The Case Has Altered

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The Case Has Altered Page 30

by Martha Grimes


  “No, she warn’t. That’s what I told you. She was doin’ more moanin’ than was usual. Said, every once in a while, ‘I done wrong,’ she says. “ ‘I ought not to’ve listened.’ ”

  There was a bit of a stir in the court, quickly quelled when the judge’s head came up.

  Oliver Stant, without moving from his place, seemed to draw nearer to her. “ ‘I ought not to have listened.’ And ‘I done wrong.’ Is that exactly what she said?”

  Annie frowned. “Well, let me think a bit . . . ” She put her fingertips to her face, frowning in an effort to recall the words. “Now, what she said was, ‘I ought not to ’ave done it. I ought not to ’ave listened,’ or, ‘I shouldn’t’ve listened.’ Yes, that’s it.” Satisfied, Annie again squared her shoulders.

  Stant repeated Dorcas’s words, then asked, “Did you make anything of that?”

  “Indeed I did, sir, but it’s speaking ill of the dead and all.” Having put herself on record with that, she was willing enough to do it. “Dorcas was forever standing about doors, trying to hear what was going on t’other side. Many’s the time I caught ’er with ’er ear stuck-like to a door.” Here, the cook leaned as if in confidence toward Stant and whispered, “Right nosy was Dorcas—”

  It was the judge’s turn to object. “Mrs. Suggins, you might feel you’re sharing a secret with counsel”—he smiled thinly—“but we’d all like to share it, if you don’t mind.”

  Annie blushed furiously. “Sorry, sir. Forgot where I was.” She pulled down her bright blue jacket, and possibly the corset underneath, and straightened herself in a businesslike way. “Dreadful sorry.”

  “That’s quite understandable, madam. I can see how you might think you’re having a good gossip in counsel’s kitchen.” He glared at Stant, who bent his head to hide a smile.

  “Did her demeanor suggest to you that she might have heard something to her disadvantage? Even something dangerous?”

  Pete Apted’s objection was routine: the witness was not a mind reader.

  “Mrs. Suggins, how long was this before the poor girl’s murder?” Oliver Stant was using his witness’s words.

  The cook had to think. “Right before, I’d say. I mean, a few days before, maybe a week. She was acting odd-like, I mean even for Dorcas—went about the kitchen mumbling. Kept sayin’ she ‘ought not to ’ave listened,’ like I told you, and when I asked her what she meant, well, all sparky she gets—’Niver you mind!’ she says, as if it’s me making ’er tell an’ not ’erself mumbling it out, and I says, ‘There’s all of us done wrong one way or another, so best forget about it and just carry on.’ ”

  “ ‘I ought not to have done it. I shouldn’t have listened.’ ” Stant repeated it for the third time. “Did you conclude, Annie, that the two were related?”

  Apted rose wearily. “Your Honor . . . ”

  But it was Stant who answered the implied objection, not the judge. “Your Honor, is this the sort of ‘conclusion’ that is objectionable? If my office boy came in scratching at a spot of jam on his shirt and saying, ‘Damn that jam donut,’ would it be risky of me to conclude the two were related?”

  The judge’s mouth twitched, but he still upheld the objection of defending counsel.

  However, Melrose was sure it made no difference whether or not the point was allowed. The point the jury had most certainly taken: that Dorcas Reese had discovered, had overheard, something that had placed her life in jeopardy.

  Oliver Stant said, “If we could return to the night of the first murder, Mrs. Suggins. To your knowledge, did the defendant ever have cause to pass through the mudroom off the kitchen?”

  “Yes, sir. She’d come through that way once or twice. I recall one time she said her shoes were filthy from the footpath, and she’d not wanted to track dirt through the drawing room.”

  “And, again so far as you know, had she seen where the .22 rifle belonging to Max Owen was kept?”

  Annie screwed up her face. “I expect I can’t really say. But I do recall she was in the kitchen on the Saturday when Mr. Owen chided Burt—that’s Mr. Suggins—for not keeping that rifle locked up in the case as he should ’ve done.”

  “Where would your husband leave the rifle when he wasn’t using it?”

  “Well, it sounds awful careless o’ Burt, and I expect it was, leaving that gun just standing in a corner. The thing was that Burt used it so much. He loves his gardens, see, both flower and vegetable, and there was always rabbits and squirrels and things about to eat up everything in sight.”

  “I see. So anyone could have walked in, either through the kitchen or from outside through the mudroom door?”

  Annie shrugged. “Yes, I’d have to say that’s right.”

  “Tell me, did Mr. Owen own a handgun?”

  She reared back as if one were pointing at her now. “Goodness, I shouldn’t think so, sir! I certainly never seen one, and nor never heard about one. Well, it’s too hard to get a license for any gun, much less that kind.”

  “So there were two guns in the house, a .22 and a shotgun—”

  Apted made a display of getting wearily to his feet: “Your grace, we have a firearms expert. Mrs. Suggins can’t testify as to what gun was, or was not, in the house beyond the ones she herself had seen or her husband had used.”

  “My point,” said Oliver Stant, “is that the defendant had access to the .22 rifle.”

  “Your point is taken,” said Apted. When Annie was turned over to him for questioning, Pete Apted said he had no questions at this time.

  Annie Suggins was told to step down. She reacted as if someone were being rather rude, she’d not finished her tea yet, but suddenly recognizing just where she was, blushed and smiled at both Oliver Stant and the judge and removed herself from the box.

  Then it was that Melrose remembered what Jury had said—indeed, what a number of people had said: “Why do I keep forgetting Dorcas Reese . . . ?” It wasn’t the answer that was important; it was the question.

  He left the courtroom in the brief shuffle of barristers and witnesses. It was a crowded scene, a crush of people who had found it a rather jolly break in the boredom of daily life to take in a murder trial. Double-murder trial. He looked around him in the corridor, registered three people sitting on a bench outside the door, clearly strangers to one another as they neither spoke nor moved. Witnesses, perhaps? And then he was stopped by the lettering on a cap that the sturdy-looking man was twisting in his hands.

  Roadworks. Melrose stared at him for a moment, but the fellow was so deep into his own thoughts that he didn’t look in Melrose’s direction. The guard by the door noticed and shook his head as Melrose took a step toward the bench. A witness?

  Melrose stared. He had never seen the man before, of course, but he certainly remembered now that detour he’d had to take outside of Loughborough to get onto the M6. He’d been only twenty or twenty-five miles from Northampton. After that, it was the A46. And if you kept on going past Northampton you’d come to the turn for Stratford-upon-Avon. . . .

  Oh, hell, Melrose thought. “Wednesday, I remember because it was me mum’s birthday—”

  Did Apted know? He must. There was some sort of rule about disclosure or discovery, wasn’t there?

  • • •

  His name was Ted Hoskins and he took his place in the witness box, obviously nervous, for he looked round about him as if he were the one being charged. But he took the oath and told the court his name, his address, his position.

  “Ah be ganger man on that job.” He seemed quite pleased with this office.

  “Is that the man in charge?” asked Oliver Stant.

  “Well, not wholly in charge. That’d be the general foreman. Me, I’m in charge o’ me mates, you know, some o’ the lads.”

  “Mr. Hoskins, could you tell us about the job you were on that began on Wednesday, the fifth of February of this year?” Oliver Stant was looking pleased as punch.

  “Yessir. It were on that part of the A6 nea
r Loughborough, just t’other side going towards Leicester. We were tryin’ to put in a new lay-by. That meant cars had to detour round on the B road for about a mile, nearly to Leicester, then double back a bit. Not too happy—” Ted Hoskins was cut off from having his little joke by Stant’s interruption.

  “Right. Now that roadworks operation began exactly when?”

  “Like you already said, fifth February.”

  “That was a Wednesday?”

  “Yessir, I believe so.”

  “Not on the Tuesday, February fourth.”

  “No, definitely on the Wednesday.”

  “So that anyone traveling that route on Tuesday the fourth would not have had to take the detour?”

  “Well, no sir. It’d have been as usual.”

  “Mr. Hoskins, that’s the way one would travel to Northampton, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say so, yes. It’s only maybe twenty miles from that M69 junction.”

  “And if you were traveling to Stratford-upon-Avon, you’d also take that road?”

  “Like as not. O’course there’s always other—”

  “The defendant claims to have driven that particular route to Stratford-upon-Avon on February fourth and to have taken the detour you describe.”

  Ted Hoskins gave a short laugh. “Well, I’m afraid she’s forgot ’erself, ’cause for there was no detour on the Tuesday.”

  “So if she went the route you described, it would have to have been a day later, or at least no earlier than the next day, is that true? It would have to have been the Wednesday?”

  Ted Hoskins nodded. “Yessir.” His look at Jenny was a sad one.

  • • •

  I believe what you were about to say—before you were cut off—was that there are other routes to Stratford-upon-Avon?” Pete Apted smiled.

  Hoskins nodded. “ ’Course there are.”

  “Can you say, offhand, what other way the defendant might have driven?”

  “Yessir.” Ted Hoskins breathed what seemed to be a relieved sigh; it was as if he hadn’t liked calling Jenny a liar. “Shortest way’d be Market Harborough on to Leamington to Warwick—”

  Before Stant could rise to object, Apted cut in: “I think we’ll have to stay with the Leicester-Northampton route, as the defendant mentioned Leicester.”

  Hoskins rubbed his thumb across his forehead. “Well, now. She could’ve got off the A road somewheres round Syston or Rearsby. Could’ve taken a wrong turning, we all do now and again.”

  “There could, indeed, have been other roadworks going on at just about anyplace along this particular route, couldn’t there?”

  Oliver Stant rose quickly to voice his objection. This was mere speculation on the part of both defense counsel and witness.

  Apted ate up the opportunity: “I’d agree, Your Honor. But given I wasn’t informed about this witness until late last night, I didn’t have time to look for a map.”

  The judge was severe. “Consider yourself fortunate, Mr. Stant, that I don’t cite you for contempt. You know the rule of discovery means you must let prosecuting counsel know immediately.”

  “I do, Your Honor, but the witness was only brought to my attention yesterday afternoon. I assure you, I let defending counsel know as soon as possible.”

  The judge made a hmphing! sound and waved his hand for them to proceed.

  Apted turned to Ted Hoskins again. “It’s not like the motorways, is it, Mr. Hoskins? There were clearly a number of different A roads and, consequently, a number of different turnings?”

  “That’s right. We all make mistakes, sir.”

  Pete Apted smiled. “We do indeed. That’ll be all.”

  • • •

  Court had recessed until two o’clock and the three of them—Apted, Charly Moss, and Melrose—were standing outside in the corridor.

  “And now I’m off to have a quiet little think with my client.” The words dripped acid. He walked off, black robe flying.

  “I wouldn’t want to be her at the moment,” said Charly Moss, looking down the corridor.

  “No.” Melrose shook his head. “I wonder how the prosecutor twigged it. About the detour, I mean.”

  “Probably some slip on her part. Or it might have been accidental. Information does come one’s way in the queerest manner.” Charly turned her eyes from the corridor to Melrose. “What was she doing? Why did she stay Tuesday night?”

  She was silent a moment, hugging her arms about her. It was cold in the corridor. Cold as marble could make it. Melrose looked at her, thought about the “cold ladies,” a sobriquet that would never apply to Charly Moss or Flora Fludd. He frowned slightly. He was still pondering what Flora had said in the Blue Parrot.

  “Where’s Richard?” asked Charly.

  “He said he was going to Algarkirk. To Fengate.” Melrose looked off through a tall window. “I’m glad he isn’t here, frankly.” . . . white first, the red last.

  Charly pushed her hair back out of her face, looked at him, asked, “Something wrong?”

  “I was just thinking about the Red Last.”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t follow—”

  “It’s a pub. Was a pub, I mean.”

  “Named for shoes? Not very witty.”

  “You see, that’s the point: automatically, one thinks of a last for a shoe, but—” Dorcas Reese’s words came back to him. That was the connection.

  “Heavens. You do look—lit up.”

  “Let’s go somewhere ourselves and have a quiet think. I might have an idea Pete Apted should hear about.” Melrose took her arm and guided her down the cold corridor.

  33

  Officially spring, thought Jury, but the day was returning to the winter light of the month before, and the wood where he walked, turning up winter’s debris, was sodden with the rain that had just then stopped. He’d spent an hour on the Wash, a desolate hour, in the rain. A straight-down, relentless rain, pummeling like bullets—or perhaps that metaphor was suggested by his hoping he’d find one, a spent bullet, another casing, anything just to find something. Jury knew he wouldn’t, unless the sands gave it up, like the hull of one of those buried ships.

  Yet, he couldn’t resist turning sand over with the toe of his shoe, hoping to find something. A shot in the dark. It still baffled him that anyone could picture Jenny Kennington with a rifle butted to her shoulder. But he knew this was a romantic defense on his part. Jenny had kept quiet about many things. Still, the kind of person she was . . .

  Romance, again. He had been a policeman long enough to know that no one was, in the end, exempt. Not Jenny, not Grace, although it was equally baffling to think of her as a killer.

  He was back at Fengate now. When Jury pulled up, Burt Suggins was tending the oval flower bed in front of the house. The gardener looked over at Jury’s car, squinting into the sunless day, his face screwed up in a mask of puzzlement. Who could this be? And the master not here, nor the missus. Burt was easy to read. Jury told the gardener that he wasn’t obliged to show him around.

  That he had the power to grant a request or refuse it pleased the old man, unused to exercising any power. Thus he hesitated, thinking it over as he mopped the back of his neck with his neckerchief. “All them be over to Lincoln, even my missus.”

  “I know. Annie made a smashing witness.”

  That surprised him, knowing that witnesses had to put their hands on the Bible and swear to tell the strictest truth. Annie Suggins was never a liar, but she had been known to exaggerate a mite. “Well, Annie never did have any trouble speakin’ her mind.”

  “Look, Mr. Suggins—”

  “Oh, just you call me Burt, everyone do.”

  Jury smiled. “Burt. I’m not on a search. I think I’m really looking for inspiration—”

  Burt Suggins frowned. He was more used to this lot looking for clues, such as footprints in his flower beds.

  “—because this whole thing just doesn’t sit right, you know what I mean? I’d like to see that gun
room—”

  “It’s no more’n a little back room off the kitchen. You bein’ a Scotland Yard inspector, well, I’d say it’s all right.”

  Jury was used to being demoted by witnesses. Demotion was a fate that Chief Superintendent Racer often foretold, too. He didn’t bother correcting the old man as the two of them headed for the house.

  The room was as Burt had said, a small enclosure off the kitchen, crowded with Wellingtons, rain gear, gardening tools, insecticides, lime for the soil. He turned to the steel cabinet bolted to the wall. The rifle it was home to was now in Lincoln. “This thing is kept locked, isn’t it, Burt?”

  “Yessir, but like I told them other policemen, I’ll have it out times when I see them pesky squirrels and rabbits.” Burt reddened. “Well . . . that night, I guess I left it . . . it’s against the law, leavin’ it out like that, but . . . ”

  “I’m not concerned with that, Burt. Only that anyone could have come to this outside door and taken it. The person didn’t have to be someone with the key to unlock that cabinet.”

  Burt nodded. “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  “Didn’t have to be anyone from inside the house, either. I assume that door is usually unlocked?” He didn’t know why he was going through all of this. Oliver Stant had already made a meal of it.

  “ ’Tis, sir.”

  They left the small room and walked back to the drive. Jury peered down the gravel. “You saw the Porsche sometime after midnight, did you?”

  “I did. ’Bout half-past, it was. Wondered why it was parked at the bottom. Usually, that Miss Dunn parks it right near here, behind Mr. Owen’s car. I go up to bed late, most nights.”

  Get in a little extra drinking time, thought Jury. Hard to blame him, out here in this unpeopled country. “They thought she’d returned to London.”

  Burt said nothing, just looked down the driveway.

  But it was not Verna Dunn; it was Dorcas Reese he was thinking about. “Why do people keep forgetting Dorcas?” Or treating her as if she were an afterthought? “Did you work out who the man was Dorcas Reese thought would marry her?”

 

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