Declared Dead

by John Francome

  'Would you please tell His Lordship about the last occasion when you saw Mr Pryde alive,' asked his counsel.

  Tom looked the jury straight in the eye and began to recount what happened on that Saturday evening: 'After seeing the state Victoria was in on the Friday, I decided to give Pryde a piece of my mind. I wasn't prepared to sit back and see Victoria's life ruined, whatever I had promised. I telephoned Edward Pryde and asked him to meet me at nine-thirty on the Saturday at the pub. As far as I was concerned, the affair was over, although I can't deny that I wished it wasn't. I'd never liked Edward and considering the kind of things he had done to his wife, I reckoned I'd have great difficulty in keeping my temper with him. But I thought it was worth a try to reason with him for Victoria's sake.

  'I arrived a little late, say at a quarter to ten, and he was already in the corner of the saloon bar. For the first half an hour or so he was fairly sociable and talked about the horses in the yard and Victoria's success in the Gold Cup. I suspected he was playing the fool with me and as I returned from a visit to the loo I determined to stop beating about the bush. But before I could get a word in, and in front of a number of people in the pub, he started abusing me and telling me he knew all about my affair with his wife. I tried to calm him down, but with little success, and I'm afraid I gradually lost my temper with him. I felt he had set out to provoke me and I duly rose to the bait. A couple of times I got up to leave but on both occasions he grabbed hold of my sleeve and pulled me back. He said that if I didn't hear him out he would give Victoria a thrashing she would never forget.

  'That was the last straw as far as I was concerned, and I told him that if he ever laid hands on her again, I'd make him pay for it. I was pretty well worked up by now and I'm not surprised I was overheard in the bar. When the landlord called for last orders, Edward asked for one more drink and I went and bought it for him, just to have a minute's break from his tirade. He took his time drinking it and by the time we reached the car park, we were the last to leave. I remember getting into my car, but after that, nothing, until I woke up still in the car park at six o'clock in the morning. I was lying across the passenger seat and had the most ghastly headache. I must have passed out, although I could only have had about three pints to drink. It must have been the combined effect of the alcohol and some pills I had taken to get rid of a bad headache earlier in the evening. That's all I can remember.'

  'Can you explain how your footprints were found at Melksham pit?'

  'I cannot. I have only been to the chalk pit once and that was last summer, with Victoria Pryde, as she told you when she gave her evidence. I can only assume that the footprints which were found date from that occasion, or that they belong to someone else who takes the same size shoes as me; I doubt if a size 9 is that uncommon.'

  'Did you kill Edward Pryde?'

  Tom turned to face the judge and then swivelled to the jury again. 'No, I did not. I have never so much as touched a hair on his head and that is the truth.'

  The impassive faces of the jury gave no hint of whether they believed him.

  Snipe sensed that this was a critical moment in the case and with his impeccable sense of timing suggested that the court should rise until the following morning when cross-examination would begin.

  I took a taxi from the Old Bailey to Amy's offices in Lincoln's Inn. Feeling depressed and frightened, I couldn't pretend my own evidence had gone well. I had been caught out by the production of those letters and I knew that nobody had believed me when I'd said a crucial page was missing. I couldn't understand where or how the prosecution could have found them. Perhaps when the police searched the cottage they had come across them in one of Edward's hiding places. It didn't really matter now, as the damage had been done. Tom had been a really good witness, I felt, only it was impossible not to feel that the burden of proof had been reversed. It had fallen upon him to prove his innocence, not on the prosecution to establish his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. They had presented the jury with motive and opportunity. Get out of that one, Radcliffe, I could hear them now saying. I only hoped Amy would have some news on Corcoran to cheer me up. Too busy to come to court, she had promised to liaise with Tom's solicitor during the afternoon to find out whether the former stable lad had made contact and signed his statement.

  I was shown into her room as she was putting down the phone.

  'How did it go?' she asked eagerly. I told her about the letters and my fears that I had, if anything, damaged Tom's case.

  'You mustn't blame yourself,' she said, trying her best to reassure me. 'Remember, you were called as a witness for the prosecution, albeit a reluctant one, so all you could do was tell the truth about your relationship with Tom. Judges and lawyers have a way of making everything sound sordid and improper. Anyone would think they never had a dirty thought. I can tell you a few who I reckon never have a clean one!'

  I managed a feeble laugh. 'Any news on Corcoran?'

  'That's just what I was on the phone about when you came in. Good news at last, there. He's in London, staying at a hotel, somewhere behind Victoria station. Booked in this morning and signed the statement which Tom's solicitors sent round early this afternoon. Apparently he thinks he's being followed and they've arranged a taxi to pick him up there in the morning and take him to court. Does that make you feel better?'

  'Considerably!'

  'Good. Now they've got the statement, they've given notice to the other side of their intention to call him, as he counts as an alibi witness. You're meant to give them due notice, so they can investigate it and if necessary call evidence to rebut it. You can rest assured old Snipe will get shirty and lay into Tom's lawyers about their disregard for the proper procedure and so on.'

  It was obvious that the next day I was going to need all my strength just being a spectator at the hearing and I willingly accepted Amy's invitation to spend another night at her flat. I went to bed early only to dream of Snipe donning a black cap and smiling as he sent Tom to the gallows. The final touch of the macabre was that Edward was standing beside him dressed up as a priest.

  I arrived at Court No 1 at ten-fifteen and paced up and down outside. I was too nervous to sit still, despite my crutches. I could see Tom's counsel in anxious discussion with two men I thought must be his solicitors. One of them, a middle-aged man wearing a striped shirt with a white collar, kept on looking at his watch and shaking his head. They were clearly worried about something and the absence of any sign of Corcoran made me guess what. I couldn't believe that, having made the effort to come over here and sign his statement, he wouldn't now appear. Amy arrived as I was about to hobble over and ask if something was wrong. I pointed out to her the group and she marched over and had a word with the man in the striped shirt. After a brief discussion she returned.

  'It's very worrying, I'm afraid. There was no sign of Corcoran when the taxi went to pick him up this morning at nine o'clock. An assistant from Tom's lawyers had gone along to check all was well, but according to the manager of the hotel, his bed hadn't been slept in all night. All that was in his room was a suitcase with a shirt and some underwear. It seems he went out yesterday at some time in the afternoon and hasn't returned. It's only a small hotel with people coming and going the whole time – I suspect during the day as well as the night – so of course nobody remembers precisely when he went out.'

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Not Corcoran as well. 'You don't think, Amy, that…'

  'I know what you 're thinking. I suppose it's possible. Brennan?'

  'It would make sense. How could we have been so stupid as to have left Corcoran on his own there?'

  'Hold on! It's not our fault. Tom's solicitors wouldn't even tell me where he was staying until today. We're lucky to have been kept as informed as we have been. Some solicitors would have told us to push off in no uncertain terms. Come on, we'd better go into court, they start at ten-thirty. We'll just have to pray he shows up by the time Tom's cross-examination finishes.'


  At least Tom had no idea of the drama being played out in the corridor beyond the courtroom doors. He appeared relaxed and collected as Scott rose to cross-examine him.

  The counsel spent the first hour sparring with Tom, who kept his head and answered politely yet firmly as Scott explored his background and life style. The niceties over, he went on the attack.

  'Mr Radcliffe, are you in the habit of going to bed with other men's wives?'

  Poor Tom rose to the bait: 'I resent that question. I most certainly am not.'

  'But you obviously regard another man's wife as fair game?'

  'No, I don't. I tried not to fall in love with Victoria for that very reason.'

  'Yet you knew when you met her that she was married?'

  'Of course.'

  'And in fact her husband had been one of the very first owners to have a horse in your yard?'

  'That's right, but that was four years before our relationship began.'

  Scott didn't seem to take any notice of the answers, leaping into his next question. 'In fact, without the support of the deceased, your career as a trainer might never have got under way?'

  I could see Tom considering his reply carefully. If he said no, he would appear ungrateful. If he answered in the affirmative, he would appear even more ungrateful and treacherous. 'He was one of a handful of people who had faith in me and at the time I was very grateful for his support.'

  I wished he had added how, for the next four years, Edward had tried to do him immense damage by bad-mouthing him to anyone on the racecourse who would bother to listen.

  'When you realised the nature and depth of your feelings for Mrs Pryde, did you still continue to offer her rides as a jockey on your horses?'

  'I did.'

  'There are not many women jockeys riding professionally, are there?'

  'Two or three.'

  'Am I right in thinking that they enjoy considerably less success than their male counterparts?'

  'You are. On the whole, they are less strong and less effective in riding a finish.'

  'And Mrs Pryde is an exception?'

  'Yes, I think she is. She has excellent tactical judgement and what she lacks in a finish, she more than makes up for by the way she sets a horse right before a fence.'

  'Did you deliberately offer Mrs Pryde rides at courses which would necessitate her being away from home for the whole day, not returning often until late evening?'

  'What are you suggesting?'

  'It's my prerogative to ask the questions, Mr Radcliffe, but since you ask I'll put my suggestion to you. I suggest that the reason you continued to put up Mrs Pryde on your horses was not because of her riding ability but to create opportunities for you both to cheat on the deceased.'

  'That's a monstrous suggestion. I choose the best jockey available on each occasion. I owe that duty to my owners. I never gave Victoria a ride other than on the grounds of ability.' There was an incongruous giggle from someone in the gallery.

  'You were very much in love with her, weren't you?'

  'Yes, but eventually I had to accept that in the circumstances it was impossible, and had to end.'

  'Would you please look at the letter dated 22nd December, exhibit seven, My Lord. Do you see the final paragraph on page two and the opening sentence of the next page?'

  'I do. I've already told this court that there is a page missing and what you have here completely distorts what I was writing about. I never threatened to end Edward Pryde's life.'

  'Would you agree with me that if there is no missing page those words read very much like a threat to do just that?'

  Tom turned to the judge. 'Must I answer that, My Lord?'

  For the first time in the trial, Snipe was sympathetic: 'No, you don't have to. You're being asked your opinion and this court is concerned solely with facts.'

  Scott produced one of the most obsequious smiles I've ever seen and returned to the attack. 'Did you ever seriously think that Edward Pryde would give his wife a divorce?'

  'No, not really. It was well known that he thoroughly disliked me and I knew from Victoria that he relied upon her heavily for financial support.'

  'Nonetheless, you often asked Mrs Pryde to leave him?'

  'That's not really surprising, is it? I hated the way he used to treat her and I genuinely thought that she would be better off without him.'

  'And when you realised she wouldn't leave him, you killed him?'

  'That's ridiculous. I never touched him, I tell you.'

  'You accept that you argued with him that evening in the pub?'

  'I lost my temper with him. He was taunting me about Victoria.'

  'And you threatened him with violence?'

  'That was only in the heat of the moment. If a man threatens to beat up the girl you love, even if she's his wife, you can't very well stand by and let him go ahead and do it. At least I couldn't.'

  'Are you in the habit of passing out after a couple of drinks?'

  'No, it's never happened before. I can only assume it was the combination of the alcohol and the tablets I had taken for my headache.'

  'You were familiar with Melksham Pit, of course?'

  'I had been there once before with Victoria.'

  'What do you mean by once before? You accept, then, that you went there again?'

  'It was a slip of the tongue. I've only ever been there once.'

  'How can you explain the petrol stains which were found on the suit you were wearing that night?'

  'I must have splashed myself when I filled my car up with petrol earlier in the evening. I'm a little clumsy and impatient and probably took the nozzle out of the tank before I'd finished filling. It's easily done with these self-service things.'

  'And the presence of your footprints on the path leading to the pit, how do you account for that?'

  'Possibly they were there from last year or just happened to match somebody else's.'

  Scott signalled to the usher to hand up a pair of brown brogues to Tom in the witness box. They had a label attached to them and up till then had sat on a table in front of the court, along with what I had assumed to be the other exhibits. Among them was the bronze statue with which Freddie had struck his father; it had been used to establish Edward's identity as the body in the boot. It had a polythene bag around it and no doubt it had been produced and examined earlier in the trial in the course of the forensic evidence.

  'These are the shoes you were wearing that night?' asked Scott, with what I detected was a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  'They are. They're probably like a hundred thousand others in the country.'

  'But you're the only owner of such a pair who had a motive for wanting Edward Pryde dead, aren't you?'

  'I had no such motive.'

  'You wanted to marry his wife, didn't you?'

  'Yes, but I've told you, I realised and accepted it was impossible.'

  'You knew that so long as he was alive there was no chance of Mrs Pryde giving up her son and leaving him?'

  'I knew that and had come to accept it. In this world you have to accept there are some things you can't have and in my case Victoria was one of them.'

  'You regarded her, then, as a possession?'

  'Of course I didn't. She is the most wonderful person I've ever met.'

  'So you would do anything to have her for your own?'

  'Not anything. I would never have murdered her husband.'

  'How can you explain the empty petrol can which the police found hidden in a disused box in your yard?'

  'It wasn't hidden, at least not by me. There are probably endless pieces of machinery and things pushed out of sight in any large stable. I can certainly assure you that I had nothing to do with it.'

  'That's not true, is it, Mr Radcliffe? I put it to you that after you left that pub you asked the deceased to give you a lift, that you forced him to drive his car to the chalk pit where you murdered him and set fire to the car in order to destroy the body.'

  'I did
none of those things.'

  'That you returned to your own car and fabricated this tale about passing out.'

  'I did not make it up. I did pass out.'

  'That you murdered Edward Pryde in order that his wife would be free to marry you. To satisfy your own desires you were quite happy to rob a young boy of his father.'

  'That's completely and utterly untrue. It was because of Freddie that I accepted Victoria's decision to stay with Edward. I am innocent of this charge against me.'

  Counsel for the prosecution sat down and Tom's counsel tried his best to re-establish his client's credibility during re-examination. It was no easy task. It wasn't that he hadn't told the truth, it was just that he was in the invidious position of trying to prove a negative against a substantial weight of damaging circumstantial evidence. What was needed now was for Corcoran to come into the witness box and corroborate his story that he really did pass out in the car park of that pub. I didn't care whether Corcoran then went on to say that he had seen Brennan follow Edward in his car. I wanted revenge on the Irishman, but that could wait.

  As Tom left the witness box and returned to the dock, I watched the jury for their reaction. It was incredible how their expressions gave so little away. I suppose they felt the eyes of the court were upon them and at least they had to give the impression of taking their duty seriously. I wondered whether they were really capable of analysing the issues, or knowing that their duty was to be certain of guilt before they reached a verdict to convict. Of course, they could only act on the evidence they had heard and seen for themselves. They knew nothing of Corcoran or of Musgrave's suspicious death or the link between my husband and Brennan. Who knows what feelings and emotions ran through their minds as they listened to the evidence? Had one of the male jurors himself been cuckolded and therefore hated any adulterer? Or had one of the women been cheated by her husband? It was a rare person who was able to leave his or her own prejudices and moral values behind as they stepped into a courtroom and passed judgement on a fellow man. I still hadn't given up hope. There was at least one woman who had appeared sympathetic as Tom had given his evidence.