The Man Whose Dream Came True

by Julian Symons

  ‘Of course not.’ Cotton turned his monkey face to the public gallery. Tony followed his gaze and saw Fiona, leaning forward in the front row.

  ‘So there was no reason why he should be specially worried?’ The judge had been tapping gently with a pencil. Now he said, ‘I don’t want to interfere, Mr Newton, but isn’t this line of questioning going rather far afield?’

  ‘I hope not, my lord. My learned friend’s purpose in introducing this evidence was I presume to show that my client was hard pressed for money. I am trying to bring out the point that one of these debts was to a friend and the other was not legally enforceable.’

  ‘I think we have taken the point, Mr Newton.’

  ‘Had threats been employed it would be a different matter. I am happy to have the assurance that there was no question of this.’

  The judge bowed his head. Newton sat down and there was no re-examination. Cotton looked from one to the other of them and left the box. Shortly afterwards Fiona’s head disappeared from the gallery.

  In a way Tony felt indignant about this. He would have liked to ask Cotton questions himself and to say ‘You threatened me, one of your thugs stubbed out his cigarette on my hand and two more tried to beat me up,’ but he understood that if there had been no threats it was a good thing for him, it meant that he had no reason to worry about the money. This meant also that it didn’t always pay to bring out the truth. Would it be right to say that truth was one thing and justice another? He was thinking about this when Jenny entered the box.

  She walked through the Court with the care of somebody moving along a private knife edge, one foot placed before the other, her face a white blank and her head held high. She was wearing a dress in some neutral completely washed out colour, and as always she looked slight and vulnerable. The stir of anger he had been prepared to feel never flickered. He found himself as dispassionate as though he were watching a play. Hussick, looking up at his client, saw that there was no reason to worry.

  For a long time the play was a repeat performance of what he had already heard, except that there were some details of her life before marriage. Most of what she had told him was true. She had been a not very successful actress, had met Foster when he returned to England from South Africa, and married him. She talked about this with a straightforwardness and simplicity that, as Tony felt, must impress the jury. Hardy led her like a dancing master through the tale she had told in the Magistrate’s Court, of his engagement, her husband’s discovery of the missing links, his determination to ‘have things out’ on Friday evening, her departure for dinner and her return to find the body in the living-room. For the first time Tony found himself wondering what had really happened. Had Lands come over, helped her, and then gone back in his own car before Tony’s arrival? Or had she done the whole thing herself? He could see Foster – but then he had never met Foster, he was thinking of Lands when he used the name – turning round in the sitting-room when she asked for a drink, the hammer in her gloved hand, the first blow that staggered him, and then the hammer coming down again and again. Was there sufficient strength in those thin hands? He had felt them gripping him, and knew that there was. And remembering the look he had seen sometimes on her face when they made love, the look that made it clear she did not regard him as another human being but only as an object to be used, he had no difficulty in seeing her striking Foster, unmoved by the blood that spurted out when the eggshell head cracked.

  It was these thoughts, and recollection of what Moreston had said that made him scribble a note to Hussick: ‘She must have had blood on her clothes when she hit him.’ Hussick read the note, nodded, folded the paper into small pieces and smiled. Tony scribbled another note: ‘HAVE YOU CHECKED?’ Hussick read this, nodded again, and then set his eyebrows dancing and turned down the corners of his mouth. What did that mean? At Tony’s finger-beckoning the solicitor wrote a note of his own which his clerk passed up. When unfolded it read:

  ‘We checked with laundry, etc. Nothing.’

  So how had she killed him? Naked, as the Liverpool insurance agent Wallace was said to have killed his wife? That was surely not possible. He found that it was hard to concentrate on the examination.

  It was after lunch when Hardy had finished and Newton rose. His tone was friendly, almost paternal.

  ‘First of all, I wonder if you could tell me just a little more of what happened when you engaged Jones. You did engage him, isn’t that so?’

  ‘On my husband’s behalf.’

  ‘Naturally. I find that a little unusual. Why didn’t your husband interview him?’

  ‘He trusted my judgement.’ She twisted her hands. ‘God forgive me.’

  That’s a bit corny, Tony thought, a bit too actressy. He took a quick glance at his four jurywomen, but to his disgust they were behaving as usual, Blue Binse looking at her nails, Pretty But Fatuous staring round the Court, Iron Hair waiting with pencil poised and Bolt Upright naturally bolt upright. What was Newton saying?

  ‘He accepted your recommendation. And your impression was favourable, you engaged him on the spot.’

  ‘He seemed pleasant. He could type. And I had met him at a friend’s house.’

  ‘You liked him?’

  Thin shoulders shrugged under the colourless dress. ‘I had no feelings one way or the other.’

  ‘At least you didn’t dislike him?’

  Again the shrug. ‘True.’

  Newton looked at his notes for what seemed a long time and then spoke abruptly. ‘Were you happily married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your husband was twenty-five years older than you, but that made no difference?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘It was one of those marriages where age doesn’t matter because husband and wife have so much in common. Is that so, Mrs Foster?’

  As she repeated in a neutral voice ‘We were very happy,’ Tony looked again at the jury, the men as well as the women. They were all keenly attentive. There was a man who looked ominously like Clinker the builder, short and swart with hairy hands which rested on the ledge in front of him. What was he thinking, what would Tony himself think if he saw the slim woman and heard her low-voiced replies? Newton struggled on like a ship ploughing through an icefield. Tony ceased to listen. He saw instead of the courtroom the confines of a cell nine by six – was that the size? – which would be his home for years. I shall die, he thought, if they shut me up in a place like that I shall die.

  Below him Newton, as he followed no particular line of questioning but probed with all the delicacy of which he was capable to find a chink in this bloodless woman’s personality through which he could attack, was conscious of attempting to make bricks not only without straw but even without the basic clay. At the same time he had the feeling, which comes to all advocates at some time or another and which they know they can trust, that in some essential respects the witness was not telling the truth. The problem then is to induce the same feeling in the jury. ‘You did not take up his references?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We know that they were not genuine. Had you written, he would have been exposed at once.’

  ‘Believe me, I’m sorry I didn’t,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘You engaged him after a short interview, you didn’t trouble to check his references. And you still say you didn’t find him attractive?’

  ‘I had no feelings, one way or the other.’

  ‘And then you saw him every day. Alone, since your husband was up in London.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This young attractive man was alone in the house with you each day, but you still had no feelings about him?’

  She raised her voice a little. ‘He was there in the mornings. To do a job of work.’

  Hopeless, Newton thought, hopeless. He speeded up his questions and changed his tone altogether, using the bullying peremptory manner that came naturally to him. ‘I put it to you that you were bored with your elderly husband.’

&
nbsp; ‘That is not true.’

  ‘That you were bored with him, wanted to get rid of him and still enjoy his money. Isn’t that the truth?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘And you used my client as a tool for this purpose, a tool who was like putty in your hands.’

  ‘That is absolutely untrue,’ she said without emphasis.

  There it goes, Mr Hussick thought as he listened to Newton putting to her the points about the hammer, about the plan to kill Foster and about the drive to the motor launch, to be met in every case by passionless negatives and a denial that she had been to the launch for three weeks before the murder, there goes our case. You couldn’t blame Newton, what could anybody do with a story that didn’t have the least fragment of fact to support it.

  Although Tony had felt no emotion when Genevieve Foster gave evidence, the very sight of Mortimer Lands as he walked into the box and stumbled slightly over taking the oath made him so angry that he had to grip the sides of the dock to control himself. The weak delicate features, the lock of white hair conspicuous as if it had been painted on the dark head, could this possibly be what Jenny had preferred to him? And sexual jealousy was not the only cause of his anger. The thought of those mornings when this wretched little man had dictated to him in the study and he had typed out all the meaningless details from books was really too much to be borne. The prison officers behind him exchanged meaningful glances as he leaned forward, and Mr Hussick looked up with a smile which managed to be at once reassuring and reproving.

  There was really very little substance to the evidence which Lands gave rapidly in a low voice, confirming that he was a second cousin of Mrs Foster, that he had worked for a public relations firm and had become a farmer after his father’s death, had sometimes visited the Fosters at the Villa Majorca, and had given Mrs Foster dinner on the night of the murder. Hardy elicited facts and times and then sat down. When Newton rose he did so this time with a flourish. He had sensed, as a counsel can do, that Lands was easy meat.

  ‘Was this visit of Mrs Foster’s an unusual occurrence?’ Lands looked puzzled. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘Was it the first time she had been to your farm for dinner?’

  ‘Oh, I see. No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘She’d been before. Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many times?’ Lands, head down, did not reply. ‘Just once? Half a dozen times? Twenty times?’

  Still with his head down Lands said, ‘Three or four.’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’ That was the judge. Lands looked up, startled.

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I said three or four times.’

  ‘Always alone,’ Newton said with relish.

  ‘She came with Eversley once or twice I think.’ Lands waved his white ladylike fingers. ‘These other times, when she came alone, he was away.

  ‘He was away,’ Newton repeated meaningfully. ‘And then she dined with you. Did you ever go to dinner with her, or with them both?’

  ‘I – I don’t think so.’

  ‘These were one way visits.’ Newton looked at the jury. ‘I am not implying anything wrong. It just seemed a little strange to me that she should telephone and invite herself to dinner on this Friday, but if she were a frequent visitor that explains it.’

  The judge looked at Newton. ‘Three or four times, the witness said, Mr Newton.’

  Newton bowed his head. ‘Three or four times. She had been before at all events. So you were not surprised when she telephoned and said “Can I come to dinner?”’ Suddenly he snapped. ‘Did she telephone?’

  Like a rabbit facing a wolf Lands stammered, ‘Yes, on – on Friday morning.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said–’ he gulped. ‘–there had been some unpleasantness about the man Eversley was employing, and he wanted to see the man alone that evening. Could she come over to me. Something like that.’

  ‘This wasn’t very convenient. Your housekeeper, Mrs Turner, was out for the evening.’

  Lands perked up for a moment. ‘Mrs Twining.’

  The correction appeared to enrage Newton. He thundered:

  ‘Mrs Twining was going out. Why not take Mrs Foster out to dinner?’

  Landa stared, dumbfounded. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Surely that would have been easier?’

  ‘I suppose so. It never occurred to me. Mrs Twining left something, something cold.’

  ‘And then you had dinner, tête-à-tête. What did you talk about?’

  Lands put a hand to his head, touched his white streak as though he were touching his forelock. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘She arrived at seven-thirty and left not long before midnight and you can’t remember anything you talked about?’

  ‘Local things,’ Lands said weakly. ‘And this man, Bain-Truscott. Eversley wasn’t sure whether he would charge the man or not.’

  ‘And what did Mrs Foster want him to do?’

  Lands gathered a little boldness. ‘I don’t remember. I wasn’t much interested.’

  It appeared to Mr Hussick that Newton was pressing it a bit hard, and indeed this was Newton’s own feeling. He went on asking questions about the times and about Mrs Twining being fetched from the station, but the effect he had made at first faded a little. Still, he had given Lands a bad quarter of an hour, although it wasn’t of great importance in the long run, and he had encouraged their client. Mr Hussick raised his eyebrows and smiled at Tony, and Tony smiled shyly back.

  Chapter Ten

  Mortimer Lands and Genevieve Foster had not really talked to each other since the trial began. They were both staying up in London, she at a hotel, he at the flat of a friend named Jerry Milton. He telephoned her that night when Milton was out.

  ‘My housekeeper’s been on the phone. Somebody’s been asking questions at the farm. She sent him away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wasn’t the police, it was somebody else.’

  ‘No doubt some inquiry agent for the defence.’

  ‘One’s been round already. I don’t like it, Jenny.’

  There was a pause. She said coldly, ‘I told you not to telephone.’

  ‘I’m worried, I have to see you.’ She said nothing. ‘I could come round. Now.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  ‘I’ve got to see you. I can’t go on if I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s upsetting for everybody. You don’t think I liked all those questions today, do you?’

  Lands had drunk a quarter of a bottle of whisky. Now he half-filled his pony glass. ‘I’ve got to see you.’

  ‘Very well. Tomorrow night you can take me out to dinner.’

  ‘I could meet you somewhere quiet, nobody would–’

  ‘I won’t have anything hole and corner. Call for me here at seven o’clock.’ She put down the receiver.

  When Jerry Milton returned an hour later he found Mortie Lands half cut and lachrymose with it. They had been friends at Oxford and had seen a good deal of each other since then. Jerry, who was an executive in a statistical research company, disliked drunks, but he tried to be patient.

  ‘It’s ghastly the whole thing, I do see that, but after all you’ve given evidence now, it’s over.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Mortie said. His hair was mussed up, and he was sprawled all over the sofa. Jerry privately thought it was a bit much – the whisky glass had left marks on a pretty little rosewood table – but Mortie had always been a little on the hysterical side. Now he said, bleary eyed, ‘It’s terrible. That poor young man.’

  ‘Jones? He’s just a dirty crook. And a murderer. You’re too soft-hearted, Mortie, that’s your trouble. Come on, you’d better get to bed.’

  With the help of his arm Mortie rose, then staggered and knocked over a Victorian glass table lamp which broke into a dozen pieces. It was really too much to be borne, and Jerry told him so pretty
sharply. Mortie began to weep.

  ‘You’re all against me,’ he said through sobs. ‘She is too. I can’t bear it, I can’t go on.’

  There was only one thing to do, and Jerry did it. He hauled the insensible disgusting lump into the bedroom and deposited him on top of the bed.

  In the morning Mortie was apologetic, and he looked so haunted, so much like death warmed up, that Jerry didn’t have the heart to say anything more.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dimmock sneezed when he got out of bed and again while he was shaving. By the time he got downstairs there could be no doubt that he had a cold. He could not have faced fish if it had been offered to him, and his breakfast was one piece of toast and marmalade and two cups of watery coffee. ‘I could eat some bacon and eggs if I hadn’t this pain in my pegs,’ he thought, and it was true that his teeth did ache. When he set out in the car it was still raining, heavy solid stuff that came steadily down. As he drove out of town he felt distinctly ill. He did not think that there was much point in going to see the motor launch or in visiting Sarah Russell, but it did not occur to him that he might say this to the Chief. He had never yet failed to carry out the assignments given to him in every detail.

  The day had begun badly with his cold, and it continued badly. He was misdirected to the place where the launch had been tied up, and when he found the place the boat was no longer there. He called at a house nearby and learned that the Daisy Mae had been removed by the police to the yard of a local boat builder named Clynes. It was eleven-thirty when he found the boatyard, most of the morning gone. Clynes received Dimmock in his office. He was a thin lugubrious man.

  ‘Police have been over her,’ he said. ‘What you want to look at her for?’

  Why did he want to look at her? Dimmock had no idea. ‘It’s part of an investigation I’m carrying out for somebody interested in the–’ He stopped and sneezed. ‘–defence.’

  Clynes was concerned. ‘That’s a nasty cold you’ve got. You could do with a cup of tea.’

  As he drank the scalding liquid Dimmock was conscious of his wet disgusting clothes, which seemed to have lost their shape. His trousers hung round his legs like pieces of cardboard.