A Twist in the Tale (5 page)

“Take your time
because I want the exact number,” Sir Humphrey said, looking over the top of
his glasses.

The seconds
ticked on as we all waited.

“
Hm
– three, I think,”
Menzies
said eventually in a voice that just carried. The gentlemen of the press began
scribbling furiously.

“Three,” said
Sir Humphrey, staring at his piece of paper in disbelief.

“Well, perhaps
four.”

“And was the
fourth Miss Carla Moorland?”

Sir Humphrey
asked.
“Because you had sexual intercourse with her that
evening, didn’t you?”

“No, I did
not,” said
Menzies
, but by this time few in that
courtroom could have believed him.

“Very well
then,” continued Sir Humphrey, as he placed the piece of paper on the bench in
front of him. “But before I return to your relationship with Miss Moorland, let
us discover the truth about the other four.”

I stared at the
piece of paper from which Sir Humphrey had been reading. From where I was
seated I could see that there was nothing written on it at all. A blank white
sheet lay before him.

I was finding
it hard to keep a grin off my face.
Menzies’s
adulterous background was an unexpected bonus for me and the press - and I
couldn’t help wondering how Carla would have reacted if she had known about it.

Sir Humphrey
spent the rest of the day making
Menzies
relate the
details of his previous relationships with the four mistresses.

The court was
agog and the journalists continued to scribble away, knowing they were about to
have a field day. When the court rose
Mr
Scott’s eyes
were closed.

I drove home
that night feeling not a little pleased with myself; like a man who had just
completed a good day’s work.

On entering the
courtroom the following morning I noticed people were beginning to acknowledge
other regulars and nod. I found myself falling into the same pattern and
greeted people silently as I took my regular position on the end of the bench.

Sir Humphrey
spent the morning going over some of
Menzies’s
other
misdemean
-ours. We discovered that he had served in the
Territorial Army for only five months and left after a misunderstanding with
his commanding officer over how many hours he should have been spending on
exercises during weekends and how much he had claimed in expenses for those
hours. We also learned that his attempts to get on the local council sprung
more from anger at being refused planning permission to build on a piece of
land adjoining his house than from an
altru-istic
desire to serve his fellow men. To be fair, Sir Humphrey could have made the
Archangel Gabriel look like a soccer
hoo-ligan
; but
his trump card was still to come.

“
Mr
Menzies
, I should now like to
return to your version of what happened on the night Miss Moorland was killed.”

“Yes,”
sighed
Menzies
in a tired voice.

“When you visit
a client to discuss one of your policies, how long would you say such a
consultation usually lasts?”

“Usually half
an hour, an hour at the most,” said
Menzies
.

“And how long
did the consultation with Miss Moorland take?”

“A good hour,”
said
Menzies
.

“And you left
her, if I remember your evidence correctly, a little after six o’clock.”

“That is correct.”

“And what time
was your appointment?”

“At five
o’clock, as was shown clearly in my desk diary,” said
Menzies
.

“Well,
Mr
Menzies
, if you arrived at
about five to keep your appointment with Miss Moorland and left a little after
six, how did you manage to get a parking fine?”

“I didn’t have
any small change for the meter at the time,” said
Menzies
confidently.

“As I was
already a couple of minutes late, I just risked it.”

“You just
risked it,” repeated Sir Humphrey slowly. “You are obviously a man who takes
risks,
Mr
Menzies
. I wonder
if you would be good enough to look at the parking ticket in question.”

The clerk
handed it up to
Menzies
.

“Would you read
out to the court the hour and minute that the traffic warden has written in the
little boxes to show when the offence occurred.”

Once again
Menzies
took a long time to reply.

“Four sixteen
to four thirty,” he said eventually.

“I didn’t hear
that,” said the judge.

“Would you be
kind enough to repeat what you said for the judge?” Sir Humphrey asked.

Menzies
repeated the damning figures.

“So now we have
established that you were in fact with Miss Moorland some time before four
sixteen, and not, as I suggest you later wrote in your diary, five o’clock.
That was just another lie, wasn’t it?”

“No,” said
Menzies
. “I must have arrived a little earlier than I
realised
.”

“At least an
hour earlier, it seems. And I also suggest to you that you arrived at that
early hour because your interest in Carla Moorland was not simply
professional?”

“That’s not
true.”

“Then it wasn’t
your intention that she should become your mistress?”

Menzies
hesitated long enough for Sir Humphrey to answer
his own question. “Because the business part of your meeting finished in the
usual half hour, did it not,
Mr
Menzies
?”
He waited for a response but still none was forthcoming.

“What is your
blood group,
Mr
Menzies
?”

“I have no
idea.”

Sir Humphrey
without warning changed tack: “Have you heard of DNA, by any chance?”

“No,” came back
the puzzled reply.

“Deoxyribonucleic
acid is a proven tech-
nique
that shows genetic
information can be unique to every individual. Blood or semen samples can be
matched. Semen,
Mr
Menzies
,
is as unique as any fingerprint. With such a sample we would know immediately
if you raped Miss Moorland.”

“I didn’t rape
her,”
Menzies
said indignantly.

“Nevertheless
sexual intercourse did take place, didn’t it?” said Sir Humphrey quietly.

Menzies
remained silent.

“Shall I recall
the Home Office pathologist and ask him to carry out a DNA test?”

Menzies
still made no reply.

“And check your
blood group?” Sir Humphrey paused. “I will ask you once again,
Mr
Menzies
. Did sexual
intercourse between you and the murdered woman take place that Thursday
afternoon?”

“Yes, sir,”
said
Menzies
in a whisper.

“Yes, sir,”
repeated Sir Humphrey so that the whole court could hear it.

“But it wasn’t
rape,”
Menzies
shouted back at Sir Humphrey.

“Wasn’t it?”
said Sir Humphrey.

“And I swear I
didn’t kill her.”

I must have
been the only person in that courtroom who knew he was telling the truth. All Sir
Humphrey said was; “No more questions, my Lord.”

Mr
Scott tried manfully to resurrect his client’s
credibility during re-examination but the fact that
Menzies
had been caught lying about his relationship with Carla made everything he had
said previously appear doubtful.

If only
Menzies
had told the truth about being Carla’s lover, his
story might well have been accepted. I wondered why he had gone through the
charade- in order to protect his
wife?
Whatever the
motive, it had only ended by making him appear guilty of a crime he hadn’t
committed.

I went home
that night and ate the largest meal I had had for several days.

The following
morning
Mr
Scott called two more witnesses. The first
turned out to be the vicar of St Peter’s, Sutton, who was there as a character
witness to prove what a pillar of the community
Menzies
was. After Sir Humphrey had finished his cross-examination the vicar ended up
looking like a rather kind, unworldly old man, whose knowledge of
Menzies
was based on the latter’s occasional attendance at
Sunday matins.

The second was
Menzies’s
superior at the company they both worked for in
the City.

He was a far
more impressive figure but he was unable to confirm that Miss Moorland had ever
been a client of the company.

Mr
Scott put up no more witnesses and informed
Mr
Justice Buchanan that he had completed the case for the
defence
. The judge nodded and, turning to Sir Humphrey,
told him he would not be required to begin his final address until the
following morning.

That heralded
the signal for the court to rise.

Another long
evening and an even longer night had to be endured by
Menzies
and myself. As on every other day during the trial, I made sure I was in my
place the next morning before the judge entered.

Sir Humphrey’s
closing speech was masterful.

Every little
untruth was logged so that one began to accept that very little of
Menzies’s
testimony could be relied on.

“We will never
know for certain,” said Sir Humphrey, “for what reason poor young Carla
Moorland was murdered.
Refusal to succumb to
Menzies’s
advances?
A fit of temper which ended with
a blow that caused her to fall and later die alone? But there are, however,
some things, members of the jury, of which we can be quite certain.

“We can be
certain that
Menzies
was with the murdered woman that
day before the hour of four sixteen because of the evidence of the damning
parking ticket.

“We can be
certain that he left a little after six because we have a witness who saw him
drive away, and he does not himself deny this evidence.

“And we can be
certain that he wrote a false entry in his diary to make you believe he had a
business appointment with the murdered woman at five, rather than a personal
assig
-nation some time before.

“And we can now
be certain that he lied about having sexual intercourse with Miss Moorland a
short time before she was killed, though we cannot be certain if intercourse
took place before or after her jaw had been broken.” Sir Humphrey’s eyes rested
on the jury before he continued.

“We can,
finally, establish, beyond reasonable doubt, from the pathologist’s report, the
time of death and that, therefore,
Menzies
was the
last person who could possibly have seen Carla Moorland alive.

“Therefore no
one else could have killed Carla Moorland – for do not forget Inspector
Simmons’s evidence – and if you accept that, you can be in no doubt that only
Menzies
could have been responsible for her death.

And how damning
you must have found it that he tried to hide the existence of a first wife who
had left him on the grounds of his cruelty, and the four mistresses who left
him we know not why or how. Only one less than Bluebeard,” Sir Humphrey added
with feeling.

“For the sake
of every young girl who lives on her own in our capital, you must carry out
your duty, however painful that duty might be. And find
Menzies
guilty of murder.”

When Sir
Humphrey sat down I wanted to applaud.

The judge sent
us away for another break.

Voices all
around me were now damning
Menzies
. I listened contentedly
without offering an opinion. I knew that if the jury convicted
Menzies
the file would be closed and no eyes would ever be
turned in my direction. I was seated in my place before the judge appeared at
ten past two. He called on
Mr
Scott.

Menzies’s
counsel put up a spirited
defence
of his client, pointing out that almost all the evidence that Sir Humphrey had
come up with had been circumstantial, and that it was even possible someone
else could have visited Carla Moorland after his client had left that night.
Mr
Scott’s bushy eyebrows seemed almost to have a life of
their own as he energetically
emphasised
that it was
the prosecution’s responsibility to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt
and not his to disprove it, and that, in his opinion, his learned friend, Sir
Humphrey, had failed to do so.

During his
summing-up Scott avoided any mention of diary entries, parking tickets, past
mistresses, sexual intercourse or questions of his client’s role in the
community. A latecomer listen-
ing
only to the
closing speeches might have been forgiven for thinking the two learned
gentlemen were sum-
marising
different cases.

Mr
Scott’s expression became grim as he turned to face the
jury for his summation.

“The twelve of
you,” he said, “hold the fate of my client in your hands. You must, therefore,
be certain, I repeat, certain beyond reasonable doubt that Paul
Menzies
could have committed such an evil crime as murder.

“This is not a
trial about
Mr
Menzies’s
life-style, his position in the community or even his sexual habits. If
adultery were a crime I feel confident
Mr
Menzies
would not be the only person in this courtroom to
be in the dock today.” He paused as his eyes swept up and down the jury.