Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Inspector, I put it to you that quite clearly you treated this as a case of murder from the very beginning?’

  ‘I took the steps I deemed necessary, sir,’ repeated Doherty.

  On the Bench, the judge wondered what line he would have taken had he been in Welter’s shoes? Would he from the beginning have gone for a plea of accident and risked the effects of the introduction of the evidence of the other two deaths and of the motive behind them that so plainly was connected with the motive in this case? And what was Welter going to do now?

  ‘I put it to you that your judgement was reached before you knew the facts on which to reach a judgment?’ said Welter.

  ‘That is not so, sir.’

  Welter picked up his note-book and read through some notes. He put the note-book down and resumed his cross-examination.

  *

  Brendon went into the witness-box at 2.30 in the afternoon. He had a confused character. For years he had acted as a beater on the Hurstley shoot and for years he had, during lunch and whilst drinking the free beer, condemned shooting as the sport of the degenerate and diseased aristocracy. He claimed to hate the Deckers and to despise all they represented, yet he never missed an opportunity to speak to any of the family. He called himself a communist, yet believed in royalty and never ceased recalling the time when royalty had come to Hurstley Place and had a word or two with him.

  Calaghan, after putting the preliminary questions, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Avonley courtroom was one of the very few on the circuit that was kept warm and the world being a perverse one, it was kept too warm. ‘Mr Brendon, were you out beating on Saturday, December the fourth?’

  ‘I was.’ Brendon had a squeaky voice. Behind his back he was called Blether-and Squeak.

  ‘Will you tell the court whereabouts you were at King’s Beat?’

  ‘I was a stop at the old yew.’

  ‘We shall have to take this a little slowly for the jury’s sake. A stop is what?’

  ‘He’s the bloke what stays in one place to keep the birds from breaking out before the beaters come through.’

  ‘Then he’s ahead of the beaters?’

  ‘Up near the flushing point, as often as not.’

  ‘Have a look at the plan the usher will now hand you, please, and tell us exactly where the old yew is.’

  Brendon was handed a photostat copy of the map of King’s Beat. ‘D’you see the ride that comes down and meets the ride what goes to the field? That’s it. Where the wood comes out and meets the first ride, that’s where we call the old yew because of a tree they say is as old as the hills.’

  The judge spoke to the jury. ‘Have you all found the place on your copies of the map?’

  Some of the jury nodded.

  ‘From where you were,’ continued Calaghan, ‘could you see any of the guns when they were at the stands?’

  ‘You can’t see nothing of them because of all the trees and undergrowth.’

  ‘Could you see the ride that goes down and round the point of the woods: around the flushing point, I believe?’

  ‘I could see down it until it went round the corner.’

  ‘Will you tell us, in your own words, if you saw anyone on that ride after the guns had gone to their stands?’

  ‘I was stop, like I said. I kept my stick tapping because if you don’t the birds come out at that comer in busloads. I saw the guns go down the ride and some went to their stands and some went round and out of sight. After a bit, some high birds come over and one or two were shot. Mr Wade was at number seven. Missed a beauty, he did. Then Mr Fawcett comes down the ride, rushing his chair along like it was a racing car. I asked him what luck and he said he’d had a few back across the valley and a very good right and left. He carried on down the ride. Next thing. Miss Harmsworth comes down the ride from the field. She’d got her dog with her. I said good morning and she has a bit of a chat and says the scent’s not very good. Then she goes down the ride.’

  ‘Did you watch her?’

  ‘Not all at once because I saw a lot of birds wanting to break past me so I taps like mad and they turned.’

  ‘When did you look down the ride?’

  ‘D’you mean how long after I first saw her?’

  ‘If you can remember sufficiently accurately, but it’s more important to say whom you saw on the ride the next time you looked down it.’

  ‘There was Miss Harmsworth and Mr Julian and they was talking.’

  ‘Whereabouts were they?’

  ‘Just where the ride turned out of sight of me.’

  ‘Would you say this would, on the map, be about opposite the tip of the flushing point?’

  ‘Please don’t lead,’ objected Welter loudly.

  Calaghan turned. ‘Would you like me to call witnesses to prove that from the position where Mr Brendon was standing his line of view came to an end almost exactly opposite the tip of the flushing point?’

  ‘You ought to have proved that before now.’

  Calaghan addressed the witness again. ‘Is that about the limit of view?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And as we have already heard from another witness…’ here Calaghan turned and looked at Welter, who ignored the gesture, ‘…this point is approximately midway between stands four and five. You saw Miss Harmsworth talking to Mr Julian Decker at this point after Mr Fawcett Decker had gone along the ride?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘One last question. Was Mr Julian Decker carrying his gun?’

  There was a sudden silence: the strange, strained kind of silent that only occurs in a murder trial.

  ‘He was,’ said Brendon.

  Welter cross-examined. ‘Do you know for a fact that the point at which your view was shut off was a point mid-way between numbers four and five guns?’

  ‘I’ve never checked, like, but…’

  ‘How far away from you was Miss Harmsworth when she talked to this person on the ride?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say.’

  ‘Will you accept my figure of about three hundred yards?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘At three hundred yards, Mr Brendon, how can you be so very certain it was Mr Julian Decker you saw?’

  ‘There weren’t no mistake.’

  ‘At three hundred yards, a man’s features are not exactly clear-cut, are they?’ Even as he continued the cross-examination, Welter knew that he could never gain the point he was trying to make.

  *

  Barbara took the oath. She had looked once at Julian and smiled, then she carefully stared away from him. She gripped the edge of the witness-box with her gloved fingers as she answered the first few questions in a voice devoid of any inflexion.

  ‘Miss Harms worth,’ said Calaghan, ‘will you please tell us about your movements at King’s Beat.’

  ‘I came in from the field and walked down the ride. When I reached the turn of the ride I went left into the Larch Plantation which is where the high birds fall and most of the runners come.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone?’

  ‘I said hallo to Mr Brendon who was by the old yew.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Miss Harmsworth, don’t forget you are on oath.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well aware of that,’ she said loudly.

  ‘Then you must realise that to lie is a very serious offence.’

  ‘I am not lying.’

  The judge spoke. ‘Miss Harmsworth, we have heard that you are engaged to be married to the accused. It is, therefore, natural that you should want to assist your fiancé in every possible way, but this is a court of law and in a court of law you owe an absolute duty to the truth.’

  ‘I swear I’m not lying.’

  After a quick look at the judge, who nodded, Calaghan said: ‘Before you say anything more, Miss Harmsworth, I think you should know that the last witness was Mr Brendon. He has testified that he spoke to you and that a short
while later he saw you on the ride, at the point opposite mid-way between number four and number five stands, talking to the accused.’

  She began to shiver and those close enough could see her strain at the side of the box with her hands to control herself. She began to cry and she turned and looked at Julian. All the agony in her mind was apparent in her face.

  Julian, for one second of exploding hatred, was about to fight his way to her. The warder sensed this and gripped his right arm. Slowly, he relaxed.

  *

  Lydia Decker was called by the defence just before the end of the second day. For once, she had dressed with care.

  ‘Were you aware of the terms of the trust set up by your husband?’ asked Welter.

  ‘I was.’ Some of the onlookers, seeing how upright she stood and how firm her expression, and hearing how strong and level was her voice, judged her to be an arrogant old woman: they failed completely to realise she was an old woman who was showing all the pluck in the world.

  ‘You knew that your elder son, on reaching the age of thirty-five, would have to elect whether or not to accept the estate?’

  ‘He wasn’t going to.’

  ‘He wasn’t going to what, Mrs Decker?’

  ‘He was not going to accept the estate. There was never any possibility that he would. He was not expected to live nearly as long as he did and he knew that as well as we did. His illness could have killed him at any time. On the day of my husband’s funeral, we discussed the matter and Fawcett told me that he would never inherit the estate because of the danger of doing so.’

  There was no objection to this hearsay.

  ‘Fawcett loved Hurstley Place,’ continued Lydia Decker, and just once there was a break in her voice. ‘He knew the history of the family and the house as well as I do. He would have done anything to preserve the estate and nothing would have induced him to accept it when he became thirty-five. Only a few days before his death, he told Julian and me that on his birthday he would renounce his claim so that the estate could immediately vest in Julian. In that way, when Julian married and had a son there would be another generation of Deckers for Hurstley Place.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Decker.’

  Calaghan hesitated and then decided not to cross-examine. The court was adjourned for the day.

  *

  That night, Julian knew even greater mental agony than ever before. He had seen his fiancé fight for him, lose the fight, and leave the box in a state of collapse: he had seen his mother fight for him with every ounce of her indomitable courage and yet waste all her efforts. He was bound to be found guilty on the evidence given, bound to be condemned to imprisonment for life, bound to be the last male Decker to live at Hurstley Place.

  He lit a cigarette. On the far end of the bunk were the three law books that had been brought to him the previous night by the trusty. Each book was thumbed dirty, sometimes to the point of illegibility. Tens of men, perhaps hundreds, had read those books with the same desperation that he had, trying to find an escape from the remorseless grip of the law. Yet how many of them would have been as he was, innocent of the crime for which he was going to be found guilty?

  He dropped the cigarette on to the floor and ground it out with his shoe, in deliberate and juvenile contradiction of the rule that prisoners would at all times keep their cells clean and tidy. Justice had become a word of mockery. Innocence was a farce. God Almighty, how was a man to remain sane when he fought injustice but knew he must lose no matter how hard he fought?

  He went to the end of the bunk and picked up the thickest of the law books. It was stuffed full of learning. It represented centuries of English law, renowned for its fairness. Surely somewhere in this tome he would discover how an innocent man was allowed to prove his innocence?

  Chapter Seventeen

  The third day of the trial opened. The judge came on to the dais escorted by his clerk, the lawyers bowed, the judge briefly returned their bows and sat down, and everyone else sat down. The sounds of shuffling feet, coughing, and sneezing, gradually died away.

  Welter stood up and prepared to resume the defence, but he was suddenly interrupted.

  ‘I want to defend myself,’ called out Julian.

  Surprise was general and the noise of talking grew. Welter stared at Julian with angry amazement as the judge spoke and said that this was an exceedingly unwise course of action to take and that no accused could better defend himself than he could be defended by counsel. The judge suggested in strong terms that Julian reconsider his decision. Julian repeated his demand. The judge, with icy disapproval, said that he could not prevent such a thing. He asked Welter to be kind enough to remain in court.

  ‘Do you wish to give evidence?’ asked the judge. ‘You may either make an unsworn statement from the dock, on which you will not be cross-examined, or you may go into the witness-box, take the oath, and give your evidence, whereupon you will be liable to be cross-examined. It is my duty to point out to you that a jury will rightly place more weight on evidence given on oath than on an unsworn statement.’

  ‘I’ll go into the witness-box.’

  ‘Mr Decker, I should feel in dereliction of my duty if I did not once more try to persuade you to revoke your decision to defend yourself.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Very well,’ snapped the judge.

  The warder unbolted the door at the side of the dock and Julian went down the three wooden steps and walked along the gangway between the witness’s benches and counsel’s benches. He felt, almost as a physical force, the impact of concentrated gaze of all those present. He entered the witness-box and took the oath, handing both the card and the New Testament back to the usher when he had finished speaking.

  Just for a second, his nerve almost failed him. This was a gamble that was almost suicidal. If he failed… Yet Hurstley Place was at stake. It was a gamble he had to take. He began to give his evidence.

  ‘On Saturday, the guns met in front of the house just before nine-thirty, as usual. We moved off in two Land-Rovers to the duck ponds for the drive there and then we went to The Springs and Park Wood. After Park Wood we drove back to the road and round to Hammotts Lane. We crossed the fifteen acre field and parked the cars by the entrance into the woods of King’s Beat.

  ‘I helped Fawcett unload his wheelchair, using the special ramps. He was number one gun and so went into the woods and up to the right along the ride, in order to come down with the beaters and take the birds breaking to the left. More than once in the past I’d tried to persuade him not to take number one gun because it meant he had to cover so much ground in his wheel-chair, but he always got angry with me for suggesting this. He said that the day he couldn’t be a normal gun, he’d give up shooting.

  ‘The rest of us went down the ride to our stands. On the way I had a few words with my cousin, Mr Henry Decker, suggesting he should take number four’s birds if he got the chance as number four would never hit them.

  ‘I went to my stand at number five. A couple of fast, swerving pigeons came over and I got one of them. A high pheasant came over and I killed it. A little later on, two pheasants came between me and number six and although they were his birds I shot them.

  ‘Just after this there was a movement in the undergrowth to my right and when I looked down I saw a flash of brown which I was certain was a fox, but I couldn’t fire because I hadn’t had the chance finally to identify it and it was pretty well in line with the other guns. I waited and a few seconds later a large dog fox came in view round one of the back pollard willow trees. As I raised my gun, it saw me and tried to run back into cover, but I put one barrel into it and knocked it over. Although I thought I’d killed it, when I went to look I obviously hadn’t as there was no sign of it. I thought I heard a movement between me and the ride, so I pushed my way through. The birds were beginning to come over now, but I naturally wanted to put the fox out of its agony. I reached the ride without having found anything.

  �
�Miss Harmsworth came down the ride and asked me why I wasn’t at the stand. I told her what had happened and asked her to keep a lookout for the fox in the Larch Plantation when she was in there picking-up. We parted and I went back to my stand. At the end of the beat I picked up the birds I could find and then returned to the ride to see Miss Harmsworth and tell her whereabouts the others were. Whilst I was there my headkeeper, Adams, came running up to say he had just found my brother dead.

  ‘I went along the ride to the wheel-chair. It was… It was obvious my brother was dead and so I gave orders for the police to be called.

  ‘I do not know who shot Fawcett. I did not see him again alive after he left to go up the ride at the beginning of the beat. Fawcett and I were not only brothers, we were also friends, and nothing on God’s earth would have caused me to shoot him.

  ‘It had long ago been agreed that I should inherit the estate because it seemed obvious I would live very much longer than he. This was Fawcett’s decision, made because the only thing any of us worried about was Hurstley Place and that it should continue to belong to the Decker family. When I inherited the estate after Fawcett’s thirty-fifth birthday, I was clearly going to make certain that Fawcett had whatever financial allowance he needed or wanted.’

  After Julian finished speaking, there was a pause. The shorthand writer massaged his right forefinger, the clerk of the court shuffled some of his papers, two of the jurymen whispered together, and the judge for some time continued to write in his note-book.

  Calaghan waited until the judge had finished writing and then stood up. ‘You claim that an amicable agreement had been reached between you and your brother as to the disposition of the estate after he reached his thirty-fifth birthday, which would have been on January the fourth?’

  ‘Yes.’ The sense of panic within Julian’s mind had grown until he had difficulty in overcoming it. Had he been a bloody fool to sack his counsel? Yet what other chance had there been?

  ‘What proof have you of this?’

  ‘The family always knew what was going to happen.’

  ‘I asked for proof. Were any documents drawn up and signed?’