Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because this was purely a family affair.’

  ‘No matter how much of a family affair, surely one would expect a decision so eventful to be documented?’

  ‘There was no need.’

  ‘That is all you can answer?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Very well. Let’s examine another question. Since your brother had so far outlived the prognosis of all doctors, was there any real and valid reason to suppose he might not continue to live to reach a ripe old age?’

  ‘He was liable to die at any minute.’

  ‘But was he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much is the estate worth?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you must be able to make a very accurate guess. Is land worth about two hundred pounds an acre in your area?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Then all the land, together with the buildings and farmhouses, must be worth about half a million pounds. Half a million pounds is a very great sum of money, isn’t it?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘But you invite the jury to believe that so large a fortune was so casually to be given up by your brother?’

  ‘I’ve told you that his only concern was with the continuation of Hurstley Place.’

  ‘Do you see any significance in the fact that his death took place only one month before he was due to make his election?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suggest that on the contrary there is a very great deal of significance in this fact. I suggest that your brother had no intention of renouncing his claim to an estate worth over half a million pounds and…’

  ‘He was never going to accept it.’

  ‘…And that you knew you had to murder him very soon or it would be too late.’

  ‘No. I didn’t kill him. Nothing on God’s earth would have made me kill him.’

  ‘Tell me, what means have you?’

  ‘Means?’

  ‘What fortune do you possess in your own right?’

  ‘I have a little money.’

  ‘How little?’

  ‘About five thousand pounds.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then if you did not inherit the estate you could find yourself in a very difficult financial position?’

  ‘Not exactly. I…’

  ‘Suppose the estate had gone to your brother – how would you have earned a living?’

  ‘That didn’t arise. My job was running the estate.’

  ‘Are you, then, admitting that you had no plans at all on how to earn a living if your brother decided to accept the inheritance?’

  ‘He wasn’t going to.’

  ‘Or had you decided he wasn’t to be allowed to?’

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  Calaghan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let’s move on to the events that took place on the fourth of December. Did you leave the house for any reason before nine-thirty?’

  ‘I went down before breakfast to Home Farm and had a word with the farm manager.’

  ‘Did you return to the house from there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t go into any of the woods?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At nine-thirty you set out with the other guns on the day’s shooting. You went first to the duck ponds, then to The Springs and Park Wood. Are either of these two woods near King’s Beat?’

  ‘They’re at least half a mile away.’

  ‘So at no time were you anywhere near King’s Beat before you went there to shoot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You drove up to the entrance to the woods and helped your brother to disembark. He went one way and you went the other, in company with the rest of the guns. You had a quick word with your cousin, Mr Henry Decker, and afterwards went on to number five stand. Up to the moment you went to your stand you had not fired your gun since leaving the Land-Rover. Is all that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You shot a pigeon and three pheasants after which you fired at a fox. You’re certain you hit the fox. Were all those shots taken at the stand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You went back to the ride, searching for the wounded fox and there you met Miss Harmsworth. Did you fire your gun whilst you were on this ride?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then in view of all this evidence will you tell the court how a cartridge case, fired by your gun that morning, was found near the body of Fawcett Decker?’

  ‘I never fired a cartridge there.’

  ‘But the cartridge case was found and it was fired in your gun.’ Calaghan picked up a sheet of paper and read it. ‘Do you dispute the fact that you shot fifty-one pheasants on the shoot of November the twentieth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At the end of a shooting day, after you have entered your bag in the game-book, do you return your counter to zero? Or do you do this at the beginning of the next day’s shooting?’

  ‘When I’ve entered the figures in the game-book.’

  ‘So on December the fourth your game counter would have been recording zero?’

  ‘It should have been, but I don’t know for certain. I couldn’t find the counter. I searched the gun-room for it.’

  ‘When that counter was found in the tum-up of your brother’s trousers, it recorded thirty-six. Do you accept the fact that up to the beginning of King’s Beat no one else had shot more than twenty pheasants?’

  ‘I can’t prove otherwise.’

  ‘And you had shot thirty-three?’

  ‘Yes. But I lost the counter and didn’t have it.’

  ‘The prosecution has shown that your brother came along the ride in his wheelchair before Miss Harmsworth walked along it and that therefore he passed along it very early in the beat – after only a few birds had gone over the guns. You shot three pheasants at this early stage. When the counter was found it recorded thirty-six, which we know to be the number of birds you had shot up to the time you returned to the ride?’

  ‘I lost the counter. I lost it. Can’t you understand?’

  ‘Quite so, you did lose it. But not at the beginning of the day, was it? It was after you’d shot your brother and had gone up to the body to make certain he was dead. It fell unseen out of your pocket and into the tum-up of your brother’s trousers. It is a damning piece of evidence because it is unquestionably yours, it is set at the number of birds you had unquestionably shot, and the figure of thirty-six unquestionably cannot refer to any of the other guns.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Fawcett.’

  ‘You were desperate because, after years of managing the estate and looking on it as yours, you were suddenly forced to realise it was never going to be yours. Your brother had decided to accept his inheritance. To you, there was only one course of action left. To murder your brother so that he couldn’t inherit the estate. You were going to make the murder look like an accident. At King’s Beat he was number one gun, which meant that after the other guns had taken up position he would come down the ride…’

  ‘I didn’t murder him,’ shouted Julian. ‘I couldn’t have murdered my brother. You’re trying me because you know I was convicted of manslaughter by shooting several years ago. That makes you think…’

  ‘Be quiet,’ interrupted the judge. He put down his pencil and addressed prosecuting counsel. ‘Mr Calaghan?’

  Calaghan answered. ‘I fear I cannot help your lordship.’

  The judge looked for several seconds at Julian before he spoke to him. His voice was harsh. ‘The law says that when the accidental disclosure of a previous conviction takes place in the trial of an undefended prisoner it is the duty of the judge to tell the prisoner that he has the right to apply that the jury be discharged and the trial be started afresh. If you wish to make such an application, you must do so now.’

  ‘I want a new trial,’ replied Julian hoarsely.

  Chap
ter Eighteen

  Julian paced his cell – a cell he now knew intimately. He thought about all that had happened. He had gained himself a respite and his trial would have to be held again, but what had he accomplished in actual fact? Anything? The facts wouldn’t alter for the second trial. The evidence would still point to him as the murderer. Yet he had stopped the law steam-rollering over him, he had delayed the law’s verdict, and even that much was something of a miracle.

  Now he had to see Barbara and gain her help. For the first time he suddenly wondered how far she would help him? He was going to ask her to break the law in more than one way: would she? Suppose that by now she secretly believed he had killed Fawcett, would she help him? Would she help a murderer just because she had been engaged to him? Could she still love a man she believed to have committed fratricide? If a woman loved a man as she had loved him, how much was her love affected by something he did that did not directly affect her? Angrily, he shook his head as if to deny words spoken aloud. Imprisonment was warping his mind. Barbara believed him utterly and suffered no doubts. She was possessed of that rare kind of loyalty which meant she would do anything in her power to help him. Another question filled his mind. Was he justified in demanding she take such a risk? But there was only one answer to this if he were ever to have the chance to prove his innocence. If…

  He paced the floor of the cell. He had to be one jump ahead of the prosecution. Which way would they go, knowing they had to be one jump ahead of him? Who would leapfrog over whom? They believed they were fighting for justice, he knew he was fighting for justice and Hurstley Place. Who was better armed? ‘Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.’

  *

  Detective Superintendent Quincy went into Avonley Police Station and to the D.Ps room. He gave a perfunctory knock on the door, entered, kicked the door shut, and began to strip off his wet raincoat.

  ‘It’s raining buckets, Sam. It’s raining enough to float off the whole bloody countryside into the sea.’

  Doherty, sitting at his desk, turned round and looked through the window. The glass was so wet that everything beyond it appeared distorted and the chimney stack seemed to be twisting in all directions. ‘It is raining.’

  ‘Why so surprised? Been asleep for the past two hours?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to catch up on the paper-work, sir. H.Q often seems to think we haven’t anything else to do.’

  ‘It’s only the paper-work that proves half the divisional D.Is aren’t on holiday. The crime figures suggest they are.’

  Doherty smiled.

  Quincy hung his dripping raincoat on the battered mahogany stand. He walked over to the desk and sat down on the edge. ‘The clear-up rate for the county stinks.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because there’s too much paper-work to cope with.’

  Quincy swore.

  Doherty took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it. Quincy accepted a cigarette and a light. ‘The bastard,’ he said.

  ‘Which one in particular?’

  ‘Which one d’you think has got under my skin and found all the tender parts? Decker.’

  Doherty spoke reflectively. ‘He’s certainly managed to throw a spanner in the works.’

  ‘Spanner? It was a ruddy big girder. Why did they let him get away with it? Goddamn it, man, the prosecution and the judge weren’t given any list of previous convictions so they must have known Decker was pulling a fast one.’

  ‘They didn’t have any option, did they? The law’s quite mandatory – since no one’s ever envisaged a prisoner admitting to false previous convictions. In the circumstances, the judge had to give Decker the opportunity to call for a new trial: after all, it could just have been true in that Decker might have once been convicted under a false name.’

  ‘The routine fingerprint check would have cleared that up.’

  ‘That’s been known to go wrong in the past. Anyway, the judge just didn’t have any option in the matter. And did that make him spit tacks!’

  ‘It makes me spit bloody great long nails. What a waste of public money?’

  ‘I doubt Decker sees the thing quite in that light.’

  ‘Decker’s a… Now listen to me, Sam, it’s not going to happen again and that’s an order. Have you sent his fingerprints out again and demanded definite, absolute, and irrefutable proof that Mr Julian Decker has never before been convicted of anything stronger than parking without lights?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Quincy stared at the D.I for a while. ‘Hell,’ he said suddenly, ‘this second trial means you, Pawley, and God knows how many other of my detectives will be tied up in court again. How’s any of the work going to get done?’

  ‘I suppose in the usual way. Some of us will work a pile of overtime for which we won’t get paid.’

  ‘Now look, Sam, if you’re after a nine to five job, paid holidays, and fringe benefits by the dozen, you’d better change to the civil service.’

  ‘I’ve often thought about it. I’m too old now, though.’

  ‘Why the devil don’t you return to Ireland and buy yourself a plot in the local churchyard?’

  They became silent and could hear the rain as it beat on the window-panes.

  ‘They’ll nail him this next time,’ said Quincy loudly.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘It’s your case, man. You shouldn’t damn’ well suppose: you should know.’

  ‘I’ve never been completely happy with the facts.’

  ‘One look at your face is enough to tell anyone you’re never happy about anything,’ retorted Quincy sourly. ‘You know your trouble, don’t you? You’re pig-headed. There’s enough evidence in this case to hang the man twice over, if those stupid bastards in parliament hadn’t abolished hanging. Just look at it. He stands to make half a million, he’s seen close to the murder spot with his gun, the job was done with the load from a sixteen bore and he’s the only one with a sixteen bore apart from the dead man, a sixteen bore cartridge case fired that day and in his gun is found near the body, and his game counter is in the dead man’s tum-up, set at the right figure. What more d’you want? A written confession in triplicate? And what about all the evidence that’s never ever been touched on in court? What about the other two murders?’

  ‘I’ll give you those first two.’

  ‘That’s too bloody generous of you.’ Doherty spoke slowly. ‘A Decker would kill to save the estate: he’d go so far as see it to be his duty. But I just can’t get used to the idea of a Decker killing a Decker.’

  ‘There’s half a million quid at stake, Sam. Most people would murder every living relative for just half of that.’

  ‘The money wouldn’t count in this case. I’ve always seen the money as something of a motive tailored to suit the facts.’

  ‘Then was it coincidence that Fawcett Decker was killed within one month of having to elect whether or not to take the estate? Of course it wasn’t, Sam, and you know it wasn’t. You’re too good a detective to be so stupid. It’s in your bones like it’s in mine that this period of a month is at the core of the case: this month meant that the murder had to be committed when it was.’

  ‘I still don’t see a Decker shooting his brother. I said it before and I say it again.’

  ‘I reckon that woman, Mrs Decker, bewitched you. After being with her for five minutes you won’t hear a word against the whole ruddy family. If they’d butchered every inhabitant in the local village, you’d just sit there and find a string of excuses for them.’

  ‘The last murder is psychologically wrong.’

  ‘Stuff psychology. What about the facts?’

  ‘I know, I know. They’re not easy to walk round.’

  ‘You shouldn’t even be trying to walk round ’em.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right again, sir.’

  ‘Then just leave the psychology to people stupid enough to be able to spell it.’ Quincy stared out of the window. ‘It’s raining harder than ever. I tell yo
u, this time tomorrow we’ll all find ourselves washed into the bloody sea.’

  *

  Julian, in his cell, looked at his watch. In two minutes he should be seeing Barbara. For the umpteenth time he told himself that when he did see her he must suppress all the emotions which would so desperately be wanting to break free.

  He checked on his watch again: one minute to go. Would she be dressed smartly, to cheer him up, or would that seem to her too much like celebrating a funeral?

  It was time now, but no one came to the cell for him. Had something gone wrong? Perhaps she’d decided at the last minute that she couldn’t face the visit. It needed a special kind of a courage willingly to see one’s fiancé in prison. Or perhaps she had suddenly been taken ill or met with an accident? He remembered when she had once been forty minutes late because of a puncture in the open countryside and how he had imagined during the last thirty minutes that she had suffered every conceivable accident or outrage.

  He lit a cigarette. If she hadn’t come by the time he had finished the cigarette, he’d know that something… He heard the sounds of a key being inserted in the lock and turned. The bolts were withdrawn and the door was opened.

  ‘Visiting,’ said the warder. ‘Follow me.’

  Julian followed the other along the corridor. This warder seemed to think there was a tax on words: in two days he had hardly spoken a sentence of more than four words.

  They went down circular stairs, along the passage way at the bottom, and came to a halt in front of a steel door. The warder knocked on the door, a small peep-hole was opened up, and an eye surveyed them. The eye disappeared, the peep-hole was closed, and the door was opened.

  Like some piece of important diplomatic baggage, Julian was officially handed from one warder’s charge to the other’s. He found himself wildly wondering why he wasn’t labelled with his destination. Then, he was shown into the visiting room and he saw Barbara.

  She was wearing the suit that she had worn when he proposed to her and she, without the slightest hesitation, had accepted his proposal.

  Between them was a table that ran the length of the room. Above the table was a thick glass partition and below it a solid partition. There were six pairs of chairs and between each pair, in the glass partition, was a speaking place.