Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  When alone, I had taken to talking to Amelia.

  I knew it was irrational but, nevertheless, I did it, imagining what she might have said in reply. It helped.

  ‘The jury found Joe guilty of your murder,’ I said out loud in the kitchen. ‘He’s going to prison for a very long time.’

  I think she would have been pleased, certainly more pleased than I.

  Over the past three or four years, Amelia had grown to hate her brother with a passion.

  Any inter-sibling love that had once existed had been totally overridden by the pain and mental suffering he had caused to her. She had been one for whom forgiveness was something other people did, especially with respect to her brother.

  ‘One day I’m going to explode,’ she would often say. ‘You watch, I’ll wipe the floor with the bastard.’

  I had tried my best to keep her calm, not least because anger was a serious precursor to her becoming depressed.

  It had been I who had insisted that she have nothing to do with Joe, and I would plead with her not to read his emails. But I know she did, and they stoked her fury. I encouraged her to let it all wash right over her. But she couldn’t, and every one of his insults was like a dagger in her heart.

  But now the court had wiped its hard blue-carpeted floor with him and, whatever the judge might say in the morning, a long stretch in the slammer awaited.

  However, no length of sentence could ever bring Amelia back.

  How long did I want as sufficient punishment?

  Or was it revenge that I needed?

  I went and sat at my desk in the study, trying to write a Victim Personal Statement.

  According to the Ministry of Justice website, my statement should explain the impact the crime had had on me.

  It had totally destroyed my life, but how could I put that into words?

  What I wasn’t allowed to include was any comment concerning the length of the sentence that I was hoping for. Lock him into a dank fetid dungeon and throw the key into the River Thames was not appropriate, even if I’d wanted it.

  I tried four times, explaining not only the physical injuries I had suffered but also the emotional and psychological ones. I wrote about how the loss of my wife had immeasurably damaged the quality of my life on a day-to-day basis, and how any hopes for my future had been extinguished by her death.

  But every time I read through what I’d typed on the computer screen, it all seemed inadequate and somehow rather trite.

  For the fourth time, I deleted the words and then closed my laptop.

  I had made my feelings perfectly clear during my testimony, so I decided I would now leave it up to the judge.

  42

  ‘The prisoner will stand,’ said the clerk of the court.

  Joe stood up and faced the judge.

  If anyone had been hoping for a quick ‘I sentence you to life imprisonment – take him down’, after which the rest of us could go for an early lunch, they were to be disappointed.

  Sentencing took the best part of an hour and a half, and Joe stood in the dock throughout.

  The judge didn’t once mention the theft. Instead he merely summarised the actual convictions and applied the Sentencing Council guidelines to each, taking into account any aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

  For the attempted murder, the judge took into account Joe’s forward planning and his premeditation in driving all the way from London, as well as the seriousness of my injuries and the long-term effects on my health. He did give Joe credit for his previous exemplary record and his previous good character but, nevertheless, he sentenced him to fifteen years imprisonment.

  I glanced at Joe in the dock. He wobbled a bit but remained standing.

  In England and Wales, there is a mandatory life sentence for murder. All the judge had to decide on was the tariff, the minimum term to be served before he was eligible for parole.

  In mitigation, the judge ruled that, as Joe had not taken the murder weapon with him but had used something already to hand in the kitchen of the Old Forge, it suggested that the degree of pre-planning had been small, but that was more than offset by his breaking into the premises and killing within the victim’s own home, a place where she should have felt safe.

  The guidelines stated that the minimum term of imprisonment for a person over the age of eighteen sentenced to life for murder started at fifteen years but, with the aggravating circumstances, plus the degree of violence used on a blood relative for financial gain, and bearing in mind the sentence already passed for the attempted murder, the judge set the tariff at twenty-five years.

  Joe did more than wobble this time. He stepped backwards and sat down heavily.

  And there was a gasp from some of the others in the court, me included.

  Even without a Victim Personal Statement from me, the judge had thrown the book at him.

  However, DS Dowdeswell, understandably, was delighted.

  When I’d met him earlier he’d been disappointed, and not a little angry, that I had declined the opportunity to read out a victim statement prior to the sentencing, but all that had now gone. He was in jovial spirits.

  I suppose, for the detectives in a murder case, the length of the sentence handed down to a guilty offender must be a measure of their success in the investigation. For some, and that obviously included DS Dowdeswell, life should mean life, but a tariff of more than twenty years was the next best thing.

  But for me, the deep sorrow of yesterday returned. It was such a waste of so many lives, and especially of Amelia’s.

  I declined an invitation from the police team to join them for a celebratory lunchtime drink in a local pub, and managed to avoid the media scrum outside the court by slipping away during the statement read by DCI Priestly to the waiting TV cameras.

  I’d phoned my taxi driver, and he picked me up around the corner in Speedwell Street and took me home.

  ‘Good result?’ he asked as I settled into the back seat.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  And, indeed, it was, in spite of my lack of enthusiasm. And I’d have been much more devastated if Joe had been acquitted of all the charges and had walked free.

  But there were no winners here, just losers.

  The driver took me to Hanwell in silence, for which I was grateful.

  Life now had to get back to normal, at least as normal as I could make it.

  Perhaps I’d give those insurance account managers a call and ask them to put me back on their persona grata lists, and maybe I’d invite a few estate agents round to value the Old Forge with a view to selling. Would a high-profile murder in the kitchen increase or decrease the price?

  ‘Don’t s’pose you need me any more,’ said the driver as he dropped me.

  ‘Not immediately,’ I said, giving him a generous tip. ‘But I’m sure I’ll use you again sometime.’

  ‘Always available,’ he said with a smile. ‘Give me a call.’

  I stood and watched him drive away. Even though he didn’t know it, his friendly face every morning and evening had done much to keep me sane during the stress of the past weeks. And I’d miss him.

  I went in to my quiet, lonely house.

  Now what did I do?

  I wandered aimlessly from room to room, unable to settle to anything, and ended up, as always, in the kitchen.

  I looked at the broken lock.

  ‘I think it’s finally time I fixed you,’ I said out loud to it, and I dug out my toolbox from beneath the sink.

  I had hoped it was just a matter of securing everything back into place, but the lock wasn’t just hanging off the wooden door, its metal casing was also twisted and useless, so I used a screwdriver and a pair of pliers to remove it completely.

  I tried to straighten out the casing but without success and, if anything, I made it worse. I decided that I’d need a replacement lock, which was a bit of a shame as the broken one was old and in keeping with the age of the house.

  Maybe I’d b
e able to match it with a modern reproduction. No time like the present, I thought, and I knew exactly where to go to find one.

  There have been markets in Banbury since Anglo-Saxon times and one was still held in the centre of the town every Thursday and Saturday.

  One of the regular stalls was run by a man with whom Amelia and I had become quite friendly over the years, since we’d moved into the Old Forge. He dealt in specialist hardware, especially little bits and bobs that you couldn’t get anywhere else. And much of his stuff was aimed at people like us, owners of listed buildings, for whom English Heritage laid down strict regulations concerning what we could and couldn’t use in repairs on our houses.

  If anyone had a replacement lock of the right sort, it would be him.

  Today was a Thursday and, if I asked him now, he might be able to delve into his huge stock at home to get the right part by Saturday. Otherwise I’d have to wait a whole week.

  I drove my 174 m.p.h. supercharged Jaguar sports car into Banbury at a very sedate pace, and not just because I was worried about picking up another three points on my licence, something which would have triggered a ban. The collision with the tree and my resulting injuries had undeniably made me far more wary.

  I parked as close as I could and shuffled down to the market square.

  ‘Hi, Bill,’ said my friend, warmly shaking my hand. ‘Haven’t seen you for a very long while.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been rather busy.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your lovely wife,’ he said. ‘Dreadful thing. I was so shocked, as I’d been talking to her only a few days before she died. She dropped by for a chat and to buy something.’

  He spent several minutes talking about Amelia’s last visit to his stall, not that it made me feel any better. Would I ever get used to her not being around? Eventually, I showed him the broken lock.

  ‘I can’t match it exactly,’ he said. ‘But I think I can get pretty close. Come again on Saturday and I’ll see what I can find in the meantime.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  As I drove home, I mulled over what the market stallholder had told me and, instead of immediately going in through my own front door, I went across the road to the Fadeleys’ place and rang their bell.

  Nancy answered.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ she said. ‘Dave and I have been thinking of you a lot these last few days. You must be pleased with the outcome of the trial. I heard it on the news.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘At least no one will still think that I’m responsible for Amelia’s death.’

  ‘Would you like to come in for a cuppa?’

  We sat in her kitchen, alongside her vast array of cookbooks, and, while we were drinking the tea, I asked her a question.

  After about fifteen minutes or so, I got up to go.

  ‘Dave will be home from London around seven,’ Nancy said. ‘Would you like to come over and join us for supper? I’m making seared scallops in a champagne cream sauce.’

  It sounded delicious and a huge improvement on my usual individual ready meals, but I didn’t want company – not tonight.

  And I had far more important things on my mind than eating.

  *

  I sat on the cold hard stone kitchen floor of the Old Forge and sobbed.

  I had come straight home from Nancy’s house and searched for something and, to my absolute horror, I had found it almost immediately.

  Not that I was pleased that I’d found it. Far from it.

  It would have been infinitely better if I hadn’t.

  For all her mental health problems, and whatever her brother might have claimed, Amelia hadn’t been stupid. Quite the reverse. She had been a very smart lady, very smart indeed. But she hadn’t been able to hide everything – not forever – and not from me.

  I couldn’t drag my eyes away from what I’d found. It was only small and I might have never noticed it, that was if I hadn’t been expressly looking for it.

  But I had been, and there it was.

  Again, I felt sick.

  Just like the jury, I deliberated with myself and came to the only logical conclusion from the evidence, a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt.

  Amelia hadn’t been murdered at all.

  She had committed suicide.

  The police were very accustomed to investigating unexplained violent deaths to determine if they were really murders made to look like suicides. But now they needed to have a closer look at Amelia’s death, as I had done, and then they would likely come to the same conclusion as I had, that this had been a suicide made to look like murder.

  Was she really that scheming?

  Yes, she was. Especially when it came to her brother.

  Furthermore, Joe hadn’t been lying after all.

  Amelia had indeed called her brother on that Tuesday evening to arrange their strange rendezvous at the disused pub car park in Wroxton for the following morning, knowing that, when she failed to appear, he would eventually drive to our house and find her cold dead body. And she had done that partly to prevent me from having the trauma of finding her, but mostly in the hope and expectation that Joe would be accused of her murder.

  She had killed herself at a time when she knew I had the cast-iron alibi of being at a charity dinner in Birmingham, and made it look like murder so I could still collect her life insurance money. Perhaps she hadn’t realised that, by pre-deceasing her mother, Joe would have inherited all of the estate.

  But maybe she had.

  Had she appreciated how important motive was to the police? Was that, indeed, part of her scheme to frame her brother from beyond the grave?

  I thought she had been much better in the few months before her death, and her talk of ‘ending it all’ had seemingly faded. But it had always been there in the background and her mother’s cancer diagnosis, together with Joe’s final hate-filled email, had caused it to rear its ugly head again, only more so.

  Amelia had known all about her mother’s cancer – Jim and Gladys Wilson from Weybridge had made that perfectly clear. Had she just not told me in order to prevent me from working out her plan?

  I wanted so much not to believe that she had killed herself after all that expensive therapy, and after I had worked so hard to prevent it, but . . .

  Let us consider the evidence.

  Amelia was dead.

  Of that there was absolutely no doubt. I’d seen her lifeless body with my own two eyes. And she had died of strangulation with our old leather dog lead round her neck – I didn’t doubt the pathologist on that one.

  But the man from the market stall in Banbury had told me that Amelia had bought something from him that totally changed everything else.

  ‘She was after one of those self-locking buckles,’ he’d said. ‘You know the type, like those on a compression strap that you put round a sleeping bag or such when you’re trying to get it really small to fit into your rucksack. She said she wanted it for a belt.’

  A belt?

  What had DCI Priestly said to me in my first interview with him at Banbury Police Station?

  This dog lead was the murder weapon. Mrs Gordon-Russell was found with it still tight round her neck.

  Tight.

  That had been the important word, but I hadn’t realised it at the time.

  Then I’d been across to talk to Nancy, to ask her a single question about that Tuesday evening.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d agreed. ‘I did see Amelia go out in her little car shortly after we’d walked back from the pub. But she was only gone for an hour. I saw her coming back again later. She put the car away in the garage.’

  Nancy was ever the inquisitive neighbour, watching all the village comings and goings.

  Only gone for an hour.

  Amelia might have nipped out to the shops for milk, or for bread, or for any number of other things, but I knew she hadn’t. An hour was just long enough to have driven over to her mother’s house and used the landline there to call her b
rother, a call the prosecutor had claimed in court was made by Mary.

  And Amelia had made sure that she’d left her mobile phone at home.

  Normally, she didn’t go anywhere without her phone, certainly not to the shops, not even to the loo. It had been like an extension of her own arm. The fact that records showed her phone hadn’t moved that night had made me believe that she hadn’t either.

  I’d been wrong.

  And the final piece in this particular circumstantial jigsaw puzzle was the thing I’d just found.

  I sat on the kitchen floor and stared at it, willing it not to be there.

  But it was.

  A small, almost insignificant blemish in the woodwork between the frame and the door from the kitchen to the hall. A bruise in the paint about five feet from the floor, just below the top hinge. A mark the width of the dog lead.

  Amelia had pinched the leather between the door and the frame to hold it tight and had then used that anchor point to jerk the ligature very tight around her own neck, and the self-locking buckle had done the rest.

  As the pathologist had so rightly said, it had then taken a minute or two for Amelia to lose consciousness. Plenty of time to open the door and remove the dog lead from its fixing point before falling to the floor.

  Had she dug her fingernails into her own neck in a true attempt to remove the lead because she had suddenly changed her mind, or had that been a calculated move to further the lie that she’d been murdered?

  No one would ever know, and I wasn’t sure which of those thoughts gave me the most comfort.

  Neither of them.

  ‘Oh, my darling Amelia,’ I cried out loud in pain. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  I sobbed some more, a lot more.

  *

  I sat on my kitchen floor deep into the night, not knowing what to do next, and I spent the time thinking.

  The simple answer, of course, was to call DS Dowdeswell and tell him what I’d found. Maybe that was also the right and proper thing to do.

  But was it really that simple?

  As far as DS Dowdeswell and his colleagues were concerned the case was over – arrest, charge, conviction and sentence. Job done and dusted. Now off to the pub to celebrate.