Prisoner at the Bar

by Roderic Jeffries

  “Did you go out in your other car at all that night, sir?”

  “Have I not already said I did not leave my flat?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to put the questions to you.”

  “I understand your duty, but regret that you find it necessary to question me as you have solely because a man — whom I mistakenly believed to be a friend — chooses to make wild accusations.”

  “However wild, they have to be checked up.”

  Curson shrugged his shoulders.

  “Would you mind if I speak to Briggs, sir?”

  “In what connection?”

  “I shall have to take a statement from him.”

  “Very well. Rollo will tell you where he is.” Curson picked up the nearer telephone and dialled the exchange.

  His dismissal, thought Whicheck without rancour as he walked to the door, hadn’t been intentionally rude. It was just that Curson’s time was far too valuable to be wasted. How much was he going to make today — five thousand quid?

  Rollo wasn’t around, but looking through one of the windows at the end of the servants’ hall, Whicheck saw a man washing down a blue Rolls-Royce. He went out of the back door, round a well-trimmed yew hedge, and came to a small, square courtyard.

  Briggs was a tall, thin man with a cheerful-looking face who was only too pleased to talk. He’d driven up to his parents who lived in Ackerley, just over two hundred miles north of London, because they’d both recently been ill. He’d found them very much better than he feared. He’d stayed there the night, left early in the morning, and got back to London just before noon.

  “Have you got any idea whether the other car had been out?”

  “The Morris?” Briggs noticed a small patch of water on the Rolls’ radiator and carefully removed it with a leather. “No idea.”

  “You don’t keep a check on the mileage?”

  “Not on that car — it’s really only a hack. Now I always know what the Rolls ’as done, not because I need to keep a record, like, but because I always just notice. But the Morris — that’s a hack.”

  Long live the hacks, thought Whicheck. He asked a few more questions, then returned to his car. As he started the engine, he reflected that although Curson could have driven down on Monday night — or have caught a train — there was nothing whatsoever to suggest that he hadn’t done exactly as he claimed and stayed the night inside the flat.

  *

  Bladen had his fifth whisky of the evening. He knew drink wouldn’t solve anything, yet he went on drinking. He’d expected Katherine to telephone him to say how Elmer had reacted, but there’d been no call. He lit a cigarette. He was smoking so much he must be pickling his lungs.

  Were the police checking up on Elmer? That was a ridiculous question. They had to check up after his accusations. So what would they find? Would they be able to prove that Elmer had made a journey on Monday night? Even if they could, that wouldn’t prove Elmer had journeyed to Lovers’ Lane.

  Suppose there was no proof that Elmer had been near Lovers’ Lane on Monday night? Suppose the police didn’t bother to do more than ask a few cursory questions because their minds were conditioned to the futility of such an investigation? After all, they dealt in the proof of probabilities and look what they already had — Katherine and he, in Lovers’ Lane, making love because human nature was human nature, wasn’t it?, interrupted at the moment critique by her husband’s gardener

  He slammed his right fist down into the palm of his left hand. Because everybody knew that a man and woman couldn’t be together in a car at night in Lovers’ Lane without getting on the job, he was going to be found guilty of a killing he hadn’t committed.

  He was innocent, so there had to be a way of proving his innocence. As a trained lawyer, he must be able to see how to deliver himself: God knows, he’d never had such a pressing incentive for successfully defending a case. But on the other hand, had he ever had to appear for an accused whose position was apparently quite so hopeless?

  He had to prove his innocence, yet if people refused to believe that he and Katherine had not been in the middle of the act of love then surely his innocence could not be proved?

  *

  It was Saturday morning. The wind was stronger and colder and the sky was overcast. It seemed as if there had been no autumn, only summer and now winter.

  Whicheck was in Eastbrook’s room when the telephone call from London came and he took it there. The metropolitan forensic laboratory reported that the hair tint on the control hairs, the two exhibit hairs, and the sample, was the same.

  Whicheck replaced the receiver. “The hair tint matches.”

  “There wasn’t ever any doubt it would,” said Eastbrook.

  Whicheck momentarily wondered if the detective sergeant would ever lose enough of his bombastic certainty to make as good a detective as his capabilities suggested he should. “See Bladen and bring his car in.”

  “No sooner said than done.”

  “And don’t get funny with Bladen,” said Whicheck, in the same even voice, “or he’ll take you apart at the seams. Just remember, he’s cleverer than you and he’s a hell of a lot more influence.”

  Whicheck went along the corridor to his own room and sat down at the desk. The daily crime sheet stared up at him: three burglaries, one hit-and-run, one G.B.H., one serious pub brawl, one shoplifting, and two cars stolen, in the past twenty-four hours. He sighed. He was a man who had to do his job well because that was his nature, but with so much man-power taken up on the Thompson case some of this smaller crime would have to go by the board. He picked up the list and saw underneath the request from the North for a witness statement that would take up one man’s time for at least a couple of hours. The crime figures were rising, the clear-up rate was falling; yet since he had taken charge of the divisional C.I.D. its efficiency had markedly risen and it was solely the lack of staff required to combat the increasing crime rate that was at fault.

  He rang the divisional inspector and asked if there was any chance of another uniformed constable being attached as an aide to the C.I.D.? The inspector laughed. Whicheck was not surprised. The whole force was understaffed because of a variety of reasons, not least of all government policy.

  He went down and out to the courtyard, got into his car, and drove to the suburb of Thaxby, where one of the burglaries of the previous night had netted two thousand pounds’ worth of furs, antiques, and money. The wife was shocked. It was odd, mused Whicheck, how greatly women were affected when their houses were ransacked: it seemed psychologically to become an invasion of their innermost privacy. There were no fingerprints and no particular modus operandi. It was going to be one hell of a case to crack.

  He returned to the station and, after parking his car, went along to the search-bay at the far end of the courtyard. Bladen’s two-tone Austin had been brought here and was now being searched by Eastbrook and Franklin under a battery of powerful lights fixed to the walls, the ceiling, and in the pit.

  Eastbrook was looking in the back compartment. Whicheck went up to him. “Did you have any trouble getting the car?”

  “None I couldn’t handle,” said Eastbrook, with unabashed confidence.

  “Discovered anything?”

  “Nothing. The starting handle’s over there, on the bench. There’s no sign of blood or gubbins I can see, but there’s no doubt it fits.”

  The starting handle was on a sheet of plastic. As he looked down at it, Whicheck visualised the wound in Thompson’s forehead. The cross-piece at the end corresponded with the side tear in the flesh in the wound. The handle was painted black and had probably never been used to start the car because none of the paint had been disturbed. There were no signs of dried blood. “Get it off to forensic.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The rest of the tools were laid out further along the bench. It was very doubtful any of these could have been the weapon that smashed Thompson to the ground. If the starting handle had been used, would the blo
w not have marked the paint? Could some sort of test be devised to find this out — say on the head of a slaughtered pig — or would forensic take care of this? Bladen would know how incriminating blood smears were and he would have washed and washed the handle until as certain as he could be that no blood remained.

  Whicheck turned and watched Franklin, who was in the pit checking the underside of the car with a travelling lead.

  “When are you bringing him in?” asked Eastbrook.

  “You reckon we ought to?”

  “There’s no doubt.”

  There didn’t seem to be any doubt, thought Whicheck. Bladen had been in Lovers’ Lane with Mrs. Curson within the hours of the killing. Bladen had every reason not to want to be seen and identified with Mrs. Curson, but he had been — by Curson’s gardener. If in the middle of love making, his mixed feelings of anger and fear would have been explosive. Earlier in the case, he, Whicheck, had been unable to visualise Bladen’s kicking Thompson when on the ground: yet who could accurately judge what another would do under tremendous emotional stress?

  *

  As this was a case involving the killing of a man, the papers had to be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. One of the senior legal assistants travelled down to Paraford Cross on a Wednesday morning and held a conference at which the assistant chief constable (east), the detective superintendent, and Whicheck were present. Bladen was to be charged with murder.

  Chapter 13

  Lovelace had written that ‘stone walls do not a prison make’: stone walls made a prison cell that almost crushed Bladen. The physical fact of imprisonment was not the most terrible thing: it was his innocence that set up a wild cry in his mind which threatened to engulf him. A guilty man had his guilt to support him in his imprisonment, an innocent man was mocked by his innocence.

  He had practised law for nine years, after three years reading for the Bar and a law degree, yet this was the first time that he had begun to understand the deadly nature of unsupported innocence.

  His imprisonment so far was physically not harsh. Because he had yet to be tried and convicted, he was technically innocent and so allowed certain ‘privileges’: his food could be sent in from outside caterers, cigarettes, books, and magazines, were unrestricted, he could receive any number of letters, he wore his own clothes, he could have a reasonable number of private visits and as many conferences with his lawyers as he wanted.

  Katherine arranged for one of the hotels in Denbrington — where both the county jail and assize court were — to send him three meals a day. A second lot of meals, much plainer, started to arrive on the third day of his imprisonment and he discovered they were being paid for by Premble. Premble’s kindness — considering how shattered he must be by the betrayal of all his years of faithful service — brought a bitter lump to Bladen’s throat. He gave the food to the warders and asked them to eat it, because he was not going to let Premble know that his wonderful kindness was unnecessary.

  The hearing before the magistrates’ court, on a Tuesday and Wednesday, was an ordeal that filled him with a despair even deeper than before. His counsel challenged none of the actual evidence because it was all true. At the trial they could challenge the conclusions the jury would draw from the evidence, but since from the moment he and Katherine told them the truth about their relationship the jury would be convinced they were liars, his innocence, based on the truth, left him naked.

  On the Thursday morning, in his cell, he read in the papers the brief report of the findings of the magistrates. He wondered what juicy helpings the press would serve up to the public when the trial was held? The public would appreciate the case: rich man, beautiful wife, barrister lover, sex in a car in Lovers’ Lane… The ordinary reader would relish every word and what was not made quite explicit would become the subject of lascivious imagination…

  He received a letter from Katherine. Some of the writing was smudged, as if tears had fallen on the ink. He remembered how she had looked in the witness box on Wednesday as she gave her evidence about what they’d done in the car in Lovers’ Lane, and he felt sick.

  On Friday, Premble came to see him in the morning. He was escorted down to one of the interview rooms by a warder who then, because Premble was a barrister’s clerk, left them alone after telling Premble to ring the bell when he was finished.

  Premble was looking used up. There was an air of utter tiredness in the way in which he slumped down on to the wooden chair. “I’ve come to see if there’s anything you want, sir?”

  Bladen shook his head. “No, thanks. The food you’re sending me is wonderful.”

  Premble was pathetically grateful. “I’m so glad. I hope… I hope you won’t be long in coming back?”

  “Is Mr. Cousins handling my work?”

  “I’m very much afraid, sir, he’s not been left with as much of it as I had hoped.”

  “Why won’t they give him a chance?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Having exhausted that conversation, they stared glumly at each other.

  Premble spoke suddenly. “I’m so glad Mr. Tutt’s appearing for you, sir. He’s a wonderful counsel.”

  “Yes.”

  “They say he’s twice refused to go on the Bench.”

  “He’ll need to be brilliant, won’t he?”

  Premble shivered.

  *

  A week later, Tutt, his junior Vallis, and instructing solicitor, Coombsley, held a consultation in the same interview room at Denbrington Prison in which Bladen had met Premble. Tutt, a roly-poly figure of a man, was a brilliant criminal counsel who gained his successes by an ability to understand and concentrate on those points of a case which in fact would most affect the jury’s minds, as opposed to those which logically and legally should do so.

  Tutt turned over one of the pages of Bladen’s proof. “You saw, or thought you saw, a peeping Tom on the eighteenth?”

  “Yes,” replied Bladen.

  “Then why return to the same spot on the thirtieth?”

  “I’d forgotten the incident.”

  “It doesn’t strike me as an easy sort of thing to forget.”

  “Well, I forgot it. In any case, I couldn’t be certain that on the Wednesday I really had seen anyone.”

  “It’s a pity that the evidence of your earlier visit came out.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  Tutt studied Bladen. “It’s still a pity.”

  Vallis spoke. “In any case, there would still be the initials in the exercise book.”

  “I know,” replied Tutt, “but we’d have had a fighting chance of making the jury believe B and C didn’t have to refer to Bladen and Curson.”

  “I only told the truth,” said Bladen.

  Tutt looked at Coombsley. Bladen knew that in the past he had looked at his instructing solicitor in just such a way — how can the man be such a bloody fool, the look said?

  Tutt wrote in the margin of the proof, then looked up. “Have you ever had sexual relations with Mrs. Curson?”

  “Never.”

  “Have you ever indulged in any form of sexual play?”

  “No, but not because I didn’t want to. She wouldn’t let me. She’s too faithful to that goddamn husband of hers.”

  Tutt spoke carefully. “I would advise against the use of the word faithful in such a context.”

  “Why?” demanded Bladen angrily.

  “A jury would obviously find it a strange word. The faithful wife does not usually twice drive with another man after dark to Lovers’ Lane and there…”

  “And there do nothing of the kind your mind keeps harping on,” interrupted Bladen wildly. “Can’t any of you get above the cess-pit level?”

  “I am trying to present your case in the best possible light, Bladen”

  “How can you, when you’re so convinced that we made love in the car?”

  Tutt took off his glasses, which he used for reading, and laid them on his brief. His voice was level,
but cold. “If you are not satisfied with the way in which I am conducting your case, you are at liberty to ask someone else to take over. I’d point out something you seem to have forgotten — I accepted the brief at some considerable inconvenience to myself and, as you are a fellow member of the Bar, at no fee.”

  Bladen forced himself to act more rationally. “I’m… I’m sorry. I know you’ll do the case a hell of a lot better than anyone else. What’s got me is the ghastly way everyone automatically believes the lie.”

  Vallis leaned over and spoke in a low voice to Tutt, who nodded. “How did you know about Lovers’ Lane?” asked Tutt.

  “I didn’t,” replied Bladen.

  “Then how did you come to park in it?”

  “I saw the entrance and suggested we find out where it led to. Katherine… Mrs. Curson, suggested it might be somebody’s drive, but I joked and said we could always claim we had come to supper.”

  “A somewhat dubious explanation.”

  “Repeated now, it all sounds bloody silly. But we were gay, laughing, carefree. Can’t you remember how you acted when you were out with your wife before you got married?”

  “She happened to be single at that time.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  Tutt sighed. “A great deal of difference. Good God, man, what do you imagine the jury’s reactions will be if you start comparing your drive to that of any young man out with his fiancée? I shouldn’t have to tell you that collectively a jury is far more moral than are any of the jurors individually. At all costs, we’ve got to avoid outraging them any more than the facts will.”

  “I’m only trying to tell the truth. Isn’t that what justice is about?”

  The look on Coombsley’s face was one of perplexed pity. Tutt turned over a page of the proof. “On the eighteenth, you were parked in the lane for about an hour. What did you do during this time?”

  “Talked, enjoyed the night view.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kiss Mrs. Curson?”

  “Yes.”