‘They’ve left proof of corruption to us. They’re entitled to.’
‘They’ve also left you with the first word to the jury about the documents and that could have a damning effect. There are always those who are ready to believe politicians are corrupt and there’ll be some of those on this jury.’
‘Tancred will have some explanation, but whether it’s true or false is another matter. What is certain is that he’s deliberately keeping it for me. So I thought I’d keep what I’ve got for him.’ Mordecai emptied his glass and pushed back his chair. ‘How does he come across to you?’ he asked generally.
‘Rather sinister,’ said Oliver Goodbody quietly.
‘And to me,’ Walter added, ‘plausible, but sinister.’
‘But is he dishonest? That’s the question,’ Mordecai mused.
For a time there was silence. Then Walter said, ‘I suppose Lacey will say that he wrote a memorandum about his meeting with Price and that Price showed his animosity about Tancred and decided to publish because he thought it a good story that would stimulate circulation.’
‘Yes. That’s for the punitive damages.’
‘Can we stop it getting in evidence?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘But you’ll try?’
‘Of course I’ll try,’ Mordecai answered testily. ‘But even this country bumpkin of a judge can’t be so stupid as to exclude it. He’ll let them call Lacey.’ He shook the last drops from the bottle into his glass and drained it.
‘We’re going to win,’ Goodbody stated. ‘I am quite sure. You’ll do fine with him. You have all the cards.’
‘Except the joker,’ said Mordecai as he moved slowly to the door. ‘Now I need the loo. The down side to champagne is that in my old age it makes me need the loo.’
Tancred was alone in the other conference room with Cranley Burrows and Burrows’s clerk. Tancred refused food and coffee, and drank a cup of water.
‘Technically the cross-examination has not yet begun,’ Burrows said, ‘so we can still discuss the case if we wish.’
‘There’s no more to say,’ Tancred replied.
Burrows turned to the clerk. ‘Check that Lacey’s statement has been prepared. When it has, bring it to me and have copies ready for the other side and for the court. I want it served this evening.’ The clerk left.
Tancred paced up and down the room. ‘Is Elspeth Turville being looked after?’ he asked Burrows.
‘Yes, she arrived in London this morning on the early train from Paris.’
‘She’s not in court. Where is she?’
‘At the Aldwych Hotel. With one of my articled clerks.’
‘I can see her tonight, I suppose?’
‘Better not. I expect you’ll still be under cross-examination. You said we might need her as a witness.’
Tancred kept up his patrol across the room. ‘I keep imagining,’ he said suddenly, ‘that Francis Richmond is watching us.’
‘Looking up or down?’ Cranley wondered.
Tancred smiled. ‘Looking,’ he answered. ‘Just looking.’
‘How do you feel?’ Cranley enquired.
‘Have you ever ridden in a point-to-point? Tancred asked.
‘Never.’
‘Well, it’s like waiting for the Off.’
Cranley shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps Ledbury feels the same.’
‘It’d have to be a very large horse,’ said Tancred. ‘No, Ledbury’s too old a hand. To him this is just another brief. He may win or he may lose. I don’t expect he cares very much. To him it’s just one more day in court. But for me—’ He shrugged and continued pacing across the room.
Foxley and French were eating sandwiches in chambers.
‘How do you think it went?’ Foxley asked.
‘Not too bad, but the documents will produce a shock.’
‘They will. But what kind of an impression do you think he gave?’
French hesitated. ‘He sounds and looks what he is – clever. But not wholly candid. I didn’t altogether like what he said about Oscar Sleaven. Pretty cold and dispassionate.’
Patrick put his head in his hands. ‘As he has been cold and not very candid with us. It’s the first time I’ve appeared for a client who refuses to tell me what he’s going to say.’ He stood up. ‘All I do know is that it had better be bloody good.’
Mr Justice Traynor crossed the Strand to lunch in the hall at his Inn. He slipped into a seat at the end of the table, next to his friend John Williams, a judge in the Court of Appeal.
‘Have you started your big case?’ Williams enquired.
Jack nodded and ordered sausages and mash.
‘That’ll make you go to sleep,’ Williams said when the dish arrived.
‘Nay, it’ll aid me keep my wool on. Ledbury and Foxley have already started squabbling.’
‘All the better for you. The more they squabble, the more the jury will rely on you.’
‘I don’t want the jury to rely on me. I want to leave it to them fair and square with no spin from me. Politics, money, newspapers! If ever a case demanded a jury, it’s this one. No, I aim to keep my trap shut. And on top of it there seem to be some pretty funny tactics by the claimant. But then, he’s a politician.’
Williams rose. ‘Well, don’t make a balls of it, Jack. We don’t want it turning up in the Court of Appeal.’
‘Thanks,’ Jack replied as he shook the Worcester sauce bottle over his sausages. He thought of the old, uncomplicated days when he was still at the Bar on circuit in Leeds, perhaps doing some easy, straightforward criminal case, prosecuting a bank robbery or a GBH; something, he thought in his present mood, with plenty of blood. To be followed by an evening in the Bar mess when he’d play his trombone. But that would have to have been in the old days. He’d not played the trombone in the mess for a long time, not since Lois had made such a fool of him. The young Asian woman in the sari on the jury, he thought. She was very like Lois to look at. But she seemed brighter. What would she make of all this skulduggery in high places? A far cry from the tobacconist shop in Ealing? But perhaps this was what she expected. In India, the politicians were all up to a spot of bribery and corruption. She’s a pleasant-looking lass. He went to have coffee in the ante-room and thought gloomily of the afternoon that lay ahead with Ledbury and Foxley.
Emerald and Sybil had taken Anna to the Aldwych Hotel for lunch. ‘All that listening to all that talk has made me hungry,’ said Emerald as the three took their places in the dining room.
‘We’ve not much time,’ Sybil replied. She looked around the room. ‘No one here we know.’
Elspeth Turville was at the table next to theirs, accompanied by Cranley Burrows’s articled clerk, a young man in a dark suit and spotted tie. Elspeth noted the three women, the two older of whom were so smartly dressed.
‘We have until two, the judge said,’ Sybil went on.
Elspeth pricked up her ears.
‘I find him very hard to understand,’ said Anna.
‘He’s from the north.’ Emerald ordered a carafe of white wine. ‘I thought he looked rather nice. Robust. Manly’
‘Quite your type,’ said Sybil.
‘Miaow!’ But Emerald was not offended.
‘Tancred looks good,’ Anna went on.
‘As good as Patrick?’ Sybil asked slyly, looking at Anna. ‘But Patrick is so much younger than that old brute Mordecai. I hope he knows what he’s doing.’
‘Of course he does, my dear,’ said Emerald. ‘He’s very clever.’
And very handsome, Anna thought. I like him in his funny wig. It suits him. But he does look very anxious.
Elspeth wished the young clerk would stop talking about a trip he’d made last summer to Antibes so that she could overhear more.
‘Did you see the odious Price looking so pleased with himself?’ Emerald asked Sybil.
Sybil sighed. ‘How I wish that old pansy Francis were alive so that he could see all the trouble he’s caused.’
‘I’ll never get over him keeping a diary and writing all that beastliness about the friends who’d been so good to him. I still don’t understand how he could.’
‘My father told me that when he was in the old Cavendish Hotel talking to Rosa Lewis, she once said, “No letters, no lawyers and kiss your baby’s bottom.” I wonder what she’d have said about writing a diary.’
Both Emerald and Sybil had ordered scrambled eggs and smoked salmon; Anna a salad. She watched them eat and drink their wine. For all their protestations of outrage, she saw that at bottom they were enjoying themselves. For them it was a show, a spectacle. For Patrick it was a job, a step in his career. For Tancred, she thought, it was life or death.
From the Wig and Pen Club Digby Price telephoned Helena in Paris.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘It’s only just begun. The fun will start this afternoon.’ He paused. ‘I wish you were with me.’
‘Now, none of that. You know I wouldn’t go there.’
‘What’ll you do tonight?’
‘Oh, go to the movies, I expect. Then come home and dream of you.’ He heard her giggle. ‘Call me at eleven,’ she added.
‘I shall.’
‘And win. Don’t forget that you have to win.’
‘I shall,’ he replied grimly. ‘I shall.’
Chapter Four
Mordecai clambered to his feet. He made a great show of it, clutching the desk for support as he laid his sticks along it, pushing aside his papers, hitching his gown around his shoulders, then picking up one of the sticks from the desk and leaning on it.
Mr Justice Traynor waited, irritated. Finally he could not restrain himself. ‘Mr Ledbury, we are all waiting. Are you ready to start your cross-examination.’
Mordecai did not reply immediately. Instead, he looked at the jury, then up at the judge on the bench above him. He shook his head. ‘I find great difficulty getting to my feet,’ he began in a low, sad voice. ‘Nature has not endowed me with the graces enjoyed by Your Lordship and many others, so I must ask for the patience that has hitherto been extended to me by the very highest courts in the land.’ He paused, then went on loudly, ‘I am, as perhaps you can observe, much crippled.’ It was a ploy he regularly used in front of a jury whenever a judge tried to hustle him.
The two middle-aged women on the jury looked at each other sympathetically.
Jack Traynor’s already healthy complexion turned almost scarlet. ‘What I said was not meant as any reflection on you, Mr Ledbury. I observed that you were on your feet and I was merely waiting for you to begin.’
Mordecai nodded. ‘Then I shall,’ he said ‘I shall.’ He turned from the judge to face Tancred in the witness box. His voice, which at first had been low, almost sorrowful in his rebuke to the judge, now became strong and forceful. ‘So that from the outset there can be no misunderstanding, I suggest you are a rogue.’
Tancred half smiled and bowed.
Mordecai went on, ‘I suggest that when you were a minister you corruptly accepted money from an industrialist, now dead, in exchange for granting him government favours. Do you understand?’
Tancred bowed again.
Mordecai said, even more loudly, ‘Do you understand what I am suggesting? That you are corrupt? Please answer.’
‘I understand very well,’ Tancred said. ‘That’s your job.’
‘My duty, you mean.’ Mordecai spoke roughly. ‘I am suggesting that you accepted bribes. Is that clear?’
‘Quite clear. And quite untrue.’
Mordecai concluded, ‘Now there can be no misunderstanding between us, can there?’
‘None.’ Tancred leant against the side of the witness box. His face was very pale but his hands with the long fingers, Anna noted, were quite steady as he folded them on the ledge. Mordecai began to pace along the row in which he stood. From where she sat Anna could only see his distorted back in his black gown and occasionally his profile. He looked to her like a misshapen raven.
‘Oscar Sleaven made a run for it, didn’t he?’ Mordecai’s voice was savage.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. When the scandal broke, your pal, your fellow conspirator Oscar Sleaven, fled the country and now he’s blown his brains out. Isn’t that right?’
‘Oscar Sleaven is neither my pal, as you put it, nor is he a fellow conspirator. He left England, I understood, to get medical treatment abroad.’
‘Why did you understand that?’
‘I believed that because Sebastian Sleaven, his brother and solicitor, made a statement to that effect.’
‘When?’
‘After Oscar Sleaven had left for the States.’
‘Eighteen months ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘The morning after the diary was published in the Sunday News?’
‘Some time like that.’
‘Did you believe that statement?’
‘I had no reason not to.’
‘You thought it true, that he had resigned his chairmanship and gone abroad because he was ill?’
‘As I said, I had no reason to doubt it.’
‘Hadn’t you? Wasn’t it merely an excuse to escape from the scandal that had been unearthed by the newspaper?’
‘If that is the interpretation you wish to put on it, that is a matter for you.’
‘It will be a matter for the jury. For Oscar Sleaven ran away just as the News published the diary that referred to you and him – and what you were getting up to. Isn’t that right?’
‘He left the country, I understand, about the time of the publication.’
‘And now he’s dead. How did you learn of his death?’
‘From newspaper reports.’
‘Not from Sebastian Sleaven?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? You know Sebastian Sleaven, do you not?’
‘I have met him.’
‘You have more than met him, haven’t you?’
‘I do not know what you mean.’
‘You have visited him in his apartment, where he lives. And very recently. Isn’t that correct?’
The muscles on Tancred’s face tautened. His hands now gripped the ledge in front of the witness box, the knuckles showing white. Mordecai swung round and faced the body of the court. He gestured and a slight, grey-haired man in the third row rose. Mordecai turned back to the witness. ‘Do you know that man?’
Tancred leant forward, peering.
‘Answer me. Do you know that man?’
At last Tancred said, ‘I do’
‘Who is he?’
‘He is John Meadows, the political editor of your clients’ newspapers.’
Another gesture from Mordecai and the man resumed his seat. The barrister went on, ‘You knew each other from your days in politics, isn’t that so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you consider him a trustworthy man?’
‘As far as any journalist is trustworthy.’
‘That is very amusing, but you may not find it so amusing when Mr Meadows tells the court that one evening four days – Irepeat, four days – before your fellow conspirator Oscar Sleaven committed suicide, you made a secret visit to his brother Sebastian Sleaven at his residence in Portland Place. If Mr Meadows were to say that, would it be true?’
Tancred moved slightly in the witness box, as though shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘It would be true.’
‘On that evening, 14 July last, six days ago, at about ten o’clock,’ Mordecai went on, ‘after making a broadcast at Broadcasting House, Mr Meadows happened to be in Portland Place walking north in the direction of the underground station when he saw you descend from a taxi and slip hurriedly into the block of flats where Sebastian Sleaven lives. If he were to tell that to the court, would it be correct?’
Tancred wanted to take a sip of water from the glass beside him b
ut he knew that he shouldn’t. His lips were dry. He stood very straight, remembering. He’d known that Price’s men were following him when he returned to London from France to see Patrick Foxley. He knew they would locate him at his home in his flat in Chelsea and follow him to the Temple, and he intended that they should. What he had not intended was for them to see whom he visited before he went to Chelsea. He had taken steps to make sure that after parking his car in the lock-up in Clapham he had given them the slip. He knew how to do it. He had been trained to watch for surveillance and to shake off a tail, and that was what he had done on that evening. When he picked up a taxi in Piccadilly to take him to Sebastian Sleaven in Portland Place, he was convinced that he was clear of them. But by sheer chance he had been observed. Because Meadows had been doing a broadcast and happened to be in Portland Place – and Meadows knew him and had seen him enter the flat.
‘Answer, if you please,’ Mordecai demanded loudly. ‘Did you visit Sebastian Sleaven on 14 July, four days before Oscar Sleaven shot himself?’
‘I did.’
Cranley Burrows half turned to look behind him at Patrick who sat rigid and grim-faced.
‘Why?’ Mordecai raised his voice. ‘Why did you visit Sebastian Sleaven?’
‘It was business.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘It was private business.’
‘Your private business, Mr Richard Tancred, is now the business of this court. Did your private business with Oscar Sleaven’s brother involve talk about this case?’
‘It did.’
‘Was that the purpose of your visit?’
‘I did not say that. I said we did talk about the case.’
‘Did you go to Sebastian Sleaven to warn him, Oscar Sleaven’s brother and lawyer, that when this case came to trial in six days’ time, Oscar Sleaven would be publicly exposed for giving – and you exposed for receiving – bribes?’
‘No. Both Sebastian and Oscar Sleaven knew as well as I that the accusation about giving and taking bribes is false.’
‘Is it so false? So false that two days after you visited Sebastian and talked about this case, Oscar Sleaven was driven to murder his wife and blow his brains out?’
The Richmond Diary Page 19