The Progress of a Crime

by Julian Symons

  “Must have been sometime during the week.” Gardner muttered the words, and did not look at Newton as he spoke them.

  “You can’t identify it more exactly than that? It must have been some occasion when you were out on your motor-cycle, I suppose. Or did you wear the jacket indoors?”

  “Hardly ever wore it indoors, no.”

  “Might it have been lying about indoors when you cut your finger, so that some blood got on to it?”

  “Might have been, I s’pose.”

  “You can’t remember?” Newton cursed himself for letting the conversation get into this channel. Such a reaction as he was now getting from Gardner created exactly the kind of impression that a barrister does not want to have left in his mind.

  “Can’t remember, no.”

  “If you do remember anything, get in touch with Mr. Earl at once. It may be very important to you. You understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  He thankfully left the point. “Now I want to talk to you about Garney.”

  For the first time the boy looked animated, even excited. “King’s smashing. He’s been smashing to me.”

  “You’ve been influenced by him?”

  “Everyone has, everyone he knows. Anything you can think of, King can do it better than anyone else. I’ve seen him jump off a twenty-foot wall just like that, it’s all a matter of the way you land, he says. And he can throw a knife—” He stopped suddenly. Newton coughed.

  “This is what I’m getting at. Would you say that in your—” he tried to think of a synonym that would avoid the use of the word gang, at last said weakly—“in your group, you were his best friend?”

  “Sure. King and me are like that. He’s got no time for some of the others, the Pole for one. They’re just hangers-on, sort of.”

  Newton spoke clearly and slowly. “The prosecution—that is, the other side—may try to make you say that you admired Garney so much that you would have done anything he told you.”

  Leslie Gardner’s eyes flickered at him and away.

  “For instance, that you might have held the boy Jones while Garney stabbed him. That may be put to you. But you don’t look to me like the kind of boy who’d do anything another boy told him. Your father and sister brought you up differently to that.”

  “I hate him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jill’s all right. I hate Dad.” Now the boy stared boldly at Newton. “He’s always on at you. About education and work and all that. Wanted me to stay on at school. I’d had enough of it when I was fifteen. Before then, as a matter of fact. I mean, they treat you like kids.”

  “I see.”

  “What I mean is, he’s all the time talking at you like you were a public meeting. For your own good and all that. I never asked to be done good to. Why can’t we live like the others do in Peter Street, I asked him, why do we have to be so different, why was he afraid I’d disgrace him? Jill was a bit that way, too, but you could get round her. She’s human.”

  “I’ve seen your father to-day. You know he’s made these special arrangements for your defence?”

  “I never asked him to.” The boy lapsed into apathy, then said, “What about King? Who’s defending him?”

  “That’s not my business, I’m afraid,” Newton said stiffly. He found Leslie Gardner, in his way, even more infuriating than his father. “Don’t forget about the stains on your jacket, that’s important.”

  When he rejoined Earl, the two walked in silence through the prison courtyard. “A bit raw, isn’t he?” the solicitor said. “And inarticulate. But not really stupid.”

  “He hates his father and worships Garney. When I told him his father had made special arrangements for his defence, he wanted to know who was defending Garney.”

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said the man on duty at the gate.

  “Good day,” Newton said with unnecessary violence. On the way back to the hotel in the taxi he said to Earl, “Ghastly weather, ghastly city, ghastly people. I wonder there aren’t more murders here.”

  On the following day he was photographed on the green at Far Wether. A swirling mist spoiled the effect of the slightly Napoleonic attitude in which he stood looking at the scene of the bonfire. Another photograph was taken at Platt’s Flats, with Newton pointing at the cottage and talking earnestly to Earl. Then the barrister and the solicitor went back to London.

  Newton spent Christmas at his home in Hampton Court with his wife and their only child, thirteen-year-old Viola, who had a friend to stay from school. He and his wife bought Viola a dozen presents, one less than her age. They knew they were spoiling her, but found it impossible to break the habit. Newton sang a lot of comic songs in a husky baritone, and enjoyed himself very much.

  Hugh Bennett spent Christmas Day with his aunt. He saw Jill on Boxing Day and gave her a wrist-watch as a present. She gave him a tie. She had gone to visit some relatives of her mother on Christmas Day. Her father, she said, was very gloomy.

  Twicker stayed at home with his wife, who was a semi-invalid. A couple who lived in the same road came in, and the men played chess while the women talked.

  Norman took his girl to have Christmas dinner with his family, and at about eleven o’clock the two of them went on to a party which lasted until six o’clock on Boxing Day morning. He woke at half-past nine, without a headache.

  Leslie Gardner and Jack Garney stayed in prison. When Garney refused to eat the Christmas pudding, first of all telling the warder exactly what it looked like, Gardner also refused to eat it.

  28

  It was on his return to the office after Christmas that Twicker made the discovery that was to draw the net round Leslie Gardner so that it was suffocatingly tight. Nobody knew better than Twicker that the case against Gardner was—not thin, exactly, but a case in which almost every detail was a supposition, resting upon the evidence of accomplices who were intent to save their own skins, or upon incriminating things said in the hearing of a girl who, according to Norman, was not much more than a tart, or upon things seen in the doubtful glare of a firework. This sort of confusion is a frequent concomitant of a murderous scuffle, but there is often one piece of quite unassailable and damning evidence that clinches all the rest, and puts a jury’s possible doubts at ease. It was just such a piece of evidence that Twicker felt to be lacking in relation to Gardner. And to the bitter passion that the superintendent felt always against criminals, his frustrated sense that all of the boys were equally guilty and should have been charged as such, was added the practical knowledge that his mistakes had been such that he could not afford to fail.

  It was with such thoughts in mind that Twicker sat in his office looking at the sample of dust that had been taken from the turn-ups of Leslie Gardner’s trousers. He remembered what the analyst had casually said: “Very nice, smart trousers, nicely pressed, newly cleaned by the look of it.” And of the dust he had said that it was odd, seemed to be some sort of coal dust. It had proved to be odder than that. The specks were almost equally brown and black, and the full report said that they appeared to be compounded of fine coal dust and silver sand mixed together. Where did one find silver sand? In a builder’s yard, on a building site. But that was of little help, or no help at all. Twicker had a vivid visual memory, and he summoned up now the green at Far Wether, the burnt-out patch that had been a bonfire and the grass surrounding it, lush, coarse and wet. No trace here of coal dust, no trace of sand. How could there be? He took out this slide from his memory and replaced it by the interior of the cottage at Platt’s Flats. His mental eye carefully examined the cottage, front room and kitchen, and then the rooms upstairs. The floors were dusty, no more than that. Outside, then? Outside there had been a good deal of mud, the way to the front of the cottage had been muddy. There was certainly no building work going on there. Move round the cottage, then. What was round at the back? Twicker su
ddenly exclaimed out loud.

  That afternoon Twicker and Norman went down to the city together. They took with them that pair of nice, smart trousers, pressed and cleaned, and the sample of dust found in the turn-ups. Norman did not share the excitement expressed in Twicker’s eagerness of movement and gesture. He had no objection to being out of the office for an afternoon, but thought or indeed felt sure, that they were on a wild-goose chase. A police car took them to Platt’s Flats, and beside the two ruined cottages Twicker jumped out, no longer a battered veteran but a young terrier hot after a reluctant bitch. For once it was not raining, but as they got out of the car their feet squelched in mud. Norman, following his too-impetuous chief, bent his mouth down in distaste. His shoes were becoming uncommonly dirty.

  Twicker ignored the front door, bored round the right of the cottage and reached the back. He said triumphantly: “There.” Norman also stood gazing.

  At one time each of the Platt’s Flats cottages had had its own garden, a tiny square patch of green with a rudimentary path to the back gate. The back gates had gone, the little gardens had merged into each other and become one single wilderness, but there remained an occasional distinguishing mark like that outside the cottage in which Rocky Jones had been found. Children had lived here, loving parents had made a sandpit with a load or two of silver sand. It was the remains of this sandpit that they were looking at, an area enclosed by boards, and still retaining a relic of its former use in the shape of a small toy spade. Beside the sand there had been a coal bunker. They lifted the bunker’s top and saw that it was now almost empty. The wooden bottom of the bunker had been sapped by rain and had given way, so that fragments of coal dust had run down and mingled with the sand. Twicker bent down and began scooping the blended sand and coal into a polythene bag. Then he spoke.

  “He came in the back way that Friday night. Perhaps he always did. As he came in it was very dark and he walked through the sandpit. No doubt he got the stuff on his shoes too, but he must have cleaned them off, forgotten the trousers.”

  “Perhaps,” Norman said. “It depends when they were cleaned.”

  “That’s what you’re going to find out. We should have done it before, but there didn’t seem any point. If you can do it without the Gardners knowing, so much the better. First of all find out what laundry they use. Go along there and take the trousers with you, see if they keep a record of stuff sent in for cleaning, I think most of these laundries do. If you get nothing out of the laundry, try the dry-cleaners in the neighbourhood.”

  “Right.”

  “One pair of trousers, nicely pressed, newly cleaned by the look of it,” Twicker said. “One old sandpit, one load of coal. If those trousers had really just been cleaned, they may be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

  There are times when everything seems to go exactly right, when all the difficult things come easy, and each penny drops into its right slot. Norman found out from Taffy Edwards’s family, who lived farther up Peter Street, that the Gardners used the Kwick-N-Clean Laundry in Lamb Avenue. The manageress of the Kwick-N-Clean was wonderfully helpful.

  “We collect from the Paradise Vale area each Saturday and deliver again on the following Friday,” she said. “And there’s a separate record made of every cleaning job. Of course they go down in the laundry book too.”

  “Have you got the Gardners’ laundry book?”

  She hesitated. “I expect so. You want to see it?”

  “I do.” Norman’s glance was conspiratorial. “And this is between you and me. I don’t want anyone else, anyone at all, to know about it.”

  “I understand.” She was a demure, not unattractive, fat woman. When the book came with its label, Gardner, 24 Peter Street, she handed it to him without a word.

  Norman turned up the entry for Saturday, 31st October. It was written in a neat hand which he guessed to be Jill Gardner’s, and at the bottom of it he read, “For Cleaning. One pair grey trousers.” He said, with rising excitement, “This item, the trousers, would have been returned on the following Friday, 6th November?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And there would have been a separate entry made out for them here?”

  “For all cleaning items, I told you. They’re separately charged. You want to see the copy of the job slip?”

  He said that he did. She came back with a book which she opened out before him. “Here you are. These are the carbons of all the cleaning work. This is the one. Name, Gardner, 24 Peter Street. Article, pair grey trousers. Job Number 41622. Now the next heading is ‘Van or Shop’ and that means it has been either delivered by the van or collected. You’ll see it says ‘Van.’ Date—that’s the date of van delivery—6th November. Sixty-three, that’s the number of the girl who did the cleaning work. There you are.”

  “Is there any way of checking this particular pair of grey trousers? These are gaberdine trousers. Can we make sure whether or not this is the pair that came in for cleaning on 31st October?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t go as far as that, putting down whether they’re gaberdine or not. A pair of grey trousers is just a pair of grey trousers.”

  He thought for a moment, then went carefully through the Gardners’ laundry book for the last two months and found that nothing had been sent for cleaning except a raincoat. He said to her, “You’ve lost this book.”

  “Now, just a minute.”

  “You’ve lost it,” Norman said firmly. He put the book in his pocket. “You can say so, and issue them with a new one, can’t you? With apologies, of course.”

  “I suppose so. Is it really important?”

  “It’s important.” Norman sat on the edge of her desk and smiled at her. “And here’s something else important. I don’t want anything known or suspected about the way this laundry book got lost. You look to me the sort of girl who can keep a secret.” She simpered a little at being called a girl.

  “I am.”

  “Then mind you keep this one. If I hear that it’s been getting around I shall be very angry.” He placed a hand on her plump arm and pinched it sharply.

  “It all fits,” he said, when he got back to Twicker. “Gardner had them cleaned on 31st October, they came back on 6th November, so he can’t possibly have worn them before then. Therefore he wore them that night. We’ve got young Gardner where we want him.”

  Twicker showed no emotion. It had been a smart idea, Norman admitted that ungrudgingly, but it somehow took the edge off his own pleasure that the super didn’t show surprise or any trace of pleasure, but simply said, “Yes.”

  “What do we do about it?” Norman asked, although he knew very well. Twicker stared at him. “I mean, have we got to let them know? This is something that’s really going to rock them.”

  Twicker did not even answer, did not even trouble to remind Norman that all evidence material to the case discovered by the prosecution must be made available to the defence. But it is possible to hasten slowly, and it was not until three days before the trial that a document headed “Notice of additional evidence” arrived on Magnus Newton’s desk, and the barrister read with concern that “Charles James Norman, sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Department, will now additionally swear…” From Newton this news of additional prosecution evidence filtered through to Edgar Crawley, and from Crawley to Frank Fairfield.

  29

  The Daily Banner, 11th January:

  Guy Fawkes Trial Begins To-Day

  TWO YOUTHS ACCUSED OF DOUBLE KILLING

  The public gallery was full when Frank Fairfield and Michael Baker walked into the Assize Court, showed their cards and found places behind the little barrier that said Press. It was with the most unctuous mock-sorrow that Lane had told Hugh that, since he was to be called as a prosecution witness, it would naturally not be proper for him to be in court before he gave evidence, and that, in view of all the circumsta
nces the editor had decided that Michael should report the proceedings. It was reasonable enough, but Hugh could not escape the feeling that Grayling and Lane and even Michael, who professed to find the whole thing a bit of a bore, took pleasure in his exclusion. On the day that the trial opened he spent the morning at Welby Petty Sessional Court and took notes on eight traffic offences, three arrears of maintenance cases, one indecency charge and a common assault. He was not forgotten, however. At precisely ten-thirty Michael leaned across to Frank Fairfield and murmured, “Pity poor Hugh.”

  The two prisoners had entered the dock, Garney dark and self-assured, Gardner slight and pale. The Clerk of the Court rose. “John Allan Garney, are you guilty or not guilty?”

  “I am not guilty,” Garney said in a strong, clear voice.

  “Leslie Charles Gardner, are you guilty or not guilty?”

  Gardner’s voice was dull. “Not guilty.”

  The clerk sat down. Magnus Newton was on his feet. Mr. Justice Beckles looked at him severely over the top of his half-spectacles, and said in a squeaky voice that conflicted with his ruggedly handsome face, “Yes, Mr. Newton?”

  “My lord, I appear on behalf of Gardner. I have an application to make on his behalf, a most important application from my client’s point of view. It is that your lordship should order a separate trial in this case…”

  “Here it is,” Fairfield whispered. “You can sit back for an hour.”

  And in fact it was for fifty-five minutes that Newton spoke in his melodious boom, referring to the conflicts of evidence that existed, the points that would be made by various witnesses against first one of the accused and then the other, the prejudices against Gardner that must inevitably arise if his case were to be heard with Garney’s. Fairfield sat with hands on the desk in front of him, making an occasional note. His attention wandered to where Jill Gardner sat with her father just behind counsel, wearing a dark blue coat and skirt, her face very pale. Now Newton was quoting his authorities, turning to the marked places in one book after another. Mr. Justice Beckles squeaked an occasional interrogative interjection. “The matter is within the judicial discretion,” Newton wound up, “but in view of all the circumstances to which I have called your lordship’s attention, I pray that your lordship will make an order that in this case the accused should be tried separately.”