She rested her elbows on the wooden rails of the box. ‘I don’t think you could say that. The driver was only level with the Anglia when the lorry appeared and he then had to brake violently.’
‘So your considered opinion is that there wasn’t sufficient road-room in which to try to overtake?’
‘That’s your opinion,’ muttered opposing counsel.
She hesitated, said: ‘It should never have been attempted.’
‘Thank you … Mrs Brasher, would you now like to tell us … ’
The judge interrupted. ‘Sir Brian, I notice it is time for us to adjourn if we are to take our daily sustenance. Would this be a convenient moment at which to stop?’
‘Of course, my Lord.’ Sir Brian turned and spoke in a half-whisper to his junior who sat behind him. ‘Suffers from a digestive disorder — if he doesn’t eat on the dot his tummy kicks up hell and justice suffers.’
The judge rose, bowed to counsel. He left the court through the right-hand doorway at the back of the dais.
Sir Brian closed his note-book and carefully folded his instructions so they could not be casually read. He spoke to his junior. ‘I thought we’d lost out on our witness.’
‘So did I. I was trying to work out how we’d pick up enough evidence without her.’
Their instructing solicitor came up to them. ‘How much longer do you give the case, Sir Brian?’
‘I’d say tomorrow midday. Redley’s summing-up in a collision case can usually go on the back of a postage stamp. Really, everything depends on how long-winded Wicker’s going to be — he likes to make ten words do the work of two.’
They made their way out of the courtroom and through the throng of witnesses and general public. Once in the clear in the corridor outside, the solicitor left them. Sir Brian and his junior continued towards the dining-rooms. As they passed one of the other courts, a man called out: ‘Hallo there, Brian.’
‘Bernard! What brings you into the light of day? Bernard, you’ve met Michael before. Bernard works in the D.P.P’s office, in case you’ve forgotten, so make love to him, Michael, and he’ll send you a flood of prosecutions.’
‘Make love to me and it’ll cost you ten years if you appear before one of the more conservative judges.’
‘Come down and have a meal with us?’
‘I’ve not much time but I’ll take you for a drink with an easy conscience since it’ll go straight down to expenses.’
‘Good. Let’s move on and secure a table and drink there before the crowd arrives.’
They walked along the passages, down the twisting stairs, reached counsel’s dining-room. They secured a table. ‘Michael,’ said Sir Brian, ‘while we sit down here and stake our claim would you care to get drinks for us from the bar? If we wait to give the order to the waitress we’ll be here until the court adjourns.’ Olivar asked them what they wanted, left, walked through to the bar.
‘Glad to have a moment in which I can talk to you, Brian. I came to the Law Courts to look you out after your clerk told me you were here.’
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘I’m about to talk out of line but it’s one time when I find a breach of professional confidence takes second place … We’ve got papers in our office. Papers on the Cheesman case.’
Sir Brian Tetley stared at the other man. ‘And?’
‘I’d see your son makes certain he briefs the finest counsel going, Brian.’
‘Who … Who’s going to be charged?’
‘Both of them, jointly.’
‘Is it a certain case?’
‘There’ll be a prosecution. Damned sorry to have to tell you.’
Sir Brian Tetley spoke slowly, almost haltingly. ‘How strong will the defence case have to be?’
‘Bloody strong if it’s to make any impression … Here comes young Michael with the drinks.’
Michael Olivar placed three whiskies and sodas on the table. He quickly sat down. He was thirsty.
*
Sir Brian Tetley drove his Rover with a vindictive fierceness, as though he saw every other user of the road as an enemy. Because this was normal, Stuart rarely consented to accompany him and if he did could never tactfully suppress his criticisms.
The headlights picked out the Mersham turning. Sir Brian braked fiercely, swung the wheel over. Because of the inherent stability of the car they cornered successfully.
Stuart released his hold on the door handle, took his cigarette from his mouth, flicked ash into the ash-tray. He could partially guess the reason for their drive but repeated attempts to make his father explain fully had met with increasingly abrupt ill-humour. Wise for once, Stuart dropped the subject. The more ill-tempered his father became, the worse he drove.
They turned left, then right, went downhill past the church and over the railway bridge. Farther on, they met flooding. Sir Brian’s attitude to the water was typical. Disdaining to judge the depth of it, he merely increased speed as he reached it. Other drivers would have been brought to a halt in the middle: he reached dry road on the far side unaware his manoeuvre could have led to trouble.
They passed through the land of the smugglers and reached Settle Court.
Sir Brian brought the car to a rocking halt, looked at his watch, opened the car door. ‘Come on.’
‘Give me time to recover.’
‘From what?’
‘That fantastic drive.’
‘Stop behaving in so absurd a manner.’ Sir Brian rang the front-door bell, knocked on the large brass knocker. Dogs began to bark.
Twenty seconds later, Mark Cheesman opened the door. He did not try to hide his astonishment.
‘Sorry to bother you, Mark, at a time like this.’ They were perfunctory words. Sir Brian entered the house and offered a half-hearted pat on the head to Apples who turned aside as she sensed that here was no great dog-lover.
Mark looked across at Stuart who shrugged his shoulders. ‘No good asking me, Mark. The old man brought me here by car and I’m still too mentally numbed to make any sensible suggestions.’
‘I’d prefer you not to refer to me as an old man within my hearing,’ said Sir Brian.
‘My apologies.’
‘Mark, I want to talk to you.’
‘We’d better go into the study where there’s a fire.’
They entered the study. Mark offered them drinks and they chose whisky. He poured out three whiskies. Sir Brian stood in front of the fire. ‘Have you been back to work yet, Mark?’
‘I went up today for the first time since … ’ He made no attempt to finish the sentence.
‘Notice anything?’
‘With respect to what?’
‘Work.’
He returned from the cocktail cabinet with three glasses and handed one to each of the others. He and Stuart sat down in arm-chairs: Sir Brian remained before the fire.
‘Nothing unusual happened,’ said Mark, ‘if that’s what you’re driving at?’
Sir Brian Tetley drank heavily. Stuart wondered at the fact. His father usually treated his whisky with restraint and respect. ‘Stuart’s had trouble,’ said Sir Brian. ‘Failed to be given some of the briefs he should and would normally have received. Solicitors are fighting shy of him.’
‘Only happened with a couple,’ cut in Stuart. ‘What’s a couple to a man of my success?’ As an attempt at levity his remark was a complete failure.
‘What’s the cause?’ asked Mark.
Sir Brian replied. ‘What can always happen. A whispering campaign mainly financed by the newspapers.’
‘D’you mean Stuart’s been losing work because of … Lindy’s death?’
‘Some solicitors have got it into their heads that Stuart isn’t the counsel to present their cases.’
‘That’s ridiculously small-minded.’
‘Solicitors are not known for their breadth of vision, but since they hold the purse-strings one has to learn to live with them.’
‘This is why you’ve come to se
e me, of course?’
‘Look, Father,’ said Stuart, ‘if I’d known you were going to kick up like this about what’s happened I’d have kept the news to myself. Dammit, Mark’s more than enough on his plate without … ’
‘My reason for being here is not what has been but what’s going to be.’ He finished his drink, held up his glass. ‘Mark, I’d like another of these before we go any further.’
‘I’ll get it for you.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Sir Brian walked over to the cocktail cabinet. His coat was unbuttoned and as he moved it flapped open giving him for a brief moment the outline of a portly, rotund person.
He returned to the fire. Drank. Accepted a cigarette, lit it. ‘An old friend of mine had a word with me earlier today. It was especially kind of him because in doing so he was breaking a professional confidence. He wanted to advise me: to make absolutely certain that I knew the pressing necessity for briefing the finest counsel for Stuart.’
Startled, Stuart looked up. ‘For me?’
‘That is what I said.’
‘What have I done? Robbed the Bank of England?’
‘You are to be charged, with Mark, with the murder of Lindy.’
They stared at Sir Brian.
‘That’s a very poor joke … ’ began Stuart.
‘Joke, you young fool? D’you think I’d joke about such a thing?’
‘But who … ?’
‘The papers are before the D.P.P.’
‘It’s ridiculous, they can’t possibly charge us.’
‘Little weight will be attached to your objection.’
‘I just don’t believe it.’
‘Must you wait until you’re in the dock before you do?’
‘What evidence can they possibly think they’ve got?’
‘Enough to bring you both in guilty unless you produce rebutting evidence. Can either of you?’
‘You know as well as I do that we were both out shooting the whole of the afternoon it happened.’
‘Can you vouch for each other? Were you in each other’s company throughout the shoot? Can you produce an independent witness who’ll corroborate your evidence? Do you believe either or both of you will be able to show you could not have had anything to do with the death?’
Stuart stared at his father: Mark, struggling to control his feelings, drank abruptly, spilling some of the liquid down his chin.
‘What rebutting proof can you bring?’
‘None … really.’
‘So I thought.’
‘But who’d believe such a fantastic thing? Who’d be insane enough to imagine Mark and me to be murderers?’
‘The jury.’
‘Any jury’s got more sense than that.’
‘Stuart, that’s the second damn’ fool thing you’ve said. The D.P.P doesn’t press a prosecution unless it seems clear the crime was committed by the people to be charged. The prosecution case is going to be strong and tight: motive, opportunity, commission.’ Sir Brian looked down at his right hand which he had been thumping into the palm of his left hand. That hand was trembling. Into his mind, despite all possible mental blocking, there shifted the verbal message — Your son murdered her. They tried to make it look an accident and failed.
He continued speaking. ‘Where the murdered person is a lovely young woman, the jury start by hating the accused. They are twelve ordinary people, never very clever, who can’t control their feelings any more than most. They’ll have read the papers, discussed the case, and will have grown prejudices. No one listens to prejudice more than a juryman because he so insists to himself he must do justice that by the end of the case he has tried to remember too much, has forgotten all, and has to return to his original prejudices because that’s all he has left to go on … So how does counsel set about tackling the jury when he knows that so much of what’s about to be said will be forgotten? Unless the facts are completely and overwhelmingly in his favour, he attacks the case from the emotional angle because that’s where prejudices may be altered and shifted. He would rather strike a chord of sympathy over some minor and trivial point than successfully make several points of fact which emotionally leave the jury cold. In this case a beautiful young wife has been murdered and, it would seem, murdered by her husband and his best friend. How many hard facts will be necessary to break down that prejudice? God knows, and it doesn’t matter because you haven’t one discernible fact in your favour. How much emotional impact? Tell me where you’ll find sufficient emotional force.’
Stuart shivered, looked quickly across at Mark, licked his lips. ‘We’ve each other to back up our story.’
‘Haven’t you yet gauged how useless, even antagonistic, such evidence will be to you? You’ve usually got a clear, logical brain. Start using it.’
Mark Cheesman spoke for the first time. ‘Do you believe we killed her?’
‘I have not asked myself that question.’
‘Why not?’
‘It has no relevance. I’m concerned only with what the jury will believe.’
‘A question you can’t begin to answer until you’ve seen the case for the prosecution.’
‘Can’t you understand, Mark, that the evidence against you must be strong for the D.P.P to suggest prosecution? That if it’s strong you must work like hell to find a defence?’
‘What more can we do than say we weren’t guilty? We can’t prove the negative any more than anyone else can.’
Stuart stood up. ‘We’re in a goddam deep hole,’ he said harshly. ‘The most we can do is back each other up which is what the jury’ll be expecting us to do.’
‘Even if it weren’t antagonistic to you, you couldn’t do that,’ snapped Sir Brian. ‘On your own evidence you spent most of the Saturday afternoon separated. When you say you both went shooting you mean that each of you believes the other was out in the woods all afternoon because that is what the other has said.’
‘You’re making it sound as though we might as well admit now and here that we haven’t a defence.’
‘That is what I came here to impress on you both.’ Sir Brian Tetley finished his second drink.
CHAPTER VIII
I stared at Pope. He sat on the settee and drank my beer. Each time he swallowed, his pointed Adam’s apple surged upwards with amazing force: each time it dropped it was as though it were going to drop far below its point of origin.
‘Tell me, Mr Waring, if it’s not a state secret, how many books a year d’you reckon to write?’
‘I suppose it works out at an average of two and a half.’
‘Would you say they did well?’
‘Depends what you mean by well. Compared with some they do, compared with others, they don’t … Incidentally, it’s one of the curiosities of writing that the books that don’t sell as well as one’s own are bad enough but that the books that sell better are quite impossibly badly written.’
‘I suppose you wouldn’t say no if they was to pick up a little?’ He finished his drink, laid the empty glass down where I could not overlook it.
‘You don’t enter this profession if you want to get rich.’
‘Maybe you’re like me: wouldn’t want to be?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I like life the way it is now. Comfortable in a small way. Too much money turns people rotten.’
‘A trite fallacy invented to try to keep the poor happy.’
He shifted his weight, the settee spring twanged. ‘Money’s done no good for Cheesman or Tetley. Take Cheesman. Rich enough for anyone. What’s it done for him? A dead wife and his best friend as the self-confessed murderer.’
He was watching me with stoat-like intentness.
‘Are you telling me Stuart’s confessed?’ I asked.
‘As true as I sit here.’
‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘Isn’t life? What strikes me as funny is what made Tetley talk. Call it the Old Pal’s Act. He wasn’t going to see his best friend falsely accused along with h
im. I told him I thought he’d left it a bit late to make the gesture an ’eroic one. Just laughed his clever smile. Cool as a cucumber, that gentleman.’
‘But what’s the motive?’
‘Been more friendly than he should have been with the missus. He says it never went all the way — but I ain’t been in the force as long as I have to start believing in gooseberry bushes. He got fed up and she wanted to carry on and threatened to tell hubby if he didn’t oblige. Net result of that would’ve been Cheesman would’ve taken out divorce proceedings on the spot and as a result the Bar Council would’ve looked into the matter and Tetley would most likely have been disbarred — since he was Cheesman’s best friend and all the rest of it. That would ’ave been the end of Tetley’s time at the Bar.’
‘How bloody stupid human contacts can become.’
‘Sounds to me you don’t like to hear justice is being done?’
‘Stuart and I have been friends for a long time.’ I stood up, leaned against the mantelpiece, pushed a pile of to-be-answered letters farther along. ‘I like him a great deal.’
‘Even now?’
‘It doesn’t make any difference.’
‘I don’t understand that kind of talk and if I did it’d make me sick. If I knew a bloke who’d killed off the wife of his best friend, all to save being thrown out of the Bar, I wouldn’t want to have anything more to do with ’im except to read his obituary.’
‘Can’t you appreciate the difference between the person, and the things he does?’
‘I can’t and I thank God I can’t. You begin to sound like one of these long-haired abolitionists.’ He cleared his throat and looked down at his empty glass.
I accepted the hint and stood up. ‘I wonder if I could ever show you the difference?’
‘Not while I’ve a reasonable thought left in me ’ead. You ought to have seen the dead woman, the state her ’ead was in, brains everywhere, and then maybe you wouldn’t be so theoretically detached … Anyway, my job’s done.’
‘At the second attempt.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Last time I heard, you reckoned they’d done it together with a money motive.’
‘Preliminary work.’
Evidence of the Accused Page 8
