Death of a Wine Merchant (27 page)

‘Sir Jasper?’

‘I have to say, my lord, that I am torn. On the one hand we have the lack of witnesses, the fact that there is nobody for me to cross-examine. And yet. And yet.’

Sir Jasper was not a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary like some
of his colleagues. As a young man, fresh from Oxford at the elegant buildings of Lincoln’s Inn, he had fallen in love with the law. He had lit metaphorical candles in all the temples of the legal system. Those candles had long since gone out, guttered and blackened as his disillusion grew with the passing years. Exaggeration had a lot to with it. The police, he felt, exaggerated their evidence and left out the bits that did not suit their case. The barristers exaggerated their vanity, locked into an adversarial system that confused the force of advocacy with the reality of their cases and the cause of justice. Judges and juries grew confused, cynical of the evidence and the barristers who presented it. Three years ago Sir Jasper himself had been involved in a miscarriage of justice. He had appeared for the prosecution in a case where a man was hanged, only for it to be discovered three weeks later that he was innocent, by which time it was too late. That case had weighed heavily with him ever since.

‘I must say,’ he went on, ‘that I attach great weight to the testimony of Lord Powerscourt. What particularly impressed me was his willingness to put his career and his considerable reputation on the line by going into the witness box. I also attach weight to the marriage certificate for I believe it to be genuine. And we have just heard from Detective Chief Inspector Weir, my lord, that the two Mrs Colvilles, who learnt of the bigamy some ten days before the wedding, are absolutely certain that it is true. And they have no objection to the bigamy evidence being brought into open court. I believe, my lord, that we always have an obligation to maintain the traditions of the law, for without order there is nothing. But we also have an obligation to be fair, to hear all the arguments and all the evidence even when they may have arrived by singularly unorthodox means.’

Sir Jasper paused. Pugh sat perfectly still, looking at his papers. Powerscourt was looking at Sir Jasper. Pugh’s junior had abandoned his sketching for the moment, staring at the prosecution counsel.

‘On balance,’ Sir Jasper concluded, ‘the prosecution has no objection to the admittance of these documents. I leave the matter, my lord, in your capable hands.’

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Mr Justice Black. ‘It is now twenty-five minutes past ten. I suggest the legal teams take an adjournment. If you, Sir Jasper and Mr Pugh, care to return at ten to eleven I shall inform you of my decision. That should give you a little time to prepare for any new circumstances we may find ourselves in.’

The legal teams shuffled out. The jury and the gentlemen of the press were drifting back into court. Pugh and Powerscourt collected Lady Lucy and filled her in on what had happened in the judge’s rooms. They held an impromptu conference on the pavement outside away from the public and the newspapermen.

‘Do you think he’s going to admit it, Powerscourt?’ said Pugh.

‘Yes, I think he will.’

‘Do we run with the mysterious Frenchman? Or the suicide?’

‘Suicide surely,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘He couldn’t take the shame, poor man.’

‘There’s one thing we haven’t realized,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’ve only just seen it this minute. Sir Jasper may have seemed rather magnanimous in there, but I wonder if he’s just being cunning.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Pugh.

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘think about the new evidence. It shows that there was bigamy and that the Colvilles on this side of the water were aware of it. Indeed they had a massive family row about it.’

‘So?’ said Charles Augustus Pugh.

‘Simply this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The one thing the prosecution case have never had is a reliable motive for Cosmo murdering his brother. Now they have one. The family are desperately keen to preserve the good name of Colville. They do not want the bigamy to be known abroad. Randolph has
disgraced the family. Once he is dead the whole story might never get out. Cosmo shoots his brother to preserve the family honour and is just about to make his escape down one of those back stairs. Then the butler steps in. It’s highly unlikely the police would have arrested Cosmo if he hadn’t been found in that unfortunate position. He’d have got away and come in round the front door with the stragglers. Just bad luck he got caught. Remember the police never heard a whisper about the bigamy.’

‘Christ!’ said Pugh. ‘I’ve got to reappear before the judge. I have to say, I have no idea what to do when the court resumes. Send me a note if inspiration strikes you, Powerscourt.’

The judge was back in Court Two at exactly eleven o’clock. There was a hum of expectancy round the room. Word had seeped out about the reason for the adjournment. What, people had been asking themselves for the past hour and a half, was this new evidence? Some thought it must relate to some fraud or other outrage in the Colville wine business. Others believed that it had to do with the defendant, that he had a secret history of violent behaviour which had only just been discovered. Most of all, the spectators and the jurymen agreed, they felt they had a right, as free-born Englishmen and ratepayers, to know what the new evidence was. They prayed that the judge was not going to let them down.

Mr Justice Black called the court to order. He coughed lightly and waited until his court was completely still.

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ he began, ‘an hour and half ago I adjourned this court while we considered whether or not to admit new evidence from the defence. Unusual though the circumstances are, I have decided, after consultations with Sir Jasper Bentinck and Mr Charles Pugh here, to admit the new material. Mr Pugh, perhaps you could read the evidence out to the court so the shorthand writers can enter it into the record.’

Pugh adjusted his glasses and began to read. In each case he mentioned the date and the names of the witnesses at the top. He spoke with no emotion in his voice at all. His tone was neutral, what his junior, who had heard it before, referred
to as Pugh’s railway station announcer’s voice. When he revealed the bigamy there was pandemonium in court. One or two of the newspapermen wrote instant news stories and had their runners take them to their offices at full speed. They might just make the lunchtime editions. The society ladies were beside themselves. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing!’ ‘Fancy leaving a letter like that in your back pocket! Only a man would do that!’ One word ran through the court like a fire in barn of straw: ‘Bigamy, bigamy, bigamy!’

‘Silence! Silence in court!’ Mr Justice Black looked livid, as if one of his famed finesses at the bridge table had failed to come off. ‘Any more noise and I shall clear the court of spectators and newspapermen alike! Mr Pugh.’

The barrister from Gray’s Inn carried on. He was on the second piece of evidence from Beaune now where Madame Yvette Planchon told of the stolen kiss, the unexpected arrival of her husband the sergeant, his threat to kill Randolph Colville and his disappearance from the scene.

Powerscourt was staring at the shorthand writers at the table below the judge. They, unlike everybody else in Court Two, had remained impassive as the new evidence was disclosed. Perhaps they had heard it all before. Powerscourt’s mind was racing. Yet another interpretation of events at Brympton Hall had just flashed through his brain. He picked up his pen and wrote a very brief message. He folded it carefully twice and wrote Pugh on the front. As his colleague made his way through the letter that had arrived from Beaune that morning with the astonishing news that the Colvilles in England knew about the other Colville wife in France, he leant forward and slipped it into the hand of Richard Napier, leaning back from his bench. Lady Lucy, sitting beside her husband with Cosmo’s solicitor on her other side, looked at him expectantly. Powerscourt spoke not a word.

Pugh had finished. He placed the three documents on the exhibit table where the gun was still lying as it had throughout the trial.

‘Call Mrs Colville, Mrs Cosmo Colville.’ Napier slipped the note into his hand. Pugh read it while the new witness made her way to the box. He squashed it up and put it in his pocket, then he turned and glanced enigmatically at Powerscourt.

‘Mrs Colville,’ he began, ‘Would you say that you were a close family?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we always have been.’

‘So perhaps you could tell the court, Mrs Colville, when you first became aware that your brother-in-law was a bigamist with a second wife in France?’

She blushed deeply. She seemed to find it difficult to give an answer. She began folding and refolding her hands. Powerscourt thought that had she been Lady Macbeth she would have been washing those hands by now.

‘Come, Mrs Colville,’ said Pugh in his politest tones, ‘I’m sure you can give us an answer.’

‘It must have been fairly close to the wedding,’ she said finally.

‘And did all the Colvilles attend the meeting?’

‘No,’ she was whispering now, ‘the first meeting was just the two brothers, Randolph and Cosmo, and their wives. We told the others in the days that followed. Everybody in the family knew by the time of the wedding.’

‘I wouldn’t want the intimate details of what was said at that first meeting, Mrs Colville, but perhaps you could just give us the broad picture.’ The more intelligent members of the jury realized that intimate details were exactly what Charles Augustus Pugh did want but knew he wouldn’t get if he asked for them directly.

Mrs Colville was now looking very distressed indeed. Only when Powerscourt turned round almost one hundred and eighty degrees did he see part of the reason. Cosmo Colville had hardly moved a muscle during the trial so far. But now he was sitting directly opposite his wife, he, Cosmo, in the dock, she in the witness box. The eye-lines of the court had been constructed for precisely this purpose. Before the arrival
of gas lighting a mirrored reflector was placed above the prisoner in the dock to reflect light from the windows on to the faces of the accused. This, Pugh had told Powerscourt years before, allowed the court to examine the facial expressions of the prisoners during testimony. Cosmo was now bent forward in the dock, his hands leaning on the little wooden wall and making gestures to his wife on the other side of Court Two. These gestures seemed to be causing considerable distress. Powerscourt wondered how long it would be before the judge noticed them.

‘Mrs Colville,’ Pugh said in his mildest tones, ‘I can appreciate how distressing this must be for you, but I would remind you that you are under oath in a court of law. Could you please answer my question?’

Out of the corner of his eye Powerscourt saw that the dumb show in the dock was continuing. Cosmo might have chosen not to give evidence but he was trying his hardest to influence the court by other means.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Colville, ‘everybody was very cross, very angry. People said Randolph had ruined the family name, that Colville Wine would become a laughing stock. The firm might even go out of business.’

The judge had finally caught sight of Cosmo. ‘Prisoner at the bar,’ he said sternly, ‘please stop making signs to your wife. If I see you doing it once more you will be taken below to the holding cells and kept there until the end of this trial. I would remind you that this is a court of law, not some School for Semaphore.’ He turned back to the witness box. ‘Pray continue, Mrs Colville, Mr Pugh.’

‘And what,’ Pugh went on, any note of criticism or reproof removed from his voice, ‘was the reaction of your brother-in-law, Mr Randolph Colville?’

She paused. ‘If anything,’ she said finally, ‘he was the most upset of all of us. He kept saying, over and over and over, that he had destroyed the good name of Colville and ruined the lives of his family.’

‘I see,’ said Pugh, ‘and did that attitude continue when the other members of the family were informed?’

‘If anything, it grew worse,’ Mrs Colville replied, now looking at the jury, now at Pugh. ‘We kept telling him that there was no need for him to attend these terrible meetings. He could have gone for a walk or kept to his room. But he wouldn’t have it. He felt he owed it to all his relations to be there in person to be attacked and humiliated.’

‘Terrible meetings, you said, Mrs Colville?’

‘Well, there was a lot of shouting. One of the uncles said Randolph deserved a horse whipping.’

Powerscourt could see where Pugh was heading. Any minute now, he said to himself, he’s going to mention the S word. Or maybe he’ll try to bring Mrs Colville to say it.

‘And had Randolph’s attitude changed at all by the time of the wedding, Mrs Colville?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied, ‘if anything it got worse.’

Now, Powerscourt thought, surely he must say it now.

‘Mrs Colville, would you agree with me that your brother-in-law Mr Randolph Colville was weighed down by his circumstances?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘And would you agree with me that he found it hard to see a way out of his predicament?’

‘I don’t think he could see any way out at all.’

‘And over the ten days or so between the bigamy information reaching England and the wedding itself, did his mood improve at all?’

‘No, it didn’t. If anything it got worse.’

‘In view of what we know now, Mrs Colville, what is your view about Mr Randolph Colville’s conduct?’

Mrs Colville paused. She looked up at the dock where her husband was watching carefully. ‘I’m afraid to say, Mr Pugh, I think now as I thought then that it all got too much for the poor man. The shame and the disgrace drove him to suicide.’

Pugh was quick to reply. ‘Suicide, Mrs Colville? Are you sure?’

The word was out now. Suicide in shorthand was entered in a dozen reporter’s notebooks.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘Watching him through those ten days there was a very strong sense that he thought his options had run out, that he had come to the end of the road. So, yes, I think it is possible, indeed probable, that he committed suicide.’

Powerscourt had been watching Mrs Cosmo Colville intently for the last few minutes. He could have sworn that for a split second after the mention of suicide her face lit up with happiness. Then her surroundings pulled her back to the normal pose of conventional regret. If Randolph had indeed committed suicide, and the jury believed that, then her husband would be a free man, able to leave the gaunt surroundings of Pentonville for the delights of St John’s Wood and Lord’s Cricket Ground.

‘No further questions, my lord,’ said Pugh, consulting his notes and giving the jury time to take in Mrs Colville’s evidence.

‘Please call Mrs Randolph Colville,’ said Pugh. Almost a hundred pairs of eyes followed Hermione Colville on her long journey towards the witness box.

‘Mrs Colville,’ Pugh began, ‘we have heard from your sister-in-law about the mental condition of your late husband in the days before his death. Would you agree with her about his state of mind?’

Mrs Randolph Colville glanced quickly over to Sir Jasper. ‘I would agree,’ she said.

‘And would you agree with her that it is possible he committed suicide?’

‘I would, yes,’ she said.

‘Did he mention it in conversation, that he might take his own life?’

‘I’m afraid there was no conversation in those days. We were not speaking to each other.’

‘And was that,’ said Pugh, taking a small sip of water, ‘because he wasn’t speaking to you or because you weren’t speaking to him?’

‘I’m sorry to say I wasn’t speaking to him. I was so angry. The last words we exchanged were a discussion about who should walk the dogs the evening before that letter arrived.’

‘Perhaps you could tell us, Mrs Colville, about your own state of mind in the period following the arrival of the letter from France?’

She stopped and looked up at the prisoner in the dock.

‘Some of the time,’ she said, ‘I was out of my mind with rage. I was angry with Randolph, so angry that I could scarcely look at him. He’d betrayed us all. I was angry at that French whore. But I knew I had to reorder my life. There was no point in being angry all the time.’

Charles Augustus Pugh took a deep breath. Now or never. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

‘Mrs Colville,’ he said, ‘I want to put a proposition to you if I may. We have heard from your sister and from yourself this morning about the possibility of suicide, that Randolph Colville took his own life. It certainly seems to fit some of the available evidence. If the jury were to believe it they would have to acquit the defendant. It would be in both your interests, an acquittal. Your sister-in-law would regain her husband. You would regain your brother-in-law. Mr Cosmo Colville would presumably regain his voice as well as his freedom. Is that not the case, Mrs Colville?’

‘I suppose it is, yes.’

Pugh paused and picked up a piece of stiff cardboard from the table of exhibits. ‘But I want to put to you, Mrs Colville, a rather different sequence of events.’

Mrs Colville looked yet again at Cosmo Colville. There was a desperate pleading in her eyes. There was no signal in reply. Everyone had gone completely silent in court. The eyes of judge, jury, pressmen, spectators were fixed on the slim figure in the witness box whose last conversation with
her dead husband had been about who should walk the dogs.

‘I put it to you, Mrs Colville, that on the morning of the wedding, you were indeed out of your mind with rage. Your husband had betrayed you. It wasn’t as if he betrayed you with some compliant mistress hidden away in the Home Counties. Randolph had betrayed you with another woman in another country. Not only had he betrayed you, he had actually married this other woman in Beaune. You were left, only half a wife. Is that not so?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Your future and that of your family were on the very edge of ruin. Your children would be known for ever after as the children of the bigamist. So, you went to the room in your house where the guns are kept. I have heard accounts of this room, gentlemen of the jury. There are enough firearms in there to equip a small regiment. You picked out the pistol because you knew how it worked. Is that not the case?’

Mrs Colville did not reply. A look that might have been fear flashed across her face.

Pugh paused and took another sip of his water. Lady Lucy was holding her husband’s hand very tightly, her eyes fixed on Hermione Colville. Richard Napier appeared to be making a sketch of the scales of justice that sat on top of the Old Bailey roof.

‘You kept the pistol in your bag all the way on that journey to Norfolk. You attended the wedding. You took a glass of champagne in the Nashes’ garden, Dutch courage amid the flower beds and the broken fountain.