After a pause he seemed to remember it suddenly, for he leant forward and placed it carefully in the tumbler of water on his desk, where it stood for the remainder of the day looking like a motif from a Tudor tapestry or a chapter end for Alice in Wonderland.
Meanwhile there was a whispering hush over the room, and presently, from somewhere below the court, the sound of a door banging heralded the arrival of the prisoner.
Gina was unfamiliar with the geography of the place and Mike’s sudden appearance from the well staircase in the bottom right-hand corner of the dock almost unnerved her. He came up slowly between two warders, whose care of him was that of hospital attendants. They were both square, short-legged men, considerably his seniors, and they patted him and murmured what must have been encouraging words as he towered above them, in the vast and shining sheep-pen below the dome.
Miss Curley caught her breath. She had not seen him since his arrest and was unprepared for the change in, him. He did not look particularly ill. His features were finer and his pallor made his eyes look darker, but his crisp shorn head was grey and, as he stood facing the Judge with his back directly to her, she saw the wide bones of his shoulders hunched under his coat.
She stole a glance at Gina. The girl was crying, angry, indignant tears hovering on the fringe of her lashes, and Miss Curley, who was liable to unexpected flashes of feminine intuition, realized that, whatever her other thoughts and emotions might be, Gina wept because his hair was grey.
She looked away abruptly. An entirely new personality had taken charge of the proceedings. The Clerk, who until now had been just another dark-faced, grey-wigged person sitting at a desk directly beneath the Judge’s dais, had risen to his feet and revealed himself to be an unexpectedly distinguished man with a deep cultured voice and a casual manner which robbed his words of their formality without over-emphasizing their meaning.
‘Michael Wedgwood, you are charged for that you, on the twenty-eighth day of January, nineteen thirty-one, at London, murdered Paul Redfern Brande. You are also charged on a coroner’s inquisition with murder. How say you, Michael Wedgwood? Are you guilty or not guilty?’
As the last word left his lips he sat down again with a great rustle of papers and there was a pause until one of the warders nudged his prisoner gently.
‘Not guilty.’
Mike’s voice was unexpectedly loud and infused a note of tension into the friendly, business-like atmosphere of the court. He remained upon his feet while the Clerk turned his attention to the business of swearing in the jury, and Lord Justice Lumley raised that part of his face where his left eyebrow should have been and remarked affably:
‘You may sit down. The only time you have to stand in this court is when you are receiving sentence or when I address you.’
He had a pleasant rumbling voice with a slight squeak in it at commas, which did nothing to detract from the magnificent oddity of his appearance or his unshakable dignity which clothed him as surely as his robe.
The jury being sworn, a proceeding conducted with the neatness and efficiency of a first-class acrobatic turn, the Clerk addressed them as they sat wriggling before him, twelve busy citizens with troubles enough of their own.
He sat down at last and bent over his desk and, while Miss Gurley trembled, the Attorney-General rose to open the case for the prosecution.
Montague Brooch was a little crow of a man. His silk gown enveloped him and his wig gave his face an even sharper, beakier appearance than it possessed without it. In repose he was inclined to look insignificant, and few would remark him, if even for his ugliness, but the moment he opened his mouth he became a personality that was as unforgettable as it was utterly charming.
‘May it please Your Lordship, Members of the Jury –’
The voice was virile yet confiding, attractive, deferential and pleasing in the extreme.
‘– the charge against the prisoner, as you have heard, is murder. I must, I am afraid, open to you with a story of considerable detail, and, while it is not without its difficulties, it must, I think, show a very serious case indeed against the prisoner.’
For the first time since the arrival of Cousin Alexander upon the scene Miss Curley felt genuinely afraid. Until now she had accepted John’s valuation of the famous man without question and had allayed all her qualms for Mike’s eventual safety by a recollection of that handsome, sanguine figure with the face of a hero and the confidence of a Harley Street specialist. But here was a real adversary. Cousin Alexander’s charm was definable and all the more vulnerable because of it, but the personality of Montague Brooch was not capable of analysis and had a disconcerting habit of confusing itself with clear and reasoned argument, so that it was his thought and not the man one most remembered.
Miss Curley glanced at John now and saw him sitting forward in his chair, his head held on one side and his cold eyes fixed unwaveringly upon the little crow with the sweet voice who spoke so convincingly, and at the same time somehow so regretfully, of the crime. There was no way of telling his thought, but Miss Curley fancied that he was disconcerted.
Behind her Ritchie was breathing heavily and down in the other witness benches she caught a glimpse of Mrs Austin’s broad back and untidy hair.
‘… Now what happens on the Sunday night? On January the thirty-first you will hear that quite fortuitously, and when in the company of friends, the accused is asked to go down to the room where, it is the Crown’s case, he knew the body lay …’
To Gina the Attorney-General was just a voice repeating facts she already knew and had heard proved over and over again until their significance was lost upon her.
To her the one reality was Mike himself, sitting directly in front of her. She could see his grey head and the short hairs at the nape of his neck and her throat contracted until the pain of it alone seemed sufficient to suffocate her.
There was not complete silence in the court while the speech went on. To Miss Curley’s surprise there seemed to be no rule against whispering, and clerks, with great armfuls of papers and noisy shoes, tiptoed about.
Cousin Alexander, looking tremendously important and more handsome than any man over fifty has any right to be in his immaculate wig and bands, was rustling his papers, conferring with his juniors and polishing his glasses with a great flourish of the topmost handkerchief.
‘… Let me take the next stage. Doctor Ferdie arrives. He agrees with Doctor Roe as to the cause of death and together these two men make a very careful autopsy…’
The delightful voice played over the unpleasant words, giving them just sufficient emphasis. Miss Curley found herself listening with detached interest. At the inquest the central figure had been the dead man, but here Mike had taken his place and the story was told afresh from a new angle.
It occurred to Miss Curley, who had known Paul and had been amused by him, that he was easily the least important person in the whole story and that his personality alone did not emerge in the dreadful résumé of the manner of his dying. She could not see the public gallery and even if she had been able she would not have recognized Teddie Dell.
‘… Inspector Tanner visited the strong-room where you have heard the body lay and, after making a careful survey of the room and its environs, discovered a most ingenious device, of which he will tell you …’
Miss Curley, having located Doctors Ferdie and Roe in the benches behind the solicitors’ table, was looking about for Inspector Tanner in the seats behind her when a large elderly man at her side turned round and, seeing her placid friendly face, whispered huskily
‘Makes you think, don’t he? I remember him in a stuff gown.’
Miss Curley gave the remark the conventional smile it needed and wondered who he was. There were a great many people in the benches whom she had never seen before, and next time the stranger confided his admiration of Counsel to her with a muttered, ‘What a way with him!’ she ventured to whisper back.
‘Are you a witness?’
‘No. Come in to watch.’
He did not volunteer any information concerning the method by which he had obtained a seat and Miss Curley eyed his pleasant face, whose only striking feature was enormous eyebrows, covertly and reflected that it was difficult to generalize and that he was not at all the type she would have suspected of morbid curiosity.
Meanwhile Sir Montague had spoken for the best part of an hour and his gentle voice was apologizing to Judge and Jury.
‘… I have little more to say now. You will hear in detail every part of the tragic and abominable story I have outlined to you. But there are a few points which I should like to put into your minds at this stage. It is usual to look for a motive in any crime and, although in this case you will not find a motive which you, or I, I hope, would think adequate, I think you will see that it is more than possible that the accused had a motive sufficient for him. I must admit to you that the Crown has no direct evidence of immoral relations between the murdered man’s wife and the accused. It may be that when you see Mrs Brande you will decide that she is not the sort of woman whose principles are those which would permit her to stoop to that sort of irregularity, but you will hear on her own submission that she was a neglected wife, and the accused has admitted in his statement, which I have read to you, that he was in the habit of spending much of his time with her and that in fact at the very moment when, as I shall prove to you, her husband was lying dead in a basement room in the house next door, he took her to a cinema, bringing her back afterwards to the flat which she shared with her husband and returning immediately, I have no doubt, to his own home in the same building.
‘You will also hear from Mrs Austin, the honest woman who attended to Mrs Brande’s household work, of the scene which she witnessed when the accused came to break the news of Paul Brande’s death to Mrs Brande.
‘Mrs Austin came into the room to find them on the hearthrug, “clinging together”, as she so graphically puts it. You may feel that this is not evidence of immoral relations and I would reiterate that the Crown does not allege immoral relations, but it does insist that there was deep friendship between the accused and Mrs Brande, dating over a period of some years and increasing in intensity as Mrs Brande’s husband increased in his neglect.
‘At what point, if any, a deep affection cherished by a young and virile man for a beautiful and virtuous woman some years his junior may grow into an overwhelming passion, in the grip of which his moral fibre is broken down utterly, it is for you to consider. The Crown is not dealing with conjecture. The Crown merely contends that a deep affection was entertained by the accused for Mrs Brande.
‘Mrs Brande will tell you that she had visited a solicitor some days before her husband’s death and had learned from him that there was no way open to her to obtain a divorce save through her husband’s cruelty or through his co-operation. She will also tell you that the accused knew nothing of this, and indeed that he had no idea that any such project had entered her head. You must believe what you see to be the truth. If you believe that a deep friendship existed between these two you may think that it is improbable, even impossible, that any woman should keep such an important matter from such an intimate friend who saw her every day. If there was nothing but friendship between them, why should she hide it? If there was more, might it not have been even at the accused’s suggestion that she approached the solicitor?
‘However, you will hear that Mr Brande would not consider a divorce and that it was to discuss this very matter, and to make his strong views known to his wife, that he had arranged to meet her on the very evening that he met his death, an appointment which he never kept …’
Miss Curley stirred in her seat. Gina was rigid, her cheeks pallid and her lips compressed. A woman in the gallery craned her neck to catch a glimpse of her.
Gradually the speech came to an end. The Attorney-General’s voice had never lost its gentle and impartial reasonableness and now it became even more soothing, even more deferential than before.
‘It has been necessary to address you at this length because you must know exactly what the facts are in this story, the burden of which the Crown will attempt to prove. If you feel, as I feel you must, that the evidence leads you to the conclusion beyond all reasonable doubt that this man, in order to marry his cousin’s wife, did kill his cousin on the night of January the twenty-eighth in this year, you will have no hesitation in doing your duty.
‘If, however, you find there is insufficient direct evidence to make you so sure, and that you have a reasonable doubt, then again you will have no hesitation in doing y our duty.
‘The case is a difficult one. All the Crown will do is to set out the facts on which you must rely. This is not a case in which you will be concerned with any possible verdicts such as manslaughter. A murder has been done and it is for you to decide if it was committed by the accused. If it was, if the Crown proves to you, as I believe it will, that this man did what he is charged with doing, then it is a crime utterly foul and unpardonable. His cousin had done him no wrong. At worst he had neglected his own wife. And yet, if you so find it, he sent him slowly and insidiously to his death with a callousness which no rigour of the law can equal.
‘If you think it is fairly proved against this man that he so murdered his cousin, then it will be your duty to send him to his account.’
He paused, bowed to the Judge, and sat down.
And then, while the court was still tingling, a police photographer bobbed up in the Punch and Judy witness box, and began to testify as to photographs taken in connection with the crime.
A surveyor had taken his place and was painfully describing the survey of the ground floors and garden of Twenty-three and Twenty-one which he had made, and had produced plans and had sworn to them, when Miss Gurley’s neighbour turned to her.
‘Shan’t come back. Nothing more of interest to-day. Fireworks to-morrow,’ he confided in a warm whisper. ‘They’ll adjourn in a minute.’
‘Adjourn?’ murmured Miss Gurley, who already saw Mike on the scaffold. ‘What for?’
Her neighbour gaped at her as at a lunatic.
‘Lunch, of course,’ he said.
CHAPTER XVII
Mr Campion’s Case for the Defence
RITCHIE WAS STANDING in the huge multi-coloured marble hall at the Old Bailey, which had the smell of a public library and was full of people who talked together with that peculiar excited anxiety almost always reserved for other people’s troubles, when Mr Campion found him and led him on one side.
He was obviously shaken by the experience of the morning and it was some time before Campion, who was tired, could be sure that he was getting his full attention.
‘There won’t be anything more of interest to-day,’ Campion repeated slowly and with emphasis. ‘I want you to come away with me now and give me a hand. It’s important.’
‘Leave the court?’ said Ritchie, his gentle eyes blinking at his friend.
‘Yes, if you would.’ Mr Campion was very patient. ‘I’ve seen Sir Alexander and Miss Curley will look after Gina. Are you coming?’
The sweet air, or it may have been the sweet freedom of Newgate Street, revived Ritchie’s powers of speech. He strode along to the car park talking with what was for him lucidity and volubility.
‘Awful, Campion!’ he shouted. ‘Ghastly! Jolly things like fancy dress, boxes for seats, coloured robes and policemen all made horrible and frightening. Like a serious harlequinade. Mike’s grey. Hair’s grey. Two men in delightful clothes arguing for his life. Like a game … rules … places to stand. Felt ill. Sick. Wanted to spew. Frightened, Campion.’
The young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles was silent. The project he had in hand was a delicate one and he required co-operation. It seemed to him best in the circumstances to allow Ritchie’s startled wits to reassort themselves without assistance.
As they climbed into the car and waited to slip out into the slothful stream of traffic Ritchie sighed and shook himself.<
br />
‘Like a dream,’ he said. ‘Absurd, like a dream. They’ll hang him, Campion. That fellow with the voice is cleverer than Cousin Alexander. That’s what counts.’
By the time they reached Ludgate Hill he was better and his companion, recognizing in him a worried edition of his normal self, thought it safe to broach the subject in hand.
‘You get on very well with Mrs Peel, don’t you?’ he inquired.
‘John’s housekeeper? Known her for years. Nice old body. Why?’
‘She doesn’t like me,’ explained Campion regretfully. ‘She didn’t like to trust me in the flat. Afraid I was going to pinch the ormolu clock with the china figures. That’s why I had to come and get hold of you.’
He paused and concentrated on his driving, wondering how far Ritchie’s perception would lead him and with what results.
The elder man did not seem to perceive at all. He acquiesced quietly and they drove on in silence. It was warm and sunny when they arrived at the cul-de-sac and Twenty-one seemed to be deserted. Twenty-three was not closed but there was little sign of activity and the Morris sign of the Golden Quiver swung disconsolately in the light breeze.
‘Mrs Peel,’ remarked Mr Campion as he sprang out of the car and came round to help Ritchie with the door, whose simple mechanism had defeated him, ‘thinks I am (a) a thief and (b) the police. You are coming with me to dispel both these delusions. Do you think you can do it?’
‘Dear good intelligent woman,’ Ritchie observed, apparently in answer to the question. ‘Kind. Always liked her.’
She stood in the dark entrance hall of John’s flat when they presented themselves at the door a few minutes later and surveyed them with belligerent beady eyes, like some large elderly beetle surprised in its tree-trunk home.
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