“You were retiring, you put in as adverse a report as possible on Wilkins, you said specifically that he was not fit to be appointed as your successor, yet he was appointed. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“I suppose you want me to say–”
“It suggests to me that he can hardly have been so inefficient as you suggest, that these so-called ‘ blackouts’ did not affect his work. Do you agree?”
Gimball hesitated and then said, “No.”
“Would you not agree, at least, that your superiors must have taken a much more friendly view of him than you did? How else can you explain his appointment?”
“He had originally put forward a merger scheme.”
“Of which you disapproved?”
“Yes.”
“But which your superiors accepted.”
“Yes.”
The judge interposed. “Mr Hayley, I don’t wish to stop this line of cross-examination if you really feel it to be vital, but I must say you are ranging very wide.”
Hayley bowed his head. “I have only two or three more questions, my lord. In spite of your report, then, Wilkins was appointed?”
“Yes.”
“And you have no direct knowledge about these blackouts? For all you know, Wilkins may simply have spent his time away from the office in drinking clubs or at football matches?”
“If you put it like that, no direct evidence. But I feel sure–”
“Thank you.” Hayley sat down.
And now, out of the nightmare of the past, crawled other figures. John Wilkins might have been inclined to cry out in court, saying, No, no, these people do not know me, they are not my friends, if he had not felt something in himself that was utterly remote from what was going on. There was a part of him that remained untouched by all the slime that those supposed to be defending him were drawing across his character. Untouched by Mrs Hazel Denison, who smiled nervously at him before giving graphic details of his behaviour in the Five O’Clock Shadow, his failure to remember her at their second meeting, and the way in which he had been thrown out. Shameful, all that, but it did not touch the inner self that he hugged, the self that had loved Sheila.
Untouched, even, by the farcical interlude of Doctor Bowen Glenister, a minor disaster that led Charlie Hudnutt to scribble a caustically indignant note to Mr Likeness, and that must be ascribed to faulty staff work.
Beady-eyed and hairy, like a great spider, Doctor Glenister took the stand and told of the prisoner’s visit to him, of the blackouts, and the request for help.
“He specifically mentioned blackouts,” Charlie Hudnutt said.
“Oh yes. There was no doubt of that.”
“And asked for your help in dealing with them?”
“That is so.” The doctor shot his rather dirty cuffs.
“And how did your interview end?”
“He promised to come back, but never did so.” Charlie Hudnutt asked a few questions to confirm that the blackouts had been the sole reason for the visit, and sat down. Maurice Mallin-Fry’s cross-examination began mildly enough.
“You say that Wilkins came to consult you about his blackouts. Was that the only reason for his visit?”
Glenister put his black nails to his mouth and nibbled. “But naturally.”
“You are quite sure of that?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure he did not ask you to procure a woman?”
Glenister raised his hands in horror, revealing soft, surprisingly pink palms. “An outrageous suggestion.”
“That’s absolutely untrue, is it? You wouldn’t do anything of that sort?”
“I would not.”
“You’re a respectable doctor, aren’t you?” Mallin-Fry’s voice was taunting. Glenister glared at him like a trapped animal.
The judge moved in his chair. “Mr Mallin-Fry, I trust you have some basis for the suggestions you are making.”
“I am coming to it, my lord. Are you a qualified doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Of what faculty?” There was no reply. “Of what faculty? Was it of the so-called St. Matthew’s Medical School? Did they give degrees by post, after some elementary postal tuition? Was the man who conducted the school sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for fraud?”
This question Glenister answered, “How should I know?”
“But you were a graduate of his school, that is your sole qualification as a doctor?”
“Yes. It gave good grounding in –”
“Never mind that. Just answer my questions. Were you charged in 1952 with helping to procure an abortion? Were you sentenced to six months’ imprisonment?” No reply. “In 1954 were you charged again, this time for helping to run a brothel?”
Glenister put his nails to his mouth again. “It was a put-up job. The case against me was a frame-up.”
“You were charged and found guilty. You received a sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment. Is that right? Is it? Answer me?”
“Yes.”
“So that if Wilkins had come to ask you about a woman you wouldn’t have been so very shocked, would you? I suggest that he came to ask you to find a girl for him, isn’t that the truth?”
Glenister’s little black eyes stared unwaveringly, venomously, back at him. “No.”
He comes here, John Wilkins thought wonderingly, he tells the truth, and it sounds like a lie. But the whole puppet-show was lies. How could he recognise himself in the caricature of a man that these witnesses were presenting? This is not me, he wanted to say, I said some of these things, I did some of them, but these things are not me. You must understand my feelings when I said and did them, you must understand about Lacey and about May, you must understand that what I felt about Sheila was real in one way and in another way a game.
They would say it was his fault, Mr Likeness thought, as Doctor Glenister left the box, but they would be unfair. It is unusual for solicitors to check up on the antecedents of their own witnesses, although here there might perhaps have been a case for doing so. Gloomily watching Betty Prenton stride across court into the witness box, he thought, she had better be good.
Chapter Nineteen
Betty Prenton was good in her way, which was not the way of the jury, nor a way easily appreciated by anybody in that courtroom. She confronted them all, not so much with bravado as with something like contempt, and her answer to Magnus Newton’s second question was given with positive relish.
“What is your occupation?”
“I am a prostitute.”
Her plain skirt and simple blouse gave no idea of that occupation. The brassy hair, the watchful eyes, the hard mouth, the vulgar voice – all these, after all, were less stigmata of prostitution than the marks, say, of any successful business woman. And it was as a business woman that she told the story of John Wilkins’ visit to her, as she had told it in her flat that night to Mr Lambie. It was a simple enough tale, told concisely and even with some humour. At the end of it Newton said, “One more thing, Miss Prenton. Would you tell the court briefly the circumstances that have led you to come forward with this evidence?”
“Yes.” She leant her big arms on the witness box and half-faced the jury. “I read about the case, recognised Wilkins’ photograph, said to hell with it, I don’t want any trouble. Then this little man Lambie came to see me –”
“Lambie?” The judge had been writing busily, now stopped and raised a hand. “Is Mr – um – Lambie to be called, Mr Newton? I don’t think his name has been mentioned before.”
“My lord, I don’t think that will be necessary. Mr Lambie is a private inquiry agent who was employed by my client’s mother, and his only importance in the case is that he persuaded the witness to come forward.”
“Thank you, Mr Newton.” Mr Justice Morland looked down distastefully at Betty Prenton. “You may continue.”
“I only want to say that coming into court does no good at all to somebody in my profession. Much against my will, as you might s
ay, here I am.”
Magnus Newton sat down, mopping his head. Hayley, who had been engaged in frantic consultation with his junior since Betty Prenton took the stand, now got up. Prostitutes, like experts, are exceptions to the general rule that harsh cross-examination may have the reverse effect of that intended. An expert operates above the understanding of the common man, a prostitute outside it. In their very different ways both are felt to be a threat to society as jurymen constitute it, and it is a pleasure to see them discomfited. So it was that Hayley felt able to open his cross-examination by saying, with obvious irony, “Let me congratulate you upon your public spirit. Particularly, as you say, because you don’t want to call the attention of the police to your occupation. How many times have you been arrested, by the way?”
“Five or six.”
“You can’t quite remember. And that was for–”
She shrugged her broad shoulders. “The usual thing. Picked up in one of these sweeps where they run girls into the van quick and ask questions afterwards. Forty shillings or a month.”
“Ah yes.” Hayley was feeling his way, probing for chinks through which he might thrust the questions that would shake her self-assurance. “You were arrested last month, were you not?”
She was impatient. “It’s always the same thing. The police have to do it, whether they like it or not. It’s just a farce, and they know it as well as we do.”
Hayley raised his eyebrows, looked at the jury, made no comment. The judge said sharply, “You were not asked for your opinions of police procedure. Please confine yourself to answering the questions.”
“The police, then, are by no means ignorant of your occupation.” Again she shrugged. “Are they?”
“Have it your way. All the same, I’m sticking my neck out by giving evidence here.”
“Now, you picked this man up in the Diving Bell, you say, just before half past nine. He offered to buy you a drink, you accepted, and then–” Hayley laughed a countryman’s laugh, the laugh of a rustic ignorant of big city vice. “I’m just not clear about that.”
“He came home with me.”
“Yes, but what I mean is, did you ask him to come home with you, or did he ask whether he could? I’m just not clear about it, you see.”
For the first time Betty Prenton hesitated. “I’m not sure. When you get into conversation in a pub like that, why, it’s often an understood thing. Anyway, I felt sorry for him, he looked so miserable.”
“You felt sorry for him. But this was a business transaction, you aren’t denying that you expected to get money from this man?”
She put her hands on her hips. “It was a business transaction, yes. And I still felt sorry for him. Does that seem to you impossible?”
“Just let me ask the questions,” Hayley said easily. “Was any sum of money mentioned in the pub?”
“No.”
“When you got home, then. And how much?”
“Three pounds.”
“That is your usual fee? I am glad that you do not let sentiment interfere with business.”
“He never paid it me.” Her voice was harsh now.
“Really? That’s very interesting. How did that come about?”
“He said he only wanted to talk, told me all about his wife and this girl Sheila. He cried. I felt sorry for him.”
“And you said, No, no, put away your money, let me make you some baked beans on toast. Then he opened the baked beans for you and cut his thumb. And you are not sure whether blood got on to his clothing.” Now, quite suddenly, Hayley’s voice was openly mocking and derisory. Betty Prenton flinched from it for a moment, then blazed at him in fury.
“I’ve said already, I think some blood did get on his clothes.”
“How could there be any doubt about such a thing? He opens the tin, cuts his thumb, calls out – did he call out?”
“Yes, he did. I was doing the toast. When I turned round his hand was all over blood.”
“His hand was all over blood,” Hayley repeated. “From a cut on the thumb? Come, come now, Miss Prenton.”
“Were you there?” she asked. “Am I telling you, or are you telling me?”
The judge tapped on his desk. “You must not speak to counsel like that.”
“But he can speak to me any way he likes, is that it?” she said bitterly. “His hand was all over blood, I tell you, and I think there was some on his clothes. It came out fast. Then he ran it under the cold tap for a minute and wrapped it in his handkerchief because it hadn’t stopped bleeding. I think he still had the handkerchief on when he left. That’s all I noticed about the blood. If I’d known I was going to be asked questions here about it I’d have written it all down at the time.”
“You were too busy cooking the baked beans,” Hayley suggested amiably.
“I was cooking the baked beans, is that so funny? I’m not ashamed of it. And I’m not ashamed of being a prostitute, let me tell you, it’s quite as good an occupation as yours.”
“You enjoy practising your occupation, do you?” Hayley asked silkily.
“Yes. I hope you enjoy yours as much – trapping people into saying things they didn’t mean.”
With the air of a man whose patience has come to an end, Hayley said, “And you are seriously asking the jury to believe that you, a prostitute, took this man home to get money from him, but changed your mind when you found he felt miserable – that you took no money from him, had no relations with him, and even cooked him a meal. Is that what you want the jury to believe?”
“Yes.” Her voice was almost a shriek. “That’s what happened. Shall I tell you what’s wrong with you sharp lawyers? You’ve got no charity yourselves, so you don’t think other people can have any. You sell your minds, but you’re very shocked when other people sell their bodies.”
Charlie Hudnutt leaned across to Magnus Newton. “She’s rather fine, isn’t she?” Newton nodded gloomily. Mr Likeness was making a drawing of her. Now he added a stroke or two to make her expression that of a barking frizzy-haired poodle.
“You felt sorry for John Wilkins. But when another – what did you call him? – another client arrived, you had no hesitation in turning him out.” She did not answer. “Had you? You told him to go. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s true, but–”
“And then, although you felt so sorry for him, you didn’t come forward when you saw that he had been arrested.”
“I’ve already said I didn’t want trouble with the police.”
“But then this remarkably persuasive private investigator came along, and you saw the path of duty. Is that really what you are telling us?”
“If you want to put it that way I can’t stop you. But it’s not true.”
Hayley spread out his hands. “What is untrue about it? Isn’t it the truth that you love publicity, and saw the chance of a lifetime to get some when this Mr Lambie came to see you?”
“No,” she cried, and beat the top of the box with her fist.
“That you welcomed the chance to come and air your brazen views in court here about the life of prostitution which you lead–”
“No. No.”
“And that really, if Wilkins came to see you at all, it was in the ordinary way of business for you, you took his money and had connection with him and he went away, and the rest is all the product of your fertile imagination?”
“Liar,” she shouted at him. “You filthy liar. I didn’t take his money.”
“Control your language,” the judge said.
“We could believe that to be the truth of it, I dare say, Miss Prenton. You’re a business woman, as you’ve pointed out. A good business woman like yourself wouldn’t allow a man to waste an hour and a half of your valuable time for nothing, would she? And then a public-spirited woman like yourself would have come forward immediately, wouldn’t she, if your story had been true?”
She had recovered herself now. She said calmly, “You can be as sarcastic as you like. My s
tory is true.”
Chapter Twenty
May Wilkins’ hair had been freshly waved. She wore a plain green frock and a triple row of pearls was strung round her neck. She answered Magnus Newton’s opening questions with composure, telling of a happy married life, and saying that she knew of the blackouts. She had mentioned the question of going to a doctor, but her husband made up his own mind about those things.
“Did you notice any change in your husband’s attitude towards you?” Newton asked. He had decided to solve the problem of putting May in the box, by admitting as much as was inevitable about the changed conditions of their married life. He was, so to speak, allowing her to show that Wilkins had been unfaithful in spirit for the sake of her evidence about the time. Indeed, Newton reckoned (although Charlie Hudnutt thought that his logic was too finespun) that if he could make it clear that May had come almost to hate her husband, it would make her evidence about the time of his return to the hotel more convincing.
“Yes, about three months ago.” And she told of the incident when he struck her. “I had made a remark about his mother still regarding him as her baby. I was sorry for it afterwards. But I think the real reason was that this girl –”
“What you think is not evidence, I am afraid. Just answer the questions. Now, did the prisoner ever speak to you about Miss Morton?”
“No.”
“Did you know of her existence until he was arrested?”
“I did not.”
“But you suspected that something of the sort was wrong. Why was that?”
“One day, it was about the second week in May, I think, John asked me what I thought of divorce.”
“Can you remember his exact words?”
“Yes. He said he’d been reading something in the paper about a man who thought that when two people fell out of love with each other they ought to get divorced. I asked what he was trying to tell me, whether he’d been unfaithful. He was trying to pretend that it wasn’t personal, hadn’t anything to do with us, but of course I knew it had.”
“And what was your reaction?”
May spoke emphatically. “I told him that even if he had been unfaithful, it wouldn’t make any difference. I loved him. I should never give him up.”
The Colour of Murder Page 18