Below Suspicion (7 page)

There was a sudden stir through the court. The spectators in the public gallery roused up. On the dais behind the chairs of the judge's bench, the Clerk of the Court moved softly across and tapped on an almost invisible door in the panelling. That door led to the judge's private room, and was opened by his clerk.

"See you later," gulped Denham. "The jury are coming back."

Then everything seemed to last an eternity, like a marihuana dream.

Those in the public gallery licked their lips. The footsteps of the jury clumped for half a mile before they assembled and settled down. Mr. Justice Stoneman, as detached as a Yogi, was in his tall chair. The prisoner, half-fainting, was supported into the dock and stood up facing the judge.

When the foreman of the jury rose, the Clerk of the Court was already on his feet.

"Members of the jury, are yon agreed upon a verdict?"

"We are."

"Do you find the prisoner, Joyce Leslie Eliis, Guilt\' or Not GuiJt\' of murder?"

"Not guilty'."

A spatter of applause, quickly hushed, competed with the sleet on the roof. Patrick Butler, head down, released his breath with a noise like a sob. Joyce Ellis stumbled and almost fell.

"You say that she is Not Guilty', and that is the verdict of you all?"

''It is"

Mr. Justice Stoneman made a slight gesture. "Let her be discharged," he said.

The usher intoned his summons for the following day: another case, another heartbreak. The judge rose. The court rose. Then, as unexpectedly as a grenade explosion, it happened.

For Patrick Butler, K.C., could no longer control himself. He was on his feet, imperiously, as Mr. Justice Stoneman turned away towards the door of the private room. Butler was transfigured. Clearly, exultant in triumph and contempt, his voice thundered across at the judge.

"How do you like that, you old swine?"

TWENTY minutes later, with the collar of his overcoat turned up, Butler emerged from the main entrance of the Central Criminal Court.

He was very tired, somewhat irritable, yet still exultant. He had used—to Mr. Justice Stoneman—perhaps the most outrageous words ever uttered within those walls. And Patrick Butler did not care a damn.

In the robing-room after the trial, when his fellow-counsels (each attended by his clerk) hung up their robes in lockers and put away wigs in leather boxes, not one of them referred to the incident. They murmured congratulations on his victory, one or t\\'0 of them in a tone reserved for funerals. Butler had smiled back. His words to old Stony, of course, had not been contempt of court; the case was finished. But old Stony, they believed, could make it very unpleasant for him.

Let old Stony try!

Sleet flew at his face in fine needles as he ducked out of the main entrance. The street called Old Bailey, sloping down from Newgate Street on the north to Fleet Street on the south, shone as black as a Venetian canal under scattered lights. He was hurrying down towards his car when someone moved out from the shadow of the building.

"Mr. Butler," said the voice of Joyce Ellis.

Inwardly he uttered a groan of exasperation. The case was over! He was tired! He—

"I wanted to thank you," said Joyce.

Despite himself Butler was touched and concerned when he looked at her. Over her clumsily tailored suit she wore only an oilskin waterproof, whipped back by the icy sleet-gusts.

"Look here, you haven't got a coat!"

Joyce was surprised. "Coat?"

"Confound it, you've got to have a coat! You can't go about without a coat!"

'That doesn't matter!" She brushed it aside, though her eyes grew warm that he should think of it. "It's only . . . Mr. Butler, you promised me something."

"Promised you something, me dear?"

"Yes. I shouldn't remind you, except that it's terribly important to me. You said, if I testified exactly as you told me to testify, you'd answer me one question at the end of the trial. Please don't go away!"

"Well . . . come down to my car and be comfortable, then."

"No!" Her eyes and mouth implored him. "I mean, Mr. Denham's there. He's been wonderful, but—I don't want him to hear. Couldn't we go somewhere and talk for five minutes?"

A^ain inwardly, Butler raved with exasperation. But good nature won.

"Come with me," he suggested.

Just across the street was an institution which called itself a coffeehouse. Once, before the war, its stalls of polished oak—divided into booths for the tables along one side—competed with eighteenth-century prints of old Newgate Prison to exude a Dickensian cosiness.

Now, as Butler pushed open a creaky door, he saw that the place was dirty and unkempt. A solitary electric light burned far at the rear. At the rear there had been a parrot, which was said to resemble an eminent judge and to which the legal gentleman taught Latin tags mixed with profanity; the parrot was still there, old and half blind, and it screamed.

Breathing a mustiness of dried coffee-stains and damp chill, Butler installed his companion in a booth facing him across the table. Some recent customer had discarded a newspaper, crumpled over an empty and fly-blown sugar-bowl. One small headline leaped out at Butler.

WAVE OF POISON CASES SAYS SUPT. HADLEY

The parrot screamed again. From the rear of the shop, silhouetted against dim electric light, a collarless proprietor shambled forward and looked at them with distaste.

"Two coffees, please."

"No coffee," snapped the proprietor, with a gleam of pleasure in his eves.

"Got any tea, then?"

The proprietor reluctantly admitted that he might have tea, and shambled away. Patrick Butler looked at Joyce.

"Well, me dear?" he asked as heartily as he could.

Joyce tried to speak, and couldn't.

Butler, studying her furtively, admitted to himself that she had stood the strain of the trial very well. He could remember one client, another woman, whose face had fallen in and whose hands—quite literally-had become a livid greenish-white.

Joyce, though under such intense nervous reaction that she could not keep her own hands still, had not aged or grov^oi ugly. Her eyes haunted him, the large grey eyes with the black lashes. Melting sleet-drops glistened against the tumbled black hair cut in the short bob. Her mouth, to Patrick Butler, was a sensual allure about which he as a sensible man must not think.

Then Joyce spoke quietly.

"You don't really believe I'm innocent, do you?"

Butler looked shocked.

"Come, now!" he urged her in a reproachful tone. "Don't you put your trust in British justice?"

"The jury acquitted you, acushla. They believed what you said. You're a free woman, free as air. What more do you want?"

"Is it ungrateful to want something more? Is it? I only. . . ."

The tea had arrived, momentarily checking conversation. Two thick white mugs, slopping a beverage like mud-coloured dishwater, were planked down on the table. Meanwhile, Butler had surreptitiously taken out his notecase under the table, fished out its contents of fifty or sixty pounds, and crushed the money into the palm of his hand.

"Now tell me, me dear," he soothed. "What are your future plans?"

"I don't know. I hadn't thought as far ahead."

"We-ell! But you must have money, you know. Of course, there's the legacy from Mrs. Taylor. . . ."

"I can't touch that, I'm afraid. I should see her face every time I spent any of it."

"A sentiment," Butler continued soothingly, "that does you credit. So if you'll just accept this," his clenched hand slid across the table, "from a well-meaning friend who. . . ."

Suddenly Joyce lost all control of her reflexes. There was a crash as her elbow knocked over the white cup, which cascaded its mud-coloured tea down beside the table. Joyce, catching herself up, regarded it with horror as though she had really committed a crime.

"I'm awfully sorry. But please don't offer me money. Please."

"Sure now, me dear, and 'twas only. . . ."

"Oh, stop it!" Joyce cried uncontrollably.

"Stop what?"

"Stop using that fake Irish accent. It's no more natural to you than Cockney or Lancashire. You didn't dare use it in court."

"Nolle prosequi. So-and-so you/" screamed the parrot, and sharpened its beak on the bars of the cage. Patrick Butler felt the blood rise in his head. Casually, temptingly, he slid the money inside the crumpled newspaper near her hand.

"I watched you in court," said Joyce. "Sometimes I thought you believed me, and then ... I didn't know. You're a wonderful lawyer, I know that. But you're really a romantic actor. You were acting and acting and acting."

Now the blood of anger buzzed in his ears.

"Isn't that rather ungrateful of you?" he asked.

"Yes, it is," admitted Joyce, with tears in her eyes. "But, when we first met at Holloway, you said you believed me."

"Naturally!"

"Afterwards you said ... if we wanted to preserve real truth, we often had to tell lies about small things. Then, later, there was that question of the door banging in the middle of the night."

"I never heard that story," he retorted truthfully, "until Alice Griffiths told it in the witness-box."

"But, Mr. Butler, there wasn't any door banging in the middle of the night! It was one of the big shutters upstairs; I went up and fastened it. After the first day of the trial, you told me to corroborate it in the witness-box."

Here Joyce's eyes, frantic with bewilderment, searched her companion's face in vain.

"Alice and Bill Griffiths," she insisted, "are honest people. Why did they tell that lie?"

"You ought to be glad they did. Miss Ellis. It saved your pretty neck."

"Then 5'ou don't believe I'm innocent? You never did?"

"I'll tell you," returned Butler, with brutal directness, "exactly what

I told Charlie Denham. You're as guilty as hell. Why don't you be reasonable and admit it?"

It was as though he had struck her in the face. There was a long silence.

"I see," Joyce murmured, and moistened dry lips.

Slowly, because her knees were shaking, she slid along the bench and stood up outside the booth. Without looking at Butler, she buttoned up the oilskin waterproof. Now she felt the trembling through her whole body. Joyce took two steps away, and suddenly turned.

"I worshipped you," she said. "I still do. I always will. But one day, maybe before very long, you're going to come to me and tell me you were wrong." Her voice rose piercingly. "And for God's sake don't say you're never wrong!"

Then she ran for the door.

The glass-panelled door banged. The parrot screamed again. As a draught swirled through the dingy coffee-room, the discarded newspaper flapped up and sank down on the seat opposite Butler. The closely wadded banknotes slid along into coflfee-stains. For a moment Butler did not touch them.

Curse and blast all women who made emotional scenes! Butler, though he felt an inexplicable twinge of conscience, could not understand Joyce. He sipped his tea, lukewarm as well as vile, and set down the cup. Angrily he snatched up the despised banknotes. Then he looked up, to find Charles Denham standing beside the booth.

"For the love of Mike," Butler burst out, "don't you start!"

"Start what?"

"How should I know? Anything!"

"Congratulations," murmured Denham, sliding into the seat opposite, "on the verdict."

"There's no call to congratulate me. I told you it would happen."

Despite Denham's calm tone, his dark eyes were glittering as they had glittered in the courtroom, and his nostrils were distended.

"What I began to tell you in court," he went on, "is that there's new evidence. Last night, while Joyce was still on trial, something else happened."

"Oh? WTiat happened?"

"You told me you didn't know Lucia Renshaw, who was in court yesterday. Do you know her husband? Dick Renshaw?"

"Never heard of him. Should I have?"

"Mr. Renshaw," Denham said, "was poisoned last night with another hea\7 dose of antimony. He died, in horrible agony, about three o'clock this morning. He was probably poisoned by the same person who killed Mrs. Taylor."

The old parrot screamed, flopping about in its cage with demoniac excitement. Patrick Butler, who had taken out a silver cigarette case and snapped on a lighter, sat motionless while he stared at Denham. Then he blew out the flame of the lighter.

"The same person . . . Look here, Charlie! Are the Renshaws your clients too?"

"Yes. Just as Mrs. Taylor was."

"And Renshaw's poisoned tool Do the police suspect anybody?"

"Yes. Lucia Renshaw herself. And I'm bound to admit," Denham averted his eyes, "the evidence looks very black against her. There'll probably—well, there'll probably be an arrest."

Butler smote his fist on the table.

"Oh, bejasus!" he exclaimed in sheer ecstasy. "Do you mean I can go into court and kick the police's behinds again? In more or less the same poison case?"

"Pat, not so fast! Don't you see the point of all tliis?"

Denham smiled. From the moment of Joyce Ellis's acquittal, he had become a very different person from the haggard, haunted young man of the past weeks. He was again his pleasant, quiet, unobtrusive self. Yet about him there was a sense of strain—perhaps a new strain—even when he smiled.

"Joyce," he pointed out grimly, "certainly didn't poison Dick Renshaw. And, in my opinion," he hesitated, "the beautiful Lucia didn't either. We're in the middle of a worse mess than we ever thought. Look here!"

From beside him Denham picked up the crumpled newspaper, flattened it on the table, and indicated again that small headline: WAVE OF POISON CASES SAYS SUPT. HADLEY

"Don't bother to read the item," Denham advised. "I've got secret information that isn't printed here. I got it from Dr. Fell." "Dr. Fell?" "You've heard, I think, of Dr. Gideon Fell? He was at the trial too.

If you'd ever turned round and looked behind you, you'd have seen him."

Butler was ruffled. He put away cigarette case and lighter.

"Would you mind telling me," he requested, "just what in blazes you're talking about?"