A Certain Justice (40 page)

Seating himself, he said: “I take it this is an official visit even though you’ve come alone. But, then, when is your arrival not official? How can I help?”

Dalgliesh said: “I went on Friday to Wareham to see Venetia Aldridge’s ex-husband and his wife. She expected to meet Miss Aldridge at the Devereux Court entrance to the Temple at eight-fifteen on Wednesday night, but Miss Aldridge didn’t turn up to let her in. But she says that she did see a strongly built man with bright red hair. I think it’s very possible that, if we bring her up to London, she’ll be able to identify you.”

He didn’t know how he had expected Costello to react. The man had seemed the most agitated by the Aldridge murder of all members of Chambers. He had certainly been the least co-operative. Faced with this new evidence he might bluster, deny the accusation or refuse to speak until his solicitor was present. Anything was possible. Dalgliesh knew that he had taken a risk in raising the matter without corroboration. But Costello’s reaction was surprising.

He said quietly: “Yes, I was there. I saw a woman loitering in the passage, although obviously I didn’t know who she was. She was there when I went in and there when I came out. No doubt she will confirm that I was in the Temple for less than a minute.”

“Yes, that is what she told me.”

“I was there because I decided on impulse to see Venetia. There were important matters I wanted to talk about. They related to the possibility that she would become Head of Chambers and the changes she proposed to make if she did. I knew that she worked late on Wednesdays, but, as I’ve said, the visit was somewhat on impulse. I walked into Pawlet Court and saw that her light was out. That meant, of course, that she must have left, so I wasted no more time.”

“You told us when you were first questioned that you had left Chambers at six o’clock and gone home, and that your wife would confirm that you were in the house all evening.”

“As she did. Actually, she was feeling unwell and was either in the nursery or in bed for an hour of the time. The police officer who called — I believe he was from the City Police — didn’t ask her whether I was under her eye the whole time. She thought I was in the house the whole evening but in fact I wasn’t. Nor, I may say, was I asked whether or not I had left the house. One of us — my wife — was mistaken. Neither of us deliberately lied.”

Dalgliesh said: “You must have realized the importance of this evidence in fixing a time of death.”

“I knew you — d already fixed the time of death, or near enough. You forget, Commander, that I’m a criminal lawyer. I advise my clients to answer police questions and to answer them honestly, but not to volunteer information. I took my own advice. If I’d told you that I’d been in Pawlet Court after eight you would have wasted valuable time concentrating on me as prime suspect, trying to ferret about in my private life to find something disreputable, distressing my wife, harming my marriage and probably destroying my professional reputation. Meanwhile, Venetia’s killer would go undetected. I preferred not to take that chance. After all, I’ve seen what can happen to the innocent who are too confiding to the police. Will you want to make any more of this? It will be time-wasting if you do. I suppose, if you do want to pursue it, I ought to answer further questions in the presence of my solicitor.”

Dalgliesh said, “That won’t be necessary at present. But if there is anything else that you have concealed, half-told or lied about I suggest you remind yourself that this is a case of murder and that the offence of obstructing the police in the execution of their duty applies as much to members of the criminal Bar as it does to anyone else.”

Costello answered calmly: “Some of your colleagues see my job as a defence counsel as obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.”

There was nothing more at present which could be usefully said. As Dalgliesh made his way downstairs to Mr. Langton’s room he wondered how many more lies he’d been told, what else had been concealed and by whom, and had again the uncomfortable conviction that this case might never be solved.

Hubert Langton was working at his desk. He rose and shook hands with Dalgliesh as if it were the first time they had met, then led him to one of the leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. Looking across at Langton’s face, Dalgliesh thought again how much he had aged since the murder. The sharp dominant features seemed to be blurring into old age. The jaw was less firm, the pouches under the eyes were becoming pendulous, the flesh was becoming more mottled. But there were more than physical changes. The spirit was devitalized. Quietly Dalgliesh told him what Kate and Robbins had discovered during their visit to Catherine Beddington.

Langton said: “So that’s where I was. At the rehearsal. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. The truth is that I didn’t know. The best part of an hour out of Wednesday evening is missing from my life. You tell me that they saw me. I must have been there.”

Dalgliesh thought that it was as difficult for him to make this admission as it would have been to accept a more damaging truth.

The tired voice went on. “I remember being about three-quarters of an hour late home, but that’s all I remember. I can’t understand what happened or why. I suppose I shall eventually find the courage to go to my doctor but I doubt whether he’ll be able to help. It doesn’t seem like any form of amnesia I’ve ever heard about.” He smiled, then said: “Perhaps I’m secretly in love with Catherine. Perhaps that’s why I can’t accept that I spent the best part of an hour gazing at her — if that’s what I did. Isn’t that the kind of explanation a psychiatrist would come up with?”

Dalgliesh said: “Can you remember whether you went straight home when you left the church?”

“Not even that, I’m afraid. But I’m sure I was home before eight, and my two helpers should be able to confirm it. Venetia spoke on the telephone to her housekeeper — didn’t she? — at a quarter to eight, so surely I’m in the clear.”

Dalgliesh said: “I’ve never seen you as a suspect. What I did wonder was whether you saw anyone you knew in the church or in Pawlet Court when you left. Obviously, if you can’t remember, there’s no point in pursuing it.”

“I can give you no help, I’m afraid.” He paused and then said: “Old age can be very frightening, Commander. My son died young, and at the time it seemed the most terrible thing that could happen to anyone in the world — to him as well as to me. But perhaps he was one of the fortunate ones. I shall, of course, be retiring as Head of Chambers at the end of the year, and retiring from work at the Bar. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn’t just inefficient, he’s dangerous.”

D
algliesh was not yet ready to leave Chambers. There was something else he had to do. He went upstairs and unlocked Venetia Aldridge’s room. It held no sense of her presence. He seated himself in her comfortable chair and swivelled it round to adjust the height to his six feet two. There came into his mind for a moment Naughton’s description of finding the body, of the chair swinging round under his touch to confront him, of her dead upturned eye. But the room evoked no shudder of horror; it was just an empty office, elegantly proportioned, functional, waiting as it had for the last two hundred years for the next temporary occupant to move in, to spend brief working years there and finally close the door on success or failure.

He switched on the desk lamp and unwrapped and opened Edmund Froggett’s scrapbook, turning the pages at first with casual interest, and then with a more deliberate attention. It was an extraordinary record. He had obviously made it his business in the last two years to attend every trial in which Venetia Aldridge was due to appear, whether, rarely, as prosecuting counsel or, more frequently, for the defence. He had noted the venue, the name of the defendant, the judge, counsel for the prosecution and for the defence, and had set out briefly the details of the case as presented by the prosecuting counsel. The arguments of both sides were also summarized with occasional comments.

The writing was very small and not always easy to read, the letters meticulously formed. The reports showed a remarkable grasp of the intricacies of the law. Froggett had concentrated on the performance of the object of his obsession. Sometimes his comments betrayed the pedagogue; he could have been a senior counsel assiduously monitoring the performance of a junior or a pupil. He must have had a small notebook with him and transcribed the details in court or as soon as he got home. Dalgliesh could picture the little man returning in solitude to his empty flat and sitting down to add a few more pages of analysis, comment and criticism to this record of a professional life. It was apparent, too, that he liked to embellish the record with pictures, some from newspaper accounts of the crime, published after the verdict. There were press photographs of judges processing to the service at the beginning of the new legal year, with a ring round whichever one had tried the case under review. There was even the occasional photograph, almost certainly taken by Froggett himself, of scenes outside the court.

It was these illustrations, so meticulously pasted in, labelled in that small precise handwriting, which began to induce in Dalgliesh the familiar uncomfortable mixture of pity and irritation. What would Froggett do with his life now that his passion had been brutally wrenched from him, his book becoming no more than a pathetic
memento mori
? Already some of the press cuttings were browning with age and exposure. And how much was he grieving? Froggett had spoken with a dignified regret that could be covering a more personal loss, but Dalgliesh suspected that the reality of Aldridge’s death had yet to hit him. At present he was caught up in the excitement of it, the self-importance of bringing his record to the police, the sense that he still had a part to play. Or was his interest more in the criminal law than in the lawyer? Would he still go regularly to the Old Bailey in search of the drama which could give his life meaning? And what about the rest of that life? What had happened at the school? It was difficult to believe that Froggett had ever been deputy head. And what had Venetia Aldridge suffered with a sadist as a father, herself powerless to help his victims, growing up in that phobic world of terror and shame?

With half his mind on the past, he turned the next page almost without thinking. Then he saw the photograph. It was captioned: “Queue waiting outside the Old Bailey for the trial of Matthew Price, 20th October 1994.” The snapshot showed a group of about twenty men and women photographed from across the road. And near the head of the queue was Janet Carpenter. Dalgliesh took out his magnifying-glass and scrutinized the image more clearly, but that first look had been enough. The photograph was so plain that he wondered whether Froggett had taken it to record her face rather than the size of the queue. It seemed unlikely that she had been aware of him. Her head was turned to the camera but she was looking over her shoulder as if something — a shout, a sudden noise — had attracted her attention. She was carefully dressed, and with no apparent attempt at disguise.

It could, of course, be a coincidence. Mrs. Carpenter might have had a sudden wish to experience a trial. She might have had some interest in the case. He went to the bookcase and began a quick search among the blue notebooks. The trial was easily found. Venetia Aldridge had defended a small-time crook who had unwisely moved into a more dangerous league and had attempted an armed robbery on a suburban jeweller’s shop in Stan-more. Then one shot had injured but not killed the owner. The evidence had been overwhelming. Venetia Aldridge had been able to do little for her client except mount an impressive plea in mitigation which had probably taken some three years from the inevitably long sentence. Reading the details, Dalgliesh could see no possible connection either with Janet Carpenter or with the present case. So what was she doing there, patiently queuing outside the Old Bailey? Had there been another trial on that day in which she had a personal interest? Or was this tied up with her interest in Aldridge?

He resumed his careful study of the scrapbook. He was now about halfway through and then, turning a page, he saw not a face he knew but a name: Dermot Beale, convicted on 7 October 1993 at Shrewsbury Crown Court of the murder of Mrs. Carpenter’s granddaughter. For a disorientating second the carefully printed name seemed to grow as he looked at it, the letters to blacken on the page. He went to the cupboard and found Miss Aldridge’s notebook. The same name; an earlier trial. It wasn’t the only time Dermot Beale had been accused of the rape and murder of a child. In October 1992, just a year earlier, Venetia Aldridge had successfully defended him at the Old Bailey. Dermot Beale had gone free, free to kill again. The two murders had been remarkably similar. Beale was a forty-three-year-old commercial traveller. In both cases a child had been knocked from her bicycle, abducted, raped and murdered. In both the body had been found some weeks later buried in a shallow grave. Even the accidental discovery had been the same; the family with their dogs taking a Sunday-morning walk, the sudden excitement of the animals, the scraping away of soft earth, the discovery of clothing and then of a small hand.

Sitting at the desk absolutely motionless, Dalgliesh pictured what might have happened, probably had happened. The pretended accident that was no accident, the rush to comfort, the suggestion that the child, dazed and wanting her mother, should get into the car and be taken home. He could picture the bicycle at the side of the road, the spinning wheels coming slowly to a stop. In the first case the defence had been brilliant. On the Aldridge blue notebook the main defence strategy was clearly set out. “Identification? Main prosecution witness easily muddled. Time? Could Beale have driven to potters Lane in thirty minutes from the sighting in the supermarket car-park? Identification of car not positive. No forensic evidence linking Beale to the victim.” But there would be no mention in Froggett’s book, and no record among Miss Aldridge’s blue notebooks, of that second trial in 1993 following the murder of Mrs. Carpenter’s granddaughter. That had been held at Shrewsbury. The same crime but a different venue, a different defence counsel. But, of course, there would have been. Dalgliesh had heard that Miss Aldridge never defended the same man or woman twice on the same charge.