The Namedropper

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘No one ever said the law was fair, any more than life.’

  ‘Can we take pause here!’ urged Jordan. ‘The jury can’t find against me, not on what they’ve heard.’

  ‘I don’t think they should, nor am I saying that they will,’ insisted Reid. ‘But Pullinger is an ornery old bastard and he’s still got to sum up and guide the jury. I wouldn’t like to place bets, not yet.’

  ‘He finds against us I’ll appeal,’ insisted Beckwith.

  ‘How many more months – and how much more money – could that cost?’ demanded Jordan, genuinely shocked. Confronting Reid’s caution, Jordan acknowledged that although he’d begun raiding Appleton’s firm to build up the necessary insurance against having a financial penalty imposed against him, he had increasingly begun to regard the money as the fitting punishment against Appleton for the inconvenience and upheaval Appleton had caused him; precisely, in fact, the sort of compensation people sought from insurance.

  ‘Anything up to a year to get a hearing before the North Carolina Supreme Court,’ answered Beckwith, to Reid’s vaguely nodded agreement. ‘Costs would be open-ended. If we won, which we would, minimal; the majority would go against Appleton.’

  ‘And if we failed, double whatever I’d have to pay now, plus whatever is awarded against me in the first place!’ challenged Jordan.

  ‘I said we’d win,’ repeated Beckwith. ‘And you wouldn’t have to hang around here, while you waited. You could go back to England and only need to return here when we got a hearing date.’

  He wouldn’t come back, was Jordan’s first thought. And then just as quickly realized that he wouldn’t have a choice. There was still the danger of limited publicity and of his identification at the conclusion of this case. That publicity – and identification – would be far greater if he failed to return for an appeal, with the inevitable photographs and the even more inevitable recognition. This would blow open the identity thefts he’d carried out in America in the past, and almost certainly at the New York banks in which he had opened the accounts in Appleton’s name and with whom he would be publicly linked in an appeals procedure. And during Beckwith’s estimated year, the attack he’d mounted against Appleton and his firm would be very actively under investigation. ‘What can we do?’

  Beckwith actually laughed at the facile question. ‘Go on expecting to win, of course! That’s why we’re all here. There’s nothing more we can do, unless you’ve got a better idea.’

  Jordan didn’t have, although he spent much of a disturbed night trying to think of one: to think of anything. He finally decided, ignoring the pun, that Alyce’s lawyer was playing devil’s advocate to their overconfidence, which he’d admitted to himself the moment Reid had spoken. It would be wrong to regard it as anything more than a cautious touch on the brake. Jordan still wished Reid hadn’t created the doubt and that Beckwith hadn’t been so flippant dismissing it.

  Despite trying to dismiss it himself, the doubt remained lodged in Jordan’s mind as he scrolled through his illicit web hideaways. There was nothing more on the Chicago query, nor any additional questions on any of his other raids. Prices remained virtually static on copper and Jordan limited himself entirely to that one metal for the day’s pilfering.

  On their way to court Jordan said, ‘I didn’t like Bob’s doom and gloom last night.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Beckwith continued to dismiss. ‘Bob’s a pessimist. That’s why he always dresses in black, like a funeral director.’

  Funeral director to Dodge City cowboy, thought Jordan.

  He was surprised that Dr Harding, who knew it was Alyce’s day on the witness stand, wasn’t in court when they entered. She was already at her table, nodding to whatever Reid was saying to her. She looked up, through her thick-rimmed, and now shaded, glasses, as Jordan and Beckwith took their places, but didn’t give any response to Jordan’s nodded smile. She was again in funereal black, matching the pessimistic Reid, without any noticeable make-up, and as she stood to take the oath, her left hand on the rail of the witness stand, Jordan was further surprised to see that for the first time since that initial day in France she was wearing her wedding and engagement rings.

  ‘Where would you rather be today than here in a divorce court?’ opened Reid, creating an immediate stir throughout the court.

  ‘Practically anywhere,’ replied Alyce, at once. ‘Most of all in my own home, with a family of my own.’

  ‘Including children?’

  ‘Of course including children. A family isn’t a family without children. How can it be?’

  ‘Children which, until you contracted a sexual disease, you were – according to your gynaecologist who testified yesterday – medically capable of bearing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you feel now at having less than a ten percent chance of bearing a child full term?’

  Alyce didn’t reply at once, bringing to her face a handkerchief Jordan hadn’t been aware of her taking from her purse ‘It might not properly explain how I feel … what I mean … but I feel empty. Inadequate. Not a proper woman.’

  ‘And now never able to be a proper woman?’

  ‘He’s pushing it right to the edge of the cliff,’ Beckwith whispered to Jordan, who saw that so far there were no exclamation marks of approval on his lawyer’s legal pad.

  ‘I’m no longer a proper woman.’

  ‘How important to you was having children?’

  ‘It was everything to me, beyond just being a woman. My marriage, as the court has already heard, was the bringing together of two of the oldest families in America. I have no brothers, no sisters. There is no direct bloodline. It will die, with my death. I believe that is important, a loss. Not to other people, I wouldn’t think. But to me it is.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Reid. ‘Your marriage wasn’t happy before your infection, was it?’

  ‘No;

  ‘How – what – did you feel about that?’

  Alyce again hesitated. ‘Inadequate, like before. Which again I guess other people, other women, might not understand.’

  ‘Didn’t you think of divorce then?’

  ‘Of course I thought about it: how could I not have done? But I never actually considered it as an option. I hoped the separation might help.’

  ‘Help what?’ seized Reid.

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Help my husband to love me.’

  Jordan saw Beckwith was at his legal pad at last, although he was assembling question marks, not approving exclamations.

  ‘If you didn’t believe he loved you, why did you marry him in the first place?’

  ‘I believed he did, when we got married. It wasn’t until afterwards that I thought differently.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I very quickly came to believe that what I thought had been love was really pride on his part: pride at me, a Bellamy, being his wife. It was as if I was a trophy. He kept cuttings, in a special book, when we appeared in social columns or magazines. He agreed to a television programme being made about us.’

  ‘Didn’t you like that?’

  ‘I hated it! I knew who I was: who my family were. I didn’t believe we had to prove it. It seemed …’ She paused, seeking the word. ‘Arrogant, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you talk to him about it?’

  ‘I tried to … told him I didn’t want any more television programmes because after the first there were other approaches … but he told me I was being stupid. That it would bring clients to the business; prestige by association, he called it. He told me I was being unreasonable.’

  ‘Did he want to accept some of the other TV approaches?’

  ‘Yes. I refused to take part, so they never happened.’

  ‘Was he upset?’

  ‘Very. He said it didn’t reflect well on our marriage.’

  ‘But you didn’t talk of divorce?’

  ‘Not over something as stupid as a television show. Divorce is a failure,
isn’t it? A lot of people stay together unhappily, for the sake of the family. I thought that if I had a child it would be all right: that he might change but that if he didn’t it wouldn’t matter … I’d have a child, hopefully more than one child, and that would be enough for me.’

  ‘Would it have been?’

  ‘I never found out. Now I never will.’

  ‘Did you ever suspect he was being unfaithful?’

  ‘Not in the beginning, although after the first few months he invariably came home late. He said it was how it had to be in his business. I thought there might be other women when I went up to Long Island and he stayed in Manhattan. He was rarely in the apartment when I called.’

  ‘Did you ever challenge him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t have any proof?’

  ‘He was disinterested in me when he did come home.’

  ‘Sexually, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your husband engaged a private enquiry agent to watch you. Did it ever occur to you to do the same, to watch him?’

  ‘No. When we finally did, appointing DDK, it was at your suggestion. I didn’t have to, before then. He’d admitted it, hadn’t he?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand that remark. Or that the jury will,’ complained Reid.

  ‘When I told him he had given me chlamydia there was the big argument – he’d been drinking. When I said he’d obviously been sleeping with someone else he said not one. Two. And laughed. He later tried to deny it, when he sobered up and realized the mistake he’d made.’

  Jordan saw Reid’s frown. ‘Do you think that’s why he admitted it, in his statement?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I told him I wanted a divorce he said I wouldn’t win. That he’d destroy me.’

  ‘How was he going to destroy you?’

  ‘Begin divorce proceedings against me, first. And make my life a misery.’

  ‘The lover you never had: the lover his investigators failed to find?’

  ‘Yes.

  ‘Did your husband ever physically attack you?’

  ‘He actually hit me twice. Once was at that time, during the argument. He slapped me, across the face. Told me to pull myself together.’

  ‘Were you bruised? Marked in any way?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You didn’t need hospital treatment?’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘When was the other occasion?’

  ‘Soon after, when I told him I was going to France and that he would be hearing from you, my lawyer, about the divorce. That I was finally getting away from Long Island and the marriage and from him. He punched me … said …’ Alyce stopped.

  ‘Said what?’ pressed Reid. ‘The words he used?’

  ‘Told me to fuck off, right then. Never to think of coming back. He actually said crawling back, like the sad bitch I was.’

  ‘Were you hurt when – and how – he punched you?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it. I fell over, hit my leg and side against a table.’

  ‘So you were hurt?’

  ‘I was bruised.’

  ‘Did you need hospital attention?’

  ‘Dr Harding looked after me. I left Long Island right then. For the last time.’

  Beckwith had started taking proper notes but stopped when Reid said, ‘You told your husband that I was going to initiate divorce proceedings before you left for France?

  ‘Yes. I took the papers I needed to sign with me’

  ‘Weeks before you met Harvey Jordan, the defendant in your husband’s claim under the criminal conversation provisions in the alienation of affections statute in force in this state?’

  ‘At least six weeks before. Which is why the accusation against Mr Jordan is so ridiculous.’

  ‘What was the likelihood of your crawling back, after discovering you had contracted venereal disease from him?’

  Alyce snorted a laugh. ‘As ridiculous as him citing Mr Jordan. Only one person is responsible for the breakdown of my marriage to Alfred Appleton. And that is Alfred Appleton.’

  ‘You’re not telling the truth, are you, Mrs Appleton?’ demanded David Bartle.

  ‘I am telling the truth, which I swore to do when I took the oath.’

  ‘He never hit you, did he?’

  ‘He slapped me when he was drunk and I told him I was beginning divorce proceedings. And threw me over, as I have just told the court.’

  ‘Neither of which needed any medical treatment?’

  ‘Dr Harding looked after me after I was punched. There was bruising, as I told you. Some grazing.’

  ‘Yet Dr Harding, who has attended you remarkably closely so far because of what is claimed to be the stress of these proceedings, is not in court on the day of your major evidence?’

  ‘I did not want to take them but he prescribed some pills when he knew he would not be able to be here today.’

  ‘Your honour,’ broke in Reid, rising before Bartle could continue. ‘Dr Walter Harding is not in court today because of something that unexpectedly arose at the hospital at which, as you know, he is the administrator. I could make contact to see if the situation at the hospsital has been resolved, for him to come here, if your honour wishes.’

  ‘I think it is essential, in view of your questioning, don’t you, Mr Bartle?’

  ‘I would have thought it essential for him to be here in the first place,’ complained Bartle, tightly.

  ‘Quite so,’ said the judge. ‘We find ourselves with another lapse in the presentation of the case. But it can easily be remedied. You are excused the court in the hope of bringing Dr Harding to us before we end today, Mr Reid.’

  Jordan saw Beckwith had arranged question marks on his pad. Some were at an angle instead of being upright.

  ‘Your husband didn’t admit to two affairs, did he?’ resumed Bartle. ‘You told him you’d had him under surveillance, because you suspected he was being unfaithful. And that you were going to cite Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies?’

  ‘That is not the correct sequence,’ rejected Alyce. ‘It was as I have described it. I had not organized surveillance and had no idea who the whores were with whom he was sleeping: I just knew he was sleeping around because that was how I had become infected. That was what I told him.’

  ‘It was you who first mentioned the divorce statute of criminal conversation here in North Carolina, not him,’ insisted the lawyer.

  ‘Until I engaged Mr Reid – and learned the totally unfounded case brought against Harvey Jordan by my husband – I had no idea of any such law or divorce provision. How could I have done?’

  ‘Yet you initiated proceedings against Ms Jefferies!’

  ‘I was advised by Mr Reid that it was a course open to me. And that it was one that I should take. ’

  ‘You had suffered a disease, which you claim your husband gave you. You had told him you were divorcing him. Yet you took the papers with you to France, instead of signing them here. You were still unsure about the divorce, weren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ denied Alyce. ‘The papers weren’t complete, particularly the criminal conversation claim against Leanne Jefferies. They were posted to me in France. I took what was already prepared. I was going to be by myself. I had time to read everything very thoroughly.’

  ‘But you weren’t by yourself, were you?’

  ‘I wish I had remained so, not for my own sake but for Mr Jordan’s. I very much regret his entrapment by my husband.’

  The exclamation marks on Beckwith’s pad were all upright now.

  ‘Your husband is a wealthy man, the president of one of Wall Street’s leading commodity brokerages with a multi-millon dollar turnover?’

  ‘My husband never discussed business affairs with me, only in the beginning when he borrowed a million dollars from me.’

  ‘A million dollars that you have no proof of drawing from any of your accounts.’

  ‘It was how he wanted it done, in cash.’

&nbs
p; ‘Not only is there no traceable record of it having been withdrawn from your accounts, there is no recorded entry of such a sum in the company books. How do you explain that?’

  ‘Easily. I told you he asked for it in cash, to avoid it showing in the books. If it were recorded it would have been taxable. Maybe it was to spend on the women I then didn’t know about.’

  ‘You had a Manhattan apartment costing well over a million dollars. The Long Island house is valued at four million. You had staff. A $10,000-a-month allowance. Luxury cars. All provided for you by your husband.’

  ‘He said the cars were part repayment of the loan, which meant I was buying them for myself.’

  ‘What about the rest?’

  ‘I would have exchanged it all for a loving husband home before ten every night. And children.’

  ‘Your husband paid for all those homes and luxuries, didn’t he?

  ‘To which I made a one-million-dollar contribution.’

  ‘Did you love your husband when you married?’

  ‘I thought I did. I thought he loved me. Now I know I was wrong on both counts.’

  ‘Families – dynasties – were more important to you than love, weren’t they? That’s what your marriage was, the creation of an American royal family, and you knew it, didn’t you? That’s what you’ve already told the court today. You didn’t expect love.’

  ‘Of course I expected love: love and respect and a family. One of the most important factors in a royal marriage is the provision of an heir, don’t forget.’

  ‘Which was why your husband wouldn’t consider adoption, because it wouldn’t have provided a proper bloodline.’

  ‘If that is the explanation you are offering for his refusal to adopt, it is total and arrant nonsense,’ rejected Alyce, as Reid returned to the court.

  ‘As your denial that you had a sexually infected lover is total nonsense,’ challenged Bartle.

  At last, despite her robustness so far, Alyce broke into tears, at which Reid hurried to his feet and said, ‘You honour! My client should surely be allowed the protection of the court.’

  ‘Which I am allowing her and which you must observe, Mr Wolfson,’ warned Pullinger, as Leanne Jefferies’ attorney got to his feet.

  ‘The shouted, violent confrontation with your husband that you have described to the court followed your discovery that you had chlamydia?’ began Wolfson.