Fog of Doubt (24 page)

(‘Fog useful after all—lead old James up garden about fog—plan not affected either way by fog—leave girl in car—close door of hall—couldn't see anyway—…' The fog would keep Thomas Evans out of the way for a longer period, but then the crime had been planned for much earlier, no doubt; for a quarter past nine, perhaps, as soon as Matilda Evans went upstairs; it was Rosie's late arrival that had kept them back till almost the last moment. ‘Even so—all not lost—arrive at house—no light in nursery—plan abandoned—telephone call an unexplained hoax.…')

At five to one, his lordship looked up at the clock beneath the public gallery and said civilly to S'Will that if it suited
him
, perhaps this would be a convenient moment to adjourn? Sir William, who knew all about the Judge's digestive troubles during the course of a murder trial said yes, certainly, m'lord, of course, of course. Tedward awoke from a sort of dream of pain and stupor and, at a touch on his arm, rose to his feet. His lordship gathered up the black cap; it lay, a narrow, folded square, through the ring of his thumb and forefinger, falling equally across his palm and the back of his hand. He bowed to the court and the court, including a great many people who had no call to do so, since he was not addressing his courtesies to them, bowed back. The Sheriff hitched up his fur-edged gown and stood aside at the door and his lordship bustled through. He thought, I hope to goodness they've laid on something reasonable for my lunch. The prison officers touched Ted-ward on the arm again and he turned with them and plunged below; they had laid on something very reasonable for
him
at any rate, and he ate it, all alone in his narrow, tiled cell, at the tiny table, perched on the single, small wooden chair. The smell of dust and disinfectant pervaded all.

In the end, they had all gone wretchedly and self-consciously down to the Garden of Remembrance and deposited Rosie's ashes in an arbitrarily chosen spot. For a moment she came to the door of his cell and said that she was too utterly
mis
. to see him cooped up there, and to think that it was ackcherly, let's face it, her who had put him there; and she put out her hand to him and he clutched at it, and saw that it was a hand of ashes, really, of pale, pink and white, feathery ash, like cigarette ash, that broke and fell the moment he touched it. Oh, well, he thought, scrubbing away the vision from his aching eyes, what the hell!—in a few weeks time I shall be dead and out of it. But he thought again, with bitter pain, that Rosie had been like this vision of the ashen hand; you thought that she was real and you put out your hand in faith, to her reality and her loveliness; and she fell away to dirt and ashes at your touch.

It was extraordinary, it was fantastic, even after all they had been through during the various appearances, both of Thomas and of Tedward, at the Magistrate's court, to be having lunch during the adjournment interval of Tedward's trial—to be sitting in a restaurant, eating their lunch as though they were ordinary people, jostled against by ordinary people, whose eyes would have popped out of their heads had they known that these were important witnesses at the trial of Dr. Edwards—
you
know, that chap that done that Frenchman in, hit him on the head with a mastoid mallet, just like what they must've used on our Ernie in hospital, and I'm sure if I'd've know what they did there, hammering away at the pore child with a great sort of a hammer like that, I'd've never have let him go.… Cockie sat with them; he was being called, in his private capacity, as a witness to the scene on the night of Rosie's death. ‘Yes, I know you've already given evidence about it, Tilda, and probably they'll ask Thomas too, when they resume this afternoon; but they have to get what everyone says—not just a selected few of the people who were there. There might be discrepancies.' He broke off as the waitress came round with their plates of chicken casserole. ‘It looks like boiled handkerchiefs,' said Matilda. ‘Well, never mind.…' When the girl had gone, she said: ‘You're sure they won't ask you about—later on?'

‘I shall testify to being the last person to see Rosie alive,' said Cockie briefly; and once again wished to God they would not all feel sorry for him because he had been the one to get up and go away and leave Rosie to die. He said, coldly: ‘Her name must come up a good deal, and there has to be formal evidence as to why she's not here to testify. That's all.'

‘If they ask you what she said about Tedward …?' said Thomas hesitantly.

‘I've told you, they won't ask me; they can't.'

Matilda sat staring down at her untouched plate. ‘Just if they did, Cockie—you wouldn't say …? I mean, it would be the end of Tedward, if that was said, flat out in court.'

‘I daresay Cockie would get round it,' said old Mrs. Evans; she flashed him a smile that had stood her in good stead throughout her life—a smile that said that men were so clever and strong and kind that all one had to do was just rely on them, and everything would be all right. ‘Cockie doesn't want poor Tedward to suffer, any more than any of us.'

‘You are all very pig-headed,' said Cockie, crossly. ‘What the soldier said is not evidence, and what Rosie said to me is not evidence because she did not say it in the presence of the accused; they can't ask me, and that's flat.'

‘You told Inspector Charlesworth,' said Melissa in a resentful voice; honestly, thought Cockie, seldom could an apparent murderer have been so loyally defended by the witnesses for the Crown. ‘My dear child, the police hear, and act upon, a great many things that can't be produced in court. The rules of evidence are peculiar to themselves.'

Thomas wound strings of stewed chicken round his fork and put the resultant bundle back on his plate, in disgust. ‘What about a “dying deposition”, Cockie. That doesn't apply?'

‘The whole point about a dying deposition is that it must have been made in the knowledge that one was going to die; the law assumes that at such a time, a man will speak the truth.'

Thomas put his knife and fork together and thrust the plate away from him. He said: ‘Yes, I see. And of course we don't know whether or not Rosie knew she was going to die.'

‘The fact that at the last moment she did tell the truth,' said Cockie, ‘does seem to suggest that she did.'

The choice of puddings was narrow and all of them were horrible. ‘Could we have some biscuits and cheese, please, and the coffee at the same time; and we're in rather a hurry.' To Cockie, Matilda said, keeping her voice low so that the closely crowded tables about them might not hear what they were saying, ‘How does one know, Cockie, that that was the truth?'

‘Why in God's name should she have told a lie?'

‘Charlesworth's brilliant idea,' said Thomas, ‘was that Tedward killed Rosie—or let her kill herself with the stuff—to prevent her saying just what, in the end, she did say.'

‘Poor Tedward,' said Matilda; ‘who would have given Rosie the sun and the moon and the stars!'

‘It was because I told him about all her lovers,' said Melissa in a low voice. Her nervous fingers fiddled ceaselessly with the corner of her napkin where the hem was coming undone.

Matilda was sorry for the girl; she looked so white and worn-out, nowadays, with dark shadows under her eyes and a look of cowed despair that was dreadful in one so young. Thomas made matters no better; he was not unkind, but he could not get out of his mind that she was the instrument through which had been shattered for ever such last little shreds of his happy illusions as had been left to him; and he could not be kind. Matilda said: ‘If Tedward could have killed Rosie, Melissa, it wouldn't have been because of that: or it wouldn't have been like that—thought out and planned and put into deliberate operation. If he had hated her because of what you said, he might have raised his hand against her then, in the moment of the first shock. But he didn't hate her; he may have ceased to love her, I think in a sort of way he did—but he didn't begin to hate her. You were there—you could see that.'

‘Charlesworth could say,' suggested Cockie, shrugging, ‘that it was a combination of the two. He wouldn't have killed her, even to save his own neck, because he loved her. But, having ceased to love her—he might have killed her.'

‘Except that it wasn't a case of saving his own neck,' said Thomas. He reached for the bill and glanced at it and folded it over again on itself, but he still had no idea what the figures were. ‘All Rosie could say was that he
had
come into the house before she did; in other words, that it was possible for him to have killed the man. That wasn't going to convict him; the police still had to build up a case, which they'd probably have built up anyway, because nobody was going to just take Rosie's word for it, if she'd said that he didn't go into the house ahead of her. And rightly so.' He unfolded the bill again and this time fished in a pocket for the small roll of crumpled notes which was his fashion of carrying money about. ‘Rosie would have lied like a trooper for Tedward, if she'd wanted to; and the thing is that she would never have let him go through this, she'd have contradicted herself right and left to save him. And she could have; nobody knew anything about that last hour or so, except Rosie. She could have “remembered” that Tedward was only in the house a split second before she was, or she could have made up something about the telephone call which would have made that trick impossible.' The waitress brought his change, and he dropped a couple of coins back on to the plate and got to his feet. ‘Whatever it was that made Rosie say that about Tedward at the last minute, she would have told lies to save him in the end. Of all people in the world, Tedward was the very last to have wanted her to die.' His arms flailed as he heaved himself into his coat. He said, irritably, ‘Come on—we'll be late.' Everyone else had been ready for five minutes at least.

Mr. Justice Rivett looked at the clock in his room across the corridor from the court, and sighed and had recourse to his Neurotic Box; in the corridor, counsel and their colleagues settled their wigs so as to be comfortable for the next two hours, having recently been notified that the habit of lifting them off in court and wriggling them on again, really did not look well; up in the gallery
hoi polloi
pushed and craned, below them the fashionably dressed ladies squeezed themselves not much more decorously into their inadequate seating space. The jury, who had broken up into groups during their lunch in the jury-room and so made friends, filed back into their places; it was odd how familiar the court seemed when they thus returned to it. Cockrill and Melissa and old Mrs. Evans returned to their weary wait in the corridor, and Matilda to her place in the body of the court. An usher stood at the ready with Thomas at his side, waiting to go back to the witness-box; in the dock, a prison officer was alert to give the signal for Tedward to start up the narrow stairs, as though his slow ascent were some nightmare sporting event. Three loud raps at the judge's entrance, the court scrambled to its feet, stood, bowed, sat down again; and, unleashed, Tedward began mechanically to stump up the stairs, and Thomas to clatter across the floor to the witness-box. Sir William gathered a handful of papers in one hand, tucked up one heel against the bench behind him, and asked another question as though the last had been answered just a moment ago. Outside, the January darkness slowly descended upon the great dome, and along the oak panelling round the recesses of the walls, strip lighting burst into its fluorescent glow. Outside, the newsvendors chalked up in red on their board-papers, ‘MAIDA VALE MURDER CASE: MRS. EVANS IN THE BOX,' and round the arched doorway a little crowd of early home-goers assembled in the hopes of distinguishing her by her picture in the papers, as she walked down the steps; or of seeing the great black gates open and a dark closed-in van drive away with the murderer and seven other inferior criminals caged up in eight tiny boxy compartments inside. In fact, so distinguished a malefactor would have a car all to himself: a discreet dark car with drawn blinds, slipping in silent anonymity through the byways to Brixton; but they were not to know that and they confidently reported at home having ‘seen the murderer'—Mum and Dad and little Ruby were thrilled; and it did make something to talk about after the uneventful office day.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

W
E
are like the ten little nigger boys, Melissa,' said old Mrs. Evans, sitting chilled and weary on the bench outside the court. ‘Only you and me left now.' She quoted: ‘One got frizzled up and then there was one,' and added thoughtfully that in America they did call it being ‘grilled' she believed.

‘Call what being grilled?' said Melissa absently, too much appalled by the thought of the ordeal to come, to pay much attention to anything dotty old Mrs. Evans could have to say.

‘Being cross-examined,' said Mrs. Evans.

‘It's all right if you just tell the truth,' said Melissa stoutly.

‘
And
the-whole-truth;
and
nothing-but-the-truth.'

‘You're all right if you've got nothing to hide,' said Melissa again.

‘Nothing to hide: but then, who in this world has nothing to hide?'

‘Well, you for one, Mrs. Evans, I should think,' said Melissa, humouring the old thing.

Mrs. Evans looked down at the little chips of diamond and sapphire, sparkling in her rings. She shifted her tack. ‘Who do
you
think, Melissa, really killed that man?'

Melissa shrugged sullenly. ‘The police say it was Dr. Edwards; isn't that enough?'

‘Not for me,' said Mrs. Evans. ‘They said it was my son, Thomas, a little while ago; but it wasn't, after all.'

‘Well, who is there left?' said Melissa. She had brought a magazine with her, hoping to be allowed to read it in peace and—now that she had decided on her plan of campaign—put the coming ordeal out of her mind till the moment arrived. Now, however, on this cold, hard bench, almost within reach of the glass swing doors behind which an innocent man stood in peril of his life, it seemed sort of—indecent—to be reading a lot of tripe about girls marrying their bosses and countesses improving their complexions, and the new tulip neck. She said: ‘Anyway, they'll never convict Dr. Edwards, so what does it matter?'