“But I thought you didn’t like Adrienne.”
“I don’t much. But still I could try and find out about this, couldn’t I? Whatever it is.”
“Do that,” Dick said indulgently. His pipe had gone out, and he relit it. “I must say I don’t feel we’ve wasted our time, do you?”
The question was rhetorical, and remained unanswered. Much later, in bed, Caroline said, “Do you think Sol can’t have done it? Not possibly, I mean?”
Dick’s large nose pointed to the ceiling. “Yes.”
“I don’t know what I think. He’s a funny sort of man, Sol, and I always thought Marion didn’t give him – I mean, I shouldn’t say they were really compatible, would you?”
Dick turned and gripped her shoulders firmly. “I don’t want to hear you talking like that. They’re our friends. Nobody would have said anything like that before this happened. The way people behave—” He did not finish the sentence, but started another. “If you’re not going to believe the best about your friends when they’re in trouble, what hope is there for anybody? I mean, supposing it had happened to us, a frightful series of coincidences like this.”
Caroline moved closer into his arms. “Yes, that’s what it is. A series of coincidences.”
On the following day Dick rang up Trapsell, and told him his deductions. The solicitor was unimpressed.
“Yes, Mr Weldon. I think you can take it that’s the kind of thing that won’t be overlooked.”
“You mean you’d realised it already? It will be brought out in evidence?”
“The conduct of the case is in the hands of Mr Newton.”
“But surely you must see—”
“Your friend Mr Grundy has every faith in Mr Newton, and I suggest we leave it to him.”
When he had put down the telephone Trapsell told his clerk that he was out if Mr Weldon called again. It was by pure error that Dick’s next telephone call, a couple of days later, was put straight through to Trapsell’s office. This time the solicitor’s impatience turned to interest within half a minute. He listened attentively, told Dick to ring him at any time without hesitation, and put through a telephone call at once to Magnus Newton.
After their guests had gone Jack Jellifer surveyed the debris of the dinner party with real distress. The main dish, steak cooked in the oven with wine and herbs, had not really been as tender as he would have wished, the burgundy had been a disappointment, there had been something disturbingly (he found himself searching for the right word even in his present anguish of mind) disturbingly lush about the sorbet which should have finished off the meal with tongue-cleaning freshness.
Perhaps these subtleties had gone unnoticed by the guests, two influential clods from New Zealand who might arrange a lecture tour for him, but Jack felt the pangs of the defeated artist. He had, also, a burning feeling, or something between a burning feeling and a knife-like pain, penetrating his chest. He said as much to Arlene.
“Indigestion.”
“You know I never suffer from it.”
“Conscience, then.” Jack burped. “I knew it was indigestion. You haven’t got a conscience.”
“Arlene, my love, please don’t go into all that again.”
“I shall go into it as often as I like.” She confronted him, a savage green and yellow and blue-hued parrot with scarlet claws. “Why didn’t you let the bloody police do their own dirty work? If Sol did kill that bitch I expect she deserved it, and anyway what did you want to say anything for, why couldn’t you wait till you were asked?”
“I’ve told you over and over again that I felt it to be a public duty—”
“Public duty be –ed,” said Arlene, who was given to free use of language. “You went to them because you don’t like Sol, that’s all. And I don’t believe you saw anything anyway.”
“I feel one of my headaches coming on.” Jack dropped into a chair and covered his eyes with one plump hand. Through his fingers he could see the abstract painting, but it lacked power to console him at the moment.
“I’ll tell you something that will make it worse, then. The daily’s not coming in tomorrow so there’s the washing up to do, and I can tell you I’m not doing it on my bloody own.”
“Pseudo,” Edgar Paget said. “That’s the trouble with this country today, too many pseudo people in it. You know what I mean, the sort of people who read The Times and the Guardian because the Telegraph’s not good enough for ’em. Snobs. That place is packed full of ’em.” His thumb jerked in the direction of The Dell.
“I never noticed it stopped you selling them houses,” his wife said.
“Of course not, I’m a business man. But I’m a private citizen too, and a private citizen can have an opinion, can’t he? This garage trouble, now, it comes from the pseudos like that man Grundy. You know I walked out, walked straight out of that meeting. ‘I shall want an apology,’ I said. Do you know what happened today? I had a telephone call from Sir Edmund, you know Sir Edmund, a real gentleman of the old school. He told me they were all very sorry for what had happened and the Committee had met again and they’d like to go ahead on the basis I suggested. It just needs a little common-sense and goodwill, that’s all, to make the world go round. Get rid of the trouble makers and pseudos like this fellow Grundy.” His wife glanced at him warningly, but Edgar took no notice. “Playing around with a woman who was going with a coloured man, and then strangling her. I knew he was a bad one, a real pseudo, the first time I set eyes on him. I wish I was going to give evidence instead of you, my girl, I can tell you that.”
Jennifer had been sitting reading, or pretending to read, the evening paper. Now she threw it down. “Oh, Daddy, I wish you’d shut up talking about that horrible man.”
She ran out of the room. Edgar looked after her, shook his head. “I don’t know what’s got into the girl, turning on the waterworks like that. She did it after the identification you know, but not when she was at the Magistrates’ Court. Stood up there cool as a cucumber, I was proud of her.”
Rhoda looked as if she was about to make some protest. In fact she said simply that she had some washing to do, and stumped out of the room.
“But giving evidence for the prosecution,” Lily said. “I mean, darling, I just don’t see it.”
Werner shrugged his elegant shoulders. “English law, it’s crazy. You heard what I told what’s his name, Manners, every word of it. Could I have said less? Did I say anything that was not true? But now they are telling me that I must go to the Old Bailey and say it, and I don’t want to.” They were sitting on the sofa, and he tugged her hair.
“Can’t you just tell them that?”
“My sweetie pie, don’t you think I’d like to? This whole thing is ruin, I can tell you. Guffy, he’s finished, nobody will look at him. Business is not good, in fact it is lousy, and it is going to get lousier. Don’t you think I wish I could get out of the whole thing, and get old Sol out too?”
“What did he say when you saw him last week? How did he seem?”
“I don’t understand the way his mind works. He might almost be enjoying it.”
He tugged her hair again, sharply. She turned her head towards him, and he kissed her.
Letter from Solomon Grundy to Marion Grundy:
Thanks for letters. Feeling the way you do, you’re probably right in saying there is no point in coming to see me. We don’t want to argue across a prison table. Theo has been in, very agitated because he’s being called to give evidence for the prosecution. Dick’s been twice, full of news, very cheerful. He’s playing detective, I gather. I hope he enjoys it.
They treat me pretty well here. Food not bad, warders friendly, nothing to complain of. Peaceful, too. Prison is extremely interesting, a closed society, an image of what the world is going to be like in fifty years. Everything is ordered here for you by authority, it isn’t like The Dell, where the residents were doing the ordering – that is the thing you like and I object to! Once you accept the fact that in all th
e trivial, inessential things you have to do what you are told, you have all the time that’s left to think about your life and errors. You are free! Do you understand what I mean?
But it is not my life and errors I think about as much as yours. However did you come to marry me? What one has done is done and there’s no use in regretting it, but I do feel that in the past I did you the maximum harm, and that I’ve now done you almost the maximum good by getting put in prison. If I am found guilty you will be able to get a divorce, and you are young enough to make a fresh start. You may get a good relationship yet! I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be ironical or to hurt you. When I’m in prison, what’s the point?
I want you to understand that I shall do nothing to influence the course of events, the result of the trial, that I shall accept whatever happens. Every event springs from a prime cause, isn’t that so? And as a prisoner, as “the accused”, I feel myself completely detached from any possible outcome. If I were outside it would be a very different matter. Try to believe that what happens is inevitable. And don’t worry about the result of the trial. As you can see, I don’t.
Sol
“Well,” Mr Hayward asked. “What’s the news, what does he say?”
Marion had aged in the weeks since her husband’s arrest, not dramatically but in small ways. The lines of discontent in her face were more deeply drawn, the eager look characteristic of her had turned into an anxious stare, she found it hard to keep her hands still.
“He says, oh, I don’t know. He says I shouldn’t worry about the result of the trial.”
Mr Hayward’s pork butcher’s face was solemn. “My poor little girl.”
Her voice was high. “What do you mean?”
“What your dad means is he may be found guilty,” said Mrs Hayward, never in favour of indirection.
“Oh, Mum.”
Mr Hayward had crossed to the square bay window and now stood looking out, with his back to them. The main road ran outside the house, beyond the few feet of front garden. “Lot of traffic.”
“I feel I’m being – inadequate.”
“You’d think it would get less, this time of year, winter coming on.” Without turning round he said, “Might be best to let us see what he says.” It was a sore point that she had not shown them the letters that came from prison in her husband’s firm angular hand.
“No.”
“Suit yourself, my dear. You must be the judge.” His voice made it clear that he thought the judge’s decision wrong.
Marion looked at her mother, who seemed wrapped in a private dream. Then Mrs Hayward said slowly, “It gets worse and worse. Every year it gets worse.”
“What does?”
“The traffic.”
Inspector Ryan found himself dropping in rather often on Tony Kabanga as the days and weeks went by, and this was surprising because Ryan had no particular liking for spades or coloureds or whatever you liked to call them. At first Ryan had kept an eye on him, because it was after all in practical terms possible that Kabanga had left the Windswept Club, gone to Cridge Mews and killed his girl friend. A practical possibility, yes, although Ryan had never considered it seriously since that first interview. The clubs seemed to be respectably conducted, as such places went, and there was no question of Kabanga being a ponce, for the dead girl or for any other woman. Apart from that, though, as Ryan said to Manners, he could see when a man was genuinely upset, and he would have been prepared to stake his reputation that Kabanga had had nothing to do with the girl’s death.
After the arrest of Grundy, of course, the reason for seeing Kabanga no longer existed, but Ryan continued to drop in on him at the Windswept, where he was almost always to be found in the early evening. The inspector justified this to himself by saying that you could often pick up useful bits of information in clubs like this, and also by saying (to Manners as well as to himself) that Kabanga was a good contact. The truth was, though, that Ryan, whose family had come over from Ireland during the Troubles and had done no good for themselves at all, was fascinated by the speedy success of this smooth African. He said as much to Kabanga one evening as he sat in the office of the Windswept drinking malt whisky, the sort of whisky he wasn’t normally able to afford.
“Look at me now, Tony. Came out of the Army after the war, went into the police because I liked the routine, the discipline. Now I’m an inspector, you know how much I get?” He said how much it was. “Chicken feed, eh? But I’m the success of the family, you know that. Then I look at myself and I look at you and I think, how’s he done it? You’ve been here how long, four years. And you’re set up for life.”
Kabanga now called the Inspector “Buck”. He smiled his slow sad smile. “To some of us money just sticks, Buck. Put it that way.”
“I’ll say it does. I call it bloody marvellous.”
“I would give all the money I’ve got if it would bring Sylvia back.”
“Come on now. You’d known her seven weeks.”
“You think that isn’t long enough? He did it, this Grundy?”
“Sure he did it.” Ryan drained his glass. “And we’ve got him – like that.”
“He has been bad luck to me all the time.” On this Ryan made no comment. “He will be hanged?”
“Not hanged, Tony boy. Life imprisonment. But they haven’t found him guilty yet.”
“I do not think much of English justice.” It was a tribute to Ryan’s friendly feeling for Kabanga that he forbore to say that a spade should be thankful he was let into this country at all. “It is too slow. It is silly. A man who would kill somebody as beautiful as Sylvia should be killed. I should like to kill him, Buck, I should like to kill him with my own hands.”
“And he really means it too,” Ryan said afterwards to Manners. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he did something silly, if Grundy did get off. I tell you, he really loved that girl.”
Once Manners had made up his mind about Grundy’s guilt he never wavered in that belief, but set about preparing the case against him with his usual conscientiousness. All the reports, odds and ends, false alarms, that poured in were faithfully investigated, but only those possibly relating to Grundy seemed to Manners really important. Without conscious unfairness he tended to relegate that unsolved question about the dead girl’s sexual activities to the background. In spite of what had been said, there was no proof that she had been a prostitute, and this aspect of the case was given up. She had been Grundy’s mistress, he had become jealous of her association with and prospective marriage to Kabanga, he had killed her. Accept this pattern, and every coin fell into its slot.
Manners liked to do a tidy job of work, and he was quite pleased with the file he finally presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The file was studied carefully, and it was decided that there was a case to answer. In due course the Prison Medical Officer’s report arrived too. From the time of his arrest Grundy had, as is customary, been under constant surveillance in the prison hospital. The report read:
I have had several interviews myself with the accused, and have had reports from the officers who have had nursing charge of him. I have studied the reports on his history, and have also read the depositions in the case.
There followed a detailed account of Grundy’s upbringing and career, his intelligence test rating (which was 135, well above average), and his illnesses. There was nothing significant here, the barrister handling the case in the DPP’s office thought, except possibly that Grundy’s Army CO said that he had always been ready for a fight, and on one occasion had attacked another officer in the mess after some trivial argument. But his conduct was listed officially as “Very good,” and the CO had evidently had a soft spot for a dashing young officer. The report went on:
In my discussions with him, his married life naturally came up as a subject. He was quite ready to talk about it, but what he said seemed to conceal some inner amusement at my questions. When I asked him what importance he attached to the sexual relation
ship in marriage, for instance, he said that he attached the same importance as any other normal man. In reply to my questions as to whether his own relationship with his wife was satisfactory, he said it was an average one, and refused to enlarge on that. My impression is that it was probably unsatisfactory for both of them, but this can only be called a personal impression.
It would be wrong to say that he was evasive. I would rather use the word “withdrawn”. He seemed to enjoy our conversation. He referred often to the uselessness of trying to struggle against fate, in reference to his own situation, and said that if he was meant to be found guilty he would be found guilty. This remark did not spring from any religious belief, for he said rather aggressively that he had none, but apparently from a feeling that all human effort was useless, and that it is impossible for human beings to organise their own lives. When I asked if he regarded himself as responsible for his actions, he replied that he did not acknowledge human responsibility in that sense.
The barrister read this with a frown, without making much sense of it. He read it again and made less, and passed on to what was for the Department the most important part of the report.
He showed no sign of depression, but there were marked indications of a dissociation of the personality, of a schizoid kind. These were evident in the opinions he expressed, although it would be too much to call him a divided personality. There seemed to me no defect of reason, due to a disease of the mind, such as would suggest that at the material time he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. He has a perfectly good appreciation of the situation, even though his attitude to it is unusual, and in my opinion he is fit to plead to the indictment and to stand trial.
That seemed to be all right then, the barrister thought as he added the document to the file. There was little chance of a successful plea of diminished responsibility.
The End Of Solomon Grundy Page 13
