A Traitor's Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

‘Did you tell them?’

  ‘Me? No, certainly not.’

  ‘Has the accused at any time mentioned to you the loss of his souvenir in the form of the figure of Justice?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Mettram cross-examined. ‘Constable, if you had given warning of these raids, do you imagine you would stand in that witness-box and make a full confession?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I would.’

  Larksfray left the witness-box and his place was taken by a uniformed constable.

  The sunlight had moved round the courtroom, plotting the course of the sun overhead: it had swept across the clerk’s table and the judge, who had twice shifted his chair to escape it, and was now spilling over the two benches where some of the journalists were sitting.

  In the dock, Elwick found it difficult to look away from the jury. There they were, twelve people who before today had almost certainly never seen him and who, once the trial was ended, would probably never see him again. How could they judge him? How could they realise that to a man of his nature the police force represented a trust, a trust nothing would ever make him betray? He had argued with both his counsel that all of his past history should be given in court so that the jury should know how he’d been in trouble, but had fought his way clear of trouble because of the help of a probation officer who was Christ-like in his beliefs: he had said, with passionate conviction, that if the jury knew that, they would realise he could never betray the force which had given him a chance. Mettram had not said so, but it had been clear he’d thought Elwick so naive as almost to be a simpleton. He carefully explained the situation. Juries were human, humans suffered from human failings, it was a human failing to believe that if a person had done wrong once he was more liable to do wrong a second time and, as a corollary, if a man was charged with doing wrong and it was shown he had previously done wrong, then there was little doubt but that he must have done the wrong with which he’d been charged.

  Elwick had never before realised that the truth could be twisted into a lie even while still remaining the truth: he had not realised that innocence could be made to don the mask of guilt.

  Which one of the detectives had betrayed the police and then gone on to frame him? Which detective had throttled his conscience? Which detective was lying, fully knowing his lies would send an innocent man to jail?

  CHAPTER XII

  Keelton garaged the car and walked round to the front door of the house. He noticed that the front flower-beds badly needed weeding. Mary usually made certain there were no weeds: it was an accurate measure of her present bitter depression that these flower beds should be in the state they were.

  He unlocked the front door and went inside. ‘Hallo,’ he called out.

  Mary answered him. ‘I’m in here.’

  He went into the sitting-room. She was on the settee, an opened magazine on her lap. ‘You’re late,’ she said, in a dull voice.

  ‘I had to go along to the office after the trial and clear up some of the work there.’

  ‘Is … is the trial finished?’

  ‘It’s not over, just adjourned for the day,’ he answered, more loudly than he had intended. ‘It’s taking longer than they expected.’ He walked over to the cocktail cabinet. ‘What will you drink?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘A whisky would do you … ’

  ‘I don’t want anything.’

  He poured out a whisky for himself, then crossed to the nearer arm-chair and sat down. ‘Where’s Joanna?’

  ‘Don’t you know? She’s been in court all day.’

  ‘I looked for her when the court adjourned, but couldn’t see her. Is she coming back for dinner?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She can’t go on and on treating me as if … ’

  ‘Why not?’ broke in Mary fiercely. ‘Why can’t she go on hating you for what you’ve done? All her life she’s come to you for help whenever she’s been in trouble, but then, when she needs help more than ever before, you turn round and betray her.’

  ‘I explained … ’

  ‘And how d’you think the explanation sounded to her? I’ll tell you exactly. It sounded like what it was, a pitiful attempt at an apology. I’ve been married to you for twenty-five years and I thought I really knew you. I reckoned you loved your family and that they meant more to you than anybody or anything else on this earth. I couldn’t have been more wrong.’

  ‘Can’t you trust me?’ he said desperately.

  ‘Trust you? After what you’ve done to her? We had a son once, but he died and we were left with just Joanna. I’d have thought the tragedy of Richard would have made Joanna doubly precious to you, but when you had to choose between your job and her, you never hesitated. You betrayed your own daughter. I don’t understand you, John: I don’t begin to understand you any more.’

  He drank. He felt anger and bitterness and near-over-whelming self-pity: it needed all his immense self-control to prevent himself telling the truth.

  She stared at him, a hard expression on her face and her eyes moist from unshed tears. ‘It wasn’t that you didn’t realise what would happen. I told you, over and over again. You’ve always been a man who would do his duty, but what you did to her was inhuman. Your own daughter so grief-stricken she blurts out a confidence and yet you take that confidence and, in the name of duty, publish it to the world.’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘Had to! Is that what you’re telling yourself now? What’s the matter? Can’t you bear to face the facts? Don’t you like remembering how I begged and begged you not to betray her? For twenty-five years I’ve been so proud of being married to you that I couldn’t look at you without glowing inside. When I look at you now, it’s like looking at a stranger.’

  He finished his drink, then went across to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself out another whisky.

  ‘She may leave,’ said Mary. Tears spilled out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She brushed them away with her right hand.

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘Home.’

  He swung round. ‘Then stop her.’

  ‘How? By force? Why shouldn’t she go if every time she looks at you … ’

  ‘Knock some sense into her.’

  ‘Then you’d like to use force?’

  He returned to his chair and sat down. They were silent. Joanna returned some time later. She came into the sitting-room. With an instinctive knowledge of how to cause the greatest hurt, she crossed and kissed her mother hallo, but ignored her father.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.

  She did not answer.

  ‘Care for a drink?’ he said, more loudly.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Joanna, you’ve got to trust me … ’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust you to tell me the right time,’ she said, with passionate anger. She ran out of the room.

  ‘Shall we eat?’ said Mary, in a low voice.

  He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t give a damn whether he ate, or not.

  ***

  Wednesday was a dull day, with a wind to which there was a snap as if to remind people that winter followed summer. Trees lost their first leaves, people buttoned up the collars of their mackintoshes and ice-cream vendors suffered a sudden slump in trade.

  The trial of Robert Elwick resumed at ten o’clock. Mr Justice Heller walked on to the dais from the doorway behind the crimson velvet curtain. His clerk held his chair ready for him and he sat down after returning counsel’s bows. He opened his note-book and re-read the last entry, made in his crabbed handwriting that had so annoyed one of his schoolmasters, then looked at the dock. The prisoner had the face of a man who was strong in character and the judge felt a momentary sorrow that the other should be in the position he now was.

  ***

  Joanna was called to the witness-box at twelve-seventeen, immediately after Barnard had given evidence. She had dressed carefully, making certain neither her clothes nor her make-up we
re controversially contemporary. No one, studying her, could fail to notice signs of the grief she had suffered and was suffering.

  She stood in the witness-box and stared at the dock, gazing with desperate appeal at Elwick. He drew up his huge frame, almost as if about to fight his way to her side, but then the warder whispered to him and he relaxed. Twenty feet away, in the end seat on the front witness-bench, Keelton silently cursed, as if the endless and monotonous stream of words could and would ease a little of the pain within him.

  After putting the preliminary questions, Peace paused and rubbed his beaked nose. There was no harder task for a prosecuting counsel than to question a woman whose loyalty so obviously lay with the prisoner. Although it was almost certain such a woman would lie, and go on lying, if prosecuting counsel seemed however slightly to be brow-beating her the sympathy of the jury would swing so heavily in her favour that many of her lies might be believed. ‘Miss Keelton,’ he finally said, ‘how long have you known the accused?’

  ‘I’ve known Bob for several months.’ Her voice was high but firm. She gripped the edge of the witness-box with her gloved hands.

  ‘Can you say what degree of friendship there is between you?’

  ‘I am going to marry him,’ she said defiantly.

  The girl had courage, Peace thought. She didn’t give a damn what the world said. ‘Have you in the past been out with him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where have you gone together?’

  ‘Several places, including the motel at Dredlington Park.’ She spoke quickly, forestalling the obvious line of questioning. ‘I suggested we went there and as we took it in turns to treat the other, I paid for the meal.’

  He decided against challenging her on this point. Even if he proved Elwick actually paid the bill, she could claim she had previously given him the money to save any embarrassment on his part. ‘How often did you see the accused?’

  ‘As often as possible.’

  ‘Did you and he discuss his work?’

  ‘If you mean did I know about the trouble and that some people were saying Bob was the traitor, yes, I did. It was a filthy accusation. He couldn’t ever betray the force, not even if he were paid to.’ She suddenly gasped as she remembered that it was the prosecution’s contention that he had been paid for his betrayal.

  ‘To your own knowledge, did he ever carry around any kind of good luck charm?’

  ‘No.’

  He let that point go by. There was more than enough independent proof to show that Elwick had always had on him the souvenir figure of Justice. ‘Miss Keelton, did you see the prisoner on Friday, the nineteenth of August?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At what time of the day?’

  ‘In the morning.’

  ‘Where were you before the meeting?’

  ‘At art college.’

  ‘Had your class come to an end by the time you left the college?’

  ‘I … No.’

  ‘Then you left in the middle of a class?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there any particular reason why you left?’

  ‘Bob telephoned me.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He wanted to see me.’

  ‘Did he say why over the telephone?’

  She was about to answer when she stopped as she realised she had been quietly led into a trap. It was clear from what she had already said that the meeting must have been a sudden and unexpected one and therefore there could now be no ordinary and casual explanation of what it had been about. Yet the one thing she dare not do was to tell the truth — that Bob had been in a panic because he had found the money. ‘He was shocked and needed to talk to someone.’

  ‘Can you say why he was shocked?’

  ‘He’d been called a liar and been physically searched.’

  ‘What happened during your meeting?’

  ‘I did what I could to calm him down. After that, he went back to work and I returned to college.’

  ‘Did you see him again that day?’

  ‘No. I went home in the evening.’

  ‘Will you describe what happened on your return home.’

  She swallowed heavily. ‘I … As soon as I got home, I asked my father why Bob was being persecuted. My father had right along objected to my seeing Bob because he’s only a detective constable and comes from a poor home.’

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘He started on again — my father, I mean — saying I mustn’t see Bob. I said I was going to and he suddenly accused Bob of having been bribed and he demanded to know whether Bob had given me the money. I told him, Bob wouldn’t ever accept a bribe. My father ordered my mother to search my handbag. There was some money in it and he claimed it was Bob’s bribe.’ She gestured with her hands. ‘It wasn’t any bribe. I swear it wasn’t. It was money I’d just got from selling some of the jewellery my godmother left me.’

  ‘Where did you sell this jewellery?’ he asked quietly, almost sadly.

  ‘It was a shop in London.’

  ‘What was the name of the shop?’

  ‘I … I can’t remember.’

  ‘Whereabouts was it?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she said wildly. ‘It was in the centre, that’s all I know. I swear that’s where the money came from.’

  ‘Do you know that the notes found in your handbag were treated for finger-prints and finger-prints of the accused were found on them?’

  ‘I showed him the money when we were in the park and he handled it.’

  ‘Do you also know that your fingerprints were on none of the notes?’

  Her face moved as if she were about to cry, but no tears fell.

  Peace sat down. There was a subdued murmur from the public benches as people expressed their surprise that counsel was not pursuing the evidence further.

  Mettram was surprised — he’d disliked Peace from the day the latter remained sober on their joint call day — that Peace should have had the sense of tactics to sit down when he did. Mettram stood up and wasted time by turning over the pages of his brief and then leaning back and talking to his junior, as he tried to decide whether, or not, to prove the girl a liar. Her evidence, given in a desperate attempt to help Elwick, was dangerous since it was in direct contrast to what Elwick’s would be. But to prove she was a liar would be to bring down on the defence the odium that rightly should have rested on the prosecution.

  Mettram thrust both hands in his trousers pockets. ‘Miss Keelton, the accused will say he is completely innocent of the crime with which he is charged.’

  ‘He is,’ she cried.

  ‘He will go on to say he had been framed, that the money in your handbag came from him and that he found it in his locker, where it had been hidden in an attempt to provide false evidence against him.’

  She shivered, ran her tongue along her lips. ‘He … he gave me the money,’ she whispered.

  ***

  Peace’s cross-examination of Elwick was typically restrained, unemotional, and without any flamboyant rhetoric.

  Some ten minutes after starting the cross-examination, Peace said: ‘Was there anything unique about your souvenir figure of Justice?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Elwick’s face was flushed and his voice was harsh.

  ‘You claim that if put amongst a dozen identical ones, you couldn’t unfailingly pick it out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even though it’s been in your possession for so many years?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well.’ Peace rested his right foot on the seat next to him and his elbow on his knee. He looked relaxed, a man concerned solely with uncovering the truth. ‘During the raid on the house in Jamaica Road, you did not at any time go upstairs?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You are quite certain of that?’

  ‘I’ve just said so.’

  ‘We must establish the facts beyond any shadow of doubt. We have heard evidence that the souvenir, exhibit numb
er eleven, was found upstairs, in a bedroom. Since you didn’t go upstairs, how did it get up there?’

  ‘That souvenir isn’t mine.’

  ‘Not yours?’

  ‘I didn’t go upstairs. If it is mine, it was planted.’

  ‘Let us take your reply point by point. You first say the souvenir found in the bedroom is not yours — but since you’ve assured the court that your souvenir was in no way unique and that you couldn’t unerringly identify it, how can you be certain exhibit number eleven is not yours?’

  ‘I know it isn’t.’

  ‘Where is yours?’

  ‘I … All right, it could be mine. But if it is, it was planted in the bedroom to make me look the traitor.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Someone who was present.’

  ‘A policeman?’

  ‘Or the people who were in the house.’

  ‘How could these people have obtained it?’

  ‘From the traitor, who stole it from me.’

  ‘When was it stolen from you?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. It may have fallen out of my pocket and I didn’t notice it, or maybe it was swiped from my coat when that was hanging up somewhere.’

  ‘Whatever happened, you are convinced the real traitor is one of your fellow policemen?’

  ‘It has to be.’

  ‘Then whom do you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘This is a general — and wild — accusation?’

  ‘I’m not the traitor.’

  ‘But you can’t prove you’re not?’

  ‘Of course I can’t or I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You are here because there is a great deal of evidence to say you are the traitor.’

  ‘It’s all lies.’

  ‘Did you treasure the souvenir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For any particular reason?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you must have been very upset when you lost it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whom, before the fourth of August, did you question at the police station about whether he had seen it?’

  ‘I ... ’

  ‘Did you question anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t that odd?’

  ‘I … Well I didn’t bother at the time because I thought maybe it would turn up.’