Fog of Doubt

by Christianna Brand

  ‘You are all very pig-headed,’ said Cockie, crossly. ‘What the soldier said is not evidence, and what Rosie said to me is not evidence because she did not say it in the presence of the accused; they can’t ask me, and that’s flat.’

  ‘You told Inspector Charlesworth,’ said Melissa in a resentful voice; honestly, thought Cockie, seldom could an apparent murderer have been so loyally defended by the witnesses for the Crown. ‘My dear child, the police hear, and act upon, a great many things that can’t be produced in court. The rules of evidence are peculiar to themselves.’

  Thomas wound strings of stewed chicken round his fork and put the resultant bundle back on his plate, in disgust. ‘What about a “dying deposition”, Cockie. That doesn’t apply?’

  ‘The whole point about a dying deposition is that it must have been made in the knowledge that one was going to die; the law assumes that at such a time, a man will speak the truth.’

  Thomas put his knife and fork together and thrust the plate away from him. He said: ‘Yes, I see. And of course we don’t know whether or not Rosie knew she was going to die.’

  ‘The fact that at the last moment she did tell the truth,’ said Cockie, ‘does seem to suggest that she did.’

  The choice of puddings was narrow and all of them were horrible. ‘Could we have some biscuits and cheese, please, and the coffee at the same time; and we’re in rather a hurry.’ To Cockie, Matilda said, keeping her voice low so that the closely crowded tables about them might not hear what they were saying, ‘How does one know, Cockie, that that was the truth?’

  ‘Why in God’s name should she have told a lie?’

  ‘Charlesworth’s brilliant idea,’ said Thomas, ‘was that Tedward killed Rosie—or let her kill herself with the stuff—to prevent her saying just what, in the end, she did say.’

  ‘Poor Tedward,’ said Matilda; ‘who would have given Rosie the sun and the moon and the stars!’

  ‘It was because I told him about all her lovers,’ said Melissa in a low voice. Her nervous fingers fiddled ceaselessly with the corner of her napkin where the hem was coming undone.

  Matilda was sorry for the girl; she looked so white and worn-out, nowadays, with dark shadows under her eyes and a look of cowed despair that was dreadful in one so young. Thomas made matters no better; he was not unkind, but he could not get out of his mind that she was the instrument through which had been shattered for ever such last little shreds of his happy illusions as had been left to him; and he could not be kind. Matilda said: ‘If Tedward could have killed Rosie, Melissa, it wouldn’t have been because of that: or it wouldn’t have been like that—thought out and planned and put into deliberate operation. If he had hated her because of what you said, he might have raised his hand against her then, in the moment of the first shock. But he didn’t hate her; he may have ceased to love her, I think in a sort of way he did—but he didn’t begin to hate her. You were there—you could see that.’

  ‘Charlesworth could say,’ suggested Cockie, shrugging, ‘that it was a combination of the two. He wouldn’t have killed her, even to save his own neck, because he loved her. But, having ceased to love her—he might have killed her.’

  ‘Except that it wasn’t a case of saving his own neck,’ said Thomas. He reached for the bill and glanced at it and folded it over again on itself, but he still had no idea what the figures were. ‘All Rosie could say was that he had come into the house before she did; in other words, that it was possible for him to have killed the man. That wasn’t going to convict him; the police still had to build up a case, which they’d probably have built up anyway, because nobody was going to just take Rosie’s word for it, if she’d said that he didn’t go into the house ahead of her. And rightly so.’ He unfolded the bill again and this time fished in a pocket for the small roll of crumpled notes which was his fashion of carrying money about. ‘Rosie would have lied like a trooper for Tedward, if she’d wanted to; and the thing is that she would never have let him go through this, she’d have contradicted herself right and left to save him. And she could have; nobody knew anything about that last hour or so, except Rosie. She could have “remembered” that Tedward was only in the house a split second before she was, or she could have made up something about the telephone call which would have made that trick impossible.’ The waitress brought his change, and he dropped a couple of coins back on to the plate and got to his feet. ‘Whatever it was that made Rosie say that about Tedward at the last minute, she would have told lies to save him in the end. Of all people in the world, Tedward was the very last to have wanted her to die.’ His arms flailed as he heaved himself into his coat. He said, irritably, ‘Come on—we’ll be late.’ Everyone else had been ready for five minutes at least.

  Mr. Justice Rivett looked at the clock in his room across the corridor from the court, and sighed and had recourse to his Neurotic Box; in the corridor, counsel and their colleagues settled their wigs so as to be comfortable for the next two hours, having recently been notified that the habit of lifting them off in court and wriggling them on again, really did not look well; up in the gallery hoi polloi pushed and craned, below them the fashionably dressed ladies squeezed themselves not much more decorously into their inadequate seating space. The jury, who had broken up into groups during their lunch in the jury-room and so made friends, filed back into their places; it was odd how familiar the court seemed when they thus returned to it. Cockrill and Melissa and old Mrs. Evans returned to their weary wait in the corridor, and Matilda to her place in the body of the court. An usher stood at the ready with Thomas at his side, waiting to go back to the witness-box; in the dock, a prison officer was alert to give the signal for Tedward to start up the narrow stairs, as though his slow ascent were some nightmare sporting event. Three loud raps at the judge’s entrance, the court scrambled to its feet, stood, bowed, sat down again; and, unleashed, Tedward began mechanically to stump up the stairs, and Thomas to clatter across the floor to the witness-box. Sir William gathered a handful of papers in one hand, tucked up one heel against the bench behind him, and asked another question as though the last had been answered just a moment ago. Outside, the January darkness slowly descended upon the great dome, and along the oak panelling round the recesses of the walls, strip lighting burst into its fluorescent glow. Outside, the newsvendors chalked up in red on their board-papers, ‘MAIDA VALE MURDER CASE: MRS. EVANS IN THE BOX,’ and round the arched doorway a little crowd of early home-goers assembled in the hopes of distinguishing her by her picture in the papers, as she walked down the steps; or of seeing the great black gates open and a dark closed-in van drive away with the murderer and seven other inferior criminals caged up in eight tiny boxy compartments inside. In fact, so distinguished a malefactor would have a car all to himself: a discreet dark car with drawn blinds, slipping in silent anonymity through the byways to Brixton; but they were not to know that and they confidently reported at home having ‘seen the murderer’—Mum and Dad and little Ruby were thrilled; and it did make something to talk about after the uneventful office day.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WE are like the ten little nigger boys, Melissa,’ said old Mrs. Evans, sitting chilled and weary on the bench outside the court. ‘Only you and me left now.’ She quoted: ‘One got frizzled up and then there was one,’ and added thoughtfully that in America they did call it being ‘grilled’ she believed.

  ‘Call what being grilled?’ said Melissa absently, too much appalled by the thought of the ordeal to come, to pay much attention to anything dotty old Mrs. Evans could have to say.

  ‘Being cross-examined,’ said Mrs. Evans.

  ‘It’s all right if you just tell the truth,’ said Melissa stoutly.

  ‘And the-whole-truth; and nothing-but-the-truth.’

  ‘You’re all right if you’ve got nothing to hide,’ said Melissa again.

  ‘Nothing to hide: but then, who in this world has nothing to hide?’

  ‘Well, you for one, Mrs. Evans, I should thi
nk,’ said Melissa, humouring the old thing.

  Mrs. Evans looked down at the little chips of diamond and sapphire, sparkling in her rings. She shifted her tack. ‘Who do you think, Melissa, really killed that man?’

  Melissa shrugged sullenly. ‘The police say it was Dr. Edwards; isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Mrs. Evans. ‘They said it was my son, Thomas, a little while ago; but it wasn’t, after all.’

  ‘Well, who is there left?’ said Melissa. She had brought a magazine with her, hoping to be allowed to read it in peace and—now that she had decided on her plan of campaign—put the coming ordeal out of her mind till the moment arrived. Now, however, on this cold, hard bench, almost within reach of the glass swing doors behind which an innocent man stood in peril of his life, it seemed sort of—indecent—to be reading a lot of tripe about girls marrying their bosses and countesses improving their complexions, and the new tulip neck. She said: ‘Anyway, they’ll never convict Dr. Edwards, so what does it matter?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Mrs. Evans, sharply. ‘Why shouldn’t they convict him?’

  ‘Well, I thought you just said that you didn’t believe he did it?’

  ‘My dear child, who on earth cares what I believe? I’m not on the jury, am I? And, after all, as you yourself say—who else?’

  ‘As far as the jury’s concerned,’ said Melissa, ‘anyone else. The jury don’t know anything about the rest of us.’

  ‘They’ve all been reading the papers all this time. I know they’re told to “put it out of their minds”, but after all, of course they can’t really do that; I mean, they can’t just forget that the police from the first were convinced that it wasn’t an “outside job”, they can’t just forget how few people that leaves in! And they must have read about Thomas being charged and released, and about me having arthritis and not being able to hit people over the head, worse luck; so that only leaves you and Matilda. And they know all about your alibi with that Belgian prince or whatever he was; no, he was a Pole, wasn’t he?—or wasn’t he? He never did turn up, did he?’

  Melissa swung round on her, violently. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Mrs. Evans looked blank. ‘My dear child, what is the matter? I only said …’

  ‘If the police accept my alibi …’

  Mrs. Evans sat for a long, long minute in silence staring down at the little, sparkly stones. She said at last, slowly: ‘I’ve been trying to think, Melissa, why I should have thought for a moment that that man was a Belge. I’ve remembered now: it was Raoul Vernet, wasn’t it, who was a Belge? Everyone always goes on as if he’d been French, but he wasn’t, he was a Belgian. He came from Brussels, he was on his way there when he died.’ And she put out her hard old hand and caught Melissa by the wrist and said, ‘ When was it you were at your finishing school in Brussels, my child?’

  A uniformed arm pushed open the glass swing-door of the courtroom; a voice cried: ‘Next witness: Miss Melissa Weeks.…’

  The light in the wooden canopy over her head turned Melissa’s smooth hair to a casque of shining bronze. Devoid of other armour, she took refuge behind it, drooping her head so that the burnished sweep of it covered half her face; her voice was an almost unintelligible whisper, she clutched at the wooden ledge of the witness-box with shaking hands. Self-consciousness run riot, thought Sir William irritably; he had only a few routine questions to put to her, she had been through it all before at least twice in the Magistrate’s court. The judge, sorting through his box with a forefinger in search of a certain kind of pill, glanced up and said impatiently that the witness had nothing to be afraid of and she really must speak up. It was very important that they should all hear what she had to say. (Not that it is, he thought; the jury know the verdict already—and nothing she or anyone can say will change their minds.) Now—would she please turn and face that gentleman over there, and he would put his question to her once again and this time they all wanted to hear her reply. Sir William, infected by the prevailing desire for more noise, bawled out his question once more; and Melissa, thus harried, croaked out harshly that yes, she had heard voices in the hall and gone up from her basement flat and seen them all standing there, Dr. Edwards and Mrs. Evans and Rosie, all standing there looking down. And she had seen the body lying there on the floor, croaked Melissa, concentrating fiercely on making herself audible, only this time the feet were sticking up in the air and she realized that they must have turned him over on his back.…

  The hush fell by degrees; as though touched by the wand of the wicked godmother, first counsel, then judge, then jury, witnesses, spectators, officials, the prisoner and his wardens in the dock were stricken silent and immovable, till at last, for a long moment, all was absolutely still. It was like the lull before an earthquake when all nature holds her breath in terrified anticipation of the violence to come: heavy, oppressive, menacing, interminable. And yet it ended; there was a sharp crack as the judge snapped-to the lid of his cheap tin box, and he leaned forward, over the arm of his chair and said in a voice almost as sharp as the crack of the box: ‘What do you mean by “this time”? Had you seen it before?’

  Melissa stood shuddering in the little box, her white hands gripping the ledge, her face like a dead face, white and blank with wide-open, sightless eyes. Her mouth opened and shut but no sound came. She tried again, and her jaw chattered like the jaw of a cat, watching flies on a window pane; but she managed at last to splutter out a single word.

  Yes.

  Edwin Robert Edwards—not guilty of the murder of Raoul Vincent Georges etcetera, etcetera; for if Melissa had seen the body lying there before Tedward’s car ever arrived at the house, then that was the end of the case against the accused.…

  Both counsel were on their feet, looking for guidance to his lordship. He sat for a long moment looking down at the little box in his hand, and then opened it and replaced the digestive tablet. ‘Let the witness sit down and rest for a moment.’ He motioned to the woman police officer, standing uncertainly on the steps leading up to the witness-box. ‘I daresay she would like some water—or perhaps you have something a little more stimulating …?’ He swung round and hooked himself over the other arm of the chair. ‘Well, Sir William—this was not in the depositions?’

  ‘No, indeed, m’lord,’ said Sir William ruefully.

  ‘No. The question now arises …’ He leaned his chin on his hand and gave himself over to earnest consideration; but already his breakfast sat more lightly on that uneasy stomach of his, for the thought that he would not be called on to pronounce the death sentence on this sad-eyed man, who through the long hours had sat with bowed head and sagging shoulders in the dock before him.

  Tedward’s head was bowed no longer. He sat straight in his chair, his hands gripping the edge of the box, his eyes blazing in his haggard face. All about him the court seethed with the slightly hysterical excitement of those who rejoice in holy places. Tilda sat gripping Thomas’s hand, trying to see over the edge of the dock, to signal her triumphant happiness to the prisoner there. The fashionable ladies could or could not see what on earth the girl had said that had made all this difference, and explained it to each other with greater or less sense, usually in opposite ratio to their greater or less sense of dress. Up in the gallery, a young man shoved his way through the protesting crowd and, his own face very white, stared down at the white face in the witness-box.

  The consultation ended, Sir William shrugged and smiled a little ruefully again, and sat down. James Dragon rose to cross-examine. The Judge said: ‘If the witness would like to remain seated …? Would you like to stay sitting down?’ In stalls and upper circle and gallery and pit, the audience settled back in their places in eager anticipation, for though the first act might have dragged a bit, the curtain had been terrific and now things looked like speeding up. Melissa shook her head mutely in response to the judge’s invitation and got to her feet and, with the back of her hand, brushed aside her hair. It immediately fell forward,
heavily, over her cheek again.

  Mr. James Dragon. ‘Um—Miss Weeks: you say that when you came up and found them all standing over Raoul Vernet’s body in the hall—that was not the first time you had seen it there? Is that what you say?

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Melissa.

  ‘You had seen it there earlier?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Melissa.

  ‘How much earlier? How long before?’

  ‘About two or three minutes.’

  ‘Can you tell us more exactly? Two minutes? Or three minutes?’

  ‘Three minutes,’ whispered Melissa.

  ‘Perhaps you had better, just in your own words, tell us under what circumstances you saw this body in the hall?’ He glanced at the judge and opposing counsel; you see, I can’t extract it by questioning, his glance said—I don’t even know myself what we’re talking about. ‘Now—just in your own words.’

  ‘And I’m sure you will do your best to let us all hear your words,’ said his lordship, benignly.

  Melissa pushed back her hair again and lifted her head. ‘I—I came up into the hall.… No, first I went out to pool the dog. I went out by the basement door, by the garage in the front of the house. And then I went up to the hall by the basement stairs and I saw him lying there.’ She stopped.

  ‘I see. He was lying there.’

  ‘Yes. He was lying on his face with his head towards the bureau, and one arm sort of still half-way up the bureau; it looked as though his feet had sort of skidded away from under him and he’d slithered down the bureau. He had the telephone receiver in his other hand. It was sort of lying outwards, on the floor.’

  Counsel shifted about among his papers. ‘Perhaps, m’lord, the jury might see, er, Exhibit six; that’s the police photograph of the body arranged as it was alleged to have been found. When the police saw it, of course, m’lord, it had been turned over.’

  The jury were by now fairly well inured to photographs of Raoul Vernet’s dead body and they passed it along the rows, earnestly studying it, two at a time, like people in church sharing hymn books. Allowing for a good many ‘sort of’s’, Melissa had described the position of the body accurately enough.