The Chequer Board (35 page)

He gathered his papers together. “Members of the jury, I have finished now. Upon the evidence before you, you have no option but to find the prisoner Not Guilty of the crime of murder. And, gentlemen, I do not think that you need fear for the consequences of that verdict.”

He sat down, and the Judge began to speak. The summing up of Mr Justice Lambourn came like a breath of clean, cold air into the court. He told the jury to put out of their minds the somewhat novel interpretation of the law that they had heard from counsel, and to listen to him. It was not disputed by the defence that the deceased man, Michael Seddon, had met his death at the hands of the prisoner. Three verdicts were therefore open to them—murder, manslaughter, or homicide in self-defence. If on the evidence that they had heard they came to the conclusion that the prisoner intended to kill the deceased man when he went into this struggle, or at any time in the struggle, that would constitute malice aforethought, and it would be their duty to find the prisoner guilty of the
crime of murder. Alternatively, if they should think that there was no such malice, but that the deceased met his death through carelessness or negligence on the part of the prisoner, then they should return the verdict that the prisoner was guilty of manslaughter. If they should consider that the prisoner was convinced during the struggle that Mr Seddon intended to kill him and that the only way in which he could avoid death was to kill Mr Seddon, then the proper verdict for them to return would be homicide in self-defence. No other verdicts were open to them. No other considerations should be allowed to enter into their deliberations.

The jury retired for a quarter of an hour, came back into court, and returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. Mr Justice Lambourn sentenced the corporal to six months’ penal servitude.

Mr Turner finished reading the dusty, faded carbon copy and sat down for a few minutes in the dim lobby, turning it over in his hands. Duggie Brent had got away with it, thanks to a counsel with a sense of the dramatic who had made the most of an indifferent case. Presently Mr Viner looked in on him. “Finished?” he enquired.

“Aye,” said Mr Turner. “Pretty lucky, wasn’t he?”

Mr Viner took the transcript and the counsel’s notebook from him. “I suppose you might say so,” he said thoughtfully. “Of course, it was in the middle of the war and, say what you like, the emotional aspect does come in, even with the Judge—the counsel who was a Commando and a paratrooper himself, and all that. But really, you know,
simple people doing the best they can haven’t got much to fear from the law.”

“I suppose that’s right,” said Mr Turner conventionally. He thought otherwise himself and from his own experience, but he did not say so. “Very interesting, it was,” he said. “Thanks for letting me have a read at it.”

The young man was pleased. “I thought you’d like to see it,” he observed. “It is an interesting trial. A bit out of the ordinary.”

“Aye,” said Mr Turner. He turned towards the door, and then stopped. “There’s just one thing,” he said. “I’m trying to find out what Duggie Brent is doing now. Do you think this counsel that he had, this Major Carter, would have kept in touch with him?”

Viner stared at him. “I thought I told you,” he replied. He glanced down at the dog-eared, dirty manuscript book in his hand. “This was the last brief Carter ever took. He dropped with his parachute party at Arnhem and held out at the bridgehead with his party for several days. Then he was taken prisoner. He was shot next day while trying to escape. Too bad that had to happen. He had a great future before him in these criminal cases.”

“Aye,” said Mr Turner heavily. “Too bad!”

T
HE
months of August and September slipped past without incident for Mr Turner. He went and showed his face in the office most days, but Cereal Products Ltd. got little value out of him. Most of his time was spent in peddling samples of his cheroots in various tobacconists’ shops around London. He was obsessed with the idea that his extravagance in going out to Burma must not leave his wife the poorer; whatever else he did, he must cover the cost of that journey before strength failed. And strength was failing, patently and rather fast. He was plagued with headaches and with fits of dizziness. He was beginning to find reading difficult, but it seemed hardly worth while bothering with glasses now; it was pleasanter to sit and listen to the wireless. He had increasing difficulty with his right hand, and it was a relief to him when Mollie started to do up his collar for him every morning, and to tie his tie. And he was losing weight.

He was still interested in his search for Duggie Brent, but he did not get on very well with it. With Mr Viner’s help he made contact with the solicitors who had briefed Major P. C. Carter for the defence of the paratrooper,
and learned from them, after much searching of old dusty files of letters, that Brent’s father had been a butcher in Romsey. He set out one Saturday morning in the little car, with Mollie driving, and went to Romsey, where he made enquiries first at the post office and later at the police station. He came back empty-handed. Duggie Brent’s father had died two years previously, and there were no relatives in the district. Nobody knew anything about Duggie Brent; it was a long time since he had been seen in Romsey, though his trial was remembered well enough. His paternity order had not been paid for a considerable time, for the girl had married and had suffered it to lapse. Mr and Mrs Turner had a nice drive down into the country, but returned to Watford very little wiser.

Over supper that evening Turner said, “There’s one thing we never did. We could have got on to the solicitor what settled up the father’s will, and that. He must have been in touch with Brent at the time.”

His wife said, “Why not leave it be? He’ll be all right. He got off from his trial, so he’s just the same as any other man, now.”

“He didn’t get off,” Mr Turner said. “He got six months. But anyway, I’d kind of like to know.”

“Seems like a waste of time, if you ask me,” she said.

He was annoyed, because he knew that what she said was true. “Well, what of it?” he enquired. “My time’s my own, ’n if I like to spend it this way, why can’t I? I got little enough to come.”

She said quietly, “Okay, Jackie—please yourself. Like me to do a letter for you, then?”

She was falling into the habit of doing all his correspondence
for him on the typewriter, and her sister Laura was seeing a good deal less of her in consequence. Writing for Mr Turner was becoming a matter of increasing difficulty as his infirmity progressed.

He could still sign his letters, but his signature was getting very bad. Taking his letters was for her an exercise in shorthand typing, and this itself was useful to her for practice.

She wrote a letter for him to the police at Romsey, reminding them of their visit, and asking if they could find out the name of the solicitor who had wound up the estate of Mr. Brent, butcher. In a few days they got an answer, and wrote again to Messrs Haslett and Peabody, asking for the address of Mr Douglas Theodore Brent. The reply they received read:

Haslett and Peabody,
Romsey,                
Wilts.                 

D
EAR
S
IR
,

We regret we have no knowledge of the present whereabouts of Mr Douglas Brent. The last address we have, dated April 1946, was,

c/o Badcock’s Entertainments Ltd.
               Rising Sun Hotel,
                              Edgware, Middlesex.

Yours truly,               
H. O. H
ASLETT

This brought the matter well into the sphere of Mr Turner. Edgware is a satellite of London not very far
from Watford, and though Mr Turner did not know the Rising Sun, he had no objection whatsoever to making the saloon bar of that house the object of a journey. His wife drove him there one evening early in September, two days after the arrival of this letter, resigned to an evening of forced cheerfulness and beer.

The Rising Sun Hotel proved to be an old house on the outskirts of what once had been a small country town. It was now surrounded by a great area of modern little houses, dormitories for a part of the huge mass of London workers. Amongst these modern shops and houses the Rising Sun stood gaunt and shabby in old dirty brick, soon to be pulled down, no doubt, to make place for a more streamlined hostelry. Behind it was a field, or parking place, now empty and dirty. One or two small caravans, some piles of timber, and a circus trailer jacked up, with one wheel off, showed that an entertainment business might have its headquarters there.

“Aye,” said the barmaid presently. “Badcock’s Circus. They come here in the winter. They’re out on the road now, of course. Come in for the winter about the end of October they do, and go out again about Easter.”

Mr Turner said, “I used to know a chap was with them one time, chap called Duggie Brent. Is he with them still?”

She wrinkled her brows. “I don’t remember … I’ve only been here eighteen months, you see.” And then she said, “Oh, wait now. Was he one of them that did the Wall of Death?”

“I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “I dunno what he did with them. I knew him in the war.”

“There was a Brent …” she said. “That’s right.
Duggie Brent. Married he was, wasn’t he? Chap with red hair, short and stocky, like?”

“That’s the boy,” said Mr Turner eagerly. “Is he with them still?”

“I dunno,” said the barmaid doubtfully. “I don’t think so. He hasn’t been in here for a long time. Over a year, I’d say.”

Mollie asked, “What was his wife like?”

The girl said, “Dark—slight—wore her hair in a bang. Used to take the money in the box for the Wall of Death. Phyllis, her name was.”

Mr Turner said, “This Wall of Death—that what they do with motor bikes?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Going round and round. He was one of the riders. But I don’t think he’s doing it now.” She called across the room. “Eddie, is that red-headed boy, Duggie Brent, still on the Wall of Death?”

“Nah,” said Eddie. “Left at the end of last season, ’n never turned up for this. Monty Burke and Dick Fletcher are doing the riding now.”

“How do you think I could find out where he went to?” asked Mr Turner. “I’d like to see him again.”

The girl asked shrewdly, “He been doing anything?”

He shook his head. “I’m not a copper. I live over at Watford, and a pal told me this was his address. I just slipped over for a beer, ’n to try and see him. We was together in the war.”

“That so?” she said. “Well, I dunno, I’m sure. Mr Badcock might know.”

“He here now?”

She shook her head. “They’re out on the road now,
won’t be back before the end of next month.” She raised her voice. “Eddie, where they playing this week?”

“Thame,” said Eddie. “Abingdon on Monday. Newbury after that.”

Mollie had become strangely patient with Mr Turner, and raised no objection to another day spent in the little car, bouncing at forty miles an hour, hour after hour, down the long arterial roads in search of Mr Badcock. They found him after lunch in a grass field outside the small Oxfordshire town of Abingdon, among the hurly-burly of his swings and roundabouts and flip-flops and dodgem cars, and the Wall of Death, and Sawing Through a Woman, and the many tables on which you roll a penny for a girl to pick it up and drop it in a bucket by her side. Mr Badcock was a small, harassed man in a bowler hat, but he was affable enough.

“Brent?” he said. “Duggie Brent? I know—Wall of Death. Left last season he did, when we shut down for the winter, never come back for this.” Mr Turner asked if he knew an address. The little man shook his head. “I got a couple o’ letters waiting for him, been waiting for months. I been meaning to give ’em back to the postman some day, but I put ’em away somewhere.”

“Eh,” said Mr Turner, “it was just a thought I had. I knew he was with you, one time.”

“That’s right, up till last October. He didn’t show up in March for his job.”

Mr Turner asked, “Did you expect him?”

“Well, not really. Wife was going to have a baby, and the ladies, they get funny when they get like that. Oh, thanks.” He accepted a cigarette; Mr Turner lit it for
him. “Funny thing about that Wall of Death,” he said. “Best attraction I’ve got. The public, they think all the time he’s going over the top, see? The riders’ wives, they get all of a twitter, even the real hard pieces—straight they do. But the riders themselves, they just get bored. Round and round, a quarter of an hour, six times a day. They get proper fed up with it.” He turned to Mollie. “You’ve seen it, I suppose?”

She shook her head. “I’d like to.”

He pulled out a heavy watch from his waistcoat pocket. “One starting in about ten minutes,” he said. “Sorry I can’t help about your friend. If you see him, say I’ve got a couple o’ letters for him.”

They went and stood on the little gallery overlooking the vertical track of the Wall of Death, watched the riders start their motorcycles in the basin-shaped arena down below and ride up on the wall in a crescendo of open exhausts. Round and round they went, weaving in and out together, up and down the wall. Between the turns Mr Turner studied the performers. They were rather florid, beery-looking young men, professionally reckless, well aware that their performance looked a great deal more alarming than it really was. It was a job that a Commando or a paratrooper would have turned to naturally, Mr Turner thought, full of bravado and noise and glamour. It was a job that a Commando or a paratrooper soon got tired of, if Mr Badcock was to be believed. Studying the performance with a critical eye, Mr Turner did believe him. Duggie Brent had been there and had gone, nobody knew where.

They came down from the gallery at the conclusion of
the act, dazed with the noise and rather tired. There was nothing left to stay for. They went to a café and had a cup of tea, and drove back to Watford.

Mr Turner was very, very tired when they got home. He had a couple of sausages and a pint of beer for supper, with some bread and cheese, and went to bed at ten.

In the middle of the night his wife woke up with a start. In the dim light she saw him sitting upright in his bed; he seemed to be shivering. She was instantly awake, and Said, “What’s up, Jackie?”