The Jury (36 page)

“Yes, you did, didn't you!” The sneer was painfully apparent.

“I've just said so,” answered Mark. He was making no headway, but for Roderick's sake he went stubbornly on, according to plan. “Do you happen to remember when you last saw her?”

“Perfectly.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Yes, I do. How d'you like my cigarettes? Have another. Special line.”

Mark smiled. “Quite so. You're telling me to mind my own business. But don't bother to pretend you're drunk. It's too thin.”

“Really?”

“You're as sober as I am, fundamentally. And even more unhappy—which is saying a good deal. Roderick Strood is one of my oldest friends.” He spoke simply, without anger or guile. “You know they've charged him with the murder?”

Brian nodded without speaking.

“Yes,” said Mark. “They're trying to make out he poisoned her. Will you tell me this, Goodeve: is it true that you were with Daphne on the day of her death?”

“Yes. Do you mind?”

“Have you told the police that?” asked Mark, rather sharply.

Brian began laughing, and having begun he exhibited a disposition to go on endlessly. Laughter turned to coughing, and coughing seemed to jerk him out of his chair. He stood facing Perryman with a satirical grin. “No, Perryman,” he said, gasping for breath, “I haven't told the police. But you're welcome to, Perryman. Look”—he darted to the table —“first I'll have a little drink.” He poured out his drink. “Come and help yourself, Perryman. First a little drink, and then I'll get 'em for you.” Gulping down his drink he went out of the room, leaving the door open. Mark heard him lift the receiver from the telephone and ask, after a pause, for Whitehall 1212.

Mark strolled into the passage. “Why be a fool, Goodeve?”

“Is that Scotland Yard?” said Brian, into the telephone. “Mr Perryman wants to speak to you. He's found the Strood murderer. No, not the man they're charging—the real murderer. Mr Perryman will tell you all about it.” Grinning maliciously at Mark, he recited the address. “Send one of your best men, won't you? Someone who can read and write, if possible.” Coughing again seized him and he slammed the receiver down and gave himself up to a paroxysm. …

Pacing up and down the corridor with Elisabeth Andersch, Mark confessed to himself that Goodeve had made him feel a little silly that night, though he was too old a hand to be betrayed into looking so. The story of the young man's meeting with Daphne in Regent Street had not visibly interested the two officers sent round from the local station; nor had Roderick's advisers been able to turn it to any good account.

“Why did she die?” asked Elisabeth again, touching Mark's hand appealingly. “Do you think it was because of me, Mark?”

Mark shrugged his shoulders. “We shall never know.”

She did not hear his answer, for her mind, as he saw, had suddenly dropped Daphne and had seized again, desperately, upon Roderick. Out of the tail of his eye he saw the door of the court-room opening. The friendly constable stepped into the corridor.

Mark took a step towards him. “They're coming back?”

“Not yet, sir. Sorry, sir. His lordship's gone to his tea.”

BLANCHE IZELEY, tormented by anxiety and indecision, searched the faces of her fellow-jurors. The three days of the trial, and the two nights spent in a strange hotel under the surveillance of the court, had wrought drastic changes in her. The bland fiction in which her psyche had sheltered for the past five years had gradually yielded under the pressure of an ugly reality. Roderick and Daphne, Paul and Blanche, she could not avoid seeing the parallel, and once seen it loomed larger and larger in her imagination. She remembered, with particularity, that day on which Paul had decided to leave her and go to his new love. “What is it you think you see in her?” she asked him. “Well, for one thing,” said Paul, “she happens to be beautiful.” To which Blanche answered, gently, patronizingly: “But there is beauty in everyone, my dear. Do try to be clear about what you're doing. There is true beauty, and there is an illusion of the so-called senses. …” He interrupted: “I've heard that record, Blanche. Try another one, if you must talk.” “But listen, Paul,” she said sweetly reasoning, “if you can't see beauty in me any more, it's because …” “It's because you bore me,” he broke out passionately. “I'm so bored I can hardly breathe.” That was virtually his last word to her, and it was something which, since it could not be forgiven, had to be explained away as an aberration, an illusion, a sickness, a what-you-will—anything rather than
face it as a plain fact. There was a moment when Blanche saw herself visiting Paul and his woman with death in her hand, confronting them in their guilt and slaying them with one blast of her mighty thought: a fantasy born of the feeling that she could never breathe again so long as those two lived to shame her. A moment only, quickly buried under the mountain of her desperately induced persuasion that their so-called love for each other was merely a gross error of a kind from which she herself, having Truth to guide and sustain her, was gloriously immune. She trained herself to think of them, not with kindness or charity (though she called it that), but with a falsely-pitying smile. But the impact with this other story, the contagion of these other lives into which the trial of Roderick Strood had plunged her, had quickened that buried moment: the mountain heaved, the bitterness erupted. And, power being given into her hands, she saw a chance, at last, of taking vengeance against her former impotence, of getting even with the fate that had humiliated her, by cleansing the world of this Roderick-Paul. Such a plan could not be entertained in her consciousness: to recognize it made it impossible of fulfilment. In the instant that she caught herself wishing for the prisoner's death, she knew that only by saving him could she rid herself of guilt.

So, anxiously, almost with despair, she searched the faces of her fellow-jurors.

They had just been refreshing themselves with tea and toast, which had been brought into the conference-room by two solemn silent policemen, with the black-gowned usher as invigilator. The pale-faced little miss on her left, as Blanche noticed with vague disapproval, had consumed, with a furtive efficiency, as many as three fingers of buttered toast. Mr Bayfield's vigorous work with a handkerchief had failed to dislodge a crumb that had taken refuge in his moustache. Almost every face wore an expression that hovered between shame and defiance. To admit to hunger at such a time seemed somehow indecent; and to eat in stolid silence—for the debate was suspended by tacit consent during the munching period— was an embarrassment. Blanche herself took nothing: it was the only way in which she could gain, in her mind, an ascendancy over these other and grosser mortals. She felt, moreover,
incapable of swallowing. It was almost as if there were a rope round her neck. She wondered what sort of a tea the prisoner was having.

“Well,” said Mr Gaskin, “what about getting on with the job?”

In a voice harsh and dry with effort Blanche said abruptly: “I'm very unhappy about this case. I … I don't think we've considered all the difficulties.”

“No?” said Charles Underhay.

Bayfield muttered impatiently, but the foreman quelled him with a gesture.

“I feel,” said Blanche, taking courage, “that we've no right to condemn this man to death.”

The Major intervened. “But that isn't quite the point, is it? You've told us that you have conscientious objections to capital punishment. Quite entitled to your opinion, Mrs Izeley. Respect you for it. But that's a question we can't consider now. If I may say so?” he added, with a bow to the foreman.

“Well,” remarked Bonaker, “if no one else'll have the last bit of toast, I
will”
He gave the impression of a man thinking aloud at the top of his voice. “We shan't get another meal for a long time, by the look of it.”

Blanche, in her terror, looked like a small stubborn child. She trembled with nervous hatred of these men who were forcing a sin upon her. She felt that the whole burden of decision was hers. If the prisoner were condemned it would be she, not these others, who would have condemned him, because in her heart she had already condemned him.

“I still object,” she said weakly.

The silence of consternation fell upon the company. Charles Underhay broke it at last. “Are we to understand that you refuse to serve?”

Blanche nodded. It would be murder, she said to herself. Whether the prisoner lived or died was of no consequence to her. But she must save herself from the guilt of taking vengeance on Paul.

“Do you realize the consequences of that?” asked Underhay in a shocked voice.

Blanche did not answer, and suddenly Bonaker took up the
tale. He had swallowed his mouthful of toast, and his speech had its usual ponderous clarity. “It's like this,” he said, leaning towards Blanche, to the great inconvenience and indignation of Mr Bayfield. “If anyone drops out now, they'll have to get a new jury and start the trial all over again. Three days of it, don't you see? Everything all over again. Not very pleasant for the prisoner, that. Bit of an ordeal, I mean. It must be a worrying business for him. Stands to reason.” Blanche buried her face in her hands. Bonaker's voice went imperturbably on. “Now, you object to capital punishment, don't you?”

Blanche, uncovering her face, said firmly: “Yes, I do.”

“Very well,” said Bonaker. “Now look at it like this. The question of punishment doesn't arise unless we find this chap guilty. Do you follow me?”

Blanche nodded.

“Very well,” said Bonaker again. “Then you've no need to worry about that.”

Blanche frowned. “I don't quite see what you mean.”

“Simple enough,” Bonaker assured her. “If we don't find him guilty, the question of punishment needn't trouble you. And, don't you see, we're not going to find him guilty.”

“Oh, aren't we?” asked Blanche meekly.

“Speak for yourself, sir,” admonished Cyril Gaskin.

Bonaker, still addressing Blanche, went on to amplify his statement. He was evidently a man who liked to make everything clear. “This jury won't find him guilty. But some other jury might, don't you see?” Having satisfied Blanche Izeley he turned to the company in general. “May as well tell you, gentlemen, before we go any further. I don't agree with you.”

“You seem to be in a minority of one,” said Underhay. “Perhaps you'll give us your reasons.”

“The evidence isn't good enough.”

“Many a man has been hanged on no better,” remarked Mr Coates.

“Quite agree,” said Bonaker. “Time we stopped doing that sort of thing, in my opinion. It gave me the surprise of my life to hear you ladies and gentlemen saying the fellow was guilty. I won't say I don't think he did it——”

“But,” said Gaskin, “if you think he did it——”

“I won't say I don't think he did it,” repeated Bonaker heavily, “because that would be putting it too mildly. I'm quite sure he didn't do it. You've only got to look at him, the way he gave evidence and all that. He's not the murdering kind.”

“Surely it's a mistake,” suggested Underhay, “to think that a murderer is necessarily a different kind of person from the rest of us. Some are, of course,” he added hastily, conscious of a stir of protest among his audience. “There
is
such a thing, no doubt, as a murderous type. But there's a sense, isn't there, in which every one of us is a potential murderer? Given, I mean, a sufficiently powerful motive, such as Strood had?” He glanced round the table for support. At the back of his mind was a picture of his daughter Betty, growing up in a world where murderers went unpunished, undeterred. “And opportunity, such as Strood had.”

“And a good nerve,” said Bonaker, “which Strood hasn't.”

“Personally speaking,” put in Gaskin, “I think he's got a wonderful nerve. Pretty cool customer, if you ask me.”

“That's because you've made up your mind he's guilty,” said Bonaker.

“Look at the way he behaved in the witness-box,” urged Clare Cranshaw. “The calm, collected way he spoke. The
careful
way.”

“That's because you've made up your mind he's guilty,” said Bonaker again. “If he murdered his wife, his composure was remarkable. But if he didn't, it was quite natural that he should be self-controlled and careful in his answers. Fact is, once a man's charged with murder nothing he does is right, in some people's eyes. If he gibbers with funk, that shows he's guilty. If he doesn't gibber with funk, he's guilty just the same, and a cool customer into the bargain.”

“I agree with you there,” said Major Forth, unexpectedly. “A gentleman,” he explained, with a side-glance at Gaskin and apparently for his information, “knows how to keep his nerve when under fire. All the same,” he went on, addressing Bonaker, “I got the impression the fellow was lying.”

“I got the impression he was telling the truth,” said Bonaker,

“But, my dear sir,” cried Underhay, excitedly, “what a tale he told!”

“What was wrong with it?” asked Bonaker.

“Everything was wrong with it.”

“Hear, hear!” Chorus of voices.

“Everything's too much,” said Bonaker stubbornly. “I'm waiting to hear what was wrong with his story.”

Everyone looked at the foreman. But Charles was now beyond feeling diffidence. “Here's a married man of the upper middle class. His wife, by all accounts, is young and beautiful. Nevertheless he carries on an intrigue with another woman. Well, I dare say we oughtn't to make too much of that. The man's not being tried for his morals. The wife resented his infidelity, as any wife would. There were quarrels about it, and ultimately a separation. A temporary separation, if you like, but enough to show that there was no question of her condoning his behaviour. As I say, she resented it. The prisoner admits as much, and even if he didn't there's plenty of evidence on that point. However, he does admit it. He admits that ten days before her death she was still bitterly conscious of her grievance against him. Yet he asks us to believe that at their last interview, a few hours before she died, she freely and deliberately sent him to his mistress. With her blessing,” said Charles, indignantly sarcastic. “Now that's what I call a tall story. In fact I call it an impudent lie.”