According to the Evidence rpm-2

by Bernard Knight

  Then the District Nurse, Brenda Paxman, related how she had made a routine visit to Mrs Mary Parker in the late morning of that day. She had done her nursing duties of washing and bedmaking, then administered the first of two daily injections of morphine into the left arm. The patient was extremely drowsy, but certainly conscious and spoke a few words to her.

  When asked in cross-examination, the nurse said that Mrs Parker’s condition was deteriorating from day to day but was not markedly different on that morning.

  This was confirmed by the vet’s housekeeper, Mrs Cropley, who said that she gave her some warm milk from a feeding cup at breakfast time but could not coax her to eat anything. Her mistress, as she called her, spoke a few words to her, but she only wanted to fall back on the pillows and sleep, as she had done for the past week.

  Nathan Prideaux confirmed with the housekeeper that Samuel Parker was most concerned and solicitous about his wife’s condition and spent much of his time when he was not working sitting by her bedside, often holding her hand.

  The deceased woman’s sister, the pharmacist Sheila Lupin, was called next and, even through the dispassionate print of the newspaper, it was obvious that she had a quite different outlook on the situation.

  ‘She’s got it in for him alright!’ observed Siân as she read out the passage aloud for the others as they sat drinking their elevenses.

  ‘“Miss Lupin described how she had gone across to her sister’s house at about one o’clock, as she visited the sick woman several times a day. She found her unmoving in the bed, and there was a fresh injection mark on her forearm, from which a bead of blood was oozing. As she cleaned this off, she realized that her sister was dead and she then ran into the veterinary surgery to fetch the husband, who hurried to the sickroom and confirmed that his wife had passed away.”’

  Further down the news report, Siân read out the part where the sister said that her suspicions were aroused when she saw a used syringe and containers of sodium Pentothal and potassium chloride lying on the examination table in the surgery. Being a pharmacist, she knew the significance of that combination and confronted her brother-in-law with the accusation, given that there was an injection mark on the arm still oozing blood and that there had been no sudden change in her sister’s condition that day to suggest that she had died of the disease from which she had been suffering for over a year.

  ‘What did he say to that?’ asked Moira, riveted by every word of the account.

  ‘It says that this was strongly denied by Samuel Parker and they had a few strong words about it, but she was not satisfied. She later spoke personally to the doctor who was called, and he shared her concerns and reported the death to the coroner.’

  Siân folded the paper up and laid it on the table. ‘That’s all there is for the first day. The judge isn’t sitting today: something about a series of applications in other cases to be dealt with.’

  ‘They don’t work very long hours in these courts, by the sound of it!’ said Moira in a disapproving tone.

  ‘It’s not that easy, running a court,’ countered Richard. ‘They can’t start too early each day, as witnesses have to get there, often from a distance. And the judge may not like starting to hear an important witness who may go on for a long time, if it’s towards the end of the day. Better to hear him out in one go.’

  Siân nodded at this. ‘It said at the end of the report that the judge commented that the case turned heavily on the medical evidence and he didn’t want to start on that until tomorrow.’

  She looked across at Richard. ‘So does that mean you’ll have to go up there in the morning, doctor?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, Siân,’ he replied. ‘No doubt they’ll call the GP first, then the hospital pathologist, then the Home Office chap – all prosecution witnesses. Normally, the defence can’t call their people until after the prosecution have finished, but I suspect that Nathan Prideaux will want me to sit behind him and listen to all the medical evidence the other side produce.’

  Moira sat up at this. ‘Don’t forget you promised to take me this time, doctor!’ she said earnestly.

  Angela made a face at Siân. ‘Looks as if you and I will be stuck here alone tomorrow, while these two go off enjoying themselves!’

  Later that afternoon the expected call came from the solicitor in Stow, asking Richard to present himself at Gloucester Shire Hall at nine thirty in the morning. He was wanted well before the court began, as Nathan Prideaux wanted a last-minute conference about the vital medical evidence.

  Soon after eight the next day, Moira was waiting in the kitchen for Richard to finish breakfast with Angela. Neither were hearty fry-up enthusiasts and usually cereal and toast were the starters for the day, so soon Moira was climbing into the passenger seat of the Humber and they were on their way.

  ‘We both look very professional today, don’t we?’ he said as they hauled up Tutshill, the steep slope into England on the other side of Chepstow Bridge. Richard wore his double-breasted pinstriped suit, which the women of Garth House had badgered him into buying instead of the belted tropical linens that Siân disparagingly called his ‘big-game-hunter outfit’.

  Moira wore a business-style suit of charcoal grey with a prim white blouse – perhaps a little austere in these days of the New Look, but Richard thought she looked very smart.

  ‘It was my office outfit when I worked for the lawyer in Chepstow,’ she explained. ‘So I thought it was legal-looking enough for attending the Assizes!’

  When they arrived in Gloucester, they found a parking space for the car in a lane off Bearland and walked through to Westgate Street, where the imposing Shire Hall was situated. Moira knew the city slightly, but the classical building with its four massive Ionic columns flanking the main entrance was new to her. She followed Richard inside with a feeling of awe and expectancy.

  The hall was a hive of activity, people either hurrying across it or standing in groups talking. Police officers, clerks in schoolmaster gowns and barristers in wigs were mixed with members of the public who stood around uneasily, especially if they were jurors or witnesses, unsure of what lay before them this day.

  Richard made his way across to a set of heavy varnished doors.

  When he pushed through they found themselves in a small panelled antechamber like an airlock, with another door ahead, which took them into the court itself.

  Moira gazed around the high chamber, a huge room panelled in dark wood. It was almost empty, and on the high platform at the front which stretched the width of the court, seven chairs stood unused. The largest one in the centre was directly below a huge gilt model of the Royal Arms.

  ‘Are you sure it’s all right for me to come in?’ she whispered to Richard as she trailed him down towards the front of the court, where three men and a woman stood talking.

  ‘I’ll get you tucked away somewhere where you can see what’s going on,’ he said reassuringly as he approached the group.

  Two were in black robes, but they held their wigs in their hands, white tabs at the throat completing their archaic costumes. The other man was the rotund solicitor, George Lovesey, who came forward now to greet the pathologist.

  ‘Morning, Dr Pryor. We’ll be going to one of the small rooms in a moment to talk things over.’

  Richard introduced Moira as his secretary and asked if she could be found a place in court. The portly lawyer shook her hand warmly, and Richard suspected that he still had an eye for an attractive woman.

  ‘Sit on the end of this row here, behind your boss,’ he said, indicating the third row of what looked to Moira like long church pews. ‘My own secretary will be alongside you when we get started.’ He nodded towards the middle-aged woman who was talking to the barristers. Moira settled herself on the padded bench and looked around the court, picking out the empty jury benches on her left and the witness box between it and the high palisade that stood below the judge’s domain.

  Nathan Prideaux detached himself from the others
and came forward to shake Richard’s hand. ‘Good to see you, doctor. We’ll go off and have a chat, shall we?’

  Leaving Moira to absorb the atmosphere, Richard made his way out of the court with the barristers and solicitor, the secretary lugging several box-files under her arm. They went a few yards down a dark corridor to a small windowless room, furnished only with a table and some plain upright chairs. A couple of tin lids lay on the scarred tabletop to act as ashtrays, and as soon as they were all seated the QC lit up a small cheroot and promptly had a good cough.

  He held out a hand to the secretary and, without prompting, she slid one of the files across the table to him.

  ‘Today, the prosecution are calling their four medical witnesses. They will have to rely almost totally on their evidence to get a conviction, as what they’ve led so far wouldn’t convince a monkey!’ he said disparagingly.

  His junior, Leonard Atkinson, looked slightly less sanguine.

  ‘But if we can’t crack their expert evidence, we’re in the same boat. So it’s largely up to you, Dr Pryor.’

  Nathan nodded ponderously. ‘Make or break, this looks like being one of the shortest murder trials of the year!’ he growled. ‘So I want you to sit right behind me, doctor. You know the drill; listen to every word they say – and if there’s the slightest chink in their evidence, I want you to let me know.’

  He looked across at the secretary. ‘Mrs Armitage, make sure that Dr Pryor has plenty of sheets of paper so he can pass notes to me, please.’

  He winked at Richard. ‘Nothing like the sound of a defence expert tearing paper to unnerve another medical man in the witness box! We need absolute rebuttal of their medical evidence, or we’re sunk. I can deal with all the other circumstantial stuff, but if we can’t torpedo Dr Angus Smythe, our client is going to be left in a very grave situation.’

  ‘So what’s the batting order, Mr Prideaux?’ asked Richard. ‘Are you going to pick Angus apart in cross-examination before I get to say my piece?’

  The London QC gave a crafty smile. ‘That should be the normal procedure, as you well know. But I’m going to try to get the judge to let me defer my cross-examination until after I’ve called you, as you would be the next witness anyway. I think it would make a bigger impact on the judge and the jury if you blew his conclusions out of the water first and then I’ll come back and put him through the wringer.’

  George Lovesey tapped his wristwatch and suggested that time was pressing, so the procession went back into court, where they found it far busier than when they had left it. The public benches were now almost filled, ushers and police officers were standing around and a gaggle of reporters were gossiping in the press benches on the right-hand side.

  Richard Pryor went to sit with George Lovesey in the second row of pews, immediately behind the two defence barristers.

  Behind him, the solicitor’s secretary slipped in to sit alongside Moira, a friendly woman who introduced herself to Moira as Doris and proceeded to explain various aspects of the procedure to her.

  ‘The defence team are on the left side of the benches, so the prosecutors are over there.’

  She covertly pointed at another brace of bewigged barristers on the right side, with the acolytes from the Director of Public Prosecutions sitting behind them.

  Both leading counsel had erected their small folding tables on the wide ledge in front of them, to hold their papers and give themselves something to either grip or lean on. The juniors had a collection of legal textbooks in front of them with bits of coloured paper marking relevant pages.

  Moira watched as Nathan Prideaux flipped his wig on to his head with a practised gesture and shuffled over to have a word with his opponent, the prosecuting counsel. Rather to her surprise, they seemed to be cracking a joke together and she heard the words: ‘. . . a handicap of three and he still lost!’

  Bemused by this strange system of English law where a man’s life hung on a contest between two apparent friends, she now saw another man in a wig and gown seat himself behind a table below the judge’s chair. The clerk of the court, an important cog in this elaborate drama, faced the courtroom, and almost on the stroke of ten thirty Moira heard a sudden susurration of whispers from the public gallery. Turning round, she saw that two prison officers had appeared in a box a few rows behind, one with a brass rail around it. Between them she saw the pale face of a man in a sober blue suit.

  ‘Is that the vet?’ she whispered to Doris and got a nod in return. Any further exchange was stopped as a portly man dressed in a morning suit appeared alongside the judge’s chair up on the high dais and called out ‘All stand!’ in a voice that brooked no dispute. As everyone lumbered to their feet, he stood aside, and from a door behind the chairs Mr Justice Templeman appeared.

  Though Moira had many times seen judges in photographs and films, the actual thing was much more impressive. A tall, lean figure with a severe face below a high forehead, he was resplendent in a scarlet gown with a black belt, cuffs and sash.

  She had rather expected a long wig coming down to his collarbones, but his wiry grey hair was partly covered by the same compact headpiece as worn by the barristers below. More sinister was the square of black silk which he carried along with his gloves; she fervently hoped that this ‘black cap’ would not be needed and she mentally willed her employer to do all he could to save the life of the haggard man in the dock behind her.

  The judge bowed to the counsel as a small procession followed him from the door hidden behind the large central chair. Moira was surprised to see two august-looking ladies shepherded in by two gentlemen. They wore expensive dresses and elaborate hats, their gloved hands clutching large handbags.

  ‘Who are they?’ she whispered to her friendly informant.

  ‘The wives of the High Sheriff and the Lord Lieutenant,’ hissed Doris Armitage. ‘Those are the chaps in the fancy outfits!’

  One man wore breeches and a black velvet jacket with frilled lace at the throat, the other a dark blue military-style uniform with gold epaulettes and red collar-tabs. As the judge settled himself in the large central chair, the others seated themselves two on either side, at a slightly lower level.

  When Mr Justice Templeman had arranged his pens, magnifying glass and notebooks before him, the clerk of the court rose and opened the proceedings, directing the ushers to bring in the jury. From another door in the panelling, a dozen men filed in self-consciously and took their places in the two rows of the jury box. The judge greeted them courteously and reminded them that they were still under the oath that they had sworn the previous day. Then he turned to the prosecuting counsel.

  ‘Mr Gordon, I believe you are ready to call your medical evidence today?’

  Lewis Gordon, a tall, heavily built man with a rugged face, looked more like a retired rugby international than a Queen’s Counsel. He had a deep, sonorous voice to match. Rising to his feet, he grasped the front edges of his black silk gown.

  ‘Indeed, my lord, I have four doctors for the court to hear.

  I first call Dr John Anthony Rogers.’

  There was some creaking of doors as an usher went outside and returned with the regular family physician of the Parker household. He ascended the three steps into the darkly varnished witness box and stood looking slightly uneasy to be the subject of such public scrutiny.

  The judge’s associate, who to Moira looked like a stage butler, stood up at the end of the upper bench to administer the oath.

  ‘Take the book in your right hand and repeat after me,’ he ordered. The GP, a benevolent-looking man of sixty, wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, held the battered Testament and spoke the well-known words which made him liable for a perjury charge if he strayed from the truth.

  The evidence that the QC extracted from him was to the effect that, about eighteen months previously, Mary Parker had been diagnosed as having cancer of the pancreas and that there had been steady deterioration of her condition ever since, no effective treatment being availa
ble.

  ‘When did you last attend her, doctor?’ asked Lewis Gordon.

  ‘Four days before her death, sir. I usually went in on alternate days, though there was nothing I could really do, except check that she was getting sufficient painkillers and proper nursing care. Unfortunately, I was on holiday when she died.’

  No one took him up on why he considered his absence ‘unfortunate’.

  ‘And was she any different on that last visit?’

  Dr Rogers thought carefully, as he knew the significance of his reply, but had no thought other than to tell the truth as he saw it.

  ‘Not really. Her condition didn’t change much on a daily basis, but she was certainly worse than she had been a week or two earlier.’

  ‘But you had no reason to think that she would have died from the cancer four days later?’ persisted the barrister.

  Again the careful doctor thought before he spoke. ‘No, but equally I had no reason to exclude that possibility. Patients in the terminal stages can die at any time.’

  Gordon tried several more times, asking what was basically the same question in different ways, but Rogers stuck to his guns. Even though she was already partisan in this issue, Moira silently applauded him for his refusal to be pressurized into qualifying his opinion to suit the QC.

  Gordon’s court sense soon told him that the judge would get restive if he persisted in his repetition and, knowing that he had obtained all he was likely to get from the family doctor, sat down to leave the field to his defence colleague.

  ‘Have you any questions for this witness, Mr Prideaux?’ asked Templeman.

  Nathan rose slowly to his feet and wrapped his gown around his stomach as he leaned against his document stand.

  ‘I will be very brief, my lord.’ He turned to the witness box.

  ‘Dr Rogers, you indicated to my learned colleague just now that you had no reason to exclude the possibility that Mrs Parker might have died within days following your last visit. How strong would you rate the word “possibility”?’