They claimed he’d shot Fawcett because Fawcett was the elder brother, due to inherit the estate under trust. But Fawcett had already agreed that he would never claim the estate when the day came for him to make the election: he knew he must die before long, when the unwanted miracle of his continued living came to an end. Nothing would ever lead him to accept the estate since within days, weeks, or months, he must die and death duties would strip the estate and ruin it. When he refused the inheritance, it would come to Julian which was the best, indeed only, solution to ensure the continuation of Hurstley Place. But there was no proof of this other than the word of the family. There had never been any need for documents, not between members of the Decker family.
His lawyers had explained to him that as he had been charged only with the murder of Fawcett there was an obvious defence, if true, open to him. He could admit he had shot Fawcett, but claim the shooting was an accident. Fawcett had been number 1 gun so that he started up on the right flank of the guns, had come down to the ride keeping level with the beaters, and had then come along the ride towards number 1 stand. Julian had shot at the fox and had gone to the ride to try to find the wounded animal to put it out of its misery. It was obvious, said the lawyers, how so tragic an accident could occur. When he reached the ride, he saw Fawcett in his wheel-chair, which had just slid off the ride because the wet ground was so slippery. Julian hurried to give assistance and in his hurry had stumbled when, by dreadful mischance, his finger was round the trigger. The gun had gone off and killed his brother. He had not admitted this before because he had been too ashamed. Of course, the lawyers had gone on to say, such a defence of accident was very much a double-edged weapon. The plea would immediately allow the prosecution to introduce the evidence of the other two deaths. Similar occurrences to that charged were not normally admissible evidence, but they became so if necessary to rebut a plea of accident. The jury, went on the lawyers with massive understatement, would not be inclined to give much weight to the plea of accident when they were presented with the evidence also of the deaths of Abbotts and Rafferty. Juries were usually rather stupid, but even the most stupid jury would not believe in three similar accidents. Nevertheless, the lawyers had said in ponderous manner, if the death of Fawcett was an accident, obviously Julian must so testify. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul, he had almost heard them add.
He had told them he knew nothing at all about the death of Fawcett. The Q.C had looked aggrieved, upset anyone should treat him as a fool. The junior had whispered something to the solicitor, who had looked quickly at Julian and then shaken his head with much force.
Julian stood up and paced the cell. Four paces this way, four paces that: four paces this way, four paces that. There was a tempest raging in his mind. He thought of his utter innocence and he thought of Barbara. He remembered her face, radiant, on the day of their engagement: he remembered it when she learned he was suspected of Fawcett’s murder. His mind seemed to be about to explode from its load of self-pity, desperation, fear, and desolation. Once again, he wanted to hammer at the walls with his fists, in the childish belief that they must come tumbling down before his innocence. But another part of his mind mocked him. In the modem world, of what value was mere innocence?
Chapter Fourteen
Avonley Assize Court was part of the borough council buildings, an area of unrelieved ugliness. The courtroom had a very high ceiling with elaborately moulded plaster work, which was held to be responsible for the bad acoustics. Lawyers on the circuit had many apocryphal stories of prisoners being convicted of crimes they hadn’t been charged with because neither judge nor jury had been able to hear a word that was said.
Mr Justice Arneld wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a round face with lines about his mouth that suggested he was about to smile: this was usually a false suggestion. When evidence of the finding of the body was over, the judge spoke to the clerk of the court, who stood up on his chair so that his head reached the level of the top of the desk on the dais. They spoke for a few moments before the clerk resumed his seat. ‘Yes, Mr Calaghan,’ said the judge to prosecuting counsel.
Calaghan, who had been speaking to his instructing solicitor, turned round, looked down at his notes and called for the next witness, the police doctor. Whilst the doctor was crossing to the witness-box, Calaghan rearranged his papers. He poured some water into a glass and drank as the doctor took the oath.
The witness gave his evidence with the assurance of someone who was often in the witness-box. He testified that he had been called to woods on the Hurstley Place estate and there had seen the body of Fawcett Decker in a wheel-chair. A plan of the area was referred to and he confirmed the spot at which the wheelchair had been. He testified he had made a superficial examination of the dead man, finding an extensive entry wound, but not exit wound. There had been no marginal burning or tattooing around the wound. There were some marginal pellet holes, proof that the fatal gun had been fired from a distance, but he was not qualified to say what that distance was.
Welter, defending silk, cross-examined very briefly. ‘Doctor, did you undertake any experiments to ascertain the direction from which the gun had been fired?’
‘I did not.’
‘Or the height at which the muzzles were?’
‘No.’
Welter sat down and watched the doctor leave the box. He thought glumly how it was one thing to have some facts favourable to the defence and so be able to fight, but that it was quite another to be left with nothing in one’s favour so that the fight was lost before it had even started. Julian Decker must be a fool. Why, after two perfect murders, did he leave enough evidence around at the third one to convict himself twice over? Had he suddenly panicked? It seemed the most likely explanation. In which case, it was the appearance of Miss Harmsworth that had caused him to panic. She had come along the ride just after he had fired the gun and he had had to move quickly to prevent her attention being drawn to the body in the wheel-chair, almost hidden by the crashed oak tree. How the hell could he, Welter, begin to present a defence? A straight denial of everything was doomed to failure: yet to plead accident was to commit forensic suicide when such defence immediately allowed the prosecution to introduce the details of the other two killings. Not, of course, that such details weren’t already in the minds of the jury. With the news coverage that had been given those details, there could hardly be anyone in the British Isles who hadn’t heard or read about them.
Two witnesses gave formal evidence and he declined to cross-examine. Cortelan, his instructing solicitor, turned and tried to attract his attention, but he shook his head. Cortelan was one of the world’s worst worriers and right now he. Welter, had enough worries of his own.
The Home Office pathologist was called. Welter reached under his wig and scratched the back of his head. The only course open to him here was to try and get the admission that this could have been an accidental shooting, without actually putting such a proposition. Then the groundwork would be there should Decker suddenly decide even as late as this to take the risk and call it an accident.
Welter stood up to cross-examine. He studied the witness. Here was a man who was completely confident of himself, a confidence well placed. There would be nothing but harm to be gained from challenging him on most of the points: more especially, thought Welter angrily, as there wasn’t a scrap of evidence to back up such a challenge. ‘You say you recovered all the shot?’
‘That is right.’
‘Can you swear you did not miss one single pellet?’
‘I’ve already testified that I cannot swear to have regained every last one, but I am prepared to state that the chance of having missed more than four or five is exceedingly remote.’
‘You can say that the path of the shot is roughly on a level?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does this preclude any position other than that the gun was held parallel to the ground?’
‘The alternatives are, as I have tried to expl
ain, that the deceased’s head was inclined upwards or downwards and that the muzzles of the gun were higher or lower than four feet above the ground.’
‘Are you calling these unlikely possibilities?’
‘At the distance at which the shot was fired, even so small an angle as five degrees of inclination of the head means a difference in height of the muzzles of the gun of about one foot.’
‘If the gun were held at the trail there would be at least two feet difference in height compared to the gun held at the shoulder?’
‘If the gun were held at the trail with the muzzles tilting upwards to give the necessary angle of shot, the difference in height would be about twenty-four inches, yes.’
‘And the head of the deceased would have to be tilted downwards about ten degrees?’
‘That is so.’
‘Would you think this was a possible position?’
‘It is possible,’ replied the doctor, in a neutral tone of voice.
Welter sat down. Temporarily, he had planted in the minds of the jury the picture of the man carrying the gun at the trail, But, logic insisted on telling him, for how long would that picture last when the prosecution proved that Decker was a fanatic on safe gun handling and had never, never carried his gun in so inherently a dangerous position as the trail? Further, if just for once he had done so, how or why did his finger happen to be resting on the for’d trigger?
Williams was called to the witness-box. He gave his evidence clearly and concisely. The deceased had been shot with a shotgun, at a range of about twelve feet. Williams had been given the shot which was removed from the head of the deceased and it consisted of 203 number 5 shot pellets, weighing almost 15/16ths of an ounce. This was the standard charge for a 2½” 16 bore cartridge. He had been handed an empty 2½” 16 bore cartridge case and had examined it. On the brass base were certain marks caused by the ejector and the striking-pin: such marks were always unique, being particular to one gun. He had been handed a gun with which he had carried out test firings. He had compared cartridges fired from the test gun with the control cartridge case and the marks on the bases were exactly similar proving beyond any doubt that that gun had fired the control cartridge.
Prosecuting counsel studied the jury’s face and saw on none of them the kind of baffled or blank expression that would show they had failed to understand the purport or importance of the evidence just given. He half turned and spoke to the witness once more. ‘I want you to look at a gun. Exhibit number sixteen, please.’
The usher picked up a shotgun from the table in front of the desk at which the clerk of the court and the shorthand writer sat. He carried the shotgun across to Williams.
Williams took the gun, broke it, and checked it was unloaded before examining it.
‘Is that the test gun?’
‘It is.’
‘How do you identify it?’
‘It is a Holland best gun. The number of it, just beyond the trigger guard, is one two nine eight.’
Calaghan addressed the Bench. ‘It will be proved, my lord, that this is the gun the accused was using on the day in question.’
In the dock, Julian stared at his gun. They were proving this was the murder weapon, yet it had never fired the shot that killed Fawcett. Why wasn’t his counsel fighting every inch of the way? It was impossible that a newly-fired cartridge, fired from his gun, had been at the point where the police claimed to have found it. Why wasn’t his counsel calling the police liars?
Welter stood up to cross-examine. Williams often appeared as an expert witness in shooting cases and the public were beginning to think of him as a man so expert in his own sphere he could never be wrong in it. That was a very dangerous thing, because juries began to place uncritical and total reliance in his evidence. Yet, in this case, why should they do otherwise? ‘Mr Williams, I have listened very carefully to your evidence but I confess that I still do not understand how you can be so sure that the empty cartridge case, exhibit number fifteen, was the cartridge that killed the deceased?’
‘I have not said that it was.’
‘I thought you were implying this?’
‘I have been implying nothing. I have simply given the facts.’
Welter spoke blandly, with just a trace of surprise in his voice. ‘In that case, we really must look at the facts again to see we are not misleading ourselves. You were given the empty cartridge case and a gun. You can tell us that, beyond any shadow of doubt, that gun fired that cartridge?’
‘I have already said so.’
‘Indeed. You have even produced some excellent photographs to prove your point.’ Williams disdained to comment.
‘You also conducted certain experiments, independently of the metallurgist, to determine whether the control cartridge had been recently fired?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you came to the conclusion, after chemical tests on the deposit left inside the case, that it had been fired within the twenty-four hours previous to your tests?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you can’t tell us at what precise hour of those twenty-four it was fired?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And you cannot tell us at what the cartridge was fired?’
The judge, testily, intervened. ‘Mr Welter, this witness has done no more than testify that the control cartridge case, found on the ride near the body, was fired by the accused’s gun and fired within the previous twenty-four hours to his examination on it.’
‘Quite so, my lord.’
‘Then I fail to see any point to your cross-examination.’
‘Very well, my lord, if you insist,’ said Welter in an angry tone of voice, as if he had just been prevented from making some very damaging point. He sat down.
Calaghan did not re-examine – an open, but silent, declaration that he believed Welter’s cross-examination to have achieved nothing. He called the metallurgist. The witness gave evidence that from the condition of the brass cap of the control cartridge it had been clear the cartridge had not lain out in the open all Friday night when it had rained heavily.
‘No questions,’ said Welter.
Adams was called. In the witness-box, dressed in a tweed shooting-suit that did not fit, he looked as he felt, a fish out of water.
‘You are head gamekeeper on the estate?’ asked Calaghan, once the preliminary question had been put.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘For how long?’
‘Over thirty years.’
‘Obviously, then, you know the estate very well?’
‘I reckon to.’
‘Is it correct that you look after certain beats and your under-keeper looks after others?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Which of you two is in charge of King’s Beat?’
‘Me.’
‘Will you tell us what work this entails on a shooting day?’
‘I… I don’t quite understand.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll put it another way. When King’s Beat is being shot, what work do you have to do in or around the beat on the morning of the shoot and before the shooting starts?’
‘I feed, natural like, prepare the flushing wire, put up them numbers, and make certain all is well. Then I goes back to my cottage for a bite of something if there’s time and then out with the beaters, beating-in.’
‘Out on the beat you feed the pheasants and so on, and put up the numbers. What exactly does that mean?’
Adams was bewildered and unable to understand the need for any further explanation. ‘Put ’em on the sticks.’
The judge intervened. ‘I am afraid we need a better explanation than that. Mr Calaghan, for those of us who are not conversant with the mechanics of a day’s shooting.’
Calaghan prompted the witness. ‘You put up a mark where the gun is to stand?’
‘I puts the numbers in sticks where each gun stands. Then if Mr Julian isn’t there to tell ’em, the guns can find where to go.’ As he spoke Julian�
�s name, Adams looked at the desk. He immediately looked away again.
‘Do you have a routine for putting up the numbers at King’s Beat?’
‘I walks down the ride…’
‘Just a moment. Will you look at the plan. Usher, give Mr Adams the plan, exhibit number one.’ Calaghan waited until it had been handed to Adams. ‘When you talk about the ride, do you mean the ride which runs in front of the Larch Plantation?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. Now you walk down that. What happens as you go down?’
‘When I’m level with each stand I goes up to it and puts the number in a stick.’
‘Did you do this on the Saturday in question?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Calaghan put one foot on the empty seat next to his and rested his left elbow on his knee. ‘I suppose that whenever you’re walking through the woods you must always be on the lookout for anything of interest?’
‘I am that.’
‘What sort of thing would interest you?’
‘Anything to do with poaching or if the stoats and weasels be strong. Maybe a fox’s taken a bird.’
‘What kind of signs do poachers usually leave?’
‘Depends on how they poaches. Some use two twos or a shotgun and then there’s still some use burning sulphur, raisins and fish hooks, or a noose on a stick. There’s more ways than there is of killing a cat.’
‘What happens when they use guns? How d’you know they have?’
‘By feathers and blood.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There’s the cartridge cases, of course.’
‘I see. Would you notice an empty cartridge case on a ride if you hadn’t seen it there before?’
‘Of course I would.’ Adams spoke scornfully.
‘Then did you see an empty cartridge case on this ride below King’s Beat, near the fallen oak tree, on Saturday, December the fourth?’
It was obvious that, too late, Adams realised the reason for the questions that he had considered ridiculous. He stared at counsel with hatred.
Death in the Coverts Page 14