Evidence of the Accused

by Roderic Jeffries

‘Because of what I’d seen and done and because of the reports from the laboratory I had no hesitation in treating the case as being one of murder.’

  Gorton poured himself out some water and drank it. He leaned back and spoke and the solicitor behind him half stood up to listen, shook his head. The solicitor returned to his seat, Gorton stood upright, adjusted his gown, turned over a page in his note-book, looked quickly at his instructions. He addressed the witness again. ‘As a case of murder, what were your next steps?’

  ‘To try to discover the motive amongst other things.’

  ‘How did you undertake to do this?’

  ‘I made, and ’ad caused to be made, certain investigations concerning the movements and monetary circumstances of two people, one of whom is the accused.’

  Union stood up. ‘My Lord, I would respectfully suggest that in the present circumstances the financial background of the accused is of no relevancy.’

  Mr Justice Addair spoke to Gorton. ‘Will you be relying on such evidence to prove your case, Mr Gorton?’

  ‘Not relying on it, my Lord.’

  ‘It does not form part of your case?’

  ‘I can’t claim it’s an integral part of it at the moment, my Lord.’

  ‘Then I think we will not hear it. If, later, it should appear we ought to have done so, we will recall the witness.’

  ‘My Lord, I … ’

  ‘Mr Gorton, we will not hear such evidence at the moment.’

  ‘As your Lordship pleases.’ Gorton’s long, narrow face expressed no emotion. He turned and spoke to his solicitor, waited as the other replied, then resumed his examination. ‘You continued with your investigations into the murder of the deceased. Please tell the court what line those investigations took.’

  Pope answered him. His voice, level in tone, impersonal, told the court how experiments had been made to see how long it took to walk from various parts of Settle Wood to the house, how clearly the sound of shots would carry in given conditions of wind. He related how the accused had been questioned about his movements in the wood on the day of the murder and how he had claimed he had done nothing but drive the woods towards Mark Cheesman for the first half of the afternoon.

  Finally, Pope gave evidence regarding the Wednesday morning on which Stuart Tetley was arrested.

  ‘I interviewed the accused and once again asked him to tell me what his movements had been on the day of the murder. I asked him why, if he had had half a dozen shots while he was driving the wood from the south to the north neck as he had claimed, these shots had not been ’eard by other people. He started to say shots were so common an occurrence in the countryside no one took any notice of them when he suddenly broke down.’

  ‘Broke down?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He was in the sitting-room of his father’s house and we’d just had a drink. He got up suddenly, said ’e wanted another whisky and poured himself out one that was neat. He drank and right away began to talk.’

  Union stood up, pushed his spectacles firmly into the bridge of his nose. ‘My Lord, the statement the accused made is, in the submission of the defence, not admissible.’

  ‘Very well … The jury will retire.’ Bewildered, the twelve men and women stood up and were led out of the courtroom.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Union, ‘it is our contention that the statement of the accused was obtained in consequence of an inducement or threat of a temporal character held out to the accused by the witness, a person in authority.’

  ‘Mr Gorton, what do you say?’

  ‘The evidence I have, my Lord, is that the prisoner made his statement voluntarily and entirely of his own free will.’

  The judge appeared to sigh.

  Gorton addressed the witness. ‘Superintendent, please describe exactly what happened immediately before, during, and after, the prisoner made the statement.’

  ‘Well, sir, as I said, ’e took this second drink neat and had two parts finished it when he began. He said … ’ Pope asked for permission to refer to his note-book and this was granted. ‘He said, “I can’t stand it and I’m not going to have Mark under suspicion any longer. The truth is, we went out shooting and I began to beat the south end of Settle Wood towards Mark who stood at the north end where the two arms of the wood meet. I fired twice so he would believe I was driving down, then left the wood and cut across the field to the ’ouse. I had to speak to Lindy. She and I had always been good friends but she had for some time wanted our relationship to go further and she had threatened to tell her husband we were having an affair if I continued to refuse her. For a long time I’d wanted to get ’er on her own and persuade her how ridiculous the whole thing was and it seemed to me I had the chance that Saturday. I entered the house and met her on the landing. I told her what she ’ad to hear. She became very angry and tried to hit me. I held on to her to prevent her succeeding and we overbalanced and both fell against the banisters very heavily. They gave way. I instinctively let go of Lindy as I struggled to save myself and I managed not to fall over. She wasn’t so lucky. I went downstairs to see how badly ’urt she was and was horribly shocked to find she was dead. While I was there my dog, Blaze, came up to me and I had to order her away. Completely shocked mentally and because there was so obviously nothing to be done to help her, I hurried back to the wood to try to make it seem as though I’d been there all the time. I said nothing then or afterwards because I thought it would be handled as an accident and if I kept silent Mark would never have to know how Lindy had tried to behave. I wanted to protect him from that at all costs so ’e could remember her as he’d always thought her.’’ … That was the end of the statement.’

  ‘How did you note this down?’

  ‘At first, the prisoner spoke very quietly. I slowed ’im up and tried to give the usual warning but he wouldn’t listen. I then wrote down in long-hand what he said.’

  ‘Was there another policeman present?’

  ‘Sergeant Ventnor wasn’t able to get to me until a little later on. When he turned up I asked the prisoner to repeat what he’d said but he refused to do this.’

  ‘Did he sign his statement?’

  ‘He wouldn’t, sir.’

  ‘Did you hold out any inducement of any kind in an effort to make the accused give a statement?’

  ‘I did not.’

  Gorton looked at the Bench, sat down. Union cross-examined. ‘You’ve left rather a lot out of your evidence, haven’t you, Superintendent?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You’ve omitted to tell us what you were saying to the accused immediately before that second drink. You’ve conveniently forgotten to make one single reference to that most important fact.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell, sir.’

  ‘In your impatience to obtain an arrest you consigned to oblivion the one overriding consideration a policeman, more especially of high rank, should constantly keep in mind.’

  ‘That ain’t true, sir.’

  ‘Ain’t it, Superintendent?’ sneered Union. Pope’s face whitened. With great self-control he forced himself to remain silent, to control his anger.

  ‘Well, Superintendent?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No? Let us take things slowly and one at a time. What did you discuss while you had your drink and he had his first drink?’

  ‘I asked the prisoner to account for his movements on the day of the murder.’

  ‘How many previous times had you put the same question to him?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘Many, many times, Superintendent … So many it must be obvious to the meanest intelligence that you had embarked on a course designed to wear your man down.’

  ‘I was only doing me duty.’

  ‘Are your orders, then, that your duty is to wear a suspect down into such a weak state mentally he can no longer resist your bullying?’

  ‘We don’t work that way, sir.’ Pope emphasised the word “we” so that it became a clear reference to whom “they�
�� might be.

  There was a considerable amount of laughter which the judge made no effort to check.

  Union leaned forward so that it appeared he rested his stomach on the desk because of its weight. ‘Superintendent, why do you take such pains not to answer my questions?’

  ‘I’m trying to answer them, sir.’

  ‘On the contrary, you are doing everything possible to avoid doing so.’ Union slammed his right hand down on his brief. ‘I’m going to have the truth out of you if it takes me the rest of today and all tomorrow to extract it.’

  ‘I trust you will not find it necessary to pursue the matter to that extent,’ said the judge.

  ‘Everything depends, my Lord, on when the superintendent decides to co-operate.’

  ‘I should have said, Mr Union, that when he was allowed to, he was doing his best.’ Union addressed Pope once more. ‘You browbeat the witness, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You threw question after question at him until he didn’t know what was happening? You then suggested the two of you had a drink because it might confuse him even more and finally you said, “If you don’t tell me the truth I’ll keep at you until everyone can guess we are certain it was you”?’

  ‘That’s not so, sir.’

  ‘Then tell me this. Why, if it’s not true, if the accused made that statement willingly, why did he refuse to repeat it when Sergeant Ventnor was there?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you that it’s obvious to all of us it’s because the accused had been given a breathing space and he realised what he’d been forced to say?’

  ‘I’m not a mind-reader.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent.’ Union’s voice became extremely sarcastic. ‘Another point. If the accused had been so delighted to co-operate fully as you’ve tried to make out, don’t you think he would have been equally delighted to append his signature to the statement?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t be bothered when I repeated my request.’

  ‘Are you really asking the court to believe that?’

  ‘That’s what ’e said, sir.’

  ‘He gaily announced he couldn’t be bothered — as if he’d been asked for his autograph?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t be bothered, sir.’

  ‘You’re claiming that this took place but seconds after his own confession was supposed to have said he couldn’t stand any more of what had been going on. Would you now like the court to believe the accused’s emotions ran up and down the scale from despair to lighthearted flippancy?’

  ‘I’m only saying what happened.’

  ‘I put it to you, Superintendent, that you obtained this so-called confession by threats, you browbeat the unfortunate man into saying things he would obviously never have said without this undue pressure having been placed upon him, you deliberately took advantage of his mental state?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Pope, voice harsh but still even.

  Ten minutes later the judge gave his decision.

  ‘I am satisfied that the confession was made willingly and not from any threat or inducement. In a situation such as this where it is one man’s word against another’s one has to look at the surrounding circumstances. While I do not attach greater importance to a policeman’s evidence merely because he is a policeman, I must bear in mind the obvious fact that a policeman has prima facie less cause to invent a story than a possible suspect. From the length of the statement made to Superintendent Pope by the accused, the logic of it, its completeness, I am convinced that it was not made by a mind being hurried into an inadvertent confession. The jury may be recalled and the confession may be read to them.’

  Pope stared at Union. How d’you like that, you bastard? he thought with pleasure.

  CHAPTER X

  On the following morning I carried my fried egg on toast through to the dining-room, swore at the paraffin heater because it refused to heat, sat down. I spread out the morning paper and turned to the report of the trial. It occupied the whole of one page except for the right-hand corner where there was an advertisement for Stork. There were photographs of Mr Justice Addair in full-bottomed wig, of Union in “civvies”, and of Lindy in a bathing costume taken three or four years ago. I wondered where they had obtained that last photograph.

  The fireworks in the case had ceased after Pope gave his evidence — and damning evidence it was. Following, had come the formal and corroborating evidence. Ventnor backing up Pope, the identification of the photographs, the detectives who’d taken comparison patterns of the various gum-boots and dogs’ pads, the detectives who’d carried the hair and bloody wood to the police laboratory, the police doctor who’d taken samples of Mark’s and Stuart’s blood, the lab. men describing their tests and how they could be certain the hair was human and from the head but that they could not identify it as belonging definitely and exclusively to the accused — that it had come from the head of someone who had had his hair cut within eight days, the lab. men proving the blood found on the landing was human and from group AB, the same group as Lindy, while Mark and Stuart were group O …

  I finished my egg. I’d bought it from Evans who kept hundreds of battery birds for the eggs he sold to the packing station and a couple of dozen free-range hens for the eggs for himself and a chosen few of his friends.

  I asked myself, having read the trial account, what would be the normal person’s reactions? There could be no two ways about it. Without Stuart’s confession on the records one was irresistibly led to the conclusion that either Mark or Stuart had committed the murder: with it, the alternative ceased.

  I had a piece of toast spread over with Marmite, and looked at my watch. I had to be at court by ten sharp, more especially as I was probably the next witness. Allowing the time the Old Girl would need to get me there I had about half an hour before I need leave the cottage.

  From the kitchen came the hissing sound of the espresso machine as the last few ounces of steam were forced out. I went through, turned off the calor gas, brought in the coffee.

  I poured out a cupful of coffee, added two spoonfuls of brown sugar and no more than a dash of milk, lit a cigarette and studied the rest of the newspaper. Everything but the trial was too remote, though, to hold my interest. Even the statement by the latest treble chance winner that the fortune would make no difference to his way of life failed to anger me as it usually did.

  I looked out of the window. It was raining. The Marsh was a gloomy land, sorrow-laden, a countryside weeping, which through the water-streaked glass gained an impressionistic effect. Winter on the Marsh suggested suicide and bodies in the cross-road gibbets.

  I stubbed out the cigarette and stood up. Still plenty of time but the slower I could take the journey the more chance there was that the Old Girl’s innards would stay in the right place.

  It was strange to remember that once upon a time Stuart had not been on trial for the murder of his best friend’s wife.

  Pope saw me waiting outside the courtroom and came over. ‘They’ll probably reach the verdict today.’

  ‘What will it be?’

  ‘You don’t really think that’s a question, do you?’

  ‘Couldn’t it end as manslaughter or even accidental death?’

  Pope smiled thinly. ‘If it was accidental wouldn’t Tetley have told the police straight away what happened? Accidental when Tetley took such trouble to sneak back to the house when no one was looking? Accidental when a ruddy great shove was necessary to push her through the banisters?’

  ‘Juries do strange things.’

  ‘Not that strange.’ Pope scratched the side of his nose. He no longer wore his best suit, evidently banking on the fact he would not be recalled to the box. ‘D’you hear ’ow Union went for me over the confession?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Tried to make out I’d laid on the third degree complete with thumbscrews.’

  ‘Normal ploy when one’s trying to
have a confession held inadmissible.’

  ‘I suppose it don’t matter it means calling a policeman a liar?’

  ‘Aren’t they all liars?’

  He chuckled, scratched his nose again. There was the faint sound of a call for silence from within the court. ‘I’d better go on in,’ he said.

  ‘Want to be in at the kill?’

  ‘I always like to see how my patients get on,’ he replied smugly.

  My name was called out. It was a trifle eerie to hear it being so publicly broadcast.

  I walked to the door of the courtroom and the policeman opened it for me. I went through.

  It was unnerving to have to appreciate the fact that so many people were staring at me. It made me remember my dream that recurred at frequent intervals in which I was the last to be examined on the Day of Judgement and all those who had gone before looked at me with calculating glances and betted as to whether I’d make it.

  I entered the witness-box, agreed I was Church of England, took the New Testament in my right hand, made the oath.

  ‘Are you John Waring, author and barrister, and do you live at How Cottage in Sonningchurch?’

  ‘That is correct.’ I liked the look of Gorton. He was a man who would never let the fire of the case make him forget he was there to present the truth and not win the case at all costs.

  ‘You are a friend of Mark Cheesman and of the accused?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How did you meet them?’

  ‘I dined at Gray’s Inn one night in the same mess as Stuart Tetley. We saw quite a bit of each other after that and when he heard I lived at Sonningchurch he introduced me to Mark and Lindy Cheesman.’

  ‘Did you see the Cheesmans fairly frequently?’

  ‘They used to ask me over to have a meal and a chat from time to time.’

  ‘Were you friendly with them?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘With both of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Waring, please give my next question considerable thought … Did you, at any time, see anything or hear anything that led you to believe there could be any relationship but friendship between Mrs Cheesman and the accused?’