Prisoner at the Bar

by Roderic Jeffries

  “May or will? Aren’t you already certain the pattern of the soles fits a print you’ve found?”

  “You always seem to be at least one jump ahead of me, Mr. Bladen,” said Whicheck pleasantly. “By the way, have you any idea when you last cleaned these?”

  “Yesterday. Is that a crime?”

  “Not that I know of. Might we look through your clothes?”

  Whicheck took each hanger out in turn and examined the suits. “What were you wearing on Monday night?”

  “The light brown one.”

  Whicheck replaced one hanger and brought out another. “This one? Mind if we take that with the shoes?”

  Bladen didn’t answer. Whicheck carefully folded up the suit and handed it to Furnival, who had taken charge of the shoes.

  “What shirt were you wearing?” asked Whicheck.

  “God Almighty! D’you want to know if I cut my toenails three weeks ago and can you have the parings?”

  “I don’t think so, but if that ever becomes of importance I’ll check with you. Is the shirt you’ve got on now the one you were wearing on Monday?”

  “No.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “It’s gone to the laundry.”

  “Which laundry?”

  “I don’t know what they’re called. Something Lightning.”

  “The Lightning Laundry in the High Street, next to Woolworths?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll have a word with them, then. It’s kind of you to have been so cooperative. Shall we run you back to your chambers now?”

  “I’ll stay on here for a bit.”

  Furnival said goodbye, the first time he had spoken to Bladen since entering the flat, and he and the D.I. left.

  Bladen went through to the sitting room. He knew a fear that seemed to dry his mouth. He and Katherine had twice parked in Lovers’ Lane, without ever knowing that that was what it was called, and there they had done no more than kiss, yet now the police thought he might be a murderer.

  They had taken his suit and his shoes away, and were hoping to recover his shirt in time, to search for bloodstains. They wouldn’t find any, of course, but where were the footprints that needed his shoe for comparison? What other evidence did Whicheck have?

  The police believed that the eighteenth of September and the thirtieth could be directly connected through him. This was utter nonsense. But suppose there really was a direct connection between the two dates, one that involved him, so that the police’s premise would not seem too absurd to others…?

  Facts had a dangerous habit of fitting the circumstances, as his work had taught him. Evidence was not often sufficiently explicit — except for something in the nature of a fingerprint — to be completely free of ambiguity. Some of the facts in this case were clearly ambiguous enough to encircle him. Or was he, because of worry at Katherine’s identity being discovered, making a huge mountain out of a tiny molehill? Whicheck could have been doing no more than proving the negatives?

  Bladen walked across to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself out a strong drink. After nine years of defending people charged with crime it was a shattering experience to find himself possibly in need of defence: further, there was bitter irony in the discovery that his complete innocence was almost a hindrance because it left his not knowing from which direction the attack might come.

  Chapter 9

  Premble looked rather as if he had been told on judicial authority that the end of the world was to hand. “I have just had instructing solicitors in the Chetsy magistrates’ court case on the telephone, sir.”

  “So?” asked Bladen.

  “I was asked why you didn’t appear in the case and before I’d had time to make some appropriate excuse he said that if you were too busy to handle his firm’s work, they’d have to return to briefing London counsel.”

  “What’s got him bitching? Alan’s very competent.”

  “He has not gained the confidence of instructing solicitors as you had.”

  “Did he make a mess of the case?”

  “Our client received a heavy fine.”

  “Then Alan won the case. The bloke should’ve been jugged for a year after driving like he did. Solicitors haven’t a leg to stand on.”

  “They don’t need one, sir,” said Premble, even more mournfully. “They can brief you or they can brief someone else.”

  “For God’s sake, man, stop underlining the obvious.”

  Premble coughed. “I once was junior clerk in a set of chambers in which was a very clever barrister.”

  “Are you putting this forward as something unique?”

  “He was so clever, sir, that he decided it didn’t matter how he treated solicitors as no matter what they thought of him they would have to brief him.”

  “And?”

  “Within two years of his adopting this regrettable attitude, he had to leave the Bar through lack of work.”

  “Someone should have told him that solicitors aren’t interested in anything but honest mediocrity.”

  “I think, sir, you fail to get the point.”

  “In order to straighten the records, I promise you I’m not setting myself up as a second clever barrister. I did not appear in court this morning as I had a personal matter to deal with.”

  “It was rather unfortunate, sir.”

  “If you knew the extent of the truth in that comment you’d be surprised,” said Bladen, with sudden bitterness.

  He went through to his room. Wraight was not there and his desk was free of briefs: the only thing on the top was the framed photograph of a redhead who looked as if she’d drag the trousers off a statue.

  Premble didn’t realise the half of it, thought Bladen. If only his trouble was as simple as a growing case of swollen-headedness.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Eastbrook, in Thompson’s cottage, searched the surface of the tattered jacket he had taken out of the rickety bamboo cupboard and found not a single blonde hair on it. This was as he expected. He put the jacket into a plastic bag which he sealed and labelled.

  He looked round the bedroom. Had there ever been another such mean, miserable hovel of a room? Thompson must have been more than mental to have lived in the place for a single day. The landlord should be slung in jail for a spell to teach him to provide decent accommodation, fit for human habitation. The truth never occurred to Eastbrook, that the landlord had wanted to modernise the place but Thompson had refused because he wasn’t going to be silly enough to pay extra rent.

  Eastbrook carried half the clothing down to the back door, then returned for the other half. It was a misuse of words to call them clothes, he thought, they were rags. When the scientists had finished, the only thing to do with them was to burn them.

  When he reached the back door, he found a man standing just outside.

  “Hullo, there,” said the other. “I live next door. Proper do all this is, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The missus wondered if you’d care for a cuppa?”

  Eastbrook suddenly showed some friendliness. “That would go down a real treat.”

  The man stared past him into the kitchen. “Found anything interesting?” He looked at the clothes in the plastic bags as if he expected them to be soaked in blood.

  “There’s not much but dirt round here,” replied Eastbrook. “Would you care to give me a hand getting these out to the car?”

  “Be glad to. D’you know, I was saying to the missus only this morning…”

  Eastbrook ceased to listen. He carried half the clothes out to the C.I.D. Hillman and dropped them on to the back seat, then took the remaining ones from the other man and added them. As he slammed the door shut he thought he’d give a thousand to one that however hard the scientists searched the clothes, they’d never find any blonde hairs. That hair in Thompson’s hand hadn’t come off his own clothes, it had come off the murderer. Eastbrook was glad the Curson woman was going to be in trouble. He’d read
the Cursons were filthy rich so that it would teach them a thing or two.

  He returned to the back of the house, locked the door, and pocketed the key. As he turned, he stared with disgust at the outside wooden privy.

  *

  Katherine was in the conservatory, which adjoined the blue drawing room, repotting a Christmas cactus, when Rollo came to say that there was a telephone call from Mr. Curson.

  She went into the blue drawing room and across to the far end where there was a telephone extension. She lifted the receiver. “Hullo.”

  “Hullo, dear,” said Elmer Curson. “I shall be back tonight at seven o’clock.”

  “Right you are.” Dinner, then, must be at seven-thirty. Barring an earthquake or a revolution, Elmer would arrive within five minutes of the stated time. He liked to dine at seven-thirty.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You sound a little depressed?”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “Has anything more been learned about Thompson’s death?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is everything in order?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are well?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “At seven o’clock, then.”

  She replaced the receiver. Why couldn’t business have kept Elmer up longer in London? She stared unseeingly at the Mortlake tapestry on the far wall. Would Elmer find out? Why, why, why had Bob told the police? It was all very proper to talk grandly about the citizen’s duty towards justice, but wasn’t the first duty of all to oneself and those whom one loved?

  She returned to the conservatory and slowly finished the repotting. Rollo came into the drawing room some ten minutes later and she called him into the conservatory. “Mr. Curson will be here for dinner.”

  “Very good, Madame.”

  “We’ll eat at seven-thirty.”

  “Yes, Madame.” He left.

  She stared at some pelargonium cuttings. Thompson had been ungainly in life and was proving to be even more ungainly in death. It was horrible to know he had been a peeping Tom. He might even have returned at nights to the house and gone round trying to peer inside the rooms, hoping something good was going on. She shivered. She felt as if her privacy had been torn up and mucked on.

  *

  Whicheck had lunch in the canteen at county H.Q. Headquarters buildings, set in a park-like area of trees, lawns, and flowerbeds, were architecturally exciting and their design had won an international award. Unfortunately, their functionality was not nearly as great as their originality. Offices were cramped, departments couldn’t be grouped together, water pressure was often too low to fill the taps on the fourth floor, the operations room was only half the size it should have been so that at times it became a bear garden and, of greatest concern to the rank and file, the kitchens were inefficient, good cooks refused to work in them, and the canteen food was extraordinarily bad, even for a canteen.

  Whicheck had sausages and mash and left half, then had the custard and apricots and wondered rather apprehensively what had been used in the manufacture of the custard. He tried to console himself with a coffee and a cigarette, but the coffee was quite horrible. He was glad to leave the canteen and go up to the third floor to report to the detective superintendent.

  Andrews was a large man in whom muscle was rapidly turning to fat. He had two years to go before retiring and made no secret of the fact that those two years could not pass quickly enough. He shared his room with a uniformed superintendent, but the latter was away for the day.

  Whicheck gave a summary of the course of the Thompson investigation. At the conclusion Andrews, who from time to time had made notes, said: “How long before the lab starts giving you some of the results of their tests, Steve?”

  “I’m hoping to get something out of them this afternoon, sir.”

  “You reckon they won’t find any blonde hairs on Thompson’s clothes?”

  “Not one. What’s more, Thompson never went into the house, so he couldn’t have picked up a hair that way, he’s never been given any of Curson’s clothes, and there’s no record of his ever being given a lift in any of the Cursons’ cars.”

  “So it’s very probable that the hair in his fingers didn’t come off his own clothes where it had got by casual contact?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But right now you couldn’t go into a court of law and prove it couldn’t have done?”

  “No,” said Whicheck.

  “There’s a hell of a weakness here, then? You know what defence counsel would do with that sort of doubt to play with!”

  “It’s early days.”

  “Maybe. Have you had hairs from the Curson woman for comparison?”

  “I want things a bit more definite before I make that move.”

  Andrews rubbed his forehead. “One thing’s for certain — we can’t afford to be wrong when we’re dealing with these people.” He dropped his hand on to the desk. “What about Bladen — what d’you make of him?”

  Whicheck, perplexed, shook his head. “I can see him in the heat of the moment picking up something solid to belt a peeping Tom as hard as possible, but I can’t then see him twice kicking the bloke on the ground.”

  “If you were caught with another man’s wife by the husband’s gardener, you’d probably act out of character. Have you uncovered anyone else who was in the lane that night?”

  “Not a soul. And if Bladen hadn’t told us, we wouldn’t have known about him.”

  “So why did he tell you, if he’s guilty?”

  “It could be one of at least three reasons, couldn’t it: bravado, conscience, fear someone might have seen his car around? He came to me this morning.”

  “What about?”

  “To order me to lay off brow-beating Mrs. Curson. While he was with me he also put forward all the arguments he thought I’d be raising in favour of his guilt and then proceeded to refute them.”

  “Did he! How much does he know about the evidence?”

  “Very little.”

  “Then he’s no idea of how the case is building up?”

  “None.”

  Andrews tapped on the desk with his fingers. “You’re not a hundred percent happy, are you, Steve?”

  “No, I’m not. It’s not so much the evidence as his character.”

  “Characters change under stress. You’ve got motive, proof he was there within the time of the killing, almost certainly the woman’s hair in the dead man’s finger… What more d’you want? A signed confession?”

  “It would help.”

  Andrews smiled. “You’re a prolonged pessimist.”

  “That’s what comes of being born with a foreign name. You native English are all so superior.”

  Whicheck left. He went down the main stairs, out to the drive, along past the driving school and the single storey building that housed the western command, and along to the laboratory.

  County forensic laboratory was not large, the staff was only one scientist and two assistants, but routine investigations could be carried out and only the more complicated tests and experiments had to be referred to the metropolitan forensic laboratories, thereby saving a great deal of time.

  The forensic scientist was a tall man with a slight stoop, a balding head that gave him a very high forehead, and an air of perpetual harassment. He came across from the bench at which he had been working and spoke to Whicheck.

  “We’re going over the dead man’s clothes now. So far there are no blonde hairs.”

  “What about Bladen’s suit?”

  “That’s a different story. We recovered a round dozen blonde hairs. I haven’t had the time to check them all yet, but there’s little doubt they’re all off the same head. One of these hairs shows certain particular characteristics. It’s been recently cut — certainly within the past forty-eight hours, probably within twenty-four — and it’s been tinted a gentle shade of gold…
beats me why women never stop mucking themselves around…” He grinned, showing he wasn’t quite as desiccated as he sometimes sounded. “Now the really interesting point is that the hair from Thompson’s hand shows precisely the same characteristics: recently cut and tinted gold. As you know, we normally can’t positively identify single hairs, although the new neutron bombardment technique may eventually allow us to do so, and we can only say they are similar in all respects — that is for the value of I, diameter of medulla, and so on, but in this instance, providing the chemists match the tinting agent, we’ve got a positive identification. The hair on Bladen’s jacket came from the same head of hair as the hair in Thompson’s hand. I don’t know if all this is going to help much?”

  Whicheck leaned against the wall. “If Mrs. Curson’s hair was cut on the Monday, or even on the Saturday, it could help a hell of a lot. One of our main problems has been trying to prove beyond the slightest doubt that Thompson couldn’t possibly have picked up one of Mrs. Curson’s hairs by chance on his clothes. If Mrs. Curson did get her hair cut on one of those two days, we’re home and dry because Thompson never turned up for work after the Friday.” Whicheck suddenly sneezed repeatedly and violently.

  “Hay-fever?” asked the scientist.

  After a while, the spasm of sneezing stopped. Whicheck mopped his nose and eyes. “That’s what they call it, although the hay season finished a hell of a time ago.”

  “Have you tried anti-histamine pills?”

  “I’ve tried everything.”

  “Then your only hope is to go and live on top of a mountain.”

  Whicheck, satisfied he was not going to sneeze again for a while, replaced his handkerchief. “What about the shoeprint, sir?”

  “You surely don’t need my word to tell you the cast and the shoe are a perfect match?”

  “It really looks as though we’re beginning to wrap up things,” said Whicheck reflectively, as he rubbed his battered ear.

  Chapter 10

  Maison Guichard was at the south end of the High Street in Paraford Cross. Ten years previously, it had been typical of any country hairdressing shop: men could get a short back and sides and women could get the kind of perm the assistants knew how to do. Seven years previously, the business had been bought by a Birmingham man who’d been trained in Paris and, as an additional business asset, changed his name to Guichard. Very soon, the place became a first-class women’s hairdressing salon.