Fog of Doubt

by Christianna Brand

  She had been through most of this once already in the magistrate’s court and was familiar with the curious means to which counsel must resort in obtaining the required information from his witnesses, without asking questions that would put the answers into their mouths. ‘… And the next day—did you see someone …?’ ‘… That morning—did you do something …?’ She obediently volunteered, therefore, that Raoul Vernet had been her friend (she departed somewhat from the oath she had sworn a few minutes earlier, in describing the exact nature of her friendship with Raoul, but consoled her conscience with the reflection that the oath applied only to relevant facts and that this had really nothing to do with the case), and that he had rung her up on the morning of his death and said that he ‘wanted to have a talk with her’. No, they had never got around to their talk.… Well, all right, Counsel might think that was curious, but she supposed a Frenchman would have too much respect for his digestion to spoil his dinner with an unpleasant discussion. ‘You know what French people are,’ said Matilda, falling into her own easy stride as the mists of unfamiliarity gradually cleared and she began to see Sir William as just a rather attractive man trying to get her to admit something she didn’t want to—just like so many attractive men, all one’s life!—‘they’re always worrying about their ventres and things, aren’t they?’ As to why she should have expected it to be an unpleasant discussion, well, it usually was when people said in that sort of dark way that they ‘wanted to talk’ to you. She glanced up at the judge, sitting austere and remote behind his great desk, just a little to the right of the black and gold sword that hangs, point up, beneath the Royal Arms, and for an instant thought that she recognised an answering gleam; excitement rose in her as she felt the old magic begin to work, knew that she had won him over, knew that so the jury would be won over, knew that for all Sir William’s cleverness, while she was in the witness-box the court was ‘on her side’. Sir William saw the lift of her head and the light in her eye, and thought: I shall have to keep on the right side of this one! She was his witness but she was frankly reluctant. The man in the dock was her friend.

  So they came at last to the hour of the murder. ‘Did you then—go somewhere?’ ‘Yes, I went upstairs.’ ‘What did you do there?’ ‘Well, first I went to my—well, actually she’s my grandmother-in-law, to help her to get ready for bed.…’

  A couple of minutes with Gran, five minutes alone in her room, ‘doing her face’, back to Gran for another five minutes or so, and then to the nursery as the clock struck half-past nine. As she went she had called down that she wouldn’t be long, but there had been no reply. No, you couldn’t see down to the hall from there.

  ‘You were upstairs in all—about how long?’

  ‘Between twenty and twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘During this time—did you hear any disturbance in the hall?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Matilda. ‘But you see …’

  ‘Just answer the questions, Mrs. Evans; don’t elaborate.’

  Matilda went slightly pink and folded her lips. Sir William thought, Now I’ve done it!—but I had to stop that one. Having gained the admission he wanted, however, he was a great deal too clever to press the point or even to ask a further question to make the significance clear. The defence would do that for him, they couldn’t help themselves, when they came to cross-examine. ‘Later on, however, did you hear something in the hall?’

  ‘No,’ said Matilda with an air of bland surprise; not elaborating.

  ‘You heard nothing?’

  ‘No,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Well, come, you haven’t lived in a world of silence from that hour to this. When did you next hear something?’

  ‘When I opened the door and went downstairs to the hall,’ said Matilda, with a most regrettable air of sucks to you.

  With nobs on, thought James Dragon, lolling back against the polished wooden bench, watching his colleague with an air of pitying surprise not lost, and not intended to be lost, upon the jury. When at last he rose to cross-examine, he came straight back to this point. ‘While you were upstairs—you heard no sounds at all from the ground floor?’

  ‘No, nothing, till I came out and went downstairs and found Dr. Edwards and Rosie in the hall.’

  ‘Did you hear them arrive?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Matilda.

  ‘You didn’t hear the car? Or the front door opening?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But the window was closed while the baby was out of her cot.’

  ‘Earlier, you were in old Mrs. Evans room?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t hear anything from there either,’ said Matilda obligingly.

  ‘It would have been possible, then, for this man to have been killed in the hall, at any time during the twenty-five minutes when you were upstairs without your hearing a disturbance?’

  ‘Well, he was, wasn’t he?’ said Matilda. She had seen something of Mr. Dragon during the nightmare of preparation for Thomas’s trial, and knew just where she was with him.

  ‘Now, you looked down to the hall and—well, just describe in your own words the scene you saw there.’

  It would be there for ever, petrified in her memory like a fly in amber—herself, with her hand on the banister at the turn of the stairs, the front door standing open with the grey fog curling in and, wreathed about with the fog, like a scene from the witches’ heath in Macbeth, Tedward standing with Rosie close at his shoulder, her hand clutching his sleeve, both lifting their heads sharply to stare up speechlessly at her; and at their feet, the long, thin body in the too bright suit, the pointed brown shoes, toe down to the floor, the ringed blue socks; the terrible head. ‘They were standing close together.… Well, I took it for granted that they’d come in together.… No, nothing at all to suggest that she came in after him.… They both just looked horrified.…’

  ‘At what stage did Dr. Edwards say that the man was dead?’

  ‘I think it was almost the first thing. I said, “Is he dead?” and he said “I’m afraid so,” or something like that.’

  ‘Did he say how long he’d been dead?’

  ‘Well, at one stage he said that he didn’t think he’d been dead very long.’

  ‘Dr. Edwards—the defendant—he said that? He said that the man had not been dead very long?’

  ‘Yes. He said, “He wasn’t killed outright,”—at the time of the telephone call, I suppose he meant—“he’s only been dead a minute or two.” ’

  ‘“He’s only been dead a minute or two”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In view of the case against the accused—that he had himself just killed the man, a minute before, that would seem a dangerous admission on his part?’

  Counsel for the Crown turned back a page or two of his notes and scribbled in the margin; plans for his closing speech ran like a Mr. Jingle conversation, through his mind. ‘Clever move—other doctor back any minute—police surgeon too—confirm time of death—going to be known anyway—suggest it himself—get it in first.…’

  ‘Was any reference made to the telephone call?’

  ‘Yes, he said—well, I can’t exactly say how it came about or what order it was all said in, but he did say that it must be nearly half an hour since Raoul Vernet had rung up and said he’d been hit, and that he must have passed out and been lying there unconscious.…’

  The shorthand writer in his little box just below the witness-box was perhaps the only person in court who was not quite sorry when Matilda, with a tentative little bow to the judge, was led away to a seat tucked down on the left-hand side of the dock; heaven send him a brief, snappy one next, thought the shorthand writer, upon whose aching hand Matilda’s otherwise rather charming verbosity had made excessive demands. His prayer was granted, for Thomas Evans came next and anything less chatty it would have been hard to imagine. He wore the resentful look he always assumed when he was ill at ease, and spoke in a low, grumbling voice. He was very pale and his hair, which had been brushed down r
uthlessly into a sort of ordered thatch, now stood on end again with the weary passing through and through of his fingers as they waited wretchedly on the bench in the corridor outside the court. Yes, he had known the accused for a long time; they were in partnership together. Yes, he had had a sister named Rose Evans. Yes, his sister was now dead. Yes, the accused had known her for many years, since she was a child. Yes, the accused was much older than she was, twenty years older than she was.…

  ‘Was he fond of your sister, do you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Very fond of her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Had you, in fact, reason to believe that he was in love with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas. He lifted his head and looked across the intervening space to where Tedward sat heavy and sad, staring back at him; and his look said, What can I do, old boy?—they’ve subpœna’ed me and got me here and I’ve sworn an oath to tell the truth: and that was the truth, wasn’t it? No easy compromises for Thomas Evans; the truth was the truth.

  They came to the message, the message that had been written on his pad. It had been there when he came in that evening. He hardly remembered the thing—he had copied the name and address into his book and chucked the little paper into the fire. Well, the fire had been there and he had thrown the paper in, that was all. No, that was not his usual procedure, but messages were usually written down on a pad, and he naturally didn’t throw the pad into the fire each time. No, this message had not been actually on the pad, but on a small piece of paper lying on the pad. No, not very unusual: if someone took the message on the upstairs extension, they’d write it down on any handy scrap of paper and leave it by the pad. Well, all right, Counsel could think it as casual as he liked; we did not all live our lives in hourly expectation of having to produce exhibits for a murder trial.… He mumbled an apology at his lordship’s intervention, but his expression said, Then tell this damn fool not to comment, and I won’t either.

  The court had heard from Matilda that Tedward had called at the house that morning. Could the writing on the slip of paper have been Dr. Edwards writing? ‘It could have been anybody’s writing,’ said Thomas. ‘It was in printed letters, the address and a couple of words of diagnosis.’

  ‘Is it usual to have such messages taken down in printed letters?’

  ‘You haven’t seen my secretary’s handwriting,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Might Dr. Edwards have known of your secretary’s habit of taking down these messages in printed writing?’

  ‘He might have.’

  ‘He was a constant visitor to your home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he almost certainly did know?’

  ‘Yes,’said Thomas, bleakly,once again; and Sir William’s Mr. Jingle ran through his head again, ‘Called at house—heard man was coming—resolution formed—note left in surgery—mallet—gun …’ But they had not yet come to the mallet and the gun; he stopped jingling and applied himself to the task of extracting in monosyllables from Thomas that Tedward would have known where the mallet was kept, and in looking for the mallet might well have come across the gun. As to the fog.… Counsel had never quite made up his own mind whether or not the fog had been necessary to Tedward’s plan. Matilda had admitted, grudgingly because she did not see where the question might be leading, that already that morning there had been signs that by nightfall the fog would be thick. He might as well get them all to agree to that; if he found later on that he didn’t want it, he need not use it. Thomas duly admitted that he had actually remarked that morning that it ‘looked like fog’.

  Really, the jury quite pitied that poor Counsellor for the Prosecution, the way the Counsellor for the Defence kept looking at him as if to say, You poor thing, can’t you think of nothing better than that? They sat in two patient rows of six, dutifully trying to remember every single answer to every single question, and utterly fogged as to what it was all leading up to, except that of course he done it, but they mustn’t make up their minds to that till the end. One thing, that Mr. Dragon did look so contemptuous about all this stuff about the fog. And then going for the doctor like one o’clock. Dr. Evans, you don’t set up to be a weather prophet.…? When you say you thought there would be fog.…? So that you couldn’t have counted on there being a fog, if you had happened to want a fog that night.…? In fact, all you could say was that you thought there might possibly be a fog.…?

  (‘Fog useful after all—lead old James up garden about fog—plan not affected either way by fog—leave girl in car—close door of hall—couldn’t see anyway—…’ The fog would keep Thomas Evans out of the way for a longer period, but then the crime had been planned for much earlier, no doubt; for a quarter past nine, perhaps, as soon as Matilda Evans went upstairs; it was Rosie’s late arrival that had kept them back till almost the last moment. ‘Even so—all not lost—arrive at house—no light in nursery—plan abandoned—telephone call an unexplained hoax.…’)

  At five to one, his lordship looked up at the clock beneath the public gallery and said civilly to S’Will that if it suited him, perhaps this would be a convenient moment to adjourn? Sir William, who knew all about the Judge’s digestive troubles during the course of a murder trial said yes, certainly, m’lord, of course, of course. Tedward awoke from a sort of dream of pain and stupor and, at a touch on his arm, rose to his feet. His lordship gathered up the black cap; it lay, a narrow, folded square, through the ring of his thumb and forefinger, falling equally across his palm and the back of his hand. He bowed to the court and the court, including a great many people who had no call to do so, since he was not addressing his courtesies to them, bowed back. The Sheriff hitched up his fur-edged gown and stood aside at the door and his lordship bustled through. He thought, I hope to goodness they’ve laid on something reasonable for my lunch. The prison officers touched Ted-ward on the arm again and he turned with them and plunged below; they had laid on something very reasonable for him at any rate, and he ate it, all alone in his narrow, tiled cell, at the tiny table, perched on the single, small wooden chair. The smell of dust and disinfectant pervaded all.

  In the end, they had all gone wretchedly and self-consciously down to the Garden of Remembrance and deposited Rosie’s ashes in an arbitrarily chosen spot. For a moment she came to the door of his cell and said that she was too utterly mis. to see him cooped up there, and to think that it was ackcherly, let’s face it, her who had put him there; and she put out her hand to him and he clutched at it, and saw that it was a hand of ashes, really, of pale, pink and white, feathery ash, like cigarette ash, that broke and fell the moment he touched it. Oh, well, he thought, scrubbing away the vision from his aching eyes, what the hell!—in a few weeks time I shall be dead and out of it. But he thought again, with bitter pain, that Rosie had been like this vision of the ashen hand; you thought that she was real and you put out your hand in faith, to her reality and her loveliness; and she fell away to dirt and ashes at your touch.

  It was extraordinary, it was fantastic, even after all they had been through during the various appearances, both of Thomas and of Tedward, at the Magistrate’s court, to be having lunch during the adjournment interval of Tedward’s trial—to be sitting in a restaurant, eating their lunch as though they were ordinary people, jostled against by ordinary people, whose eyes would have popped out of their heads had they known that these were important witnesses at the trial of Dr. Edwards—you know, that chap that done that Frenchman in, hit him on the head with a mastoid mallet, just like what they must’ve used on our Ernie in hospital, and I’m sure if I’d’ve know what they did there, hammering away at the pore child with a great sort of a hammer like that, I’d’ve never have let him go.… Cockie sat with them; he was being called, in his private capacity, as a witness to the scene on the night of Rosie’s death. ‘Yes, I know you’ve already given evidence about it, Tilda, and probably they’ll ask Thomas too, when they resume this afternoon; but they have to get what everyo
ne says—not just a selected few of the people who were there. There might be discrepancies.’ He broke off as the waitress came round with their plates of chicken casserole. ‘It looks like boiled handkerchiefs,’ said Matilda. ‘Well, never mind.…’ When the girl had gone, she said: ‘You’re sure they won’t ask you about—later on?’

  ‘I shall testify to being the last person to see Rosie alive,’ said Cockie briefly; and once again wished to God they would not all feel sorry for him because he had been the one to get up and go away and leave Rosie to die. He said, coldly: ‘Her name must come up a good deal, and there has to be formal evidence as to why she’s not here to testify. That’s all.’

  ‘If they ask you what she said about Tedward …?’ said Thomas hesitantly.

  ‘I’ve told you, they won’t ask me; they can’t.’

  Matilda sat staring down at her untouched plate. ‘Just if they did, Cockie—you wouldn’t say …? I mean, it would be the end of Tedward, if that was said, flat out in court.’

  ‘I daresay Cockie would get round it,’ said old Mrs. Evans; she flashed him a smile that had stood her in good stead throughout her life—a smile that said that men were so clever and strong and kind that all one had to do was just rely on them, and everything would be all right. ‘Cockie doesn’t want poor Tedward to suffer, any more than any of us.’