Evidence of the Accused

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Sounds typical. Don’t make sense except to people with cork-screw minds.’ Perce hitched up his trousers. ‘They don’t fit so well since I lost some weight … Must be ’ell for him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In there listening to ’em tie the rope round ’is neck, knowing he’s going to swing for it.’

  ‘I don’t think he will under the new laws. The defence might even get the charge reduced to something less than murder.’

  ‘Not according as to what that detective told me. Look, Mr Waring, I’ve been wanting to talk bad. I’d ’ate to feel responsible for what’s going to happen to ’im and I’ve been wondering whether to forget a bit of what I know?’

  ‘It’s not quite that easy, Perce. Your evidence … ’

  ‘Live and let live, that’s what I live by. If I see things I ain’t meant to see, I say nowt and that’s just what I ought to ’ave said to the coppers but they caught me unprepared. Now they says my evidence is the last link in the chain that’s going to tie up Mr Cheesman and I don’t like it. Look, you’re a law man, you tell me. If I was to say that after a lot of deep thinking I was anything but certain it was ’er and Mr Tetley, what would happen?’

  ‘You’d get it right in the neck.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For changing your evidence between the preliminary hearing and here.’

  ‘Then suppose I just said I’d thought better? There ain’t no crime in thinking better, is there? Just like a politician.’

  I took out cigarettes and offered them to him. He accepted one and rolled the filter tip around in his lips until it was sodden.

  ‘It’s impossibly difficult,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ve thought like you, wanted to help either Tetley or Cheesman. Pope found out and gave me a real lambasting. If Mark Cheesman killed his wife, shouldn’t he pay the penalty? When that question’s baldly put to me, sometimes I think he should, sometimes I think he shouldn’t. The truth of the matter is, of course, we’re not called on to answer. The State is prosecuting and we are forced to testify and testify truly. We’re allowed no loyalties, no bonds of friendship … It’s a damned good thing, in many ways. Would you like to be responsible for judging Mark Cheesman?’

  ‘Not me. I don’t want the job of judging anyone. Causes too much ruddy trouble.’

  ‘I shouldn’t either. The dead are dead but you can say we owe them a duty every bit as great as the one we owe the living. Don’t you and I owe Mrs Cheesman a duty? To help make someone pay for the dreadful harm done to her? … Loyalties are brutal burdens.’

  ‘Boil it all down and tell us what to do about the story I’m to give.’

  ‘Give the true one. Whatever are the consequences they must be the right ones because they come from the truth.’

  He looked round for somewhere to put the ash, could find nowhere so flicked it on the ground and covered it with one of his large feet.

  I looked at my watch. ‘Soon be lunch-time. Come and eat with me, Perce?’

  ‘What about being ’ere?’

  ‘They break for the meal. In any case, I doubt we’ll be called before tomorrow.’

  ‘What about Mr Cheesman — do they feed ’im?’

  ‘Good God, yes. He can still order his own meals if he wants. Smoked salmon and caviar.’

  ‘Often wondered what it was like to go salmon-fishing. There ain’t any of it in Kent, is there?’

  ‘Never heard of any.’

  ‘Pity.’

  For whom, I wondered? The owners of the streams?

  *

  I was called on the second day. I entered the courtroom, took the oath, looked at Mark. He moved his lips as he tried silently to ask a question. I nodded my head. I would have sworn a fortune he had been wanting to know if Pears was all right. Now Lindy was gone, he was left with only the dogs.

  Gorton put the preliminary questions to me. I answered them. We reached the more meaty evidence.

  ‘How well did you know Mark Cheesman and his wife?’

  ‘We were very good friends.’

  ‘Did you visit them frequently?’

  ‘Reasonably so.’

  ‘You’ve said it was Stuart Tetley who introduced you. Was he also very friendly with the Cheesmans?’

  I saw Union about to rise to protest, then relax. There was little point in objecting to a question the answer to which was so very obvious. ‘He was,’ I replied.

  ‘Did you at any time and from any source gain an impression to the effect that Stuart Tetley and the deceased were more than mere good friends?’

  ‘I … I heard something to that effect.’

  ‘Can you tell us approximately when this was?’

  ‘The late middle of last year.’

  ‘From whom did you hear this?’

  ‘A man called Perce Charnley.’

  ‘We are calling Charnley, my Lord.’ Gorton turned back and addressed me again. ‘As a result of what he told you, did you then begin to wonder exactly what was the relationship between Mrs Cheesman and Mr Tetley?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What conclusion did you arrive at?’

  ‘I thought it possible they were having an affair.’

  ‘Had you any proof for this belief?’

  ‘None. It was merely that I frequently saw them looking at each other in a particular way whenever they believed they were unobserved. I never saw any physical contact between them.’

  Gorton sat down, rested his chin in the palms of his hands. Union stood up. He leaned forward against the edge of the desk and his stomach bulged into two. He looked at me with distaste, took off his spectacles, polished them on a handkerchief, replaced them. ‘You are a writer, I believe? You have had books published?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Successfully?’

  ‘It depends what you call successful.’

  ‘Do you appear in the best-seller lists?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever sold more than five thousand hardboard copies of one book?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I feel sure, Mr Waring, that you’d have no wish to place yourself in the Hemingway class … You also read for the Bar and were called. Did you practise?’

  ‘For a short while.’

  ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘I decided I was unlikely to reach the eminence of someone like yourself. I was too good-natured.’

  Union ignored the very slight laughter. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, you’ve tried at least two professions and failed in both?’

  ‘I haven’t reached the heights of either.’

  ‘Would you call the accused successful?’

  ‘He has a very good position.’

  ‘And a large income?’

  ‘I should imagine so.’

  ‘Was, is, Mr Tetley successful?’

  ‘I believe he has been doing very well.’

  ‘Then when the three of you were together, you were the odd man out. You were the … failure … amongst the successful?’

  I made no answer.

  ‘Would you now like to tell the court whether you saw Mrs Cheesman and Stuart Tetley “looking at each other in a particular way” in actual fact or whether it was your way of personally trying to square the material difference between you and them? Whether your mind deliberately and desperately tried to make out that there was truth in the bit of dirty village gossip you’d picked up because it pleased you to do so?’

  ‘I can only repeat what I thought at the time.’

  ‘We know what you thought, Mr Waring: what we’re trying to discover is why you thought it. Real friends don’t usually go around ready and eager to believe each other to be highly immoral.’

  ‘They may if they’ve been told about it.’

  ‘Not friends, Mr Waring. A friend would scotch the rumour, behead it at birth. A friend would never go skulking about life, crawling around trying to sniff out whether there was any truth in so vicious a story.’

  I again made no
answer because there was no point in doing so. Union had made use of me as a minor whipping-boy. He had formed in the minds of the jury the impression that the whole of my evidence was to be disbelieved: he had tricked them into thinking that my evidence had been important and because it appeared to have been shown to be biased the prosecution case had been seriously shaken.

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re unable to answer,’ Union said heavily. He looked at the jury, nodded his head twice with owlish emphasis, sat down.

  Gorton did not bother to re-examine. He did not mind if I came out of it in a rough light and he reckoned he could better repair the damage caused in other ways.

  Charnley was called. As I sat down on one of the benches, he was stepping into the witness-box.

  He took the oath and told the court where he lived and what he did.

  ‘You say you went for a walk through Settle Wood. Before we go any further, can you tell us what day of the month this was?’

  ‘Not rightly, no, sir. It was a week day and I’d been given the afternoon off on account of I worked a Sunday but I don’t knows exactly what day it was.’

  ‘You can be certain, though, it was in August?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘During the walk, did you see anyone you knew in the wood?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘Who?’

  Charnley looked round the court, then at me with a dumb plea for help: he licked his lips.

  ‘Who, Mr Charnley? You must answer.’

  ‘Mrs Cheesman and Mr Tetley.’

  ‘Can you be positive it was they?’

  ‘Couldn’t mistake ’em.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘Lying down in the bracken … close together.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Must I, sir?’

  ‘I’ve already said so.’

  ‘Kissing and cuddling, sir.’

  ‘Were Mrs Cheesman’s clothes at all disarranged?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Which portion of her clothes were disarranged?’

  ‘Her … Her top half.’ Charnley was sweating and he brushed some of the sweat away from his forehead with his hand. To him, facts like these were far too indelicate to be publicly stated in mixed company.

  ‘How badly disarranged were they?’

  ‘Just … Just disarranged.’

  Gorton sat down. I noticed Mark’s expression: it expressed the same sense of shock as it had at the preliminary hearing.

  Union leaned over and spoke to his solicitor, rolled back over his stomach to an upright position. ‘How well do you know Settle Wood?’

  ‘I knows the right of way. Goes through.’

  ‘Were you on the right of way when you claim to have seen these two people?’

  ‘No. I weren’t, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suppose I must have lost my way, like.’

  ‘You left the right of way completely by mistake?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know the wood at all well?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Weren’t you a little worried when you got off the one path you knew? After all, you might have gone round in circles?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that. You see, sir, this other ride runs parallel with the right of way straight through to Sembury Hill.’

  ‘Perhaps through a sense of modesty you have refrained from telling us the real extent of your acquaintance with these woods. Would it perhaps be more correct to say that the picture is you do know a little of them beyond the right of way?’

  ‘I … I suppose that would be better.’

  ‘You’re obviously an intelligent and observant man. Do you think you could explain to the jury whereabouts you saw the two people concerned?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I could do that.’

  ‘And if I were to ask you to take me to the exact spot, could you do that?’

  ‘No trouble. Got a good memory, like you just said.’

  ‘I think I’m right in saying that to do this journey we’d go along the second ride and from somewhere along it we’d see the place where the two people were in the bracken?’

  ‘That’s not quite right.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d put me right?’

  ‘Well, you see, there’s a bit of a bank you have to climb over and … ’

  ‘Let’s get this perfectly straight. You’re saying you weren’t actually on this second ride?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘When you saw Mrs Cheesman and Mr Tetley you were deep in the heart of the wood away from the ride?’

  ‘I was away from it.’

  ‘But not lost?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir.’

  ‘In other words, you know Settle Wood backwards. You know all its rides, and you know the land in-between. You know this, don’t you, Charnley, because you’re the most successful poacher in the area?’

  ‘That ain’t true. You ain’t no right to say that.’ Perce’s horror at the suddenly disclosed perfidy of counsel as a result of which his second trade was so cruelly brought into the open was obvious. He was a tormented man: one who found himself running naked.

  ‘Do you say you are not a poacher? Think carefully and remember you’re on oath.’ Perce looked heavenwards, perhaps for some Jovian bolt to descend and splinter Union.

  ‘Answer me, Mr Charnley, are you not the foremost poacher around Sonningchurch?’

  ‘I wouldn’t poach; it’s against me religion,’ he cried out desperately.

  ‘Suppose I were to bring five witnesses here, to this court, each of whom would testify that you poached: suppose I were to bring absolute proof … ’

  ‘Mr Union,’ said the judge in an amiable voice, ‘are you calling five such witnesses?’

  ‘No, my Lord, not exactly. If I may … ’

  ‘Then I don’t think we need or should enquire into what would happen if you did. Are you bringing any proof at all which will support your contention that Mr Charnley is a poacher? Have you proof of past convictions?’

  ‘No, my Lord, but … ’

  ‘Then I think your line of questioning is wrong, Mr Union, and is most misleading.’ Union was obviously swearing under his breath. Who could blame him? The judge’s liking for intervention had manifested itself at quite the wrong moment so far as Union was concerned. Charnley had been on the run and about to make the admission which would have discredited himself as a witness.

  The judge turned his large head slightly and carefully studied the witness. ‘Mr Charnley, certain suggestions have been made into which I should like to enquire.’

  ‘My Lord,’ said Union hastily, ‘perhaps it would, with respect, be better if I put the questions your Lordship wishes to put?’

  ‘By no means, Mr Union. Mr Charnley, were you on a poaching expedition on that August day on which you say you saw Mrs Cheesman and Mr Tetley?’

  ‘I’ll swear to ’eaven, no. The season hadn’t started.’

  ‘Does that mean that had the season started you might well have been out on a poaching expedition?’

  Charnley became greatly confused, was helped out of such confusion by the judge. Charnley cleared his mind and denied with telling vehemence that he could tell the difference between a pheasant and a partridge. By the time counsel was allowed to resume his task, the witness was firmly characterised as a good honest countryman. I was not surprised Union spoke wearily.

  ‘Stuart Tetley.’

  We could hear the call being repeated outside the courtroom.

  Stuart came into court. He looked smart, efficient, capable. He entered the witness-box and took the oath.

  Gorton pulled a sheet free from the several papers immediately in front of him. He held this in his left hand, tucked his right hand inside his gown behind his back. ‘Mr Tetley, you’ve known Mark Cheesman for some time?’

  ‘From when we were at school together.’

  ‘Had you met Lindy Cheesman before her marriage?’


  ‘I was first introduced to her a couple of months before Mark became engaged.’

  ‘Were you friendly with them both?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Will you please tell the jury precisely and fully what were your relations with the dead woman?’

  ‘I liked her very much and thought Mark was a lucky man.’

  ‘Did this relationship ever become more than friendship?’

  ‘Not on my part.’

  ‘Were you in Settle Wood at any time last August?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Lindy Cheesman.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I called at the house one August afternoon after a case of mine had finished early in Canterbury. Naturally, Mark was out and to while away the time until he returned Lindy suggested we went for a walk. We entered the woods and after a bit she complained of being tired. We sat down. Lindy asked me to kiss her.’

  ‘She asked you to kiss her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I did. She was a very lovely woman.’ Stuart shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that was part defiant, part apologetic. ‘Before long, we went much further than I’d reckoned on and I had hurriedly to regain my senses. Sexual intercourse didn’t take place but it could easily have done … It was because I refused to continue that afternoon that Lindy conceived the idea that I was hopelessly in love with her. Eager for the thrills of an affair, she tried again and again to make me break the trust Mark had in me. It was to break up, or to try to, this intolerable situation that I returned to the house that afternoon.’

  ‘After you’d been in the wood in August?’

  ‘When Mark and I went out shooting.’

  ‘I … I don’t follow you, Mr Tetley.’

  ‘It was I who unwittingly pushed her through the banisters to her death.’

  CHAPTER XIV

  Gorton stared at Stuart Tetley with a look of disbelief on his face that suddenly changed to one of comprehension. He turned, spoke to his solicitor.

  Union was talking to his solicitor and his junior was tapping his large buttocks to try to attract his attention.

  For the rest of us — we ignored the calls for silence as we spoke to those on either side of us. The jury’s tongues were in constant movement, the reporters were writing as hard as they could go.