Blood and Judgement

by Michael Gilbert

  Curiously enough, all feeling of nightmare receded as soon as Petrella entered the water. This was a job of work. Something which needed proper attention and left no room for fantasy.

  Borden submerged first, to mark the area of their night’s search with long aluminum pegs. They were starting where the official search had left off, casting wide on either side of the line.

  “I’ll mark out an oblong strike,” said Borden. “You work up and down the left-hand side, from the corners, inwards to the centre pegs. I’ll do the same on the right-hand side. Don’t hurry. Things sink very quickly even when it’s a clear gravel bottom, like this. Get your face down to it, and search every square inch.”

  After the first night, Petrella’s memories of that week became blurred. The work, during the hour that they stayed underwater, was not only monotonous, it was detached, trance-like and otherworldly. Their only interrupters were fish, attracted by the beam of the torch, who would swim up, lazy and fearless, to examine the new planet which had arisen in their watery hemisphere. One large carp Petrella got to know quite well. It would hang, hardly moving, in front of his face, dart provocatively away, and then slowly return. Petrella decided, in the end, that it was trying to make love to him.

  At the conclusion of each lateral movement of the search he would meet Borden. They would work up to each other until his right hand touched Borden’s left, then they would depart, silently, to the outer edge of the area, move forward the peg which marked their progress, and so start again.

  At the end of the hour the cold drove them to the surface. They stripped their suits and pummelled some warmth back into each other’s bodies. Then they dressed, made their way back to the car, and went home to bed. And to sleep. Petrella had to be up at six and it was, perhaps, this continued shortage of sleep that gave, in remembrance, such an air of unreality to that week.

  He remembered the highlights. The moment when Superintendent Haxtell walked into the CID room and told them that the Corinne Hart case was finished.

  “Right or wrong,” he said, “I decided to work on his mother. I persuaded her in the end that it wasn’t really safe for her son to stay free. She’s not only withdrawn her alibi, she’s prepared to give evidence against him.”

  “Guilty but insane?”

  “Diminished responsibility anyway,” said Haxtell. (Kellaway had said, “Once the jury’s out, I’m finished.” That was Haxtell’s view too. Like most policemen, he cared little what happened ultimately to his victims; unless they happened to have killed a policeman, in which case they ought to be hanged and he felt uneasy until this had happened.)

  Then there were the visits, one a day, to Collins’ shop, to study the postcards in the glass showcase; postcards which offered sewing machines and perambulators for sale, deep massage, and lodgings for lonely young men, but none of them seemed to carry any particular message for Petrella. He wondered if the whole incident of the white-faced girl might have been a hallucination. Something imagined between waking and sleeping.

  It was on the fourth night, remembered for its cold, unrelenting rain, that they were startled, on returning to the car, by a cloaked figure which stepped out of the shadows and shone a torch upon them.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, Bateson,” said Petrella.

  “Oh, it’s you, Sergeant.”

  “Who did you think it was, car thieves?”

  “Didn’t recognize the car,” said Bateson. “I been keeping an eye on her for some time.”

  “Then you can take your eye off,” said Petrella. “Because we’re going home to bed. Good night.”

  “Will he tell anyone about us?” asked Borden, as they drove off.

  “He won’t tell anyone,” said Petrella. “He’ll simply put it in his occurrences book. It’s sort of a personal log all policemen keep. ‘Last night at 2 a.m. I observed Councilor Brassey returning to his house. I said good night to him. He said good night to me.’”

  “Sounds a waste of time,” said Borden.

  “Surprisingly, it isn’t. Did you know that the men who shot Antiquis in London were caught because a constable down at Southend made an entry in his occurrences book four days before the murder took place?”

  Borden said, no, he didn’t know that, and drove in thoughtful silence for a few minutes.

  “Who sees that book?”

  “His sergeant.”

  “It was a mistake ever teaching policemen to read.”

  It was on the following night, the fifth of their search, that Borden failed to reappear at the end of the dive. They had known before they started that there was a bare sixty minutes of pressure left in their aqualungs and they had slightly hastened the search to give themselves a safety margin.

  Petrella was getting ready to go down and look for him, when the frogman’s head broke surface. They paddled in silence to the bank.

  “What kept you?” said Petrella. “I began to think you were in trouble.”

  “Just at the end of the square,” said Borden, “right on the dead ball line, as you might say, I felt something. I’m sure of it. You can almost sense it, when the bottom’s been churned up and settled down again. And there was a good deal of activity among our fishy hosts.”

  “Did you–?”

  “I hadn’t time. I felt the air beginning to suck dry, so I came up quick. We’ll finish this job tomorrow night, Patrick.”

  That was Monday night. It was on Tuesday morning that Kellaway sent for Petrella. He could read trouble in Dodds’ face. It stood up, like a thick black ridge of thundercloud. The storm hit him as he entered the room.

  Kellaway was standing. He was so angry that he was past all the ordinary signs of anger. He was a little whiter than usual but his voice was almost civil.

  “Will you kindly explain,” he said, “what the devil you’re up to in that reservoir?”

  Petrella did so, as best he could. His words fell into a pool of inky silence.

  “And is this stunt something you’re doing in your own time, to improve your health? Or is it connected with the Reservoir Case?”

  There were dangers both ways. Petrella said, “It sort of arises out of the Reservoir Case.”

  “Then if it’s police work, why has no report been put in?”

  Why, indeed?

  Kellaway said, “I warned you as nicely as I could, some days ago, to lay off this self-advertising stunt of yours. Just come out of the clouds for a moment. You’re not Sexton Blake. You’re a probationary detective sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Force and you’re under my orders, which I thought were clear enough to be understood, even by you. I don’t want to make an official matter out of this and put some mark on your book which will stop you getting promotion. But you step out of line once more, and that’s what I’ll have to do. Have I succeeded in making myself clear this time?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Petrella. “Quite clear.”

  “Have you got anything more you want to say about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I’ve got one thing more. You’ve been called as a witness when the case opens at the Central Criminal Court, which looks like being tomorrow. A lot of your evidence was only formal, so I’ve arranged to dispense with it or do it some other way.”

  He paused, and added, “There’s no sense in taking the field in a Cup Final, with a player who may shoot through his own goal.”

  11

  Old Bailey – First Day’s Play

  Mr Justice Rowan looked like an actor of the modern school; the school begotten by Television out of Cinema, in which sincerity of manner and a good frontal bone structure were much more important than the classic profile.

  Like most of Her Majesty’s judges, he disliked hearing capital charges. They were, in his experience, an excuse for the intrusion of all sorts of sentiment, obscurantism, and theatricality into an occasion which should be logical and judicial.

  He looked warily around him as the court rose at his entrance. C
harles Younger, he saw, of senior Treasury counsel. And with him Margesson, the most brilliant and painstaking of the juniors. The Crown, he concluded, must have a shaky case if they had put two such stars together to open the batting.

  For the defence, Claude Wainwright, a real old warhorse, noted in the popular press for his slashing attacks on the police, but give him a real point of law and he could argue it well enough. Only a fortnight ago, in the much-to-be-preferred atmosphere of Queen’s Bench, he had listened for three days while Mr Wainwright had tried to persuade him that the holder of a bill of exchange endorsed generally had equal rights against both the original issuer and his transferee.

  Mr Wainwright’s junior, a man older even than Mr Wainwright, he was not conscious of having seen before.

  The jury looked as baffled and inert as juries usually looked at the beginning of a heavy case. Probably they would come to life later. The public gallery was full and the press box grossly overcrowded. He had called attention to this before, but no one had done anything about it. One day they would get a really sensational case and a pressman would die of suffocation.

  Peine forte et dure.

  The preliminaries over, Mr Younger rose to his feet. He had thick, black hair, bright brown eyes, and a face like an intelligent prize fighter.

  He said, “This is a case in which the Crown charges capital murder against the accused, Howton, for the killing, by shooting, on September 22nd last, at or near the Binford Park Reservoir, of Rosa Marion Ritchie, the wife of Alfred Ritchie, whose whereabouts are at the moment unknown, but who, at that date, himself had very recently escaped from one of Her Majesty’s prisons, where he was being detained on a criminal charge.”

  Mr Younger looked at the jury for the first time and added, “I have stressed the position of the deceased woman’s husband at this early stage in the proceedings because although absent – he is believed by the police to be in France – he plays an important part in this story. The view taken by the Crown is that this is what might perhaps be described as a gang killing: I can think of no more dignified words for an essentially sordid crime, committed in part at least for gain, by an associate of a known criminal.”

  Mr Younger was, here, on very delicate ground, and no one knew it better than himself. The sentence which he had just thrown, apparently impromptu, had cost him and his junior many anxious hours to compose.

  “To understand the case properly, you must know that Ritchie was an active and successful larcenist. He headed a group which concentrated on robbing jewellers’ shops. Not the very largest shops, in the West End, which are usually adequately protected, but somewhat smaller ones on the outskirts of the central districts and in the suburbs. It was a North London gang, and most of the offences took place in North London. At the time of Ritchie’s arrest the police had compiled, and I shall produce to you, a long list of pieces, mostly small diamonds, gold and platinum, which they were thought to have taken. When Ritchie was arrested, more than a year ago, and his gang dispersed, very little of this jewellery was discovered. I shall try to show you that it had been placed in the hands of his wife who, on her own account or acting on his instructions, had hidden it.

  “We now come to the first concrete fact, in this curious chain of facts, which it will be my duty to set before you. From the moment that Ritchie, the author of these thefts, disappeared behind bars, the proceeds of his crimes started to reappear, in bits and pieces, sometimes in altered form, on the market. We shall produce four witnesses who were offered, or have actually purchased, such jewellery. They are, I need hardly add, perfectly honest men, pawnbrokers and jewellers, and they have helped the police considerably in their inquiries. Two of these men definitely, and one less definitely, have identified the accused as the man who disposed of the jewels to them.

  “I shall further show, by the testimony of the lady with whom the deceased lodged, a Mrs Fraser, that during the whole of the period between her husband going to prison and the supposed time of her death, Mrs Ritchie was” – Mr Younger paused delicately – “in touch with the accused, going out to meet him on three or four occasions that we know of, and very likely on other occasions as well.

  “This, then, is the picture. This is what was happening during the first eight or nine months of last year. Matters were precipitated by an event which neither the accused nor Mrs Ritchie could well have foreseen. On September 21st last, Ritchie escaped on his way from a London prison to permanent detention. It is not known how he spent the first night of his freedom nor what happened to him thereafter, although there is secondary evidence, which I will produce to you for what it is worth, that he crossed to France and has remained there ever since.

  “On the following day, Saturday, September 22nd, which is a date you will have to remember very carefully, Mrs Ritchie went to the grounds of the Binford Park Reservoir. We do not know at what time, except that she left her lodgings before three o’clock, and one of the minor mysteries of the case is how she managed to get into the grounds of the reservoir at all. But that she went there is past dispute, for she remained there, and there her body was found, under a covering of hastily scraped-up leaves, some six weeks later.

  “The accused also went to the reservoir.”

  Mr Younger turned and looked at Howton, who stared sullenly back, single red eye ablink.

  “Three people, local residents, have now been found by the police who saw him at it, or near it, that night. He was accompanied by certain – associates. One witness observed him climbing into the grounds of the reservoir itself. A tragedy might have been averted had she informed someone in authority of what she had seen, but since she was over seventy and alone in the house, you may feel that she is not greatly to be blamed.

  “We are now in the realms of conjecture. I will give you the facts, as they are known to us, and you will have to draw your own conclusions from them. At some time – it is reasonable to suppose that it was that night, unless he was in the habit of visiting the reservoir regularly – the accused entered the small cottage at the southern end of the reservoir. We know that he was there because he left his fingerprints on the paintwork of the living-room window when he climbed in. The cottage was at that time standing empty, the employee of the Water Board who occupied it having departed. Another curious fact of this case is that, despite the efforts of the police, and in spite of the publicity which attended the earlier proceedings, this man, a Mr Ricketts, has not come forward. He may or may not have anything to do with the case, but one would have thought that he would have come forward to say, ‘I am the man you are talking about.’ One would have thought that he would have done this, if–”

  An unbiased observer swears that Mr Younger paused for a full five seconds after the word “if”. In the deep silence someone was heard to gasp. A quick drawing-in of breath. It was not the prisoner. He was staring fixedly ahead of him.

  “–if only to assist the police in their inquiries,” concluded Mr Younger mildly.

  “The next fact to consider is that a boat, customarily kept at the foot of the cottage garden, was found, sunk and abandoned, at the opposite end of the reservoir and that, roughly halfway along its course, a diver, working for the police, recovered, from the bed of the reservoir, an automatic pistol. It was at a point too far from the shore for it to have been thrown. Tests have shown, quite conclusively, that it was from this gun, pressed up against her side, that the bullet was fired which killed Mrs Ritchie. Other witnesses will depose that they have seen the accused in possession of this gun or one very like it.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Howton.

  “Silence,” said the usher.

  “It’s a —ing lie, and the man who says it’s a —ing liar.”

  “Mr Wainwright,” said the judge, “will you explain to your client that he will have an opportunity of giving evidence himself if he wishes, at the proper time.”

  “If Charlie Garden says it’s my gun, there’s things I can tell you about Charlie Garden–” />
  Mr Wainwright arose, but not, it was remarked, with any undue speed, and said, “I much regret the irregular observations made by my client and agree that they ought to form no part of the record.”

  “Very well, Mr Younger,” said the judge.

  “At this stage,” said Mr Younger, “I should add only a word about motive. I have indicated, in outline, what the Crown will try to show you, through its witnesses. It will bring Rosa Ritchie to the reservoir, and it will bring the accused to the reservoir, with a gun. And it will leave Rosa Ritchie dead, on the bank, with a bullet fired from that gun inside her; and the gun itself concealed, with some care, in the deepest part of the reservoir. And thereafter it will show you jewellery, formerly in the possession of the dead woman, being secretly disposed of by the accused. But there is necessarily a gap in the story. No one heard the shots. There was a silencer on the gun and it was pressed into the woman’s side. No one has come forward who saw the murder committed. It would perhaps be surprising if they had. And no one knows with any certainty why the shot was fired. I could, of course, myself suggest a number of motives, and I have no doubt that your ingenuity could supply others. The matter is of secondary importance. His Lordship will, I know, guide you more fully on the relevant law in due course. At the moment all I need say is that there is no onus upon the prosecution to prove any motive at all. Many murders are committed without motive, or for motives so small as to be ludicrous.”

  “Murder without motive,” scribbled the reporter from one of the brighter dailies. After a moment’s thought he changed it to “apparently motiveless murder”.

  “I shall now call Dr Summerson, the pathologist who first examined the body.”

  Petrella spent the morning catching up with one or two routine jobs. After lunch he walked along to the Highside Infirmary, where he knew most of the sisters, having been assigned to guard the place a few months before when there had been attacks on nurses coming home after dark. The attacker had never been discovered, but Petrella had enjoyed his incursion into the curious, clean, cosy, regimented, adolescent life that went on behind the walls of that hideous Victorian structure.