The End Of Solomon Grundy

by Julian Symons

  It was as nasty a twenty minutes as Ryan had had for years, and the worst thing about it was that he didn’t feel he could put up any defence. He had been stupid, he had stuck his neck out, and it was no sort of use saying that Kabanga hadn’t seemed to be anything but genuine. Put not your trust in spades was the lesson to be learned from the whole thing, not even when the spades seemed to be trumps.

  The afternoon was given to the evidence of Stanley Leighton, who survived the ordeal better than Hardy had dared to expect. Witnesses may alienate a jury by uncertainty or over-confidence, so that under pressure they either become totally unsure of what they have seen or take refuge in the dogmatic assertion of “facts” which are obviously no more than suppositions. That Leighton steered his way between this Scylla and Charybdis was due largely to the skill of Eustace Hardy. Thinking over the judge’s intervention during Clements’s cross-examination, an intervention in which he had almost taken on the role of cross-examiner himself, it seemed to him that Crumble was showing, most unusually, a bit of feeling. And then also Hardy had gathered from something in Stevenage’s manner – nothing that he could put his finger on, yet it was quite perceptibly there – that his junior was critical of his handling of the case. He had also become aware, when he sneezed three times and then blew his long thin aquiline nose, that he was developing a cold. The fact and the thoughts together stung him into self-examination. He was a man who would have been disgusted to feel that he was carrying through a case to anything but the best of his ability, and he handled the potentially shaky Leighton quite brilliantly.

  “Why were you looking out of the window, Mr Leighton?” A smile touched his face and vanished, like sunlight glancing over ice. “Come now, you needn’t mind saying.”

  “Well, I was kind of interested in Miss Simpson, see, in her visitors. I’m a bit naturally curious, put it like that.”

  “Especially in Miss Simpson, Miss Gresham, perhaps?”

  “She was a good-looking girl, you know,” Leighton admitted.

  “And you are interested in good-looking girls?”

  “Definitely. I mean, who isn’t?”

  “Now, I want to be quite clear about what you saw on the evening of the 23rd.”

  “What I saw was this big ginger-haired chap walking down the Mews. He went by my house, and after that I stopped looking a minute, because I was getting dressed so that I could get off to catch my train, see.”

  “But then you looked again?”

  “That’s right. And he was ringing the bell. Then she came down and they spoke for a minute or so. She let him in and they went upstairs.”

  “Had you see this man before?”

  “Definitely. I’d seen him go into her flat before, two or three times.”

  “You are sure it was the same man that you saw on this night?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Did you later pick out this man at an identification parade?”

  “I did.”

  “And do you see him in Court now?”

  “There.” Leighton flung out a hand quite dramatically at Grundy in the dock. Grundy glared back at him and suddenly shouted, “Don’t be such a bloody show off!”

  “Silence.”

  “He’s enjoying himself. Look at him.” Grundy pounded the dock in front of him. There was uproar in the Court. Mr Justice Crumble’s great nose and thick raddled cheeks began quite perceptibly to shake, and his ten fingers played by what seemed their own volition a kind of dance in front of him, so that his pen dropped to the floor and had to be retrieved. Magnus Newton, face very red, hurried across and spoke to his client, who could be heard saying something like, “Get this bloody farce over.” There was a stir and murmur in the public gallery. Two or three members of the jury could be seen looking at Grundy with the sidewise, fascinated glance that means no good for an accused man. Then the judge said, “Mr Newton, I cannot have this. Your client must control himself.”

  “He will do so, my lord. He wishes to apologise to the Court.”

  “Very well. But he must control himself.” Slowly Mr Justice Crumble’s shaking subsided. Eustace Hardy, well satisfied, sat down.

  It is the law that the prosecution must tell the defence of any criminal record that their witnesses may have if it is relevant to the case being tried, although the defence is under no such obligation in relation to their own witnesses. Hardy had, then, begun by frankly admitting Leighton’s previous conviction, but had said that this was seven years ago. Newton went into details of the conviction, and carried on from there.

  “I see that you are now a scrap metal dealer. Where is your yard?”

  “Yard?”

  “Yes. Where do you keep the scrap you buy?”

  “I don’t have a yard. I’m more of a middleman, see.”

  “You don’t have a yard!” Newton allowed astonishment and incredulity to pass over his puffy features. “Do you mean that you don’t handle any scrap metal yourself, that you never see it or store it or stock it?”

  “That’s right. I’m definitely a middleman.”

  “Very much so, I should say. And your friend Mr Hinchcliffe, the gentleman in Birmingham, is he a middleman too?”

  “Oh no, he’s just a friend of mine.”

  “Can you give me the name of any firm who has bought scrap metal from you, or through you, in the past six months?”

  But here Newton over-reached himself, for Leighton gave him the names of three firms, and the judge showed signs of impatience, so that he had to give up this line of questioning. Nor was he more successful in shaking Leighton’s conviction that he had seen Grundy, and nobody else, enter the Cridge Mews flat that night. The only point he was able to make was that Leighton had seen other men going into the house, but this was too vague to be particularly revealing. At one moment Leighton appealed to the judge, in answer to a question from Newton.

  “My lord, why should I make up this story to let Mr Newton make aspersions on my character?”

  “I suppose you are going to tell us that you have come here simply as a good citizen concerned to see justice done?” Newton asked with a sneer.

  “Definitely, yes. Estelle was a nice girl.”

  The gibe had been unfortunate, and Leighton’s reply was not lacking in dignity. Newton sat down.

  He got no more change out of Seegal and Harrison, who told their stories as they had before. The faint degree of uncertainty about their identification was almost more convincing than positiveness would have been. Altogether, if the morning had gone to the defence the afternoon decidedly belonged to the prosecution.

  Newton went back to his house in Hampton Court. He had been in a good temper for a fortnight, ever since the news about his daughter’s scholarship came through. His wife recognised that he wanted to talk about the case and she let him do so throughout dinner and most of the evening, although legal talk bored her.

  Eustace Hardy stayed at his club when he had an important case on. He found the atmosphere congenial, and was able to work there after dinner with greater concentration than he would have achieved at home. On this evening, however, he could feel the cold creeping up on, and over, him. He had decided on hot whisky and bed when one of the assistant directors of the DPP’s office telephoned, in a state of perturbation unusual in him, to ask if he might come round with Manners to talk about some fresh evidence.

  Hardy saw them in a little room where he knew they would not be disturbed. A coal fire burned brightly, brandy and whisky were in front of them, but still Hardy shivered and sneezed. “I’ve got a cold,” he explained.

  The assistant director expressed sympathy, even alarm. Hardy waved away his concern. He knew from experience that his cold, now that he was fully aware of it, would not prevent him from handling the case to the end, and might even spur him to a sharper point of acuity. He would have been prepared to concede that the cold was perhaps psychosomatic, a consequence of the fact that the case had not been going too well. Now he lay back in his cha
ir and waited for Manners to speak.

  Manners did not feel at home in these surroundings. At the station he was regarded as a cut above his fellows and a little remote from them, a man whose opinions on any subject were to be heard with respect. Here, among all these leather chairs and dark brown pictures, in the presence of a man whose response to his presence as bearer of important news was the remark that he had a cold, Manners felt awkward, resentful, almost inferior. It was in his mind that Hardy did not take the case with proper seriousness, and the thought persisted even though he knew it to be unjust.

  “It’s a woman called Mrs Stenson,” he said. “She came to the Yard late this afternoon. Her story is that she parked her car in Cridge Mews just after ten o’clock on the evening of the 22nd, occasionally parks it there because it’s conveniently near a friend of hers in Cridge Street. A man friend, I gather she’s divorced.”

  “Ten o’clock. Fits in with Leighton,” the assistant director said. He had a jerky, attractive eagerness that in Manners’s eyes contrasted favourably with Hardy’s languor.

  “That’s right, sir. Must have been when Leighton turned back and started dressing, that’s why he didn’t notice it. Well, she parked her car, started to walk out of the Mews to her friend’s house, and saw a ginger-haired man come down the Mews, stop at the door of No. 12, ring the bell. A woman came down, they stood talking, and the man went in. She’s identified the man as Grundy from a photograph.”

  Hardy had his eyes closed. He murmured, “Why hasn’t she come forward before? It’s two months ago.”

  “She went away the following afternoon, Tuesday, to Paris, staying with some friends over there, didn’t come back until a few days ago. Wasn’t until she read about the case in the papers that it came back to her. Natural enough.”

  “It really pins Grundy there,” the assistant director made a pinning gesture. “Right place, right time. In a sense it’s only confirmation of Leighton, but two is much better than one when the one is Leighton, I’m sure you’ll agree. He stood up wonderfully, though. I thought your handling of him was masterly, masterly.”

  Eyes still closed (he looks like a bloody death mask, Manners thought), Hardy asked: “What’s she like, this Mrs Stenson?”

  At another time, in another place, Manners might have said that she was the rich bitch upper-class type, but he felt that this would not do. He summarised. “Says she’s thirty-two, rather haggard but good-looking, bit of a rackety life I should say. I told you she was divorced. Lives on her own in half a house in Porchester Terrace – told me that herself. Obviously has plenty of money. Slightly nervous type, but seems determined. I should think she’d hold up all right in the box.”

  Hardy opened his eyes. “There’s no question of her having been in your hands, like Mr Leighton?”

  “No, sir.” Manners permitted himself a brief laugh.

  “I had a check, just to make sure, but she’s got no record. You realise I saw her only a few hours ago, and I’ve had no time to get a life history, but she seems all right. Husband was a stockbroker, no children, she says they just didn’t get on so they decided to part, only civilised thing to do and so on. That’s the sort she is.” More at ease, he permitted himself the remark he had held back a few minutes ago. “Society type.”

  Not by the flicker of an eyelid did Hardy indicate the distastefulness of the phrase. “Very well.”

  “This is what she says.”

  Hardy read the statement through. The assistant director wriggled enthusiastically in his chair. “It’s exactly what we want, don’t you agree, ties up the whole thing, just couldn’t be better.”

  “It seems useful.” He’s a cold fish, thought Manners, who was sometimes accused of being a cold fish himself, if you cut him open it would be water inside instead of blood.

  “We’ve got to give the defence twenty-four hours’ notice. We’ll serve a Notice of Additional Evidence and call her at the end, so that the defence can’t make too much of a song and dance. All right?” The assistant director was referring to the rule by which the prosecution case may not be reopened once it has been concluded, so that it might be necessary for Hardy to spin out his examination of witnesses to allow for this.

  Hardy sneezed. “Don’t worry. We’ve got the boys who caught him at London Airport. There’s your own evidence, Superintendent. And then there’s Tissart. He’ll talk all day if I let him.”

  “You ought to go to bed.” The assistant director would have liked to add “Eustace,” but something about Hardy forbade such familiarity.

  “I’m going.” He drained his glass. His guests dutifully rose.

  They showed Marion into the little room, and she sat down. Sol came in and sat on the other side of the table that separated them. A police officer, sympathetic but watchful, stood by the door. It was all as she had seen it in half a dozen films.

  Sol looked as he had before, looked well even. Nothing could ever refine his features, and he was certainly pale, but he looked well. When he smiled at her, which was something she didn’t remember him doing for a long time, he really looked quite youthful, and she felt again the emotion, a blend of admiration and delicious nervousness – the sort of nervousness you might feel about the reactions of some self-contained but potentially fierce animal that you were proposing to adopt as a pet – that had moved her when she married him.

  “I’m back, Sol,” she said. “For good. Caroline came down to see me and made me see I ought to come back. They’ve been wonderful, Caroline and Dick. I think she came down specially to see me, though she didn’t say so.”

  “They like to stick their noses into other people’s business.”

  “But Sol, you know they found out about—”

  “I know, I know.” He ran a hand through his ginger hair. “Dell life doesn’t suit me, but you’re right, they’re good neighbours.”

  She looked at the impassive policeman, lowered her voice. “I read about what happened, you ought to try and control yourself – you know, the jury will get a wrong impression, that’s what Dick said.”

  “And of course Dick’s right.”

  She felt the old barriers rising. “Please, Sol.”

  “You don’t understand anything I’ve written to you, do you?”

  “When you’re in the box, when, you know, you’re being cross-examined, you must keep calm then.”

  “I told you it didn’t matter.”

  “Oh, how can you say that? Of course it matters.”

  “The purpose of living is what happens now,” he began, and then said as though he were humouring a child, “All right. Perhaps it does matter.”

  They talked for another five minutes, but she could not be sure that he had taken in anything she said. Had it been worthwhile, she wondered afterwards, had there been any point in going, did he want to see her? Driving back in the car with Dick, who talked away with his usual enthusiasm, she could not be sure.

  Chapter Six

  Trial, Fourth Day

  Trial Transcript – 7

  Detective-Constable LEONARD SIMS, examined by Mr Stevenage. “I was instructed, with Detective-Constable Larkin, to go to London Airport, watch for the accused, and detain him for questioning. I discovered at the Airport that he had booked a single air ticket for Belgrade, and when the Belgrade flight was called, Detective-Constable Larkin and I detained him as instructed. He expressed surprise, and said that he was going for a holiday in Yugoslavia. He made no objection to returning with us, although he was annoyed.”

  Cross-examined by MR NEWTON. “You say he was annoyed. That would be the natural reaction of an innocent man, would it not?”

  “It might be, sir.”

  “Had he made any attempt to conceal his flight?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Had he booked under a false name, did he try to board the plane at the last minute, anything like that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “In fact his whole behaviour was perfectly consistent with i
nnocence, was it not?”

  “I had simply been asked to detain him.”

  “Let me put it this way. He behaved exactly like any other passenger?”

  “That is so, yes.”

  “Now, when you detained him, I believe he said something. Will you tell us what it was?”

  “It was something like this. ‘I suppose it’s because of that stupid bitch Facey. She thinks I’ve killed my wife. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s got the police searching for her body.’ He said further that he and his wife had quarrelled, and his wife had gone to stay with her father.”

  “And this was the truth?”

  “I understand so, sir.”

  “Mrs Grundy was understandably upset, and had gone to stay with her family?”

  “I couldn’t say if that was the reason, sir.”

  “So really this order to detain the accused was the result of a ludicrous mistake?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. I was simply carrying out instructions.”

  “The instructions of your superior officer, yes…”

  Extract from the cross-examination of Superintendent JEFFREY MANNERS by Mr Newton. “…So you had been told by this neighbour, Mrs Facey, of her suspicions. You had no warrant for making a search, had you?”

  “The kitchen window appeared to have been forced, and in all the circumstances it appeared right to investigate.”

  “I know, Superintendent, I know. And did you find anything suspicious when you searched the house without a warrant, anything at all?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The whole tale of the accused murdering his wife was absolute nonsense, was it not?”

  “It proved to be untrue, certainly.”

  “It came about because the prisoner quite naturally resented the insinuations of a silly neighbour?”

  “There had been a quarrel, and Mrs Facey had heard it. Then Mrs Grundy disappeared. I think her conclusions were reasonable, a little alarmist perhaps.”

  “But they were utterly wrong?”