Prisoner at the Bar Page 11

  “Do you imagine that’s what we’ve really got to worry about right now?”

  “You worry about it because…”

  “Because the police think I killed Thompson and aren’t far short of arresting me.”

  “They can’t be. You didn’t do it.”

  They became silent.

  “If I am tried for the murder,” he said, “the evidence of our visits to the lane will come out in open court.” He waited for her to say something, but she was silent. “The only way of avoiding that is to persuade the police of the truth. They must be told about Elmer and check his evidence.”

  She spoke slowly. “I wish to God you’d done as I asked.”

  He failed to understand the reference. “How d’you mean?”

  “I begged and begged you not to tell the police we went to the lane. If you hadn’t told them, they’d never have discovered.”

  “They might have done…”

  “They wouldn’t. You weren’t going to listen to me, though. All that interested you were your own ideals.”

  A man did his duty, he thought, and then discovered that instead of respect he had earned himself only calumny. “But for your ideals, we wouldn’t have been within miles of the lane.”

  “You don’t seem to understand loyalty.”

  He did not answer as he had been going to. He suddenly felt sick at the knowledge that they were arguing with bitterness. “Katherine, for God’s sake, we’ve got to stop this.”

  She said nothing.

  “We must work out the future. I’ve no option but to tell the police, convince them that Elmer was present.”

  She let go of the steering wheel and put her hands in her lap. “Bob, please, don’t.”

  “You must understand,” he cried desperately.

  She switched on the engine. “I can’t do more than beg you,” she said. “But if you refuse to listen, I’m not going to suffer the degradation of Elmer’s learning from the police. I’ll tell him when I get back: it’s something I should have done, right at the beginning.” She bit her lower lip and tears welled up in her eyes.

  Ideals were an expensive luxury, he thought. Too goddamn expensive for the ordinary mortal.

  *

  Bladen rang the police station from chambers and asked to speak to Whicheck. Whicheck was out, but a detective constable said he thought the detective inspector would be back just after lunch.

  Bladen slumped back in his chair. He had to make the detective inspector realise Elmer’s true character — something one only understood after knowing Elmer for a time — so that Whicheck could at last appreciate what had happened in Lovers’ Lane.

  He looked at his watch. The time was just after twelve. He sorted through the briefs on his desk and picked out one, slipped off the red tape and opened it. The instructions said the plaintiff was alleging a broken contract and special damages of one hundred and twenty-five pounds. The defence denied that any single clause of the contact had been broken. There had been a statement of claim, a defence, and now he was being called upon to draft a reply. The paperwork could go on for months. He suddenly saw it all as so artificial, so insignificant when compared to the terrible things done to humans day in and day out. It became meaningless when compared to the growing guilt of an innocent man.

  He cursed himself, lit a cigarette, and pushed the brief to one side. There was small point in his trying to work if he filled his mind with self-pity. He stared at Wraight’s desk and wondered what woman the other was out with today? Wraight never suffered from complex emotional troubles: his approach to women and life was far too simple for that.

  At ten to one, he left chambers and went along to the club. He had three whiskies at the bar, drinking them quickly and with little pleasure. He went into the dining room and ate at the same table as two men he knew well. They tried to talk to him, but his answers were so short that soon they gave up — not before the elder had laughed and said that with so much mental concentration around it was obvious that someone was going to have to fork out a vast number of guineas for counsel’s opinion.

  Bladen left the club at a quarter to two and walked to the police station. The sun had vanished behind thick black-bellied clouds and the wind was strong and sharp, a reminder that the recent fine weather had been sufficiently unusual as to be unnatural. A few drops of rain fell as he crossed the road to the police station. An unhappy augury? Angrily, he asked himself whether he now had to rely on omens and soothsayer’s charms?

  Whicheck sent a message down to the general room to ask Mr. Bladen if he’d be kind enough to wait for a bit. Time passed. Bladen read the yellowing posters, lit a cigarette. Why was the wait so long? Was Whicheck trying to show who was boss now, to unnerve him? To hell with it, he’d clear off. But he didn’t.

  After a quarter of an hour, he was shown up to Whicheck’s room. Whicheck was not alone — Detective Sergeant Eastbrook was also present. Whicheck shook hands, but Eastbrook merely nodded and then took a notebook from his pocket and sat down on the chair behind and to the right of the desk.

  Bladen sat down in front of the desk. So they were really going to play it rough — first the long wait, then the ostentatious preparations to take notes of the coming interview. Had he been guilty, there would have been some point to these elementary moves: as it was, there was none. He recalled the line written by an extravagant French author: ‘The loudest sound in the world is the silent cry of the guilty conscience.’ “I want to tell…” he began.

  Whicheck interrupted him. “Mr. Bladen, it is my duty at this stage to tell you that a note will be made of all you say and it may be used in evidence.”

  “Presumably, then, I’m the prime suspect?”

  Whicheck did not answer.

  Bladen took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit a cigarette. It was madness. Kafka was stalking the land. He was innocent, yet his innocence was but a paper shield. The law was persecuting him because he had believed too implicitly in the law and justice. “I did not murder Thompson,” he said. He was shocked to hear his voice shake. God Almighty! The next thing would be he’d break out into a sweat. “I did not see Thompson that night, I did not see anyone. Even had I seen him as he came peeping, there’d have been nothing to send me into a rage because Mrs. Curson and I weren’t doing anything. Can you drag your minds up out of the dirt sufficiently to understand that? We were not making love.” He drew on the cigarette. Whicheck’s expression hadn’t altered. Would it have done so if the story had been different, cataloguing behaviour that would have left Havelock Ellis and Kinsey whistling with admiration?

  “You thought you saw a peeping Tom on the Monday?” asked Whicheck.

  “Yes. But there was no one.”

  “Did Mr. Curson know you were there with Mrs. Curson?”

  “Of course he didn’t. But just because we were in a place called Lovers’ Lane, it doesn’t mean we were making love.” He paused a moment, then told them what he had come to say. Whicheck only occasionally interrupted to put a question.

  “The hair couldn’t have come from me or Mrs. Curson, so it had to come from someone else, someone who in the casual course of the day could have gathered it up. Have you ever stopped to think that someone must be Elmer Curson?”

  “We’ve considered the possibility, of course.”

  “He was there.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve told you, because he’s a man whose passion is possession. He needs to possess things. He has to prove he’s a success.”

  “Everyone knows he’s a success.”

  “But he can’t be certain they do know unless the proof is before them. The most terrible disaster he could suffer would be to lose one of his possessions and be seen to lose it. That’s why he went with Thompson. He had to know whether Mrs. Curson and I were actually committing adultery. If we weren’t, if she was remaining physically faithful, he would do nothing. He’d rather suffer the private humiliation of knowing his wife spiritually loved me
, than suffer the public humiliation of being seen to lose her in the divorce courts. Elmer Curson was in Lovers’ Lane because he had to know the truth.”

  Whicheck took a handkerchief from his pocket and prepared to sneeze. His face screwed up and his mouth opened. Nothing happened. After a while, he lowered the handkerchief. He suddenly did sneeze, a tremendous explosion of noise. He blew his nose. “Most men considering the possibility of their wives’ infidelity go to solicitors, who instruct private investigators,” he said.

  “Most men aren’t millionaires whose religion is ownership.”

  “The facts don’t suggest he was anywhere near Lovers’ Lane on Monday night.”

  “Of course they don’t. The facts wouldn’t have suggested I was within miles of the place until I’d told you I was there. When you knew I’d been there, and only then, you began to fit the facts.”

  “Are you, then, accusing me of twisting the evidence?”

  “I’m saying facts are more than one-sided and when a detective thinks he knows who the guilty man is, he chooses which side he’ll accept. Check up on Elmer Curson, find out where he was on Monday, search his clothes for bloodstains, question his London staff about seeing him go out, question his chauffeur about whether he had any of the cars.”

  Whicheck said nothing.

  “Are you going to do that?” demanded Bladen.

  “Our job is to investigate all possibilities.” Whicheck replaced his handkerchief in his pocket. “If you weren’t going to commit adultery, Mr. Bladen, why did you go down Lovers’ Lane?”

  “We didn’t know its name. We liked the view.”

  There was a snort of amusement from Eastbrook.

  “What the hell’s he laughing at?” shouted Bladen. “Why won’t you believe the truth? Have you all got minds like sewers?”

  “Possibly,” said Whicheck. “Or possibly our minds have just become conditioned by experience.”

  Chapter 12

  Katherine sat in her sewing room and tried to pluck up the courage to go and tell her husband the truth, to confess that she had betrayed her own high concepts of loyalty.

  Why, her mind shouted, why had Bob ever told the police they’d been in the lane on Monday? How could he so have disregarded the consequences, especially since he knew first-hand how the law invaded a person’s privacy and then trampled on it.

  She stood up. However terrible she felt at having to tell Elmer what had happened, her sense of shame would be greater if he first learned the facts from the police.

  The library faced north. Three of the walls were lined with bookcases and on the shelves were many rare and valuable books, also collected works of great authors bound in tooled leather and bearing the Curson crest. On the fourth wall, between the two windows, hung a fifteenth-century Kashan prayer carpet, one of the earliest known. Because it was badly frayed at the top, Elmer had had a small plaque put on the wall, giving the date of the carpet, in case someone thought this was not as valuable as it was.

  She sat down in one of the sumptuous leather chairs. He was seated at his desk, talking over the telephone. He was giving orders to one of his general managers and his tone was curt. Things had to be done his way, or there was trouble. Because he had diversified his business interests so much, some of his employees thought he couldn’t know enough to run all the businesses and that their experience was more useful than his. They overlooked his brilliance which came from a one-track mind, dedicated to success. After five minutes, he replaced the receiver. He smiled at her. “It’s not tea-time yet, is it?” He looked at his watch.

  “I want to talk to you, Elmer.”

  He studied her face. “What is wrong?”

  She noticed how the corners of his mouth turned down slightly. His mouth was a determined, aggressive one. If she had been in ordinary trouble, he would have helped her out of it more quickly than anybody else could. He had a harsh, demanding personality and if he wanted a thing done, it was done. “Elmer, Bob and I were out together on Monday night.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. It’s much nicer not to be on your own when I have to be away.”

  “We had dinner at the motel and then… Elmer, we went in his car for a drive and stopped in Lovers’ Lane — but I swear we didn’t know what the place was called. It was the night Thompson was killed there. I wouldn’t have gone near the place if I’d known what it was called. We just thought the view was so nice. Elmer, we didn’t do anything: we didn’t make love.”

  He opened the top centre drawer of his desk and brought out a cigar in its metal case. He unscrewed the top of the case.

  “We didn’t make love,” she said. “I’ve never ever been unfaithful to you.”

  He slid out the cigar. “I trust you absolutely,” he said in his quiet, slightly flat, voice.

  “But do you… Do you believe me?”

  “I said I trust you. I know you are far too loyal ever to betray our marriage.” He struck a match and when it was well alight he played the flame on the end of the cigar.

  “The police don’t believe me: they think we went there to make love.”

  “The police are men of small imagination and less understanding. That’s why they are policemen.”

  “They… they think Bob killed Thompson.”

  “Oh?”

  “They say Thompson caught us making love and Bob was so enraged he got out and killed Thompson. They know Bob thought he saw a peeping Tom the previous time.”

  “Had you been there before, then?”

  “I… Yes.” She spoke miserably. “I know what it sounds like, Elmer, but it’s not so.”

  He puffed at the cigar. The telephone rang and he answered it. It was a business call and he immediately became immersed in a mass of facts and figures.

  It was so typical of him, she thought bitterly, that he should attend to business rather than trying to comfort her. Once satisfied she had not been committing adultery, business became of far greater importance than her emotions. Then she angrily asked herself how many other husbands would have put such implicit trust in their wives in similar circumstances? How unfair could she become?

  At the end of the call, he began to make notes on a pad.

  “Elmer, please listen,” she said desperately.

  He put down the pencil, leaned back in the chair, and drew on the cigar. “Yes, dear?”

  “Bob’s got desperate because of the police. He’s going to tell them what he thinks happened. He says you were in the lane with Thompson, trying… trying to spy on us to find out for yourself whether we were making love.”

  His expression did not alter as she went on talking. Only at the end did he speak. “He obviously believes me to be a man of extreme malice.”

  “Elmer — you could never let an innocent man suffer, could you?”

  “Do you seriously imagine I could?”

  “I know you couldn’t.”

  “Then that disposes of that trouble,” he said. He picked up his pencil and resumed making notes of the recent telephone conversation.

  *

  Whicheck drove up to Forden House and parked his car on the far side of the central flowerbed. A man, whom he had not seen before, was trimming the yew hedge. Presumably, this was the new gardener or a man from one of the contract gardening firms. One of the advantages of being rich was that even death didn’t inconvenience you for very long.

  He pulled the bell and waited. The wind was rising and the leaves of the oaks made a continuous gentle rushing noise. Two jackdaws, cawing, circled overhead. Otherwise, all was quiet. To him, the house was big and very ungainly, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t like to live in it. He was a man who treasured privacy and in the police semi-detached in which he lived there was very little of that.

  Rollo opened the door and, as usual, managed to suggest by his attitude that he was only carrying out the function because the footman was temporarily absent. If there had been a union for butlers, Whicheck thought, Rollo would have been a great man for res
trictive practices. “Would it be convenient to have a word with Mr. Curson?”

  “I’ll see if Mr. Curson is in.”

  “If he isn’t, will you ask him when he will be?”

  Rollo did not smile.

  Whicheck waited in the hall for a couple of minutes and was then shown into the library.

  Curson, who remained seated, waved to a chair. “Have a seat, Inspector. How can I help you?” His manner was pleasant, but authoritative. He was dealing with a subordinate to whom he would show common courtesy, but little more.

  Whicheck sat down. How did you talk to a millionaire about his wife who’d obviously had hot britches?

  “I presume you’ve come to discuss Mr. Bladen’s accusations?” said Curson.

  “Yes, sir.” So the wife — sensibly — had broken the news first. Had she managed to wheedle him into believing that even though it had been dark, they’d been enjoying the view?

  “Kindly tell me exactly what his accusations are.”

  Whicheck told him.

  “At what time was Thompson killed?” asked Curson.

  “Between eight and eleven o’clock, sir.”

  “At that time I was in my flat in London.”

  “Did you go out at all that night?”

  “I did not.”

  “I’m sorry to have to press this, sir, but can you prove you did not go out? Were any of the staff present?”

  “The housekeeper served dinner and then went to her home in Hanwell. Briggs, my chauffeur, borrowed one of the cars and drove up to Ackerley to see his parents, who have been ill.”

  “At what time did you have dinner?”

  “At seven-thirty.”

  “There was no one else in the place after that?”

  “No.”

  “You said your chauffeur borrowed one of your cars — you have more than one at your flat?”

  “I naturally keep a small town car up there.”

  Naturally, thought Whicheck, with quick amusement. “And he borrowed the small one?”

  “He borrowed the Rolls because it was a long journey and he had to be back by noon the next day.”