Prisoner at the Bar

by Roderic Jeffries

  Bladen drained his glass. There was a pulse hammering in his throat. He was back in the rat trap, not yet caught, pinned by the snap-back spring, but being irresistibly pushed forward nearer and nearer to the trigger.

  “Bob, what is it?” she asked. “What was all that about? I couldn’t understand.”

  He told her. When he had finished speaking, she stared at him, fear twisting her face. “They… they really think you were there when Thompson died?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you weren’t, were you?”

  “Is that meant to be a question? Are you beginning to wonder now exactly how long I was out of the car, are you trying to work out whether I had time to smash him over the forehead with something nice and solid, kick him as he lay on the ground…”

  “Stop it.”

  He walked over to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a second, and much stronger, drink. He had feared the police had evidence far more incriminating than he knew about, now he knew that his fears were justified. The evidence was going to say he had been present at Thompson’s death and therefore he was the murderer.

  He had to fight. But how, and whom? The police weren’t faking the evidence: the scientists weren’t prostituting their profession falsely to incriminate him. What other evidence did the police have and how close were they to arresting him? So far they hadn’t cautioned him so he was not yet officially a suspect, but there couldn’t be long to go.

  He finished the drink. It was becoming a nightmare, but a nightmare from which there was to be no relief by awakening. It was like wading through an ever-increasingly viscous sea of glue with a hungry pursuer who could skim the surface.

  The Tompion, sounding asthmatic, chimed seven.

  “Elmer will be here any minute,” she said dully.

  He lit another cigarette.

  The words might have been a cue. They heard the front door open and the quick murmur of voices. Thirty seconds later, Elmer came into the drawing room.

  Elmer Curson was a middle-aged, middle-sized man whose face only just missed being handsome. He had a ready smile, which showed white and even teeth and suggested a deep warmth of character. He could mix easily with people and flatter them without seeming to do so. He made friends easily. He was a man who wielded great power because he was extremely wealthy and he was wealthy because he had always been fanatically single-minded in the search for success. He should have been popular as well as successful, since he did all the right things, such as giving generous contributions to the charities that were considered deserving by the Establishment, but he wasn’t. Eventually, people understood what motivated him. He took the trouble to be pleasant to others because they might one day be useful to him, he gave to charity because that was an accepted way of proving one was rich, he possessed valuable things because only the successful could possess them. People were quickly attracted to him, then slowly repelled by him.

  “Hullo, my dear.” He kissed Katherine on the cheek. “Good evening, Bob. It’s nice to see you. You’ll stay to dinner, of course.”

  “I don’t think…”

  “You can’t deprive us of the pleasure and in any case I’ve told Rollo you’re staying. Both got drinks? Good. I’ll give myself one.”

  He poured himself out a whisky to which he added a carefully gauged quantity of soda, sat down on the settee, and then asked them whether anything more had been learned about Thompson’s death.

  Katherine mentioned the police had just been to the house, asking more questions.

  “They’ve no idea who the murderer is?” queried Curson.

  Katherine gripped her glass tightly. “None.”

  “It’s a nuisance. I shall have to find another gardener.”

  That was the real problem, thought Bladen. The man’s death was nothing.

  Curson began to discuss some friends in London. He could be an amusing speaker, but his wit at times had a cruel edge to it.

  They had cold chicken for dinner. Rollo opened and served a bottle of Niersteiner Auflangen Beerenauslese. As he savoured the superb wine, Bladen wondered whether Elmer really appreciated it or whether it was just one more way of showing — to himself even — that he was successful enough to afford the best.

  Coffee was served in the blue drawing room and Curson poured out two cognacs. Bladen drank both coffee and cognac and then said he must be going. “I’ve some work to finish before I go to bed.”

  “I like to hear a man say he’s going back home to do some work, Bob,” said Curson. “The real curse of our country today is the rapidly diminishing number of self-employed persons. To paraphrase Johnson, there’s nothing so much as concentrates a man’s work as the knowledge that no one else is going to pay his bills for him. We’ll come and see you off.”

  Katherine spoke. “I think I’ll stay here if Bob doesn’t mind. I’ve a bit of a head and…”

  He interrupted her. “You know what I’ve always said, dear: the finest cure for a headache is fresh air. You come along out and get some.”

  She reluctantly stood up. Curson put his arm round her shoulder and drew her to himself. In another man this might have been a gesture of quiet affection, with him it was a gesture of ownership. “How’s work going these days, Bob?”

  “Not too badly.” Bladen wondered whether his voice sounded as shaken as he felt. He had just realised that Katherine’s hair was resting on the shoulders of her husband’s coat.

  Chapter 11

  Bladen stood by the cocktail cabinet in the sitting room of his flat and drank the strong whisky. He crossed to the small table on which was a wooden cigarette-box, but found the box was empty so walked through to his bedroom and took a packet out of the top drawer of his chest-of-drawers. The bed wasn’t made, which meant Mrs. Rawson hadn’t been again.

  Back in the sitting room, he slumped down in the nearer armchair and a spring twanged. If the hair in Thompson’s hand had not come off his own clothing, then it had come off Katherine’s head or clothes, his clothes, or the clothes of a third person who was likely to have been in close contact with her. He knew it hadn’t come from Katherine or him, so only the third possibility remained. Elmer Curson had been with Thompson.

  There must have been a peeping Tom — Thompson — present on the Wednesday. Thompson had gone to Elmer to tell him what was going on. Elmer would have been filled with the overwhelming need to know the truth and the whole truth. He possessed things with a passion that quite transcended all other emotions in his life and to lose any possession would cause him great pain: how much greater the pain then, how much more bitter the agony, if he lost his wife! What humiliation, publicly to be seen to lose his wife! Elmer would do anything to avoid the ridicule of the horns of cuckolding. He would even spy on his wife and her lover to see if they were committing adultery because if they weren’t going quite that far — and part of his mind would try to assure him they weren’t because Katherine was a woman of endless loyalty — he would take no action. Anything was better than to lose his most beautiful possession and be publicly branded a man who was not man enough to hold on to his young wife.

  So there had to be another car, another pair of lovers. Elmer wouldn’t have smashed a man to the ground and there kicked him: this called for a man of violent passions. Thompson must have interrupted another couple and the man, perhaps at the most embarrassing moment with someone else’s wife, had gone berserk with fury. After Thompson went over the rock face, the man drove off, suddenly conscious of what he’d done. Elmer climbed down to Thompson, who died, but not before his hand swept across Elmer’s coat and picked up a single blonde hair.

  Elmer was playing a waiting game now. If no arrest was made, everything remained as it was. If he, Bladen, were arrested and it came out in court that he’d been in Lovers’ Lane with Katherine, the world would believe adultery had taken place and he’d spat on Elmer’s marriage bed, but Elmer would gain compensation for his suffering in seeing the law smash the life of the man who’d tried to
take his wife.

  Bladen got to his feet, crossed to the cocktail cabinet, and poured himself another strong whisky. It was quite clear now. He and Katherine had arrived early at Lovers’ Lane because the meal had been so poor and they’d driven away early. But because they had been there and he’d imagined he’d seen someone — recalling what had happened twelve days before — and he’d left the car, he had become the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He drank. Why hadn’t Whicheck realised the truth? The question had only to be asked for the answer to be apparent. For Whicheck to discover the truth, he had to know Bladen was innocent… only Robert Bladen knew that. Yet if this were so, then surely the truth could never be proved?

  He finished the drink He was in that rat trap now, and the bars were of the finest steel.

  *

  Whicheck left the divisional superintendent’s office on the ground floor of Paraford Cross police station, having made his daily report on the C.I.D. He climbed upstairs. The detective superintendent was coming down from H.Q. some time during the day to discuss the case. After scant coverage — Thompson’s death on its own wasn’t good for much of a story beyond the first spicy details — the press were suddenly showing a greatly increased interest in the case. Obviously, word had filtered through to them that the people involved were the kind of people who made news. One reporter the previous evening had even cornered him and insolently asked whether it was true that no immediate arrest was being made because the main suspect was so wealthy. The press was usually a strong ally of the police, but there were one or two pressmen who strained that alliance to the limit. Whicheck was a man who gave favour to no one and who had an unswerving belief in the concept of a police force that was completely neutral in all its investigations. It riled his normally equable temper to be accused by inference of soft-pedalling an arrest because of a fear of money.

  He went into his room and sat down on the desk, picked up a pencil and wrote down on the left-hand side of a clean sheet of foolscap paper a brief summary of all known facts of the case, while on the right-hand side he entered what investigations were going on in respect of each of those facts. It was an elementary, but surprisingly effective, way of making certain he wasn’t missing anything vital. In the present instance, it reminded him he had not heard anything from the garage he had asked for some help. After a quick check in the local directory for the number, he dialled the garage and spoke to the manager. “Hullo, Mr. Stammers, Whicheck here.”

  “Ah, yes, I was just about to ring you.”

  You liar, thought Whicheck.

  “That tyre-print was very clear and gave us the pattern and measurements. The make of tyre is a Dunlop and the size five ninety by fourteen. It was almost new.”

  “How many cars use that size?”

  “There’s the B.M.C. fifteen hundred range, a number of Fiats, the Vauxhall Cresta, and the Facet Vega, before production was discontinued.”

  Whicheck thanked the other and rang off. The tyre-print on its own was of little use because it had no special marks for identification purposes. Yet Bladen’s car used tyres of that size and make and his were new since the car was almost new. It provided weak confirmatory evidence.

  He tapped on the desk with his fingers for a moment, then made a call to the metropolitan forensic laboratories to ask whether they had completed their tests on the hair tint that had been driven up to them by police car? The man he spoke to said that they couldn’t work twenty-five hours a day and the results of the tests would be telephoned through when known: until then, please stop worrying. Whicheck swore as he replaced the receiver. Didn’t the scientists know that a case could reach a point where for the investigating officer it could be like sitting on a time bomb? Dealing with Bladen wasn’t the same as dealing with an old lag. Everything had to be certain, exactly right. There could be no short cuts, no evading of the judges’ rules, however stupid they might be, no subtle threats, yet there had to be speed.

  *

  Bladen telephoned Katherine at nine o’clock on Friday morning. As soon as she answered, he said: “You’ve got to see me.”

  “I can’t…”

  “I tell you, you’ve got to.”

  There was a pause. “All right. In three-quarters of an hour.” She rang off.

  He walked down the passage to the kitchen. The place looked utterly slovenly. There was dirty crockery and cutlery everywhere, dirty cooking utensils littered the stove, and the gash bucket under the sink was overflowing. What the hell had happened to Mrs. Rawson? Had she taken her enormous tribe of children on holiday? He switched on the kettle, then hastily sat down because of his pounding head. It was a long time since he had suffered the effects of getting tight.

  He made himself a cup of instant coffee, not because he liked it, which he didn’t, but because it was quick and easy. He started to smoke a cigarette, but soon found the taste impossible and stubbed it out.

  He drove to the statue of Queen Mary the First and found no parking space there or in the municipal carpark and had to tour the side streets until he came up behind a car that was just leaving. He ran back to the statue, arriving sadly out of breath and with a head that pounded twice as heavily, only to discover that he need not have worried. A further quarter of an hour passed before Katherine’s Mini arrived. She drew up by him. He suggested they used her car and got in. A patrolling traffic warden, who had been about to come over to them, turned away.

  She drove off. “I… I asked you not to telephone me at home too often,” she said.

  He turned and looked at her. There were lines of strain on her face, making her look older. Was it just the worry, or had Elmer invaded her bedroom the night before? When he thought of Elmer in her bed, he knew a primitive, painful rage.

  As they reached the end of the road, she said: “Which way?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go out to Cheyney Ford.”

  They turned left at the next set of traffic lights, just past the old council buildings which had been turned into shops, and drove along East Road, passing through the centre of the large new housing estate that had been built over the past five years. Half a mile beyond the end of East Road, Paraford Cross abruptly ended and green fields suddenly took the place of bricks and mortar.

  The Para was a chalk river, not yet destroyed by water abstraction and commercial pollution. It was very winding, looping this way and that as if it had set out to take the longest possible route between each two points. At Cheyney Ford, however, it ran straight and widened out to fifty yards. On the left side was a small black and white hotel, beautifully restored by the brewery company which owned it, and smooth green lawns ran down to the water’s edge and weeping willows cascaded down into the slow-moving water.

  Katherine parked the car in the layby some fifty yards down from the hotel. She looked at her watch.

  “Are you in a hurry?” he asked.

  “I can’t be away too long.”

  “Because of dear Elmer?”

  She didn’t answer and he cursed himself for being so stupid. The thudding headache was dulling his wits and the rising tide of fear was twisting his tongue. He tried to speak calmly. “Katherine, have you thought about what the inspector said yesterday?”

  “I’ve thought about little else,” she answered bitterly.

  “But did not understand what it really means? That hair in Thompson’s fingers was from you. Thompson couldn’t have picked it up casually, so it had to come from someone else and Whicheck reckons it came from me. But I know it couldn’t have done. So it had to come from a third person, someone who was in physical contact with you after you’d come back from the hairdresser on Monday, someone likely to get a hair from your head on his coat.”

  “Elmer?”

  “Elmer must have been there on Monday night with Thompson. Elmer went up to London simply to get you and me to go out together. He drove down from London, met Thompson, and they went to the lane. He had to know whether we were co
mmitting adultery, whether one of his possessions was being stolen from him.”

  “He couldn’t have killed Thompson.”

  “No. Thompson was caught peeping at a car he mistook for mine and the man inside went mad. He smashed Thompson up and Thompson went over the rock face. The man in the car got the hell out of it. Elmer went down to see what had happened to Thompson and arrived as Thompson died, grabbing hold of the hair in a cadaveric spasm. Elmer, terrified by the disgrace of having to admit he was with a peeping Tom, just cleared off back to London and no doubt spent the night petrified. Then you and I got caught up in the murder and Elmer found himself in a position where provided he said nothing he’d be all right. If no arrest is made, he’s clear. If I’m arrested and it comes out in public that you and I were together in Lovers’ Lane he’ll suffer the humility of that being known, but to recompense him he’ll see me convicted for a murder I didn’t commit. He could clear me without any danger to himself, but he won’t. To clear me would be to make public his presence and the fact we were together. He won’t let that happen without my being jailed.”

  She said nothing as she stared through the windscreen at the gently moving water.

  “I’ve got to tell the police, Katherine.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “What I’ve just told you, of course.”

  “D’you think they won’t have considered the possibility?”

  “You can’t consider it seriously until you know that I’m innocent.”

  “Please, you mustn’t tell them.”

  “For God’s sake, why not?”

  “They’ll go to Elmer and say that you and I were in a car in Lovers’ Lane.”

  “He knows that.”

  “Does he?”

  “Of course he does. Elmer was in the lane with Thompson.”

  “You could be wrong, you just could be wrong for once.” She gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “And if you’re wrong, Elmer doesn’t know. If someone told him now, he might… He might think what everyone else would, that we made love.”