Fog of Doubt (14 page)

‘Perhaps you'd like to just go over that again.…'

‘I wouldn't like it at all, but if it's necessary to your case against me, by all means let's. I got in at—whatever time it was; about ten minutes after they'd found the man dead. I asked or they told me, I can't remember which, about sending for the police; they pointed out that the telephone cord had been ripped out by the fall and they hadn't been able to ring. I said perhaps one of us had better go round by car and Dr. Edwards said
he
would. As you know, he fetched up at the police station about ten minutes later, which further confirms the madly important point about what time I got home. A police sergeant came back with him and took over. That's all I know.'

‘You didn't—as the owner of the house and all that—you didn't think of coming yourself for the police?'

‘What the bloody hell did it matter who fetched the police?' said Thomas, furiously.

‘It didn't matter a bit, of course, as far as the police were concerned. But why
did
n't you go?'

‘I haven't a clue why I didn't go. Tedward said he'd go and that's all there was to it.'

‘It wasn't because you'd put your car away in the garage and didn't want to get it out again?'

Thomas was absolutely silent for a moment. He repeated at last: ‘It was simply because Edwards offered to go.'

‘Had you in fact put your car away?'

‘I always put it into the garage when I get home.'

The garage at the Maida Vale house ran in under the kitchen on the left of the front door, at the basement level of the house. The ground rises up from Maida Vale to St. John's Wood and the houses there are built into the side of the rise, over semi-basements, with the front door up some steps, fifteen or twenty feet above the level of the wide thoroughfare of Maida Vale, which forms an extension of the Edgware Road, through to Kilburn. A straight drive led into the garage, across the pavement. Charlesworth said, slowly and steadily: ‘On this occasion—did you, in fact, Dr. Evans, put your car away as soon as you arrived?' As Thomas once again hesitated, he stopped him altogether. ‘Doctor, I think perhaps at this stage I ought to caution you. You seem to be finding these questions difficult and the last thing we want is to trap you in any way. You've got a right, if you want to, to refuse to answer anything more without your solicitor present; anything you do answer from now on will be taken down and may be used in evidence.' He added miserably: ‘I'm sorry to have to do this,' and ground the butt of his cigarette into the ash tray. Mr. Charlesworth was really a very nice young man.

‘That's all right,' said Thomas. ‘I realized what it was all leading up to. You're going to charge me?'

‘That depends on the answers to one or two more questions. I want to know whether you went to your car again that night; and I want to know whether anyone else went to it; and I want to know what happened to the shoes you were wearing when you came home.'

Thomas was terribly pale—terribly pale. Charlesworth said: ‘Take it easy. I don't want to rattle you.'

Thomas summoned up a smile. ‘Thank you very much, Inspector. You're being very decent about it. I'd better say first that of course I didn't do this thing. As for the rest, no—I didn't go out to my car again that night. I put it in the garage before I went into the house and nobody else can have gone to it because I'm the only person who has a key to the garage—I handed it over to the police later on, that evening. And I handed my shoes over too; we all did. We'd been puddling around in the blood, I suppose and they were messing about with footprints and things.' He added, lightly: ‘I suppose you've still got them, because I haven't had them back. Wanted as exhibits at my trial, I wouldn't be surprised?'

‘Together with the mat from the front of your car,' said Charlesworth. ‘Marked with Raoul Vernet's blood. And you say that after you got home at ten to ten that night, you didn't go back to your car.'

Matilda was not a fainter. She wished very often that she was, she wished she could swoon and cling and have hysterics and be made a fuss of and get it all out of her system that way; but, worse luck, she was one of those who, from the first impact of the blow, are calm and clear and impress everybody by their fortitude (or callousness), and only afterwards pay a price in jangled nerves and exhaustion of spirit and pain and helplessness and a bleak despair, that comes too late for sympathy or help. ‘I'm sorry,' said Charlesworth, looking at her white, still face. ‘It just had to be, that's all.'

‘What does
he
say?'

‘Not very much.' He dragged forward one of the big, square, pale-green drawing-room chairs. ‘Do sit down, Mrs. Evans. I'm afraid it's a shock for you.'

She sat down on the arm of the chair. ‘Do you mean to say he doesn't deny it?'

‘Well, he said he hadn't done it; but he said it as a sort of formula, he made no secret but that it was just “for the record”. When we charged him he just said that there wasn't any point in saying anything at this stage. Which,' admitted Charlesworth, ‘was quite true.'

‘But what in God's name have you got against him? Merely that he was driving about in the fog.…'

‘Mrs. Evans—he put his car away as soon as he got back to the house. He got some of Raoul Vernet's blood on his shoes—well, that's easy enough, most of you did; but traces of blood were found on the mat in your husband's car. How did they get there, if he didn't go back to his car after you found the body?'

‘Well, the next day_____'

‘We collected all your shoes that night; and also the mat under the driving seat of the car. That blood must have been there before he came into the house at ten to ten.'

Matilda was silent, sitting quietly on the arm of the pale-green chair, against the glow of the coral-coloured curtains. ‘He
must
have gone out to the car some time, that's all.'

‘He himself says he didn't. Only he has a key—is that right?'

‘Yes. The garage is left unlocked all day.'

‘He had locked it after garaging the car. And it's he who says he didn't go back.'

‘Well, he just must have.'

‘When, for example?' said Charlesworth.

‘I don't know when. We were all messing about all over the place after we found poor Raoul.…'

‘Did
you
see your husband go out to the garage? Or did anyone else?'

‘No, but … Well, we all dispersed. Melissa put on one of her well-known acts, though what it was to do with her I don't know, she didn't even know Raoul, she'd never heard his name unless I happened to mention it to her that morning, which I can't remember whether I did; but anyway she threw a drama and I got Rosie to take her into the office and quiet her down. Yes, and it was at the same time that I took Gran upstairs, because I remember saying to Rosie, “You cope with Melissa while I take Granny back to bed.” And Tedward had gone for the police; so that would leave Thomas alone, with poor Raoul's body. Perhaps that's when he went to the garage?'

‘If so, why doesn't he say so? And anyway, what for?'

‘He may have gone to put the car away.'

‘He says he put it away when he arrived back. He always does, doesn't he?'

‘He may have forgotten—he may not have put it away this particular time.'

‘That would suggest that he knew that this
was
a particular time! Why depart from his usual procedure?—unless, of course, he knew what was going on in the hall.'

‘
I
don't know,' said Matilda, wearily. She added: ‘He's probably “shielding” somebody: they always do in books and he's just the sort of person, the silly chump.'

‘They may in books,' said Charlesworth. ‘But not in real life, they don't. I mean, people shield people, even murderers; but not to the extent of getting themselves hanged for it—you can take it from me! And anyway, who would he be protecting?' He added, in alarm: ‘Now, don't
you
start!'

She gave him a rather wavering smile. ‘Well,
I
don't know, Mr. Charlesworth; it's all the most horrible, ghastly, fantastic mistake and I suppose it'll all be all right in the end; but meanwhile …' She got up off her chair-arm. ‘Can I see him? Where is he?'

Thomas was at the police station where he would remain for the night until he should appear before a magistrate next day and be taken off to Brixton to await his trial; in a narrow little cell, white tiled, with a tiny window of thick glass high up in the wall and a tiny peep-hole in the door. A narrow wooden bench ran down one side and was the only furniture in the room; four blankets were neatly folded at one end of it—one for a pillow—and at the other was the huh-ha, its chain dangling outside the cell so that he might not be tempted to tear it down and strangle himself with it. A suicidal drunk howled forlornly in the cell across the way and now and again slow footsteps clomped down the corridor and a voice called out to stop that bloody row; Thomas knew that as the footsteps passed his own cell, an eye was applied for a moment to the peep-hole—that there was no corner or crevice of the cell in which he could feel himself really to be alone. Now and again he wondered if the death of Raoul Vernet had really been worth all this; but he knew that it had.

Next day at the police court, he was allowed a few words with Matilda, sitting gripping her hand on a hard wooden bench with other prisoners also muttering to their friends and lovers, in little groups round the room; a bare, cold room stinking of dust and disinfectant with an ink-marked table in the centre and the wooden benches all round the walls. Afterwards he was in a small courtroom with a magistrate in plain clothes at a huge desk on the dais, under the lovely carved Royal Arms in their colour and gold; himself in a little, raised dock, fenced in with modestly ornamental wrought iron, the whole so narrow that he could hardly stand up in it, let alone sit down on the six-inch bench. It was all very informal. The court buzzed with ceaseless comings and goings and murmurings and mutterings, outside in the corridor where witnesses waited like hospital patients on benches against the walls, the chattering rose to a deafening crescendo and a very new young policeman put his curly head out through the door and shouted, ‘Quiet,
please!
' and drew in his head again with a mock-bridling movement, winking at his colleagues: there!—what do you think of that for a first effort, eh? Under some misapprehension, the door from the cells was opened and a prisoner was marched in, looking scared and strung-up, and hurriedly turned round and marched out again more bewildered than ever. Mr. Charlesworth lounging against the wall behind the witness box was suddenly galvanized into action, stepped briskly into the box and embarked upon a brief recital of events at the station the day before. ‘… the prisoner was then charged and he said, “There's no point my saying anything at this stage, is there?”' He was silent, his hands on the edge of the square witness box, his arms rigid, looking alertly into the magistrate's face.

The magistrate shifted at his desk. ‘Yes. Now, Doctor Evans—are there any questions you'd like to ask?'

Thomas looked round him vaguely. ‘Well, no, I don't think so.' He caught Charlesworth's eyes, and Charlesworth almost imperceptibly shook his head. ‘No, definitely not, thank you.' A funny place to be looking for guidance—but still!

‘Do you apply for legal aid?'

Do I apply for legal aid? What the hell's the use, thought Thomas, of asking me questions I can't properly understand. I suppose they're so used to their jargon that they can't imagine everyone else isn't. Did legal aid mean free legal aid, or what? ‘I'd just like to see my solicitor, I suppose,' he said to the magistrate. (Poor dear Mr. Burden—how was he going to like
this?
)

And it was all over and he was being whisked off through the prisoner's waiting-room, down the stairs to the cells again; there to wait for a full complement of prisoners before the van drove them all off to Brixton gaol. He caught one parting glimpse of Matilda's face, stretched with a palpable effort into a smile; her eyes gazed lovingly after him through a mist of tears. He could not know how gallant and small he looked between his two tall escorts, with his pale face and untidy, faded gold hair, his hands thrust down angrily into the pockets of his jacket. He flung her back a smile and she raised one hand with the thumb stuck up and gave it a little uh-uh jerk, as though to say: It's O.K.! It's in the bag.

But it's me that's in the bag, thought Thomas, ruefully. It was not much fun.

It was a brisk November day. Cockie hugged his old mackintosh about him, jigging from one foot to the other to keep himself warm as he waited for Charlesworth to emerge from the police court. He appeared at last, with Sergeant Bedd. ‘Hal
lo
, Inspector. Just the chap I want to see.' He jerked his thumb over towards a pub. ‘Come on; we'll talk when we get there.' In the saloon bar, as yet fairly empty, he sat his guest down at a little round table with a raised brass rim round it, and asked what he would have. ‘Get us three bitters then, Bedd, will you, like a good chap? I want to talk to Mr. Cockrill.' To Cockie he said, in a phoney American accent, ‘I expect you're plenny mad with
me?
'

‘I've got no right to expect anything,' said Cockie. ‘I think you might have warned me before you actually charged him, but I suppose you had your reasons.'

‘It all happened so quickly; and it was after I saw you yesterday, I wasn't expecting to charge him; but when I got back from Maida Vale, they'd established this blood on the mat in the car—same group as the body and all that. What was I to do?'

‘I'm not complaining,' said Cockie. ‘It's just that it would have been easier for me to talk to Mrs. Evans and all that.' He reminded Charlesworth: ‘They're personal friends of mine.'