Evidence of the Accused

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Not a chance, sir, and that goes for the doctor. Neither of us stood there at any time.’

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘She never went within ten feet of the body.’ Pope jerked himself up into a standing position. He scratched his chin, then his bushy right eyebrow. ‘Let’s move upstairs.’ As there was a general movement among the others who all seemed about to follow him, he shouted: ‘’Old on. This ain’t the tube. Ventnor and me’ll go first and we’ll call the rest of you when we want you.’ He and the sergeant climbed the stairs. They moved slowly along the landing and visually searched the carpet and the floor on either side of this, the banisters, the walls.

  The landing was of the shape of an out-of-proportion H. Two parallel passages were joined two-thirds of the way along by a cross passage: to the north, between the parallel passages, was a bedroom, to the south was the space of the upward continuation of the hall at the end of which were the huge windows which offered so magnificent a view across the woods and the Marsh to the sea.

  Opposite the door of the south-eastern bedroom the banisters were smashed and a section leaned out and over the hall.

  ‘Took some force to push through those banisters if they aren’t rotten,’ said Ventnor.

  ‘They ain’t rotten — might be wood-worm to blame, that’s all.’ Pope paced to the end of the carpet, looked back. ‘Bring a light up.’

  One of the portable searchlights was carried upstairs by a detective who trained the light obliquely along the floor to the left of the carpet. Level with the broken banisters there appeared on the parquet flooring two spots of what looked at first sight like glossy varnish.

  Pope knelt down and closely examined the two spots. ‘Blood or me name ain’t Esmond — and nice round drops at that. Have a look, Ventnor.’

  Ventnor did so. ‘Useful drops, sir.’

  ‘Came down just nice for us. There’s jagged edges to ’em so they’re from a bit of a height.’ He studied the spots under a magnifying glass. ‘Jagged edges all round and some of ’em about to break away. What say? Fifty inches?’

  ‘Fifty give or take ten inches.’

  ‘That’s one for the experts. In the meantime, photographs, sketches, then dig ’em out.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The photographer took a sequence of shots of the two spots, altering the light and the angle at which it fell on them several times. The sketch was soon made, after which Ventnor brought up from downstairs a sharp knife and two plastic tubes. He cut out the wood on which the stains rested and in each case successfully brought the drop away whole. He placed each slither of wood at the bottom of a tube, wedged it tight with plastic cotton wool so that the wood could not move and perhaps allow the stains to be rubbed away.

  The superintendent looked around the landing. ‘Ruddy palace,’ he muttered.

  *

  I read the joke through for the third time and regretfully decided it could not be printed in Laws and Lawyers. It was surprising how straitlaced some of our readers were. I once had a fire-and-brimstone letter from a Q.C in the Chancery Division calling one of our jokes flagrant and unobfuscated pornography which should send me straight to jail. I showed the letter to Sir Brian who laughed and said that the Silk in question was a noted collector of blue photographs. I vaguely knew the man and I felt the remark of Sir Brian’s was malicious slander of the highest order.

  I leaned back in the chair, lit a cigarette. The copy could be sent to the printers tomorrow and I could, for three weeks, forget the magazine and get on with my real work … writing books which attracted as much attention as a polar bear in a snowstorm. Not that I hadn’t once reached the review columns of The Observer. ‘Although the author of this book is English, it is not a bad piece of work … ’ That title sold thirty-five more copies than the previous one, eighty-two less than the succeeding one.

  It was odd how often I thought I had written a book that was really worthwhile: odd, also, how I had never learned to learn from experience. I never would write such a book.

  I flicked ash towards the ash-tray but it never reached there. No matter, it was good for the carpet. I looked at my watch. Ten past nine. Too late for the news, time enough to cross to the Marsh Arms for a brisk couple. Pubs would do a lot less trade if there were fewer lonely men in the world.

  I put on my duffel coat, left the cottage and walked the short distance round the bend of the road to the Marsh Arms. I went into the private bar. From the public bar on the far side of the passage there came the excited shouts of people watching the local team play one from Rye at darts.

  ‘’Evening, Mr Waring, usual?’

  ‘Usual, thanks, Clarence.’ I looked round, nodded at the chap whose name I could never remember, wondered about the couple who sat on the sofa that was covered with a laboriously executed pastoral scene in gros-point, smiled at Andrews.

  I was handed a gin and tonic. ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ said Clarence. ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Gin?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I waited. Had someone at last discovered who was the father of Sally’s baby?

  ‘I thought you must have heard — you being so friendly with ’em.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘The Cheesmans from Titterton.’

  I put my glass down. ‘Look, Clarence, for once get things in the right order. What’s happened?’

  ‘Young Mrs Cheesman was found dead this afternoon: fallen from upstairs so they say. Terrible.’

  I lifted up my glass and drank quickly. I didn’t stop to try to discover how correct the information was but left the bar, went back to the cottage, climbed into the Old Girl and started out.

  I tried to hurry the car but it was useless. She had her maximum speed and that stood for all occasions. All I could do to make up a few seconds was to take the Marsh corners faster than I should have done — a practice to be avoided by the nervous. Just before I reached the bridge over the canal, a hare jumped into the road. Once there, as so often happened, it seemed to become frightened to the point of idiocy and kept running ahead of me instead of making for the safety of the hedgerows. I slowed down, swerved, and it just failed to commit suicide under my front wheels.

  I reached Settle Court.

  Several cars were untidily parked in the drive. The only one I recognized was the black three-litre Rover of Doctor Stevens.

  I rang the front-door bell and almost immediately the door was opened by a uniformed constable.

  ‘I’ve just heard Mrs Cheesman has met with an accident … ?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d come in, please, sir?’

  I entered.

  ‘If you’d wait here, sir, and I’ll go and get hold of someone.’ He left me standing in front of the door to the lavatory in the narrow part of the hall. I remembered how often Lindy had complained at the stupidity of having little more than a passageway at the front, yet a vast open space at the back. She never thought that the wonderful view obtained in the hall proper made up for the lack of a sense of size and spaciousness on first entering the house.

  A man in civilian clothes approached me. He seemed to be all hair and sharp points and I wondered what he reminded me of, but I couldn’t think.

  ‘I’m Detective-Superintendent Pope. Let’s go in here.’ The ‘h’ was so heavily laboured he made it seem as though there was a special significance to be attached to his choice of the drawing-room.

  We entered. The temperature was icy because none of the radiators was on. Not for the first time, I admired the furniture. The main pieces were genuine Elizabethan and at least two of them were collectors’ items. There was a small court-cupboard with its original wooden peg hinges to the doors and intact pilasters, a refectory or long table with carving all over its bulbous legs, joined stools, a table-chair, a 1585 fire-back with armorial bearings in the large ingle-nook fireplace … Determined to give credence to their claim that part of the house was Elizabethan, this was the one roo
m in which Lindy and Mark had met with success.

  ‘Would you tell me who you’d be?’ asked the superintendent as he leaned his bottom against the table. He looked a very weary man.

  ‘John Waring.’

  ‘And you’ve come here … ?’

  ‘To know if it’s true Mrs Cheesman has had an accident.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s only too true. Who told you?’

  ‘The landlord of the Marsh Arms in Sonningchurch.’

  ‘She had an accident. She is dead.’ He looked at me with eyelids that seemed half shut but it might only have been the shadows from his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘What kind of an accident? The landlord said something about falling from upstairs.’

  ‘Perfectly right. Terrible head injuries. Death was instantaneous.’

  I was silent.

  ‘Are you a great friend of the family?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ As I answered I suddenly knew what he reminded me of. A stoat. That vicious furry creature which would stalk its prey with relentless fury: which would single out one rabbit from a dozen and stalk it round the field until it was overcome by fright and waited for its death while the other rabbits went on eating.

  ‘D’you smoke?’ he asked suddenly. He reached into his coat pocket and brought from it a packet of cigarettes. ‘They’re only cheap tipped.’

  ‘Same brand as I use,’ I replied as I took one.

  He lit a match and after we’d finished with it he threw it into the fireplace. ‘Bloody tragedy, it really is,’ he said suddenly.

  I was surprised. He was saying he could understand human suffering. I’d have thought otherwise.

  ‘If a tramp dies it doesn’t mean much. His death closes the story, cuts him off from time, throws him into the dust-bin. But see a young married woman dead and you know there’s the ’usband, many friends, usually children … Lucky there are no children here.’

  I crossed the room and flicked ash into the fireplace. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Doctor Stevens was called in and he took over from Doctor Enton. He’s doing what he can.’

  ‘God! Why do accidents like these have to happen?’

  ‘Mostly they don’t, and sometimes they aren’t.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know yet, not until we’ve finished looking round.’ He watched the smoke spiralling up from his cigarette. ‘Whereabouts in Sonningchurch d’you live?’

  ‘How Cottage.’

  ‘Where’s that in relation to the general store?’

  ‘Next to it on the council houses side.’

  ‘D’you work in Ashford?’

  ‘I work at the cottage. I write.’

  ‘Waring … Waring … Wasn’t there an article about you in the Kent Messenger some time ago along with a photograph that must have been taken some time ago? Decided to go to the library and take out one of the books mentioned. Quite enjoyed it.’

  So even a policeman would lie! Clearly, the superintendent had been thoroughly bored by whichever one of my books he had read. Not enough action? Not enough dialogue?

  ‘Well, Mr Waring, I’ll be frank. There’s no point in your staying on here. Mr Cheesman is heavily doped and we ’ope for his sake he’ll stay that way yet awhile. As for all of us, we’re finishing up and going home.’

  ‘Someone will have to be here tonight to look after the animals.’

  ‘Everything’s taken care of. Miss Bishop says she’ll stay on long enough to bed the dogs down … Any idea what kind they are?’

  I told him.

  ‘Never seen ’em before. If I was a shooting man I’d stick to a Labrador or a spaniel. No need for all these fancy foreign breeds.’

  I didn’t bother to argue. A stoat was hardly likely to be able to appreciate the difference between the working characteristics of different varieties of gun-dogs.

  *

  Police laboratory at the Yard.

  Bryant sighed, scratched the bald part of his head. He yawned, rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Late night last night?’ asked Anstey.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep because of my damned indigestion: tummy rumbled so much I thought it’d wake the neighbours.’ He carefully unpacked the hair that had come from behind the middle finger-nail of the right hand of Lindy Cheesman, mounted it on a glass slide in a diluted solution of glycerine. He looked at it through the microscope. ‘No characteristic adhering particles,’ he muttered. He turned aside from the microscope and wrote on the top sheet of the pad of paper on his right. He yawned again. Across the room he saw Anstey was preparing the bloodstains.

  Bryant looked through the microscope. Practice made it easy for him to pick out the significant features of the hair: air network of the medulla in fine grains, value of I lower than 0.3 as measured by eye-piece micrometer, thick cortex, pigment of the cortex in the form of very fine grains. He wrote on the pad: human hair. There had never been any real doubt on this score but every detail would have to be proved.

  He measured the length of the hair. Twelve centimetres. Then it was from the head. Man or woman? Probably man, but not for certain.

  He studied the end opposite the root. The hair had been recently cut yet had had sufficient time to grow up round the cut. He searched for, and soon found, a chart that showed pictorially how the magnified end of a hair looked at certain given intervals after it had been cut. He wrote: hair cut about eight days previous to detachment, two to three days error in estimate to be allowed. Finally he made certain the hair was not dyed.

  Bryant yawned more heavily, rubbed his eyes. He wondered whether Arsenal would win their next match.

  On the other side of the room, Anstey had scraped off the dried liquid from one of the two slithers of wood. He split the resultant powder into two, placed one half on a filter paper. He took a glass rod and with it put a drop of prepared reagent on the side of the powder. Within seven seconds a green stain appeared which later became a dark greenish-blue. The powder was dried blood.

  He took the other half of the powder and dissolved it in a saline solution. Nothing more could be done for the moment and he left the bench at which he had been working, walked over to Bryant. He saw the other yawn yet again. It made him remember how very tired he was himself.

  Anstey centrifuged the saline solution and obtained a crystal-clear saline extract. He took a capillary tube and after a quick check to make certain the tube was clean he drew up into it half an inch of the solution, then into the same tube drew up a further half-inch of previously prepared antiserum. He placed the tube in a rest and waited, lit a cigarette. He had smoked too much that day and the taste in his mouth was a bitter one.

  Within four minutes a white ring appeared at the junction of the saline extract and the antiserum. After twenty minutes a white precipitate formed. The blood was human.

  There was still one more test to be made. He placed a drop of serum A on one corner of a glass slide, a drop of serum B on the opposite comer. Then he mixed saline solution with the serum A, with the serum B. Half an hour later there was agglutination in both cases. The blood was group AB. He had, in a phial, some blood taken from the deceased’s body. He grouped that. AB.

  He stood up, stretched his arms, looked at his watch. Later than ever back home. What would his wife find to say this time?

  CHAPTER V

  Pope relaxed deeper into the settee in my sitting-room and a spring twanged. ‘I’d call this a pleasant little house you’ve got here, Mr Waring.’

  ‘So it is if you ignore the damp, suspected dry-rot in the kitchen, confirmed wood-worm and death-watch beetle in the roof timbers, lack of electricity, and the fact that the plumbing is such it’s not funny to read The Specialist.’

  ‘It’s got possibilities.’

  ‘Only to someone suffering an embarrassment of riches.’

  The superintendent sighed. ‘Always money, ain’t it? From the cradle to the grave, it’s money. My mother was left a widow when me and my brother were under five. She had to
char and take in washing to keep us. Amazing how women will struggle to bring up their children … Soon as I was old enough I joined the force as a constable in the days when the pay wasn’t enough to keep a budgerigar in seed. Like a ruddy fool I married on my first rise and the money scramble became worse’n ever. Nothing’s more exhausting than chasing money.’

  ‘If you’d wanted to appreciate that particular job you ought to have taken up writing.’

  ‘Graham Greene ain’t starving.’

  ‘It’s not everyone who’s a Graham Greene.’

  He looked at me and suddenly smiled: a peculiar blend of diffidence and cunning. ‘I’m interested in people, Mr Waring, and the way they work and think. When I learned you was a writer I wanted to put a question to you. Would you mind very much?’

  ‘I thought you’d come here to question me?’

  ‘This isn’t in the line of business, as you might say … You must know people who write but get absolutely nowhere. What d’you think it’s like for them to realise the world can judge their lack of success? Me, I’m a detective-superintendent. The chief constable knows if my work’s good, bad, or indifferent — so do the men under me: but that’s the lot. Now an actor, sculptor, painter, or author, is judged by the public and he must know what the public’s judgement is. Suppose the answer ain’t a cheerful one — would you say that ’urts the man even more than his lack of financial success, is he embittered or humiliated because he is so publicly an unsuccess?’

  Was he asking me because I was an authority on public indifference: or merely because I was in the business? ‘Most of them console themselves by concentrating on the public’s ignorance and bad taste,’ I answered. ‘As for the lack of money — aren’t artists supposed to starve before they can give of their best?’

  He laughed.

  Surely he must be able to comprehend how nothing could bite deeper than the public’s insensitivity? You sweated your guts out for months and finished your book, then the public looked the other way.

  ‘I don’t think it’d be my life,’ continued Pope.

  ‘It has its compensations.’