Fog of Doubt (21 page)

‘We sound like a couple of ruddy owls,' said Charlesworth.

‘Owls are remarkable for seeing in the dark; but it was too dark for
me
, in her room that night.'

The inquest had been adjourned ‘to allow the police to make further enquiries'. ‘Though what on earth we're supposed to discover, I don't know.'

‘I knew Rosie Evans pretty well,' said Cockrill. ‘I must say I don't see her working out all that.'

‘The alternatives.…'

‘The alternative is that someone put it into her head—either to help her or the other thing.'

‘Who on earth would want to kill Rosie Evans?'

‘I don't know,' said Cockie. ‘Who on earth wanted to kill that poor, inoffensive Frog?'

The curve of the great Edwardian bar glowed ruddily in the dreadful pink neon lighting; in the intricate carved wooden shelving behind the bar, bottles were reflected back and back again in their mirrored recesses. They repaired to an alcove, horribly upholstered in red, and sat down uneasily on the rexeline-covered seat. ‘Let's begin, anyway, by taking the charitable view. Dr. Edwards, in all innocence, gave her the original prescription; with or without advice she thought up this bright idea of getting a larger dose, and she went and overdid it by accident.'

‘Or by design,' said Cockrill, sombrely.

‘What, suicide? But why?'

‘She was having an unwanted baby. Everybody had lost interest in her, nobody was helping her, they were all taken up with the business of the murder. Old Faithful, who might still have been counted on, had suddenly learned that she was nothing but a nymphomaniac; for that matter, they'd all learned that, and her stock was at zero.' Cockrill drained his glass and set it down with a bump. ‘Not that I believe it; she was not the type.'

‘One so often hears that said,' said Charlesworth, suddenly looking much older than his years. ‘But these kids—they do, you know, don't they? They're all froth and bubble—they haven't much stamina. One does find them giving way to sudden fits of despair.'

‘This wasn't a fit of despair,' said Cockie. ‘It was a carefully thought out, elaborately carried out plan.' He collected the glasses and went to the bar with them; Charlesworth watched him carrying them back towards him, shouldering his way crabwisc through the crowd, not spilling a drop. He said, as he sat down: ‘No—suicide's out.'

‘Then, still in sweet charity.…'

‘There's no charity in this thing,' said Cockie. He stared down into his glass with troubled eyes. ‘Don't let's fool ourselves. This wasn't a mistake. Suppose someone wants to help her, damn it all—they know that Dr. Edwards' dose won't amount to much, they suggest this way in which she may make it more—surely to God they might tell her twice as much, or three times as much, or if you like four times as much! But twelve times! Twelve times! Nobody in their senses would take such a risk.'

‘They might have suggested less and she thought she'd go one better.'

‘But she went nine or ten better,' said Cockie. ‘She wouldn't go one better to the extent of twelve times the dose; not even Rosie.'

‘On the other hand, Rosie did take that much.'

‘On the advice of somebody she trusted,' insisted Cockie.

Charlesworth thought it all over. He said, slowly: ‘We're now talking of laymen?'

‘We're talking of Matilda Evans and old Mrs. Evans and Melissa Weeks.'

‘Of course it
may
have been a non-layman; a doctor?'

Cockie shrugged.

‘I mean, Thomas Evans could have put her up to it before he was taken into custody. We've nothing to prove that he didn't really know about the baby business, all along.'

‘He may have,' agreed Cockie. ‘He may have put her up to it and Dr. Edwards may have put her up to it. Neither of them could legitimately have given her such a dose as would terminate the pregnancy; they might see it as a way to help her without incriminating themselves. But if no layman would make such a hideous mistake—how much less a doctor.' The pastille tin in which he kept his tobacco shot off the slippery surface of the seat and clattered on to the floor. ‘Blast the bloody thing,' he said, and stooped and groped about for it. ‘I'm old,' he said, straightening himself with a hand to his back. ‘I get feelings in my bones. I've got a feeling in my bones that this thing's murder.…'

But murder by whom? By the murderer of Raoul Vernet—or were they to believe that
two
killers lurked in that little group of plain, everyday people centring upon the house in Maida Vale? By Matilda Evans, then? But Matilda had never for a moment believed Raoul Vernet to be Rosie's seducer; she had believed her lover to be a young man, a student. And what reason had Matilda to murder Rosie, to murder her by a cold, reasoned, premeditated plan? Only that, by ‘getting herself into trouble' Rosie had made trouble for them all.

Or old Mrs. Evans? But old Mrs. Evans could not have lifted her crippled hand to strike the blow; nor would she have had any reason, for she too had been told a story of a young man, a big, strong, young fisherman from the East, sweeping poor, fascinated Rosie off her feet. Mrs. Evans had had no reason to kill Raoul Vernet; and no reason to kill Rosie, whom she held so little responsible for her sins.

Well, Melissa Weeks then? Melissa seemed hardly likely to have avenged Rosie's seduction so drastically, even if she had not known that she would have to take on an army to do the thing properly. As for Rosie—what had Melissa against Rosie Evans, except for an occasional boy friend pinched, an occasional hope destroyed? And Thomas—Thomas who had been in prison while the plot against Rosie had been in action, who loved Rosie with all his heart; who purported to have known nothing of Rosie's love affairs? Or Tedward? ‘Whether or not he could have killed the man,' said Cockie, ‘or whether or not he would have—can you conceive that he would have killed this girl? He was in love with her, he's been in love with her since she was an adolescent. He'd discovered that she'd been deceiving them all, he'd discovered, if you like, that if he'd killed Vernet, he'd killed the poor chap on an absolute misconception of the whole affair. But even so … You see, if he started this thing he must have started it that night; he must have suggested it to her when he took her upstairs, under the guise of “administering a sedative”, What?—just because he was disillusioned in her? It doesn't ring true; it simply doesn't ring true.' He shook his head and the tin box shot off the shiny seat again and on to the floor. ‘But I get feelings in my bones these days,' he said, retrieving it again. ‘And I've got a feeling in my bones that this thing's murder—murder by suggestion, by a person or persons unknown.'

Three days later, at the renewed inquest, the jury, bewildered by a plethora of possibilities and alternatives, chose the most exciting and brought in a verdict to precisely the same effect.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
O,
labelled now as person or persons unknown, the Maida Vale household stumbled through the necessities of routine, with Tedward, a ghost in the familiar, shabby old overcoat that, in a night, seemed to have grown so much too big for him, stumbling in their wake. Interviews, questions, answers, instructions; the police, the curious public, the ever-present press. Not a day but their names appeared in the papers, with inaccurate details of their private lives, with grey, smudgy photographs, misleading headlines, misrepresentations of the ‘recollections' of their friends. ‘Mrs. Evans', ‘Rosie Evans', ‘Dr Edwards' were household words. If it were true that eating created appetite, thought Matilda, the public had been fed to starvation point. They awaited with avid eagerness the reappearance of Thomas in the magistrate's court.

Thomas had almost looked forward to this day; a break, anyway, in the deadly sameness of life in his prison ward, with the constant companionship of his friend with the touch of schizophrenia. It was not very pleasant when one got here, however; perched up in the damn little narrow dock with no room for one's legs, and one's self-conscious back turned to the people in the long narrow benches so close behind one. There was quite an array here to-day, a smooth gentleman representing the Director of Public Prosecutions hurriedly mugging up his notes, his own solicitor, Mr. Granger, and a youngish barrister, patently anxious, representing Mr. James Dragon in the prisoner's interests. The public squashed and squeezed into the gallery behind him, which was not a gallery at all really, but a sort of loose-box, very long and nearly as narrow as his beastly dock, and raised not more than a step or so above ground level. He thought he caught a glimpse of Damien Jones there, among the crowd; it was very decent of the kid to have come.…

The gentleman from Public Prosecutions had probably just been doing a crossword after all for he had obviously no hesitations about his piece. He stood up and rattled it off, very clear, very brief, very fair. ‘That is the case against the prisoner, Your Worship.' The case against the prisoner was that the victim had seduced the prisoner's sister, or at any rate the prisoner had believed he had; that the prisoner had put forward a false alibi, a previously planned false alibi, claiming to have been called out on a visit to a sick child in a house which, in fact, proved to be untenanted; that the weapons used in the killing had belonged to the prisoner and the prisoner, as a doctor, would have known how and where to strike; and finally, and surely conclusively, that there had been found in the prisoner's car, traces of the victim's blood which could not have got there unless he were the murderer. Or let the gentleman from Public Prosecutions put it in this way—the prisoner had arrived back after the discovery of the body
and by his own admission had put his car away before entering the house;
by his own admission, he had not returned to the car. How then, could those traces of the dead man's blood, have got into the prisoner's car? ‘That is the case for the prosecution.' The gentleman from the D.P.P. sat down. And a damn thin case it is too, he said to himself.

Witnesses, witnesses, witnesses.… Detective Inspector Charlesworth, Detective Inspector Cockrill, Matilda, nervous and anxious, hardly taking her eyes off Thomas, expert witnesses, out of turn because they had urgent business elsewhere and were anxious to be released as soon as possible, if His Worship could make it convenient to the Court.… So am I anxious to be released as soon as possible, thought Thomas, ruefully; and he wondered how soon
that
would be convenient to the court and whether it would be ever, whether he had not tied this noose a bit too effectively about his own neck. Melissa Weeks, nervous and gabbling, Gran, nervous and charming, Tedward.…

He walked slowly and heavily, like an old man; and Thomas remembered Rosie and made no more jokes to himself. ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give to this court shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.… Yes, I arrived at the house with Rosie, with Miss Evans, at about twenty-five to ten … Yes, I left my car in the road outside. Yes, I removed the ignition key; it would be an automatic action, I always do.…' A clerk took it all down in long-hand, filling up pages and pages of foolscap with large, flowing writing, enormously widely spaced. Counsel waited to put each new question till the clerk had finished with the last. Now and again he said, ‘Just a minute', and the magistrate asked witness to go a little more slowly, please, because this gentleman had to take down what was being said. At the end of the witnesses' evidence he would read it all back to him in a rapid, monotonous gabble and witness, stepping down from the box, would be invited to sign it and would do so, with much fumbling for glasses and preliminary scratchings, trying out the police court pen.…

Counsel for Thomas Evans was on his feet. ‘Dr. Edwards—did you see the defendant's car outside the house when you arrived?'

‘No,' said Tedward.

‘You have told us that you left your car and went up into the house?'

‘Yes,' said Tedward.

‘Followed by Miss Rose Evans,' said Counsel, skating delicately over any question as to how closely Miss Rose Evans had followed.

‘Yes.'

‘And later saw the defendant enter the hall through the front door?'

‘Yes; about ten minutes after I got there.'

‘Did you observe anything about his attitude to the presence of the dead body in the hall?'

‘He seemed very shocked and surprised,' said Tedward.

‘He seemed very shocked and surprised; as though he were seeing this body for the first time?'

‘Yes, certainly.'

‘And then, Dr. Edwards, what did you do?'

‘Well, one or other of us suggested that as the telephone wire had been torn out by the fall, I should go for the police; so I went back to my car.'

‘I see. And on this occasion, did you see any car outside the house?'

Leaning against the wall behind the witness-box, Charlesworth shifted from foot to foot in an agony of suspense. On the answer to this one question, so much hung; if Thomas Evans were committed for trial, what was one to do about Dr. Edwards, about his confession, about Rosie's confirmation of his confession, about the faked telephone call? They had let the thing drift too far, that was the truth of it; in face of the verdict on Rosie, ought they not to have withdrawn the charge against Thomas and started all over again? But they had not; and whichever way it went, he, Charlesworth, would get the brickbats, that was certain. And rightly so; he had been too damn hasty in charging Thomas Evans. Ted Edwards had thrown out hints that he could clear Thomas Evans; if he didn't do so now … Charlesworth prayed fervently to heaven to intervene.

And heaven intervened. The dead hand of Rosie, which in life had tumbled the little pawns about so violently, stretched forth from her casket of ashes and picked up one little pawn and tossed it out into the sunshine of freedom; and thrust another on to the vacant square. And Tedward put his hand into the dead hand of his love, and let it move him where it would. ‘Yes. This time there was a car outside the house: Thomas Evans' car.'