The End Of Solomon Grundy

by Julian Symons

  Yet Borritt faced Stevenage’s cross-examination with a sort of hangdog determination. He had his own system, one in which he awarded points for similarities in handwriting, and deducted points for dissimilarities, making a positive identification at the end only if he reached a total of one hundred. It was about this that Stevenage questioned him.

  “I understood you to say, Mr Borritt, that you discovered sixteen points of dissimilarity between the postcard and the handwriting specimens of the accused.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you deducted points accordingly.”

  “That is so, yes.”

  “Sixteen sounds a great many for one small postcard.”

  “It is.”

  “Am I right in saying that six of these points were found in the letter ‘a’?”

  “Yes.”

  “But should this not be simply one point of dissimilarity, as it is a single letter repeated?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And your other points were concerned with punctuation marks, were they not?”

  “And with diacritics. It is possible to learn a great deal from individual use of diacritics.”

  “Diacritics, in plain language they are the dots over the letter ‘i,’ the crossing bar of the ‘t,’ that kind of thing.”

  “That is so, yes.”

  “And what you are saying is that these diacritics and punctuation marks show sufficient differences to establish a genuine dissimilarity.”

  “I am.”

  After fifty minutes of this, Stevenage decided that he had cast enough doubt on Borritt, and the tall man rolled up his sheets of paper, tucked the rollers under his arm, bowed to Mr Justice Crumble, and shuffled out of Court on very obviously flat feet. There was nothing wrong with Borritt, perhaps he knew as much as Tissart, but those flat feet were somehow a final dubious mark against him.

  At this stage of the trial an air of boredom pervaded the Court. The day was stuffy, although it was December, and Mr Justice Crumble, head sunk low in his gown, plum fingers playing with each other, gave the impression that he was on the verge of sleep. Eustace Hardy had listened to Borritt’s evidence with his eyes closed and a look of ineffable weariness on his face. Two of the jurors seemed to find it impossible to stop yawning, a third was occupied in creating a most intricately patterned doodle.

  Elsewhere in Court there was the subdued rustling of papers, the popping up and down and in and out of altogether junior and unimportant figures, that can only take place during one of those periods in a trial when people feel that what is going on is not really worth their attention.

  Borritt had been permitted to give his evidence first through that consideration often afforded to expert witnesses on the ground of their presumably extreme busyness, but everybody had been hoping that Grundy would go into the box that day. When Stevenage sat down, however, it was five minutes to four, and Mr Justice Crumble, emerging perhaps from a profound meditation on the nature of man, decided that it was time to adjourn. The Grundy fireworks, if there were to be Grundy fireworks, were left for the morrow.

  There were no rejoicings in The Dell that evening. Cyprian put the matter with his usual brutality by asking about Mrs Stenson.

  “What about her?”

  “I mean, if what she says is right he’s had it, hasn’t he?”

  “Cyprian,” Caroline said. Marion tried to look as if she had not heard.

  Cyprian stuffed veal and ham pie into his mouth.

  “Has anyone investigated her?”

  Dick answered. “Yes. George Trapsell’s been looking into her background. Can’t have turned up anything or they’d have used it.” Cyprian mumbled something unintelligible. “What?”

  “I said it was pretty funny her not knowing about the case.”

  “I don’t know. She went abroad the next afternoon—”

  “Did she? Has anyone checked on that?”

  “Greedy,” Gloria said. Cyprian’s hand was stretched out for another piece of pie.

  The Weldons had been right in thinking that Marion’s return would sway opinion – that is Dell opinion, which within this narrow enclave was more important than anything said in the outer world – in her husband’s favour. It was a mark of this changed opinion that Peter Clements, returning from a hard day’s administrative argument about a new thriller series, in which everybody had been most painstakingly nice and there had been not a hint of a snide remark, had found himself decisively cut by Sir Edmund Stone. As Sir Edmund said afterwards to his wife, that fellow Grundy might be a perfectly awful character, but for somebody like that fellow Clements – a fellow who was, Sir Edmund said with a very inaccurate glance at the charge on which Peter Clements had been arrested, very likely no better than Grundy himself – to get up and give evidence against him was something that a gentleman really didn’t do. Peter Clements was shaken almost equally by this and by the curt nod which was all he received from a neighbour named Adrian Leister, who was a saxophonist in a successful jazz band, and with whom he had always considered himself to be on the most friendly terms.

  Back in the house where the blankness of Rex’s room stared at him as though it were a symbol of some great gap suddenly created in his physical being, the nerves of the ears suddenly cut or the tongue torn out, he decided that life in The Dell was no longer bearable. He went that very evening to stay with an adoring aunt who lived at Penge, and a couple of days later wrote to Edgar Paget to say that he wanted to put up his house for sale. Edgar sold it for him within a month, to an advertising man who was rather pleased to be able to tell his friends that Peter Clements, the well-known queer mixed up in the Grundy murder case, had lived there. Peter was eventually fined ten pounds on the charge of importuning, but he did not lose his job. Nor was his heart actually broken, for shortly afterwards he rented a flat in a new, rather smart block in what used to be called Maida Vale. He shared this flat with a film executive of about his own age, and they got on awfully well together.

  Edgar Paget also found himself no longer a hero of the Grundy saga but suddenly recast, to his disgust and astonishment, as a minor villain. When he went into his local for a pint that evening and the same thing happened, with slight variations, on many evenings to follow, unpleasant remarks were made in his hearing about pathologically untruthful schoolgirls who were encouraged by their fathers in the un-English pastime of kicking a man when he was down. To have his character as a bulldog Englishman attacked was for Edgar almost like an accusation of illegitimacy and he snapped vigorously at these cowards who, as he said to Rhoda, would never name names or say anything you could really get hold of. He refused to admit to Rhoda or even to himself, the possibility that Jennifer might not have been telling the truth.

  Jack Jellifer found his relationship with Arlene quite distinctly changed by his performance in the witness box. One evening, for instance, he began to tell her about his activities and achievements during the day, as he always did when he came home, but she cut him short in a ruthless manner, with a remark to the effect that she had heard it all before. They passed most of the evening in watching television. Jack wore a martyr’s cloak of sullenness, for after all he had done no more and no less than what he regarded as his duty.

  All organisations are more or less bureaucratic, all engender in their chief executives a desire not so much for personal glory as for the assurance that their skill, intelligence and dexterity shall not be spoiled by the clumsiness of all those other fellows. Chief-Inspector Whiteface of the Narcotics Squad felt that he had gone as far as could possibly be expected when he warned Manners about the idiot Ryan, who for some bad reason or for no reason at all, had cultivated Kabanga’s acquaintance. He did not, however, think it necessary or advisable to tell Manners about the raid on Kabanga’s clubs. Suspicion that these clubs were being used as drug pushing outlets and that Kabanga himself was receiving and distributing the drugs in a big way had hardened into certainty, and it was certain too, or so Whiteface’s man insi
de the Windswept said, that Kabanga had just received a consignment. He might have been made suspicious by Ryan’s visits, and he would get the wind up properly when he realised that the visits had stopped. It was necessary to raid Kabanga, and to do it quickly. If Whiteface told Manners about it he would be certain to ask that the raid should be delayed until the trial was over, a request which Whiteface did not want to grant and would have found it awkward to deny, even though the result of the trial couldn’t, as he saw it, possibly be affected. It was as a result of this reasoning that Whiteface left Manners in ignorance.

  The raids were carried out on Kabanga’s six clubs simultaneously, just after midnight. In four of the clubs drugs were found in considerable quantities. Kabanga himself was in the tiny flat that he kept at the Windswept. He was very high on heroin. With him was a woman who was also high on heroin. They made quite a fuss, Kabanga shouting obscenities about the inspector who had come to him as a friend and then shopped him, the woman shrieking and fighting, saying things and making threats that were incomprehensible to the officers arresting her. It was not until they got to the station that they discovered the woman’s identity. She was Olivia Stenson.

  Chapter Eight

  Trial, Last Day

  Trial Transcript – 8

  MR NEWTON “My lord, I wish to ask for the recall of one of the prosecution witnesses for further cross-examination, as a result of information that has become known both to my learned friend and to myself since yesterday.”

  THE JUDGE “This is an unusual request, Mr Newton. What is the name of the witness?”

  MR NEWTON “Mrs Stenson.”

  THE JUDGE “I take it you have had an opportunity of consulting with Mr Hardy. What do you say, Mr Hardy?”

  MR.HARDY “My lord, in the circumstances, I do not resist the application.”

  (Mrs Stenson was recalled to the witness box.)

  MR NEWTON “Mrs Stenson, you gave evidence in this Court yesterday upon oath to the effect that you saw the accused on the night of September 23rd, in Cridge Mews. Was that evidence true?”

  “No”

  “Was it in fact wholly fictitious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me put the truth to you, so that the jury may have it clearly. You said that on the night of September 23rd you were in Cridge Mews. That was a lie?”

  “Yes.”

  “The truth is that you never saw the accused in your life before yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said that you went to Paris on the following day. That was a lie?”

  “Yes.”

  “The truth is that you went three weeks later, so that you had every opportunity of knowing about the case in the papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell the Court your reason for perjuring yourself.” (The witness did not reply.) “Perhaps it will be easier if I put certain matters to you. Are you a drug addict?”

  “Yes.”

  THE JUDGE “Please speak up.”

  MR NEWTON “Who is your supplier?”

  “Mr Kabanga.”

  “Now, will you tell the Court if an approach was made to you the day before yesterday.”

  “Yes. He told me—”

  “‘He,’ that is, Mr Kabanga.”

  “Yes. He told me that the trial didn’t seem to be going well, that the man, Grundy, might get off, and that he was going to fix him.”

  “That was his expression, ‘To fix him’?”

  “Yes. He said I was to come forward as – as a last minute witness, and to corroborate another witness.”

  “That was Mr Leighton.”

  “Yes. He told me what to say, and said it would be all right, I should be believed.”

  “That is because you are, what shall I say, a woman of good social position.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Whereas Leighton is a convicted felon?”

  “Yes. I believe that is true.”

  “It is true. Now, you knew the serious nature of what you were doing, Mrs Stenson. Why did you do it?”

  THE JUDGE “You must answer the question.” (The witness appeared distressed.) “You may sit, if you wish.”

  MR NEWTON “I will repeat the question. Why did you do it?”

  “He – Kabanga – threatened me.”

  “How did he threaten you?”

  “He said he would cut off—”

  “Cut off your supplies?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was because of this threat that you came here yesterday and perjured yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this perjury might not have been discovered but for the fact that you were arrested with Kabanga last night, in a raid on his club—” (end of transcript)

  It is rarely, in truth, that cases are won and lost in a few minutes of so-called “deadly cross-examination”. The process is generally much more a relentless piling up of facts which lead inexorably to only one possible conclusion. But Newton’s treatment of the pathetic figure in the witness box, hardly recognisable as the poised, elegant Mrs Stenson of yesterday, was felt by those who saw it to be devastatingly effective. The other side were on a hiding to nothing, as Toby Bander said afterwards, but the old thing really rubbed their noses hard in the dirt, and did so in such a manner that he did not seem to be attacking the wretched Mrs Stenson so much as making clear that the villain of the piece was the sinister Kabanga. It was a situation of which nobody could have failed to take advantage but Newton really used it, as Toby Bander handsomely conceded, to the full.

  Hardy, on his side, made no attempt to do the impossible, and resuscitate Mrs Stenson as a witness of truth. His face retained its customary impassivity. There is no armour against fate, he may have thought, and there is no redress when you have been saddled with a thorough-paced liar as a witness. He did not re-examine, nor attempt in any way to minimise what had happened. His cold had come back in full stream, and whether or not it was of psychosomatic origin, it was plain that, to put the thing simply, he should have been in bed. He made little attempt, even, to resuscitate Kabanga, who was called back when Mrs Stenson had left the box. The African did not conceal that he had told her what to say, and did not seem to understand at all the seriousness of his offence. Newton made full play with this and, without making any positive accusation, succeeded in leaving the impression that Kabanga had probably introduced Sylvia Gresham to the drug habit. Hardy’s re-examination was brief.

  “Mr Kabanga, I believe that in your country it is not unusual for false evidence to be given, even in a case of such seriousness as this?”

  Kabanga was not the wreck that Mrs Stenson had been. He answered readily. “Of course. It is a matter of how much you pay to the witnesses.”

  “And your sole motive was that you believed the accused to be guilty, and wished justice to be done?”

  “Of course, yes.”

  “You realise now that what you did was extremely wrong?”

  Kabanga pointed dramatically to the man in the dock and shouted: “He did it. Will your justice say so? If it does not, I spit on British justice.”

  Hardy was barely able to repress his irritation. Didn’t the man know what he should say? He ended his re-examination with a couple of perfunctory questions, sat down and blew heavily into his handkerchief. Stevenage might have felt sorry for him, except that he was almost sure that when the time for cross-examination of Grundy arrived, his senior would miraculously have recovered.

  The crucial interview in the case, seen in retrospect, took place before these cross-examinations, before even the day’s proceedings in Court, when Newton and Toby Bander, already apprised of the raids and arrests, went to see their client in his cell and told him what had happened. Grundy said nothing.

  “Now,” Newton said pontifically – he could not prevent his manner from being pontifical, and really did not try very hard. “Now, I shall recall this Mrs Stenson and Kabanga too, and I don’t think there is any doubt that th
e questions I put will be extremely damaging to the other side, very damaging indeed. Isn’t that so, Toby?” Toby Bander agreed, as forcibly and directly as possible, that it was so. “The question is whether, in these circumstances, you should go into the box yourself to give evidence.”

  Grundy raised his thick eyebrows and said that he was in their hands. He might have been talking about somebody else.

  “No, that’s not the way it is at all. We are in your hands.” Newton could not resist putting his thumbs in his buttonholes. “On a similar occasion to this, where a vital witness might or might not be called, Marshall Hall left with his client two slips of paper, one saying that he wanted the witness called, the other saying that he didn’t. He asked his client to return one of the slips. The man chose to call the witness, but wouldn’t go into the box himself.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Newton coughed. Toby Bander said. “He was hanged.” He added after a moment’s hesitation, “But under the 1957 Homicide Act that wouldn’t be possible in this case.”

  “It’s only life imprisonment now for strangling someone.” Grundy seemed almost to be enjoying himself.

  “I want you to understand clearly what the choices are, and what the effect may be,” Newton said. “A man who is accused almost always goes into the witness box to explain his actions. If he doesn’t, prosecuting counsel conveys to the jury that the reason he didn’t do so was obviously that he was afraid—” here Newton paused, for Grundy had grinned at him in a very disconcerting manner. “—to face cross-examination and the judge also is likely to comment adversely in his summing up. Speaking generally, then, there are only two kinds of occasion when a defending counsel is likely to advise his client not to enter the box. The first is when the prosecution case is so weak that it doesn’t require an answer. That doesn’t apply here, although I don’t think the case is a very strong one.”