Dunster

by John Mortimer

  The sepulchral voice of the usher was calling outside the court, ‘Mr Derek Midgeley! Derek Midgeley, please!’ Then the courtroom door swung open and Mr Midgeley marched in under the usher’s orders and came to attention in the well of the court. I suppose he was old: he looked ageless: a lean, cadaverous man with receding hair, a high, bony forehead and an expression of gloomy severity. His face was pale as plaster, in which two deep cracks ran from his nostrils to his mouth. In another existence he might have been a militant Puritan, retired long ago from Cromwell’s Ironsides, one who had marched with sword and Bible against the frivolous Cavaliers. He had on a dark-blue business suit, shiny with age, and some sort of badge in his buttonhole. He was the only one of all the witnesses who looked like an old soldier and when he said the word Midgeley I expected him to add his rank and number.

  ‘Just stand there, Mr Midgeley, would you, where the witness can see you?’ And Ken Prinsep told him, “You won’t be called on to speak until later.’

  So Midgeley stood and looked up at Cris. It was a long, hard stare with very little warmth or forgiveness in it.

  ‘Is that Trooper Midgeley?’ Ken Prinsep asked Cris.

  ‘It’s rather a long time ago. He’s changed a good deal since we last met.’

  ‘I expect we all have, in the last forty-odd years.’ The judge got some obedient laughter.

  “But I believe that’s Midgeley, yes.’ Cris smiled down at the silent witness and got no reaction.

  ‘If he says he was near enough to you and Lieutenant Blair to hear these words from you – “We must say the Germans did it’’ – how would you feel about that. Sir Crispin Bellhanger?’

  ‘I should wonder how he came to give evidence that was so far from the truth. I should be prepared to believe that he was mistaken and not telling a deliberate lie.’

  The judge wrote that down carefully and Derek Midgeley was about-turned by the usher and marched out of court, but not before Robbie had subjected him to a minute inspection.

  ‘See that, Glover?’ our leader whispered to Justin. ‘CND badge in the buttonhole. Get hold of their membership lists. Find out all you can about him. Clearly a nutter who doesn’t like war.’

  The day in court was over. We struggled out into the mosaic-floored corridors and I headed, with some urgency, through the door marked Gentlemen in Gothic lettering. As I stood facing the porcelain, the door was pushed open and Dunster looked in. Anyone else, me included, would have beaten a hasty retreat. Not so Dunster. He stood beside me as though we had never had a quarrel in our lives and seemed, all things considered, quite extraordinarily cheerful.

  “Brilliant, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t think we should discuss the case.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Progmire. At least have the guts to admit he was brilliant.’

  ‘Cris gave his evidence very well. Yes. Probably because he was telling the truth.’

  ‘Not your boss. Your boss was hypocrisy on oiled wheels. That’s how I’d describe his evidence. No, I mean Ken. Totally fearless. Absolutely dominated the proceedings.’

  ‘The judge doesn’t seem to like him much.’

  ‘Tactics, old man. Brilliant tactics. Ken’s got the judge to expose himself as a boring and entirely prejudiced old fart. I think the jury have got the message.’

  ‘Do you, really?’ I moved away from him to wash my hands. It was a ridiculous scene; we might have been back at school, hanging about in the bogs.

  ‘Tell you one thing, old man’ – Dunster was zipping himself up with a look of complete satisfaction – ‘we’re going to make a far bigger impact with this story in court than we’d ever have done on television.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Queen’s Bench Court Five became a way of life; I went there instead of to the office and in the evenings I discussed the day’s work with Lucy. I sat, each day, helpless to alter the course of events. I kept looking at the jury and worrying if they didn’t think that the very enormity of the charge against Cris meant that it had some truth in it, and how impressive the surprise witness, Derek Midgeley, might be when he came to give evidence.

  The odd thing about those days in court was that they seemed to have nothing much to do with the facts of the case. Pomeriggio – the procession of men, women and children, singing, carrying candles, walking slowly to their death – had never seemed further away and more lost in the pages of history. What we were concerned about were the judge’s questions, Robbie’s cunning re-examination, or the futile and counterproductive attack Ken made on a general, long retired, whom we had called as a witness to Cris’s character. Looking back to those long mornings and sleepy afternoons I seem, in all the time taken by the laborious and highly expensive investigation, to have learnt nothing new about that night in the Apennines. No question was finally answered and no new layer of truth revealed.

  Trying to remember the so-called courtroom drama, much of it has vanished, as unmemorable as lessons at school. Pictures come back to me. I can see Dunster staring at every witness with ferocious or friendly intent, trying to exercise some sort of remote control over their evidence; Beth looking beautiful, calm and detached; Robbie hitching up his gown; the judge’s furious little puffs at his glasses before he polished them; Justin Glover arriving gloomy and exhausted after another family crisis, gradually cheering up as he listened to other people’s troubles. These things come back to me most clearly, but the important moments of the trial are harder to remember. I have to think hard before I can hear the questions and answers that seemed so dangerous or conclusive at the time.

  ‘Mr Sweeting. You were visited in Italy by my client, Mr Dunster.’ Someone, no doubt Justin, had tricked out the ex-trooper in a genuine natty suiting which made him look ill at ease. He had told his story to Robbie, much as he had to us in the back of the Bar della Luna, grinning at the jury with a mixture of bravura and guilt, like an elderly, awkward schoolboy who has been caught doing something moderately disgusting and is doing his best to brave it out. And then Ken Prinsep had risen to the attack.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Natty seemed to notice Dunster for the first time. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ He was the most cooperative of witnesses. ‘He was the other one who came out from England to visit me. I seem to have got quite popular lately. I can’t believe that they just came for the grappa at the Bar della Luna!’ He looked hopefully round the court, waiting for the laugh that never came. ‘Mr Dunster rang me from Bologna and then came over. It was a Friday. No. I tell a lie.’

  ‘Please, Mr Sweeting, be careful.’ Ken Prinsep gave a strong warning.

  ‘It was a Saturday.’ Natty looked contrite and this time did get the ghost of a smile from the jury.

  ‘Don’t bother about whether it was a Friday or a Saturday. Did you give him an account of what happened, that night when the church was blown up?’

  ‘Oh, we chatted away about a lot of things. He was my first visitor from England, oh, for a long time. That’s how I remember it.’

  ‘Did you make a statement to him, about the church?’

  ‘Mr Prinsep!’ The judge, who had been silent during Robbie’s examination, could contain himself no longer. ‘Am I to understand that your client has been around collecting statements from witnesses?’

  ‘He visited Mr Sweeting in Italy, yes, my Lord.’

  ‘For the purpose of discussing the question the jury has to try?’

  ‘Is your Lordship suggesting there was any harm in that?’

  ‘Harm, Mr Prinsep? I don’t know about harm. We shall have to see how the matter develops. I don’t know what the situation is under other jurisdictions, with which you may be more familiar, but litigants in this country leave it to their solicitors to go round collecting evidence.’ He made it sound an eccentric and revolting occupation, like someone pulling out their own teeth.

  ‘My Lord, Mr Dunster’s visit was some time before these proceedings started.’

  ‘So he wasn’t collecting evidence?’
r />   ‘He said he wanted a good story,’ Natty volunteered to help the judge, who was acting, in a way which even the Mummers would have found over the top, the part of a man completely mystified. ‘It was for a film he was making.’

  ‘For a film, Mr Prinsep?’ Mr Justice Sopwith tried to do for the noun what Dame Edith Evans had done for the handbag.

  ‘Your Lordship will remember’ – there was, in the soft Canadian voice, only the slightest tremor of desperation – ‘that Mr Dunster discovered the truth about Pomeriggio when he was researching a television film he was writing.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the judge, who did seem to have forgotten. ‘I remember that perfectly well.’

  ‘He wanted a good story for his film, sir. He was interested in finding out if our side hadn’t done things as bad as the Germans did. That’s what interested him, as a film maker, from what I remember.’

  ‘If our side hadn’t done what sort of things?’ The judge looked puzzled.

  ‘Well, breaking the rules of the game if you know what I mean.’ Natty looked embarrassed. ‘The rules of war, I think they call them.’

  ‘Did he ask you to tell him if the British committed a war crime?’ the judge asked and Natty agreed, while Ken leant over for one of his whispered conversations with Dunster. Then he surfaced again and turned his horn-rimmed spectacles on Natty.

  ‘That’s not entirely correct, is it? He just asked you to tell him all you knew about the incident.’

  ‘Did he?’ Natty did his best to look interested, an attempt which wasn’t wholly successful.

  ‘And you told him clearly that you had helped Captain Bellhanger and the other men blow up the church.’

  ‘Is that what he says?’

  ‘Exactly. Did you tell him that?’

  Now Natty looked across to me and Justin. No doubt he was trying to tell us he was sorry for the answer he was about to give. He knew he was a bit unreliable, the one who always made a mess of things, but he hoped we’d go on liking him all the same. ‘I suppose I might have done.’

  ‘You might have done!’ Ken was staring at the jury as he repeated the words; it was his first wholly successful moment in the trial. And it was the point at which he should have sat down and shut up, but he had to go on to ever-diminishing effect. ‘Where were you when you might have told Mr Dunster that?’

  ‘We were in the back of the bar. I suppose we were enjoying ourselves. As I say, I don’t often get anyone from England to talk to. He bought a bottle of grappa.’ Jaunty Blair, I remembered, had recalled the facts as Dunster wanted them with the aid of a bottle of Remy Martin.

  ‘And you said that Captain Bellhanger had ordered you to do it?’

  ‘Mr Dunster said that was the story he was after, yes. For the film he was doing. I thought it was just like those ones we had in the war: Night Fighters, Girls on the Square and London Defiant ... Things like that. What was the one they had on at the Odeon, Leicester Square?’

  Ken tried another smile on the jury. ‘I don’t think most of us were around then.’

  ‘Pity. That was a good one.’

  ‘Never mind about that.’ Ken did his best to reassemble his scattered winnings. ‘The fact is that you may well have told Mr Dunster that Captain Bellhanger was guilty.’

  ‘He might have, Mr Prinsep.’ The judge was displeased.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘You said he may well have. We must be careful here, mustn’t we, to be entirely accurate about the evidence?’ At which Ken Prinsep sat down, no doubt unwilling to risk further questions.

  ‘How many did you have?’ Robbie hitched himself and his gown up to re-examine.

  ‘How many what, sir?’

  ‘Grappas!’ Robbie boomed like a cannon, making the jury blink.

  ‘Maybe we saw off half a bottle.’

  ‘Just the two of you? You and Mr Dunster?’

  ‘The two of us, yes.’

  ‘Grappa’s pretty strong, isn’t it? Stronger than whisky?’

  ‘It was a bit of pretty good stuff, yes. Local grown.’

  ‘And you thought he was making a cinema film like those you saw at some picture palace? A work of fiction. With an invented story?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, sir. Yes.’ Natty had obligingly answered the question before Ken Prinsep could get to his feet to object.

  ‘No doubt you were feeling a bit cheerful and you thought you’d give this nice gentleman who’d come all the way from England exactly what he wanted?’

  ‘My Lord. I object. My learned friend is cross-examining his own witness.’

  ‘He’s simply asking him to repeat what he told you. Yes. Carry on, Mr Skeffington.’

  ‘But was there a word of truth’ – Robbie glared at the jury, inviting them to share his outrage – ‘in this fictional story?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. Not a word of truth, sir.’ Natty looked round as though amazed that anyone should have taken him seriously, it was just he thought he could make a better film out of it. If he put it that way round, you see. I’m sure he really knew that it was the Germans, all the time.’

  ‘My Lord. Might this witness be released?’ Robbie was no doubt anxious to get Natty as far away from the court as possible, in case he gave us any more surprises. He went, but not back to Maltraverso. Apparently the Ministry of Defence had lost all interest in his past desertion. His wife Constanzia was waiting for him outside the court and he was free to keep his promise and take her, after so many years’ delay, to visit Dorking for the first time in her life.

  ‘Mr Dunster. You wrote a letter containing this libel to every member of the Board of Megapolis?’

  ‘I wrote a letter containing the truth about the chairman’s past.’

  ‘What you thought was the truth?’

  ‘What I know was the truth.’

  ‘This letter was calculated to cause Sir Crispin the maximum possible embarrassment.’

  ‘I imagine all criminals are extremely embarrassed, when they get found out.’

  No one except Dunster smiled. Robbie let that one go for the moment and went on with his cross-examination. ‘When you wrote that letter, your allegations were already known to Sir Crispin?’

  ‘I expect Progmire told him.’

  ‘Mr Progmire did. So you thought it likely he’d cancel the series?’

  ‘I knew that he would. He’d hope for a cover-up.’

  ‘And when the series was cancelled you’d be out of a job.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dunster looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘I mean, you wouldn’t get any further payments from Megapolis.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you’re getting at. That hadn’t occurred to me.’

  ‘So it was because you were angry with the chairman that you wrote to the Board, and then sent this wicked pamphlet round to everyone working at Megapolis?’

  ‘I wanted them to know the truth.’

  Throughout this cross-examination I could only marvel at how little Robbie Skeffington, QC understood the witness he was attacking. The immense harm done by Dunster didn’t come from the fact that he was a liar, or a cheat, or a crook – like the other shady litigants Robbie was used to showing up in their true and unattractive colours. He had to deal with a witness who believed all he said. Our leader should have opened fire with, Mr Dunster, are you not a man who is passionately and selflessly devoted to the truth? That was the most damaging indictment that the ingenious old QC could have possibly thought of.

  ‘You are a journalist, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘With ambitions to be a successful journalist.’

  ‘No. I distrust success in any profession. It usually goes with compromise and dishonesty.’

  The QC and the High Court judge looked at him with displeasure. Only Ken Prinsep gave a brisk nod of agreement.

  ‘Come along now, Mr Dunster. Be honest with us.’

  ‘I have every intention of being honest. With or without you.’

&
nbsp; ‘You know perfectly well that every journalist is after a sensational story.’ Robbie ploughed on like a tank, ignoring all insults.

  ‘Sometimes, I suppose, the truth is sensational.’

  ‘So that is what you were after, a sensation?’

  ‘That is not what I was after.’

  ‘And in the unlikely event of your winning this case you hope, don’t you, Mr Dunster, to become famous as the journalist who exposed a British war crime? Just tell us, have you already signed a contract with your publishers? Or is that a question you’d prefer not to answer?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Dunster said calmly, and the judge, who had closed his eyes during the last few questions, opened them with newly awakened interest. ‘I prefer not to answer.’

  ‘Because you have signed a contract?’ Robbie asked with considerable satisfaction.

  ‘No. Because I find your question utterly contemptible.’

  I don’t know how the jury reacted and it may be a fatal flaw in my character that, in spite of a lifetime which should have taught me to know better, I felt an uncomfortable stab of admiration for Dunster. Robbie was like the executioner, as he lit the fire, asking St Joan if it wasn’t true that she was only doing it all for the money, a possible new scene in the play we had done at the Mummery with considerable lack of success.

  The cross-examination then droned on, all one long afternoon and up to lunchtime the next day. It became a prolonged exercise in mutual misunderstanding, which left Dunster unaffected and Robbie worse tempered than usual. No one seemed to understand the witness any better at the end of it, but then they hadn’t had a lifetime’s study of Dunster forced upon them.

  ‘Are you Sir Ninian Dobbs?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘One-time Professor of Military History and Master of St Joseph’s College, Oxford?’

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘Author of From Sicily to Surrender: The Italian Campaign 1943-1945?’