Willoughby both made it back to the court just in time to hear the verdict.

  ‘On the charge of first degree murder we find the defendant not guilty,’ the foreman announced, a decision which was immediately greeted with a victorious whoop by the euthanasia lobby up in the gallery. Judge Bower immediately banged his gavel and demanded complete silence.

  ‘That was a given,’ Willoughby whispered. ‘No-one was going to convict your chum of murder. Not even his nibs.’

  ‘On the charge of manslaughter,’ the foreman continued, ‘we also find the defendant not guilty.’

  This verdict was greeted with even larger whoops of joy from the group above Cassie and Willoughby, an outbreak which took a quite considerable amount of energetic gavel banging by Judge Bower to silence.

  ‘On the charge of assisting a suicide—’ the foreman paused and glanced at his fellow jurors with what looked to Cassie like a perfectly obvious expression of regret.

  ‘Yes, Mr Foreman?’ Judge Bower prompted. ‘And what is your verdict, please?’

  ‘On the charge of assisting a suicide we find the defendant guilty as charged.’

  During the ensuing uproar Willoughby turned to Cassie and put a hand on her forearm. ‘It’s still only a technicality,’ he said over the noise. ‘Whatever my doubts, it really will be most unfortunate as well as highly unfair if the old fool decides to try to make an example. Believe me.’

  But far from feeling reassured Cassie felt only fear. While everyone around her was vociferously denouncing the verdict she was watching Judge Bower, watching his face tighten as he banged his gavel relentlessly, watching his eyes narrow as he observed the disorder in his court. She knew even before he got the silence he demanded and spoke that a token sentence was the thing that was furthest from his mind.

  ‘Prisoner at the bar,’ he began. ‘You have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of assisting in a suicide and according to the letter of the law for this you must be punished. The law states unequivocally that it is wrong to give assistance to anyone who wishes to take their own life, whatever their circumstances and whatever their physical condition, and for those found guilty of such a crime the maximum recommended sentence is one of fourteen years.’ Judge Bower paused, as if to make quite sure his message was getting home as indeed to judge by the utter silence of the courtroom it most certainly was. ‘However,’ he continued, looking back once more at Joel who was still staring up at the ceiling above him. ‘However, taking into account the conditions of this particular case, along with the notable testimonies as to your good character collected on your behalf by your learned counsel, you may be relieved to hear that I have no intention of passing any such sentence on you.’

  Willoughby nudged Cassie in the arm as if to reassure her while everyone in the court room seemed to exhale audibly with relief.

  ‘None the less—’ Judge Bower continued, raising his voice above the murmurs, ‘none the less I do not intend to allow you to walk away from this court a free man. I will not countenance people taking the law into their own hands without qualified guidance, as you did in this particular instance. You have broken the letter of the law and those who stand in flagrante must expect some form of retribution, otherwise the law will stand mocked. I therefore sentence you to four years in gaol—’

  The rest of what Judge Bower had to say was lost in the uproar which immediately followed on his shock pronouncement. While an attempt to restore some order was made, Cassie found herself on her feet staring down at Joel who was still sitting exactly as he had been for the past few minutes, staring up at the ceiling with his arms folded across his chest.

  The usher as well as the judge was calling for silence, but the order was lost and ignored in the furore that had broken out. Finally, in response to a good ten seconds’ worth of gavel hammering a semblance of silence fell as the outraged public retook their seats as directed by the judge, who also advised everyone that he considered all present to be in contempt of court. Undeterred, someone shouted a well-deserved remark at the judge questioning both his intelligence and his birthright.

  ‘He’ll need an armoured car to get out of this place,’ Willoughby muttered. ‘But there you are. Some mothers have the brutes, yes?’

  ‘As I was saying, prisoner at the bar, before I was so rudely interrupted,’ Judge Bower continued, fixing Joel with what Cassie took as an ironic smile. ‘The sentence I have chosen to pass on you is that you shall be detained for a period of four years, with the recommendation that you serve one of those years in a prison to be selected, and that the other three years be suspended, the further time only to be served should you be found to be in any breach of the regulations governing the behaviour of criminals in Her Majesty’s gaols. Take the prisoner down. This court is now dismissed.’

  In vain Cassie tried to catch Joel’s eye as he stood up slowly, but unsurprisingly instead of looking up he was now staring down at the floor and slowly shaking his head in seeming disbelief. In desperation Cassie called out to him, but such still was the noise that he could not have heard her because as the police on either side of him began to lead him down from the dock he was still staring downwards. At the last moment, just as Cassie was about to call him at the top of her voice, he looked up and catching sight of her stopped. The escorting police stopped too, realizing that their prisoner had caught sight of someone, and then they too looked up so that all three men were staring up at her at once.

  But only one looked at her with any emotion other than idle curiosity. As Joel stared back into her eyes Cassie felt her breath catch in her throat. Neither of them did anything except look – they made no gesture, mouthed no message. They just stared into each other’s eyes, but momentarily, before Joel disappeared from view, he suddenly smiled at Cassie, a smile such as she had never seen him give before, a smile so broad and so warm that she felt as if much needed warmth was pouring back into her life. As if she had been cured of an illness.

  Then he was gone from sight, gone before Cassie could return the smile, before she could mouth the words she now knew she wished to whisper to him.

  ‘You need a drink,’ Willoughby said, bending down and taking her arm. ‘You most certainly do. And looking at you, I can tell you so do I.’

  * * *

  She
was allowed to visit him the following afternoon in Wormwood Scrubs where he had been taken pending his transfer to an open prison just outside Oxford. The dull institutional smell could be sensed even outside the gates, but once inside the actual buildings it became the stuff of Cassie’s nightmares, a cloying, gagging composite of floor polish, disinfectant, boiled vegetables, stale nicotine and sweat. The visitors were mostly women, the few males among them being a handful of teenagers doing their best to look hard and uncaring and three or four worn-out-looking older men, fathers obviously come to give weary solace to sons following in their footprints. As they waited Cassie could hear in the distance heavy doors banging closed, raised voices and the faint echoing thud of approaching footfalls. Finally the prisoners arrived and looked round the room to spot their particular visitors.

  Joel was one of the last to come in, ambling along by himself at the rear of the queue, his hands clasped behind his back, his face, much paler, lit as ever by the brilliance of his dark brown eyes. In response to Cassie’s wave he raised his eyebrows and without any increase in his pace he wandered over to the table where she was sitting, pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down as if prison was the most normal place in the world to find himself with Cassie.

  For a moment they just sat looking at each other in silence, eye directly to eye, a look which said so much of what needed to be said before Joel once again raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ Cassie replied.

  He drummed the top of the table with the fingers of one hand. ‘You didn’t by chance bring any cigarettes, I suppose?’

  Cassie opened her bag and took out a pack of Gitanes Blondes which she slid across the table to him.

  ‘It’s only while I’m banged up, you know,’ Joel explained, ‘I shall give up again the moment I’m out. As I think I told you before – giving up smoking’s easy. I should know—’

  ‘You’ve done it so often,’ Cassie finished for him.

  ‘Fancy you remembering that,’ he said, staring at her as he began to undo the pack.

  ‘Fancy,’ Cassie agreed.

  Having got the pack open, Joel took out a cigarette and looked at it as if he had never seen one before. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ he said. ‘Not in person, at least.’

  ‘You nearly didn’t,’ Cassie replied. ‘But I guess I still haven’t learned which knob works the head and which one the heart.’ Joel looked up at her again but before he could say anything Cassie went on, ‘It might have helped matters if you’d bothered to reply to my letter.’

  ‘Which letter?’

  ‘Which letter? The one I wrote in reply to the last one you wrote to me, after that night. The night at your club.’

  Joel shook his head. ‘I never got it,’ he said. ‘Promise.’

  ‘You never got it?’

  ‘I never got any letter from you in reply to mine. I swear it.’

  ‘I gave it to Erin to post,’ Cassie said with a frown. ‘Erin would never have forgotten.’

  ‘Then it must have got lost.’

  ‘I wondered why you hadn’t replied.’

  ‘I’d have replied, Mrs Rosse,’ Joel said slowly. ‘I would have replied.’

  ‘What would you have said?’

  ‘If I never got the letter—’ Joel looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Of course,’ Cassie agreed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Anyway.’ Cassie smiled and then glanced quickly round at all the other inmates and their visitors. ‘So how are you? I mean – I mean, how is it? Are you OK?’

  ‘If you mean how’s being in gaol, you must know what they say about the English, surely? If you’ve been to a public school, gaol’s a picnic.’

  ‘You didn’t go to that sort of school. You told me you went to some sort of high class cushy co-ed. Where you bathed naked in the rivers with the girls.’

  ‘So maybe it’s just as well I’m being sent to an open prison.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie continued. ‘Talking of which, what was with the Old Etonian tie?’

  ‘My counsel’s idea,’ Joel said, now lighting his cigarette. ‘The beak was an OE and you know – when you have your back to the wall, every little helps.’

  ‘You are going to appeal?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Joel raised a quizzical eyebrow and blew out a plume of smoke which evaporated above Cassie’s head.

  ‘Joel—’ she began.

  ‘I didn’t do this to become some sort of cause célèbre,’ Joel interrupted. ‘The judge was right. I took the law into my own hands and for that I must pay the penalty. I did what I did with my eyes wide open.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Joel,’ Cassie retorted. ‘You don’t have to martyr yourself for some sort of cause, you know.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mrs Rosse. There’s quite a queue forming behind this particular bandwagon already.’

  ‘But surely if you believe in what you did—’

  ‘Which I most certainly do—’

  ‘Then isn’t it also part of the manifesto to help other people in similar situations?’

  ‘I think I’ve done my sharing and caring bit, Mrs Rosse,’ he replied, tapping the edge of his cigarette on the ash tray. ‘After all, I’m the one who’s been sent to gaol. I imagine what’s happened to me will suit some people right down to the ground and I don’t like that. What I did wasn’t inspired by any sort of reforming zeal. I did what I did because I loved my father. Others can make what they like of it. But I’m no crusader, caped or otherwise.’

  ‘So you’re not going to appeal.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘You’d rather spend a year of your life in gaol.’

  ‘I have a lot of reading to catch up with. I’ll be able to get a lot of work done, too.’

  Cassie looked at him, long and hard. ‘You are the most impossible man I have ever met,’ she said. ‘In fact you’re probably one of the most impossible men in the whole world.’

  ‘True,’ Joel agreed, leaning back as he put out his cigarette. ‘So how are things back at the ranch?’

  Cassie brought him up to date with everything, telling him all about Cheltenham, Mattie’s defection, and the reasons behind her retirement of The Nightingale.

  Joel told her he’d managed to take in that particular piece of news, even though it broke on the very eve of his trial. ‘It would have been hard not to. It made quite a few news bulletins. I was actually quite surprised. When last heard of the horse was working so well.’

  ‘There was nowhere left for him to go, nothing more for him to prove. Besides, he doesn’t owe me anything. He doesn’t owe anyone anything.’

  ‘What about the kidnapping?’ Joel wondered, changing tack. ‘Any further developments?’

  ‘My insurers are still refusing to pay out. It looks as though we’re going to have to go to court.’

  ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’ Joel stuck his lower teeth out over his lip and sucked in some air, drumming his chin with two fingers as he did so. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it is. I’m here for a while, and I’ll need something to occupy me. So why don’t you send me everything you have on the case. Make up a file. Put anything in it which you think might have some relevance to the kidnapping, anything, doesn’t matter how wild a card it may be. One thing I have learned not to mock is a woman’s intuition, so bung it all in. Everything, and send it to me as soon as you can. I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands over the coming twelve months, more than the police are going to have, and anyway I’m a lot more interested in this case than they are.’

  ‘I won’t know where to start.’

  ‘Yes you will,’ Joel retorted. ‘Just look for connections. Find out if there are any connections between anyone on the insurance side and anyone else involved. Other owners, trainers, rivals, anybody. Old lovers even.’

  ‘What about young lovers?’

  ‘Young lovers even,’ Joe
l replied, looking into her eyes once more. ‘Young lovers, old lovers, middle-aged lovers.’

  ‘You know the score, Mr Benson.’

  ‘I think I do. Mr Rosse, the French count, and Mr Christian.’

  ‘Mr Christiansen.’

  ‘Et moi. We can rule three of those out straight away.’

  ‘Leaving—?’

  ‘Monsieur the count. The sadist from the Loire. We can’t rule him out. Hell might have no fury like scorned women, but men can run them pretty close. What was his name?’

  ‘Jean-Luc de Vendrer,’ Cassie replied quietly, remembering her close encounter with the wrong kind. ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

  ‘What exactly was the problem there?’

  ‘The problem was I got him completely wrong. I thought he was gentle and intellectual and he turned out to be the very opposite. Sometimes I really do wonder what he intended to do to me that night.’

  ‘The night you locked him in his closet and did a runner from his château?’ Joel grinned.

  ‘Believe me, Joel, it was no laughing matter,’ Cassie replied grimly, remembering the look in the Frenchman’s eyes as he had told her to lie where she was on the bed and wait for him.

  ‘What do you reckon he was into? Flagellation maybe? Or something worse?’

  ‘I have no idea, Joel. All I knew then was I didn’t want to wait to find out.’

  ‘But you really did shred all his silk designer ties while you were waiting for the housemaid to unlock the bedroom door? I just love you for that.’

  ‘I wish I’d trashed the whole damned room,’ Cassie said. ‘Only he had some really rather lovely pieces.’

  ‘He has to be on the list of suspects. Nothing is fair in love and war, thank goodness. Put it all down.’