False Witness

by Dexter Dias

  “You did?” Hardcastle looked at me. “But the defense would be entitled to have an opportunity to speak to her. They haven’t had that.”

  “Haven’t they?” said Justine, smiling as she sat down.

  “What do you say, Mr. Fawley?”

  There was little point denying the truth. I could not admit that I had spoken to Vera Cavely personally—barristers are not supposed to talk to witnesses. So I merely said, “The defense has interviewed her. However, I still object to the prosecution re-opening its case.”

  Justine got up. “I don’t want to re-open. She is a rebuttal witness.”

  I looked at her. “Rebuttal of what?”

  Justine said, “The alibi notice says the defendant”—she paused to read it verbatim—” ‘the defendant was not at the stone circle at the time of the murder.’ We now hear, for the first time, Mr. Kingsley was not in Stonebury at all. This evidence rebuts that new contention.”

  I still objected but my heart was no longer in it.

  “You may proceed, Miss Wright,” the judge ruled. “Bring back the jury.”

  Vera Cavely was made to stand at the back of the court. She was told repeatedly by Norman not to speak but she kept asking him the way to Dover.

  Justine continued her cross-examination. “Do you recognize that lady, Mr. Kingsley?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Much to Norman’s relief, Vera was allowed to leave court.

  “Were you in fact in Stonebury on the night of the murder?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “So earlier you lied on oath?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You don’t have much respect for the Bible?”

  “Not much.”

  “What were you doing that night?”

  “I saw Miss Cavely in Stonebury and she told me that there was to be some kind of… what you might call an initiation ceremony. You know, a local custom, that kind of thing.”

  “But there was a murder?”

  “So it appears. But I don’t know about that. All I wanted to do was to see the ceremony, it was a bit of research. I had an idea to write a novel about a village, its customs, its people. It was completely innocent.”

  “Did you see Molly Summers?”

  “I saw her being led from the village. That’s all. Then I went home.”

  “Why?” asked Justine.

  “It started to rain. I wasn’t very well.”

  There was a tut of disbelief from the grandmother. The taxi-driver said something to the next juror.

  “All you wanted,” Justine said, “let me understand this, was to do some research for a novel.”

  “Yes.”

  “That you never wrote?”

  “That I never wrote.”

  Justine picked up a book. “I imagine you are familiar with the work of other authors, and not only those in your field?”

  “Of course.”

  “For example, do you know the work of Peter Dyson?”

  “I don’t see the relevance—”

  “Just answer the question,” hissed the judge.

  “Yes,” said Kingsley. “I know his work, but can I just say—”

  “No,” said Justine. “You can’t just say. You’re going to listen while I read. This is the opening of Dyson’s earliest novel, In the Shaddowes.”

  As Justine opened the hardback with its dark shiny cover, I got to my feet. “Your Honor, this is utterly irrelevant.”

  “The relevance may become clear,” Justine replied, “if m’friend is quiet for a moment.”

  “I warned you, Mr. Fawley.” Hilary Hardcastle was delighted. “I told you, what’s sauce for the goose—I’ll give Miss Wright the same latitude I gave you.”

  Justine cleared her throat and once more put on her elder-sister voice. The whole court seemed transported to a lonely village. She read slowly but with purpose.

  And so, my Friends, let us beginne. It is the Wisdome of a Corrupte Age that Darknesse is to Light, what Deathe is to that Thing we call Life itself. There is not the One without that you must have the Other. And more: they lend a Forme and a Morality between them.

  So as I write this poor Accounte in my final Journal, there is an Eccho in my Mind. For amongst the Shaddowes of my Past, I see a Face. It is the Face of a young Wretch.

  I still see it before me—and perhaps allwaies will?—until I reach my Ende in this Rotten Chamber. For I touched her with Darknesse. And her little Life rose like a Smoak from the Stones and hid the very Sunne.

  When Justine had finished, she looked at the defendant who had not seemed to have listened. “As a novelist yourself, Mr. Kingsley, would you say that is Dyson’s best work?”

  “It’s not bad,” he replied haughtily. “A bit melodramatic. But in my opinion he can do better.”

  “Is Mr. Dyson outside court today?”

  “No.”

  “Are you in communication with him?”

  “That’s a difficult question to answer.”

  “Is he going to give evidence in this trial?”

  I didn’t object. The case had moved beyond objections and I felt exhausted. Kingsley shuffled in his wheelchair miserably.

  “Where is Peter Dyson today?” asked Justine.

  Kingsley waved his hand.

  “Where?” Justine repeated. “Where?”

  “Here,” Kingsley finally said.

  “In court?”

  “Yes.”

  And, of course, it was Richard Kingsley himself. I wondered how I could have been so foolish to have missed it. What had Kingsley said in Battersea Prison when I asked him about Dyson’s book?

  You don’t read this rubbish, do you?

  No, I don’t really read it.

  “The truth is, Mr. Kingsley,” Justine continued, moving in for the kill, “the truth is, you wrote this novel before Molly Summers was murdered, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And on the night of her death, you weren’t doing some research?”

  “No.”

  “You were living out your fantasy, weren’t you?”

  Richard Kingsley did not reply.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  THE ONLY EVIDENCE THAT REMAINED WAS VERA Cavely. There was very little I could do to challenge her, since Kingsley had admitted that he was in Stonebury.

  Justine rattled through the woman’s testimony, aware, no doubt, that Vera was itching to find the M20. Eventually Justine asked, “What did Mr. Kingsley say to you on the night?”

  “He asked me where they’s going to take the girl and I says, The stones. Then he asked me, When? And I says, When they’s good and ready.”

  “Do you have any doubt that you saw Richard Kingsley on the night of the murder?”

  “What’s I just been saying? I dunno why young folks don’t listen anymore.” Vera turned to Hilary Hardcastle who nodded with approval at the last sentiment. “Them youngsters, Judge. Never listens. I must have asked them one hundred times to fetch me carburetor. And do they? Do they heck.”

  “Yes, wait there please,” said Justine.

  I rose to my feet not knowing what I was going to say. In reality, I didn’t want to cross-examine Vera at all, it was too risky. But complete silence would appear as a sign of weakness to the jury.

  I took a deep breath and began, “Miss Cavely, you didn’t see Mr. Kingsley at the stones that night?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t see what happened at the stones?”

  “Did I says that?”

  “No. But it follows from your evidence.”

  “Follows where?”

  “Just follows—oh, never mind,” I said. “You yourself were not at the stones?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “About them stones.”

  “What about them?”

  “What I saw him do.”

  Suddenly I was cornered. Did I press on? Kingsley was sunk anyway, and if I
left it, Justine would re-examine.

  I had to take a risk. “Tell us very slowly what you saw.”

  “I saw him going to the stones with a knife.”

  Hardcastle could not contain her joy and repeated each damaging word aloud. She said, “Now, Miss Cavely. Let me be clear about what you told Mr. Fawley. Was it, I—saw—him—going—to—the—stones?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a knife?” Hilary asked.

  “Yes. With a knife. A right sharp one. And I says to him, What is you doing? And he says to me, Be quiet and mind your own affairs.”

  “Mind your own what?” the judge asked.

  “Affairs. Business. Keep yer snout out, as we says down our way. And I says to him, Well you know, Mr. Chapple, that ain’t no way to talk.”

  Hardcastle’s face dropped. “Pardon? What did you say?”

  “Keep yer snout out. It’s a saying we has.”

  “No. Not that. Did you say Chapple?”

  “Yes. That fellow what used to be a teacher.”

  “And when did he used to be a teacher?”

  “When I still had a carburetor in me car.”

  Everyone was confused. The judge threw down her pencil and refused to commit the evidence to paper. In the jury box, the social worker whispered frantically to the grandmother. The taxi-driver clearly could not believe it. Members of the press scribbled away. For her part, Justine sat very still.

  Was there, I wondered, any truth in any of this? Or had Vera finally blown her last gasket? It was all too bizarre. I decided not to ask any more questions, having sabotaged the serenity of the court to some effect.

  Of course, Vera was supposed to be Justine’s witness. Having blown up in her face once, Justine had clearly decided to cut her losses and did not dare to ask any further questions in re-examination.

  Vera Cavely was eventually led out of court. All that remained were the speeches. Justine was the first to address the jury. She stood in front of the box and looked at the jurors in pairs, waiting for the bustle and the fidgeting in court to subside.

  Finally, there was silence.

  “Someone once wrote, members of the jury, that there are monsters in this world. They may look like us, they may talk like us, but deep down they are not like us. You know, you can find the bones of dinosaurs in the museums, and I suppose dragons have virtually disappeared from folklore, but certain creatures still move among us—creatures beyond our understanding. And Richard Kingsley is one of them.”

  She looked momentarily at the dock and the shriveled man in the wheelchair. “And which of you,” she said, “can understand, I mean really understand why Mr. Kingsley took the life of that girl? What unimaginable urge did it satisfy? What sense does it make?”

  Justine pulled her black gown around her thin shoulders and spoke very slowly. “When Richard Kingsley came to Stonebury, he brought a kind of darkness with him. He cast a shadow over the village that took the life of an innocent girl with it before it lifted. And that, members of the jury, was a truly monstrous thing to do.”

  I thought of my daughter and how she had cried herself to sleep, and I thought of Emma, whom I had sent to Stonebury. And I was worried, because Emma had not rung.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  I DIDN’T LISTEN TO THE REST OF JUSTINE’S SPEECH, though I sat next to her in court and saw her understated gestures and could feel the vibrations of her words. For I suspected that whatever she said, whatever I would say the next day, the truth was still out there—somewhere. And it seemed to me that the truth was like that fox on the Stonebury hunt, and the more you chased it, the more it ran. But if it wanted to, it would find you, when the time was right.

  After the court had risen, I tried to speak to Justine about what Vera had said. But Justine stormed off into the sanctuary of the ladies’ robing room. By the time I had disrobed, Justine had disappeared. But Jamie had left a message for me to meet him in Il Paradiso. So, leaving the bar’s number with the clerks in case Emma should ring, I set off along the Embankment.

  Before long I arrived at Blackfriars Bridge. The mists were beginning to drift on the river toward the Tower of London and anchored barges were rising and falling slowly with the gentle swell. The next day, the jury would go out and either Kingsley would be free of the charge for ever or he would be sent to prison for the rest of his life.

  I gazed into the silent waters, not really seeking inspiration, for I didn’t know what the night would bring, and I felt that the right words would come when I had to speak. My speech was being written somewhere—but not by me. I finally saw myself at the Sepulchre itself, at the very heart of Stonebury. And it was now me who was on the stone. And I wondered who would wield the knife. But I was confused. And my confusion was provoked by the fact that I saw not two, but three people around me at the stones. I wondered whether old Vera was right and whether one of the faces belonged to Chapple. But even if that was so, who else was there? Who else?

  Back Bridge Street and Butter Lane were deserted and no one else was on the door as I entered Il Paradiso. I asked Donald, the barman, whether Jamie had arrived and he merely shrugged and handed me a malt, the best this side of Berwick. I chose a circular table near the door, closed my eyes and waited.

  I was unaware of being joined by a man to my right until he spoke. It was Whitey Innocent.

  “You look pale. Mr. Thomas,” he said.

  “Yep, Whitey. I really look like crap. That’s what everyone tells me.”

  “You been sleeping with the enemy, Mr. Thomas?”

  “When did you get out, Whitey?”

  “Few days back.” His eyes seemed a little wider in the dreary gloom, like a pair of camera shutters opening to gather in more light. “Hear you had some trouble, Mr. Thomas.”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Anyway, where did you hear that?”

  He didn’t answer, but said, “You’re too late.”

  “Too late?”

  He smiled a little, revealing his protruding teeth in all their glory. They were browner than I remembered.

  “What am I too late for, Whitey?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Your blood-clot detective.”

  “You mean, Payne?”

  “Yes, star.”

  “What do you know about a kilo of heroin, Whitey?”

  Emmanuel Innocent was silent. He looked greedily at the glass of malt in front of me, which I pushed toward him. Then he ran a dirty thumbnail over the rim where my lip marks had been left and finished the whisky in one gulp.

  When the alcohol bit his throat, he let out a sigh. “Payne say that bitch screw it up. Screw it up good. And she screw it up ‘cos she’s screwing… you.” He raised his head slightly, but I couldn’t see his pupils. “You been sleeping with the enemy, Mr. Thomas?”

  Before I could answer, Donald held up the telephone receiver. Emma had called.

  She immediately said, “Tom, I thought you’d given up drinking. It’ll do you no good, you know.”

  “Look. Forget about my liver. What have you found out?”

  “Can’t tell you everything. I’m phoning from a call box outside the village and I’m running out of change.”

  “I understand. The main points then.”

  “Tom, this is one strange place. It’s like walking through a Mary Shelley novel.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, every house in Stonebury has a thatched roof, a log-fire and a couple of skeletons buried in the garden. I mean, how on earth did you manage to spend all that time—”

  “Emma.”

  “Sorry. I’m afraid you’re not going to believe some of this.” She then started sneezing uncontrollably and it sounded as if she had dropped the receiver.

  “Emma. You OK?”

  “It just never stops raining down here. I’m soaked. The things I do for you. I don’t know.” She coughed a couple of times. “Question: where is old man Summers buried?”
<
br />   “Nethersmere Woods.”

  “Right. And where did he die?”

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  “Nethersmere Woods. I checked the local Chronicle. Found the report from his inquest. He died the same year Molly was baptized. What a surprise.”

  “You’ve lost me. Why?”

  “Guess who represented the Summers family at the inquest?”

  “I haven’t a clue, Emma.” Then I had a guess. “Was it Aubrey Davenport?”

  “Close. But wrong. It was Ignatius Manly. It must have been before he got silk. I wondered whether the two facts were related—”

  “Don’t be ludicrous.”

  “Oh, really? Well, check this out. The rumor down here is that Ignatius committed suicide. Apparently, they’ve found a note or—”

  “Emma, what are you talking about?”

  “Tom, I haven’t got time to explain. I’ve found out something else. Who was the officer in old Summers’s case?”

  I was beginning to see. “Inspector Payne?”

  “Wrong.” She started coughing again, coughing so roughly it sounded as if her throat-lining had worn through.

  “Emma. Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right? Do I sound all right? You owe me one, Tom. So help me, I’m not going to let you forget this.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t Payne, who was it?”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t Payne.”

  “But I thought you—”

  “I said it wasn’t Inspector Payne. It was plain old PC Payne back then. Simply PC Plod. A coincidence?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tom, my money’s running out and you can’t reverse the charges. Hang on. Someone’s outside. I don’t like the look of—”

  “Get out of there, Emma.”

  “No. I’ve got to tell you this.” She took a big breath and talked very quickly. “The report said Summers was a poacher and accidentally killed himself in the woods. Shotgun went off or something. Sounds a load of bull, if you ask me. But this is the interesting part.” Her voice became muffled as she put her hand over the receiver. She spoke to someone outside. “Look. I’m just about finished. You’ll have to wait.”