by John Bingham
“How much weight, I ask you again, should we attach to her evidence? How much weight to the alibi upon which the prisoner relies as the main prop of his defence?
“Much as we may wish to do more, how much reliability dare we place on that evidence if justice is to be done? She made, you will remember, two separate and somewhat different statements. In the first, she said she had never been alone for any length of time with Prosset. And that Sibley had been with her up to one o’clock on the night of the murder. In her second, however, faced with the prisoner’s own third and final statement, in which he tells an entirely different story, what does she do? ‘Oh,’ she says, in effect, ‘that is quite right. It is just as the prisoner says. My previous statement was all a mistake! I now wish to make a statement to fit in with his!’ The Crown submission concerning the written and verbal evidence of this young woman is that it would be wiser to disregard it—let me put it no stronger than that—and in coming to your verdict consider as more pertinent those other aspects of the case to which I have drawn your attention. If, however, you feel that some consideration is called for, then I submit that her first statement, in which she describes Sibley as leaving her flat around one o’clock in the morning, is the one which merits your attention. He would, you will observe, members of the jury, have had time to spare to journey down to Ockleton by four o’clock, and, having established, as he hoped, his presence in London, to go about his carefully premeditated crime.”
Mr. Smerton was, of course, sardonically scathing about the three separate statements which I had signed. His speech bristled with such phrases as “for reasons which we can well guess at,” and “realizing the truth could no longer be concealed,” and “correcting the results of a very conveniently bad memory.”
Were there any reasons to believe, he asked, that the third statement which the accused had made was in essence any more truthful than the first two? Was not the whole thing a tissue of lies, and could any reliance be placed upon anything which he said in the box, on trial for his life, when he had so manifestly told a packet of lies and indulged in concealments and evasions even when he was in no immediate danger?
The jury had heard medical evidence to show that at least one of the wounds on Prosset’s temple could—in fairness, he would put it no higher than that—could have been caused by a knuckleduster. Why had Sibley so hastily discarded what he would have them believe had become a cherished talisman? Let them not be astonished at the absence of blood on the knuckleduster; aluminium was the easiest thing in the world to wash clean. What had happened to that brown suit? Who was the mysterious outcast to whom the accused alleged he had given it? Did he even exist? The jury had heard of the strenuous efforts made by the police to trace the man, in workhouses, hospitals, dockland, Labour Exchanges, even in ships at sea and in highways and byways. He must repeat: did the man exist? The jury might well doubt it. They might consider this yet another of the lies with which this case was cluttered, and that in all probability the incriminating and, they might think, bloodstained suit had been disposed of in a way which they might never now discover.
I thought sadly that on the films an excited old tramp would be seen, at this point, pushing his way through the crowds around the court room, muttering that he must get through; it was a matter of life and death. At first they would hold him back, but in the end he would burst in; and he would be wearing my suit. The prosecution would collapse and I would be discharged without a stain on my character.
But it didn’t happen like that in real life.
Actually, the old man might not be able to read properly, or if he could perhaps he only read the racing results. He might be on some remote farm helping with the crops, or he might have sold the suit for a few coppers, or he might be dead. He might even turn up later; when I was dead myself. I recalled Mr. Martin’s views on capital punishment. It is funny how your views change with your own position. I thought of Kate, who would have nothing to look forward to, not even in twenty years’ time, for if I was found guilty I did not visualize a reprieve.
When I died, Kate would die, too, in a way, as Mr. Martin had said.
I had long since decided that if the verdict went against me I should consider it the end. I would brook no suspense in my heart. I would prepare my mind, so that when the final act came it would be carried through with dignity. Oddly enough, the analytical side of my mind had long since come to the conclusion that, from the point of view of pure justice, I could hardly complain if the jury found against me. I had killed Prosset in my heart and in my imagination. Only a chance phrase or two had saved me from killing him in practice.
I looked at my watch. The warders stirred restlessly. It was unusual for a jury to be out so long. I could imagine the early evening papers coming out with a bit in the Stop Press: “Sibley: jury still out after 1 hr 40 mns.”
John Aldwick had done his best. The trouble was that, due to the strain, my early optimism had given place to pessimism. That was why I remembered more of Smerton’s points, towards the end of the long wait, than my own man’s. But my counsel had scored some highly successful points. As I recalled them, my optimism returned slightly.
It turned out, for instance, that one person did know about the knuckleduster: Ethel the maid. She said that one morning the postman had demanded some money for a letter, and I, half asleep, had told her to take it from my trouser pocket. She had come across the knuckleduster, but did not know what it was. The significance of this had escaped her at the Magistrate’s Court—until indeed, she had heard, that very day, the prosecution put forward the view that I had acquired it specially for the murder.
Her evidence went to corroborate, at least partly, my own evidence that I had had the thing a long time. More important, it was psychologically useful as a surprise refutation of prosecution theory.
My counsel made a good deal of smuggling, “imports,” the mysterious Max, and Prosset’s unknown “friends” on the coast. But he would not touch the Cyprus cigarette angle.
“Juries don’t like us to smear a man’s character who is not in the dock,” he said, shaking his head. “Makes a bad impression—very bad impression. Judges don’t like it, either. No proof, Mr. Sibley. No proof, see? All theory.”
Of course, so many of the facts had been admitted that all he could do was to try to strip them of their sinister import, and to explain them away as natural, normal things which could have happened to anybody. But some witnesses he had challenged outright; notably Ethel, concerning when she had last seen my brown suit, and the girl in the cleaners.
It is terrifying how significant can sound a phrase like: “Is it possible to get bloodstains out of clothing by dry-cleaning?” I had asked it in a normal, casual sort of voice. But nothing could remove the sinister implications when it was repeated in the cold, clinical silence of the court.
“You have said,” John Aldwick, KC, asked the girl from the cleaners, “that the accused had no newspaper in his hand when he spoke to you, and that therefore his evidence was false when he ascribed his question about bloodstains to something he had just read in the paper?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, what? Yes, he had a paper, or yes, he hadn’t?”
“He hadn’t, sir.”
“How long afterwards was it that the police questioned you?”
“About two or three days, sir, I think.”
“You think? You can’t remember that, but you do remember for certain that the accused, only one of many customers, had no newspaper in his hand?”
“Yes.”
“You have a curiously selective memory, have you not?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“All right. We’ll leave that. Do you still wish to say that you know for absolute certain that the accused had no newspaper, or will you say, perhaps, that as far as you recall he had none?”
“No, he hadn’t one, I’m sure.”
“You have heard him say that he was carrying one?”
“You realize the importance of the point? He says that he only asked you about bloodstains because he had been reading of a murder case in his newspaper.”
“Well, he hadn’t one.”
“What sort of voice did he ask the question in?”
“Just an ordinary sort of voice.”
“Just an ordinary sort of voice? Did he seem anxious or nervous?”
“No, sir. I don’t think he did.”
“Did he look pale or overwrought? Did he look like a killer with a bloodstained suit at home?”
“No, sir.”
“In fact, he looked like a normal person might who had just called to collect some ties and had been reading about a murder case in which bloodstained clothes had been involved; and who might well have been asking a very natural question—considering he was in a dry-cleaners? Do you agree with all that?”
“Well, yes, I suppose he did, really. He might have done.”
“What do you mean, you suppose he did, he might have done? Surely he either did or didn’t? Did he look a normal person asking a normal casual question, or didn’t he?”
“Well, all right—he did, if you like.”
Mr. Aldwick, KC, sighed patiently.
“It’s not a question of what I like, madam. A man’s life is at stake.”
“He looked ordinary, sir.”
“But you still maintain he had no newspaper in his hand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am going to ask you one last question. When I rose to cross-examine you, was I holding some papers in my hand or not?”
It was a clever question because the significance of it was at once apparent to the witness. Therefore very naturally she hesitated some seconds before answering.
Even had she given the correct reply, he would have pointed out how long she took to answer. As it was, she gave the wrong one.
Aldwick, of course, was on her like a ton of bricks.
“And yet you expect the jury to believe you, when you say you can remember today, many weeks after it happened, an exactly similar detail, but one of infinitely more importance?”
He did not wait for the answer, which he knew would not be forthcoming, before sitting down.
When the footsteps approached the door again, I expected them to go past, as they had so often done before, but they did not do so. We went up to the dock. I remember dropping my cigarette end at the foot of the steps and pausing a second to crush it with my shoe. Then we mounted the steps.
I stared at the various counsel with their juniors, and the counsel from other courts who had crowded in to hear the final stages of the trial, each dressed in his black gown and wig; grouped together or chattering in pairs; black gowns rustling, now whispering, occasionally smiling, nodding their heads, their noses like beaks under their wigs.
Sometimes they adjusted their gowns as a rook will flutter its feathers. Now and again they moved, black feathers twitching, beaks opening and shutting.
It was clear to me that they were not men; they were dark birds, possibly ravens. I looked in vain for the dark raven I had shot in the windy copse on the hilltop; or maybe they were rooks or carnivorous crows; or simply black cockatoos. I felt that if I banged the front of the dock they would take fright, fluttering up into the air. But I did not do so, because they would come down to earth again in two long rows, screeching and mocking and jeering, and I did not want to see Kate running the gauntlet between them.
“You all right?”
I felt one of the warders put his hand on my arm. I nodded. I tried to tell myself that it was just that I had eaten little or no lunch, but I felt certain now what the verdict would be. I had seen the dark birds again.
It was almost a relief to see the red robes of the judge.
I felt so certain of the verdict that I did not understand—indeed, I thought I had misheard—when the foreman said: “Not guilty.”
Then I realized that I had heard aright. All the dark birds in the court fluttered their wings, with a great flapping of feathers, and rose in the air, beaks opening and shutting, cawing and protesting at the verdict. Flapping and flapping. A voice shouted, “Order! Silence!” But they swirled round and round, higher and higher, up into the roof of the court, flapping, dying away, growing fainter, till they disappeared.
“Take it easy.”
I felt an arm at my back, supporting me. It was damned silly. Prosset would not have nearly fainted.
Just before I stepped from the dock to freedom I caught sight of Herbert Day standing near, among the spectators, waiting his turn to file out. His face above the black, dusty-looking suit was green. I saw him glance towards me. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His tongue quivered along his lips in the old, snake-like movement that was characteristic of him.
I did not know if he was green with relief that an innocent man had not been hanged, or with apprehension in case the hunt should still be on. But I did know, in that second, that he killed John Prosset, either alone or with somebody else. I knew it for certain.
He need not have worried. Once the police have shot their bolt, it is the end. Nobody was ever hanged for the murder of John Prosset on May 29th at Ockleton.
Kate and I were married by special licence a couple of weeks after the trial, and I resigned from my office. Happily, I had always written my fiction stories under another name. I had even carried on correspondence with editors under this name, and received cheques made out for that name. Thus, there was no question of this side of my career being affected by the trial.
I decided to gamble on making a living out of fiction; and I succeeded. I bought my present cottage, up in the Cotswolds, just months before war broke out, and in fairness to Kate I changed my name. In theory, if you leave a court after a murder charge a free man, you do so without a stain on your character. In practice, some mud always sticks. Some people are always inclined to think that the jury may have been wrong. So Michael Sibley had to die, so to speak, after all, but it has proved a pleasant enough death. I may add, in passing, that from what I heard later, one reason why I was acquitted was because I am a bad talker. It seems that I made such a faltering, tongue-tied, nervous impression in the witness box that the jury thought it unlikely that a calculating murderer would have been so lacking in coolness and self-possession.
When considering whether to change my name, I also had to bear in mind the probability that Kate and I would have children; I did not wish them to go through life known as the offspring of a man who had once been tried for murder. I am glad now that I acted as I did.
We have a fair-haired little daughter called Margaret, aged four, and a boy of nine called Francis, who is dark, like myself, but better looking than I ever was. He was born early in 1940, while I was stationed with the Royal Engineers at Aldershot, before I was posted to the Middle East. Poor Kate, the war was perhaps more trying for her than for most other wives. Having nearly lost me once, she seemed in peril of doing so again, and I think she was convinced I would not survive the hostilities.
As I write, with my typewriter in the garden, it is a glorious spring day. There is a fine view across the Cotswolds, and the sky is cloudless. At the bottom of the garden there is a little wood and a stream, and I can hear a pair of jays scolding each other. The trees are bright with that clean, crisp, green foliage peculiar to this time of year. Kate has gone down to the village on her bicycle to buy some groceries, and I am supposed to be “keeping an eye on the children,” whatever that means.
The short-story market is not what it was before the war, of course, owing to the paper shortage, but I was wise enough—or perhaps I should say I was sufficiently hard-up—to maintain my connections during the war years, and I cannot complain. I have also written a couple of books, one of which may be filmed.
So I am really extraordinarily lucky.
The dark days of the past, the inferiority feelings of school days and youth, have gone; I wonder now h
ow I ever felt as I did about Prosset. The trial, too, has receded in my mind, and the war years are fading.
The village is only ten minutes’ walk away, and when Kate comes back I shall probably stroll down myself. I can see from my garden the little church steeple; opposite the church is the Crossed Keys tavern, where the beer is very reasonable, all things considered, and you can usually get a game of darts around midday or in the evenings.
I usually have a game with George Farrow, if he is about. He is a heavily built man, with a large moustache and dark, ox-like eyes. Thanks to him, I live a blameless life: my gun licence is always in order, my radio and car licences are renewed on the exact dates required of me, I have a dog licence for the spaniel, and I never under any circumstances whatever ride a bicycle “without a red rear light or reflector”; for, as PC Farrow says, once you’ve got a conviction, you’re a marked man for the rest of your life. You’ve got a police record.
“Of course, if you’re convicted of murder,” I once said to him, “I suppose the rest of your life hardly matters.”
He turned his heavy eyes on me in astonishment. “Murder, sir? Nobody’s ever been accused of murder around these parts.”
“They haven’t?”
“Not since I’ve been here, they haven’t. Nor ever will be, I hope.”
“Nor ever will be, I hope,” I repeated fervently.
“They’re friendly, steady folks around here. They’d no more think of doing a murder than you would, sir.”
“They wouldn’t?”
“No, sir.”
“No more than I would?”
“No, sir, they wouldn’t. That’s a fact.”
I looked round the bar, at the friendly faces, at all the evidence of good fellowship and good humour, of countryside self-reliance and tolerance.
PC George Farrow was classing me with all that. I felt a curious upsurge of spirits, almost of exultation, as of one who had somehow made good.
