Jonathan shook his head.
‘Will you be much longer?’
‘No, I’m nearly done. I shall need the papers I gave you during the cross-examination.’
And he was nearly done, for, when the judge returned a little later and the trial resumed, he said he knew that by leaving the house without waiting for the nurse or telephoning he had brought the investigation on himself. When the police had come, he had not at first recognised Detective-Inspector Johnson, who from the start had been hostile and aggressive. On his second visit Johnson had been even more truculent, and when he had told Johnson that Trelawney had killed himself Johnson had just looked at him and walked away. He knew he had never been popular with the local police. They had always believed he had been too soft on the criminals they’d caught, but it was only after the second interview that it crossed his mind that Johnson might have been in the Stringer case. He had looked out his old court notebook and found that Johnson had indeed been one of the junior officers when he, as the judge, had ruled Stringer’s statement inadmissible because of the oppressive questioning by the police. It was then that he knew what to expect. He trusted none of the local police, and the incident over his arrest at dawn confirmed his fears. He had not told the police about his family and his financial relationship with the dead man for he had destroyed the tapes of his conversations with Trelawney and had forgotten about the last tape. So at the time he had nothing to show them. He sensed Johnson’s satisfaction at having him under investigation. Then the press campaign had started in the Globe. When the policeman returned for a third time he realised that Johnson was determined to implicate him. He had already told Johnson that Trelawney had commited suicide, and in view of Johnson’s attitude he resolved to remain silent. When he heard that Patrick Trent, whose handling of the Stringer case had also come in for criticism after Jonathan’s direction to acquit Stringer, was the lawyer in charge of the case for the DPP, and when Symes told him about Trelawney’s letter to Lightwood, and when the pressure in the press mounted, he knew he would have to face trial.
Here he paused, looking down over the edge of the dock into the well of the court, his head bowed. Then he looked up at the jury, looking more tired and even older and frailer than before. ‘So, whatever your verdict,’ he concluded, ‘David Trelawney got what he wanted. As I said when I began, it is due to his malevolence that I am here. But I say as solemnly as I am able’ – and he said each word slowly, deliberately – ‘when I went to that house on the afternoon of June 21st, I wanted Trelawney dead. But I did not kill David Trelawney. He killed himself.’
There was a long silence before he turned to the judge. ‘That is my evidence, my lord.’
Graham nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He looked at Bracton. ‘Well, Mr Bracton?’ Bracton rose, gathering his robe around him.
Joan Bracton had slipped into a place at the back of the court which Brian Graves had arranged should be kept for her. She could see Richard, but she didn’t want him to know she was there.
‘Why did you leave the dead man in that empty house and go away without saying a word to anyone?’ Bracton began very quietly.
Jonathan looked down at his hands gripping the ledge of the witness-box, then up at Bracton. ‘I cannot tell you.’
‘Why – to use your own words – did you run away?’
‘I just felt I had to leave him.’
‘Is that your only explanation?’
‘It is the only explanation I can give. At the time I felt I had to leave, and I did.’
‘But why not wait for the nurse?’
‘I have tried to explain. I had been very moved by what he had said earlier, and I was very startled by what he had done. His death was for me the end of a long story. When he was dead I just needed to get away.’
‘You had sat in that room for some time, with the dying man on the bed only a few feet from you. Why did you suddenly get up and leave? Wasn’t that a strange thing to do, to run away?’
‘It was. But I knew I had to leave.’
‘Why?’
‘I just knew I had to get away from him.’
‘According to you, the man had just killed himself. You had watched him do it. Then, without telephoning anybody or waiting for the nurse, you went away. I ask you again: why?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘I cannot explain. I cannot remember what I thought at that time, except that once he was dead the story was over. So I left.’
‘There was a telephone by the bed. Why didn’t you summon help?’
‘There was nothing that anyone could do and—’
Bracton interrupted him. ‘How do you know? How do you know that someone might not have been able to revive him?’
‘If you mean why did I not summon help immediately after he had injected himself, I was not prepared to do that. He said he wanted to die. That was his choice. He had done what he wanted to do.’
‘To kill himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘When he was dead you knew his demands, his preying on you, would cease?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you were pleased.’
‘When I went to that house on that afternoon I hoped he was dying of cancer. But after I had been with him, and listened to what he had to say, I felt differently.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I was thinking of what might have been. We ought to have been friends.’
‘But you weren’t, were you?’
‘No, we were not.’
‘You were not friends, even before he began making his demands for money, were you?’
‘No, we were not.’
‘Your father preferred David Trelawney to you, his own son?’
‘Yes.’
‘David Trelawney fathered a child on the woman you loved. Was that the reason why you weren’t friends?’
‘It was part of the reason. But there was also other reasons.’
‘What other reasons?’
‘Because of my father and his mother.’
‘That was not his doing, was it?’
‘No, but it had created a link I had not liked. By then we were certainly not friends.’
‘You hated him.’
‘Yes.’
‘And his death suited you very well?’
‘I have admitted that. From the time I heard he was ill I hoped he might die.’
‘So you had a motive for killing him?’
‘In the sense that he had harmed me and preyed on me, that is true.’
‘And you had the opportunity, for you were alone with him in the house?’
‘I had.’
‘So you had motive, you had opportunity, and when he was dead you stole away without a word to anyone. Wasn’t that because, deliberately, in a fit of temper provoked by something he’d said or done, you had killed him?’
‘No, it was not. I have told you what happened.’
‘The doctor told us that Trelawney at that time often dozed or dropped off to sleep, even when people were with him in the room talking to him. Did Trelawney do that when you were with him?’
‘Not before he had injected himself.’
‘You admit you touched the apparatus and the syringe?’
‘Yes. Trelawney asked me to.’
‘If he had been dozing would it not have been easy for you to have gone to the syringe driver on the table and injected him without waking him.?’
‘That is your theory. I do not know if it is a sensible theory or not. All I can say is that it didn’t happen.’
‘I suggest that is what you did.’
‘Then your suggestion is wrong. I did not kill David Trelawney, nor did I help him to kill himself – which is what he did.’
Bracton paused. ‘You came that day because you expected to be given some letters?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you not angry when you found you’d been tricked and only been given blank sheets of paper?’
‘No, by the time I saw there were no let
ters I knew he was dying, if he was not already dead.’
‘You came to him because you wanted those letters and you did not care whether he lived or died. Isn’t that right?’
‘No, I hoped he was going to die. I have never pretended to be sorry he was so ill.’
‘When you were alone in the house and you found he’d lied to you about the letters, wasn’t it then that you saw your chance of ridding yourself of him?’
‘No, that is not right.’
‘It was very easy to do, wasn’t it – just go to the table, and press the syringe and inject him with a fatal dose?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘I have told you. I did not do that.’
‘You could have, couldn’t you?’
‘That is what he wanted you and everyone to believe. But I have told you what happened.’
Colonel Basildon had slipped into his place beside the judge and passed him a note. ‘The children are refusing to go with their grandmother for half-term,’ Graham read. ‘They wish to come to you.’
Not now, Graham thought. Not this now, at the most critical moment in the trial. How could he collect the children himself? How could he have them for the weekend? He whispered to the High Sheriff, ‘Tell them I’ll telephone at five o’clock.’
Colonel Basildon pushed back his chair. The heads of the jury turned and watched him leave.
‘How many times did you pay money to David Trelawney?’ Bracton asked, and the jury turned back to look at Jonathan.
‘Many times.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Yes. Mr Benson has the documents which show the payments I made.’
He has deliberately kept them until now, thought Graves. He knew Bracton would have to ask about the money. Benson had risen from his place and was handing up a sheaf of papers to Jonathan in the witness-box.
‘What do the documents show?’ Bracton asked.
‘That in 1964, 1974 and 1980 I made loans to the Continental and International Trading Cie, registered in Paris, of £20,000, on each occasion against personal guarantees from David Trelawney, who was the president and sole shareholder of that company. Later in 1980 the company became insolvent and my money was lost.’
Harold Benson was still standing below the witness-box, with more documents in his hand, waiting.
‘I have here bank statements, not those which the police seized and examined. Those were my Coutts’ bank statements. For the payments to Trelawney I used the Banque Nationale de Paris, the St Helier branch in Jersey in the Channel Islands. The name of the account is the Wentworth Estate account. My mother’s name. I have the disposal of all the funds in those accounts and I am the sole signatory.
Bracton looked quickly down at Graves. Then he said, ‘You didn’t show these to the police?’
‘No, I did not. The manager of the St Helier branch, Mr Le Quesne, is here. He arrived from Jersey this morning and is outside the court, waiting to give evidence. Do you wish him to be called in?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, he will speak to the truth of what I’m saying. All the signatures on the cheques in this account are mine and in my proper name. Do you wish to see these accounts?’
‘In a moment,’ Bracton said, trying to speak coolly. ‘Have you anything more to produce?’
Jonathan stretched down and took more papers from Benson. ‘Oh, yes, much more. First, I have here Trelawney’s acknowledgements of further personal loans. In 1985 he received from me £20,000; and again two more sums of £20,000 in 1987 and 1990. They appear in these bank statements.’ He held them up.
‘How do they appear in the statements?’
‘As drafts for cash.’
‘Is there anything to show the money went to David Trelawney?’
‘Not in the accounts, no more than the £500 a month which I paid from 1979 until last year. From 1985 David Trelawney had no bank account. He had nothing, and only a life interest in the house in which he lived, which had been purchased by my father. After David Trelawney’s death it reverted to me. But I have in my hand, as I said, Trelawney’s receipts for the major sums in 1985, 1987 and 1990.’ Jonathan looked at the judge. ‘I have marked the relevant entries in the bank statements for easy reference.’
The judge nodded and they were brought to him. After he had looked through them he said: ‘These accounts show a healthy credit balance, with a very substantial sum in the deposit account. Yet in his statement Mr Symes said you told him you had lost £500,000 at Lloyd’s and were in very serious financial difficulties. Is that true?’
‘It is true I told Mr Symes last summer that I had received notice from my agent at Lloyd’s that I must pay £500,000. I wanted Mr Symes to believe that I and my family were in severe financial difficulties so that this information would reach David Trelawney. I wanted Trelawney to believe he could get no more from me because I had none, and that now he had to rely solely on what he could get from the trustees. I hoped this would prevent Trelawney from ever again demanding money from me.’
‘So you had received notice that you had to pay £500,000 to Lloyd’s?’
‘Yes, but what I did not tell Mr Symes was that I had stop-loss arrangements—’
He turned from the judge and faced the jury, ‘In other words I had taken out insurance to cover any losses from Lloyd’s except for the last £50,000. As a result my loss was limited to £50,000. When certain tax consequences are taken into consideration my actual loss was estimated as no more that £4000.’
‘You did not tell Mr Symes about these stop-loss arrangements?’ Graham asked.
‘No, nor was he aware of my bank accounts in Jersey. I had also told others that I had to pay Lloyd’s half a million pounds. I did this because I hoped it would get back to David Trelawney. It did, for Trelawney told Mr Symes, as he also wrote to Lightwood, that I was ruined. But, unknown to me, this fitted the impression he wanted to create – that I desperately needed to get my hands on the money which the trustees were about to pay out in respect of Trelawney’s illness. That was part of his plot. So my plan to deceive him aided his plan to implicate me.’
He leaned again over the rail of the witness-box and took more documents from Harold Benson.
‘This is the notice from my Lloyd’s agent calling on me to send a cheque for £500,000 in July of last year; and this the stop-loss policy and letter which shows that my loss is limited to £50,000. Neither I nor my family are ruined. We are fortunate in still having very considerable financial resources.’
He handed the documents to the usher, who took them to the judge, then to Bracton and lastly to the jury. Jonathan broke the silence. ‘You will also see that the monthly drawing from my account of £500 ceased in May last year. It was in that month that David Trelawney approached the trustees.’
Bracton asked quietly, ‘Why were you paying him all this money?’
Jonathan did not immediately reply, Then he said, ‘I have explained. I paid him because I owed him a great deal.’
‘Because you owed him your life?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fifty years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that sufficient reason to make you pay him scores of thousand of pounds?’
‘I thought it was.’
‘Was that the only reason?’ asked Graham from the bench. ‘In his letter to Major Lightwood, David Trelawney wrote that he had saved your life – and something more. What did he mean by that?’
Jonathan turned towards him, and for a moment was silent. Then he said ‘I do not know. I suppose it was part of the plot to denigrate me and involve me in his suicide.’
‘But how could that further involve you in what you say was his suicide?’ Graham continued. ‘Why does he refer to something more? What could he mean?’
‘I have said. I do not know.’
‘But he must have meant something when he wrote to his friend that he had saved something more than your life. What could it have been?’
‘It
could, I suppose, have something to do with the girl I had wanted to marry. He had slept with her, had a child by her. Perhaps he meant that he had saved me from marrying a girl I shouldn’t have. That she would never have made me happy. I do not know. But that was the kind of man he had become. All I know for certain is that it was I, who, by saving him from bankruptcy, had saved him.’
Graham folded his hands under his chin. Bracton asked, ‘Do you insist that the only reason you paid this money, year after year, month after month, was because many, many years ago Trelawney saved your life in the war? Are you telling the court that that was the only reason?’
‘That and the family connection. He played on that.’
‘How did he save your life? Describe it.’
Jonathan raised his hand and, involuntarily, placed it on his forehead. He began to speak, slowly, carefully. ‘It was in the mountains of North Africa, towards the end of the campaign there. A few of us, including Trelawney and myself, were cut off, surrounded by the enemy. I was lying wounded on the hillside below the summit which we were defending. Another attack was coming. David Trelawney could have abandoned me, but he came for me and stood above me, firing at the attackers, driving them off. Then, despite very heavy enemy fire, he carried me to one of our fox-holes in our positions on the summit and stood guard over me all night while the enemy attacked again and again. Next day the remainder of our battalion counter-attacked from the valley below and we were relieved.’ He paused. ‘If he had not done what he did, I must have died. As he so often said, I owed him everything.’
‘And because of what he had done for you then he later asked you for money – and you gave it to him?’
‘I did.’
‘And he kept demanding and you kept paying, time and time again?’
‘Yes. Our connection through our families was close. He thought he had a claim on me.’
‘But you hated each other?’
Jonathan was silent. Then he said, ‘I have told you. We were not friends. When we were boys my father loved him and not me; my father loved his mother, not mine. Trelawney slept with the girl I grew up with and thought I loved. But he had saved my life.’
‘And for the rest of his life he never let you forget?’
Indictment for Murder Page 22
