“No. Why should they have done? I don’t understand you.” The geniality had vanished. Bostick was the kind of man, Hugh thought, who always expects to be cheated and cheats first to prevent it. He said sharply, “You’re Bennett from the Gazette, right? I thought I’d seen you around.”
“I’m sorry.” Fairfield was covered with blurred apologetic confusion. “We’re doing some unofficial detecting, Hugh and I.”
“For the defence, of course. The Banner’s backing this boy Gardner, I saw that. Good enough stunt, I suppose, though he’s guilty as hell. What it’s all got to do with me, that’s what I don’t understand. Don’t like being brought into police business, except in the way of giving my sub for charities, taking a couple of tickets for a dance and so on.”
“Part of the police case against Leslie Gardner is based on evidence connected with this laundry.”
“Nothing said about it at the Magistrate’s Court.”
“No. This is additional evidence that has presumably been discovered since then,” Fairfield said cautiously.
“What sort of evidence?”
“It’s connected with the cleaning of a pair of grey trousers.”
“At this laundry?”
“Yes.”
“And you’d like to know how they got hold of it? So should I. Very much indeed.”
“The Gardners use this laundry.”
“Do they now? Well, I can tell you the police have made no inquiries of me.” He pushed down a switch on his desk and spoke into a microphone. “Ask Miss Pligh to come up. At once, please. She’s the manageress,” he said, and then did not speak again but tapped with a pencil on his green leather desk until Miss Pligh, fat and friendly, came in.
“Ah, Miss Pligh.” Bostick was almost a parody of the bonhomous democratic employer. “Just a small query you may be able to answer.”
“Certainly.”
“Have the police been in touch with you recently about any matter relating to the laundry?” He stared intently at her. Miss Pligh’s not uncomely cheeks blushed a deep pink. “Have they?”
“I can explain.”
“I shall be glad of that. Particularly why you thought fit not to tell me anything about it.” Bostick did not look at anybody but the plump woman who wriggled slightly in front of him, but Hugh sensed that he was enjoying the presence of an audience.
“They said it was to be kept a secret.”
“And who are ‘they,’ Miss Pligh?”
“The man from Scotland Yard. Sergeant Norman. I thought he’d get in touch with you himself.”
“So you thought fit to keep the whole thing secret, did you?”
“I was worried, but I didn’t like to say anything.”
“Oh, really. I suppose that is what you call using your initiative?”
“I—”
“Do you? Is that what you call it? I can tell you what I call it. I call it downright disloyalty to the business that puts bread into your mouth. Shall I tell you the effect of what you have done? You have involved the Kwick-N-Clean in a sordid murder case. You have damaged our business, I don’t know how much.” Bostick had been almost shouting, fat hands gripping the desk. Now he leaned back. “I hope you are proud of yourself.”
Miss Pligh burst into tears. Fairfield looked at the empty glass in his hand as though he disliked drink. “It may not be quite as bad as that. If Miss Pligh could tell us just exactly what happened.”
“If that wouldn’t be too much trouble. And if it doesn’t mean breaking any promises made to Sergeant Norman,” Bostick said with deadly sweetness.
Between sobs Miss Pligh told them the story. Bostick sat with arms folded.
“So Norman took the Gardners’ laundry book,” Fairfield said. “And he was excited about the date. Yes, I can see that.”
“He didn’t take the book, Miss Pligh kindly gave it to him,” Bostick said. “Is there anything more you want to know? That’s all? Then you can go, Miss Pligh. I’ll talk to you later.”
When she had gone, Bostick raised his hands above his head. “What can you do with them? Solid oak from the neck up. My word, old Edgar wouldn’t put up with her for five minutes.”
“She should have come to you. But I hope you won’t—”
“Shan’t get rid of her. They’re all so stupid, I should get no one better. But she’s not going to find life round here very easy for the next few weeks, I’ll make sure of that.” Bostick rubbed his hands together. The look on his face made Hugh feel sorry for Miss Pligh. He went to the cocktail cabinet. It was the first time Hugh had seen Frank Fairfield refuse a drink.
When they were out in the street he said, “What does Edgar Crawley do at the Banner?”
“He’s the editor. But he’s more than that. Also known as the direct pipeline to Lord Brackman.”
“Is he anything like that man?”
“Edgar is seventeen different kinds of a horror. But no. He is nothing like Charles J. Bostick.”
In the unused front room at Peter Street, Van Gogh and Utrillo looked down on them. Jill sat frowning at the news and then asked, “What does it mean, exactly?”
“It means that the police think they’ve found proof positive that Leslie’s tied up to the murder of Rocky Jones. The trousers came back on Friday afternoon. Do you remember taking them in?”
“I remember the laundry coming.”
“And there was a pair of grey trousers in it?”
“I can’t remember that. It’s two months ago. There was nothing missing. I’d have to go by the book.”
“The police have got the book. Didn’t you realise it had been lost, and you’d been given a new one?”
“I suppose so. I didn’t think about it. Why should I?”
For the first time, as he saw Fairfield grimly tugging away at this thread towards the nastiness at the end of it, a strand of lank hair falling over his rough forehead, the bloodshot eyes for once unblurred, Hugh realised consciously what made him a good crime reporter.
“We’ll have to accept that the trousers did come back that afternoon. Leslie was picked up by the police straight from work in his old brown suit. He came back about midnight. He was picked up on Saturday morning straight from bed, and the trousers then had this mixture of sand and coal in the turn-ups. How did it get there if he wasn’t wearing them late on Friday night?”
“Perhaps the laundry left it in?” Hugh suggested.
“I don’t think that horse will run. The laundry will say it’s not possible that anything could have been left in after cleaning. And I think you’ll find the police will be able to show the trousers have been worn.”
“You believe he did it,” Jill said suddenly. “You think he went out and killed Rocky Jones. Don’t you?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. I’m telling you what the police think they have found out. That’s the point we have to start from, Jill, you must understand that.”
Jill put her head in her hands. Hugh found himself unable to discover his own beliefs. Leslie Gardner seemed to him a cipher, as are so many characters in criminal cases, and it was useless to ask whether this cipher was in reality the kind of youth who might have helped to kill a man and another boy. “Look at the facts,” Lane was always saying. “Nothing else is important.” But what conclusion could you reach when the facts of a story seemed confused beyond extrication? Desperately he said to Fairfield, “What do you believe?”
Like some great oracle, Fairfield answered, from his position under the Van Gogh self-portrait, the broad battered humanity of which he somehow, at a great distance, echoed. “I told you, it doesn’t matter. What any of us believes doesn’t matter. We play the game according to the rules. There’s no other way to play it, no other way we can win.”
“You still think we can win?” Jill asked.
“Of course we can win.
First of all, Jill, I want you to tell me about Leslie’s clothes, what they were, the sort of times he wore them, how often he had them cleaned, everything you can think of. Don’t leave out anything, even if it seems silly.”
“I’ll try.” There was a whistle from the kitchen. “That’s the kettle. I’ll make tea.”
Hugh followed her. She turned and clung to him, kissed him passionately, then gripped his shoulders. “Hugh. This doesn’t mean the end of it.”
“If anybody can help us, Frank will.” He was aware of evasiveness.
“Yes. Hugh, I’m so worried about Dad. He’s changed. He missed a ward meeting last week, the first one for years.”
He broached uneasily a delicate subject. “I suppose his teeth—”
“It was before he broke the plate. All he does is go to work, come home and eat and go to bed. He got off work this week, but he really doesn’t seem much interested in the trial, I mean in what goes on. To-night he had his supper and went straight to bed. Oh, Hugh, what have I done to him?”
“Are we going to get some tea?” Fairfield’s head peered round the kitchen door. When they were back in the front room he said, patiently relentless, “What did Leslie usually wear when he went to the cottage?”
“How should I know? I didn’t even know he went there.”
“I mean when he went out and wasn’t using his motor-bike, just said he was seeing the boys.”
“Oh. Mostly his brown suit from work.”
“How many pairs of grey trousers had he got?”
“Two. One made of worsted and the other gaberdine…”
It was after midnight when they left, and Hugh felt that they had discovered nothing. When he climbed the stairs to the flat Michael was sitting with his feet up, wrapped in a red and green striped dressing-gown. “How goes it, Romeo?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Was it Romeo to-night or the crime investigator’s number one son? You haven’t missed anything wildly exciting in court. There was one of those tremendously polite little interludes called brush between counsel, which look so furious when they’re put on the stage, and are really so tame.”
“I heard about it.”
“I forgot, you get your news from the fountain-head. How is the fountain-head, by the way? Has the Banner propositioned you yet?”
“Not yet.”
“And if they do, what will you say?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know what I’d say. I couldn’t shake off the dust of this place fast enough. If you’re offered the chance to get out, take it, and don’t mind what anybody says.” Michael had these moments of rare, surprising honesty. He dropped his book, a copy of Shaw’s Plays for Puritans, to the floor, and looked vaguely reminiscent. “I met the most marvellous mare to-night. You know the local hospitals have a closed circuit radio programme? They asked me to do something about theatres in the city, and when I went up there was this red-head in the studio…”
Hugh made himself a cup of chocolate and listened for half an hour to Michael talking about the marvellous mare, before he went to bed.
33
The tactics for treating child witnesses are pretty generally agreed. They must not be frightened or in any way coerced, or even pushed at all hard. If they turn inarticulate in the witness box it is usually better to let them stand down rather than try to squeeze from them a repetition of every word in their original statements. Any least hint of pressure, it is known, is liable to make a jury think that the counsel applying it is a potential mental torturer, a latter-day Mr. Barrett. Eustace Hardy had these rules (which, naturally, apply only to respectable children and not at all to delinquents, who may be treated as roughly as you like) well in mind. His manner with children was perfect, that of a reasonably indulgent father who never descended to using the syrup of sentiment. It was said, no doubt with more than a touch of exaggeration, that Hardy always took a case which had a child witness in it because he knew that during examination or cross-examination of the child he could sway a jury temporarily, and sometimes even permanently, in his favour. So, now, Maureen Dyer, stiff in her best frock, relaxed gradually under the flow of easy questions asked in that silvery voice, and told quite readily of the man who had knocked her over, of the hard and sharp thing she had felt in his pocket, and of the knife shining in his hand.
“And then you went along to the identification parade,” said father Hardy.
“Yes, and I picked out him.” Maureen Dyer pointed to the slight figure of Leslie Gardner.
Her responses were becoming almost too ready. If he asked any more questions, Hardy decided, she might sound glib. He sat down.
Magnus Newton rose, puffing and smiling, an uncle with half a crown in his pocket which would be handed over if you gave the right answer.
“What were the fireworks you had on that Guy Fawkes night, Maureen?”
“Some yellow dragons and some fizz flares, and some sparklers.”
“And when this man knocked into you, they all went on to the ground.”
“Not the sparklers. I’d used them first. I don’t like them as much as the others.”
“Keep the best till last,” Newton said with a laugh rather obviously artificial. It was apparent that, in dealing with children, he was not of Hardy’s calibre. “And then your golden dragons were knocked to the ground.”
“Yellow dragons, yes. But a nice man helped me to pick them up and light them, and they were all right.”
“That’s good,” Newton said heartily. “Now, the thing that most interested you was your fireworks. So you didn’t have much time to look at the man who knocked into you, did you?”
“Oh, but I saw him. I recognised him afterwards, didn’t I?” She was wide-eyed.
“You’re sure you weren’t mistaken? You didn’t have much time to look at him.”
“Oh yes, I did see him. He was very close to me.”
“Now, you say you felt something hard and sharp in his pocket. How could you tell that the thing was sharp.”
“I just could, that’s all.”
“Did it come through the cloth and prick your hand?”
“Oh no. I just felt it, through the cloth, you know.”
“But how could you feel something sharp through the cloth? It’s hard to feel a sharp thing through a pocket, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I just did. And then I saw it afterwards. It was a knife.”
Newton’s tone was becoming with each question less that of the jovial uncle. The half-crown was on the verge of disappearance. “So you were knocked over. And when you got up you looked for your yellow dragons. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then when did you see the knife?”
“He drew it as he ran away from me. I saw it flash in the light.”
Newton resisted the strong temptation to treat the girl as a delinquent. “You could only have seen that just as you got up. Don’t you think you might have been mistaken?”
“Oh no.”
All question of the half-crown gone, a cane almost audibly swishing in the background, so that his junior, Toby Bander, shifted uneasily, Newton said, “Then why didn’t you say anything about the knife when you were first asked about all this?”
She hesitated, looked towards somebody, probably her father, said nothing. Newton repeated his question. Don’t let her cry, he thought, don’t let her cry.
Her under-lip quivered, but she didn’t cry. “I suppose I just never thought of it.”
“You didn’t think of it,” Newton said slowly, looking at the jury. He did not dare to ask any more questions. Hardy decided that there was a nail or two here which might usefully be driven home.
“When you were at the identification parade, Maureen, did you pick out the man at once?”
“Oh yes. There were a lot of others,
but I knew this one.”
“So there was no doubt in your mind?”
She shook her head vigorously. “Oh no.”
“And are you just as sure about seeing the knife?”
“Yes. It was shining, you see.”
Hardy nodded, smiled at her, and sat down. Mr. Justice Beckles squeaked, “You may stand down, young lady. You may leave the box.”
With the utmost self-possession, Maureen Dyer stepped out of the witness box and walked across to her father, who handed her an enormous teddy bear. Magnus Newton, who rarely used strong language, whispered to Toby Bander, “There goes a bloody little liar.”
34
The moments when he walked along the corridor into court, across the few feet to the witness box, muttered the conventional words, had for Hugh Bennett a dreamlike quality of tension which was nevertheless unreal. It was as though he himself were on trial, or at least as though the whole ritual of the law was on this occasion specially and deliberately aimed at him. He found himself quite unable to look at the boys in the dock, in fear that—that what, precisely? That Leslie Gardner had assumed some stigmata that accused Hugh Bennett of responsibility for his present position? Absurd, of course, yet in the absurdity there was some element of truth.
“Your name is Hugh Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“You are a reporter working with the Gazette newspaper in this city?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell the jury the reason for your presence at Far Wether that evening?”
Slowly he was led through an account of the evening, his conversation with Corby, his meeting with Maureen Dyer. All this was mere confirmation, which did not hold the attention of the court. Hardy went on.
“Will you tell us what you did after you saw the youth point at Corby?”
“He struck away my hand. Then I put my arms round him and felt something hard in his pocket. He pulled himself away from me and stumbled over the little girl. Then he ran towards Corby.”
“You felt something hard in his pocket. Might that have been a knife?”
The Progress of a Crime Page 15