Prisoner at the Bar

by Roderic Jeffries

  She stood up and crossed the thick-pile carpet to the window. Outside, Thompson, on hands and knees, was working at one of the herbaceous borders to the side of the extensive lawn. Thompson might be mentally retarded, the locals said it was because his father had been all of seventy-four when he was born, but when it came to gardening he was something of a genius. He had to be, for Elmer to employ him: Elmer would never have employed him from a sense of charity. Elmer wanted a garden that was twice as spectacular as anyone else’s. It was opened to the public four times a year and the money collected was given to charities helping spastics. It gave Elmer great satisfaction to show people what a wonderful garden he had.

  She turned and stared at the room. Even though it was the study, it was sumptuously furnished. Elmer had commissioned Arkrowyd to decorate and furnish the house. The cost had been over thirty thousand pounds which had made even Elmer blink twice, but then the house had been featured in one of the glossy magazines and in the article accompanying the coloured photographs had been a reference to the connoisseur taste of the owner. Elmer finally considered the money well spent.

  She walked out of the room into the hall, turned left and went down the passage to her sewing room. This room, not very large, was peculiarly hers and the staff never, to her knowledge, entered it except to her orders. It was the one room Arkrowyd had not been allowed to decorate and it remained as unpretentious as the rest of the house had been on the day Elmer bought it. The red curtains were faded, the carpet was worn in the centre, the table was made of deal, the armchairs were ragged, the ugly bookcase was filled with dusty novels by long-forgotten authors. Over the ugly marble mantelpiece hung a photo of her Skye Terrier which had died the previous year, whose name had been Captain Hook because he’d had such a funny nose.

  She sat down in the nearer armchair and stared through the window. The view was different from the one seen from the south-facing rooms, but it was as striking. Forden House stood on the crest of a shallow hill and it overlooked the low-lying land that stretched to the coast. The countryside was attractively split up into the traditional chequer-board style of farm land, giving an endless range of greens and browns. In the spring, there were patches of vivid colours to mark where the bulb growers had started their specialised trade.

  She was twenty-eight and very much in love, but not with her husband. In a day and age when most people did exactly what they wanted, with little regard to the consequences and the feelings of others, she honoured her loyalties without counting the cost. She was married to Elmer and therefore owed him her loyalty. Her parents had taught her about loyalty. Her father had been with the same firm all his working life. They hadn’t paid him as large a salary as he could have got elsewhere, but they had given him his first chance — one that he would not otherwise have had — and he had never forgotten this. Her father had been sufficiently old-fashioned to say “Money isn’t everything” and really mean it.

  She hadn’t married Elmer because he was wealthy and she’d been dazzled by his riches. She’d married him because she’d really believed she was in love with him, he with her. Elmer had the strange knack of initially being able to make other people believe his character was what he wanted them to believe it was. She had found him kind, cultured, worldly in the best possible sense, and considerately loving. Only after they had been married for some time had she discovered that he was as cold and unemotional as the polar ice. He had married her because she was young, intelligent, and beautiful, the kind of wife other men would like to possess. He gave her costly jewellery and furs, and encouraged her to dress expensively, because that would breed envy in the bosoms of other men’s wives. He treated her with an exemplary correctness and gave her anything she wanted except the warm emotion she so desperately longed for.

  *

  Bladen found a parking space by the statue of Queen Mary the First, who was said to have founded the original prosperity of Paraford Cross in 1557 by having two clergymen burned at the stake — so providing martyrs to whose tombs the faithful pilgrimaged. He checked on the time. Five to seven. They said a man was only as old as he felt: waiting for Katherine he felt about nineteen as he suffered all the chest-thumping excitement of a really important date.

  He saw her red Mini as it turned into the road by the cinema. It passed him and drove into the municipal car park. He got out and walked to meet her.

  She was wearing a dress in a light shimmering blue that had all the simple elegance of very expensive quality. Round her neck was a single row of pearls, the only piece of jewellery she really liked out of all that Elmer had given her. When she smiled at him, her eyes were filled with a deep, warm love. “I’m not too terribly late, am I, Bob?”

  “You’re almost exactly on time, which makes it a record.”

  She laughed, showing white even teeth. “You’ve no grounds for being so rude. It wasn’t I who was half an hour late the last time we went out.”

  “That was when I got held up on business.”

  “One law for the male and one for the female, eh? And yet you’re supposed to be a lawyer offering the same justice to all.”

  They walked past the pay-booth, empty since it was after six, and along the pavement to his car. Once they were seated in it, she said: “Where are we going?”

  “How about trying the motel for dinner? There’s a new chef and they say the food’s good now.”

  “Let’s. Whatever the food’s like, the drive over the hills is fun. Have I ever told you my dream? It’s to live in one of those quiet ancient farmhouses, tucked away in a gentle valley. It would be absolute Heaven.”

  “Even when the place is flooded with Sunday trippers from the towns, chucking all their rubbish into the nearest hedge and charging through the fields”

  “Stop destroying my dreams.”

  “Sometimes it pays to face reality.”

  “That is the kind of remark I’d expect a pompous barrister to make.”

  He grinned. “Am I pompous?”

  “You might be, if I let you.”

  “There’s something about me you should know. On my call night, I got so plastered I recited the full and unexpurgated version of Eskimo Nell.”

  “Then you should have been sacked on the spot.”

  “Disbarred is the technical term. In any case, nearly everyone else was far too plastered to understand what I was saying.”

  “It sounds like a Bacchanalia.”

  “I’m afraid there were no dancing girls.”

  “How very disappointing for you.”

  “There are girls who go in for the law, but it seems to be one of nature’s laws that they all wear glasses, have skinny legs, and very flat chests.”

  “A girl can’t help the size of her bosom.”

  He started the engine. It was absurd to believe that if they lived together life would always be as gay and untroubled, but whatever it was they would be happy.

  “Why are you so suddenly looking serious?” she asked. “Have we rocked back on to our dignity?”

  “I was thinking what fun life could be for us.”

  “Let’s hope that one day it will be,” she answered, and suddenly her own voice was serious.

  “It could be now, if you’d change.”

  She stared through the windscreen at the stream of cars that was being held up by a lorry trying to turn right. “It’s always the other person who has to change, isn’t it, and it’s always so easy for the other person to do so?”

  *

  They left the motel early, after a very disappointing meal. They drove back across the hills and reached the Brayford/Chetsy road. He turned off this into the same lane they had been along twelve days before.

  “Bob, d’you…” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  They rounded the gnarled old hornbeam and went along between the rhododendron bushes to the open area at the end.

  He kissed her, with a hunger he did not try to hide.

&nb
sp; She returned his passion for a moment, then gently freed herself.

  “You’ve got a will of iron,” he muttered, his voice thick.

  “You — you don’t hate me because of it, do you?”

  “I just wish the iron wasn’t so damned tough.”

  “We’re silly to give ourselves the temptation.”

  “That’s a hell of a female way of looking at it.”

  “I am a female.”

  “That much, I’ve been allowed to discover!”

  She spoke softly. “Whilst we can still laugh, Bob, we’ll be all right.”

  “The good old British sense of humour that carries us through every crisis.” The car was parked with the bonnet facing Joumelle Point so that as he looked at her he could see, beyond the car, the rhododendron bushes in the moonlight. Some of the leaves in the centre of the nearest bush seemed to be moving too energetically for the amount of wind and he suddenly remembered the face he might have seen the previous visit.

  “Have you seen something?” she asked in a sharp tone of voice, which showed she had never forgotten what had happened before.

  “I’m not certain.”

  “Bob, I don’t like it. It makes us being here rather… rather horrible.” Her voice rose. “I can’t stand thinking someone may be watching us.” What was really worrying her, she wondered rather wildly? Was it that this was making her recognise the fact that although her loyalty to Elmer prevented her committing adultery with Bob, it so obviously didn’t prevent her coming to a secluded spot and enjoying a certain amount of love-making? Wasn’t that being hypocritical?

  “If there is someone, I’ll get the bastard this time,” he said, angered not only by the possibility of there being a peeping Tom, but also because it was clear how her thoughts were running.

  “Forget it.”

  “No.”

  “Let’s drive away and never come back. I suppose a lot of people come here and there’s plenty for anyone to see.” He cursed himself for having returned. He picked up a torch from the glove locker and got out of the car. He ran along the track to the hornbeam. He switched on the torch and searched the ground on both sides as he slowly walked back along the tracks. If there was a peeper here, the other was cut off unless he could run like a bat out of hell. He thought he heard something on his left where there was a natural bay. He stepped into it and searched the bushes. Finding no one, he returned to the track.

  As he climbed into the car, he said: “I didn’t see anyone and I would have done had there been anyone.”

  She touched his arm. “Please, let’s go.”

  He started the engine, backed and drove along the track, round the hornbeam, and up to the road. He had to wait for an oncoming car.

  “It’s made me feel…” She didn’t finish.

  The oncoming car passed. He drove out on to the road and accelerated fiercely, grinding the gears as he changed up to third. What a hell of a way to finish the evening.

  *

  Tuesday, the first of October, was a day of sun, puff-balls of cumulus, and a light wind that had a snap to it. Sunshine and shadow chased each other across the land.

  Adams, sixty years a shepherd, a man who knew next to nothing about the theory of sheep-farming but made it pay better than anyone else in the district, slowly plodded, with feet splayed outwards, up the slope towards a ewe that stood on its own near the rock face. The ewe looked healthy enough — she wasn’t hunching — yet she was one that normally never strayed from the main body of the flock. He didn’t hurry his rate of walking — hurry never mended anything — and it took him over half a minute to get close to the animal. When ten yards away, he saw what had disturbed it. On the ground lay the body of a man.

  Chapter 3

  Police Constable Elwick was the village constable, an intelligent man of thirty-five who was a far cry from the bumbling idiot tradition would have a village P.C. He studied the body.

  “Fell down from the top,” said Adams, in his high-pitched voice that was thick with the local accent.

  Elwick looked up. The side of the slope had fallen away a long time ago, uncovering the ragstone rock in an almost sheer face ten feet high. The flatfish area below was littered with pieces of rock.

  “Maybe his sparking was too hot so she knocked him over.” Adams cackled loudly, with the glee of someone who was no longer bothered by itching loins.

  “Could be, but his forehead looks as if it was hit with something solid. And that’s a hell of a bruise under the eye.”

  “Some of the girls these days’d do anything.”

  “Hang on here, will you, and see no one comes along while I get on to Paraford Cross.”

  “I’ve got me sheep to looker.”

  “It won’t take a moment.”

  “There won’t be no one around ’afore it’s dark. Then them bushes up top start to dance a jig.”

  Elwick walked away. He went round the plateau and along to the point where the rock face disappeared under the grassy slope. He climbed up to the top, crossed to the track, and went down this to the road and his motorbike. He switched on the radio transmitter. “Hullo Romeo Romeo Papa. Tango Tango one four.”

  “Hullo Tango Tango one four.”

  “Body of man found on Wayton Hills, injuries suggest assault. Reference point Brayford/Chetsy road, at junction with Wayton Lees road. There’s a track to the south, known locally as Lovers’ Lane.”

  “Stand by, please.”

  *

  The presence of a local Bar at Paraford Cross was a strange historical fact, even an anachronism. It dated from the late eighteenth century and there were no existing records to show exactly why it had ever been set up, although there were some who claimed this was simply because the inhabitants of the town in those days had been an even greater lot of thieving vagabonds than they were now. The law being an ardent protector of tradition, especially anachronistic tradition, the local Bar remained active despite its small size and visiting assize judges always dined once in the mess each term.

  There were two sets of chambers, on opposite sides of a landing in an ugly building halfway along Market Street. Several firms of solicitors had their offices in the same street, an arrangement that was convenient from a professional point of view if one that caused some concern to suspicious clients.

  Bladen entered the building and climbed the stairs to the first landing, where he turned right. He went into chambers, past the opened doorway on which were printed the names of the three barristers who practised within.

  The clerk’s room was immediately on the right. Premble, the chief — and only — clerk was a small man who worried continually and seemed to consider himself the conscience of those in chambers. He looked up from the desk. “Good morning, sir.” He had a deep voice and a way of speaking that suggested every word should be considered of the utmost importance.

  “Morning, Albert.” Bladen crossed to the mantelpiece over the boarded-in fireplace where a number of briefs were carefully stacked. “Anything new come in?”

  “Two undefended divorces and the High Court brief in Medoc and Copper, sir.”

  “So they finally decided to have a fight. Excellent! There’s nothing like a long, bitter, and bloody fight to bring in the sovereigns.”

  Premble’s expression, predictably, became one of disapproval. The law was a very serious matter. “You have not forgotten, sir, that you are appearing in the county court this afternoon?”

  “Two-thirty, before His Honour Judge Splatt, a man of distinctly finite charm.” Bladen picked up his briefs and went into the next room which he shared with Wraight. Wraight was twenty-five and the law provided him with a way of using up his spare time. Bladen sat down at his desk, leaned back in the chair, and lit a cigarette. His black mood of the previous night was gone and he was quite illogically convinced that all the difficulties would iron themselves out. Perhaps Elmer would suffer a fatal stroke. Katherine would make the kind of wife every man longed for, but few were lucky eno
ugh to marry. She was beautiful, warm, loving, gay passionate, loyal. They’d live in one of the old farmhouses she dreamed about, tucked away in the Wayton Hills. She’d suffer a very sharp drop in her standard of living. He was now earning a good income at the Bar, but it was only peanuts compared to Elmer’s income. There would be no large house, no butler, housekeeper, chauffeur, no fleet of cars headed by a Rolls-Royce, no flat in Chelsea, no suite at Monte Carlo’s Hotel de Paris: there would just be the farmhouse, the Austin, one local woman to give a hand in the house if they were lucky, and should they go down to Monte Carlo they’d stay in Italy because it was cheaper.

  But he knew which way of life would make her happier. She longed for a real marriage, with children. Elmer had always wanted a son, but there had been no children. Katherine had seen specialists in London and each one had said there was no discernible reason why she should not bear children so that the fault probably lay with her husband. Elmer refused to consider the possibility he might be the one to blame.

  The telephone rang and Bladen lifted the receiver. Premble said: “Mr. Palster has just asked to brief you, sir, in quite a big case.”

  “How much did you sting him for?”

  There was a short pause. “The brief will be marked one hundred guineas, sir,” replied Premble frostily, before replacing the receiver.

  Bladen stubbed out his cigarette. A hundred guineas for just one brief. When he’d been married to Gwyneth, a hundred guineas had been riches beyond the dreams of avarice. What would their marriage have turned out like had he been earning enough to satisfy her wants? He shrugged his shoulders. Her wants would always have increased sufficiently to outstrip his income.

  *

  A number of men were gathered about the body. The detective sergeant who was fingerprint and photographic expert had taken photographs and was now making a sketch. The detective inspector was talking to the police surgeon and the divisional detective sergeant and a detective constable stood close by. Two uniformed constables waited for further orders. Above, in Lovers’ Lane, two more uniformed constables and a detective constable had begun a preliminary search.