He had not really thought about the way in which the new evidence had been obtained. It was not until he was on the way to Court and one of the police officers asked how things were going and said that if there was anything he could do for Tony without stepping out of line he’d be glad to do it, that the mystery was suddenly clear to him. ‘If there’s anything I can do–’ he remembered those as being the General’s very words, and in spite of Tony’s reaction he had obviously gone on to do it, he had gone to the inquiry agency. Tears welled in Tony’s eyes. He murmured: ‘He’s a good man, a very good man.’
‘What did you say?’
He shook his head, said there was nothing he wanted done, and wiped away the tears. As the police officers agreed afterwards, he was a bit of a soppy type.
Chapter Nineteen
Sarah Russell wore her best clothes for the occasion, topped by a hat ornamented by red and white cherries. She followed Dimmock, whose evidence was confined to an account of his discoveries and the fact that he had interviewed Sarah. She was intimidated at first by the formality of it all and the fact that the lawyers were dressed so strangely, but the little man asked her such simple questions, about how long she had worked for Mrs Foster and what kind of work it was, that she soon felt at ease and even began to enjoy herself. After the preliminaries Newton got down to business.
‘Now, Mrs Russell, I want you to cast your mind back to that Friday morning, the morning of the murder. Is there anything you particularly remember about that morning?’
‘Something funny happened. I didn’t think much of it at the time.’
‘Yes?’
‘There was this bit of carpet in the hall, you see. It was all rucked up because some of the tacks had come out of it, so I thought I’ll tack that down. Mr Foster, he was no good at that kind of thing.’
‘Yes, I see. So what did you do?’
‘I looked for the hammer, it was always kept in the tool box out in the scullery. But it wasn’t there. So I spoke to Mrs Foster.’
‘Will you tell us what she said.’
‘Told me not to bother, she had a headache. And mind you, the day before she’d been saying she must get it done.’ Sarah looked round with an air of triumph and touched her hair, which she feared was untidy.
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I thought, what’s happened to it, must be somewhere, and eventually I found it. In one of the kitchen drawers, where it had no business to be.’
‘Will you tell us how you found it?’
‘It was wrapped in tissue paper.’
These words created some interest. The judge made a note. Hardy listened with a frown. Newton repeated the words and asked if she could remember anything further.
‘Yes, I called out to Mrs Foster and said “I’ve found it” and I was just taking off the paper when she came out into the kitchen and told me to leave it alone. She was quite sharp.’
‘You saw the hammer?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Did you touch it?’
‘No, I was taking off the wrapping when she said that. Said again she had a headache and told me to leave it. So I did.’
‘Exhibit fifteen, please,’ Newton said. The hammer was handed to Sarah. ‘Is that the hammer?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Had you ever known it to be put away like that before?’
‘Never.’
‘Can you tell the Court why you haven’t mentioned this previously.’
‘I didn’t think anything more about it. And nobody asked me about anything funny. Not till Mr Dimmock.’
The mention of Dimmock’s name launched Newton nicely on to the question of the raincoat. This was the really vital piece of evidence, for Sarah had recognised the fabric as coming from a raincoat that Mrs Foster had bought a week before her husband’s death, and Dimmock had confirmed this with the shop from which it had been purchased. The inference was overwhelming that she had visited the Daisy Mae after buying it, although in the witness box she had sworn otherwise. And there was something else, which Newton had been allowed to bring out without objection from Hardy. There were spots on the raincoat, and an urgent forensic examination had revealed that they were blood. The blood group had been identified as AB which was Foster’s blood group, although it was Mrs Foster’s blood group too.
In ordinary circumstances this information would have been kept from the prosecution, but the circumstances here were remarkable. When he heard of Mrs Foster’s death Newton thought it his duty to make the situation known to Hardy. There had been a conference that morning at which, slightly to Newton’s surprise, Hardy had refused to acknowledge that the new evidence made much difference to the case against Jones. But this was typical of Hardy who, for all his air of languor, was not inclined to drop a case once he had his teeth into it. Now he rose and looked for a moment silently at Sarah Russell, who returned his look with some belligerence.
‘Did you like Mrs Foster?’
‘We never had any argument.’
‘But did you like her, Mrs Russell?’
‘Didn’t like or dislike. She kept herself to herself, didn’t talk much.’
‘You know that she died tragically in a car accident last night, so that she cannot comment on your story?’
‘It isn’t a story. It’s the truth.’
‘I’m sure you are saying what you believe to be true.’ Hardy smiled at the witness, but the smile came out as ironic rather than friendly. ‘You say you fixed the date on which this hammer incident occurred as the morning of the murder. How can you be sure?’
‘It’s not a day I’m likely to forget.’
‘I suppose not,’ Hardy said humbly. ‘And you remember all the other details too. Are you sure the hammer was wrapped in tissue paper?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘It wasn’t just lying on it, with the tissue below?’
‘I said before it was wrapped round in tissue.’
‘So you did.’ Hardy was apologetic. ‘How did you know it was a hammer?’
‘How did I know – I don’t understand.’
‘It’s very simple.’ He spoke as though to a child. ‘You opened the drawer. There was some tissue paper. What made you think it was a hammer?’
‘I didn’t – I don’t–’ She made another false start and the judge told her to take her time. ‘I suppose I was poking about in the drawer. I don’t quite remember.’
‘You don’t remember that. Do you remember if you pulled aside the tissue?’
‘I must have, mustn’t I? To see the hammer.’
‘But you don’t remember doing it?’ Suddenly, sharply, he said, ‘You did see a hammer, you’re sure of that?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure.’
‘You saw the head of it? Or the handle?’
These are silly questions, she wanted to say, I know I saw the hammer and so do you, but she knew she must not say that. ‘I’m not quite sure.’
‘Not quite sure. But you identified the hammer, Mrs Russell.’
‘It was the same hammer. I know it was.’
‘Yet you can’t be sure how much of it you saw. Well, we will leave it at that.’ Hardy smiled at her again, then his voice hardened. ‘You did forget, though, didn’t you?’
She looked at him, confused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’d been questioned already. And you didn’t mention it.’
‘Nobody asked me about anything funny. Not until I saw Mr Dimmock.’
‘Mr Dimmock, ah yes, we have heard Mr Dimmock,’ Hardy said in a voice implying that they wanted to hear no more of him. He went on to establish that she had seen the accused with Mrs Foster and that there was no sign of friendship between them, that the Fosters had never quarrelled in her hearing, and that Mortimer Lands had seemed on good terms with Mr Foster. But Hardy did not press this, nor did he ask more than perfunctory questions about the raincoat. His interest was not in demonstrating Mrs Foster’s innocence, but
in showing Jones’ guilt.
Chapter Twenty
The passage that most struck the wise men in the Court (and there is always a number of wise men in any Court) about Hardy’s final speech was that in which he ingeniously combined defence of Mrs Foster with a demonstration that even if she had lied it gave no assurance at all that Jones was telling the truth.
‘Genevieve Foster, as you know, is tragically dead. She cannot be here to answer the matters raised by the last defence witnesses. But what did the points they raised really amount to? That indefatigable investigator Mr Dimmock discovered that she occasionally dined out with her cousin in a place, it was suggested, that was “significantly far away”. But what is there significant about this when you remember that both she and Mr Lands were members of the same golf club? And then, what do you think of Sarah Russell’s evidence about the hammer, that hammer which was so curiously wrapped up in tissue paper? Isn’t it strange that while she recalls all this so clearly she can’t remember why she thought the thing in tissue paper was a hammer at all, or whether she saw the whole of it or just the handle or the head? I am not attacking her sincerity – nobody who heard her would do that – but I suggest that what she saw was the handle of some quite different tool and that when Mrs Foster said she did not want the carpet tacked down at that moment it was simply for the reason she gave. She had a headache. When we have that good common sense explanation why should we look for something sinister?’
Hardy looked about with an air of mild triumph, and continued more seriously. ‘And then we come to the raincoat. There are spots of blood on it, and you may have noticed that my learned friend was not very precise about how they may have got there. Let me be as precise as possible. If those spots on the raincoat have any meaning in the case at all Mrs Foster must have attacked her husband with the hammer while wearing the raincoat. She must also have been wearing gloves, since her prints were not on the hammer. Now you will remember that she was a slim, I might almost say a frail woman. Can you really picture her putting on the raincoat and gloves and then using the hammer to commit this brutal murder? Isn’t it far more likely that she made a mistake in saying that she hadn’t visited the launch for three weeks before the murder, that she went there for some completely innocent purpose, tore the raincoat and cut her hand at the same time so that some blood spilled on to the raincoat? And that when she noticed this she stuffed it away so that her husband shouldn’t notice that the new raincoat was ruined?’ Hardy paused. ‘And mark this. Even if you accept that she took part in her husband’s savage murder, it does not follow that Jones is innocent. If her association with him was really an adulterous one, is it not overwhelmingly likely that he was a partner in her husband’s murder?’
Now Hardy turned to the prisoner in the dock and appeared to be addressing him directly, using a tone of withering scorn which made him almost visibly shrink. ‘If you prefer to believe the tale that Jones told, you will acquit him. But can you believe it? Didn’t he impress you when he gave evidence as a rather intelligent young man, and also as one who would tell any lie to save his own skin? Listening to his account of the charade in which he says he took part, and which he says utterly deceived him, the dummy wrapped up as a body and the rest of it, ask yourselves: can any man have been as big a fool as that?’
Although Newton had the advantage of the final speech, his task was not an easy one. He had to decide just how far he could go in attacking Genevieve Foster without alienating the jury. In the end, after a long discussion with his junior, he decided to play it low and calm. As he asked the jury to accept the story told by the man in the dock, and recalled just what that story was, Newton did not once look at his client, who felt at times that he was being attacked rather than defended.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard my learned friend Mr Hardy, and I will take up at once his last words: “Can any man have been as big a fool” as to act as Jones did. Just look at this question in another way. You must all of you have wondered when you heard my client give evidence why a man should concoct so clumsy and so discreditable a story in his own defence. I do not put him before you as a particularly virtuous man, or as a man whose intentions were anything but wicked. But, as my learned friend says, he quite obviously does not lack intelligence. To admit that, in the stress of passion, he entered into an agreement to murder Eversley Foster, and then to leave the country and wait for his criminal partner in a foreign land – to tell this tale that he knew would have little chance of belief because it was bound to be contradicted at every turn – can you believe that a man of reasonable intelligence would tell such a story unless it were true?
‘For some time this story rested on his own word, and probably it was a word that few of you would care to accept. Happily, it is now supported by evidence. You have heard that Mrs Foster was sufficiently friendly with Lands to dine with him sometimes at a place which, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, was I repeat significantly far from her home. You have heard what Sarah Russell had to say about the hammer with which the crime was committed, and you may feel that there is no doubt at all that she did see a hammer and not the “other tool” which had been mentioned. If you accept that she did see the hammer you will make what you think right of the strange fact that, once having got Jones’ fingerprints on it, Mrs Foster preserved this hammer in tissue paper. You have heard the story of the new raincoat, a small piece of which was found in the motor launch Daisy Mae. You will remember that Mrs Foster said at a time when the matter did not seem important, that she had not visited the launch for three weeks before the murder. You have heard that the raincoat had on it those damning spots of blood and you have heard where it was found, stuffed away in a junk room.’
Newton lowered his voice, his tone became sepulchral. ‘It is painful for me to have to say these things. I do not wish to accuse the dead. But the points I have mentioned are some of those I should have questioned Mrs Foster about. Do you think, can anybody think, that she could have given satisfactory answers?’
There he left the question of Genevieve Foster, and went on to a peroration which certainly did not spare his client.
‘I cannot put him before you as anything but a contemptible character, but I ask you to accept his story as true. And if you do accept it the important thing, the vital thing, that you must remember is this. He has told you frankly that he was prepared to enter into a conspiracy by which he would take part in the murder of Foster. That is, of the man he knew as Foster, for in fact he never met the real Eversley Foster. But if you accept his story he did not take part in it, he was deceived into thinking that he was taking part in a murder plot when in reality he was the dupe of the real murderer and of her accomplice Lands. If you find that this is really what happened, that Jones agreed to take part in a murder but really participated only in a charade, as my learned friend rightly called it, then I am telling you as a matter of law – and I am sure my lord will make reference to this later on – that he is not guilty of any crime at all, and that you must acquit him. You may think whatever you please of his character, but his character is not in question. I submit to you, members of the jury, that Anthony Jones is completely innocent of the crime of which he is accused.’
Had Newton really pitched it too low? That was the general opinion of the wise men. Looking at the jury, at Blue Rinse and Iron Hair and the others, noting slight signs of impatience while they listened to Newton in comparison with the close attention paid to Hardy’s bell-like lucidity, they really hadn’t much doubt about it.
Chapter Twenty-one
This assessment of the jury was quite wrong. Iron Hair had been on his side from the first. He bore a strong resemblance to a nephew of hers who had gone out to Australia and sent a splendid food parcel home to her every Christmas. Blue Rinse and Pretty But Fatuous had been inclined all along to think that Mrs Foster was too good to be true, and the man resembling Clinker, who was a director in a firm of woollen merchants, thought that Jones looked to
o intelligent to have behaved so stupidly and by an odd jump in reasoning therefore believed him innocent. Most of the others had thought he was guilty, but they were shaken by the raincoat evidence. They talked about it for an hour and a half, but there was never much doubt about which side the waverers would come down on.
The ‘Not Guilty’ verdict caused little surprise. Hardy congratulated Newton. Clerks tied up the briefs with bits of tape, white for the DPP’s file, pink for all the others. Tony stepped down from the dock and Mr Hussick came over to him, eyebrows dancing. He shook hands with Mr Hussick, then with Newton and Newton’s junior. Newton spoke a few words and turned away. It was all rather anticlimactic. The only people who seemed really pleased were Bill and Joe, the prison officers.
‘You’re away then,’ said Bill. ‘I knew that was the way it would be. I could feel it in my water. Had to get up to pee in the night, that’s a sure sign. Never wrong, the old water.’
Tony felt like a departing guest who should thank his hosts for their hospitality, but it turned out that he had to collect various belongings from the cell below the Court.
‘What’ll it be then?’ Bill asked. ‘Off for a night on the town, a bit of a celebration?’
He shook his head. There was nobody for him to celebrate with. Bill and Joe agreed afterwards that they had never seen a man acquitted on a murder charge take it so quietly.
Standing outside the Old Bailey in summer sunlight he wondered what he should do. He owed his freedom to the General. Should he telephone to thank him, or go down to Leathersley House? A Rolls-Royce car nosed down the road and slowly drew to a halt. The judge’s car, perhaps, or would he be trying the next case? A chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. Tony stared at him. The man made a gesture indicating unmistakably that he should step inside.
The Man Whose Dream Came True Page 21