A Messiah of the Last Days

by C. J. Driver

  “Please,” I said. He picked up the internal phone on his desk and ordered coffee and sandwiches for two; while he was waiting for whoever it was at the other end to repeat his order, I carefully took John’s pistol from my overcoat pocket and laid it on the desk between us.

  Williams put the phone down, looked at the pistol carefully without touching it, and then looked at me. He stood up.

  “Will you wait a moment please, Mr. Grace?” he said and went from his office into the main one. In a moment or two he was back, bringing with him a young man in plain clothes and carrying a small shorthand pad.

  “This is Sergeant MacIver,” he said. “If you have no objection, Mr. Grace, I shall ask him to keep a note of this conversation.” He was being very formal and very careful; it suited me perfectly.

  “That’s fine by me, Inspector,” I said. “Perhaps I should start by saying I have good reason to believe this is the weapon that was used to kill your man Caister.”

  “Could you tell me where you got this weapon from, Mr. Grace?”

  I told him as succinctly as I could, and leaving out all but the most salient details.

  “Was Buckleson at your house this afternoon when my man called, Mr. Grace?”

  “I was not there,” I answered.

  “That’s a lawyer’s answer, Mr. Grace,” said Williams.

  “It’s the only answer you’ll get, Inspector. Why did you send your men to my house?”

  “I thought he might go there. Believe it or not, I thought a spot of protection might be needed for your wife and children.”

  “John wouldn’t have hurt them.” I repeated Alison’s certainty without believing it.

  “If you think so, Mr. Grace. I wouldn’t be so sure myself.”

  I paused, then asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  “You realise the moment you discovered John Buckleson was on your premises, you should have contacted the local police.”

  “Who would have got themselves shot.” An hour and a half in the car had prepared me with answers to every conceivable question.

  “Did he threaten you?” Williams gestured at the gun.

  “No,” I said.

  “All right, Sergeant,” Williams said to his shorthand writer. “That’s all. You can go now. Could you type that up and let me see it? I want Mr. Grace to say it’s a correct transcription of our conversation.”

  When the Sergeant had gone, Williams leaned back in his chair and said, still formally, “Mr. Grace, it will no doubt be a relief to you to know that half an hour ago I had a phone-call from the police station in Langford. John Buckleson had given himself up to them. They are bringing him here now.”

  I sat quietly in my chair. I had given up trying to understand. “Did Buckleson say anything …”

  “No, he did not mention you or your wife, Mr. Grace.”

  We sat looking at each other across the table.

  “Can I ask you one thing off the record, Mr. Grace? Are you going to defend Buckleson? If you are briefed, I mean.”

  “No,” I said. “Not if I can help it. Do you remember telling me once you preferred ordinary criminal work to these political things?”

  “These ‘political things’ have become serious crimes, Mr. Grace.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “Well, that’s how I feel. I’m going to stick to some nice ordinary robberies-with-violence from now on. But I’ll tell you one thing: I think Buckleson is unfit to plead—he’s mad, totally mad. And if I were defending him, that’s the line I’d take.”

  “No, Mr. Grace,” said Williams standing up suddenly. “I’m not buying that one, on or off the record. That Buckleson’s as sane as you or me; he’s a right clever little bastard and if anyone tries that insanity line, he’ll come unstuck good and proper. We’ll get him on the murder charge alone, and I hope he breaks stone for every day he has left to come. If we still hanged people like Buckleson, I’d be happy to put the rope around his neck myself, and pull the lever.”

  “If you knew as much as me about Buckleson, I don’t think you’d think he was sane.” I was not giving up; it was the one hope.

  “I think you’d be surprised to find how much I know, Mr. Grace, maybe a lot more than you do; and I say Buckleson’s sane. And that’s that, Mr. Grace. If you’d sign this …” MacIver had come back in with a neatly typed version of our conversation. I read through it, then signed that it was a true and faithful version of the events. It didn’t really seem to matter much any more.

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Grace,” said Williams, very formally.

  I stood up; there was no point in trying to fight a battle which someone else would have to plan first. “What about a solicitor for Buckleson?” I said.

  “When he is charged he will be allowed to request the services of a solicitor.” Williams was retreating into the language of his profession.

  “What are you going to charge him with, besides murder, I mean?”

  “No, Mr. Grace. That’s all I’m prepared to say to you, except good-night. Sergeant,” he called out, and the young sergeant appeared in the doorway. “Show Mr. Grace out, will you please? Our interview is over.”

  *

  There were still two things I had to do before I went home. The first was to see Tella.

  I drove to her flat but left the car a hundred yards down the road. The police might of course have been pulled off their long watch as soon as Williams got the news of Buckleson’s surrender, but if they were still there I was going to make it a little more difficult for them to identify me. But I couldn’t see any watchers near the flat.

  Tella’s flat was still very crowded; the children had been put to bed in the upstairs rooms, and the various mothers and their hangers-on were sprawled around the downstairs room, some sitting on their sleeping-bags, some squatting on the floor. Tella was looking older than I had ever seen her—I suddenly realised that she wasn’t as young as I had thought; there were lines of tiredness around her eyes, her hair was frizzy and her clothes dirty. She stood well away from me.

  “Tom,” she said, “there are rumours going round that … that …” She could not bring herself to say it. “They released some of the Free People this morning, and they said the police had told them … Tom, it’s not true, is it?”

  “They are going to charge John with murder.” Her eyes were fixed on my face. “Is that what you heard?”

  She nodded and then very slowly she began to cry. I suppose it was almost a relief to her to hear from me what she had heard as rumours and refused to believe. Some of the others there rallied around then—because I had really been talking to the whole roomful of them as well as to Tella—and Tella was comforted and I was brought a chair to sit on and someone made us tea, all the usual paraphernalia of comfort we use to control grief.

  Later, when she had stopped crying, we talked more; I still didn’t tell her John had come to Wealdridge before giving himself up, but I told her what else I knew, and then told her she must phone Peale and tell him to get down to John as soon as he could. I thought it was best to give her the illusion of action, although I did not see how Peale’s presence would help John at all.

  “Can’t you go?” she asked.

  “Tella, I’m a barrister, not a solicitor. Peale has to go, and then later on he can brief a barrister.”

  “But you’re going to defend him, aren’t you?”

  “No, Tella. It’s no good any more. He needs someone from the outside, someone not involved.”

  “He’ll need you, Tom; you understand all this …”

  “You’re wrong, Tella. I don’t understand how anybody could put a pistol to the back of the head of someone he knows and blow his brains out.” That was the obvious detail; but I could understand that better than some other confusions I reserved for myself; the dumping of the body, the notice, what he called the ‘God-game’, the surrender to the police.

  It was all confusion, and the only word which made sense of it
was the one which always gives order to confusion: John was mad. John had to be mad, because otherwise I could not understand how his actions matched his ideas, or his words his actions, or even some of his actions other actions.

  “John will want you, whatever he’s done.”

  “No, he won’t. He knows what I think. Now you go and phone Peale, and I’ll go.”

  And that too was that, or so it seemed.

  *

  Then there was Henderson. I phoned him not from Tella’s flat but from a call-box near where I had parked the car.

  “I’ve been trying to get you all day,” I said.

  “The police had me—eight hours’ questioning! And I thought I knew how to ask questions. Professionally it’s been a salutary experience. Did you have that long? When I phoned Alison this evening, you were with the police, she said.”

  “No,” I answered. “Not nearly that long.”

  “Well, that’s a relief anyway.” He sounded almost cheerful; certainly I could detect no distress.

  Before I could stop myself, I burst out: “You said John wouldn’t kill him.”

  “Come now, Tom, I said nothing of the kind.”

  “You don’t have to lie to me; I’m not a policeman.”

  “I said if Caister told John what he was, John would understand.”

  “He understood so well he put a pistol to the back of Caister’s head and blew his brains out.”

  “How do you know it was John?”

  “Because he told me.”

  There was silence the other end, then Bob asked quietly, “When?”

  “He was at my house before he gave himself up.” I hadn’t meant to tell Bob.

  “Has he given himself up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you persuade him?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And he told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’ll be charged with murder then?”

  “Yes. You said he wouldn’t.”

  “Tom, I’m a doctor, not God.” All the urbanity was gone now; his voice was very quiet. What was it I had said to Alison? ‘I’m a lawyer, not God.’

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been holding on pretty tight, and it’s beginning to crack now.”

  “No, you’re right. We’ve misjudged our man badly, Tom.”

  “And Caister’s dead; and ‘our man’ will spend the rest of his life in gaol, or thirty years of it at least. There’re other charges besides murder, Bob.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something else I don’t know about. It isn’t going to make much difference.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He might as well plead guilty for all the chance he’s got. Unless …” Deliberately I left the word in the air.

  “Unless what, Tom?”

  “I can’t tell you now. I’ll have to wait until he’s seen a lawyer, and the lawyer has got a barrister.”

  “That’ll be you.” Was there a query in that?

  “No, it won’t.”

  Again there was long silence the other end. Then, “But you’ll have to, Tom.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. And anyway I’m not going to discuss it now. But you may be able to help the defence.”

  “By doing what?”

  “That’ll have to wait until there’s a defence.”

  “But, Tom …”

  I rang off; there was no point in arguing with anyone about it, not then.

  11

  Retreat from thought. Retreat from feeling. Take the quiet of the pine trees with you; the crows prefer the open fields. Take the territory of the owls for refuge.

  Work goes on. Home goes on. Love for wife, for children goes on. The vixen howls; the owls hoot; the crows invisible in the fields on the other side of the wood yak and guffaw like old men coughing. I am defending someone who is accused of criminal negligence in causing a car accident in which a mother died and her three children. He is a cheerful, red-faced man, an alcoholic as he confides, upset at the deaths, but unrepentant about driving dangerously in a dangerously uncared-for car; “that’s life, I’m afraid, old man,” he says to me as if it were an answer. Coming home the train is crowded; someone’s on strike again, and I stand the whole way, with a fat man bumping me from behind and saying at every lurch, “Beg pardon, old man.” Alison lies naked in my arms all night; “just you wait until we’re on holiday,” I tell her, but I no longer believe in simplicity. Complexity is all. Nell is not well; she’s been coughing badly at night for the past … how long? I can’t remember. Still the cough racks her into a wakeful crying every night. I dream of nothing but the wind in the pine trees, sighing and shuddering all night.

  *

  Was it two days later Peale phoned me? Three? Four? I don’t remember nor do I care. There is a note from the clerks’ office on my desk when I get in: ‘Please phone Mr. Peale of Peale and Randall urgently when you get in.’ I crumple the note in a tight ball and drop it in the waste-paper basket. Some time later the phone on my desk rings; it is Peale. Time is out of control. I have no more sense of it than a man locked alone in a cell.

  “Yes, Mr. Peale, it’s Grace here.”

  “I left a message for you to phone; didn’t you get it?”

  “I’ve only just got in, Mr. Peale.”

  “Your court sits late, Mr. Grace.”

  “Yes.” He knows I am lying but I do not mind.

  “I saw Buckleson this morning. I gather you know all the circumstances.”

  “Some of them.”

  “Miss Raymond briefed me to look after him; she also specified your services.”

  “I told her I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Will you hear me out, Mr. Grace?” His voice is very formal, very cold; you know where you stand with Peale. “I persuaded Miss Raymond to let me nominate another barrister. But when I saw Buckleson this afternoon, he said he would have you or no one. He said he’d defend himself if you were not available.”

  “I’m not the right person to do it, Mr. Peale.” Toby Daventry is pretending not to listen.

  “Unfortunately, Buckleson does not agree with you. Frankly, I do not think you are the best person either. However, Buckleson is adamant.”

  “I shall need a couple of days …”

  “Mr. Grace, Buckleson goes before a magistrate for a second remand tomorrow morning. Miss Raymond has instructed me to apply for bail.”

  “You know damn well Buckleson won’t be bailed.”

  “I do, Mr. Grace, I do. Unfortunately, my instructions are to see to it that every stage is contested; and my further instructions are that you are to contest them.”

  “I shall need time.”

  “Mr. Grace, there isn’t any time; the remand hearing is tomorrow morning.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  “Buckleson says if I try to appear for him he will refuse to acknowledge that I have been instructed on his behalf. Either you are there or no one. Those are my very specific instructions. I must have your decision now.”

  “Can’t you get someone else?”

  “Mr. Grace, while I am delighted at your reluctance, the situation is simple. You defend Buckleson or no one does.”

  I said nothing. What was the other dream, when I was a child? It was still there, patient and passive. A dream from history, or from some book I had picked up in a library and had not understood. There always, whatever the source. There was hunger, months of hunger; my dream-mother had died of it and my dream-father lay all day on his bed, coughing and taking not even the little food which we still had. Then we heard He was coming. Hartle the shoemaker who had been re-baptised Elisha told the Elect he had dreamed of His coming three nights in succession. There were soldiers in the street all night searching the houses of those they said preached sedition; where they found no sedition they took food and wine away, and where no food and wine they took the women. Seven men from the Guild of the Weavers and Basketm
akers were burned in the market-place for heresy. But a boatman from the other bank of the great river was brought to our congregation by Hartle renamed Elisha, and he told that the Messiah had been preaching against the Anti-Christ in another city, and the Elect had risen up with sickles and staves to drive the legions of Satan from the city.

  “Take your time, Mr. Grace,” said Peale.

  “All right. I’ll take the brief.” Whose voice was that? Toby looks across the room at me. It must have been my own. My eyes cannot bear the light in the open fields, but the trees have gone; think, Tom Grace, think.

  “Very well; that’s settled,” says Peale; he does not sound pleased, all the same. “I shall send you a brief in due course, though I gather from Buckleson you will not need much briefing.”

  “I’d appreciate all the details you have, nonetheless.”

  “Of course.”

  “Who’s defending the others?”

  “The youngster Austell won’t need defending; I hear from the police he’s turning Queen’s Evidence. I’ve got Archie Ames for Lester again—he asked for him—and someone called Boustred for the girl.”

  “I see.”

  Phone down. Silence in the fields while the circle closes. These are men; they bear staves; they will do what has to be done. You make your bed, young Tom, because you lie on it; it’s your life after all; things are like that, any road.

  Toby Daventry is saying something. “Sorry, Toby,” I say. “I wasn’t listening.”

  “I said, ‘Are you all right, Tom’. Are you? You look bloody dreadful.”

  “I’m all right; don’t worry. I’ve got a bit of a headache, that’s all.”

  “Too much gin at lunch, what? Hair of the dog, old chap.”

  Oh, get stuffed, Toby Daventry, with your sleek hair and your pin-stripe trousers. You wouldn’t understand even if I would tell you.

  *

  One more thing to do before I go home. I open a drawer in my desk and take out a sheet of headed notepaper. “Dear Matthew,” I write. “You advised me to break all my links with Buckleson and the Free People for both personal and professional reasons. The personal are of course my own affair: the professional are not. I find myself in a situation where I have no choice but to act on behalf of Buckleson. I feel therefore that in all honesty I should leave chambers. I shall start making arrangements to transfer elsewhere as soon as I can, Yours, Tom.”