‘Is this not one of your regular haunts, Mr Devlin? Well, I cannot blame you, although the beer, as you are about to discover, is excellent. But since we are speaking of miscarriages of justice, I thought it a suitable setting for our discussion.’
Harry gestured towards the mahogany-framed sheets of yellow newsprint which hung from the picture moulding. ‘Because it takes its name from the Wallace case?’
‘Do you know the story?’ The question seemed to be rhetorical, for Miller continued without waiting for a reply. ‘In 1931, an insurance agent called James Wallace was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his wife with a poker. The judged summed up in Wallace’s favour, as you will note from the trial report above your head, but the jury took a harsher view. Although the conviction was quashed on appeal, Wallace only lived for another couple of years. For once the cliché was correct - he died a broken man.’
Harry stretched in his chair. The beer was as good as Miller had predicted and he was starting to relax. ‘One evening,’ he said, ‘Wallace was playing chess in a cafeteria not fifty yards from where we’re sitting. A man who gave the name Qualtrough telephoned and asked him to call the next day at a fictitious address in Mossley Hill. When Wallace gave up the wild-goose chase and made his way home, he found his wife’s battered corpse lying in the parlour.’
Miller beamed. ‘It is good to talk to a knowledgeable man. So often people seem unaware of Liverpool’s remarkable murderous heritage.’
‘You can’t blame the tourist board for concentrating on its Beatles trail and the Albert Dock.’
‘Yet it is so easy to forget, Mr Devlin. There are lessons to be learned from the Wallace case. The ambiguous nature of circumstantial evidence, the ruthless tunnel vision of investigating policemen, the unpredictability of juries. It is far too tempting to believe that certain facts admit of only one explanation. I call it the Sherlock Holmes fallacy, a vice which detective fiction encourages. I do not know whether you have ever heard what Raymond Chandler said of the Wallace case...’
‘He described it as unbeatable.’
‘Again, I am impressed. You are well read.’
‘A misspent youth. And adulthood, come to that.’
‘But Chandler was wrong, was he not?’ Miller leaned across the table, stabbing his forefinger at Harry to emphasise the point. ‘Fifty years later, the Wallace case was solved.’
‘Although the guilty man escaped justice.’
‘My point entirely. So much of the fascination of these mysteries lies in the fact that one person killed another - and lived on for many years thereafter, untouched by the law, untroubled even by the clammy breath of suspicion.’
‘And you believe that to be so with the strangling of Carole Jeffries?’
‘I do. The first person I spoke to about the case was Edwin Smith’s mother. She was widowed more than forty years ago and her son died by his own hand in circumstances she must have considered to be of the utmost shame. Yet she is still alive, although very frail. I visited her in Woolton, in the residential home where she has spent the last eighteen months. She is eighty-five but for the past thirty years she has clung to the notion that a terrible mistake occurred. She accepts that her son was weak; she told me that he always craved the limelight. That, she believes, is why he confessed to the crime. Yet she is adamant that for all his faults, he was no murderer.’
‘Wouldn’t any mother say the same?’
‘I can understand your scepticism. Yet I believe she is right.’
‘Why?’
‘Please forgive me, Mr Devlin, if I do not put all my cards on the table in this first conversation. Besides I am still at the stage of piecing the facts together.’ He opened his document case and slid from it a thin red file. Fanning out a sheaf of papers, cuttings and handwritten notes, he said, ‘As you can see, I have already collected a good deal of material concerning the case, but I have yet to begin the rigorous analysis that a solicitor would consider appropriate.’
Depends on the solicitor, reflected Harry, thinking of Cyril Tweats. Aloud, he said, ‘What’s your objective? Do you plan to write a book?’
Miller’s laugh reminded him of a seagull’s keening. ‘Dear me, I have no literary ambitions at all. Although I have written - well, one or two little personal things - I can assure you I have no ambition whatsoever to see them published. I leave creative fiction to second-rate CID men with an imperfect grasp of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. My research is conducted out of interest, nothing more.’
‘How long have you been working on this project?’
As if to give himself a few seconds to frame his reply, Miller put the papers back in their wallet, which he carefully replaced in the shabby case. ‘Oh, a short time only. I - I had been casting round for a suitable subject for my enquiries. Of course, I hoped for something local, as I do not care to travel far afield. And nothing mundane would do, it had to be out of the ordinary. But even though, quite apart from Wallace, Liverpool is not lacking in murder stories, I discovered that most of the best had been - if you will excuse my choice of words - done to death.’
‘So you hit on the killing of Carole Jeffries?’
‘As I said, it boasts many appealing features.’
If Miller felt his adjective unfortunate, he gave no indication of it and Harry did not doubt that he was in the presence of a ghoul. Yet the man’s deliberate and excessively formal way of speaking had a hypnotic quality and Harry found himself hungering to know more. ‘Refresh my memory.’
‘Guy Jeffries,’ said Miller, with pedagogic gravity, ‘seemed in 1964 to be a man who had everything. He was handsome and knew it, his wife Kathleen was a tall, striking brunette and their only daughter, Carole, was extremely pretty. They were a close family. Kathleen had been a brilliant undergraduate at the time she met Jeffries, but after marrying and starting a family, she gave up any thoughts of a career and dedicated herself to looking after Carole and supporting Guy as his reputation grew. Guy, for his part, although universally regarded as a charmer, does not seem to have looked at another woman after his marriage. Everyone was aware that he doted on Carole. They were, then, that rare thing - the perfect family.’
Miller permitted himself the glimmer of a smile. ‘Yet as we are all too painfully aware, life is never perfect. On a bleak February night, Carole was murdered and the happy family destroyed forever.’
‘About Guy,’ said Harry. ‘Wasn’t he a writer?’
‘Yes, your memory is excellent. He wrote a couple of seminal works on socialism in the sixties, although by profession he was a lecturer. His subject, political philosophy, might sound dull to you and me, but he had the gift of making it come alive for both students and readers. Shortly before the tragedy occurred, the University was buzzing with rumours that a new Chair was to be endowed by a charitable foundation and that Guy Jeffries would be the first to occupy it.’
‘How old was he?’
‘He had recently celebrated his fortieth birthday. The appointment would have made him one of the youngest professors in the University’s distinguished history.’
‘It didn’t happen then?’
‘No. So much in Jeffries’ life came to an end when his daughter was killed.’
‘Is he still alive?’
Miller shook his head. ‘He died in 1979, by his own hand. It is said that he never recovered from his distress at Carole’s death. I looked up his obituary in The Times: reading between the lines, he must have had a nervous breakdown and I gather he later turned to drink to drown his sorrows. Extraordinary, is it not, how one act of shocking violence can change so many lives?’
Harry remembered the death of his own wife, Liz. She too had been murdered and there had been times during the past two years when he had felt as though he would never recover from the loss of her - even though they had been living apart befor
e she was killed. Friends meaning to be helpful would tell him that life must go on, and they were right, although their homilies made him grind his teeth in silent rage. All the same, he could imagine the horror Guy Jeffries must have felt, could understand how the death of his child might rob any man of the love for life.
Brusquely, he said, ‘It was February, you say, and therefore as cold as hell, if the weather was anything like it is now. What was Carole doing in the park?’
‘She had told her father she wanted to go for a short walk there. It had been a misty and miserable day and she wanted to blow away the cobwebs.’
‘You sound unconvinced.’
‘The picture I have of Carole does not suggest to me a fresh-air fanatic. It was already dark: of course, the clocks had not yet gone forward. I find the idea of a health-giving stroll implausible. But Guy Jeffries seems to have had no hesitation in believing what his daughter told him.’
‘When was her body found?’
‘Close on midnight. Jeffries was working in his study when Carole left the house and Kathleen was out, attending a seminar in Manchester. There had been one caller at the house earlier in the day, another upwardly mobile man of the people by the name of Clive Doxey.’
Harry raised his eyebrows. He had not been aware that a celebrity of the present day was involved in the story. ‘Nowadays Sir Clive?’
‘Yes, another doughty campaigner against injustice.’ Miller smiled slightly. ‘Doxey left before Carole went for her walk, however, and Jeffries failed to realise she was still missing until his wife returned. At first they assumed Carole must have decided to visit a friend, possibly a girl called Shirley with whom she worked. And there was her boyfriend, a pop star of the day whom she had met through her job at Benny Frederick’s photographic studio and shop in Victoria Street.’
‘And that’s the same...?’
‘Yes, today Benny Frederick runs a thriving business specialising, I believe, in the field of corporate videos. You may have come across it yourself. But thirty years ago he had taken over his father’s old firm and started making a name for himself with his portraits of many of the stars of - ah - the Swinging Sixties.’
Miller was unable to disguise the mockery in his voice. He spoke as though he was describing a risible alien culture. ‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘Guy would have expected Carole at least to leave a message. He and Kathleen rang around her friends and, drawing a blank, became alarmed. The girl had mentioned herself that the boyfriend would be out of town that night and so there was no question of her having sloped off with him. Finally Kathleen called the police. The Jeffries were an influential couple and their concern was taken seriously. A constable came round and his first thought was to check the park.’
‘Hadn’t Guy already done so?’
‘Only in a cursory way, it seems. In any event, looking methodically under every thicket, the policeman soon discovered her corpse.’
‘Was it hidden?’
‘The killer - presumably - had pulled it into the bushes, but made little attempt at camouflage. The young policeman must have had an eagle’s eyes to discover poor Carole in darkness, but her body would have been found the next morning in any event.’
‘And the ligature? Was that left on the scene?’
‘Carole’s own scarf was knotted around her throat. The murderer seems to have made no attempt to remove it. As you may know, that is not uncommon in strangulation cases. One can guess that she was no longer a pretty sight. “Purple lips and ears, froth and blood-staining about the mouth, the tongue forced outward, the hands clenched” - these are the typical signs of asphyxia. I quote, of course, from that eminent pathologist, Sir Sydney Smith.’
Even at thirty years’ remove, Harry found himself repelled by the picture Miller was sketching and by the relish with which he was sketching it. Murder fascinates everyone, Harry thought, because of the hints it gives of the darkest recesses of the human soul. But the act of killing and its physical consequences seemed to him obscene, and to exult in them, he felt, was akin to drooling over a pornographic film.
He drained his glass. His earlier mood of cautious tolerance towards Miller was evaporating. Yet he felt impelled to satisfy his curiosity. ‘How long did it take the police to fasten on to Edwin Smith?’
‘They picked him up within twenty-four hours.’
‘And the boyfriend, what about him?’
Miller pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘Ray Brill - that was what he called himself. Perhaps it was a pseudonym, I am not sure.’
Harry reached back into his memory and his treasury of pop music trivia. ‘Of the Brill Brothers? Is that the man?’
‘Again you are well informed. Yes, that was the name of his - ah - duo.’
‘Was he ever a suspect?’
‘A good question. In the press reports which I have seen, he expresses shock and horror at the outrage. Yet one would expect nothing less from a cruel and ruthless killer - if such he was.’
‘And Smith hired Cyril Tweats?’
‘His mother did, yes. The family had money and I gather that Tweats was a popular defence solicitor of the time, but if I may be blunt, the choice of representative was not a happy one.’ Again he spoke in a knowing way that gave the impression he had something else up his sleeve.
Sharply, Harry said, ‘And what made you approach me?’
‘When I discovered that the firm of Tweats and Company no longer exists, I called at the office of the local law society. They told me Mr Tweats had sold his practice shortly before Christmas to you and your partner, Mr Crusoe.’
‘Have you spoken to Cyril himself?’
‘As yet, no, for two reasons. First, when I asked about you and your firm, I was told you have something of a name for digging into cases where the truth has yet to come out. I gather you have a weakness for a mystery, but people seem to think you are a man who strives to see the right thing done. Frankly, I hoped you would sympathise with my own instinct to investigate and be willing to offer a little practical assistance.’
‘Flattery won’t necessarily get you everywhere. What was the second reason?’
‘Any approach I may make to Mr Tweats will need to be judged with delicacy. I have to say - I trust I do not offend you - it seems possible that, if Edwin Smith pleaded guilty, he did so as a result of receiving less than the best advice.’
‘I won’t pretend Cyril was a latter-day Marshall Hall, but I’m not clear about exactly what you’re looking for.’
‘I have taken pains to trace the present whereabouts of the main surviving actors in the drama. Guy is dead, of course, and so is Edwin Smith’s barrister. The detective who headed the inquiry is a sick man, by all accounts, and Carole’s mother a semi-recluse. But I plan to talk to as many people as I can over the course of the next few days. I hope to hear from Smith’s former girlfriend, and perhaps I’ll catch up with the young man Carole was courting at the time of her death. Meanwhile, I have gone as far as I can in researching the case through paperwork available to the public. I cannot hope to gain access to the police records. But there will, I expect, still be an office file somewhere in your archives. I would be interested to see it. There is just a faint possibility that it may contain information which helps me in my quest.’
‘To decide whether Smith was innocent?’
‘And, if he was, perhaps to gain a clearer idea of who might have been guilty.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’
‘Indeed I may,’ said Miller. His teeth glinted in the harsh yellow light as he added, ‘Think of it, Mr Devlin. To discover the truth now, after all these years, wouldn’t that be a prize? Think of old Mrs Smith and what it would mean to have her son exculpated at long last. And that is not all. Who knows, one might even have the opportunity to identify the person who took advantage of Smith’s scapegoat role and succee
ded - yes! - in getting away with murder.’
The man was enjoying himself, Harry felt sure. Never mind the convicted man’s mother: he was treating his enquiries as a game. And in that moment, Harry made up his mind about Ernest Miller. He was too shrewd to be dismissed as a meddlesome old fool with a bee in his bonnet; there was nothing blind or self-deceiving about his confidence that Smith had not committed the crime. Yet Harry sensed he was a man who, for all his bookish air, would like to take his pleasure recklessly. A man who might relish it all the more if the game he was playing became dangerous.
Chapter Three
when I broke forever with the past
‘I’m making no promises,’ Harry said to Miller as they stood on the doorstep of the Wallace.
‘I would not expect them. After all, you are a lawyer.’ Miller gave a thin smile. ‘I hope only that I have said enough to tantalise you, to make you anxious to know rather more about the killing of Carole Jeffries, even after thirty years.’
‘I can’t even be sure we’ll still have the original papers. And if we do...’
‘Naturally, I understand there is the question of professional confidentiality, although on this occasion, since the client has long been in his grave, I anticipate no practical objection. However, you may have other qualms about making any disclosures to me. As successor in practice to Cyril Tweats, you may be conscious of the risk of being tarnished by potential criticism of the way he handled Edwin Smith’s defence.’
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