Evidence of the Accused

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘I know of none.’

  Union sat down.

  Gorton re-examined. ‘Doctor, would it be correct to say that this hair could have as easily come under the finger-nail at the time of death as at any other time?’

  ‘I can suggest absolutely no reason whatsoever why not.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Detective-Inspector May was called. He spoke in the bleakly toneless voice native to a policeman in a witness-box. For much of the time he gave his evidence without Gorton’s having to ask him the questions.

  ‘I examined the body as a matter of routine, not because I suspected anything. Under the finger-nail of the middle finger of the right hand I found what I took to be a human hair. I examined this under a magnifying glass and was able to distinguish the root.’

  ‘What colour was this hair?’

  ‘I couldn’t say more, sir, than that it looked to me to be what I’ve always called mouse-coloured.’

  Many people looked at the prisoner. His hair was a dark mouse-colour.

  ‘Did you try to see, Inspector, whether this hair could have come from the dead woman?’

  ‘I examined the deceased’s hair and satisfied myself her hair was blonde.’

  ‘Inspector,’ said the judge, ‘by that you are saying that in so far as you could tell, the deceased’s hair did not owe its colour to the hairdresser’s art?’

  The public thought the judge was trying to be humorous and several laughed. They ceased as he rebuked them in his cold, even-toned voice.

  May waited until there was silence once more. ‘My Lord, because there was no darkness about the roots of the blonde hair of the dead woman I assumed it was naturally that colour. An assumption that was to a very large extent borne out when comparison hairs were taken.’

  ‘I regret I do not follow you.’

  ‘When comparison hairs were taken from the dead body I made a point of noticing the colour of those from the genitals. They also were blonde.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Gorton reached up behind him with his left hand and flicked the tails of his wig away from his neck. He brought up his right foot and placed it on the seat, rested his right elbow on his knee. ‘Inspector, having examined the hair you found under the finger-nail, what did you next do?’

  ‘I decided it had not come from the dead body but from the head of someone else. I called in Detective-Superintendent Pope who was in Ashford that afternoon.’

  ‘I think it must be made clear to the jury, Inspector, that any conclusions you reached about this hair were based on your estimation and not on any scientific fact.’

  ‘That is so, sir.’

  Gorton removed his foot from the bench to the floor, sat down.

  Union stood up and studied the Detective-Inspector for some considerable time. ‘Tell me,’ he said at length, ‘can you give the court any good reason why the hair might not have been under the deceased’s fingernail all day?’

  ‘I can only say it seemed unlikely, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Her hands were very well looked after and she was obviously a most carefully groomed woman. That kind of person would notice whether the hair were there, or not.’

  ‘That’s your supposition based on observations which may or may not be correct?’

  ‘How else, Mr Union, could the witness have answered your question?’ asked the judge.

  ‘My Lord, I wished to make it quite clear to the jury that the witness did not know as a fact that the deceased was, if I may suggest it, like the princess who could feel a pea through innumerable mattresses.’

  ‘I think we may safely leave them to draw their own conclusions in the matter.’

  ‘With great respect, my Lord, when a police officer … ’

  ‘We have sufficiently discussed the matter.’

  Union turned sideways and rearranged some of the papers before him — an act that, strangely, allowed him to work off the sense of annoyance engendered by the judge’s interruption.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ said Union heavily. ‘Suppose, Inspector, that Mrs Cheesman had been busy with housework all day, never having time to stop and relax, suppose she had to give her husband and friend lunch at one o’clock sharp, suppose that afterwards she metaphorically put her feet up, lit a cigarette, and relaxed for the first time that day, isn’t it just conceivable even to you that during the hectic and most strenuous day she might not have had time to notice she had one small, thin, hair in her finger-nail?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know about that, sir.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Whether she did much housework or cooking.’

  Union turned round and spoke to his junior. ‘The man’s an idiot.’

  Spenser smiled, knowing his Silk meant the opposite of what he had said. Spenser had a theory. Silks went into court with a junior so that there was always someone on whom they could unload their irritation. At two-thirds of the brief markings of his leader, Spenser thought highly of irritation.

  Union addressed the detective-inspector again. ‘Would you be able to go so far as to agree with me that there are circumstances in which it is possible the deceased could have gone through part of the day with the hair undetected beneath her finger-nail?’

  ‘I suppose, sir, it was possible. Just.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector.’

  ‘That’s all,’ said Gorton, before Union had sat down again.

  Mr Justice Addair looked at the clock. ‘This seems a convenient moment to adjourn. We will resume at two o’clock.’ He closed his notebook, put the pencil carefully by the side, stood up, bowed, turned, walked to the door.

  CHAPTER IX

  I ordered roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Brussels sprouts, baked potatoes. The waitress scribbled hieroglyphics in her pad, dropped the pad to her side where it hung from a tarnished chain attached to her belt, walked away with a shuffling action which suggested she suffered from bad feet.

  The smell of the restaurant was its most noticeable feature. A Frenchman would have declared without any hesitation it was the stench of that abomination, cabbage water. It was more than that: it was an epitaph to provincial English cooking.

  The man who sat opposite me at the same table was reading a novel by an authoress I knew. I always felt outraged that she sold so well since her husband had a well-paid job and she had a moderate private income. She did not have to write to eat.

  My lunch arrived. I began to eat. The joint had been cooked, allowed to go cold so that the slices could be carved paper-thin, then as each order went through to the kitchen a portion was heated for a few moments, greens and potatoes were rescued from the water, Yorkshire pudding added, and the whole lot daubed with a gravy that owed everything to flour and Bisto.

  I chose ice-cream for the dessert. They couldn’t do much to that.

  I had coffee and with it a cigarette. I wondered about Stuart. Presumably, he was eating. Or trying to. Did the position in which he found himself dry out his mouth and enlarge his throat until a crumb seemed too large to go down? I’d known Stuart for a long time but I couldn’t judge how calm he’d be with such a threat hanging over his head with Damoclean nicety. I knew how I’d feel. I always thought it was because I was a writer that I could mentally follow a train of events to a conclusion, logical or illogical, before most people had fully considered the original action. If I dropped a hammer on my toe I took myself off to hospital, was interviewed by a worried specialist, suffered an amputation, failed to discover how to use crutches …

  What were Mark’s thoughts? His wife had been murdered and he saw his best friend on trial. Was Mark cursing the change in the law which meant this was no hanging matter?

  I stubbed out the cigarette, stood up, picked up the bill. The man opposite was still reading his book as avidly as ever. No literary taste.

  I paid at the cash-desk and the sour-faced woman was careful not to say thank you as I handed her the ten shilling note. I waited for the change, left, walked
up the street, crossed, made my way to the building in which was the courtroom. Would I be called that afternoon or would I have to spend the time as I had the morning: hanging round wondering how to make the time pass?

  ‘’Ave a good meal?’

  Pope stood there, studying me. He had put on a dark suit with thin white pin-stripes: his tie might easily have been a regimental or old school one: his shoes were highly polished: his hair was slicked down. He was a stoat going to church to pray for the soul of the rabbit he was about to consume.

  I answered his question. ‘The food was just eatable.’

  He chuckled. ‘Not like the Dorchester, what, what?’

  It was strange to discover how friendly he was to me. I doubted he was like that with many people.

  He took out cigarettes from his pocket. ‘For you?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘They tell me the prisoner’s behaving well and is very calm and reasonable.’

  ‘Been asking tenderly after his health?’ Of course he had.

  ‘I’ll give ’im his due — he’s a brave man.’

  ‘That’s praise indeed.’

  ‘Look, Mr Waring, I was in the P.B.I and we took on all types. D’you know who was the only one to be recommended for the V.C? — never gave it him because there wasn’t an officer present — a bloke who’d been to Eton. He was braver than I’d be in me dreams.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So when people are up against it I appreciate what’s to be appreciated no matter what.’

  ‘Have you ever stopped to think that that Etonian would have been brave whether he was with your lot or was an officer in the Guards?’

  ‘That doesn’t come into it.’

  To him, it didn’t and never would.

  ‘D’you think I’ll get called today?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes a case like this goes through like a dose of salts, sometimes it gets all glued up.’ He scratched about his eyebrows. I thought of his action as bird-nesting.

  Two robed counsel hurried past us on their way to the courtroom where the civil lists were being heard. They were young and their wigs were white. I wondered how they’d been able to land themselves cases out on circuit. I was never given one. Unless one counted undefended divorces which at five and two were some of the quickest money at the Bar. A man who was certain of three of those a working day could put up his feet and smile.

  ‘Know anything about fuchsias?’ asked Pope. ‘They’re a hobby a mine.’

  ‘All I can tell you is that a chap I knew used to grow magnificent ones in a mixture of horse-dung, powdered plaster, peat-moss, and old geranium leaves.’

  ‘What goddam awful rubbish,’ he snapped indignantly.

  *

  The court resat at exactly two o’clock. Mr Justice Addair entered as a clock in the street outside struck the hour. He was a man who made a fetish of punctuality. He bowed at counsel, sat down, picked up his pencil, opened his note-book, looked up. ‘Yes, Mr Gorton.’ Gorton called Detective-Superintendent Pope. Pope entered the courtroom, stepped into the witness-box, picked up the New Testament and took the oath without bothering to read the printed card the usher held up for him.

  The preliminary questions were soon covered. Before the meat of the evidence was reached there was a slight pause. The shorthand writer made certain his second pen was handy in case the first ran out of ink. He massaged his fingers, looked at the electric clock and checked how long it would be before his relief arrived. The men and women in the press-box looked bored. The jury had lost some of their initial embarrassment and nervousness.

  Gorton resumed his examination. ‘You have told the court that you arrived at Settle Court because of the telephone call from Detective-Inspector May. There, you examined the body. What did you do then?’

  ‘First of all, sir, I decided to search the floor for prints. There weren’t any visible to the naked eye so I ordered portable searchlights to be brought in. If you shine a light sideways on you can often pick out otherwise hidden prints.’

  ‘Did you discover anything?’

  ‘We found two prints near the body. One appeared to be of part of a boot, the other of a dog’s paw.’

  ‘Resting there a moment, Superintendent, do you identify these photographs — I shall be calling the photographer later on — as being of the prints you saw?’ Gorton handed several photographs to the usher who took them to Pope. ‘That’s them.’

  ‘Did these prints assist you in any way?’

  ‘Not apart from the knowledge that someone with a dog stood near the dead woman. We ’ad the prints enlarged to see if that would help, but it didn’t.’

  ‘Did you subsequently carry out any tests?’

  ‘We took certain gum-boots and used them to see if they would give marks similar to those we found.’

  ‘With what result?’

  ‘As we’d expected, the original marks were too obscure for comparisons.’

  ‘Were you able to identify the dog mark?’

  ‘I thought it was the print of a dog’s pad and later this was confirmed.’

  ‘Evidence will be tended on this point … Beyond the fact that the mark was made by a dog did you learn anything from it?’

  ‘Only that it was made by a large dog rather than a small one, sir.’

  ‘A breed about the size of a German short-haired pointer?’

  Union rose to his feet. ‘My learned friend must not suggest so obviously the evidence he wishes to be given.’

  The judge smiled thinly. ‘Does that mean, Mr Union, that you would have no objection were the direction to be not quite so obvious?’ There was no answer.

  ‘Mr Gorton, you must allow the witness to give the evidence.’

  ‘Very well, my Lord … Superintendent Pope, can you say what type of dog you would imagine would have made such a mark?’

  As though reluctant to do so, Union sat down.

  ‘A biggish dog,’ replied Pope.

  ‘Of any particular breed?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain, of course, but it must have been something about the size of a German short-haired pointer.’

  ‘Of which breed, I believe, the accused has one and Mr Cheesman two?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘To be completely fair, am I correct when I say you do not, and cannot, identify the marks as having come from any one dog of any one breed? It might have been made by a Labrador, an Alsatian, a Doberman pinscher?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that is perfectly correct.’

  ‘What happened after you had found and studied these prints?’

  ‘I extracted the hair from under the deceased’s finger-nail and Sergeant Ventnor wrapped it up.’

  ‘Did you examine the hair?’

  ‘Not to any extent, sir. I left that to the experts.’

  ‘What did you next do?’

  ‘Went upstairs to ’ave a look round where the deceased had fallen through the banisters. I called for the light up there and by using it we found two spots of what I took to be blood, by the broken banisters. I had these spots photographed … yes, sir, these are them … and sketched, then I examined them more closely. They suggested they had fallen from a height of fifty inches, allowing ten inches either side of that figure.’

  ‘Resting there one moment, Superintendent, will you explain to the jury how it is you can estimate the height from which the blood has fallen?’

  Pope turned until he faced the jury-box. There was a hint about him, in his best suit, of an H.G. Wells character: the little man about to astonish the world. ‘When the blood drops to the ground it makes a different pattern all according to the height it came from. You can tell approximately by the little tails that spread out from the drop and the size of the drop itself. The bigger the tails and the bigger the drop, the higher it came from.’

  ‘Would you call this an accurate way of judging the height?’

  ‘It’s accurate, sir, if you allows a margin for error and it’s under a maximum height
.’

  ‘If you were asked, in this case, to give a minimum and maximum figure beyond which the blood could not have come, what would you give?’

  ‘Ninety per cent certain those figures are forty and sixty inches, sir. Say thirty-five and sixty-five and it becomes a hundred per cent.’

  The judge spoke. ‘Superintendent, I wish to be perfectly clear on this point. You say that from the shape of a drop of blood you can tell, with the accuracy you have suggested to the court, the height from which that drop came?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘You would not allow a greater margin for error?’

  ‘The one I have given is possibly too lenient, my Lord, but I was asked for an absolute maximum and minimum.’

  ‘Quite so … Thank you.’

  The examination-in-chief continued. Painstakingly, laboriously, Gorton questioned Pope about all that had happened.

  ‘At this point,’ said Gorton, ‘did you test the banisters?’

  ‘We did. I fixed up a safety net and chose a piece of banister beyond the torn section. We inspected it for any obvious signs of potential weakness such as worm-holes, in the same way we had inspected the section that had broken away. We found none. I then leaned against the chosen section of banister to see if it would give under my weight. It didn’t. Ventnor leaned against it and even though he weighs a lot more it still held and this despite the fact it must ’ave been weakened because of the section farther along that was bust. We then gripped ourselves to each other and allowed ourselves to fall against it. It held. Only when Sergeant Ventnor pushed me against it with all the strength he could muster did it give way.’

  ‘What did that experiment suggest to you?’

  ‘It convinced me the deceased could not have fallen through the banisters on account of leaning against them or even tripping up and accidentally falling against ’em.’

  ‘At this stage had you reached any general conclusion with regard to the accident?’