Evidence of the Accused

by Roderic Jeffries

  I sat down, turned, looked at the dock. They had brought Mark back and he was standing in it. At last, the strain he was under was reflected in his face and I could see that the nerve was jumping in the flesh beneath his right eye.

  The judge returned to court. We stood until he was seated, then settled down ourselves. Everyone stared at the jury.

  The foreman was asked if they had reached a unanimous verdict. They had. What was it?

  ‘Not guilty.’

  CHAPTER XV

  I walked out of the shivering building into the street. I saw Pope and Ventnor standing at the edge of the pavement. The stoat and the rook. As I turned my head slightly the dying sunshine blasted my eyes. I walked forward. ‘How d’you like it?’ snarled Pope. He added a string of blasphemous swear words.

  A lorry passed us, its cargo of sheets of corrugated iron bouncing up and down to the humps of the road and creating a filthy noise. Behind the lorry came a piece of history — a Phantom II Rolls-Royce, chauffeur driven, with a woman in the back who looked at the world through a lorgnette.

  ‘I could go a pint,’ said Ventnor.

  ‘Of strychnine?’ suggested Pope.

  ‘Mild and bitter,’ replied the other with his usual broad good humour. ‘How about you, Mr Waring?’

  ‘I can hear it foaming in my glass … Charnley is making his own way home after seeing some remote cousin so I’ve got time — mustn’t be too long, though. I’ve to return Pears to Mark.’

  ‘The bastard,’ said Pope venomously.

  The traffic slowed to a halt as farther up the road a van tried to make a right turn. We threaded our way through the stationary vehicles to the far side of the road.

  There was a pub a hundred yards down on the right. Ventnor led the way into the saloon bar, spoke to me. ‘What’s your order, sir?’

  ‘Same as yours is going to be. Mild and bitter.’

  ‘Superintendent, sir?’

  ‘Any goddam thing.’

  ‘Three milds and bitters it is.’ Ventnor walked across to the bar, spoke to the fat and pimply barmaid.

  ‘Having sat all day, I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a table.’

  Pope followed me and we sat down round the square, formica-covered table.

  ‘Feeling bloody?’ I asked.

  He looked up at me. ‘I’m feeling bloody enough to walk out of here and do justice myself. I’d give twenty quid to charity to be able to have the jury together for a ten minute talk on life … ’

  Ventnor came over to the table and the three pint glasses were carefully put down. Foam from one of them spilled over. ‘Been crying on your shoulder, I suppose?’ he said to me.

  I grinned. I was surprised at the suddenly informal way in which Ventnor referred to his superior.

  Ventnor picked up a glass. ‘Here’s to crime.’ He drank deeply. When he took the glass away from his mouth some of the foam was attached to his upper lip. A long tongue came out and neatly wiped it away.

  Pope consented to forego his angry misery sufficiently long to drink. I noted his thirst was in no way impaired. A quarter of the glassful disappeared with consummate ease and skill.

  I took out my cigarettes and offered them. We each had one. Ventnor lit a match.

  ‘One law for the rich and one for the poor,’ said Pope suddenly, and he spoke as though he was the first to have remarked upon it. ‘If you’re rich enough, been to the right schools, you can get away with murder.’

  ‘Come off it,’ I replied. ‘Mark didn’t bribe his way out of the case.’

  ‘A rose smells whatever you call it … You know as clear as we do, one of ’em did the job for the two of ’em. They wanted the woman out of the way for ’er money — like I said originally.’

  ‘Why didn’t you advise they both be charged together?’

  ‘Because I was taken for an idiot. Because I let them draw the blinds over me eyes and the eyes of the legal department. I ought to go and see a cyclist.’

  ‘Cyclist?’

  ‘Psychiatrist,’ interpreted Ventnor.

  ‘They’re clever. Give ’em their due. Very clever. They bumped ’er off and waited. Maybe it’d be called an accident: if so, fine. If not, I’d learn about the money and that would be the time they’d go into their act. One of ’em confesses: she was chasing ’im and he had to push ’er off the landing to escape a fate worse ’n death. So I swallows that, though it makes me shudder now to think I could do such a thing, ’e gets charged with a case that’s cast-iron in a dozen languages. So what happens? The husband turns up at the trial and makes a confession: the jury lap it up: send Tetley away as free as a daisy. At that point, I said to myself, Popey, you missed the first time, but by God you’re going to nail the right bastard this time and no mistake. She was murdered and you know it, and you’re going to see the rest of the world knows it. You’re goin’ to nail Cheesman’s hide ’igh up on his own confession. So what happens? Tetley confesses and the jury fall for it despite everything the judge does and they bring in a verdict of not guilty. I tell you, I still don’t believe it happened.’ He raised his glass and drank steadily until it was empty. He put the glass down on the table.

  ‘Same again?’ I asked.

  Pope nodded, Ventnor burped quietly, a sound which I took as a signal of assent. I went to the bar and ordered refills. The barmaid filled the glasses from the pumps, smiled at me with a mechanical smile, took my money, gave me change that was wet from beer.

  I returned to the table. ‘Drink up and forget the whole thing.’

  ‘They’ll be putting the last screws in me coffin before I do that,’ muttered Pope.

  ‘Good luck to ’em,’ said Ventnor. ‘Blokes as clever as them deserve the breaks.’

  Pope swore at his sergeant. ‘One for the rich and one for the poor,’ he muttered, as though it were an article of faith.

  ‘That doesn’t come into it, does it?’ I said. ‘Admit it, now you’ve been topped up with good Kentish beer.’

  ‘Listen. Suppose you and me, ordinary folk, ’ad done that murder? We’re clever and we fix on the story that’s served them. You gets charged first and during the trial I goes into the witness-box and says: “I did it. I now confesses because my dear friend is in mortal danger and my conscience will no longer let me remain silent. I confess so as I can suffer the right and proper penalties which will ease my conscience.” D’you know what the jury would do? Laugh their bloomin’ ’eads off. But just suppose they ’adn’t. Suppose it’s my trial and during it you make your little speech? This time they’d find you too bloomin’ funny for words. And why? You and me don’t wear an old school tie. We act like the ordinary, majority of people: like them in the jury. When the chips are down we worry about our skins first and not until they’re all nice and dry do we care about other people’s. We don’t look the sacrificing type … But the old school brigade! Filled with the spirit of self-sacrifice. ’Oo went to the wars first? The old school tie? Maybe a handful of ’em did but they weren’t nothing compared to the numbers of blokes like you and me. Who are we always being told is eager to lay down his life for ’is friends? The old school tie. I’m telling you, if your parents are crooked enough to have the money to send you to Eton, you can get away with murder. Tetley and Cheesman got off because instead of people seein’ ’em for what they are, people saw ’em for what they’d been taught to believe they ought to be … That’s why it’s one law for the rich and another for the poor.’

  ‘You haven’t touched the law: it’s the jury’s minds you’re complaining about.’

  ‘What’s criminal law but what happens to the people who break it? Law ain’t the stuff Parliament chums out, law ain’t what the judge says: it’s what happens to the bloke who’s found guilty … Why is ’e found guilty? Because the jury says so. What makes ’em say so? Their minds. And their minds work at different rates for the rich and the poor.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You’ve just seen it happening.’

>   ‘I don’t know that and neither do you.’

  ‘You don’t know? How near to a thing d’you have to get your nose to see it?’ In his deep disgust, Pope lifted up his glass and drained it. He stood up. ‘Let’s have the glasses.’

  Ventnor and I gave them to him and watched him cross to the bar.

  ‘He’s not often like this,’ said Ventnor quietly. ‘He’s a very clever man, clever at his job that is, not academically so. But he’s got a big bee in his bonnet and when that comes out for an airing he can’t do anything but listen to the buzzing. Another thing; he has a respect for the law that’s almost … I don’t know. I’d call it church-like if that didn’t sound daft … and when he sees the law flouted, laughed at, he gets sick inside.’

  ‘Is it so very certain the law’s been scorned in this case?’

  ‘That’s not a sensible question, Mr Waring. We know she was murdered. She was pushed through the banisters. The murderer, murderers, believed it would be called an accident. They’d forgotten the lab. boys who can take a speck of dust and tell you it came from the fifth floor of the Marine Hotel, Ryde.’

  ‘What’s all the talk about?’ demanded Pope, as he returned and put the glasses down on the table. ‘Telling each other what a stupid bastard I am?’

  ‘Sergeant Ventnor was saying that because you’re a clever man with a deep respect for the law, this case has really clobbered you.’

  Pope was caught off balance. He was embarrassed by what I’d said. He placed the glasses on the table. ‘If there were less lawyers there’d be more law,’ he muttered, as he sat down. ‘I’ve seen too many guilty men get off because of the lawyers. They’re the blokes what make it all so complicated there’s bound to be a loophole somewhere. Why can’t it be simple?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference in this case if it had been. The law involved was almost nil.’

  ‘Maybe there weren’t no law, but by God, there was a clever legal brain! Forget the judge, aim everything at the jury, hit ’em under the belt where it hurts. If Tetley planned it, he’ll be taking Silk before I’m drawing my pension.’

  ‘If he isn’t disbarred for perjury.’

  Pope drank, replaced the glass on the table, brushed the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘They thought of everything. A bloke kills. He ain’t just to worry about murder. There’s a charge of attempted murder if the victim don’t die, or manslaughter if he does and the facts won’t stretch all the way. Tetley and Cheesman weren’t risking anything, especially as they ’ad to skate on ice so thin it’d crack under a butterfly’s fart. Look how they played it. Just when we was ready to land the two of ’em, Tetley confesses. When a bloke confesses to murder and you know the facts fit, you charge ’im. Right? Tetley stands trial and is found not guilty because Cheesman confesses, so what happens? So he’s not guilty of murder, not guilty of attempted murder, not guilty of manslaughter. And what about conspiracy between ’em? Conspiracy needs two people and when one’s found not guilty there ain’t two any more so there ain’t nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘There’s still perjury.’

  ‘You take them for perjury. That means they’re before a jury what’s given the old familiar story. Each bloke couldn’t wait to sacrifice ’imself for the other. We can’t say they was lying so as to get away with murder because they’ve been found not guilty of just that. All we can say is they lied, and the jury’ll say so what? They was lying very nobly and the police are being vindictive to keep worrying about such nice people and this ain’t a police state, so just let’s tell everyone not guilty and balls to the police.’

  ‘I doubt it. Juries may be stupid … ’

  ‘I’ve seen ’em do just that. I’ve seen ’em let blokes off what was so guilty it was a waste of time to ’ave a trial. Juries’ll call black white if you handle them right.’ He produced a packet of Barons that looked as though it had been fairly and squarely sat on.

  We smoked.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Old Girl chugged her way back towards the Marsh. I watched the fascinating procession of fields in which was new green corn, leys, sheep and their lambs, cattle … There was still some land free from houses.

  I turned off the A20 a mile before Ashford and travelled through the narrow lanes with their high hedges which were such a bane to the motorists but which were so much more important than the cars.

  Pears would be glad to see me, but when I returned her to Mark there would be pandemonium. Pears weighed just short of sixty pounds and she’d hurl herself at Mark in an ecstasy of affection so he’d have to look sharp not to be thrown to the ground. Funny thing, dogs: they saw, yet they did not see: they bore witness, yet they couldn’t witness.

  Pears had sniffed the body with recognition but puzzlement — the smell was not as it should have been.

  Mark could really be blamed because he’d been such a fool. But then that seemed to be one of the prerogatives of all husbands. He gave Lindy a large home with all the trimmings and busied himself with making the money to pay for the running of it, forgot what kind of a woman he’d married. Lindy became bored the moment she was not given a lot of the marzipan of life. She wanted cocktail parties, tea sessions, school-friend natters, first nights, social balls, admiration. There wasn’t much chance for those things in the country — not in the quantity she desired.

  So Lindy sought amusement. At first, I declined the invitation because although I understood it I could not believe I was understanding right. When I decided I was, I jumped. You can despise a person because you know her values to be snobbishly false: you can laugh at her: it doesn’t stop you wanting her. Lindy made love as a fabled courtesan.

  Of course, she became bored with me. She wanted new fields to conquer and although I didn’t know it at the time, she chose Stuart.

  He couldn’t have hesitated. No holding back because of his best friend’s feelings. Make love and to hell with Mark who wasn’t man enough to look after his own property.

  When Lindy started to give me the cold shoulder I was soft enough to think it was only temporary and that because I was so passionately in love with her I must win her back. I believed that until the night Charnley got so very drunk at the Marsh Arms. When he was tanked up he went into details of what he’d done or seen, and many of the stories were distinctly Rabelaisian. At closing time, Clarence Dewar offered to give me a hand to get him back from the pub but I persuaded him I’d manage it on my own. On the journey back, Charnley told me what he’d seen in Settle Wood.

  Even though there was no hope, I tried. That’s the terrible thing about the human mind. So often it cannot be disciplined into accepting the truth it has already admitted. I made a fool of myself with Lindy. She laughed at me until I told her I now knew where Stuart spent his afternoons and perhaps it was time Mark heard. Lindy had a hell of a temper. She told me at length what she thought of me and the degree to which she’d always despised me. Her affair with me had given her nothing but amusement: love was a ridiculous word to use in such a context. As to whispering to Mark about Stuart — she’d tell Mark I’d been pestering her which would ensure he’d disbelieve anything I said even if he listened to it. There was one more thing. If I wanted to play it rough, she and Stuart could go one better. Stuart had only to talk to his father and Sir Brian would kick me out of the editorship of Laws and Lawyers quicker than quick. Four hundred a year gone west … It would have forced me to take a job which in turn would have meant I’d have had to give up my writing.

  It’s strange how much you hate. When you’re poor you hate wealth: when you’re unsuccessful you hate success: when you’ve been rejected you hate the person who rejected you.

  Pope made a very pertinent remark one day when he asked me whether I was a ‘second helping’ friend. I’d denied the possibility. But of course he was right. The Cheesmans had never asked me to their ‘first helping’ days because I was so obviously not in the right social or monetary bracket. I was asked along at othe
r times for light relief, for amusement. A man who didn’t earn very much was interesting. A man who couldn’t afford anything beyond the bare essentials was an oddity. A man who wrote books no one had ever heard of or read was highly amusing.

  I knew what I had to do and I did it.

  Naturally, I wanted the whole thing to look like an accident. I went into the house at a time I knew the two men would be out shooting and met Lindy on the landing. She was very annoyed: then a little frightened. After explaining things, I pushed her through the banisters. When I was making certain she was dead, Pears came into the hall from the kitchen, the outside door of which I’d left open, and went up to the body, smelled it, was puzzled. When I left I returned her to the garden.

  I’d overlooked the men of the forensic laboratory. They uncovered things I’d have sworn never existed. They found my hair in Lindy’s finger-nail, the mark of my boot, the blood my nail had scraped out of her neck as she vainly struggled to prevent my pushing her to her death.

  At first I thought I’d bought it and the police would uncover me. When that didn’t happen, I took a closer look at the evidence so far brought to light and realised it was ambiguous as evidence so often is. The hair found in Lindy’s finger-nail was almost certainly a man’s hair and from someone who’d recently had a hair-cut. But it didn’t tell more than that: it couldn’t identify which one of us three, Mark, Stuart, myself, it came from, since by a stroke of good fortune we’d all had hair-cuts at about the same time and being a single strand it was useless for a colour check. Then again, Mark and Stuart had been wearing gum-boots — as had I. But there was no way in which to say which pair had made the prints by the body. That was like the dog’s pad marks — Apples or Blaze? Couldn’t tell. Odd how no one thought to include Pears.

  It was clear that a jog in the right direction and from the right quarter would remove the ambiguity from the evidence. With an indicated result, the evidence would appear to point directly that way. I made certain I became on friendly terms with Pope and undoubtedly I had to thank my relative poverty for the fact I succeeded. Had I been as prosperous as Mark or Stuart, Pope would have bracketed me with them.