by John Wilson
– I know. I felt bad about it until I realised that she was doing exactly the same to me. I changed all the locks.
– Mr Franklin told me about that. Well let’s have a look at them.
The four men stood around the desk looking down at the papers that documented the literary interests of the Respondent and the Co-Respondent. There were more books on Adam’s list than there were on Julia’s. However, the similarities were striking. Adam’s list included Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall, Black Mischief, and A Handful of Dust and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. Julia’s included only Vile Bodies and Scoop. Adam had the collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whilst Julia only had A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. Adam had Chrome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Brave New World and Eyeless in Gaza, whilst Julia only had Antic Hay and Brave New World. Both had the collected poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. They both had The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Adam had nearly everything that had been published by George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming up for Air. All were first editions. Julia had only Down and Out in Paris and London and Coming up for Air. Both first editions. The rest of Julia’s collection was more conventional and old-fashioned. Sir Patrick Tempest KC picked up the two lists and studied them more carefully.
– So, if you are right Falling gave her at least one, two, three … eleven books as gifts? I looked up the publication dates of these books and I think the most recently published was Coming up for Air, which came out in June 1939.
– It’s no wonder the scoundrel didn’t have a practice! Seems to have spent all his time reading obscure novels.
– Oh, they are not all that obscure. I have read many of these books myself – in my spare time. But I have to say, it is a rather flimsy basis upon which to mount a petition for adultery. I have certainly never come across such a case before.
Pemberton’s shoulders slumped.
– So you think I’m going to be in difficulties?
– No. I didn’t say that. I only said that it was rather unusual. It is not as though it is the only point that you have. There is the watermark, of course.
– I didn’t bring that with me. It’s rather a fragile piece of evidence.
– I’m surprised it survived being burnt at all.
– Well, that was a bit of luck, I suppose. I don’t know how it happened. But how are we going to prove that Falling received a letter from my wife?
– We don’t need to.
– Why ever not? If it is important surely we should be getting it into the evidence.
– Oh, we will. It is just that we don’t need to prove it. I took the liberty of ringing up Blytheway yesterday. Said that we hadn’t served a notice to admit but that I took it he would not be disputing that the watermark was consistent with your stationery. He admitted it right away. If anything, he seemed rather blasé about it. He told me that he felt that I should ring Alnwick for the sake of propriety but that he didn’t think Alnwick would disagree with him. And Alnwick also confirmed that there would be no issue as to provenance.
– Well. That’s good news.
– Not really. If your wife told you she had sent a letter to Falling there would be something seriously amiss if they did not all tell the same story. I want to come back to that before we finish. But I would rather deal with the things you want to talk about first.
There was a silence, lasting almost a minute, whilst Pemberton thought about what was troubling him.
– I think I wanted to ask you about Blytheway.
– I had assumed as much.
– We all know he is a bit of a dilettante – a frivolous lightweight – but he got one over on Preston recently and I wondered what you thought of him?
– Let us all return to our seats.
When they were all sitting down Tempest looked across his desk at Pemberton for a long moment before continuing:
– I’m afraid that I have never regarded Blytheway as a lightweight. Quite the contrary – and I have been against him many, many times.
– I didn’t realise.
– I know that many of my cases have been reported, and if you look back through them you will not find many, particularly in recent years, where opposing counsel was Roland Blytheway. However, if you look back to an earlier time there are quite a few reports of cases when we were both junior counsel. I don’t go out of my way to advertise them, to be frank.
Pemberton’s heart sank.
– Why. What happened?
– He gave me a number of bloody noses. And so, in recent years, if I think that he has a good case, I have settled. Settled cases don’t tend to get into the law reports unless of course – giving Pemberton a particularly telling look – they are settled at the doors of the court in the midst of a swarm of journalists. To be fair to myself I do think Blytheway shows me equal respect and if he has a poor case he will be the first to sue for peace.
– If he is such a good barrister why did he never take silk? You can’t be saying that he is as good as we are?
Pemberton immediately regretted that remark. Although he had never really admitted it to himself he knew that he and Tempest were not in the same league.
– Jeremy, Jeremy. We both know why that is, really, don’t we?
Pemberton chose not to answer that question and pressed on.
– So you think I have a good case, and Blytheway thinks Falling has a good case. Well, you can’t both be right, can you?
– I wasn’t saying that every case we had against one another settled. We have fought cases in recent years and some of them I have won and some of them he has won. However – and I have naturally been thinking about this a great deal in recent weeks – those have all been cases where everything turned on credibility. If his client was believed, he won. If my client was believed, I won.
– Well, if it is just a matter of credibility we are all right, aren’t we? What judge is going to prefer his evidence – Julia’s for that matter – to that of one of His Majesty’s Counsel?
– Oh, Jeremy, please! Don’t be pompous, I beg you! That’s the last thing we need. You must not presume! You see, there is one other point – and it favours our opponents.
– What’s that?
– This is your case. You are the one making the allegations. You are the one who has something to prove. The burden of proof is on us. They don’t have to prove anything. Again, when I went back through my encounters with Blytheway – those cases that ended up in court – whilst credibility was important and probably decisive we both did better when it was the other who carried the burden of proof. We, I am afraid, are carrying that burden. And it would be extremely remiss of us if we did not take that into account.
– This is all sounding rather gloomy!
– Not at all. It is a cardinal rule, that so many younger members of Bar forget – not you of course – that it is far more important to look carefully at one’s own weaknesses than to concentrate on the perceived weaknesses in the other side’s case. That is all I am doing.
They had been with Tempest for the better part of an hour. Mr Franklin and Tempest’s junior, Eliot, had been scribbling frantically without making any contribution to the debate. Tempest asked his client if he had any further questions.
– There is one another point I would like to discuss with you. It is about my late daughter Jenny’s diary.
– I was deeply saddened to hear what had happened. I can’t imagine what you have been going through since then.
– Thank you, Pat. And thank you for your letter, which was greatly appreciated. I am sorry I didn’t reply to it. There were so many letters and I was in something of a state for quite a while after that.
– Oh, don’t worry about that. I think I said in my letter that you shouldn’t trouble to reply.
– Well. Anyway. Thank you.
– What did you want to discuss about the diary?
– Have you seen it?
– And read it. Eliot and I were able to borrow it from Mrs Pemberton’s solicitors on the usual undertakings. I married up those little crosses with the dates in the petition. If those were indeed days when Jenny went to the Ritz with Mrs Pemberton, then, taken together with Falling’s case that he was seeing a prostitute and not your wife, she may have a defence. It’s definitely Jenny’s writing in the diary isn’t it?
– Yes. I am afraid I read sections of it even though she had asked me not to. I feel very bad about that. She and I had a terrible argument about it just before she went out to the Café de Paris with that Jenkins chap. That’s why she took it away from me and gave it to Julia.
Pemberton was silent for a moment, his shoulders hunched as he looked down at his shoes. He thought about telling his counsel about the rather unseemly incident in Mecklenburg Square when he tried to wrench it away from Julia and got into a fight with Falling, but decided against it. Tempest said nothing and waited for him to continue.
– You see … I don’t know how to say this but … now that Jenny is … is dead … can’t we try and stop this evidence going in?
– I wondered if you would ask me that. I suspect you know the answer to your own question as well as I do. Jenny may be gone but the diary remains. The crosses are all still there and I have no doubt Mrs Pemberton will give evidence to the effect that these correspond with occasions when she was with Jenny at the Ritz. It will be a question of whether or not she is believed about that. In addition, it may be that Mrs Pemberton’s solicitors have been able to obtain a witness statement that is admissible in evidence so that Jenny may be able to assist her step-mother from beyond the grave. Do you know whether a statement was obtained?
– No. I don’t. I have asked all of my staff if any of them actually witnessed her signing off a statement but they have all denied it.
– So, the options are either that she did not sign a statement, for whatever reason, or she did sign one but, in all probability, it wasn’t witnessed; and if the latter eventuality proves to be the case that will affect the evidential weight that it can be given. But we must wait and see whether anything is produced. I don’t think there is anything more we can do about this aspect of the case, certainly for the present. Is there anything else in connection with the diary or Jenny’s evidence?
Pemberton was silent for a long minute, studying his shoes and wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. He shook his head.
– Good. Now I have some questions that I would like to put to you. Questions that, no doubt, Blytheway will be putting to you. First of all, have you ever seen your wife alone with Falling?
– No. Well, not exactly.
– Not exactly?
– As you can imagine, I have given this a lot of thought.
– What do you mean by “not exactly”?
– There was one time. It was at the Middle Temple Ball in 1936. He marked her card. When I remembered this – at the same time that I was looking through her books – I looked out her dance card. It was the seventh dance. A slow waltz. She was supposed to be dancing the eighth dance, a foxtrot, with Peter Preston in my chambers, but when I asked him about this recently he told me he had looked for her but couldn’t find her. She was supposed to be dancing the ninth dance with me, and she did. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at the time. But for about four minutes she was missing.
Tempest leaned back in his leather chair. There was a long silence.
– Hmmm. It’s not much to go on but it may help. Have you still got the dance card?
– It’s in her room. I am fairly sure she didn’t take it with her. No one realised the potential significance of it.
Pemberton did not want to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that he himself had not spotted that potential significance.
– Good. But that brings me back to my central question. Leaving aside a four-minute absence at a ball in 1936, have you on any other occasion seen your wife with Mr Falling?
After a long pause:
– No. The next time I saw them together was at our home and that was only when he and his wife were taking their leave – and he was only there because I invited them – because I wanted to talk to him – to observe him – to see how he reacted to being in the presence of my wife.
– Well. I think that may be a problem. And it brings me to my next question. If the occasions when you have seen them together are as limited as you say they are, what made you suspect that there was anything between them at all?
– Well, again – and I know that this may sound silly in the cold light of day – but on two occasions in late 1940, after her children had been evacuated, she spoke in her sleep. She was evidently distressed. She was writhing a little in the bed.
– And what did she say?
– Not much. The first time I didn’t place much store by it. She said “Not now. One day, perhaps.”
– “Not now, one day, perhaps”?
– I know. As I say, I didn’t put much on it. But several nights later the same thing happened. She said again, in exactly the same words and exactly the same tone of voice, “Not now, one day perhaps.” Well, for it to happen again worried me. I wondered whether or not she was thinking of the children, that one day, perhaps, they could come back and be with us. And so the following morning, in an effort to help, I told her what she had been saying in her sleep and asked her what it meant. I thought she would be grateful to me and start talking about Agnes, Stephen and Sebastian but instead she became seriously alarmed. She asked me what else she had said, and of course I said nothing because there had been nothing else. But when I asked her what her dream was all about she said she didn’t remember …
– Carry on.
– And so I thought back. I noticed that she had a certain happiness that was independent of me. That there was a certain … guardedness … when she talked about her days. And I tried to trace back to where it had begun. I had been so busy that I hadn’t noticed before. And it took me back to 1936. Then I searched through all my memories and the nearest thing I could find was Julia dancing a slow waltz with Adam Falling. And when I pictured that dance in my mind’s eye I felt as though there was a … a … bat’s squeak of an intimacy that went a little too far. And so I began watching Falling and my wife more carefully.
– Is that really all that pointed in the direction of Falling?
– Well, there was one other thing. Falling is a chain smoker. His room always stank of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t as if he smoked anything decent. Wretched Woodbines.
– How is this relevant?
– I realised that sometimes when Julia had come home there was a whiff of cigarette smoke on her clothing. Of course, that could have been completely innocent. So many people smoke, although I can’t stand the habit myself.
– That is not much to go on.
– After my suspicions were raised I waited for her to come home from her … “war work” … and when she took off her coat and hung it up in the hall I went over to smell it. I picked up one of the sleeves and held it to my nose. There was a definite reek of tobacco. Cheap tobacco. Unfortunately, I was still holding the sleeve up to my face when Julia came back into the hall and saw me. She looked alarmed again, and rather than say “Why are you behaving so ridiculously?” or something like that, she made no comment at all.
– It is not the strongest evidence, I’m afraid.
– But here’s the thing: when I got home from chambers, I learnt from Samuels, my butler, that she had arranged for all of her clothing to be dry-cleaned.
Tempest steepled his fingers and gazed up at the ceiling whilst everyone waited for him to say something.
– Well. I might be able to make something of that. But you never actually saw them together?
– No.
– That brings me to my last question: you have never – or almost never seen them together.
– No.
– So how did they communicate with one another?
I have been giving this a lot of thought. I take it there were no letters sent either to your home by him or to your chambers by her?
– No. I’m absolutely sure of that.
– What about the letter that she says she sent to him last December?
– I’ve asked Arthur about that and he has no recollection of such a letter, but he can’t be sure.
– We’ll need a statement from him to that effect. What about telephone calls? Surely, if he had telephoned her at home a member of staff would have answered, and if she rang him one of the clerks would have taken it? Is there any indication that either telephoned the other?
– No – said Pemberton glumly.
– So. I ask my question again: how did they communicate?
– I don’t know.
– Hmm …
Tempest’s response betrayed a sliver of doubt.
Still, we have some very good positive evidence and, having looked at the down side, I will spend the rest of the time between now and Monday looking at the better parts of our case.
He brought the meeting to an end and everyone stood to leave. He shook Pemberton’s hand again and told him to feel free to call him over the weekend if necessary. Pemberton had his home number. And they all made their way out and descended back into the grounds of the Inner Temple.
“Not now. One day, perhaps.”
Chapter Ninety-four
(Friday 2nd May 1941)
A peacock feather is a thing of beauty, Adam thought as he took one out from its Chinese vase and walked over to the window of his room. Holding it by its stem, he waved it gently so that the green feathery barbs swayed to and fro. Turning slightly so that the eye of the feather could catch the late afternoon sun, he gazed at its iridescent shimmer – bronze, blue, dark purple and green. The Temple was quiet. He looked down at the Temple Church. It glinted dustily in the bright sunlight. A clock struck four and brought him out of his reverie.