Bosanquet’s expression hadn’t changed, nor had his stress. Conversationally he informed the jury: “You will hear medical evidence that the child had been dead since approximately the time that he disappeared. You will also hear, however, that he did not die on that first night and probably not for forty-eight hours afterwards. The pathological experts will tell you that he had received mortal injuries, through his skull having been battered in, though with what precise implement or implements it is impossible to say. The pathological experts will also tell you that there were signs of lacerations and other wounds on his body, not connected with the mortal blows, which may have been inflicted many hours before death.
“That is something of what happened to Eric, though I am afraid that I shall have to tell you more later. I now come to the connection between him and the defendants in the dock.”
He made the slightest of gestures to his right, but continued to gaze steadily at the jury.
“So far as is known, Eric had not spoken to either of them before the evening of September 20. He may never have seen them before. There is evidence, however, that they had seen him. These two young women share a room in the house of Miss Pateman’s parents. They have also, for two years past, rented a cottage in the country, where they have been accustomed to go at weekends. You will hear more, I am afraid, of Rose Cottage. It is near Melton Mowbray, and some considerable distance from Markers Copse. It has, however, become not uncommon, as you will hear, for their acquaintances, or members of a circle to which they belong, to rent cottages similar to theirs at convenient distances from the town, and they are known to have visited one in the Market Harborough direction, in fact in Snaseby.”
That was a reference, which some besides me must have picked up, to George Passant’s group. Bosanquet left it there, and went on: “It may sound as though Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were living a luxurious life. I might remind you that they were each drawing good salaries, Miss Pateman as a secretary, Miss Ross as a trained clerical worker. They had left school with their O-levels, Miss Pateman with seven and Miss Ross with four, and in the normal run of things they were regarded as valuable employees whose security wasn’t in doubt. For two years past they had been able to run a car, a Morris saloon. As it happens, that car had its own part, a negative but finally a significant part, in the story of Eric’s disappearance.”
Patiently, meticulously, he described the police investigations. They had interviewed some thousands of people who might have seen Eric on the evening of September 20. There had been several hundred reports from others who thought they had (or, though he didn’t say it, couldn’t resist either exhibiting themselves or taking the sadistic bait). Witnesses, sound and level-headed, were almost certain that they had seen Eric walking off with a pair of men or a single boy. Others believed they had noticed him catching a bus. Several had caught sight of him in various makes of car. These stories took weeks to sift, and all turned out to be false.
The careful words tapped gently into the court. The minute hand was getting round to twelve. The judge leaned forward and asked: “Is all this quite necessary, Mr Recorder?”
“There is a great deal of complexity, my lord.”
“But do we need all of it?”
“I’m inclined to think it may be as well.”
The voices were courteous, silky, and just perceptibly tense. There might be some past history between the two men: or was the judge simply impatient? He knew, of course, everything the lawyers knew. No one on either side believed there could be any challenge to the facts. He had presumably expected that there would be a short opening speech, after which the defence, instead of trying to disprove the facts, pleaded diminished responsibility at once. Bosanquet stood there, amiable, obstinate. This was his case: he wasn’t going to be hurried or budged. It might be that he had a double motive. I thought, and later had it confirmed, that he must have heard that the defence were still uncertain about their plea: though at that time I didn’t guess the reason. And also he could be insuring against the medical evidence, once diminished responsibility was brought in: by being so rational himself, he was underlining how calculated the crime had been, just as he had, as though by accident, reminded everyone that the two women were of more than average intelligence.
Without altering his pace, he persevered. Many reports of persons who thought themselves eye-witnesses had been analysed and discarded. But two, which had been received in the third week of the investigation, had something in common. In both, the witnesses thought they had seen a child sitting between two people in the front seat of a car, with a woman driving. One of these sightings had taken place not far from the recreation ground. The child, as Mrs Ramsden would testify, appeared to be smiling and waving, the other adult’s arm round his neck and shoulders. Was the other adult a man or a woman? That Mrs Ramsden hadn’t been sure of, since the face was obscured by dark glasses. The second sighting had been a mile away from Rose Cottage. Mr Berry, who was working in his garden, had seen a car travelling very fast: he had noticed a child on the front seat but could not be positive about the other occupants. He had several times before observed Miss Ross and Miss Pateman driving to Rose Cottage: but he did not bring these occasions to mind, and this was not the car he had seen previously. It was in fact a brown Austin, and the number plate was not noticed at either sighting, or else was obscured.
“Those were the first indications which brought the defendants within the scope of the enquiry. I have to remind you that the police had many leads which seemed far more positive and more worth pursuing. But the police routine could not overlook even the most unpromising of suggestions. And so, as a matter of routine, Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were interviewed for the first time on October 6, that is, three days before Eric’s body was found. They were, as you will hear, both calm and co-operative. They expressed themselves as horrified by the disappearance and anxious to help. They denied any knowledge of the boy, but were very willing to account for their movements in the weekend of September 20–22. Their car had, as it happened, needed repairing, and they had left it in their usual garage. So they had gone out to Rose Cottage by bus and spent their usual quiet weekend. On the Saturday morning Miss Ross had done a little shopping in the village. They had returned to the Patemans’ house by the last bus on the Sunday night.
“All this sounded quite natural. As a matter of routine the police checked one or two details of their account. Miss Ross was remembered as shopping in the village as usual on the Saturday morning. No one had noticed anything unusual, outside their ordinary weekend habits. In the same way, an enquiry was made at their garage, the Wyvern Garage in Whitehorse Street, and their car had duly been left there for repair during the weekend, as they had stated. But here Detective-Constable Hallam, whom you will hear in evidence, asked some further questions. He wanted to know what had been wrong with the car. The answers did not satisfy him. The garage proprietor, Mr Norman, had been slightly puzzled himself. There had been a small jamming in the gear change, but only of the kind which experienced car owners like the defendants could put right in a few minutes themselves. This was simply a straw in the wind, but Detective-Constable Hallam was not satisfied.”
The enquiries went on, Bosanquet leaving nothing out. The car was conspicuous, it was well known in the neighbourhood. It occurred to the detective-constable to discover whether it had ever been noticed on the other side of the town, in the vicinity of Eric Mawby’s house. He had found witnesses who had seen such a car patrolling, not one evening but three or four evenings consecutively, the route between Eric’s house and the recreation ground.
“This was still a straw in the wind,” said Bosanquet, with no emphasis at all. “But Detective-Constable Hallam’s superiors thought it justified a visit to the Patemans’ house, at a time when Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were present. We have now come to December last, when, of course, Eric’s body had already been discovered. At this second interview Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were not as co-operative as at the first. They refused to discuss the repairs to the car, and after a while refused to answer further questions.”
Silence. The hallucinations of fact. Cora had her gaze still turned on Kitty, who had begun, in a frenetic fashion, to scribble notes and push them forward to her solicitor. She was writing as assiduously as the judge himself.
“There followed a third interview, this time at Rose Cottage,” Bosanquet said. “During the questioning of Miss Ross and Miss Pateman, which was being conducted by Detective-Inspector Morley, other officers were searching the cottage and the garden. For some time this search revealed nothing. The cottage was swept and garnished. But in due course one of the officers, Detective-Sergeant Cross, discovered a small metal object pushed into the corner of a shelf. He recognised it as an angle joint which might have come from a Meccano set. He asked them to explain why it was there. At that point Miss Pateman said or screamed something across to her companion – something like, though no one can be definite about the exact words, ‘You blasted fool’.
“Neither of the defendants produced any explanation about the presence of this Meccano unit. They said it had nothing to do with them. After a further interval officers searching the garden found, buried in the bushes, the box of what appeared to be a new Number One Meccano Set, containing most of its components, and carrying on the lid a tab from the Midland Educational Company. At this stage the defendants were separated, cautioned, and brought back to police headquarters for further enquiries.”
Bosanquet glanced at his wristwatch. As though under suggestion, others of us did the same. It was ten minutes to one.
“By this time, since the officers had spent some hours at Rose Cottage, it was Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless the manager of the Midland Educational Company was immediately contacted, and search, of course, continued at the cottage. The bill for the purchase of a Number One Meccano Set was traced, bearing the date of September 18 last year, that is, two days before Eric’s disappearance. The shop assistant who had made this transaction was visited at her home. She was able to remember the purchaser as someone answering to the description of Miss Ross.
“Meanwhile Miss Ross was being examined alone by Detective-Superintendent Maxwell. He will tell you that she was still denying knowledge of the Meccano set, although in a parallel examination Miss Pateman was providing explanations, such as, that it was a long-forgotten present which had never been delivered. The detective-superintendent was given the information from the Midland Educational Company. He told Miss Ross and asked her to account for it. Then she said: ‘Yes, we took him out to the cottage that Friday night. We borrowed a car to do it.’”
In a tone indistinguishable from that in which he quoted her, he spoke to the judge: “I’m inclined to think, my lord, this might be a convenient time to break off.”
“As you like, Mr Bosanquet.”
The politeness, the bowing judge, the ritual, Cora’s blonde head disappearing underground. When I had followed George and Margaret downstairs, the entrance hall was full, people were pushing towards the refreshment table. Outside, in the spring air, cameras clicked. Some were press cameras, but the journalists had not emerged yet, and I led the other two away, trying to hurry George’s invalid pace. I heard some whispers and thought I could pick one out as “that’s her uncle”.
We walked, Margaret in the middle, George’s heavy slow step with feet out-turned delaying us. Neither Margaret nor I could find anything to say. Instead, George spoke: “It’s nasty,” he said.
His words, like all the words spoken that morning, could not have been more matter-of-fact.
“It’s nasty, of course,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry, George,” said Margaret.
He smiled at her, a diffident, gentle smile.
“Still,” he went on, “wait till you hear the answer.”
Margaret couldn’t reply, nor could I. Was he whistling up his old unextinguishable optimism, or was he just pretending? Wait till you hear the answer. I had heard politicians growl that identical phrase across the floor of the Commons, after the bitterest attack from the other side.
“I must say,” said George, “I thought that—” – he brought out his curse as though the word had just been invented or as though the carnal reality were in front of his eyes – “was unnecessarily offensive.”
Now he wasn’t pretending. He was speaking out of the hates of a lifetime. I didn’t answer. This was no time to argue, though in fact I thought the exact opposite. I thought also that Bosanquet, in his own fashion, was a master of his job.
“Well,” said George, “where are we going to eat?”
Margaret and I looked at each other, hesitating. We didn’t want much, she said. George, with a kind of boisterous kindness, said that we must eat something. He knew of a good place.
It turned out to be a pub which sometimes we used to visit (he showed no sign of remembering that) at the end of a night’s crawl. Nowadays it served hot lunches: and there, in a small and steaming room upstairs, George, giving out an air of old-fashioned gallantry, placed Margaret in a chair and insisted that she eat some steak-and-kidney pie. His pleasure was extreme, pathetic, when she was ready to join him in drinking a double whisky.
He was fond of her, because she never blamed him. He had told her a good deal about his life, and found that she casually accepted it. “I hope that’s really all right for you,” he said, looking at her plate of meat and pastry, like a proud, considerate, but slightly anxious host.
It was not we who were trying to support him, but the reverse. He might be behaving so out of a residue of robustness greater than most men’s – or out of indifference or a lack of affect. All we knew was that he was behaving like a brave man. He even told a long complicated funny story, so quirky that it didn’t seem unfitting that day.