‘Was there anything else?’ the prosecutor asked, knowing full well there was plenty else to condemn me.
‘There was a button,’ the witness said. ‘It was discovered at the back of the front passenger seat. On exhumation of the body it was found to match the missing button on George Tilbury’s school blazer.’
For a moment I sensed that I was reading a thriller, and one that I found totally convincing. I was anxious to read to the end and hear with pleasure of the miscreant’s punishment. Then suddenly I heard my name, ‘the prisoner’, in reference to the ownership of the car, and I shivered with the knowledge that I was the protagonist in those pages, and that it was not fiction at all.
As the damning evidence was passed to the bench, the prosecutor said with a certain satisfaction. ‘If Your Lordship pleases, that concludes the case for the prosecution.’
And then I started shivering. I began to imagine that I was guilty, and I strove to keep that thought within the bounds of fantasy. Young George was indeed a threat to my continued headmastership. He had to be disposed of. I couldn’t use the word ‘kill’. Not even in my fantasy. But I was able to imagine his body in my arms, and the stray blazer button that had come adrift. Then his burial in my cottage garden. And on that sacred ground my fantasy faded, and I saw myself with George’s blood on my hands and I cursed my frail imagination that it was so limited. I felt a sudden sweat on my forehead, as I shivered with an ice-cold fever. I gripped the hand-rail, and with what seemed the last of my voice, I screamed aloud, ‘I did it. I murdered George, God forgive me. And I don’t know how or why.’
I watched my sweating fingers slip their grasp as I folded to the floor of the dock. As I lay there, I heard Simon’s voice in the distance. ‘I would ask Your Lordship to disregard those last remarks. My client is delirious and under great stress.’
But Simon did not sound convinced. Perhaps he thought that, at long last, I was telling the truth.
I heard no more. I felt some cold water on my face and I heard murmurings from the court. I felt myself carried and laid down on a bench somewhere and I heard the guard whisper that the judge had called an adjournment. As I slowly came to myself, I recalled with horror those thoughts that had triggered my collapse. And I feared that they had little to do with fantasy. Perhaps after all, I had killed the boy and it was so terrible that I had blocked it from my memory.
Chapter 25
In all, the Crown prosecutor had taken just over two weeks to present his case. I have not given it in detail. I have omitted all the legal jargon and the interruptions of the judge on a point of law. Though my life was at stake, I found them tedious and I would not wish to burden my reader with these irrelevancies. I am concerned only to give the gist of the prosecution argument. And it was damning enough. I couldn’t imagine how Simon was going to handle my defence. Finally, it came down to my word against theirs, and theirs was altogether too powerful. Moreover, I had no doubt that my fainting fit at the end of the prosecution’s case was a solid pointer to my guilt and to my unbearable remorse.
It was a Monday when the case for my defence opened. I waited to be taken into the court. I fully expected Simon to visit me, but it was not until I stood in the box that I caught sight of him. Although he smiled, I felt he was avoiding me.
It was my turn to go into the box and to find a thousand words that all meant innocent. I took the oath and I took it with fervour, for rarely could the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth be sworn with greater zeal. Again Simon smiled at me.
His first question struck at the heart of the matter.
‘Sir Alfred,’ he said, ‘what is your religion?’
I was relieved that he had given me the opportunity to speak aloud on a subject hitherto confined to the whisper, the undertone, the murmur, those intonations of rumour and suspicion.
‘I am a Jew,’ I said. For the first time in my life I felt a certain pride in that declaration, though I was careful to conceal it. ‘My parents were born in Paris, and during the German occupation of that city it was unwise to parade such a faith. They managed to escape, but almost all their family was left behind.’ I thought I might tell the court about my grandparents and the ovens, but their memory was sacred, and I would not exploit it for my defence. ‘They came to England,’ I went on, ‘where I was born. But they did not practise our faith. But we never converted. I am a Jew,’ I said, ‘and I have never denied it.’
At that moment somebody coughed in the courtroom. He might simply have been clearing his throat but, hounded as I was, I could be forgiven a touch of paranoia. And I took that cough as a sign of somebody’s suspicion. Then anger seized me.
‘Am I being tried as a Jew?’ I asked. ‘Or as a murderer?’
Simon gave a hint of a smile. He was not displeased by my outburst, but he had to be seen to restrain me.
‘The charge is murder, Sir Alfred,’ he said quietly. Then quickly he posed his next question.
‘Tell the court about your relationship with the witness James Turncastle,’ he said.
‘I felt like a father to the boy,’ I said. I went on to detail the deprived background that demonstrated the lack of interest or love from his parents. I spoke of how he played with my own children and how he had spent the weekend at our cottage in Kent. ‘He was one of my family,’ I said.
Can we talk about the items that James Turncastle allegedly found on your person and in your home. The religious items.’
I said that I certainly owned a prayer-shawl. I had found it in the cottage after my father’s death. But it was not kept in a drawer. It was in a locked chest in my study. As to the phylacteries and fringes, I had never possessed such religious tokens. I added that although I was a Jew, and had never denied it, I was not a practising one.
‘James Turncastle stated that he was a close friend of George Tilbury,’ Simon said. ‘Would you say that that was true?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘I never saw them together. James had friends, but young George wasn’t one of them. The only time I saw them together was the day before George disappeared. I saw George loitering outside my study and I was about to ask him what he wanted when James appeared and whisked him away. I had the impression that George wanted to tell me something and that, whatever it was, James did not want it known.’
Now let us examine your whereabouts on the day or night of the murder of George Tilbury,’ Simon said. ‘The afternoon of April the third. The prosecution witness James Turncastle has sworn that he saw you driving out of the school at two o’clock, and that George Tilbury was in the passenger seat. Is that true?’
‘Partly,’ I said. ‘I did indeed drive out of the school at two o’clock, but I was alone.’
‘Where were you going?’
‘I had an appointment with my dentist. It was my six-monthly check-up.’
‘What time was your appointment?’
‘Half-past two. It is written in my diary, and no doubt also in Mr Tweedie’s appointments book.’
‘And what happened at the dentist’s?’
‘I had to wait a while and Mr Tweedie did not see me until ten to three.’
‘And then?’
‘He examined me and found nothing amiss. So he simply cleaned my teeth and by three I was out of his surgery.’
‘And then?’
‘I drove straight back to school. I had a paper to prepare for the Times Educational Supplement and I worked on that for the rest of the day.’
‘Thank you, Sir Alfred,’ Simon said in an attempt to boost my confidence.
‘Now we come to the testimony of PC Byrd who stated, on oath,’ he stressed, ‘that on the morning of April the fourth, at 2.40, he saw you driving on the main village road in the direction of the school. Where were you at that time?’
‘I was in bed,’ I said. It sounded so simple, so virtuous and so boring. But truth is all of these things, and the banality of truth was all I had to give.
‘Why didn’t you inform the police
immediately of George’s disappearance?’
Again the truth. ‘I wanted to look for him. I felt he couldn’t be far away. But after a whole day of fruitless search, I informed his parents. And thereafter the police.’
Simon then continued with the matter of the hole in my Kent cottage garden, the hole that one moment was a hole and shortly afterwards was a hole no longer. I swore that I knew nothing about it and that the last time I had visited the cottage was some weeks before George’s disappearance.
By the time Simon handed me over for cross-examination, I had gained a little confidence, but that small gain was quickly wiped out by the Crown prosecutor. He itemised one by one every fact of my testimony and suggested that in all aspects, I was an out-and-out liar. I could do nothing but deny his accusations. ‘No,’ I kept saying. ‘That’s not true.’ Over and over again, as I had once rehearsed my mantra, ‘not guilty’.
At the close of his grilling, he swivelled towards the jury and shrugged his shoulders in contempt. I stepped down, and my knees were melting.
I was relieved to see Mr Tweedie take the stand. I had no doubt that he would confirm my alibi. Which he did, promptly and with no hesitation and in almost the same words as I had given in my defence. His honesty was so evident that the prosecution for once, did not cross-examine.
What I write now is unbelievable. The prosecution had taken over two witness-packed weeks to arraign me. My paltry defence was over in little more than a day. Apart from Mr Tweedie, Simon had scraped two defence witnesses from the bottom of the barrel. And neither could give more than character references. Eccles was the first to appear, and I felt that if my life depended on somebody like Eccles, Eccles of that never-forgotten wink, then it was indeed lost.
I listened with some fascination to his testimonial. He said that I was the ideal headmaster, a man of integrity and principle. That I was renowned and revered as a teacher and as a disseminator of educational methods. My work in the English school system had been duly recognised and honoured. And deservedly so. Then he really went over the top. ‘Above all,’ he said, ‘I consider him a close and loyal friend and I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams that he could have committed the crime of which he stands accused.’
The prosecutor did not even bother to cross-examine. He simply shrugged his shoulders as if he knew that Eccles had somehow been planted. Eccles was followed by Fenby, whose testimony was melancholy but patently sincere. Even so, the prosecutor ignored him. After Fenby had stepped down, there was a hushed silence in the court. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Simon’s next move.
He rose reluctantly and addressed the judge, ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘that concludes the case for the defence.’
There was a gasp around the courtroom. He might as well have thrown in the towel and conceded that his client was guilty as charged. The jury sighed with relief. They possibly reckoned they could all get home in time for supper, for the verdict seemed quite clear. But first they had to endure the closing speech for the prosecution and the defence’s summing-up, as well as the judge’s charge to the jury before they could adjourn and return with their verdict.
But at this point, the judge called for a late lunch-break and I was taken down to the cell once more. As I left the courtroom, I noticed Mr Eccles scurry out of the door as if he had urgent business to attend to. I tried to be grateful for his glowing testimonial, but somehow that too, was redolent of conspiracy. I saw nothing of Simon during that lunch-hour and I assumed that he was preparing his summing-up. I left my tray untouched. I had appetite for nothing. I knew I was condemned and I saw no point of even returning to the dock. But in time they came to fetch me.
I shivered on the stand. I was convinced that my freedom, truncated as it had lately been, was now well and truly over. Yet I harboured hope. I had to. For even if the jury were not convinced of my innocence, of which I myself was no longer too sure, they surely must be beset with doubts. Surely the words ‘framed’ and ‘conspiracy’ would play some part in their deliberations. They were twelve good men and women true. They would not be cavalier in their judgement. They would doubt, they would hesitate, they would waver. They could not in all conscience declare their certainty. I willed them to doubt. It was all I could hope for.
The judge had not yet entered. The jury were seated and expectant. I looked at the prosecutor, and though he was sitting quite still his face wore a swivelling smile. He clearly expected the verdict he had argued for. Then I looked at Simon, and I was stunned. His head was bowed and his shoulders drooped in despair. I waited for him to look at me and when he did, I saw that his skin was ashen. He shook his head in my direction. ‘We have lost,’ he seemed to be telling me. ‘There is no hope.’ I wondered what new piece of evidence had surfaced during the lunch-hour to dash his hopes so thoroughly. And I was soon to learn.
We stood as the judge entered and took his seat. The court was silent. Expectant. It was the last act of the drama. Anything could happen. And it did.
‘Before we proceed with the summings-up,’ the judge announced, ‘the prosecution counsel has made an application for alibi rebuttal. Let the prosecution recall Mr Tweedie.’
My automatic response to this announcement was to seek out Eccles, for I knew that his hurried exit from court was linked with this reversal. But I could not see him. I looked at Simon and he shrugged helplessly.
Mr Tweedie took the stand once more, and once more he took the oath.
‘You wish to withdraw your former testimony?’ the prosecution asked. His tone was angry. He wished to impress the court that he had no truck with perjury.
‘Yes,’ Tweedie said. ‘I was not telling the truth.’
‘And you wish now to correct your statement?’
‘Yes,’ Tweedie said humbly.
‘You stated that on April the third, between two-thirty and three o’clock, you treated the prisoner at your dental surgery. Is that not so?’
‘I didn’t treat him,’ Tweedie said. ‘He had an appointment at 2.30. I was expecting him. But he didn’t turn up. I waited for him until three o’clock. And then I saw another patient.’
I was stunned. Tweedie, like the rest of them, was a barefaced liar. I ran my tongue along my teeth, hoping to trace some vestige of his cleaning. But I felt only fur on my tongue, and I thought perhaps that Mr Tweedie was right. That for some reason I had missed my appointment and that the man was telling the truth.
‘So although the prisoner claims that you treated him on that day,’ the prosecution insisted, ‘you are saying that he did not turn up for his appointment. That you did not see him that day at all?’ He wanted to make the damning evidence perfectly clear.
‘That is correct, sir,’ Tweedie said.
The prosecutor swivelled to Simon. ‘Your witness,’ he said, with infinite pity.
Simon dragged himself to his feet.
‘Mr Tweedie,’ he began, ‘I have in my files a statement that on April the fourth, at 2.30, you treated Sir Alfred at your dental surgery. You signed that statement in my office before his trial. Do you agree that you signed that statement?’
‘Yes, I did,’ Tweedie said.
‘And now you have suddenly seen fit to withdraw that statement. Could you explain why?’
‘That statement was a lie,’ Tweedie said, ‘and I decided to tell the truth. It would have been on my conscience.’
‘Your conscience?’ Simon queried, surprised that he had one at all.
‘Do you realise,’ he went on, ‘that your initial statement was therefore perjury, a criminal offence?’
‘I do, and I regret that,’ Tweedie said.
‘Then why did you lie in the first place? If indeed,’ Simon added, ‘it was a lie?’
‘The prisoner was my friend,’ Tweedie said. ‘I did not want to let him down.’
‘I’m sure my client will value your friendship.’ His tone of sarcasm was the best that he could do. Then he turned and walked back to his seat. I felt sorry for him. He was soon oblige
d to offer his summing-up for my defence, and in view of that last-minute evidence, I couldn’t imagine what words he could cobble together. I watched him as he drank from a glass of water.
The prosecutor then swivelled into position for his summing-up. It was surprisingly short. He was clearly convinced that the jury needed little persuasion on his part.
‘During the course of this trial,’ he said, ‘we have clearly established and provided a motive, an essential in any charge of murder. But to provide motive is not enough. We need evidence, hard evidence, that the prisoner is guilty. And that we have in plenty. We have been told by reliable witnesses that young George was seen in the company of the prisoner at two o’clock on the afternoon of April the third. And young George was never seen again. We have evidence that the prisoner bought the murder weapon in London on April the second. We have a witness who saw the hole in the prisoner’s garden in Kent, that hole in which young George was found to be buried. The prisoner’s car was not seen in his driveway until three o’clock on the morning of April the fourth, the day that George’s disappearance was announced. That car was about its business for thirteen hours, ample time to drive down to Kent, dispose of young George and bury his body. And then to drive back to the school. Damning evidence had come from forensics: the fingerprints of the victim on the dashboard of the prisoner’s car, and the torn-off blazer button that was found on the passenger seat. But the most incriminating evidence of all is that of Mr Tweedie, who withdrew his first testimony made on the basis of friendship and finally told the truth. That the prisoner’s alibi was false and that he had not kept his dental appointment. What further proof do we need, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find the prisoner guilty as charged?’
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