Take No Farewell - Retail (42 page)

My possessions reached Hyde Park Gardens Mews on Saturday morning promptly and intact. I could not summon the heart or the energy for systematic unpacking and it was in a dispiriting chaos of tea-chests and suitcases that Imry found me when he called by late that afternoon. I was glad to see him on more counts than he could have imagined, but of his enquiries about my interview with Fellows-Smith I made short shrift. Instead, I ushered him into the only armchair that the sitting-room boasted, poured him a generous glass of scotch, perched on an up-ended portmanteau with a glass of my own and told him what, if my stock of favours had not yet been exhausted, I earnestly wanted him to do.

‘Attend the trial? Surely you’ll be there yourself.’

‘No. She’s expressly forbidden it.’

‘But … why?’

‘She doesn’t want to see me, even across a crowded courtroom.’

‘Does she know you’re paying Sir Henry’s fees?’

‘No. And I don’t want her to know. It’s the least I owe her. That and obedience to her wishes, however much I might like to defy them.’

‘Well, I’ll go, of course, if you want me to. But what will my presence achieve? I’ll just be another onlooker.’

‘An onlooker I can trust, Imry, that’s the point. The newspapers are unreliable. Sir Henry will tell me whatever he thinks I want to hear. And Windrush will follow his lead. For the truth about how it’s going – good or bad – I’ll have to look to you.’

‘Very well, then. I’ll attend.’

‘This will spare you a scrimmage at the entrance.’ I handed him the ticket. ‘It looks like it could be for the grandstand at Lord’s, doesn’t it? I suppose, in some respects, a trial for murder is a sporting event. But it’s a cruel one, more like
bear-baiting
than cricket. And there’s a great deal at stake.’ I drained my glass. ‘More, I sometimes think, than I yet know.’

Sunday 13 January 1924 dawned blood-red over London. I and most other residents of the city woke to a sky more apocalyptically coloured than any we could ever recall. This was more than a shepherd’s warning. This was a phenomenon that could not be ignored. A harbinger of tempests, according to my milkman. A precursor of national disaster, if my newsagent was to be believed. (He took the imminent prospect of a Labour government as confirmation of this.)

I described the dawn to Edward later that morning, standing by his grave. I asked him if he thought Consuela had seen it from her cell at Holloway and what it might portend for her trial. But he did not tell me. The dead, of course, have no need of omens. For them the future is indistinguishable from the past. The agony of our uncertainty is lost on them, because, in their world, every issue is settled before it is raised. Thus, to Edward, Consuela’s fate – and mine with it – was long since sealed. And the only kindness he could show me was to leave me in ignorance of what it might be.

Chapter Fourteen

IMRY LODGED AT
his club for the duration of the trial. There, each evening, we met to discuss its progress. And there, each night, Imry committed to paper his recollection of the events in court and his reaction to them. Hitherto, his involvement in the case had been entirely vicarious. Now, all of a rush, he had a chance to see the people I had told him about, to listen to their testimonies and to gauge their honesty. For as long as the trial lasted, I was to see them through his eyes and to hear them through his ears.

Monday 14 January 1924

I had never entered the Old Bailey before this morning. I had passed it many times, of course, never failing as I did so to recall the controversy aroused by its design. Poor old Mountford got it in the neck from
The Architectural Review
for this jumbled piece of baroque and I have always felt sorry for him because of it. I could not see what alternative there was on such a cramped site. This morning, however, I changed my mind
.

My disquiet began on the pavement outside. A crowd that looked as if it were queuing for a football match had gathered at the public entrance. On their faces and in their voices was something I did not like: a desire for sensation amounting almost to blood-lust. And inside, filling the great hall beneath the dome, was a seething ruck of lawyers, journalists and jurors, all tricked out in uniform for the occasion: baggy gowns, shabby raincoats and ill-fitting demob suits respectively. Their voices rose in a babble towards the
painted
ceilings and decorated arches, where truth and justice are celebrated in oil and plaster. And when I gazed about at all the lavish expanse of verd antique and cipollino, I thought: this is not right; this is not how it should be
.

Within minutes, I was seated in the court, astonished to find myself so centrally placed, so very much part of what was about to unfold. Dark wood; green leather; lecterns; ink-wells; water-jugs; bustle and murmuration all around; and a sickly half-light descending from on high. These were my first queasy impressions of what I had blundered into: an over-sized and ill-aired schoolroom in which the furniture had been eccentrically re-arranged
.

I sat quite still amidst the hubbub, letting the function and character of the chamber disclose itself to my mind, knowing that, as the days passed, what struck me now as bizarre and impractical would come to seem natural and inevitable. As with life, so with buildings: we adapt to the prevailing madness more easily and more swiftly than at the outset it seems possible to imagine
.

My seat is in a row immediately behind the benches occupied by legal counsel. We are as close as we would be in the stalls of a theatre, their black-gowned shoulders and tasselled wigs comprising an unyielding phalanx a foot in front of my nose. Beyond them, at a slightly lower level, is the ushers’ table, where pink-bound documents and obese tomes are scattered apparently at random. At the head of the table, to my right, is a long desk occupied by a lean and supercilious gentleman whom I take to be the clerk of the court. To his right, in a tiny cubicle of her own, is the stenographer. Behind them is the wooden rampart of the bench, seemingly large enough to accommodate a whole platoon of judges, let alone the one destined to preside over events. On the wall behind the bench is the Royal Coat of Arms and the Sword of Justice
.

On the far side of the court is the witness-box, raised and canopied in the fashion of a pulpit. To the left of it sit the jury, in two rows of six, penned in like reluctant pew-fellows. And somewhere to the left of the jury are the press-benches, obscured from me by the dock, the vast proportions of which are perhaps the single most striking feature of the chamber. If the bench could contain a platoon, the dock seems capable of holding an entire
company
of defendants. Steps within it communicate with the cells below, so that the arrival of the accused is immediately apparent only to the occupants of the public gallery. This is above and behind me, a cramped wooden balcony with little to commend it but the view
.

The court was crowded this morning, every seat taken. According to the list displayed outside
, Rex versus Caswell
was to commence at 10.30 a.m. before Mr Justice Stillingfleet. Leading for the Crown was Mr M. Talbot, KC, assisted by Mr H. Finch, KC, and Mr F. Hebthorpe. The defence was to be led by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett, KC, assisted by Mr R. Browne and Mr G. Forsyth. Sir Henry I already felt I knew from Geoff’s account of him: rotund, smiling, patently at ease in such surroundings. His two juniors seemed in awe of him, Browne preposterously young and earnest, Forsyth sturdy and workmanlike. Talbot distinguished himself at once by casting superior glances in all directions and shaking hands with nearly everybody, including, amidst conspicuous guffaws, Sir Henry. Finch and Hebthorpe existed in his shadow and only slowly attained a separate identity in my mind. Various solicitors twittered on the margins, including Windrush, who, again, I recognized from Geoff’s description
.

Looking to my right and left, I could see nobody who matched my expectations of the Caswell family. Perhaps, I concluded, they were not in court. Some seats next to the jury-box were filled by middle-aged men whose bearing and demeanour proclaimed them as policemen: definitely no Caswells there. As for the keen-eyed lady in the pink toque with whom I was shoulder to shoulder, and indeed every other occupant of the seats in my row, their general quiver of anticipation suggested a relish for the occasion entirely free of personal involvement. No doubt they had pulled strings rather than stood on the pavement all night to be where they now were, but their motive was the same, one I could not help feeling was indecent, if not downright obscene. If they did not have to witness the chilling spectacle of the law in action, why in God’s name did they want to?

The usher’s announcement caught me unawares in the midst of this brown study of my fellow humans. Rising later than most,
I
realized that all delay was now at an end. The trial of a capital crime was about to commence. Mr Justice Stillingfleet – tall, beak-nosed and implacable in full-bottomed wig and scarlet robe – swept into place. His first action, performed before some of us had even sat down again, was to snort into a huge sky-blue handkerchief with such deliberation that I could almost have believed it was a stipulated legal preliminary
.

And then, as I looked back at the dock, I saw that it was no longer empty. Consuela Caswell – the woman I had heard so much about but had never met – was standing there, calm and erect, head raised, gazing straight ahead as if focusing on the very point of the blade of the Sword of Justice. She wore a black suit of some kind, trimmed to the waist, and a white blouse with a large bow at her throat. She was bare-headed, her dark hair cut short, and there was no trace of jewellery or make-up, except the slender gold band of her wedding-ring, which glistened in the light cast by the lofty chandelier as she rested her hands on the low rail running along the edge of the dock
.

Austere and expressionless, she seemed to me in that moment quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. How could you have deserted her, Geoff? That question leapt instantly into my mind. How could you have brought yourself to betray her? At thirty-five she was still so lovely that I could scarcely take my eyes off her. At twenty-two how much more exquisite must she have been?

Suddenly, the charge was being read. ‘Consuela Evelina Caswell, you are charged on two counts: firstly that, on the ninth day of September nineteen hundred and twenty-three, at Clouds Frome in the county of Herefordshire, you did, feloniously, wilfully and with malice aforethought, murder by the administration of poison one Rosemary Victoria Caswell; and secondly that, on the same date and in the same place, you did, feloniously, wilfully and with malice aforethought, attempt to murder by the administration of poison one Victor George Caswell. How do you plead on the first count?’

‘Not guilty.’ She spoke softly but definitely, with no hint of hesitation
.

‘And on the second count?’

‘Not guilty.’

Now, as a stern wardress touched Consuela’s elbow and she lowered herself onto a chair so that I could only see her head and shoulders; now, as gowned figures wheeled and circled below her like so many carrion crows and the usher cleared his throat explosively; now, for the first time, the force and momentum of this ritual was borne in upon me. The juggernaut of justice was underway. And I shuddered in its wake
.

The empanelling of the jury took more than an hour. Sir Henry objected to three men who were older and better dressed than the others. I found myself wondering why. Because they looked like the kind of husbands who might fear being poisoned by their wives? Because women might be supplied in their places? If the latter was his reason, he was disappointed. There were only two female faces among the final twelve
.

The judge instructed the jury, after another extravagant nose-blowing, to disregard the fact that the trial had been transferred from Hereford at the request of the defence. ‘This should not be taken to imply a lack of confidence in their case,’ he concluded. I could not help feeling that, if he really wanted them to disregard the point, he would have done better not to mention it in the first place
.

A little before noon, Talbot rose to address the court. I already knew, of course, what he was going to say. So, I imagine, did most of those around me. The essence of the Crown’s case was simple: that Consuela, her jealousy aroused by anonymous letters questioning her husband’s fidelity, had sought to poison him with arsenic, but had actually killed his niece instead. Talbot set the matter out in great detail, specifying dates, times, locations and logistics. Copies of the letters were distributed, then read aloud for the benefit of those, like me, denied a copy. They sounded as crude and predictable as might have been expected. ‘It’s time you knew the truth about your husband.’ ‘He’s been having an affair with another woman these six months past.’ ‘A pair of shameless adulterers, one of them your husband.’ ‘Closed bedroom curtains one afternoon a week at a certain house in Hereford.’ ‘I know
what
happens there. It’s time you did as well.’ ‘Think about this next time he demands his rights.’ More in the same vein drove the lady in the pink toque to her phial of
sal volatile
in a spasm of delighted prurience; this, one felt, was what she had come for
.

Talbot’s exposition was a model of dispassionate clarity, or so it seemed. He spoke slowly and without recourse to oratorical devices. And yet, increasingly as I listened to him, I became suspicious of what I heard. He is a handsome, intelligent, supremely self-confident man, heavy-lidded and with enough shadow about his chin to warrant shaving twice a day. There is withal a swagger about him, a drawl, a languid air halfway between boredom and disgust. Precise, correct, calm and measured, he nonetheless gives me the impression that he considers the whole business of prosecution to be beneath him; that nothing in this case or the people involved in it merits more than his passing attention
.