The Man Whose Dream Came True

by Julian Symons

  ‘She planned it. She planned the whole thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ For once Mr Hussick appeared surprised.

  ‘She gave me the cuff links, said she’d bought them for me, that they were a present.’ Beginning at that point he told the whole story, Jenny’s plan for disposing of Foster, the money she had given him for the fare and later for living in Caracas, the drive on Friday night out to the motor launch, the passage down the river to the sea and the thing being dropped overboard, then his own departure to London and to the airport. To tell the whole story was a relief, and he felt himself to be absolved from any consequence in doing so, because this little man was on his side.

  Mr Hussick covered several pages of his notebook. When the narrative flow had stopped he rubbed his nose. He seemed for once hardly to know what to say, and when he did speak it was in a manner unusually tentative.

  ‘If that’s the complete story–’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You were on your own account prepared to be accessory to a crime. It doesn’t put you in a good light.’ Tony made no reply to this. ‘Although in fact according to you no crime was committed. What was in the sack? The thing you threw over into the water.’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘No, of course not. This line involves an outright attack on Mrs Foster, you understand that?’

  ‘Yes.’ He leaned forward. ‘Somebody may have seen the car as we drove to the launch, or on the way back. Someone may have seen the launch going down the river.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘You could make inquiries.’

  ‘Naturally I’ll do that. You must understand that while legal aid covers my costs and those of your counsel, it may be difficult to put in hand a full scale inquiry of this kind.’

  ‘She wasn’t where she says at ten o’clock that night. She was in her own house, and afterwards she was with me.’

  ‘The police will have checked this, I’m sure. I’ll have a word with them.’ Mr Hussick closed the exercise book, and said with a return to his customary cheerfulness, ‘Let’s consider who we should brief for you. What would you say to Franklin Russell? George Pooling? Magnus Newton?’

  ‘I don’t know any of them. But if it’s a matter of money–’

  ‘Oh no no, not so far as counsel are concerned. If they aren’t too busy they will be happy to take it on. It’s just that legal aid won’t run to a great deal of money.’ He left the sentence rather hanging in air, for he had been about to add being spent on a wild goose chase, but refrained.

  ‘I leave it to you.’

  ‘The best thing you could do. I’ll let you know developments. Don’t worry, keep smiling.’ With a pat on the shoulder he was gone.

  That night Tony slept soundly. He felt that by telling the truth he had exorcised Jenny from his mind for ever.

  On the following day he saw the psychiatrist, who gave him tests involving putting shapes in different relationships to each other, and then consulted some papers. He was an urbane balding man with a pleasant smile.

  ‘Well, Anthony, you know why I’m seeing you. You’ve been examined by the doctor and you’re in good physical condition. I have to report on you mentally.’

  ‘Whether I’m mad, you mean?’

  ‘That isn’t a word we use. It’s a question of whether you are fully responsible for your actions, and that involves all sorts of things like how easy you find it to adjust to other people and so on.’ The smile said that there were no aces hidden in his sleeve. ‘They tell me you’ve been very co-operative. There’s just one little thing, what was it now? Oh yes, when your father came to see you. You got rather upset. Why was that?’

  ‘We don’t get on”

  ‘I see. what about your mother?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I know that, but how did you get on with her. Did you love her?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The man was as comforting as a bedwarmer. ‘She committed suicide. Took sleeping tablets. I found her.’

  The psychiatrist, who had an account of the suicide on the paper in front of him, nodded. ‘That upset you a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was after her suicide that you hated your father?’

  ‘It was his fault. He had a mistress, she found out. And then he married this woman, very soon afterwards.’

  ‘You felt it was a betrayal of your relationship with your mother?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Had he felt that? He didn’t know. Had he ever loved his mother? Surely it had been his father who was loved. ‘It was because of him that she took the pills.’

  ‘That’s what you feel.’

  ‘It’s why she took them.’

  ‘It was a terrible experience for you,’ the psychiatrist said in his warm voice. ‘And soon after it you left home. Then you had several jobs, but you kept none of them for more than a short time. Tell me about those jobs…’

  He emerged bewildered from this long session. It seemed to him that his involvement in what had happened at the Villa Majorca was being treated far too seriously. Why should it be a reason for digging into his childhood and youth, why should it be thought that they had anything to do with it? He tried to say something like this to the psychiatrist, who seemed to regard his attitude as novel and curious, and interesting chiefly because it was suggestive about Tony’s state of mind. But surely it was a normal thing to think that a single incident in the present had nothing to do with the past? Lying in bed that night, fingering the coarse sheet that for some reason brought the image of Jenny before his eyes, he thought of all the things he might have said. ‘I am going to be charged with murdering a man named Eversley Foster so that I could take his money. Will you tell me how that can possibly be connected with the dislike I feel for my father or with my mother’s death?’ Let him try to answer that one. Staring into the blackness of the ward he thought of half a dozen other questions that would have dented the psychiatrist’s shell of urbanity, but of course the man was not there to answer them.

  Chapter Five

  During the next few days there were several developments in connection with the case, some of them important.

  Franklin Russell read the papers given to him by Mr Hussick and then turned the brief down. He said that this was because he had a full plate, but Mr Hussick suspected that it was because of the nature of the defence. George Pooling was taken ill with pneumonia after playing eighteen holes in a rainstorm, and had to be ruled out. Magnus Newton, however, said yes, and if he was not the subtlest cross-examiner or the most intelligent man in the world, there was no doubt that he had a flourishing criminal practice. Hussick left the papers with him and a couple of days later had a conference at Newton’s chambers.

  ‘Extraordinary story, does this fellow know what he’s doing?’ Newton was a little snuffy red-faced man. He had had a good lunch and was smoking a big cigar. Mr Hussick did not care for the smell of cigar smoke.

  ‘I’ve tried to show him the implications.’

  ‘There’s this to be said, that if his story’s true he committed no crime at all, you realise that.’ Mr Hussick smiled to show that he had realised it. ‘He was prepared to commit one, but that isn’t the same thing. Have you tried to check his story?’

  ‘I’ve done my best. The police say that on Friday night Mrs Foster arrived at Land’s house – he’s some sort of farmer, a gentleman farmer I’d suppose you’d call it – at seven-thirty. That’s confirmed by Lands himself and by two neighbours who came in for a drink. The housekeeper had left a cold meal and gone out for the evening to see a friend. She had to go and come back by train – Lands’ place is about a mile from the local station. It was arranged that she should come back on the last train, which gets in at eleven-fifteen. Mrs Foster met her, took her back and then left. It was a drive of about fifteen miles and she got back just before midnight. It all fits.’

  Newton blew out smoke. ‘Why didn’t Lands go to the station to collect his own housekeeper?’

>   ‘I’m sorry. I should have said he did go with her. His car was in the garage, so they used hers.’

  ‘Of course, according to his story Lands is in the plot.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would she have had time to do the things Jones says she did and get back to, what’s his name, Lands in time to meet the housekeeper?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I don’t see how we can prove it.’

  ‘If somebody saw her car –’

  ‘I’ve made inquiries, but so far there are no results.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  Mr Hussick’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I know.’

  Newton grunted, looked through the papers again, then pushed them aside. ‘What his story comes to is this. She’s in it with Lands, she must be Lands’ mistress, he came to this house Villa Minorca–’

  ‘Majorca.’ Newton was bad about names.

  ‘Somebody must have seen ’em together.’

  Patiently Mr Hussick said, ‘Certainly they were seen together, and naturally he had been to the villa. Foster knew him quite well. After all he was a relative.’

  ‘This is the story and we have to use it.’ Newton tapped the papers. ‘Get somebody on to it, do some digging, what was she like before she married Foster, did she make trips to London and meet Lands there, look for a link.’

  ‘I am doing so. But we haven’t all the money in the world.’

  ‘Yes, well, I leave it to you.’ Newton got up and stood in front of an empty fireplace, cigar ash all over his waistcoat. He expanded his chest suddenly, with the effect of a frog blowing himself up. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Jones? A good-looking young man, quiet, polite. Conceited, I daresay.’

  ‘A good witness?’

  ‘I should think so.’ Mr Hussick hesitated, qualified this. ‘Rather lacking in self-confidence. Do you want to talk to him?’

  ‘Not unless I have to.’ Newton did not care for talking to his clients. In his experience such meetings were almost never useful, and they were sometimes embarrassing. ‘It’s all down here. If that’s his story, there it is. You’ll keep in touch.’

  Mr Hussick took his bowler hat and got up to leave. Newton shook hands, went back to the papers again and then put them aside. They both knew that it was an open and shut case.

  A couple of days later another conference was held in the chambers of Eustace Hardy, who was taking the case for the Crown. Hardy was an elegant, fastidious man, with a silver voice that matched his abundant silver hair, and an awareness of his own intellectual superiority that sometimes irritated juries. Just now it was irritating Detective Superintendent Jones, who wished that Hardy didn’t have such an air of regarding the whole thing as a tedious chore. When he murmured to the Director of Public Prosecution’s representative that it all seemed quite straightforward, Jones couldn’t help feeling that something might go wrong.

  The DPP’s man, whose name was Walker, nodded. Jones felt impelled to put in a word.

  ‘I think their line is going to be that Mrs Foster egged him on, maybe even that she took part in the murder. These things get round on the grapevine. They’ve been checking her movements that night – she went to dinner with a cousin, man named Lands.’

  ‘Is there anything in that?’ Hardy’s fingers moved to straighten a silver cigarette box on his desk.

  ‘As far as I can see, nothing at all.’

  ‘What is Jones’ mental condition?’

  ‘You’ve got the report there, Mr Hardy.’ Jones could hardly conceal his annoyance. Why didn’t the bloody man look at his papers?

  ‘Yes indeed.’ Hardy glanced at it. ‘Well integrated in relation to ordinary social contacts, possible inferiority complex, affected by mother’s suicide, poor relationship with father, yes, well, this kind of thing doesn’t mean very much. He doesn’t have any doubt that the man’s fit to stand trial, that’s the important thing.’

  ‘That’s the important thing,’ Walker echoed.

  Hardy scratched a red spot on his neck. The Superintendent was not usually an uncharitable man, but he could not help thinking, you’re not perfect you bastard, you have spots on your neck like anybody else. And scratch them too.

  ‘He’s got no form, although he was hard pressed for money,’ Walker went on. ‘But there’s one thing you should know about, although we can’t use it, nothing to do with this case. Just a few days before he took up residence with Old Mother Widgeon, Jones was working for a retired General, helping with his memoirs, that kind of thing. The General got rid of him after he’d forged a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds.’

  ‘Just got rid of him. He didn’t prefer charges?’

  ‘And let him keep the money,’ Jones said in disgust. ‘Slapped charges on him, he’d be in prison and Foster would be alive today.’

  ‘What name was he using then, Bain-Truscott?’

  ‘Scott-Williams.’

  ‘Any idea why he used that name?’

  Hardy was scratching the spot. Jones watched it becoming angrier. ‘I think he used quite a few, mostly double-barrelled.’

  ‘Compensating, I suppose the psychiatrist would call it. Where did you get this story from?’

  ‘The General wrote to us. Seemed to think it would prove he wasn’t a murderer.’

  ‘Did he say why he didn’t prosecute?’

  ‘I gather he felt Jones deserved another chance, something stupid like that.’

  ‘Interesting. He must be a persuasive young man.’ Interesting, hell, the Superintendent thought, he’s a villain and that’s all there is to it. ‘However, all the ends seem to be neatly tied up.’

  ‘It’s an open and shut case,’ Walker said. Hardy smiled faintly and thanked them both.

  ‘…I don’t see how you could do what you did to me. You know I love you, doesn’t that mean anything at all? I’m not surprised you couldn’t look at me when you were giving evidence, you knew it was all lies. How could you be such a bitch, bitch, BITCH.’ He read the long repetitious scrawl, then tore the sheet across. What was the good of writing? He put his hands on his knees and stared at the bed opposite. Every move she made was meant to destroy me, he thought. And I can’t feel anger against her, I don’t feel anything at all. When the warder came across, said he had a visitor and stuck a card under his nose he was incredulous at the name written on it.

  The General was bolt upright in the uncomfortable chair that the interview room provided for visitors. Tony sat opposite him, the table between them. The prison officer stood in the corner. It was like some curious game. The General spoke.

  ‘So your name’s Jones. Don’t know why you didn’t say so, nothing wrong with it, had an adjutant named Jones, good chap.’ Silence. ‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘I wrote to the police, told them about our little affair. I thought it might help you, show that you had money, had nothing to do with the other business. I suppose you got through the money in a few days. Still, I wished I hadn’t written. That’s why I’m here.’

  Silence. He looked at the chintz curtains.

  ‘I’m putting you on your honour now. Did you have anything to do with the death of this man?’

  How was it possible to answer such a question? He did not even try. The General’s head was a fine one, handsome and perfectly proportioned, but he noticed now for the first time that it was very small, almost a model of a head carved in brown and white.

  ‘I should like to help you. I feel a certain responsibility, I don’t know why. But I must know the facts.’

  ‘You said I was a scoundrel.’

  ‘You behaved outrageously. However, I still don’t believe you capable of anything like this. Is your defence being properly conducted?’

  ‘Legal aid.’ He was bored with the whole thing. Why should he sit here and let himself be questioned by this old fool, what had his past history to do with the disastrous present? He felt a longing to be back in the ward and looked at the man beside
the door. The General misinterpreted him.

  ‘Leave us alone for five minutes.’ The officer shook his head and Tony warmed to him. ‘You can tell me anything, any way I can help.’

  ‘There’s nothing.’ Tony stood up.

  ‘If you refuse to accept my help–’ The General stood up too, erect and neat. Again it was a shock to see that not only his head but his whole body was small, he was like a large toy soldier.

  ‘I’d like to go back now,’ he said to the officer by the door.

  Strange things are found on beaches. Some boys digging for bait on the beach a couple of miles away from the place where Tony had thrown his bundle into the sea found an old pillow, a plastic hand of the kind sold in joke shops, and a partly-inflated football bladder. They were loosely joined together, and obviously other things attached to them had come away in the sea. They trod on the hand and squashed it and played beach football with the bladder. Later one of the boys took it home and kicked it about in his backyard until it hit a nail sticking out of an old toolshed and burst.

  Life in the prison hospital was enjoyable in its way. The officers were overworked and Tony made himself useful in doing little jobs about the place, taking in the tea trolley and helping with the washing up. It was pleasant to find that he was respected by some of the other prisoners awaiting trial. A Cockney named Mobey who was to be charged with attempting to poison his wife with arsenic was apologetic about his own inefficiency.

  ‘I have this bird, you see, who’s fallen for me, twenty years younger than I am, you wouldn’t think it possible would you?’ Mobey was in his forties, and a carpenter by trade. ‘When the wife got to hear of it she played up, gave me hell. Between her and Sandra, that’s my bird, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. But I should never have used arsenic, that was my mistake, it happened to be handy that’s all. Should have used something else.’

  ‘Are you pleading guilty?’

  ‘What do you take me for? My mouthpiece’s going to say it was a mistake, she did it herself, cooked it with the greens.’ Mobey gave Tony a wink. ‘She was never much of a cook and I don’t eat greens. But you, now, I can see you really gave it some thought.’