The Unburied (37 page)

The lawyer thanked me very affably and then sat down and conferred quietly with Dr Locard.

At that moment Sergeant Adams stood up and the Coroner asked him: ‘Do you wish to put a question to the witness?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve been listening with great interest, Dr Courtine, and I believe you may have hit upon part of the truth. But there are some important matters that are still unaccounted for. Why do you think Mr Stonex left the chalked message for Perkins with those instructions?’

‘He needed someone to be blamed for the murder. And so he intended to collect the package himself disguised as a mysterious stranger. But for some reason he had to abandon that part of the plan.’

‘I see. And why did he put blood-stained money into the package?’

‘So that if he did not collect it, then Perkins himself would be suspected of the murder.’

‘I thought you would say that, sir, and my own suspicions were taking me in that direction.’ He paused as if embarrassed by what he was about to say. ‘Finally, Dr Courtine, can you throw any light on Dr Carpenter’s belief that the deceased died at about four o’clock?’

I was disconcerted myself by this question for it had crossed my mind that the doctor must have been bribed into giving that extraordinary evidence, although remembering the young man’s arrogance in the Cathedral that morning, I would have thought he was too proud to compromise his integrity for money. ‘I can only suppose’, I ventured, ‘that Dr Carpenter’s confidence in his expertise has on this occasion – if on no other – proved somewhat premature.’

I was gratified by a few titters from the spectators and a thin smile from the Coroner. Adams, looking disappointed, resumed his seat.

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Mr Attard said and turned to me: ‘And thank you, as well, Dr Courtine. I don’t think we need detain you any longer. Your evidence has given the court much to think about.’

As I stepped down I reflected on the Sergeant’s last question and rather wished I had not exercised my wit at the expense of the young surgeon. Yet he must be mistaken. And it was precisely at that moment that a strange idea – even stranger than the one that I had explained to the Coroner – began to take shape in my mind and I felt my face burn with excitement as I pondered its implications. If I was right, then I knew why Mr Stonex had changed the date of the tea-party: it was because he wanted Austin and myself to be there as witnesses.

My mind was on that as Austin was now called and he shuffled into the witness-box unsteady and shaking, like an old man.

‘Was anything that you saw at the New Deanery on Thursday afternoon untoward or suspicious?’ Mr Attard asked him.

‘Nothing.’

‘Then do you have anything to add to what Dr Courtine has said?’

‘Only that I saw no indication that the house had been ransacked when we arrived. It’s true that the old gentleman told us he had been looking for the manuscript describing Freeth’s death, but he was certainly not responsible for the disorder I saw when I went back later that day.’

His answer surprised me. The houseplace was in turmoil when we entered it. He was clearly not himself, for he was speaking slowly and very carefully.

‘Did you notice the deceased take something out of the case of a grandfather clock?’

Austin smiled: a horrible grimace intended to suggest amusement. ‘I would most assuredly have remembered such an odd proceeding. No, I did not.’

That was extraordinary! After all, it was he who had suggested looking there!

‘What about the message chalked on the slate which the deceased rubbed out?’

‘I did not see that either. That is to say, I noticed the slate but to my certain recollection there was nothing written on it. Mr Stonex merely picked it up and absent-mindedly stroked it.’

‘And what of Dr Courtine’s testimony that the deceased mentioned a brother?’

‘I did not hear such a reference. I believe Dr Courtine must have misheard the old gentleman. He certainly referred to his sister.’

‘Thank you, Mr Fickling. You may resume your seat.’

For the sake of the hypothesis that was taking shape in my mind, it was important to clear up a point on which the Sergeant must have misunderstood Austin. I stood up.

Austin halted in his progress from the witness-box and gazed at me in amazement.

‘Do you wish to put a question to Mr Fickling?’ the Coroner asked me in surprise.

‘I do, Mr Attard. I’d like to ask about something that the Sergeant said.’ I turned to Austin: ‘You told him that Mr Stonex met you by chance on Wednesday evening and informed you that he wished to bring forward our appointment for tea to yesterday?’ Austin nodded cautiously. ‘You said the reason he gave was the postponement of the ceremony for the organ?’ He nodded again. ‘Can you explain that?’

‘He said that his Bank had been going to close on Friday afternoon but now that it had been cancelled, he would be at work.’

That could not be right. ‘At what time did you meet him on Wednesday?’ I asked.

Austin hesitated. ‘It must have been early that evening.’

I was astonished. Austin was clearly very confused. ‘Your recollection must be at fault. It was I who told you about the organ and that was very late that evening.’ He opened his mouth as if to speak but said nothing. ‘Do you not remember’, I went on, ‘the conversation that you and I had that evening?’

‘The conversation?’

‘The discussion we had of events twenty years ago.’

He nodded.

‘Then do you not recall that it was after that that I mentioned going into the Cathedral on my way back from dinner and learning of the delay to the organ?’

Austin stared at me for several seconds. ‘Yes, that must be so. I was mistaken about the time but I remember the whole thing very distinctly. It was after our conversation. I found I could not sleep that night and so I went out for a constitutional after you had gone to bed and met Mr Stonex then.’

‘Where did you meet him?’ I asked.

‘As I came out of my house and was passing the back of the New Deanery, he was about to enter.’

He was lying. He could not be confused about that. However much he had had to drink that night. Or earlier today. And if he was lying he had a reason and that raised some disquieting possibilities. It was not forgetfulness or intoxication that had made him deny the incidents I had described. I suddenly felt a desire to expose the truth whatever it cost.

‘And where did you go after that?’ I asked. I knew he would be gravely embarrassed by this public allusion to the visit he had made in the middle of the night.

‘Dr Courtine,’ the Coroner interrupted, ‘I hardly think that can be relevant.’

‘I have a reason for putting the question, Mr Coroner, if you will bear with me for a moment I think it will become evident.’

Mr Attard nodded. Austin stared back, his hands gripping the edge of the box. ‘Where did I go? I went nowhere. I merely walked around the town for twenty minutes and came home.’

‘You did not go into a house?’

He looked at me in dismay. ‘No. No, I did not.’

‘That’s very strange. You see, I, too, found myself unable to sleep that night and when I heard you go down the stairs I left the house myself.’ I could see from his face that he had had no idea and that this revelation horrified him. ‘I meant to catch you up, but you were too quick for me and disappeared into that alleyway that runs from the Close into Orchard Street.’

The room was absolutely silent.

Austin was frightened. Clearly there was something in what I saw on Wednesday night that alarmed him. I wished I could work out what it was but I could not see how everything connected: the mysterious woman seen by Appleton, the brother of the victim, the ransacking of the house. It occurred to me that there was another mysterious woman in the case – the one who had been in the house in Orchard Street in the early hours of Thursday morning – but I could not imagine how she might be related to Austin’s evident anxiety.

I turned to Mr Attard: ‘Mr Coroner, I think I know how the murder was committed in such a way as to confuse all of us about the time of its occurrence. I believe the victim was killed much earlier than has been assumed.’

Austin stared at me white-faced. I noticed that Sergeant Adams had leant forward to gaze at me intently while the Coroner looked at me, his pen poised motionless in his hand.

I turned back to Austin: ‘I believe the victim was lying dead in another room of that house before you and I even arrived for tea.’

There was a buzz among the spectators. The noise was so loud that I believed I was the only person who heard Austin exclaim: ‘In that case, who was it who gave us tea?’

I was astonished by the remark. It made no sense. My eye happened to fall on Slattery who was staring at Austin with an expression of terrifying intensity and mouthing something I could not make out.

‘I see what you are trying to do!’ Austin shouted. ‘But I had nothing to do with it. I was teaching all afternoon – as dozens of witnesses can prove. I was in front of my class until after four o’clock and then I was with you from the moment the Library closed until the body was found by the police.’

‘Gentlemen, please,’ said the Coroner. ‘Mr Fickling, please calm yourself.’

Austin turned to him: ‘This man has a grudge against me for an imagined wrong that goes back more than twenty years.’

‘That is not true,’ I exclaimed. ‘If I had not forgiven you many years ago I would not have come to visit you.’

‘You forgave me,’ Austin repeated mockingly. ‘How generous of you.’

I looked at his jeering, drunken face filled with venom and wondered how I had ever convinced myself that I had forgiven him. Or that he had ever intended anything but harm to me.

‘You may take your seat, Mr Fickling,’ the Coroner said.

Fickling shuffled back to his seat while Mr Attard turned to me and said: ‘Dr Courtine, I don’t understand what you meant just now when you said that the victim was dead before you arrived at the house.’

‘I was suggesting’, I said, ‘that Mr Stonex had killed his brother before Fickling and I arrived. His body was lying in the study.’

‘Dr Carpenter has already testified to the impossibility of that,’ the Coroner said. ‘The corpse is certainly that of Mr Stonex the banker and not some hypothetical brother of his.’

I opened my mouth to say that the doctor had obviously been bribed, but thought better of it.

‘And so’, the Coroner went on, ‘I’m going to advise the jury to dismiss this red herring from their consideration. Thank you, anyway, Dr Courtine.’

I sat down and as I did so I glanced towards where Fickling and Slattery were sitting. The latter was smiling at his friend who was still shaken and wan but was nodding. It was clear to me that, far from alarming them, what I had just said had reassured them. I must have approached very near to the truth but without quite attaining it. I had another surprise, for at that moment Dr Locard turned and smiled encouragingly at me.

The Coroner announced that there were no further witnesses and that he would proceed instantly to his address to the jury.

‘Some of the witnesses you have heard’, he began, ‘have tried to complicate a very straightforward matter. But from my long experience on the Coroner’s bench I know that there are in every case issues which are never fully understood. That is particularly inevitable here for we are dealing with the perverse mind of a human being capable of cold-blooded murder, and therefore it is wrong to seek the enlightened rationality which guides the more elevated representatives of our race. I advise you, therefore, to see the case in all its evident – though brutal – simplicity. You should treat with considerable scepticism the evidence of Dr Carpenter relating to the time of death. You should also set aside the ingenious theory of Dr Courtine, which is a plot for a sensational novel rather than evidence for a court of law. Every fact upon which reliance can be placed points towards Perkins as the murderer: the testimony that Mr Stonex admitted him to the house at half-past five, the bloodstained banknotes hidden in his house, and the fact that he kept changing his account of events as each new piece of evidence against him emerged. Foreman of the jury, will you now decide among yourselves whether you are able to reach a determination here and now, or whether you need to adjourn to the room that is available for you?’

The jurors conferred briefly and then the foreman, a burly, red-faced man who looked like a prosperous grocer, said: ‘We don’t need to withdraw, your honour. We’ve decided already.’

‘Very well. What is your finding?’

‘We have determined that the deceased was unlawfully killed and slain by the prisoner, Edward Perkins.’

There was an anguished cry as if someone had been dealt a physical blow. We all looked at the prisoner whose face was twisted in horror and fear. The Coroner gave instructions that he be held in custody until his trial and we watched silently as he rose to depart and the prisoner was led away.

I got up and went to the end of the row of seats but found I could not move because the ample figure of the Major was obstructing the aisle, and so I turned back to go the other way but found Dr Locard talking to the lawyer. Beyond them I noticed Sergeant Adams looking at me as if he wished to speak, but, like myself, he was trapped where he was. As I stood there, unnoticed and feeling rather uncomfortable, I heard the Major’s voice booming behind me, in answer to a question which I had not heard: ‘A formality, I promise you. On that evidence, no jury could acquit. He will hang before Easter.’

I advanced towards Dr Locard and heard him arranging to come to Mr Thorrold’s office later that afternoon and saw the lawyer hurry away. I was relieved to see out of the corner of my eye that Fickling was also leaving – accompanied by Slattery.

To my surprise Dr Locard turned towards me and smiled and said: ‘Dr Courtine, my wife and I find that we are unexpectedly free this evening. You would be doing us a great honour if you would dine with us. There are several matters I wish to discuss with you.’

I could not think quickly enough of a convincing reason not to do so and therefore I accepted and we agreed the hour.