A Sentence of Life

by Julian Gloag

  “And why should Maddox conceal the photograph of his secretary?”

  “Because he didn’t want anyone to see it. That’s the usual purpose of concealment.”

  “And why should he not have wanted anyone to see it?”

  “An exchange of personal photographs suggests a certain intimacy which he may have wished to conceal.”

  “Who said anything about an exchange of personal photographs?”

  “A photograph of Maddox was found in Singer’s handbag.”

  “But who said anything about an exchange of photographs?”

  “It would be natural to assume—”

  “Assume!” Contemptuous. “No, it would not be natural to assume any such thing—except to a police officer already convinced of a man’s guilt and out to get him willy-nilly.”

  “You’ve no right—”

  “I didn’t ask you a question! Where did you find this photograph of Maddox?”

  “In Singer’s handbag.”

  “Secreted, no doubt?”

  “It was inside the lining of the bag.”

  “Sewn in?”

  “No. Not sewn in.”

  “Did it carry Maddox’s fingerprints?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have the slightest evidence that Maddox gave the girl the photograph?”

  “I should have thought—”

  “I’m not asking you what you think, Superintendent. I’m asking you whether you found any evidence that Maddox gave Singer the photograph.”

  “In that sense, then, no.”

  “So this ‘exchange’ of photographs is entirely your own idea?”

  “I don’t find it unwarranted by the facts.”

  “Answer the question!”

  “It is what I thought, yes.”

  “Without the slightest evidence?”

  “Strictly speaking—”

  “Yes—strictly speaking, Superintendent.”

  “In the strict sense, there is no actual evidence of an exchange, no.”

  “No evidence whatsoever, in any sense. And yet you gaily come into this court and bandy about your own idea of an ‘exchange’ as though it were a fact, which, if it were, would be highly prejudicial to the accused. And you call yourself a responsible police officer?”

  “A policeman is not usually a wide-eyed innocent, you know.”

  “Are you implying that your obvious prejudice against the prisoner in this case stems from some kind of superior sophistication not available to ordinary mortals?”

  “I am not prejudiced against Maddox or anyone else.”

  “Do you deny that right from the beginning you were certain of Maddox’s guilt?”

  “It is not my job to pass opinions as to guilt or innocence, it is to collect evidence.”

  “If it is not your job—and indeed it is not your job—to pass opinions on guilt or innocence, why did you say to Maddox, ‘We know you did it’?”

  “I never made any such statement.”

  “You deny saying, ‘We know you did it’?”

  “I do.”

  “And do you deny that you also said, ‘We can prove you did it’?”

  “That is quite untrue.”

  “You did not make such a remark?”

  “No.”

  This was absolutely monstrous. Trembling, Jordan pulled Bartlett’s note from his pocket. He unclipped his pen and began to write on the back of the paper. It was Symington who said that, he wrote, not George. Not George. He underlined the words fiercely and the nib tore the paper and stabbed through into his thigh. There is nothing to be gained. You will please stop attacking George in this manner. This is an instruction!

  He watched the note being passed down until it reached Tom Short. Tom peered at it far more than long enough to read it, and then Jordan saw him crush it in his hand and let it drop to the floor. He made no signal to Bartlett, and instantly Jordan knew that he wasn’t going to.

  He felt a great and futile rage within him, such a rage he had not had since he was a child when … blinded with screams and kicking madly, wild, frenzied, prevented. Years later, so it seemed, slackening with sobs, dwindled, drained, emptied. Deadly weak. What did it matter?

  He had bowed his head. He raised it now. For a little while he did not try to understand the sense of what was being said. He absorbed the comfort of something going on, George steady and unperturbed. He realised that, after all this time, he still did not know the superintendent’s Christian name. Just George. Old George. St. George. He smiled faintly. Farmer George. Gradually he began to listen again. They were onto his letter to Jack Timberley now. How futile, in a sense, futile because nothing sounded as it was, or was as it seemed. “The fact is …” “It is true, is it not? …” “The fact was …”

  “… the fact was that you and Inspector Symington had gone to the offices of Sutlif and Maddox on the morning of Saturday, March the fourteenth, and it was at that time that you discovered this letter from Mr. Jackson Timberley to Maddox?”

  “That’s quite correct.”

  “And on Monday, March the sixteenth, you questioned Maddox for several hours, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the letter was in your possession at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you ask Maddox about it in the course of your questioning?”

  “No. We had not at the time obtained Maddox’s letter to Mr. Timberley, nor Singer’s letter.”

  “You did not consider that Maddox might be able to elucidate the letter for you? That he might, in a word, have been quite easily able to explain why Mr. Timberley should be offering Singer a job in America on February the twenty-sixth?”

  “The matter was still at a preliminary stage of investigation.”

  “You did not think it might be fair to ask Maddox to explain—in his own interests, perhaps?”

  “It was not until we had obtained a copy of Maddox’s letter to Mr. Timberley and Singer’s letter, that there appeared to be anything significant to explain.”

  “And when you did obtain those letters—Maddox to Timberley on February the eighteenth and Singer’s letter to Timberley on March the first—what was so significant about them, to your mind, that required explanation?”

  “The quite clear contradiction implied in the fact that Maddox was stating that Singer had made up her mind to go to America, and, less than a fortnight later, Singer was refusing the offer of a job there. That, and the wording of Maddox’s letter.”

  “Ah, yes, I thought we’d get to that. What significance did you see in the wording of Maddox’s letter?”

  “The last sentence, I believe.”

  “The last sentence? Let me read it to you, then. Yes, after Maddox has recommended her, he then says: ‘She has recently had some bad luck personally, but I’m sure all that will soon be forgotten, and a change of scene will be a good tonic.’ That is the sentence?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what is so significant about it?”

  “I only say it could be significant. There are other interpretations possible.”

  “That’s very liberal of you. But what was your interpretation? I am interested in your processes of thought; you display a quite remarkable ingenuity in throwing a most unsavoury light on the simplest matters. What dirt did you dig up in this?”

  “It is not for me to state an opinion.”

  “But I want to have this out in the open. I want to have this clear. I want the jury to understand these innuendos that appear to have been the guiding lights of your investigation. I am sick of these dark and noxious hints. So I put it to you, Superintendent, that what you chose that final sentence to mean was that Singer was pregnant, but would soon manage to procure an abortion and that it would be a good thing to get her away and out of sight where she couldn’t cause any more trouble for Maddox. That’s how you read the sentence, is it not?”

  “It’s a possible interpretation.”

  “And is it not also
a possible interpretation that Maddox was referring to the death of Singer’s mother and expressing a genuine concern for her welfare?”

  “That might be possible.”

  “But you didn’t see fit to ask Maddox which was the true explanation?”

  “You are twisting this. The letters from Maddox and Singer only came into our possession after the preliminary examination.”

  “I am twisting it? You had the letter from Timberley before Maddox was even charged—there was a mystery there already. Yet you did not ask him. I put it to you that you have never been disposed in the entire case to obtain or accept a reasonable explanation from Maddox.”

  “I am not conscious of having in any way been derelict in my duty in the conduct of this case. And I’m rather tired of your attempts to bully me into admitting a prejudice against Maddox.”

  “You do not strike me, Superintendent, as the kind of person who is going to be persuaded into admitting that he might have ever possibly have made the slightest mistake. You are obviously a man who will continue to call a spade a spade even when the prongs are entering your flesh to prove it a fork. It is to your spade work that we will now turn. Once you had fixed on your suspect, Maddox, you really did remarkably little to follow other lines of enquiry that might have suggested the possibility of other suspects. You have stated, for instance, that you were able to find no evidence that Singer had any very close friends or, indeed, that she had any friends at all, of either sex. Now this is a very curious state of affairs, but, I suggest to you, it is due not so much to an absence of evidence as to an absence of effort in obtaining evidence. We know that you questioned Mrs. Payne, who lived below the Singers in Putney, but whom else did you question who might have been expected to throw light upon Singer’s personal life?”

  “There were two potential sources of information about Singer’s personal life and possible friendships. One was the Delmar Secretarial School, which Singer attended for a year and a half, and the other was the Lamont High School at Putney, which she had also attended for some years. On the morning of Friday, March the thirteenth, accompanied by Detective Sergeant Rice, I visited the offices of the Delmar Secretarial College and there interviewed Miss Johnson. She was able to give me no information relating to Singer, as she, Miss Johnson, had not been on the staff of the school when Singer attended.”

  “Was there no one else there who had taught June Singer?”

  “No, sir. Miss Delmar, who had run the school singlehandedly for many years, had died some two months prior to the date of my visit. Miss Johnson was temporarily in charge.”

  “There must have been records of students contemporary with Singer?”

  “I enquired very particularly about that point. Apparently Miss Delmar’s policy was to destroy all records dating back more than three years.”

  “And the Lamont High School? What information were you able to obtain there?”

  “I visited the Lamont High School on the morning of March the seventeenth, accompanied by Inspector Symington, and interviewed Miss Cochrane, the headmistress. Miss Cochrane had no direct knowledge of Singer, as she had not at the time been in her present post, but—”

  “Who had been headmistress when Singer attended the school?”

  “I was coming to that. A Miss Appleby. She resigned about five years ago and went out to teach in Africa. In Ghana, I believe it was.”

  “And what attempts did you make to contact Miss Appleby?”

  “I did not contact Miss Appleby.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Miss Cochrane suggested that I talk to Mrs. Fremantle. Mrs. Fremantle, who was still teaching at the school, had been Singer’s form mistress in her last year and had also taught Singer at prior periods. I interviewed Mrs. Fremantle. She told me that Singer was an intelligent and quiet girl who rather ‘kept herself to herself.’ Those were her words. I think Mrs. Fremantle’s deposition has been made available to you.”

  “And did either Miss Cochrane or Mrs. Fremantle show you the records of Singer’s attendance and the listing of her contemporaries?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what use did you make of those records?”

  “I made a note of the names and addresses of the pupils who had been in Singer’s form in her last year.”

  “And you saw these people and questioned them?”

  “I did not. Mrs. Fremantle had specifically stated, as you will have read, that she did not recall anyone who might be described as friendly with Singer.”

  “So you just didn’t bother?”

  “I secured the cooperation of the local police, and every person still remaining in the locality was seen and questioned by them.”

  “With what results?”

  “Most of them remembered June Singer, but none of them had maintained contact with her after leaving school.”

  “And what about those who had left the locality?”

  “We were not able to locate them.”

  “And by this time, I suppose, you had arrested Maddox, so that it didn’t seem worth going to much trouble?”

  “Twenty-one persons who had been in Singer’s form were questioned.”

  “And what about other pupils in the school at that time?”

  “The Lamont High School had an attendance of over four hundred when Singer was there. It was not deemed feasible to interview each and every one.”

  “So, in addition to anyone who had moved away from Putney, anyone a year or so older or younger than Singer, and who might have been particularly friendly with her, would have escaped your attention entirely?”

  “As I say, it was not deemed feasible to interview every former pupil at the establishment.”

  “Please answer my question.”

  “If there had been any such persons friendly with Singer, we would not have known of them. On the other hand, the case received considerable attention in the press, and it might be thought that if there had been any such persons, they would have come forward.”

  “And do you honestly think that a murderer or someone implicated in a murder would just conveniently come forward?”

  “I was not talking about that.”

  “Yes. Indeed, I have had the feeling progressively all along in this examination that you and I are not talking about the same thing, or even the same case.” Bartlett paused.

  Jordan was aware of an immense and gentle boredom, and perhaps Bartlett was aware of it too. For the final onslaught did not come. Instead the barrister lowered his tone to the humdrum.

  “There is just one final matter I want to ask you about, Superintendent. When you asked Maddox on March the thirteenth whether he would submit to a skin test, did he immediately agree to do so?”

  “Not immediately. He asked me what was the function of such a test.”

  “And you told him?”

  “I did.”

  “Can you recall approximately the words that you used in informing him of the nature of this test?”

  “I can’t recall the exact wording. But I informed him that if the tissue taken from him failed to match that found under Singer’s fingernails, it would go a long way to establishing his innocence. And, conversely, if the tissue matched, that this would certainly not count in his favour.”

  “You apprised him of this danger—this risk?”

  “I did.”

  “And what else?”

  “I don’t think there was anything else.”

  “You did not indicate, perhaps, that, insofar as the results of this test might go a long way towards establishing the likelihood of guilt, or the certainty of innocence, an innocent man would have nothing to fear?”

  For a moment George was quite still, and the court was still, with him. “I believe I might have said something to that effect.”

  “In other words, you were very careful to point out everything that was involved in the matter of this skin test?”

  Again the silence. And then, for the first time, Superintendent
George glanced at the prisoner. And Jordan felt a sudden flood of humanity—for a moment he was no longer a cold supernumerary; he was connected, he was part of it.

  “Yes, I think I was careful to do that.”

  “And when you had explained this to him, he agreed to the test?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite freely? You were not urging him, against his will, to submit to it?”

  “There was no pressure of any kind put upon him.”

  “He assented freely and easily?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And what was his demeanour at this moment?”

  “I don’t think there was anything remarkable about his demeanour.”

  “Well, did he seem fearful?”

  “No. Quite normal.”

  “Not fearful. Yes. You had pointed out to him, had you not, that an innocent man would have nothing to fear?”

  “I couldn’t be certain I used those words.”

  “But,” very gentle, “words to that effect?”

  “Something to that effect, yes.”

  “Would it be fair then, Superintendent—” the ringing voice of justice triumphant—“Would it be fair to say that his demeanour was that of an innocent man?”

  Well? Well? What was this? Answer him, man! Jordan sat up straight. Rigid—and yet he leaned, moved, yearned. Answer!

  “Ever since I knew Maddox,” slowly, consideringly, “it was always very difficult to judge his state of mind. I don’t think, in my experience, I have ever come across any suspect whose truthfulness or honesty was more difficult to evaluate.” For the last time the policeman looked at him. “So I really don’t think I can answer that question, Mr. Bartlett.”

  “But his manner was not that of a guilty man?”

  “No. No—he did not have a guilty manner.”

  And as the cross-examination closed, and Pollen stood up and the judge murmured about adjournment—”Just a few points, my Lord.” “Time is already getting on.…” “Not more than ten minutes …” “… not got all night. All right, very well.” “And it is not true to say, is it, that …” “No, sir.” “And it was perfectly normal procedure, was it not, to …” “Yes, sir.” “… pertinent facts exhaustively investigated …” “Yes, sir.” “… duty of a police officer … no place for prejudice … not a question of prejudgment … painstaking … no reason for … fair … warning … as prescribed … the Judges’ Rules … no question … integrity … unanswerable … openminded, thorough, conscientious …” “Yes, sir. Yes sir. Yessir.”