by Dexter Dias
From behind me, his words seemed to crawl through the cracks in the door frame. “Such passion. Can’t wait for your closing speech,” he said.
And as I walked swiftly down the corridor and past Legat, who was still strapped to the bed, I heard Kingsley call out something that sounded like, “Keep riding the Stang.”
Legat smiled grotesquely.
“Keep riding the Stang, Mr. Fawley.” Richard Kingsley’s voice had all but disappeared. “Keep riding the Stang. Keep riding the Stang.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I DON’T SEE WHY WE COULDN’T GO TO THE SAVOY,” I said, looking around the post-theater crowd in the restaurant later that evening.
Justine did not answer immediately. She took a long draw on her slim cigar and mouthed the smoke from cheek to cheek, all the time knowing that I was bound to find this mildly provocative, despite my aversion to smoking.
“Because,” she said, finally billowing out the orange smoke.
“Because what?”
“Just because.” She was being evasive, irritating and very Justine.
My encounter with Kingsley had left me both ravenous and confused, although not necessarily in that order.
She continued, “How was your… beef—”
“Bistecca Fiorentina,” I said.
“I don’t know how you can eat it so rare. It was barely cooked. There was blood everywhere.”
“We booked a table at the Savoy at the beginning of the trial, so what’s all the fuss?”
“That was different,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because we had nothing to hide.”
“So?”
“So now we do.”
What did that mean? I hoped it was the possibility of sex that night, but when I looked at her, she looked away and increased my longing. I had phoned Justine the day after Manly’s memorial. The day after she had whispered strange things in my ears and tore my court shirt and scratched my back; Penny, of course, hadn’t noticed. When I tried to phone her, she had hung up. The next day I rang her in chambers. She had to speak to me. Finally, I compelled her to meet me.
She insisted that we meet in an inconspicuous restaurant, she said that the eyes of the Bar were on us, she said there were no promises.
So we settled on an anonymous Tuscan place off St. Martin’s Lane. It was called II Gallo Nero. It was not so much a restaurant as a place to be humiliated by waiters with fake accents, where food was overpriced and undercooked, where there were more wines from Canberra than Chianti. But with Justine opposite me, it seemed perfect.
“Do you want to get the bill?” I asked, finishing off the bottle of Chateau Bondi Beach.
“Steady on,” Justine replied. “I haven’t ordered a—what’s it called?”
“Tiramisu.”
I have always been clumsy and awkward with women; either dithering embarrassingly or diving in recklessly. Justine must have sensed my insecurity and deftly fingered the back of my hand.
“I’m not going anywhere, Tom.”
“I just thought we could—”
“Yes?” She feigned innocence. A winsome smile, a toss of the hair.
“I mean… Penny’s home. Ginny’s not well, you see. And well, that hotel—”
“The Strand Palace?”
“Yes, that one. It’s just round the corner.”
Suddenly Justine’s eyes were a forest of color. She held her left hand out palm upward. “That’s fifty quid, mate. Up front. Hundred without yer boots on.”
“Justine, I only thought—”
“That’s the point. You didn’t think. Not of me. What do you take me for?”
The waiter arrived. “Signori? For the desserts?”
“A cheap whore?” said Justine.
I tried to retrieve the situation. “A tiramisu for the—”
“Just the bill,” she snapped.
The waiter was confused. He had served me several times before when I was with Penny.
“Can you order a taxi?” I asked. “For Chiswick.”
“Si, signor.”
“And do you have any vin santo?” I did not know why I asked this.
“Yes, er… si,” he said.
“Allora, due, per favore,” I said.
He looked at me somewhat quizzically. When I held up two fingers, he gave a shallow bow.
Justine had been watching a little bemused. “What are you plotting, Tom?”
“You’ll see.”
“It sounds terribly naughty.” Suddenly she was playful again. I could have screamed. “Friends?” she said.
“I suppose it was rather insensitive of me.”
“Penny was my best friend, you know. Well, out of the girls at school. None of them really liked me. I don’t find this easy, Tom.”
I tried to take the initiative by offering a sacrifice. “Perhaps we should… forget it,” I said, trying to look casually at the Renaissance reproductions on the wall behind her.
“Don’t be an idiot all your life, Tom,” is all she replied.
Ten minutes later, Justine twisted another smoldering stub around the ashtray savagely. “So how was the conference with Kingsley?”
“Different.”
“Quite a… character, 1 bet.” She enunciated the syllables of “character” with excessive care.
“He is, if you go in for that sort of thing.”
“Interesting?”
“Dangerous.”
“Have you got a chance of winning?”
“You tell me,” I said.
The waiter finally returned with two small, heavily cut glasses, newly polished and filled to the very brim with a rich straw-colored liquid smelling of the Tuscan hills.
“This is delicious,” said Justine. “What on earth is it?”
“Vin santo,” I replied. “Holy wine. Makes you tell the truth.” I sipped a little and looked at Justine. “Well?”
She did not reply.
“Perhaps it’s best we don’t talk about it,” I said. I tried to summon the waiter over, but when I caught his eye, she began to speak.
“I would say your chances are pretty good. Our witnesses are silly little girls and the forensics are a bit suspect.”
“What about the confession?”
“Are you defending him or am I?” I didn’t answer this and she continued, “I know… I know Aubrey is a little worried.”
“About what?”
She put a finger to her moistened lips. “Ever look up that witness?”
“Which one?”
She lowered her head and whispered, “That one.”
“Why the secrecy?” I didn’t imagine that a restaurant full of bit-players would be interested in the case of the Queen against Richard Kingsley.
“I still haven’t told Aubrey I disclosed her details to the defense.”
“To the defense?”
“Well, to you then,” she said.
I took another sip of vin santo and wondered whether her betrayal was a first tentative flirtation, a kind of foreplay. I said, “Goldman tells me he got some High Street solicitors in the West Country to act as his agents. But—”
“But what?”
“But they couldn’t find the witness. She’s some kind of hermit or hermitess or whatever you call them. Of course,” I said, wondering how far I could push my luck, “of course, you’ve seen—”
“Her statement? So what if I have, Tom?”
“So you could tell me whether it’s worth busting our butts to find her.”
“I can’t help you on that.”
“Won’t, you mean.”
“Listen. I gave you her name because I didn’t think Davenport was complying with his duties of disclosure. Not playing fair. That’s all. You’ll get nothing more from me.”
“Is it worth seeing her?”
“Were you listening?”
I tried to imagine Justine’s room in chambers, the Regency desk, her silver hair and the softness of her whispers. “C
ome on, Justine.”
She blinked twice very softly and bit her bottom lip like she did that time. “I gave her details to you, didn’t I?”
The waiter interrupted and announced my taxi which, much to his annoyance, I told him to send away.
“I never thought Italian food amounted to much,” said Justine.
“This is authentic,” I replied.
“We’ll have to come again.”
“So there’ll be a next time?”
“Maybe.” She lit up again. “Any problems with the trial bundles or the unused material?”
“No. You—and I mean you and not Davenport—have been very good.” Minute beads of sweat had broken out on my forehead and my eyes were beginning to haze over. “By the way, what does your graphologist say?”
“What graphologist?”
“About Kingsley’s handwriting?” I said. Then seeing that Justine did not reply, I added, “You know, the note Payne found.”
“Well, we haven’t actually instructed—”
This I could not believe. “You are joking?”
“Aubrey thinks… well, you’re not disputing that Kingsley wrote that note, are you?”
“Kingsley is.”
“But Payne found it in Kingsley’s cell, Tom. Be realistic.”
I still felt uneasy about the origin of the two notes. If Kingsley did not put the first in my brief, then how did the typed note get there? As for the second, I wondered whether we could argue that Payne’s search of the cell was illegal? But the truth was that everything pointed to Richard Kingsley as the author. I said, “Kingsley insists we test the handwritten one.”
“Your funeral,” Justine replied and immediately realized what she had said. Her eyelids flickered a little. “Poor Ignatius,” she whispered, her eyes becoming two sad pools.
The robing rooms of London were awash with theories of how a High Court judge was found at the bottom of his stairs with his neck broken. I wanted to press Justine, but this was not the right time. “You couldn’t help our graphologist see the original, could you?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“You know how difficult it is. No one knows where exhibits are pending a retrial.”
“I’ll get on to that little toad, Payne,” said Justine.
“So you don’t like him either?”
“Watch him, Tom.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to work that out,” she said. Justine looked at me and there was something in her eyes that thrilled me and made my heart pound painfully. “Can you stay over?” she asked.
“Not again.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve run out of excuses,” I said.
“What? After one night’s fornication?” She used rather a biblical word which reminded me of sermons and pulpits and priests and incense. She said, “What did you tell Penny last time?”
“Said I got legless at Manly’s bun-fight and slept on Nick Mellor’s leather sofa in chambers.”
“Penny believed that?”
“Think she was relieved I didn’t come home drunk.” I knew I should have said, Come home drunk again. But I was unsure how much Justine knew about my drinking.
“Why don’t you come down to my place?” she asked.
“Your country mansion?”
“I’d hardly call it that, Tom. I’ve just had new central heating installed at the cottage.”
“I heard that your father owned an obscenely large residence near Stonebury.”
“He did.”
“So why can’t we stay there?” I asked.
“We just can’t. I haven’t stayed there since my father—”
Justine broke off and seemed upset. Again I had pressed the wrong buttons. I decided to try to lighten the conversation.
“I am grateful for your kind invitation to join the great and the good among the turnip fields,” I told her. “But I’m afraid I object to the life of the landed gentry. On moral grounds.”
Justine looked at me coldly. “And how about adultery? Do you object to that, Tom? On moral grounds?”
I did not reply.
“So what did Penny say?” she continued. “When you finally told—”
“You’re not serious?” It had actually flashed across my mind in a moment of guilty weakness. But what would confessing have achieved? It could only have hurt Penny and got me into trouble, although I was not certain which of these two considerations was the most important. So I said, “I’m not going to tell her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tom.” Justine’s face crinkled and she appeared very old. A line, like an old scar, ran from her right eye to the corner of her frowning mouth.
“It’ll devastate her,” I said.
“What if she finds out?”
“No, really. She’ll go absolutely—”
“Penny’s my friend. We don’t have secrets. Never have.”
“For Christ’s sake, Justine. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You’ve got to tell her.” She put her lighter into an unimaginably expensive handbag. “You’ve got to tell her, Tom,” she said as the orange cloud of smoke began to clear. “Or I will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JUSTINE AND I LEFT THE RESTAURANT TOGETHER, BUT soon I was alone and in a taxi racing through Westminster. Big Ben struck once rather dolefully. I was not sure what time it was, but it was late.
Penny would be hurt either way, whether I told her or Justine did. If I confessed, I would gain a little credit from Penny and I might impress Justine. But that was too easy. Life was not that simple. I wondered whether Justine could be bluffing. Maybe she was trying to provoke me into action? Maybe I could fake her out? But there was that look in her eye. The same look as when she talked about potting some particular vile criminal, the look she had when she talked about Kingsley. She was not bluffing—I had to confess.
Once home, I did not sneak up the stairs. If Penny woke up, I intended to have it out there and then. It was the honorable thing to do. I almost felt righteous.
The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Along the corridor, I could hear Ginny tossing fitfully in her sleep and coughing, coughing so painfully. My daughter was clearly unwell and I had been guzzling antipodean plonk with my mistress.
I took a tentative step into the bedroom. The floorboard groaned. Standing there, I could see that Penny had thrown off the duvet and was lying completely naked in a fetal position. An icy blast of wind struck my left cheek, which was still blushing with the wine. The window was wide open and the glass rattled in the frame.
Penny did not move but said, “Where have you been?”
“Out.”
“Really?”
Another rush of wind. I could feel my resolve shriveling. “Yes, really.”
“Anywhere in particular?”
“No. Nowhere in particular.”
“You’ve been out with Justine, haven’t you?”
This was the moment. How to broach the subject? Did I start gently and start discussing our problems? Or was it better to tell her directly: The truth is, Justine and I are having an affair.
“Have you been out with Justine?” she repeated. “Tell me.”
“No,” I said. No? I felt thoroughly ashamed. How could I have said no?
“Tom, I just want the truth. Have you been out with Justine?”
Fortunately, I had another chance, it was not too late. I took a deep breath. “No,” I said more firmly.
Penny sprang upright and threw the pillow at me. “Liar,” she screamed. “I can smell her, you liar.” She was not crying. It would somehow have been easier if she were. “Are you having an—”
“I don’t know.” I had retreated into my corner of the room and squatted on my pile of dirty laundry. “Really, I don’t.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. If a woman is after you, you’re an erection waiting to happen. You’re so pathetic.”
The last word was particularly hurtful but deserved. I simply
waited for Penny to continue.
“I hope you’re more adventurous with your mistress than you are with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you only know two positions. Eyes open and eyes closed. It’s hardly the Kama Sutra, is it, Tom? Still, it had to happen really.” She drew two blue knees up to her chin, her head seeming to bounce on them as she talked. “You didn’t have a prayer.”
“How did you know?” Like so many of my less successful crooks, I was more interested in how I was caught than in the terrible consequences that follow discovery.
“The cigar smell for a start,” she said. “And I thought, Why would he lie about seeing Justine?”
“Pretty impressive.”
“Thanks.”
And suddenly we were being almost civil. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know,” she replied.
I slowly started undressing, neatly placing my suit on thick wooden hangers; my normal practice was to fling it over the back of the chair. Penny drew the duvet up to her knees. I could only see her head, one side of which was lit by the moon.
“You’d better come to bed, I suppose,” she said.
Penny did not move as she began to speak, staring, always staring, through the gaping window as the winter air seeped into the room. “There was a man—well, he was no more than a boy really—caused a bit of a scandal at school. Alex… Chapple, I think it was. We all fancied him, I suppose. But he only had eyes for one person.”
“Justine?” I asked.
“Who else? He used to teach us—English, I think. Introduced us to John Donne and Marvell and all the Romantics. He got the job because he knew Justine’s father, or something like that. No one really knew.”
“And what was Justine’s father like?” I asked.
“Well, she seemed to…”
“Love him?”
“Worship him.”
“That’s not really what I asked, Pen. What I meant was—”
“Put it this way,” she said, “what’s anyone like who sends single mothers to prison for shoplifting?”
“Doing his job?”
“And loving every second of it, Tom.”
I was still confused. What was the relevance of all this? Penny seemed to be building slowly, convincing herself before she shared these memories with me.
