Fog of Doubt

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Why should you have been so careful of your appearance, Mrs. Evans? Who did you expect to see?’

  Mrs. Evans pulled herself together. ‘Who? Well, that Frenchman, of course.’

  ‘You expected to see Raoul Vernet?’

  ‘There was nobody else in the house, was there? At least I didn’t think there was.’

  ‘You thought you heard Raoul Vernet moving about in the hall? What did you think he could be doing there?’

  ‘I thought he was probably trying to find the downstairs huh-ha,’ said Mrs. Evans, simply. She shrugged. Hospitality was hospitality, the shrug said, and in the absence of his hostess it was obviously up to anyone else in the house to see that no guest was permitted to wander wretchedly about in search of physical relief. ‘For all I knew, the poor man might be in agony.’

  ‘So you looked over the banisters …?’

  ‘One has to go just a little way down the stairs.’

  ‘And you saw …?’

  The prisoner in the dock got heavily to his feet and said in a loud, clear voice: ‘And she saw—me.’

  Reproof from Bench to dock, reviving sips of water for shocked witness, mutter, mutter, mutter between Judge and counsel and stage manager and accused’s solicitors; mutter, mutter, mutter, unchecked, throughout the court. Matilda sat clutching at the sleeve of Thomas’s overcoat. ‘What on earth does this mean, now? It’s all too terrifying, what docs it mean….?’

  ‘They’re both trying to protect each other, that’s all.’

  ‘How could she have seen Tedward? Tedward was in the car at that time, with Rosie; we know that.’

  ‘Of course she didn’t see Tedward; he’s trying to stop her talking, trying to stop her giving herself away.’

  Matilda’s grip intensified on his coat-sleeve. ‘Giving herself away …? Thomas you don’t think …?’

  ‘My darling Matilda, somebody killed this man. Why do you think I went to prison, why do you think I kept mum about the car, why do you think I went through all that hell.…? When you went up to tell her that Raoul had been killed—she had her wig on again, didn’t she? You told me so yourself. Not pinned on properly, she couldn’t do that: but perched on. Why?—if she’d just been sitting reading in bed.’

  Mutter, mutter, mutter; whisper, whisper, whisper. ‘And I did think it was odd, Thomas, that she shouldn’t have heard anything from her room; her hearing’s so good.’

  ‘He probably did go out to look for the huh-ha. And she went out just as she says; and looked over and saw him there, and took the mallet and crept down.…’

  ‘But the mallet was in the desk downstairs.’

  ‘The mallet was either in the desk downstairs or it was in the chest on the landing—I told the police that, half a dozen times. So there’s only one thing left, there’s only one possible way of escape.…’

  ‘Because, Thomas, she couldn’t have thought that he was Rosie’s lover, she couldn’t have. Rosie’d told her some frightful tarradiddle about a strong, silent young fisherman, sweeping her off her feet.… And, I mean, anyone could see, even from upstairs looking down on his bald patch, one could see that Raoul couldn’t have carried Rosie down to the water’s edge in the moonlight, let alone ravaging her in the boat afterwards.…’

  Shush, shush, shush! went the ushers all over the court; the prisoner had retired defeated, into a fretful silence, anxious, agonized, alert, the witness was on her feet pushing aside the cup of water. ‘No more to drink!’ cried old Mrs. Evans, starting up in the witness-box in outraged virtue. ‘No more of your golden wines to take the memories from my mind and the ache from my heart! They desert you,’ she confided to Mr. Justice Rivett, who sat electrified, gripping the arms of his chair, ‘and then they stand you a couple of champagne cocktails and think everything’s going to be just as it was.’ She added, as she had added to Matilda on the day of Raoul Vernet’s death, that these Frenchified Arabs were always the worst. ‘The worst of the West imposed upon the worst of the East.’ She smiled up at him brilliantly. ‘Quite an epigram! But difficult to say.’ Especially with false teeth, she added frankly.

  Mr. Justice Rivett thought that it would be best if the witness would now retire; but Mrs. Evans had no intention of retiring until she had had her say, and a witness giving evidence cannot, against his own will, be removed from the witness-box. Very well, then, if witness would come back to the night of the murder … She had looked over the banister? And she had seen …

  ‘I saw a mirage,’ said Mrs. Evans. ‘A mirage. I saw a great sandstorm and in the stinging swirl of the sand I saw the Avenger with uplifted arm, I saw the sign of the lily upon his breast and the legend on his banner, Avenger of the Innocent. But it was a mirage. I looked again and there was nobody there but the dusky one, the evil one, the betrayer, the seducer.…’ She quoted again: ‘He has broken his English Lily and left her there, weeping, on the golden sands.’ She looked up at the Judge. ‘Only of course I was on the stairs, really.’ She added: ‘But Madonna Lily was a Tiger Lily now; and—one blow from the tiger’s claw …’ There was a chair behind her in the witness-box and she sat down on it with a bump; to the policewoman in attendance behind the box, she said, ‘Have I been talking nonsense again?’ in a puzzled voice.

  Sir William gave up. He made a little bow to Counsel for the defence and himself sat down.

  The Judge made a just-a-minute sign to Mr. Dragon. He sat for a long moment, silent, at his great desk, his face in his hands. He lifted off his little wig with the sticking-out, upward-curling pig’s tail of a tail and passed his hand over his own scanty hair and replaced the wig again. He addressed himself to the jury. He thought he should remind them that no witness could be asked in court to give evidence that might incriminate himself. He thought the jury would agree that certainly nobody had invited the present witness to give the evidence they had just heard from her. Their present concern, however, was with the prisoner in the dock and nobody else; the truth or falsity of the witness’s statement would doubtless be checked later by the proper authorities. But the man in the dock was entitled to a fair trial—and that meant a complete trial, and his lordship felt that they should just pursue this difficult matter to as rapid a conclusion as possible, after which, since Mrs. Evans was the last witness to be called for the prosecution, Counsel for the defence might or might not decide to put his client in the witness-box in his own defence—in his own defence, repeated his lordship, frowning over at the prisoner in the dock. Now—Mr. Dragon, matters must be left to your discretion and of course I shall assist you in any way possible in the conduct of this—I think we must agree—extremely, er, shall we say difficult situation.… Mrs. Evans, don’t you think, in your own interests, it would be better if you remained seated? This must be most trying to you.…

  But Mrs. Evans was making positively her last public appearance and she would do it in style. It was true that she was exhausted: exhausted with the physical effort of standing so long, of speaking so much, of keeping her poor wits clear, of keeping at bay the real dottiness which, as she had long ago confided to Cockie, was apt to impose itself upon the pretended dottiness with which she had brightened the boredom of her lonely room; but she tottered to her aching feet and, clinging rather desperately to the ledge of the box, faced the court once again. And please not to worry about all that business of incriminating herself, said Mrs. Evans. ‘I don’t know quite what I’ve been saying, I get these dotty patches you know; but if I said that I killed that poor Frenchman, then I think that may be true. Poor thing—he’d never done me any harm, or any of us any harm; but I think I got him muddled up with some book. He was dark and swarthy, you know, and I think I suddenly saw him in my imagination, wrapped in a burnous or whatever they call those things, and the fog swirling about him was a sandstorm and I’d recently been—well, I’d got into one of my muddles, you know and sort of mixed myself up.…’ And across the court she said to Sir William: ‘I told you not to dismiss Robert Hichens so lightly.’

>   ‘No questions,’ said James Dragon, suddenly sitting down.

  ‘No questions,’ said Sir William, simply teeming with questions he could not put because this was his witness and he must not cross-examine her. He looked up, however, expectantly at the Judge.

  And the Judge did not fail him. ‘Very well—the witness may go. But—just before you go, Mrs. Evans: would you remind us of what you told the jury when you first came into the witness-box—about your right arm.’

  Old Mrs. Evans had done her bit and she was all ready to depart. Her big black handbag was hitched by its straps over her left arm, in her right hand she clutched her gloves, rolled nervously into a ball. She turned back. She lifted a white, exhausted face to his lordship; shaken and near to tears, she lowered her eyes and so stood, staring, staring, staring at the little black, rolled-up ball of gloves in her hand. Then she leaned forward and dropped it neatly, over the edge of the box. ‘Hit it!’ she said, craning over to look at some invisible mark on the floor below. ‘But then I’m a pretty good shot. I keep in practice—I’m always throwing things.’ And she gave her last little bow and her last little, gallant, watery smile, and leaning heavily on the policewoman’s arm, crept out of the witness-box.

  Counsel for the defence was not looking towards the witness-box. He got slowly to his feet, a little piece of paper in his hand. He said: ‘My lord—I have here a note from the prisoner. He advises me that he wishes to change his plea to one of—Guilty.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  YOUR name is Edwin Robert Edwards?

  Yes.

  You are a qualified medical practitioner?

  Yes.

  Dr. Edwards, you were on intimate terms with the family at Maida Vale?

  Yes.

  And with Dr. Evans’ young sister, Rose Evans?

  Yes.

  Rose Evans is now dead, isn’t she?

  Yes. Yes she is. Yes, Rosie’s dead.

  But Rosie came and leaned on the witness-box before him, resting her plump white arms on the ledge, looking up into his face, putting out a hand to him that fell away into dust and ashes when he took it in his own; and said that she was too utterly mis. to see him there in that horrid little pulpit thing and to think that it was ackcherly her, Rosie, let’s face it, that had put him there and all because she’d been such a basket in Geneva; only, honestly, how could he have thought for one minute that that frowsty old Raoul Vernet had been one of her boy friends? Yes, yes, of course it was true that one of them had been old, quite old and terribly experienced and all that, filling one up with oceans of champagne and leering away like anything, fondly imagining that he was seducing one—but still, when one said old, about thirty something, or perhaps even forty, but not practically an octogenarian not to mention being bald on top! ‘But of course, Tedward, I suppose you didn’t really have time to see.…?’

  ‘Dr. Edwards, had you ever in your life set eyes on this man, Raoul Vernet?’

  ‘No,’ said Tedward. ‘Not till that day he died.’

  ‘Or heard his name?’

  ‘No. Not till that day he died.’

  ‘Can you recollect when you first heard it?’

  ‘Matilda Evans mentioned it to me that morning. She said he’d flown over from Geneva and he wanted to see her. She said she thought he felt bad about Rosie and wanted to talk it over, I knew—at least I understood—that Rosie had been seduced by a middle-aged man, a well-to-do, middle-aged man.…’ He shrugged. ‘After that she went upstairs and left me to see myself out. I wrote a message to get Thomas Evans out of the house that evening and I went—taking the gun and the mallet as I passed through the hall …’

  And the shade of Rosie was there again, plump white arms folded along the ledge of the witness-box, saying how clever of clever old Tedward to think it all out so quickly, to plan it so cleverly, clever old Tedward Bear! He mumbled that it had all been vague in his mind, a far-off, sporting chance, a chance that the coming fog might offer, he couldn’t yet see how. A chance to avenge—a chance to avenge, he cried out suddenly and loudly, looking down into her innocent upturned big blue eyes, seeing himself again as he had seemed to himself at that moment, as he had seemed to a shocked and astonished old woman peering down, trembling, from the shadows on the stair, having heard his car draw up at the door and footsteps in the hall—a knight in shining armour, an avenger, with uplifted arm and the sign of the broken lily upon his breast. ‘She told me she knew; she told me long ago that she knew, she tried to tell me again just now, she knew and she wanted to suffer instead of me. She knew that I had made a mistake, but …’ She had thought of him as he had thought of himself—as an Avenger; Avenger of the Innocent.… Avenger of the Innocent!—of the slut who had trampled his lilies of illusion into ugly little fragments and handed them out to every casual, ravening passer-by. ‘I killed an innocent man for you, Rosie,’ he said, into the electrified silence of the court. ‘I murdered him—I, a doctor, I murdered him.’ Grotesquely shaking, his hand fumbled for her hand, felt along the ledge of the box for hands that were not there, for hands that seemed to be there but tumbled away to ash as he grasped at them. He lifted his weary head; somewhere out there in the far distance, there was a splash of scarlet that for two long days had been a symbol of something called Justice, of something called Retribution. ‘She’s gone,’ he explained to the scarlet splash. ‘She’s dead.’ That was justice too, that was retribution too. ‘They found out about the telephone trick,’ he said. ‘They worked out how it had been done. You see—I had to have an alibi, I worked it so that she was with me, so that she’d come back to the house with me.… But the police found out the trick. I thought I was finished. I wanted her to know about it and why I had done it; I believed in her then, you see. I wanted to explain it all to her before they hauled me away. I told her everything. And then …’ He put up his shaking hands to his face. ‘I found the police had got it wrong after all; they thought I’d left her in the car and come in and killed him and gone back to her. And that was true—but they’d got it all wrong, they’d missed the essential point, they didn’t know after all. But she knew now.’ And he looked down again into the upturned plump, white, non-existent face and said: ‘And you never could keep a secret, Rosie, could you?’

  Yet Rosie had kept one secret. By telling half a dozen secrets, she had kept one secret from them all: by telling half a dozen secrets of Rosie, the innocent flower, betrayed by this man or that, she had kept the vile secret of Rosie herself the betrayer, of Rosie who had sold her innocence wholesale for a glass of champagne, for a sail on the lake, for an adventure in a student’s flat.… Rosie, betraying, suddenly herself betrayed by her confidante: Melissa with her white face and dark, obscene round hole of a mouth as he would see it for ever, screaming out Rosie’s ugly little secrets, screaming out that his love was no broken lily but a strumpet, a strumpet that would soon become a trumpet, a strumpet trumpeting forth the truth of his mistaken vengeance as he had confided it all to her. ‘A joke,’ he said, raising bleared eyes to the splash of scarlet on the bench; or was the scarlet there, now?—had not something happened in between, was not this some small, dim room, was there not a dusty, disinfectant smell that seemed vilely familiar?—vilely familiar, and yet comfortingly familiar, something remembered, something inescapable, something that held security, held freedom from responsibility, freedom from the necessity to try any more, to explain any more, to care any more.… ‘A joke,’ he repeated to that splash of scarlet receded away into the distance for ever, leaving him high and dry on the shores of God knew what blear-eyed, babbling lunacy. ‘A joke!’ But there had been no joking then. Tenderly helping her upstairs to her bedroom, the whispered words of advice, get hold of some headed note-paper, copy out the prescription I gave you, go to different chemists and don’t tell a soul, don’t tell a soul.… ‘Why should I have died for her?’ he asked the bare walls of the little cell, ‘knowing what I now—at last—knew? Why should I let her live to tell them all the truth?’ F
or her he had killed a man—a man who proved to have been utterly guiltless, concerned only with her protection and care; for her he had seen his friend suffer in his place, for her he had listened to an old woman telling him in parables that she would sacrifice her freedom for his life. All of them protecting Rosie, all thinking only of Rosie, suffering for one another, suspecting one another and yet without a thought of blame for one another—because of their faith in her. ‘A slut!’ he cried aloud. A slut, a cheat, as false as hell, as false as hell with her guileless confidences and her candid eyes.…

  The door of the cell opened and somebody came in; somebody alive and wholesome with something not alive that tried to creep in too through the open door. But the door was closed, barring her out. He raised his head, his hands still covering his face, bleared eyes peering out through bars of fingers. ‘Cockie? Is it you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cockie. ‘You know me, now? That’s good.’

  ‘What’s happened to the court? Wasn’t I in court?’

  ‘You sort of—passed out, you know. Just for a bit. So they brought you back here.’

  ‘I did tell them about it?’ said Tedward, anxiously.

  ‘Yes, you told them. That was what you wanted?’

  ‘I had to tell them it wasn’t her, really. But then the judge said hewouldn’t accept my saying “guilty”. Didn’t he?’

  ‘Rather a lot of people had said so by then,’ said Cockie, quizzically smiling. ‘The thing was—you got yourself into the witness-box. There, you could say what you liked.’ He mumbled that he was ‘sorry about it all’.

  For a moment the old, kindly habit of reassurance and friendliness reasserted itself. ‘Don’t worry about me. And tell the others not to worry. I’m all right. I’m fine.’ He gave a travesty of his old smile. ‘You knew, did you—all the time?’

  ‘I only guessed. And not at first. But I couldn’t get over your taking Rosie through that nice warm room into the other one. Why?—if not to fix that telephone thing?’