Short Stories

by Sarah Caudwell

  “But he didn’t?”

  “Well, at first he confirmed Ronnie’s story in every detail—-even the police officers who interviewed him were quite impressed. And he seemed a respectable sort of character, not at all like Ronnie-—no criminal record and a steady job working in an office for a well-known local businessman.”

  “Too good to be true?”

  “I’m afraid so. A day or two later he’d spoken to his employer, a Mr. William Johnson, about the strain he was under on account of the charge against his brother. Mr. Johnson had tried to cheer him up by taking him out for a drink after work and Gary had admitted, after a couple of pints, that what was worrying him was the prospect of committing perjury. The truth was, he said, that Ronnie had gone out immediately after lunch, having specifically warned Gary to tell anyone who asked that he’d been at home all day.

  “And Mr. Johnson, being an upright, law-abiding citizen, thought it his duty to report this conversation to the police. With evidence that Ronnie had tried to fabricate an alibi in advance for the time of the raid, the case against him was obviously a good deal stronger than it had looked at first.

  “By a curious coincidence, I happened to know the place where the conversation between Gary and Johnson had occurred—or rather, as I had to keep reminding myself, was alleged to have occurred. It was a pub called the Golden Honeypot, quite close to where Gary and Ronnie lived, in a rather run-down area of north London. I wouldn’t normally have had any occasion to be anywhere near there, but one of the cases I was working on with Christopher was about the sale of a house in the same area. Rather an interesting case,” she added, her dark eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. “It eventually went to the Court of Appeal—you’ll find it reported as Bildora Ltd. v. Strange. Our client claimed, you see, that Bildora Ltd. had tricked him into selling his house by—”

  “Eve,” said Selena, gently but firmly, “you were telling us about the murder.”“Ah yes. Well, a point had arisen in the Bildora case which I’d thought I might understand better if I actually saw the house. So one lunchtime I went and had a look at it, and afterward I stopped for a drink and a sandwich in the Golden Honeypot. It didn’t seem likely, though, that my personal knowledge of the locus in quo would be of vital significance so far as Ronnie was concerned. Even if Mr. Johnson was lying-and I couldn’t imagine why he should be—the last thing he’d be likely to lie about was the color of the wallpaper in the Golden Honeypot. Poor Ronnie—he was my very first client and there seemed to be nothing I could do to help his case. I went to bed, I remember, feeling rather despondent about it.”

  When she met Hector Pomfret in the robing room at the Old Bailey on the following morning, she had found her learned leader unsanguine about their prospects. Though Ronnie still adhered to his original story and appeared entirely bewildered by his brother’s behavior, there could clearly now be no question of the defense calling Gary as a witness. The Crown, thought Pomfret, would also be reluctant to call him; but the evidence of Mr. Johnson would almost certainly be enough to persuade the jury that Ronnie, on the day of the bank raid, had been planning to engage in some serious criminal activity.

  The best hope for the defense, said Pomfret-—Eve understood him to mean the only hope—was to persuade the judge to rule Mr. Johnson’s evidence inadmissible under the rule against hearsay; but the judge was Mr. Justice Rattlestick. Mr. Justice Rattlestick, so far as Pomfret was aware, had never in his judicial career made a ruling favorable to the defense when he could possibly avoid it; still, said Pomfret, evidently not wishing his junior to become discouraged, there was a first time for everything.”

  “A most unpleasant man, Rattlestick,” said Basil Ptarmigan. “It was said that his chief disappointment in life was being appointed to the bench too late to have the chance of passing the death sentence on anyone.”

  “That,” said Eve, “wouldn’t at all surprise me—he struck me as soon as I saw him as that sort of man. He was good-looking, I suppose, though at that time of course he seemed to me to be quite old, but there was something repellent about him—something brutal and vicious about his mouth… I remember thinking, when he first came into court, that he wasn’t the kind of man one would care to be seen home by after a party.”

  The first day of the trial was occupied with the prosecution evidence about the bank raid, not in dispute so far as Ronnie Baxter was concerned: none of the witnesses claimed to be able to identify the driver of the getaway car. The morning of the second, following the announcement by counsel for the Crown that his next witness would be Mr. William Johnson, was devoted to legal argument, in the absence of the jury, as to the admissibility of Mr. Johnson’s evidence.

  “During which,” said Eve, “Mr. Justice Rattlestick made not the slightest pretence of impartiality-—he plainly regarded any barrister who defended a client on a criminal charge as party to a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice. After the sheltered life I’d led in the Chancery Division, I could hardly believe that a judge could be so openly unpleasant. So it came as no surprise to anyone when he ruled against us and Mr. Johnson went into the witness box.”

  “And turned out, I suppose,” said Selena with sympathetic pessimism, “to be the ideal witness?”

  “Yes, from the point of view of the Crown. From ours, he was catastrophic. A sober, solid, sensible-looking man in his mid-forties, who’d built up a flourishing business from almost nothing and was now a pillar of the local community——active in the church and local politics and all that sort of thing. It was obvious that the jury would believe every word he said. And we had no basis for suggesting that they shouldn’t—so far as we knew, there wasn’t the slightest reason for him to be telling lies.

  “If he was telling the truth, the only possibility consistent with our client’s innocence seemed to be that Gary had been lying-—not to the police, but when he talked to Mr. Johnson. Well, I knew that brothers don’t always love each other as they should, but I found it difficult to imagine that Gary would have destroyed his brother’s alibi out of pure malice.

  “Mr. Johnson hadn’t got where he was, he said, all by his own efforts-—he wasn’t ashamed to admit that from time to time he’d needed a helping hand. So he thought it was only right that he should offer a helping hand when he saw someone else who needed it. And one such person, it seemed, was Gary Baxter.

  “Ronnie and Gary had been orphaned as quite small children, both their parents having died in an air raid during the Second World War, and they’d been brought up by their grandmother. Gary had still been only fourteen when she died and he’d just gone on living in the same house with no one but his brother to look after him or set him an example of how to behave. But in spite of this unpromising background Gary was trying hard to make something of himself and Mr. Johnson felt that he deserved help and encouragement. In the two years that Gary had been working for him, Mr. Johnson had always tried to make him feel that he could tum to his employer for advice if he had a problem, or even a modest loan if he ran short before payday. Which made it quite natural for him to confide in Mr. Johnson when his brother got into trouble.

  “I began to wonder whether Gary could have any financial motive for wanting his brother out of the way. I’d assumed that the house they lived in was rented—people like Ronnie and Gary didn’t usually own property in those days—but it now looked to me as if they might have inherited it from their grandmother, It occurred to me that it must be quite close to the one in the Bildora case and that the same developers might want to acquire it-—if so, the sum involved could be quite substantial.

  “During the luncheon adjournment, I asked our instructing solicitor whether he happened to know who owned the house. It turned out that it had indeed been part of the grandmother’s estate and his firm were the executors of her will——that’s how Ronnie came to instruct them when he found himself on a criminal charge. I asked him if I could see a copy of the will and he promised to have one sent down from his office.

  �
��By the time it arrived we were back in court. I had to read it at the same time as taking a note of the evidence, but fortunately it was quite short and at first sight fairly straightforward-—the two boys were to be allowed to go on living in the house and if either of them left the other one was to be allowed to go on living there. If and when they both left, it was to be sold and the proceeds were to be shared between them and half a dozen other beneficiaries.”

  “A simple, innocent criminal lawyer,” said Selena, “would no doubt have taken these provisions at face value. But after six months’ pupillage in New Square—”

  “I could hardly fail to realize that their effect was to create a strict settlement within the meaning of the Settled Land Act. Which meant, of course, that if Ronnie ceased to live in the house Gary would be left as the person with the powers of a tenant for life-including the power of sale."

  “And by virtue of section 106, if he sold the house in exercise of that power—”

  “He’d be entitled to the income from the proceeds and the other beneficiaries wouldn’t get a penny until he died. Which seemed to me to be such a thunderingly good motive for him to want Ronnie to be sent to prison that I felt like standing up and telling everyone about it straight away.

  “Inexperienced as I was, however, I saw that this was unlikely to be the correct procedure. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more difficult it was to see how the the Settled Land Act point could be brought to the attention of the jury if Gary himself wasn’t going to give evidence. I also began to think of objections which might be made to my theory. In particular, how would Gary have known the effect of the Settled Land Act on the provisions of his grandmother’s will? It didn’t seem likely that he spent his leisure hours reading textbooks on real property.

  “I decided to mention the point to Pomfret after the four o’clock adjournment and leave it to him to work out whether it could be raised in the cross~examination of Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was giving very detailed evidence about his conversation with Gary, which he seemed to remember practically word for word, so I didn’t doubt that he’d still be in the witness-box the following morning.

  “At half past three someone handed me a note addressed to Pomfret and I passed it to him. After reading it, he stood up and told Rattlestick that he was obliged to leave the court, being urgently required elsewhere in connection with other proceedings.

  “‘Since your learned junior is still here to protect your client’s interests,’ said Rattlestick, with an unpleasantly sarcastic emphasis on the word learned, ‘there can of course be no objection.’

  “Five minutes later, counsel for the prosecution said that he had no further questions and sat down.

  “‘Yes, Miss Lampeter?’ said Rattlestick.

  “I stood up and asked for an adjournment. I felt dizzy and slightly sick and my voice came out as not much more than a squeak, but I didn’t seriously imagine that he’d refuse. My client was facing the gravest possible of charges and Johnson was the main witness against him: it was clear that the cross-examination should be conducted by leading counsel.

  “‘Do you mean, Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick, ‘that you are not competent to conduct the cross-examination?’

  “I felt as if I were blushing all over. It was, of course, exactly what I meant, but not what I wanted to say. The press bench was full of crime reporters on the alert for some entertaining titbit and women barristers always make good copy, especially if they’re young and quite attractive, and especially if they've done something silly-— an admission by a woman barrister in open court that she was incompetent to conduct her case would have made their day. I took a deep breath and said that I could not claim to have the experience or eloquence of my learned leader.

  “‘I didn’t ask you that,’ said Rattlestick. ‘I asked if you were making the application on the ground that you were not competent to conduct the cross-examination of this witness?’

  “He was looking at me with a sort of gloating enjoyment, like a tomcat playing with a plump little mouse. I was pretty green as a lawyer, but I had quite enough experience of life to recognize the expression——I saw that he was hoping that I would burst into tears. And unless I did, he wouldn’t grant the adjournment.

  “Well, I could easily have done it and perhaps I should have done—my duty, after all, was to my client, and it seemed to be the only way to make sure that his case was properly conducted. But I saw the reporters with their pencils hovering eagerly over their notebooks and I knew that if I did I’d never dare to go into court again and my career at the Bar would be over before it started. And I thought ‘I’ll be damned if I let the old bully do that to me.’ So instead of bursting into tears, I gave him my best social smile, as if he’d made a rather poor joke at a cocktail party, and said that if he thought it convenient I would of course be happy to proceed with the cross-examination.

  “I didn’t entertain any hope of eliciting any answer from Mr. Johnson which might be at all helpful to our client’s case—-all I wanted was to keep him in the witness box until the four o’clock adjournment, so that he’d be available to be cross-examined by Pomfret on the following morning. I had a naïve confidence, in those days, in the ability of leading counsel to make bricks out of straw.

  “I felt free, therefore, to put my questions in what I suppose one could call the Chancery style—-that is to say, in a polite and friendly sort of way, without everlastingly suggesting that the witness was telling a tissue of lies. Mr. Johnson responded in the same spirit and we began to get along quite well.

  “At this stage my personal knowledge of the Golden Honeypot began to come in rather useful. I was able to ask him in great detail about the surroundings in which the crucial conversation had taken place——where he and Gary had been sitting, whether the barman could overhear them, how loudly the jukebox had been playingand so on. He answered freely and at some length and I began to be quite optimistic about continuing in this vein until the adjournment.

  “‘Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick, ‘may I remind you that you are conducting a cross-examination, not making small talk at a ladies’ coffee morning? Is the interior decoration scheme of the Golden Honeypot of any conceivable relevance to the case?’

  “I said that I was trying to establish whether the witness would have heard clearly what Gary had said to him. But I didn’t dare to ask any more questions on the same lines and it was still only quarter to four.

  “I next tried asking the witness about Gary’s relationship with Ronnie. From what Mr. Johnson had told us of the background, there were many things that the elder brother might have done to incur the resentment of the younger, and of which Gary might perhaps have complained to a sympathetic listener.

  “‘Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick, ‘your client is charged with a more serious offense than stealing his brother’s teddy bear. May I ask you again to confine yourself to questions having some relevance to the case?’

  “There were still seven minutes to go to the adjournment and my mind was a complete blank, apart from my idea about the Settled Land Act. I asked whether Gary had ever said anything to Mr. Johnson about his financial circumstances and went on from there to ask whether he had said anything about the provisions of his grandmother’s will.

  “For some reason Mr. Johnson seemed rather flustered by the question~—he said that he knew nothing about that and it wasn’t for him to pry into what people left in their wills. I was puzzled by his reaction, but I didn’t spend much time thinking about it. I saw, glancing at my watch, that it was only a minute or so to four o’clock and if I could think of some innocuous question which would see me through the remaining sixty seconds—

  “‘Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick, ‘there is no need to be concerned about the time. I do not propose to adjourn until your cross-examination is complete.’ ”

  “There was nothing I could do—it was pointless to prolong the agony. I did say, of course. that my learned friend Mr. Pomfre
t might have further questions to ask Mr. Johnson on the following morning and I assumed, therefore, that he would remain available.

  “‘No, Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick. ‘The witness is plainly a very busy man who has come forward to assist the prosecution out of a sense of civic duty and has already sacrificed a considerable amount of time in order to give evidence. He should not be subjected to any further inconvenience. I should not be justified in requiring him to return here tomorrow or forbidding him to discuss the case with his friends and family. I don’t know,’ he went on, with a nauseating pretense of geniality, ‘whether Mr. Johnson is a married man, but I dare say that if he is that would impose a considerable strain on him-—isn’t that so, Mr. Johnson?’

  “‘Well, my lord,’ said Mr. Johnson, ‘I don’t deny my Dora’s going to be on at me tonight to tell her all about it.’

  “‘Well, Miss Lampeter,’ said Rattlestick, ‘have you any further questions? Any further relevant questions?’

  “I told him that I did have just one or two more, because, when Johnson mentioned that his wife’s name was Dora, I’d suddenly remembered that his name was William. And it had occurred to me that when people are forming a private company, the kind where all the shares are owned by a husband and wife, they very often call it by a combination of their Christian names.

  “So I asked him whether I was right in thinking that he was the principal shareholder in a company called Bildora Ltd. And when he said that he was, I knew why he wanted Ronnie to be sent to prison. After that it was all plain sailing, though I had a little difficulty in getting Rattlestick to understand the Settled Land Act point.