Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘The health-insurance company wrote to me and said that they had unilaterally determined that her condition was chronic rather than acute, and their policy didn’t cover chronic conditions other than cancer. So they stopped paying. For the past year I have been funding her treatment out of our savings – monthly appointments with the psychiatrist and twice-weekly visits to the psychotherapist. Not to mention two further lengthy stints in hospital at five grand a week.’

  ‘So you’re broke?’ asked the detective.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not broke, but let’s say my retirement nest egg has taken rather a hit.’

  ‘So it is very convenient for you financially that your wife is now dead.’

  I stared at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  The chief inspector again shuffled the papers in front of him. He read from one of them and then looked up at me.

  ‘And is it not also the case, Mr Gordon-Russell, that you now stand to benefit to the tune of a million pounds from your wife’s life insurance policy. A policy you took out only eight months ago?’

  7

  ‘I have to say that I’m quite surprised they let you go.’

  Simon Bassett had never been one to mince his words.

  We were walking together out of Banbury Police Station.

  ‘But they have no evidence. They can’t have. I didn’t do it.’

  ‘But they think they have a motive,’ Simon said. ‘That’s often enough on its own for them to arrest. They then search for evidence later.’

  I had tried to explain to the detectives why I had taken out such a large insurance policy on Amelia’s life but they hadn’t really understood, even if they had wanted to. To them it was simply a further reason why I had murdered her.

  ‘The policy had a no-pay-out-for-suicide clause,’ I’d told them. ‘So it wouldn’t pay out if Amelia killed herself. She knew that. It was one of the ways I tried to stop her doing it. I told her that if she died of self-inflicted injury or an overdose, or by jumping in front of a train, then I would get nothing. Strange logic, maybe, but she referred to it often, claiming that the thought of me losing all the premiums for no return had prevented her from doing anything stupid on more than one occasion.’

  ‘But the policy does pay out for murder.’ The DCI had said it more as a statement than a question.

  ‘I suppose so. Only death by suicide was specifically excluded.’

  ‘In that case there was a huge incentive for you to kill her before she could kill herself, in order to collect the insurance?’

  Clearly, my efforts at explanation had been falling on deaf ears.

  ‘I didn’t want her to die,’ I’d pleaded to them. ‘I was just trying to keep her alive. I loved my wife and I miss her desperately.’

  What did they want me to do to prove it? Break down and cry?

  But that was not in my make-up and forcing myself to weep would surely appear as contrived and false and, worse still, as proof in their eyes of my guilt.

  I looked up at the dark threatening sky and sighed. ‘I don’t think they believed a single word I said. You could see it in their faces.’

  ‘But it gave them something to consider,’ Simon replied. ‘Trust me, if they really thought you’d killed Amelia, you’d be in the cells now and not out here.’

  We started off towards the station but there was a shout from behind.

  ‘Mr Gordon-Russell.’

  I half-expected it to be DCI Priestly or Sergeant Dowdeswell calling me back to arrest me but, when I spun round, I found myself confronted by two press photographers who busily snapped away with their cameras. I turned away from them in disgust.

  ‘How the hell did they know I’d be here?’ I asked.

  ‘Tipped off by the police, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Simon replied as we hurried along. But the two weren’t giving up that easily. They ran past us and continued to take more shots, their flashguns going off like strobes in a nightclub.

  I started to cover my face with my arms.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Simon said sharply. ‘It makes you look like you have something to hide.’

  So I put my hands down and walked along with my head held up high, or at least as high as my five-foot-eight-inch frame would allow.

  Eventually, after about five minutes, the two obviously decided they had enough pictures and they peeled away, eager, no doubt, to send the images off to their editors.

  I sighed again.

  ‘How long before they lose interest?’ I asked of no one in particular.

  ‘Not until the next juicy story breaks,’ Simon replied.

  *

  We caught the train back to London. I wasn’t sure where I was going but Simon needed to get back for some meetings and I just went with him.

  At Marylebone we were met not by a couple of photographers but by a whole TV-news crew complete with cameraman, sound recordist and female reporter.

  ‘Mr Gordon-Russell, have you any comment to make about your wife’s death?’ shouted the reporter as I passed through the ticket barrier.

  I glanced at Simon and he shook his head. ‘Whatever you say to them they will distort to fit their agenda. So don’t say anything.’

  I kept my mouth shut and walked straight past without giving them a second glance.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ I said when we were safely on our way in a taxi. ‘Surely they have more important stories to follow.’

  ‘Spoilt rich aristocrat being quizzed as a suspect in the murder of his commoner wife? Just up their commie street.’

  ‘I’m not spoilt or rich,’ I objected.

  Simon looked at me. ‘But you were brought up in a castle, weren’t you? There’s nothing the press like more than having a bash at the upper classes. If they can’t find Lord Lucan, then you will have to do.’

  He obviously wasn’t much of a fan of the news media, nor, it seemed, of the aristocracy, although it was hardly my fault that my father was an earl.

  The taxi dropped me off as Simon had to rush back to his office for a meeting, so I wandered down Baker Street on foot, not really sure where I was going, or for what purpose.

  One must have things to arrange after the death of one’s spouse. How about deciding the order of service for a funeral or memorial service? Or completing necessary paperwork, such as registering the death, sorting out bank accounts, wills and probate?

  Plus a myriad of other things to be done. Surely?

  Why, then, did I have nothing to do?

  It was not just that I had no practical arrangements to complete, but now there was no work for me to do either.

  I had checked my emails on the train back to London and discovered that the two other insurance companies for whom I was engaged as a freelance consultant had both suspended the agreements.

  I wondered if I should sue them for breach of contract, but that would hardly bode well for any future relationship either with them or any other firm. The world of insurance was quite cliquey, with everyone knowing each other’s business. To upset one was likely to upset them all. I would just have to grin and bear it, and hope that the suspensions were short.

  I drifted aimlessly along, staring into shop windows.

  I was horrified to see that Selfridges already had their Christmas window displays up and running, more than two months before the day itself.

  Christmas. Oh, God!

  In spite of her saying that it was all too commercial and complaining about how much work was involved, Amelia had always adored Christmas, and she revelled in finding me a present that I would love, despite also declaring that I was ‘impossible’ to buy for.

  I had already bought hers for this year.

  Back in July she had tried on a gold necklace in a small jewellers in Brighton when we had been there for a day. She loved it but claimed it was far too expensive; but I had managed to sneak back and buy it without her knowledge. It was hiding at the back of one of my desk drawers.
<
br />   Now what would I do with it?

  Here, surrounded by a multitude of shoppers on Oxford Street but effectively alone, my eyes did fill with tears.

  How could anyone possibly think that I’d killed her? I worshipped her and would do anything to have her back.

  I stood on the kerb waiting for the traffic lights to change while several London buses swept past me at speed, and I seriously wondered about stepping out right in front of one of them.

  Quick and easy, and it would put an end to this dreadful pain.

  Perhaps the only reason that I didn’t was because everyone would then conclude that I had indeed killed my wife, and the real culprit would get away scot-free. And I was still positive that that was Joe Bradbury.

  Sandwiched between the emails from the two insurance companies, there had been yet another of his rants, as usual full of abuse and untruths.

  ‘How could you do such a thing?’ he had written. ‘Amelia always said you were dangerous and now you’ve proved it. If it weren’t for you, my sister would still be alive. Your marriage to Amelia was, without doubt, the worst thing that ever happened to our family. I have tolerated your behaviour up to now for the sake of my sister. But no longer. How could you? . . . how could you? . . . shame on you.’

  I had hardly bothered to read it. I certainly wouldn’t be replying.

  As another twelve tons of bright-red double-decker thundered past inches from my nose, I resolved to stay alive long enough to expose my brother-in-law as the fraud and liar that he was, and to bring him to justice for the death of my wife.

  It was easier said than done – the staying alive bit, that was.

  8

  On Saturday I went to the races at Ascot.

  I’m not sure why, because I wasn’t acting as a steward, but I’d had enough of kicking my heels aimlessly around Douglas’s house. And I needed something else to occupy my mind rather than spending all the hours that God gave yearning that I could reverse the passage of time, like Superman.

  However, I received some strange looks from my fellow racegoers even before I’d passed through the turnstiles.

  The press had obviously received inside information from the police, and more than just telling them when I’d appear outside Banbury Police Station. Features of the crime were being widely reported by the media, including the gory details of how Amelia had died in spite of the fact that the post-mortem report had yet to be completed.

  Friday had been another sparse news day and the police failure to make an arrest in what was now being described as the ‘dog-lead murder’ was still prominent on both broadcast news bulletins and in the papers. All the front pages included the picture taken of me with the police station in the background, and the evening TV news had had the footage of me arriving at Marylebone.

  All of their stories included the fact that I had recently taken out an insurance policy on Amelia’s life and implied that I had killed her in order to collect, without actually stating it in so many words. Close to libel but not quite. The lawyers had been busy.

  So much for the presumption of innocence. That was clearly a myth and the crowd at Ascot had obviously believed everything they had read and heard.

  ‘Shame on you,’ one man shouted at me, echoing the email from Joe Bradbury.

  ‘Murderer,’ yelled a young woman wearing a full-length black coat, who then encouraged those around her to join in the abuse.

  I realised that it had been a huge mistake to come and I sought refuge from the mob in the Stewards’ Room, using my authorised pass to gain entrance to the weighing room complex beneath the grandstand concourse.

  Even though I wasn’t down to act in an official capacity at the meeting, it was quite common for qualified stewards to report early to the day’s chairman just in case there was an emergency and more stewards were needed than had been booked.

  However, on this day, even the Stewards’ Room was not a safe harbour in my storm.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’ George Longcross demanded.

  Oh, shit! I hadn’t appreciated that he was acting as chairman.

  ‘You are not welcome,’ George said. ‘You’ve brought the sport into disrepute.’

  ‘How exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he replied arrogantly. ‘By being accused of murder.’

  ‘I haven’t been accused of murder,’ I pointed out. ‘And I have not been arrested. I have simply been questioned by the police about the murder of my wife, but not as a suspect.’

  ‘Humph!’ he uttered in disbelief. ‘That’s not what the papers are saying.’

  And it was also not how I felt.

  ‘Then the papers are wrong. Otherwise, how would I be able to be here?’

  For a moment he seemed confused but he was not going to back down. George Longcross had probably never once backed down in his whole life. I had always considered him to be an overbearing pompous snob and nothing about this exchange had encouraged me to change my opinion.

  ‘I order you to leave,’ he said angrily. ‘Right now.’

  I wondered if he had the authority to make such an order but decided that putting it to the test was unlikely to make me any friends in the racing establishment.

  So I left, and not only the Stewards’ Room but also the whole racecourse – but not before half a dozen or so more members of the public had vented their rage at my presence. One of them was even acquainted with me slightly through our time riding together as amateur jockeys, and he was particularly vitriolic, accusing me of bringing disgrace on a noble family.

  ‘Your father must be horrified,’ he shouted at my face from about six inches away.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ I protested, but it fell on deaf ears. He’d read the newspapers – he knew.

  But I was, indeed, very apprehensive of what my father might be thinking. And my mother too. For the most part, my parents lived in their own ivory tower in the Welsh Marches, where they were more concerned with how they could afford to keep the castle roof watertight than they were with the major news stories of the day.

  I knew that they were aware of Amelia’s death – Douglas had phoned them on the first evening I’d been in his house – but I had yet to be in contact with them myself.

  I’d never been that close to my parents; indeed, as a young child I had been cherished far more by my grandparents. I believed that my mother had been more ‘hands on’ when my two elder brothers were born but, by the time I arrived eight years later, she was far too busy running the local church and history groups to worry about her new baby. In those days, before my grandfather’s death duties had laid waste to the family fortune, there had been an army of domestic staff to cook my meals and wash my clothes, and, later, even a chauffeur to drive me to and from my boarding schools. Not that I’d felt particularly deprived of maternal affection at the time. It was just the way things were, and I knew nothing different. Only much later, as a teenager and after my grandmother’s death, did I start wondering if my arrival into this world had been a huge blunder on my parents’ part.

  So I hadn’t called them yet, not least because my father, in particular, would have been hugely embarrassed if I’d been in an emotional state with him on the telephone. But perhaps now was the time to remind them not to believe everything they read in the newspapers.

  I caught the train back to London from Ascot station while many were still arriving for one of the great days of British racing – Champions Day, the last great hurrah before flat racing on turf went into hibernation for the four and a half long months of winter.

  Why had I come in the first place?

  I had been humiliated, especially by George Longcross.

  He and I had never really seen eye to eye. He was a harsh judge and was always quick to blame the jockeys for the slightest interference, even when it had been completely accidental or due to one of the horses reacting without warning. I, on the other hand, tended to try and give the benefit o
f the doubt to the riders.

  Professional jockeys are self-employed and hence don’t get paid unless they are racing, so any decision to suspend them from riding affects their ability to earn a living. Nevertheless, and irrespective of their fame and fortune, George Longcross treated them like servants, referring to them always by their surnames alone. I had a more sanguine approach, while at all times upholding the strict Rules of Racing.

  I felt there had to be a delicate balance between carrot and stick, considering most of the people the stewards deal with have hugely more experience of racing than we do, and far greater earnings. It’s similar to football, where a Premier League star earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week is under the control of a referee who is paid only a small fraction of that in a full year, and is most unlikely to have ever played the game professionally.

  I believed that respect should be a two-way process but George Longcross demanded absolute subservience both from the sport’s participants and from his fellow stewards, with no place for empathy, compromise or compassion. It didn’t do much for his popularity rating at any time, and especially not with me at the moment.

  I kept my eyes down on the train to Waterloo, thankfully arriving without any unpleasant confrontations with my fellow passengers.

  ‘Chester Square, please,’ I said to the driver of a black cab at the station taxi rank.

  We set off and I wondered if it was my paranoia or was he really looking at me via his rear-view mirror more than at the road ahead?

  But he must have been paying more attention to the traffic than I’d realised, as we made it safely to Chester Square without so much as the slightest bump or scrape.

  I stood on the pavement and paid him through the open window, including a tip.

  ‘Good luck, mate,’ he said.