The Burden of Proof

by Roderic Jeffries

  “It’s no good calling me a liar because I’m not one and never have been.”

  “Can you suggest to the court one acceptable reason why you should have noticed the license plate of this car out of all the thousands you’ve seen?”

  “Like I’ve already told you half a dozen times, there was the girl and I watched her and through watching her I saw the number.”

  Yorker was almost satisfied he’d made it seem that the main attack had been beaten back with contemptuous ease. One or two more questions would make absolutely certain. “If you were watching the girl as closely as you are pleased to tell the court you were, you couldn’t have studied the car.”

  “I’ll admit the whole truth!” Quincy leaned forward in the box and spoke with elephantine humour. “I was watching her legs. Nothing wrong in that, because as I’ve always said, if a girl’s got good legs, why shouldn’t one have a thunderin’ good look at ’em. When her legs went past the rear license plate I switched tracks because I suddenly recognised the number. Didn’t half say something to myself later on when I realised I’d missed her getting into the car!”

  “I suggest that is all nonsense. If you’d been watching her legs so very closely, you wouldn’t have bothered to look at the number.”

  “Why not? They were both nice round figures.”

  More laughter.

  Yorker smiled because Quincy believed he’d made a fool of an eminent Q.C. Now was the time to change the line of attack because it would seem like the admission of defeat. “We’d better move on.”

  “That’s what her boyfriend said!”

  “When the police first approached you and asked you what day the second meeting had been on, what did you say?”

  Quincy looked around the court to make certain his efforts were being appreciated. “That it was the end of the week,” he said carelessly.

  “Meaning?”

  “A Friday or a Saturday, of course.”

  Yorker’s expression gave no hint of the sudden surge of excitement within him. “But you’ve been assuring us that you knew it was a Saturday?”

  “When they told me — ” Quincy stopped. He looked rather puzzled.

  “Told you what?”

  “Well — what the case was about.”

  “Who were they?”

  “The two policemen who came to The Kinema and saw me.”

  “You told them it was either a Friday or a Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what did the police tell you that made up your mind it was Saturday? Out with it, Mr. Quincy,” snapped Yorker.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “But I knew by the change of program — ”

  “The penalties for perjury are very severe, Mr. Quincy, and prison is a far cry from The Kinema at Prestry and your comfortable home at number twenty-two Richborough Gardens. What did the police tell you to make you certain it was Saturday?”

  Quincy looked around the courtroom and there was a frightened expression on his face. “They didn’t actually tell me anything.”

  “Actually?”

  “They only asked me that if I’d seen the meeting on Saturday would anything have happened on that day to fix it in my mind.”

  “Did they ask you the same question concerning Friday?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “How should I know?” Quincy asked plaintively.

  “Did you want the police to think you had a wonderful memory?”

  “I was only trying to help them.”

  “In other words, your one object was to say to them what you thought they wanted to hear?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “But when they mentioned Saturday and not Friday, you very obviously thought that they were suggesting it must have been Saturday?”

  “All they said was, if it was Saturday, wouldn’t I have been thinking about the change of program?”

  “So all the rigmarole you gave us about the change of program telling you which day the meeting was, was a suggestion implanted in your mind by the police?”

  “But the programs are changed on Sundays and Mondays.”

  “Dear me, Mr. Quincy, I don’t think you’ve been following me. Let me put it a little more simply. Who first suggested you might be able to remember which day of the week the meeting was by the proximity of the change of program?”

  “I… the police.”

  “So you knew the meeting was at the end of the week, but you couldn’t say whether it was Friday or Saturday. When the police interrogated you, they carefully suggested it must have been Saturday and you accepted the suggestion and adopted it as your own with the result that in this court you’ve told us a pack of lies.”

  “They weren’t lies,” he said desperately.

  Yorker leaned forward and pointed a rigid right arm at the witness. “Do you, on your oath, swear that you know you saw the deceased on Saturday, the seventh of July?”

  Quincy brushed the sweat away from his forehead.

  Yorker heaved up his gown, looked around the courtroom, sat down.

  Scatt re-examined. He spoke quietly and calmly and was able to give the impression that he’d have believed the witness even if the latter’s name were Ananias. “Mr. Quincy, would you ever give evidence contrary to the facts as you know them, merely to please the police?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “So no matter what they said to you, you’d tell the truth as you know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just suppose the police had somehow suggested to you that the meeting took place on Friday and you believed the day in question was Saturday, what would your evidence be?”

  “That it was Saturday.”

  “In the present case, what is your memory of events? Was the second meeting on Friday or Saturday?”

  “Saturday.”

  “No matter what the police said to you?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Thank you,” said Scatt.

  Quincy was about to leave the witness box when he halted as the judge spoke.

  “Just one moment.” The judge rested his hands on his desk. “I wish to make quite certain of one fact. Mr. Quincy, did the police suggest to you that this meeting took place on Saturday?”

  “I wasn’t lying, my Lord, I swear I wasn’t.”

  “I’m not inquiring into that aspect of the matter,” said the judge with ominous patience.

  “They — they may have done.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Quincy. Mr. Scatt, I should like the conduct of the police in this matter to be brought to the notice of the relevant authority so that the necessary inquiries can be made.”

  “Very well, my Lord.”

  “The court will adjourn until ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  Ritter waited until the judge had left the courtroom, then he turned and walked toward the door. He saw Fisher. You poor bastard, he thought quite casually, the noose has landed round your neck instead.

  *

  Three reporters came up to Patricia and Elizabeth as the two girls were about to climb into the Lotus Elite. The reporters introduced themselves.

  “How d’you reckon it’s going?” The middle-aged man whose breath reeked of whisky addressed Elizabeth.

  She did not answer.

  “D’you think he’ll get off?”

  “Why don’t you leave her alone?” snapped Patricia. “What’s it matter what she thinks? How’d you like to be asked a lot of ridiculous questions if you were in her shoes?”

  They stared at Patricia without evincing any particular emotion.

  “Of course he’s going to get off,” said Elizabeth suddenly. “He’s completely innocent.”

  “Is your engagement still on?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The middle-aged man hesitated, as if about to put more questions, then he shrugged his shoulders. “Thanks, ladies.” He and the other two walke
d away toward the exit of the council car park. One of them said, loudly enough to be heard back at the car, “Nothing there.”

  Elizabeth entered the car. She fastened her safety belt and started the engine, waited impatiently as Patricia, hampered in her movements, sat down. Elizabeth drove off. “I suppose if I’d said I believed him guilty, that would have been news?”

  Patricia was silent.

  “And if I’d confided I was pregnant, they’d have put me on the front page?”

  The engine noise rose as Elizabeth accelerated.

  “We’re still in the built-up area,” said Patricia suddenly. The speedometer showed fifty-five.

  Elizabeth’s only reply was to increase speed.

  They reached the end of the town and passed the white and black unrestricted speed sign. Perversely, Elizabeth slowed the car.

  They turned off the main road into the winding lanes that bypassed Prestry.

  “It may be over this time tomorrow,” said Patricia.

  Elizabeth made no answer.

  *

  The warder entered the cell with the breakfast tray. He put it down on the bunk and then looked around and pointed up at the corner bracket. “Did I ever tell you of the morning I came in here and there was the bloke hanging from that bracket?”

  “You haven’t,” muttered Roger. He hadn’t slept and the inside of his head felt too large for the outside. During the night, his imagination had presented him with picture after picture of the judge’s sentencing him to ever-growing terms of imprisonment. He stared, with revulsion, at the porridge, the bacon and eggs, toast, butter, marmalade.

  The warder leaned against the brick wall. “Didn’t half give me a shock and that’s straight. The feet were swinging, like a pendulum, and I remember saying to myself, wonder if he’s telling the time in hell? Funny thing — his tongue wasn’t hanging out. I always thought the tongue hung out.”

  Roger sprinkled sugar on the porridge. It had become normalcy to hear of suicides during breakfast. Perhaps that would be the most lasting impression he’d gain — that normalcy could shift with frightening ease.

  “How’s the trial going?” asked the warder.

  “Much as everyone else expected.”

  “D’you reckon on getting sent down?”

  “Those in the know seem to think it not unlikely.”

  The warder chuckled pleasantly. “Be a bit of a change for you, won’t it? They tell me you’ve got big money.”

  “Only my debts are of any size.”

  “Don’t your house have twelve bedrooms?”

  “Fourteen if you count the attic rooms.”

  “Got a big garden, too, I suppose. When me and the missus wins the treble chance we’re going to get away from people — right away from ’em — and have a place where we can grow roses and things. Where would you go to do that?”

  “Parts of the west coast of Scotland will keep you clear of people.”

  “That’s what really matters. In this job it’s nothing but bleeding people what hates your guts from one year’s end to the next. I’d like to be able to stand on top of me own hill and look round and not see another person, and if I did see one to be able to tell ’em to clear out of it because they was on my land.” The warder stared into the distance with a wistful expression on his face.

  Roger saw the flowering heather and the tall hills with craggy tops, the distant sea, the soaring eagle, the croaking raven. Abruptly and painfully, normalcy was no longer the four walls of the cell.

  *

  Yorker removed his tie and collar in the small and grubby robing room and then used the cracked mirror to see to fix his wing collar. He spoke to Pattern, who was robed. “We must finish today, Jeremy, come what may. I’ve just had a call from chambers. A brief at three hundred has suddenly been offered for tomorrow because old Roy’s gone down with the flu and my clerk who has the business morals of an alley cat accepted it knowing full well I could easily be held down here.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to an early finish either. The girlfriend’s coming back from Switzerland tonight. I promised to meet her at the airport if humanly possible.”

  “Girlfriend? I thought you were a self-confessed bachelor.”

  “Where’s the inconsistency?”

  “You’ll end in trouble, my lad. A good old-fashioned bastardy order. And don’t expect me to defend you under five hundred.”

  “If I were stupid enough to get caught I’d make certain I briefed a decent lawyer.”

  “My God, the ingratitude of the man!” Yorker put on his tabs. “The only thing you can expect from the young these days is a stab in the back.”

  The door of the robing room was thrown open and Scatt hurried in, red bag slung over his shoulder. “Blasted train was half an hour late. Spent my time gnawing my fingernails and wondering how the hell I’d explain my absence to the old bastard, Sandfling.” He began to change as quickly as possible. “How long’s your defence going to take, old boy?”

  “A reasonable time, unlike the case for the prosecution.”

  “Good, good. Too much work and too little time to do it in.”

  “Double your brief fees.”

  Scatt swore as his collar became hooked up on his front stud and refused to come free. “I’m not starting that one yet or I’ll be left holding nothing but the baby.”

  “Jeremy will probably soon be able to give you some advice there.”

  Scatt did not try to understand the reference.

  *

  There was a strong air of disappointment among the public. They had come to the case expecting revelations of life in high society, yet so far as the previous day was concerned they’d been presented with nothing more than a humdrum series of facts.

  Exactly at ten-thirty, Mr. Justice Sandfling entered court. One Q.C., who rated his own wit a trifle too highly, had once said that if Sandfling had an appointment with the devil and the devil dared to be one second late, there’d be a devil of a row.

  Scatt continued to present the case for the prosecution. Witnesses were called who filled in the background.

  The case for the defence was opened. Yorker made a short speech. He said he was not calling many witnesses because, as the jury would see for themselves, the accused’s own testimony was the finest evidence. Yorker wondered how long it would take the jury to realise that there was little evidence being called simply and solely because there was little evidence to call?

  His address was clever. Quite unobtrusively, he built up the image of a man who could not have been the father because had he been he was of such a nature he would have shouldered the responsibility in full, and also, of equal force, he was far too intelligent ever to go contrary to so clear and stern a warning as Doctor Franch had given him.

  “Roger Ventnor,” said Yorker. He turned and watched Roger step out of the dock and cross the well of the court to the witness box.

  “Is your name Roger Picton Franchot Ventnor and do you live at Reton Park Hall and are you thirty-one years of age?”

  Roger gave his evidence. He tried desperately to find some way to convey to the court and the jury that they were hearing the truth, but as he spoke he seemed to gain the impression that his own words were lies. What were the twelve men and women thinking? What was it like to know that his future lay in their hands? Perhaps they didn’t think of that because it would have frightened them.

  Yorker was one of those counsels who, in examination-in-chief, believed the accused should mention every single aspect of the case that it was admissible to mention. Nothing was too trivial provided it formed part of the picture that was being painted to illustrate the innocence of Roger.

  Cross-examination was bitter and along foreseen lines. Had he had sexual intercourse with the deceased at any time? Over how many weeks, months, or years? When did he claim to have ceased to have had sexual intercourse with her? Was that the time he met Miss Wheeldon, the rich Miss Elizabeth Wheeldon? What had happened to Miss Stukeley? Had he
cast her aside like a worn-out glove? But had he really brought the friendship to an end? After all, he admitted to three meetings and what was more likely than that there had been a great number more? That the licentious relationship continued behind the back of the unsuspecting Miss Wheeldon? That his story was designed merely to placate the girl who was now his fiancée? If it hadn’t why had he been so concerned about the fact that the dead girl had been pregnant? Surely only the father could be so concerned as to try to find a way of inducing an abortion. He felt he owed her something? Was he really trying to tell the court that that was his only motive? He owed her something because of an affair — according to him — that was over and done? Was he expecting to be believed… His evidence completed, Roger slowly returned to the dock. He felt weary and beaten. He’d given all he could find to give, yet he was certain he had seemed to offer nothing. They’d made every action of his despicable in retrospect.

  Dully, he sat in the dock and watched Patricia, frightened to be the cynosure of so many eyes because they might be laughing at her for her deformity, battling it out with Scatt and winning, not only the battle but the admiration of the court. He heard Yorker make his closing speech — and found himself bored by the repetition of facts that had been aired so many times before — even though it was those facts Yorker was using to try to save him.

  Chapter 17

  The judge had been summing-up for an hour and a half and it was dark enough outside to be called night. He always summed-up with meticulous care and at great length, treating each piece of evidence fully and with strict impartiality. A cynic had once said that it was this tremendous sense of impartiality of his that was his greatest defect as a judge. He left the jury bewildered because he never indicated what verdict they should bring.

  “…And now, members of the jury, let me remind you yet again that the burden of proof rests on the prosecution. Bearing that in mind, we now come to the evidence of what we have agreed to refer to as ‘the second meeting’ between the accused and the deceased. You will remember that throughout this trial the defence has said this meeting took place on a Friday, while the prosecution has contended it was a Saturday — the last day on which she was seen alive. The prosecution’s evidence sits fairly and squarely on the evidence of Mr. Quincy who in examination-in-chief explained — whether or not to your satisfaction is not for me to say — why he knew that the day he saw the deceased was a Saturday. You then heard, in cross-examination, evidence of what appears to have been police interference — and if all that we have heard proves to be true, I suggest interference is not a strong enough word. Your job in this matter is to decide what effect you think this interference had. If none, that is the end of the problem. If, on the contrary, you feel that Mr. Quincy would not have named Saturday but for the police’s action, you will go on to consider certain matters. But at this stage, let me point out to you that because this piece of evidence may be the subject of doubt, you must not, simply and solely because of that, disbelieve all the evidence of the prosecution, or all the evidence of Mr. Quincy. You may decide that Mr. Quincy is honestly convinced that, in spite of the police’s intervention, the second meeting took place on Saturday, or you may decide that he was mistaken and it was a Friday, or that there is too much doubt to be convinced about either day. How is the other evidence affected if the meeting was, or could have been, on Friday? You will know that — as has never been denied — the accused was seeing the deceased until the day before she died and that therefore it was possible he also saw her on Saturday. In view of these facts, you may decide he gave her the pills on Friday, or on Saturday, or that he did not give them to her on Friday, or any other day — that there was no further meeting, and that the accused’s story is the correct one and it was, in fact, a third person who supplied them. In other words, members of the jury, should you decide that Mr. Quincy’s evidence is incorrect — because of one reason or another — you must not therefore necessarily assume the accused did not give the pills to the deceased but must decide on the facts.