One witness as to formal evidence was called before the luncheon adjournment. After lunch, evidence was given on the finding of the body by the hotel staff and the identification of the dead woman. The police doctor testified Mrs. Cabbot was dead when he arrived at the hotel bedroom and that as far as he could then tell she had died from the effects of knife wounds.
The pathologist followed the police doctor into the witness-box. He took the oath and gave his evidence in a quiet, level voice.
At the conclusion of his evidence-in-chief, Gretnor rose to cross-examine. He was a big man with a large frame rather than an excess of fat. His style of address was a calm, matter-of-fact one and he had the rare gift of being able to persuade juries against their better judgment because of the apparently sheer reasonableness of all he said.
“You have testified that the number of cuts or slashes was very great. Very great in relation to what?” he asked.
“To both the number necessary to ensure death and to the number one expects to meet in a case of this nature,” replied the witness.
“Did this lead you to any conclusion?”
“Not a conclusion, but it was an obvious possibility that the murderer was in a frenzy, by which I mean a state of such mental excitement that the murderer was to all intents and purposes unaware he was striking again and again.”
“Would there have been a great deal of blood on the knife?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And a great deal of blood elsewhere?”
“Yes, especially from the third wound up in the neck, the one I have already said caused the deceased’s death.”
“In your very great experience, with so much blood around would you expect the murderer to have escaped contact with the blood?”
“That is a very difficult question to answer.”
“I’m sure you’ll answer to the best of your ability.” The pathologist momentarily pursed his lips. “Perhaps I can best explain it if I say I would expect the murderer to be touched quite heavily with blood, but that I certainly am not prepared to be dogmatic on this point.”
“You would expect the murderer to be touched quite heavily with blood,” repeated Gretnor slowly, as he looked at the jury. “And surely you would even more certainly expect this if the murderer were in a frenzy and so utterly careless about what happened?”
“I would not say that.”
“You wouldn’t?” Gretnor’s expression was one of great surprise. After a short while, he sat down.
Charlton re-examined. “If the murderer had been wearing a coat, but took it off before committing the murder, no blood would fall on the coat, would it?”
“Naturally not, if the coat was beyond the spread of the blood.”
“Could the distribution of blood be such that it reached the murderer unequally?”
“If by that you mean could blood fall on him above his waist, but not below, it could.”
“Where did the blood come from?”
“The deceased’s neck and face.”
“Thereby falling from what height?”
“Between four feet six inches and five feet one inch.”
“Thank you.”
The pathologist’s place in the witness-box was taken by Lather, an expert on animal fibres. He testified that the wool in the thread handed to him by the police was of the same consistency, type, and structure, as the wool of the suit he had been asked to examine.
Gretnor cross-examined him, but found the task a difficult one. Lather was a dour Scotsman who was unimpressed by anything but his own opinion.
“According to your evidence,” said Gretnor, “the wool of the two exhibits is exactly similar?”
“Aye.”
“Which you say proves that the thread came from the coat?”
“I did not say that.”
“And could not have come from any other coat?”
“I did not say that either.”
“Then the thread could have come from a coat other than the one we have seen in court?”
“My evidence is that the medulla is similar with a similar value of I, the medullary index: the air network matches in structure, with medium sized air sacks, and the cells are easily visible. The cortex is similar in shape and construction. The cuticle, where visible, is similar. I have testified to no more than that.”
“Other wool from other animals might be very similar?”
“It might be.”
“You can’t tell us?”
“Not until I’ve examined the wool from these other animals.”
There was some laughter. Gretnor was too experienced a counsel to be worried by either the answer, the laughter, or the fact that he had made no progress. “The position is this, then? You say no more than that although the wool is similar, there is no way of proving the wool in the thread, exhibit number seven, didn’t come from a garment not the coat, exhibit number eight?”
“On the evidence of what I have examined. I can say that the wool of the two exhibits is strikingly similar. But, by the very nature of these two exhibits, I cannot swear they cannot come from separate sources.”
Gretnor sat down.
Charlton stood up. “Mr. Lather, in your considered and expert opinion did the thread come from the coat?”
“It is probable.”
An expert on dyes was called. From a very careful examination and comparison of the dyes used in exhibits numbers seven and eight, he was prepared to state that the thread came from the coat. Gretnor did no more than cross-examine briefly.
Nathan, receptionist at the Swan Hotel, went into the witness-box.
After the preliminary questions had been put to him, Charlton said: “Were you on duty at the reception desk on the evening of Sunday, the twenty-sixth of June?”
“I was.”
“From what time until what time?”
“From four o'clock until midnight.” Nathan had a nobbly face and an elongated chin. Nervousness was making him sweat and he repeatedly mopped his face and neck with a handkerchief.
“During this time, are you able to see anyone who enters the hotel?”
“If they come in through the main entrance.”
“Did you notice on the evening in question anyone whom you knew was not a resident at the hotel?”
“Yes. Several people.” Nathan swallowed heavily and his Adam’s apple jumped up and down. He mopped his face and neck once more.
Charlton flicked the tails of his wig away from his neck, where they had caught up in his wing collar. He smiled at the witness to put the other more at his ease. “Will you tell us if any of these non-residents took your attention for any particular reason?”
“There was a man...He seemed to be looking for someone. I noticed him ’cause I was certain he’d come over for help. You know, see if I could tell him where a resident was. But he didn’t come over to the desk. Just kept looking round the place, going into one or other of the public rooms, then coming back into the lobby.”
“What time of the day was this?”
“It was some little time after I’d come on duty. I couldn’t say exactly.” Nathan swallowed heavily and looked worried, as if he feared he was going to be accused of being unco-operative.
“Can you tell us approximately the time? If you can’t, however, just say so. The court will understand.”
“It was somewhere near six o’clock.”
The judge spoke to the witness. “Have you any way of relating this time to some point in the evening to which you can put a definite and known time? Were you relieved for a meal?”
“Oh, yes, my Lord. At eight o’clock.”
“Did you see this man before you were relieved?”
“Quite a time before.” Nathan gained some self-confidence. “It was roughly mid-way between coming on duty and my meal break.”
The judge wrote in his note-book. He spoke to counsel. “Yes, Mr. Charlton.”
Charlton resumed his examination-in-chief. “Can you give any e
stimate of how long this person was in the hotel?”
“I suppose it was about a quarter of an hour, all told.”
“What happened at the end of that time?”
“He went out through the main doors. I watched him leave because I’d been wondering who he’d been looking for.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“No, he didn’t and that’s what I thought was so strange. You see...”
Skilfully, Charlton cut short the other’s answers, recognising the fact that whereas at the beginning Nathan had been so nervous he had difficulty in speaking, now that he had gained some confidence he was about to become loquacious. “Did anyone later question you about any aspect of that evening?”
“A detective came to the hotel and asked me about any strangers I’d seen. I told him about this man. The next day, I think it was, another detective showed me a whole lot of photographs and asked if I recognised any of ’em. I picked out the man I’d seen at once.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“He’s here. He’s the murderer...”
“My Lord,” objected Gretnor loudly, as he hurriedly came to his feet.
The judge spoke to the witness in a voice that was coldly angry. “You will refrain from any comment of this nature.” He addressed the jury. “Members of the jury, you will ignore what has just been said.”
Nathan once more sweated profusely. When he spoke, he stuttered. “Yes...yes...yes...my Lord.”
Charlton continued his examination. “Have you seen the man you identified since then?”
Nathan, plainly scared to answer, looked from counsel to the dock, then at the Bench.
“Is he here in court?” said Charlton sharply.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“He...he’s in the dock.”
“Thank you.” Charlton sat down.
Gretnor stared at his brief. It had not been his intention to cross-examine the witness at all rigorously since there had been no point in doing so: Plesence did not deny he had been at the Swan Hotel around six o’clock. But with a witness as mentally upset and shaken as was Nathan, there might be something to be gained by a sharp cross-examination and there would be little to lose.
He stood up and his demeanour was antagonistic. “When you were shown the photographs by the detective, did he suggest to you which was the one you were likely to be able to identify?”
“No, he just told me to look through them.”
“Think back carefully and then say whether you are quite positive he made no suggestion in any shape or form?”
“I...I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so,” repeated Gretnor, with very great scorn. “On a point this important, you only think.” He leaned back and rested himself against the front of his junior’s desk. “Let’s see if you’re really certain about anything? Can you be certain the time was six o’clock and not six-thirty?”
“But I said I didn’t know that exactly.”
“In other words, you’re guessing. Then are you quite certain that this man kept walking backwards and forwards between the rooms? Didn’t he once sit down?”
“Well I...Look, he might have done. I couldn’t watch him all the time.”
“What’s that?”
Nathan mopped his face and neck. He looked desperately at counsel for the prosecution.
“Did you just admit to this court that you couldn’t watch him all the time?”
“Yes.”
“But weren’t you a moment ago claiming that you had had vour eyes on him for every second?”
“I don’t think the witness claimed that,” observed the judge.
“A matter of interpretation, my Lord,” said Gretnor, and moved on to the next question. “Were you working whilst at the reception desk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then there must have been times when you were too busy at your work to observe what was going on around you? Presumably you didn’t keep a constant watch on the main doors?”
“But I couldn’t.”
“Then someone might have come through the main doorway, crossed the lobby, gone up the main staircase or taken the lift, and you would have known absolutely nothing about this person?”
“I...I’d have known if that had happened.”
“How, if on your own admission you were working and couldn’t keep a constant watch on the main doors?”
Nathan did not answer.
“And this same person might later have come down the stairs or in the lift, crossed the lobby, and gone out of the main doors and still you would have been none the wiser?”
Nathan went to speak, but did not.
“You claim to identify the accused as having been at the hotel — what suit was he wearing?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was he carrying anything?”
“I...Look, so many people come and go. I remember his face but that’s all.”
“Even that claim is open to doubt,” said Gretnor, as he sat down.
There was no re-examination. The judge adjourned the court until the following morning.
As Gretnor stood up and bowed to the judge, he thought that fate might have helped him in that the court was adjourned at that moment when it seemed the defence had made a valid point, but how many more valid points would he have to make before the jury started to overlook the evidence of the knife and the finger-print on it?
David sat on the cell bunk and wondered what Patricia was doing and feeling. It was a strange, and frightening, fact that already lie was finding it difficult exactly to visualise her face. Yet it was not very long since he had last seen her. He tried to remember how her eyes puckered when she smiled, how her mouth turned up at the comers, and how her nose was slightly snub, but all his mind would call up was a hazy picture as if he were looking at her through a gauze net.
He lit a cigarette and dropped the spent match into an over-full ash-tray. On the door was a long list of regulations in H.M. Prisons. If one had to obey them all, one surely ceased to be an independent human being? Vaguely, he remembered reading about snout barons, who were the uncrowned kings of the prisons and who had their runners to beat up the men who didn’t pay up quickly enough. If he was convicted, he’d enter a world that would bear so little relation to the one he had known in the past he might be on a different planet.
He pulled his mind up. What the hell was he doing thinking about what would happen if he were convicted? He was innocent and innocence couldn’t be convicted. Then he remembered all the evidence and wondered bitterly who would believe him.
Only a mad person could hate him as much as Catalina did. She made him think of a Black Widow, venomous, deadly. His mind flicked back to the Caribbean cruise and how they had stood on the moonlit deck and pledged their mutual love. Perversely, he could remember exactly how Catalina had looked then. Now, she hated him so much she had done all she could to see he was convicted of murder. He remembered the description of the dead woman and of the injuries she had received. Catalina had slashed Mrs. Cabbot to death in a wild, mad frenzy.
Would Catalina, in her madness, attack Patricia? At the thought of Patricia’s being mutilated, he felt sick. He had to force himself to overcome a wild impulse to shout for the warder and demand he be allowed to see that Patricia was alive and well. No shout could be less heard or heeded. The prison authorities were totally unconcerned with his fears and the extent to which such fears tormented him.
He stubbed out the cigarette. Gretnor had to prove to the world and the jury that he didn’t kill Mrs. Cabbot. God Almighty, why should he have murdered her? He’d never even met her.
Catalina drank her sixth gin and French. She was lightheaded and her thoughts were somewhat hazy. She hoped Patricia really did love David, because then she would be suffering hell.
David had wrecked her, Catalina’s, life. He’d lied and lied to her. He'd pretended he was rich and she hadn’t realised what a lie it was until t
oo late and she was married to him.
She laughed. They thought they’d been so clever, but she’d been so much cleverer. They'd spat in her bed, but she’d made certain they never again spat in any bed. They’d been stupid enough to think they could insult her and get away with it, not realising she wasn’t a long-legged, bulgingbreasted, overgrown English schoolgirl. She’d fire in her veins, not water. When she was insulted, she hit back.
She had another drink.
David would have to go on and on and on paying her maintenance. She laughed. All the time he was in jail, he would be paying her. She’d find herself someone who was civilised enough to appreciate her and together they’d spend the money that came from her ex-husband, languishing in jail because he was stupid.
A fierce wave of anger swept through her mind. How could David have preferred Patricia? How could he have insulted her, Catalina? Tears came to her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She finished the drink, looked at the bottle of gin, hesitated, then poured herself out another one.
Patricia, in bed, wept. Her tears were tears of grief.
CHAPTER XI
Detective Inspector Cathart had been in the witness-box for just over two hours when his examination-in-chief came to an end. During that time his careful, detailed, and unbiased recital of facts had made a considerable impression on the jury.
Gretnor began his cross-examination very carefully, making it clear to the jury that at the moment, anyway, he was merely checking on facts, not attacking the witness. “You had met Mr. Plesence before the occasion on which you questioned him as to whether he had ever been to the Swan Hotel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So he knew you were a policeman and what your rank was?”
“Yes.”
“Before questioning him about a visit to the hotel, did you say that a woman had been found dead, murdered, at the hotel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you say the woman’s name was Mrs. Cabbot?”
“I did.”
“And was Mrs. Cabbot the wife of a man who had unfortunately died a short while previously?” Now, Gretnor knew he was skating on the thinnest of ice. He had to make the jury realise that David’s denial of having been to the hotel was instinctive rather than a deliberate lie: yet he dare not underline the fact that the two deaths were intimately connected.
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