Don’t leave anything out. ‘Has anybody else been arrested?’
‘Not so far as I know.’ With more assurance he said, ‘Of course the police don’t take me into their confidence but – nobody else at the moment, certainly.’
So Jenny was still free. Don’t leave anything out. But it was inevitable, for his sake and for Jenny’s, that he should leave things out, for how could he tell the whole story without incriminating them both? He told the solicitor of the work he had been engaged to do, of the fact that the work had ended because Foster was going abroad, and of the revelation about Foster’s identity when he saw the photograph. He said nothing about the car or about the body – whose had it been? – that they had thrown into the sea. Mr Hussick made notes in a neat clerical hand. When Tony had finished he looked up, his eyebrows not dancing but apparently permanently raised.
‘So you never met Foster?’
‘I never met the man who was – whose photograph the police showed me.’ Hopefully he said, ‘There’s no question that it was Foster?’
‘None at all. Can you describe the man who was introduced to you as Foster?’ Tony described him, up to the streak of white on the top of his head, and Mr Hussick noted the details, asked if Tony had any idea of the man’s identity, and then tapped the exercise book with his pen.
‘What it comes to is this. You were deceived by Mrs Foster from the start. Do you have any idea what might have been the object of this deception?’ Tony shook his head. ‘Its effect has been that you are under arrest. Are you saying that this was her purpose? It would be a serious accusation.’
‘I can’t believe–’ What could he not believe? He started the sentence again. ‘I’m not accusing her of anything.’
Mr Hussick nodded in a neutral manner. ‘As you may have gathered, the body was found in the living-room. Death had been caused by head injuries. At the moment I’m rather in the dark about the police case. I shan’t know what it is in detail until the Magistrate’s Court hearing.’
‘I see.’
‘But there are two or three things we might try to clear up now. First of all have you any record, any criminal record? It wouldn’t come out at the trial, but I should like to know. Nothing? That’s good. Then, why Caracas?’
The words prosecution, defence, trial, had distracted him. ‘What?’
‘It seems a long way to go, but I understand you had a job waiting out there.’
‘No, that isn’t quite right. I’d saved the money and I’m fed up with England. I thought I could easily get a job there.’
‘I see.’ Hussick seemed about to say something more, but did not do so. He continued almost casually. ‘The police believe that the murder weapon was a hammer, and I understand it has your prints on it. Can you tell me how they might have got there?’
It was not Mr Hussick’s practice to make up his mind about any case in advance, and he regarded all his clients as innocent until they were found guilty, but he was disturbed by the look on Jones’ face. He meant to wipe his prints off the hammer and then forgot, the solicitor thought, and then put the idea firmly away from him. He offered cheerful words about it being early days yet to think of counsel and said he would handle things himself in the Magistrate’s Court. It would help if they could find the mysterious man with a white streak in his hair.
‘You must be able to find him,’ Jones said earnestly. He was a handsome young man, Hussick thought, although a little on the willowy side. He ought to make a good impression in the witness box.
‘We’ll do our damnedest. And let me know if you think of anything else, I’m here to help.’ A wave of the hand and he was gone. The officer who had been waiting outside the door took Tony back to the ward.
Chapter Two
Life in the prison hospital seemed to be based upon a wrong conception of what he was like, for he was persistently treated as though he were an invalid or a schoolboy. One day he went to see the Medical Officer, who gave him a careful physical examination and asked how he was getting on.
‘What do you think of the others, the other patients? Get on with them?’
‘They’re all right. But we’re not patients, we’re prisoners.’
‘What about your general health? Ever have any serious illnesses? As a child perhaps?’
‘Only the usual things, measles, mumps, chickenpox.’
‘Meningitis? Any form of rheumatic fever? Nothing serious at all, you’ve been lucky, haven’t you.’ He made little ticks and crosses on a form. ‘You’re eating well, I’m glad to hear that.’
Back in the ward he asked the old man the reason for the examination. ‘Just routine. They always like to have a look at you.’ On the following day he shook hands earnestly before leaving. Tony had somehow not liked to ask what he was charged with, but after the old man had gone he spoke to the warder and learned that it was rape.
On the following day he had two visitors. When he entered the interview room a little round-shouldered man was looking out of the window into a courtyard, clinking coins in his pocket. When he turned, Tony recognised his father.
Mr Jones came forward and shook his son by the hand. His moustache was grey and he had grown fatter, but otherwise he had changed little. His characteristic smell of beer, tobacco and sweat was as strong as ever.
‘How are things then? You’re pretty fit from the look of you. Take any exercise?’
‘An hour a day.’
‘That’s good. I’m keeping pretty well. Nora too, she sent her regards. I’ve retired now, you know. Taken to watching the Codgers again, makes something to do.’ The Codgers was the football team they had watched in Tony’s childhood. ‘Not a patch on what they were, though, shouldn’t be surprised if they go down. You follow them at all?’
‘No.’ How could he have loved and later hated this foolish little man? ‘What did you come for?’
‘Just wondered if there was anything you wanted. I brought these along.’ He snapped open his brief-case. The officer by the door moved forward but relaxed when Mr Jones took out a bunch of grapes.
Tony felt suddenly very angry. He flung the grapes on the floor. ‘I don’t want your bloody grapes.’ His father looked at him in astonishment.
‘Now then,’ the officer said, ‘that’s enough of that.’
Mr Jones snapped the brief-case shut and stood with lowered head. ‘That’s how it is, then. You’re no good, I always said it. No good and never been any good.’
Tony stood up too. ‘Get out.’
His father appealed to the prison officer. ‘What do you think of it, eh? You bring ’em up, you give ’em a good home, and see the way it turns out. Right from the time he was a boy I said to his mother, “You’re spoiling that kid.” I was away a lot, had to be you understand, business.’
‘Get out, get out.’ Tony advanced upon his father. The officer stepped between them, and Mr Jones went. The officer shook his head.
‘You’ve fairly blotted your copybook, you have.’
‘If he comes again, I won’t see him.’
‘Your own father, too. I don’t know. Knock you about when you were a kid, did he? Might have been better if he had, at that.’ He offered the comment in a philosophical rather than a critical manner.
The second visitor – he had grown cautious, and asked the name in advance – was Widgey. She gave him a perfunctory kiss and said, ‘Looks as though the cards were right, eh? How the hell did you get into this mess?’ He said truthfully that he didn’t know. ‘The police have been on to me asking questions. I told them we had a bit of a spat that last day. Had to when they asked me, understand?’
‘I understand. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Don’t suppose it does. Wanted to tell you though, because they’re calling me as a witness. Can’t really refuse.’ She offered a cigarette and he took it.
‘Widgey, would you do something for me?’
‘What is it?’
‘There’s someone I want very much to see. I don’t like
to write because – well, I don’t know what to say. Will you get in touch with her, go and see her, ask her to come.’
Widgey’s thin mouth was clamped shut. She released smoke through her nostrils. ‘You’re a fool.’
‘You’ve never met her, you don’t know what she’s like.’
‘I’ll tell you what she’s like. This is something the police let out when they saw me, though they didn’t mean to. She’s the chief witness against you, that’s what she’s like.’
Chapter Three
‘Your name is Genevieve Foster, and you are the widow of the deceased, Eversley Foster.’
‘Yes.’
‘What was your husband’s occupation?’
‘He was a director of several companies. He had spent a good deal of his life in South Africa, that was before I met him, and he had an interest in a mining company out there. Most of his directorships were connected with South Africa.’
‘And he went up to London on business every weekday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you tell the Court in what circumstances you made the acquaintance of the defendant.’
‘I met him one day at the house of Mr Bradbury. I knew Mrs Bradbury, and he came to tea. I brought him back to Southbourne and happened to mention that my husband wanted secretarial help on a book he was writing in his spare time. It was a book on local topography. Bain-Truscott, that was what he called himself, said he had secretarial experience. He produced references.’
‘Is it a fact that the references were forgeries?’
‘I understand so. I did not take them up.’
‘And your husband engaged him.’
‘Yes. Eversley thought he would be suitable. He left work each day for the secretary to do. Bain-Truscott came in the morning and left before lunch.’
‘Was he an efficient worker?’
‘I believe so. Eversley did not complain.’
‘But after a few days your husband did complain to you about something, I believe. Tell us about it.’
‘It was at the beginning of the second week. Everaley missed a valuable pair of cuff links and a matching tie-pin.’
Tony closed his eyes, but her image remained on his retina, pale and composed. He opened his eyes again to see the door of the Court open and a man enter silently and sit down on one of the benches. The weak handsomeness, the white streak in his hair – it was Foster! He wrote a note quickly on one of the bits of scrap paper provided for him: ‘Man with white streak in hair – three rows from back – he is man I knew as Foster,’ and passed it down to Mr Hussick. The solicitor’s brows rose skyward. He nodded and passed over the piece of paper to his clerk, who sat next to him. The clerk got up and went out, grinning. What was there to grin about?
It is one of the peculiarities of English law that a prosecution case must be presented in full in the Magistrate’s Court, where it is decided whether or not the accused person should be sent for trial, while the defence may reserve its case. The advantage to the defence is more apparent than real, because the proceedings are reported fully so that the jury empanelled to hear the trial know a great deal about the case already, and what they know is likely to favour the prosecution. The proceedings lack the tenseness of a dress rehearsal because the principal actors, the counsel, are missing. On the prosecution side a bored and sometimes inaudible young barrister appeared on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and Mr Hussick had told Tony that he proposed to handle the defence personally at this stage.
‘Nothing to do really,’ he had said when he saw Tony just before the hearing began. ‘Hear what they’ve got to say, spot their weak points, bide our time, that’s the way.’
‘But I thought–’ Tony had been about to say, ‘–that I should have a proper counsel,’ but changed this to ‘–that you were engaging counsel.’
‘So I shall, so I shall, and you’ll have the best. But at this stage, what’s the point? It’s not as though we’re fighting here.’
‘Aren’t we?’
‘Certainly not. Reserve our defence, save our big guns for the time when they’re needed. You’ll see.’ Mr Hussick spoke as though his client might be involved in many such trials, from each of which he would learn something.
So the atmosphere was undramatic, the Court was not even quite full, everything seemed to be conducted sotto voce, but as one witness succeeded another and left the box unquestioned or only cursorily challenged by Mr Hussick, Tony’s spirits dropped. There was Carlos Cotton to tell about the money Tony owed him, and Bradbury to give an account of the loan that remained unrepaid. There was Widgey, obviously giving evidence under protest. Then came Mr Penny, which turned out to be the name of the little jeweller he had asked to value the links and tie-pin. A bank clerk named Podger came to say that Mr Foster had drawn out two hundred and fifty pounds on Friday morning, and to confirm the numbers of the ten pound notes. Then there was Dr Dailey, who was what they called a Home Office pathologist. He said that Foster had been killed at between eight and ten o’clock on Friday evening by several blows struck from behind. The hammer was produced in Court and he confirmed that it was stained with blood of Foster’s group, and had one or two hairs from Foster’s head adhering to it. And Dr Dailey was succeeded by a stiff self-confident fingerprint man named Moreston who said that he had found two clear prints of Tony’s fingers on the hammer, together with several other prints too smudged for identification. Hussick questioned none of these witnesses, but sat with a smile of apparent self-satisfaction on his face, taking an occasional note. And now here was Jenny, intolerably calm and beautiful. What was she saying?
‘On Friday morning my husband drew out two hundred and fifty pounds from the bank.’
‘Was it unusual for him to draw so large an amount?’
‘A little unusual. He had a foible for paying all the accounts in cash each month where this was possible, rather than by cheque. This month they were for rather large amounts.’
‘Can you remember anything else he said on that morning?’
‘Yes. Before leaving for London he said that he would have it out with Bain-Truscort, that is about the links. He was convinced that Bain-Truscott had taken them.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. He asked me to tell Bain-Truscott that he would like to see him on Friday evening. I told him when he came that morning, and he said all right.’
‘Were you in on Friday evening?’
‘No. Eversley knew that I hate scenes. I arranged to go out to dinner with my cousin at Redling, particularly so that I should not be there.’
‘After that, you knew nothing more of the matter until you returned home shortly before midnight and found your husband’s body?’
‘That is correct.’
‘And then you telephoned the police?’
‘Yes.’
During this recital she had not looked at him. Once her tongue came out and quickly licked her upper lip as it had done after they made love. Remembering this, and remembering the things they had planned but which she never meant to carry out, he gripped the side of the box in which he sat so tightly that a splinter of wood went into the middle finger of his left hand. He took a piece of paper, scrawled on it in trembling capitals ALL LIES and handed it down to Mr Hussick. The solicitor looked at it and put it aside. His clerk came back, still grinning. Would Hussick attack her, say she was lying? The solicitor rose from his chair. ‘No questions,’ he said. Jenny made her way out of the box. The man with the white streak in his hair rose and followed as she left the Court.
He hardly listened to the rest of the evidence. On Hussick’s application he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey instead of at the local Assize near Southbourne, on the ground that there might be some local prejudice against him.
Chapter Four
After these proceedings he realised for the first time that his acquittal was not inevitable. This was made clear by Mr Hussick who came to see him and said, with no diminution of cheerfuln
ess, that they mustn’t let the other side have it all their own way.
‘But you didn’t challenge them. I told you, her story was all lies.’
‘Tactics, tactics.’ Mr Hussick shot up his eyebrows. ‘Play your cards close to your chest. One thing, though. I’ve got to know what the cards are.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ve been a little bit naughty. You never told me about Mr Penny now, did you? I’m not going to hide anything from you. They have a case, no doubt about it they have a case.’
‘Everything she said was a lie.’
Mr Hussick ignored this. ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t like. Taking those links for valuation, they’ll make a lot of that. Ask how you got hold of them. Then there’s the money. I mean, I don’t think we can deny that it was Foster’s money, can we? And of course the hammer, I don’t care for the hammer. Then your appointment with Foster on Friday evening, you must have known it wouldn’t be pleasant, what happened? If I could clear up those points I’d feel a lot happier.’ He opened the exercise book at a blank page.
‘Suppose they can’t be explained.’
‘Oh, but they must be,’ Mr Hussick said happily. ‘It would be very unwise to offer no explanation.’
‘You mean I might be found guilty?’
‘I mean you mustn’t keep anything back. You must tell me the truth.’
‘What about my ticket?’
‘Ticket? Oh yes. When the time comes I don’t think you’ll find there will be any problem.’
‘Who was the man I pointed out in Court?’
‘He’s Mrs Foster’s cousin, the one she had dinner with on that Friday night. His name is Mortimer Lands.’
Mortimer Lands. He had been deceived, then, from the start he had been deliberately deceived. The body in the bedroom twisting like a fish above the blue eye of the medallion, the gifts, the plans for the promised land of Venezuela, all of these had been a dream. The deception was reality. This was what he had to endure and to accept.
The Man Whose Dream Came True Page 14