Verdict of Twelve

by Raymond Postgate

  A.—Last week. I forget which day. Irene would tell you. She looked quite well.

  Q.—You didn’t see her this morning?

  A.—No.

  Q.—What did you do this morning?

  A.—I got up at the usual time—six o’clock—tidied up downstairs, and left a note for the missus. I ran out to see my sister Mae, who hadn’t been at all well. I found she was better, and came back straight here. That’s all. Why are you asking me these questions?

  Q.—Was your aunt well-to-do?

  A.—I couldn’t say. She wasn’t hard-up that I know of.

  Q.—I suppose she will have left you something in her will?

  A.—It’s not the sort of thing I care to discuss with the poor lady not yet cold in her grave.

  Q.—Still—

  A.—In well-bred circles that is all that needs to be said. I would have you remember that I’ve had a very severe shock and while I will answer any reasonable questions I’m not going to listen to idle chitchat. Aunt Ethel will have done whatever she thought right and that is all any one is entitled to know.

  Q.—Oh, yes, of course, of course. Now let me see if I’ve got everything right: You got up—about when? Some time before six, was it?

  A.—Six exactly. And down in about ten minutes.

  Q.—Yes, yes. And then you tidied up and laid the table. Pulled the curtains, I suppose?

  A.—I don’t remember any details: I was worrying about my sister. I got to her as soon as I could—a little earlier than I meant to. Just before seven, I think.

  ***

  There were many other questions and answers, but they got the police no further. The constable whose beat went past Mrs. Mulholland’s house had noticed during the night that the sitting-room curtains were not drawn as usual. But this information seemed to lead nowhere. Elaborate questioning failed to find any one who had noticed a suspicious character, or any character, in Duke Street that morning. The dial system prevented tracing the telephone call.

  Irene came for a while under suspicion, but it was found that she had a half withered arm and physically could never have committed the crime. Inspector Hodson himself was convinced that Victoria was guilty, but her defence seemed impregnable. Both her mistress and Miss Meakin remembered clearly hearing her get up, and though they were not certain as to when she left, there was no reasonable doubt that it was after six, when two policemen were standing by Ethel’s newly-dead-body, a good half-hour away.

  In the end Victoria inherited £2,327 11s. od. from her aunt and purchased with it a tobacconist’s and newsagent’s business. In three years’ time she had made enough to buy her house; and this new prosperity was responsible for her receiving a juror’s summons. She spent 7s. 6d. with a lawyer, to receive the information that she could not escape her duties; and in consequence, half displeased, half interested, she made her way to court on the day.

  She thought to herself, in a manner as near to humour as any thought of hers could be, that it wouldn’t half be queer if she had to be juror in a murder case. Somebody who did know how judging somebody that didn’t. For she never attempted to forget that she had killed her aunt, and she never had the least regret. She was rather proud of it, though she remembered having several bad scares and was certain she’d never do such a thing again.

  It had been pretty simple. The alarum clock was easy. Even the coppers had suspected that. It was only a matter of testing the winding, and she’d done that several times, holding the bell in her handkerchief. She had found exactly the number of turns of the alarum key necessary to make it ring twenty seconds and no more. Then she had set it and left it. She had been intentionally irregular in her getting up for some days before, to make sure Mrs. Mulholland would listen for her alarum. Anyway, Miss Meakin was safe. There is sometimes a very slight difference between an alarum that has run down and one that is cut short, but it is not the sort of thing a sleepy woman notices, let alone remembers to tell a rozzer.

  The bumping of the furniture had been a little more difficult. But only a little patience was needed, and sleeping with your window shut to avoid a draught. Candles burn exactly to time: didn’t the Romans use them as clocks or something? Victoria had spent many nights testing and re-testing their speed, marking out the hours, halves, and quarters on them. She didn’t use her knowledge until she was absolutely certain to a few minutes either way. Then on the night she pulled her blind down and arranged what looked like a sort of booby trap.

  To a nail driven into the window-sill she attached a long piece of string; the other end she tied to the wooden chair which was almost her complete bedroom furniture. She leant the chair against her bed, tipped to one side. If the string were to break, it would fall down to the floor on its side, with a reasonable but not excessive noise.

  Then she made a triangular cut in the candle on the table by her bed, at a particular place which she had marked. She moved the table underneath the string, so that the string pressed into the triangular cut, right against the wick, and then, taking the time from her watch, lit the candle. Unless her calculations were wrong, the candle flame would reach the place at six exactly, and in a minute or so the string would snap.

  Her calculations were not wrong; on top of that she had a bit of luck on which she had not reckoned. People hear what they expect to hear. Miss Meakin and Mrs. Mulholland had for day after day heard Victoria’s alarum go off, then heard her bump about a bit while dressing, and after that if they strained their ears heard her move faintly and distantly doing the kitchen out downstairs. When, half asleep, they heard the beginning of this process they assumed that they had heard the rest. If Inspector Hodson had cross-questioned both of them closely and immediately that very morning he might perhaps have raised a doubt in their minds whether Victoria’s getting up was actually followed by the usual sounds of work downstairs. Even if he had, as the inspector knew very well, doubt about almost any evidence can be induced by sufficiently long cross-examination: results obtained that way don’t generally stand up too well in court. Anyway, when he did examine the two ladies in detail, they showed none of the phenomenal feats of detailed memory that occur in detective stories. They merely remembered that things had gone as usual that morning, and said so.

  It had taken a bit of nerve (Victoria remembered) to go on to Mae’s after It, instead of hurrying back. But as soon as she got home she had gone back upstairs, pulled up the blind, made the bed, set the chair straight, wound up the alarum, and twisted the nail out. She’d put in a new candle and let it burn a minute. She’d taken the two ends of string and the candle stump and thrown them on the kitchen fire. So even if the coppers had gone over her room they must have found nothing.

  She was day-dreaming to this effect, standing with the other jurors, when the clerk caught her attention.

  “I swear by Almighty God,” she repeated after him, “that I will well and truly try, and true deliverance make between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar whom I shall have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence.” Silly way of talking, she thought; kissed the book and sat down on the bench for the jurors already sworn.

  2

  The Clerk of Assize turned next to the man whom he had noticed as being unusually handsome. Like most men of past middle-age he habitually faintly disliked or distrusted handsome men, especially dark handsome men. If there was any excuse he would classify them as shiny or foreign looking. A man was all the better for being a bit rugged looking, and all the worse for having regular features and being noticeably well-groomed. However, even he had nothing against this juror. After a quite perceptible stare he said to him: “Arthur George Popesgrove, repeat after me…”

  ***

  Arthur George Popesgrove. A very English name. Only an Englishman or an American could say Arthur correctly; George was the King’s name; and no one would think that Popesgrove had been taken o
ut of the telephone directory. Sometimes the owner of the name wished he had selected Anthony as first name. Though he was rather darker, his face had a distinct resemblance to the Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden’s, and it was no fault of his if his clothes were not identically the same. Certainly, Mr. Eden could never have been more conscious than he was of being English. No other member of the jury felt that to be called to serve was a high privilege: at the best, they accepted it as a duty. Arthur Popesgrove was delighted when he opened the summons. “You see, Maud,” he said to his wife, “I have to be a juror now. That is very important. I take my part in safeguarding British justice.” He smiled contentedly—his wife looked down her nose and said nothing. Her nose was fat, large and white; very wide at the base and with blackheads; it was not a very English nose. But after all you could not order your wife to change her nose. At least she answered to the name Maud without protest, and they never spoke anything but English in the home. English; he was wholly English, for his naturalization papers were the evidence of will and choice, whereas the birth certificate of the man next door was only evidence of an accident. None of his children should ever know that their blood was anything but English. If necessary, even the cooking in his restaurant should change. Already he had one man parading the grillroom floor behind a great silver dish on which was a huge roast sirloin. When patrons asked for his advice he very often would say: “After all, there’s nothing like really good roast beef, is there, sir? Or a steak, perhaps? Scorched outside and red inside.” Stuffed vine-leaves had disappeared from the list: garlicky dishes were less common.

  The size of his family was perhaps a little un-English. He had had six children before observing that large families were unfashionable as well as uneconomic. Their names however were unimpeachable. Eric Archibald, Julia, James Henry, Mary, Charles Edward, and Arthur Herbert. Try and mess about with those. His own accent was impeccable. Once he used to hiss his esses slightly, but there was no trace of that now. He had even prepared, in case of need, a false genealogy for his children. He would tell them that their mother came from the Channel Islands, and that their grandfather, on his side, had been a bit of a rogue. “We don’t talk about him, but it’s your right to know,” he saw himself saying. “He was the son of a small Dorset landowner who came up to town and spent his money wildly. He got into a fight one night and a policeman died as a result. He had a rather heavy sentence. I don’t remember him; I was only a kid then.”

  He felt certain that he was doing his children a far more real service by telling them this story than by disclosing the truth. Yet few people but himself would have felt that there was anything shameful in the origin of A. G. Popesgrove, restaurant proprietor. It went back to a Thessalian village—dry, poverty stricken, smelly and under a brilliant sun which never shines in England, even on the brightest summer day. The sun is never an enemy here: it does not burn your skin with its heat, and spike your eyes with its brightness. The blue sky is never hateful and metallic. The countryside is rarely brown and burnt, with clouds of dust rising and blowing all over your food and clothes. The smells may not be better, but they are different and they are not eternal and unvarying.

  The little boy, Achilles Papanastasiou, handsome as only a Greek small boy can be, very early decided that the best thing that he could do was to get away from this village as soon as he could. He did not mind how he did it; and a quarter of a century later he truly did not remember how he had done it. But the way was this.

  Greek politics before the war were a little more open than they are to-day, but they did not differ in essence. Colonel Theseus Theotoki was a politician, and on one of his election tours he noticed young Achilles. He went to his parents and bought him, as he might have bought a calf. There was a little more palaver about it: he spoke of Athens, of a liberal education, and of the opportunities which the secretary of a political leader would have, and the transaction was registered at the town hall as an adoption.

  Young Achilles immediately found out that his duties included more intimate services than secretarial work. The colonel owned certain private houses and hotels which were run in direct contravention of the law. That was not very serious, but a certain discretion had nevertheless to be observed. Quiet semi-blackmail was possible. By the time Achilles was sixteen he realized he had a lever which he could use against the colonel. So, for a short time Achilles had a great deal of money. Athens was very gay: the war was on and there was plenty of amusement of a normal kind, which was what Achilles preferred. The colonel seemed an inexhaustible resource, and Achilles went out on a permanent binge.

  So far it did not matter. But Achilles was very inexperienced; he was, after all, only a raw boy from a village. He committed the enormous imprudence of becoming arrogant as well as wasteful. He spent his patron’s money mercilessly and failed to perform any of the duties for which he was paid. The gambling rooms and the rooms where other pleasures were provided did not see him for nights on end. He was supposed to act as a sort of male “hostess,” as an encourager of extravagance, as assistant chucker-out and occasionally pickpocket. He didn’t. Colonel Theseus protested for a while, and then suddenly realized he was being made a fool of. He remembered he possessed a certain influence still, and went to see the chief of police.

  Achilles was drinking in a wine shop in the Peiraieus that afternoon. He had not had very much to drink yet, he was quiet and sober, and slightly uneasy about his patron’s manner that morning. He was more than a little disquieted when the girl serving in the saloon, who was about a year younger than him, said to him in a low, clear whisper:

  “Get out. Leave Athens this afternoon and don’t go back home. I’m warning you.”

  She left him gaping and went back to her work. After a minute he signed to her.

  “A glass of uzo. What did you mean by what you said just now?”

  His hand roamed round her behind.

  “Stop that, silly. This is serious. Two policemen” (she used an exceedingly offensive Greek word which had no English equivalent) “were here an hour ago. They talked about you. I knew it was you because they mentioned Colonel Theotoki. This evening you’ll be arrested. A sailor will charge you with [an indecent offence]. You’ll be proved to have assaulted the police as well. You’ll get prison, and deportation to one of the islands, they think.”

  “You made it up.”

  “I didn’t. You wait and see. If you go back to the colonel’s place they’ve got something else. I didn’t understand exactly what, but it was something to do with stealing.”

  Achilles turned rather green, and felt sick. He had been a little free with the colonel’s jewellery. What did an old man want with bracelets, anyway?

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Helena Melagloss. Are you going?”

  He sat for a few minutes silent and then went down to the port. There were plenty of jobs on Allied transports for able bodied youngsters, and no questions asked.

  ***

  Right until the end of the war he worked on French boats, usually in the galley, as a sort of pantry boy. He was well fed, learnt French thoroughly, and certain rudiments of cooking. He also learnt to be quick with a knife. He caught a disease and was cured of it summarily by the ship’s surgeon, who scared him into a cautious method of life by a highly exaggerated medical lecture. He deserted from his ship on November 18th, 1918, at Marseilles, with no passport or other papers at all, except a seaman’s card showing he had served on French transports for two years.

  His money lasted very few days, and he was rescued half-starving in Toulon by a compatriot whose real name remained for ever unknown to him. No one ever called him anything but Monsieur Dimo. Monsieur Dimo owned a small hotel-restaurant in the harbour district. The restaurant trade was cheap but decent. The trade in hotel rooms was almost wholly for prostitutes; Achilles was kept continuously making and re-making the same beds every night. His duties went on regularly until on
e and two in the morning, and sometimes later. They restarted at 9 o’clock. He had to clean out the restaurant and tidy it, and then go into the kitchen, peel potatoes and do all a kitchen-maid’s work. After that he must return to the restaurant and serve aperitifs. Then he must act as waiter until about three, when he would do the washing-up which had been too much for Madame Dimo. After that he was supposed to have some time to himself, but it was almost invariably taken from him on the grounds that it had been impossible for Madame to clean out the bedrooms in the morning. By half-past five preparations must begin for the evening dinners, and from then on work was continuous. He received no wages, only tips, and these he was supposed to share equally with Monsieur Dimo, though he soon learnt to cheat on that. Monsieur Dimo provided him with a passport and a permis de séjour, made out in the name of Anton Polycrate. He never knew whether there was any such person: on the whole, it is more probable that the passport was forged than stolen.

  One day he decided that he could better himself by going along the coast to St. Raphael or Nice. He politely gave Monsieur Dimo notice. Monsieur Dimo narrowed his eyes.

  “So, you are going, my little one. I wonder. Perhaps I can persuade you to stay. I think I can.”

  Achilles smiled. A rise in wages—or, rather, wages at all—would do as well.

  “The French police,” reflected Monsieur Dimo, “are very severe on aliens who creep in on false passports. A term in the cachot and then deportation: that is the very least. I have a suspicion that your papers that you carry are not your own. I think the gendarmes would like to know what happened to its real owner.

  “I would advise you to stay with me. If you run away, and I tell the police to look for you, they will find you very soon.”

  Achilles remained silent for a moment. Then he said:

  “I shall expect a very good reference from you, Monsieur Dimo.”

  Monsieur Dimo replied very quietly with a single very rude word.