A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

Stratton and Ballard exchanged glances, and Ballard grimaced and rolled his eyes. Taking this line, Stratton supposed, was a bit like the business of accusing Backhouse. Shillingworth was bound to take Davies’s instructions, even if they were ridiculous.

  ‘Did he tell you,’ continued Shillingworth, ‘when he said the bodies had been found in the washhouse, whether they had been concealed or not?’

  ‘He told me they had been concealed by timber.’

  Stratton and Ballard exchanged glances again.

  ‘When Inspector Stratton said he had reason to believe that you were responsible for the deaths of your wife and daughter, what did you say?’ asked Shillingworth.

  ‘I said, “Yes”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, when I found out about my daughter being dead, I was upset. I didn’t care what happened to me then.’

  ‘Was there any other reason why you said “Yes” as well as the fact that you gave up everything when you heard that your daughter was dead?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was frightened at the time.’

  ‘Why were you frightened?’

  ‘I thought that if I did not make a statement the police would take me downstairs and start knocking me about.’

  ‘Did you then make this statement saying that your wife was incurring one debt after another: “I could not stand it any longer so I strangled her with a piece of rope”?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And later that you had strangled the baby on the Thursday evening with your tie?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is it your tie which is Exhibit Three in this case?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Had you ever seen the tie before you were shown it by the Inspector?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, sir,’ murmured Ballard to Stratton. ‘He told us at least twice that he’d strangled the baby with it.’

  Stratton nodded, and would have dismissed the matter, but something occurred to him. ‘Did we ever ask him to identify the tie?’ he whispered.

  Ballard shook his head. ‘Not after he’d seen it in the Charge Room. He picked it up, remember? But then he’s a great one for changing his mind … Anyway,’ he added, after a moment’s thought, ‘Backhouse identified it for us, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s true enough.’ But, thought Stratton, Davies had never been able to explain to them why he killed the baby, had he? Oh, pull yourself together, he told himself – it wasn’t as if it could have been anyone else, and you’re a policeman, not a bloody trick cyclist. Rubbing his face, he suddenly realised quite how much he wanted the trial to be over and done.

  ‘Is it true that your wife was incurring debts?’ asked Shillingworth.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But untrue that you strangled her?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why, if you had not committed these murders, did you say that you had?’

  ‘I was upset. I don’t think I knew what I was saying. I was afraid that the police would take me downstairs.’

  ‘Is that why you told a lie to them?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was upset pretty bad. I had been believing my daughter was still alive.’

  Davies was doing surprisingly well, thought Stratton. In fact, his part in these exchanges was so prompt and fluent that it must surely have been rehearsed many times. All the same, he couldn’t help thinking it was a bit daft of Shillingworth to try and let Davies have it both ways – it was one thing if the man hadn’t known what he was saying because he was upset, but quite another if he had deliberately confessed because he’d been scared. Which, Stratton thought, he had been – after all, he’d been caught, hadn’t he?

  ‘Trying to have his cake and eat it,’ whispered Ballard, confirming his thoughts. In the hiatus that followed when Shillingworth had concluded and the prosecution was readying itself, Ballard added, ‘Ronstadt’s going to make mincemeat of him.’

  Stratton looked round the courtroom and, after a moment, picked out the neat, upright form of Davies’s mother from the rows of people in the gallery. What must she be thinking? Her baby granddaughter was dead and her son was a murderer twice over – three times, if you counted the baby Muriel had on the way. For a moment, the elderly woman’s pinched little face became Jenny’s, and Stratton, blinking rapidly, looked away.

  The Backhouses were sitting together on the other side, a solid, respectable unit of two. Edna Backhouse, in a dark coat with a matching hat firmly planted on her head, had her lips pursed and her hands primly folded over the capacious bag in her lap. Backhouse, next to her, bent over to polish his glasses, the light reflecting off his domed, bald head. Stratton hadn’t warmed to the man, and he certainly thought he was laying it on with a trowel about his various ailments, but the sort of ordeal the poor sod had been through in court was something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, never mind the fact that he and his wife were having to live in a house where murder had been committed.

  Feeling that he was staring, he lowered his gaze. In the dock, the author of all the misery looked smaller and more pitiful than ever.

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Is it true,’ began Ronstadt, ‘that on five different occasions at different places and to different persons you have confessed to the murder of your wife and to the murder of your child?’

  Stratton raised his eyebrows at Ballard. He couldn’t see how he’d arrived at five different occasions and thought that Shillingworth must be straight on his feet, but there was no objection.

  ‘Well …’ Davies hesitated, a baffled look on his face. Finally, he said, ‘I have confessed it, sir, but it isn’t true.’

  ‘But you did confess five times?’

  Again, Stratton looked towards Shillingworth, but he remained in his seat.

  Davies looked completely lost. Stratton could well imagine how lost – caught up in the vast tangle of the lies he’d told, he was trying to work out how to answer, and, of course, he wouldn’t have been able to rehearse any of this.

  After some hesitation and in the voice of one giving up on an insurmountable challenge, Davis said, simply, ‘Yes, sir. I was upset.’

  ‘Are you saying,’ Ronstadt asked, in tones that rang with disbelief, ‘that on each of these occasions you were upset?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Davies, who now appeared to have taken the five occasions as gospel, ‘but the last one I was.’

  ‘If you were not upset on all of the five, why did you confess to wilful murder, unless it was true?’

  Davies blinked rapidly several times, then said, ‘Well, I knew my wife was dead, but I didn’t know my daughter was dead.’

  Ballard murmured, ‘Still sticking to it, then. Surprised he can remember, after all he’s said.’

  ‘You say you didn’t know your daughter was dead,’ said Ronstadt. ‘What had that got to do with it?’

  ‘It had a lot to do with it.’ Davies sounded petulant.

  ‘We’re on our way …’ Ballard murmured.

  ‘Is that a reason for pleading guilty to murder, that you are upset because your daughter is dead by someone else’s hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it?’ It wasn’t only Ronstadt’s voice that was heavy with disbelief now, but the very air in the courtroom, as if all those present had somehow exhaled their thoughts.

  ‘Do you think that’s possible?’ Stratton asked Ballard out of the corner of his mouth.

  Ballard, looking at him as if he’d suddenly grown an extra head, gave a firm shake of his own. ‘Sir, he’s making it up as he goes along. Look at him – he hasn’t got a clue what he’s saying.’

  That was certainly true. Davies, in the dock, looked as if he barely knew where he was, let alone anything else. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, after a long pause.

  ‘I see,’ said Ronstadt, making it clear that he didn’t, at all. ‘Let’s just look at those occasions. You voluntarily went, did you not, to the police on November the thirtieth after having had read to
you a letter from your mother to your aunt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It was because in the letter your previous lies were exposed that you decided to go to the police, was it?’

  ‘It was not because of the lies,’ said Davies, suddenly truculent. ‘I was getting worried about my daughter.’

  Ronstadt raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘Are you seriously telling the jury that you went to the police and confessed to murder because you were worried about the whereabouts of your daughter?’

  At this, Shillingworth did get to his feet. ‘With respect,’ he said, ‘there was no confession of murder. He said, “I have disposed of my wife. I have put her down the drain.”’

  ‘It sounds very like murder,’ said the judge, dismissively.

  ‘Blimey, sir,’ whispered Ballard, in the short silence that followed. ‘That’s going a bit far.’

  ‘Blimey indeed,’ murmured Stratton. Despite the niggling worries, things were going better than he could possibly have imagined. Lamb, he thought, was going to be delighted.

  ‘I will amend my question,’ said Ronstadt, with an exaggerated air of patience. ‘Because you are upset about your daughter, who so far as you know is perfectly well, you go to the police and confess to the disposition of your dead wife’s body. Is that right?’

  After a moment, during which Stratton wondered if Davies knew what ‘disposition’ meant, he said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  Might as well give him a spade and tell him to dig his own grave, thought Stratton, scanning the jury members’ faces and seeing expressions that ran the gamut from incredulity to revulsion.

  ‘I see,’ said Ronstadt. ‘So that is your defence, that you confessed to the murder of your wife and child because you were upset … And therefore you make an allegation through your counsel against a perfectly innocent man that he caused the murder.’

  Again, Shillingworth got to his feet. Save your breath, chum, thought Stratton. You’re on a hiding to nothing with this one. ‘Is that the proper way of asking the question, with the greatest respect? “You make an allegation against a perfectly innocent man” can only be a statement based on the assumption that his witness is innocent and mine is not. My friend has no right to make a statement describing Mr Backhouse as “a perfectly innocent man”.’

  The judge looked perplexed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, it can only be done for the purpose of prejudice.’

  ‘I crave leave,’ said Ronstadt, in a voice that dripped with irony, ‘not to have to believe that everything the accused says is true.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Ballard.

  There followed some to-ing and fro-ing over statements, during which Davies appeared to get into a complete muddle about which one was being discussed. By the end of it, the picture of a man whose past was rapidly and remorselessly catching up with him was clearer than ever. ‘So,’ concluded Ronstadt, ‘you are saying that, out of the four statements you made, three of them were lies, and only the second statement from Wales – the one in which you accuse Mr Backhouse – is true?’

  ‘Yes.’ Davies sounded surer now.

  ‘So, would it not be right to say that you are a person who is prepared to lie or tell the truth at your convenience?’

  ‘Why should I tell lies?’ Davies burst out angrily. His eyes were bright with panic, and for a moment Stratton had the impression of some tiny, furtive animal, flushed into the open and then cornered, twisting frantically this way and that to escape its captors. Stratton glanced at Ballard, and guessed from the flinty, set expression on his face that the sergeant was thinking exactly what he was: Shame you didn’t consider that before you murdered a woman and a helpless baby. He felt no sympathy now, just the excited anticipation of watching a fellow hunter using all his skills and training to go smoothly for the kill. The rest of the court felt it too; where there had been disbelief, there was now a different undercurrent – almost a thrill, as, necks craning and mouths agape, people leaned forward as if straining to catch Ronstadt’s next words.

  ‘After you made the first statement at the police station in London – that’s Exhibit Eight, which is the short statement of confession – you told the police, “It is a great relief to get it off my chest.” That’s correct, isn’t it?’

  Stratton raised a questioning eyebrow at Ballard, who tapped his notebook by way of confirmation.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it was a relief to you to tell the truth at last to the police, which was a confession of murder?’

  Davies looked puzzled. ‘It wasn’t the truth,’ he said at last. ‘It was a lot of lies.’

  ‘You are telling us that it was a relief to tell a lot of lies?’

  ‘I was upset,’ said Davies, doggedly.

  ‘Do answer the question,’ said the judge, testily. ‘Was it a relief to you to tell a lot more lies?’

  ‘I …’ Davies paused, mouth agape. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t a relief.’

  ‘Now,’ said Ronstadt, ‘you’ve told us that the second of your statements, in which you accuse Mr Backhouse, is true. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’ve said that Mr Backhouse commits an abortion on your wife so that she dies of it, and that knowing that he is responsible for her death, he organises the disposition of her body and the removal of your child to some other place? Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then he comes along here and commits perjury against you? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I see. Let’s look a little further at what I suggest is your habit of lying to suit your convenience. You lied to the Backhouses, didn’t you, about your wife being away?’

  ‘I lied to Mrs Backhouse, yes.’

  ‘You lied to Mrs Backhouse. And you lied to your aunt down in Wales, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You then told half a dozen separate, distinct and deliberate lies to the police, inventing any story that came into your head, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not any story, sir,’ said Davies, desperately. It didn’t really matter now, thought Stratton, what he said. Ronstadt’s hammering home of the words ‘lied’ and ‘lies’ were so effective and so final that they might as well have been nails in the little man’s coffin.

  ‘Well, you began by lying about putting your wife’s body down the drain. That wasn’t true, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t true.’

  ‘You lied about helping Mr Backhouse carry your wife’s body downstairs, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. That was true.’

  ‘Do you not realise from what you have heard today,’ said Ronstadt, with the air of patient, even compassionate, explanation, ‘that he was physically incapable of doing that, or even of carrying the baby?’

  ‘I still say I helped him carry my wife’s body,’ said Davies stubbornly.

  Ronstadt sighed audibly. The sound managed to convey a dozen things unspoken – regret, sorrow, dismay at such a blatant show of mendacity … Despite his antipathy to the man, Stratton was impressed. There was no coughing now, no stirring or rustling, just a taut silence.

  ‘I suggest,’ said Ronstadt, ‘that that is another lie. You lied to your employer, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Another lie. You lied to Mrs Backhouse, your aunt, the police, and your boss.’

  ‘Yes. I did it because Mr Backhouse told me to.’

  ‘Mr Backhouse told you to lie to all these people?’

  ‘He said that if anyone asked about my wife and daughter I should say they’d gone on holiday.’

  ‘I see.’ Ronstadt half-turned from Davies and then, swivelling back on the balls of his feet with the dexterity of a matador about to administer the coup de grâce in a bull ring, said, ‘And now you are alleging that Mr Backhouse is the murderer in this case? Perhaps you can suggest why he should have strangled your wife?’

  Davies opened his mouth, then closed it
again. Unblinking, Ronstadt stared at him, waiting, a predator about to spring.

  ‘Well,’ he said uncertainly, ‘he was home all day.’

  ‘I asked you,’ said Ronstadt, ‘if you can suggest why he should have strangled her?’

  Davies looked dazed, and appeared to shrink a little more, as if squashed by the air itself. The silence seemed to be quivering with electricity, and Stratton felt the blood pounding in his ears. As if in slow motion, Davies bent, then raised, his head, then looked around the court as if he might find an answer there. When he finally answered, it was in the thick voice of a man waking from a dream. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ronstadt, in tones of the utmost reasonableness, ‘perhaps you can suggest why he should have strangled your daughter.’

  Davies shook his head, defeated. ‘No,’ he said.

  With elaborate courtesy, Ronstadt said, ‘Thank you, Mr Davies,’ and, striding across the courtroom, resumed his seat. As he did so an audible exhalation, like a sigh, went round the court, and, the tension evaporating, people began to shift about and murmur to one another.

  Shillingworth rose. ‘My lord,’ he said, wearily, ‘that is the case for the defence.’

  ‘I think that must be the shortest closing speech from a prosecuting council I’ve ever heard,’ said Stratton, when they emerged at the end of the day.

  ‘Caught Shillingworth on the hop, didn’t it?’ said Ballard. ‘He looked as if he wasn’t expecting to have to do anything till tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, he did. Mind you, it’s not going to make any difference – not unless the judge changes his mind overnight. I’ve got to get back to the station – DCI Lamb’ll be waiting with bated breath, I shouldn’t wonder, but why don’t you cut off home?’

  ‘I’d like to, sir, if it’s all right. See the nipper before she goes to sleep.’

  ‘Don’t blame you.’ For want of a more intimate gesture, Stratton clapped Ballard on the back. ‘Off you go, then. Give my best to your missus, won’t you?’

  ‘Course, sir. And … you know …’ Ballard’s grin became lopsided in the effort to hide his embarrassment, ‘thanks.’