A Dead Liberty (13 page)

Justice, Lucy decided, was a game that needed the active participation of two players—the accuser and the accused. When one party wouldn't play, then the game couldn't go on.

“Is that quite clear?” asked the governor crisply.

Not only, thought Lucy, couldn't the game go on without her but she wasn't playing the game—which was something quite different. And probably more important, she thought, since Justice seemed to be male. She started to consider this interesting point—was it because of its Godlike stance, the blind female figure with the Scales of Justice at the Old Bailey notwithstanding—when her train of thought was interrupted.

“At any time,” said the governor.

Lucy brought her mind back to the governor's office at Her Majesty's Prison Cottingham Grange.

“It is usual when people are in prison for contempt of court,” explained the governor, “for the judge to be informed should they—er—have second thoughts on the matter.”

If she did that, decided Lucy, she would at once be handed back to the Court again for trial for murder. Then the Judge would blow the whistle and the game would start in earnest. She shivered. There was something about the judge in the role of referee that aroused uneasy memories of her school games field. The physical education teacher had been of the “jolly hockey-sticks” variety (not to say vintage) and a stickler for the ethics of the world of sport. One of her favourite edicts had been “The referee is right even when he or she is wrong.”

Another frequent pronouncement had been on the importance of etiquette. At least, Lucy remembered wryly, she had acknowledged that ethics and etiquette were two different animals: she was never quite sure if the headmistress had. The etiquette of the games field, the teacher had insisted, required that the player should always behave afterwards as if the referee's judgement was correct.

Lucy could see that when the school team of St. Damien's played the first eleven of St. Cosmos's down the road it didn't matter very much; but carry the analogy into a court of law and it mattered a great deal. Especially if it were upon her—Lucy Mirabel Durmast—upon whom the judge was ruling. Suppose the judge
quae
referee were wrong?

And above criticism, too.

What about the ethic and the etiquette of the legal game?

“I might, perhaps, be able to put your mind at rest upon one point.” The governor was conscientious to a degree. “Had you chosen to employ one, your legal adviser would, of course, have done so.”

Lucy looked up but said nothing.

“Only if there is a verdict of guilty on the other charge …”

Even in prison, Lucy noted, everyone was mealy-mouthed about the mention of murder.

“… will the jury be made aware of your sentence for contempt of court,” continued the Governor. “It will then come under the category of previous convictions.”

Lucy had forgotten all about the jury. Twelve good men and true came in somewhere, didn't they?

Had she forgotten them because she had only looked at the judge when she had been in Court or had it been more Freudian than that?

Twelve total strangers who came between her and her liberty. Twelve men and women plucked at random off a metaphorical Clapham omnibus to hold her destiny in their collective hands. All in the sacred name of that abstract conception called Justice—which meant something different to each person anyway. Twelve good citizens (and bad ones, too, very probably, seeing that they were all by definition human and no longer necessarily householders) swearing by Almighty God that they would faithfully try the several issues joined between Our Sovereign Lady the Queen and the Defendant …

There had been crimes that Queen Victoria hadn't been prepared to have on the Statute Book and said so. Lucy hadn't been very much interested in the history lesson at the time but she wished now she had paid more attention. She was suddenly curious to know which actions they were that Queen Victoria wouldn't join issue with …

The governor had clearly been pursuing quite a different train of thought. “The Court will be told about any previous convictions you have had only after a Guilty verdict has been given—if it has—and before sentence is passed.”

The Law was as stately as quadrille. Lucy was irresistibly reminded of “The Lobster Quadrille”
Alice in Wonderland
. “Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?”

Only nobody had asked her if she wanted to join the Law's dance. She was dancing by reason of
force majeur
. Literally, you might say. Whether she liked it or not. Or, more colloquially, seeing that it was all about the Law, without the option.

Lucy didn't hear what the governor said next because she was still thinking about the jury. Twelve good men and true—even though, when it came to the point, nobody actually knew how good they were, let alone true—had become arbiters a long time ago. Lucy knew that, too. She dimly remembered being taught that trial by ordeal had been the practice before trial by jury. Then the degree of effort the accused put into surviving the ordeal was the test. In those days everyone thought that those burdened by guilt would give up and that the innocent, buoyed up by just and righteous indignation and innocence—would struggle on. Too bad, for instance, if you just happened not to be able to swim.

She shivered. It didn't do to remember barbarity.

“You understand all this, I hope,” said the governor.

What Lucy had just suddenly understood was where the common or garden phrase “sink or swim” had come from. She would never again use it lightly.

The governor was a persistent woman. “That jury won't be told anything about this sentence unless and until there is a guilty verdict.”

It was what the jury would be told before the verdict that was troubling Lucy.

What the jury had to swear was that they would give true verdicts according to the evidence … Suppose the evidence wasn't true? Or simply not presented in Court? Did that mean that the jury would still be able to give a true verdict?

They didn't have to, of course. This dawned on Lucy rather belatedly. She realised a little late in the day that all the jury were charged with doing was reaching a true verdict according to the evidence—which was something much much simpler.

And very frightening indeed.

“Where to now, sir?” enquired Crosby as they left Melissa Wainwright's house in the outer suburbs of Calleford.

“The university,” said Detective Inspector Sloan. “To see His Highness.”

“Prince Aturu?”

“Successful criminal investigation is largely a matter of routine,” said Sloan obliquely.

“Yes, sir,” said the detective constable, who didn't mind where he was going as long as it was behind the steering wheel of a fast motor vehicle.

“Take me,” instructed Sloan, “to Cremond College. That's the one the Prince is at.”

Cremond College was one of the six colleges which comprised the University of Calleshire. It lay nearest to the Greatorex Library and was particularly popular with post-graduate students. Crosby brought the police car to a halt with something of a flourish at the entrance gate. Although Cremond College was one of the newer colleges of the Foundation it sported a Gothic-style arch. An engraved motto ran round the inside of the arch.

The detective constable picked out the words with difficulty. “
Auxilio … auxilio divino
.” He turned to Sloan. “What does that mean, sir?”

Sloan's schooling had been of the no-Latin-and-less-Greek variety. “Loosely translated,” he grated, “it says ‘Gawd help us.' Come along now, Crosby, let's not waste time.” He led the way through the archway and cast a cynical eye over the quadrangle beyond. “If you ask me,” he said gloomily, “the red-brick seems not so much Ivy League as in league with the ivy.”

“It likes the mortar,” said Crosby simply. “Sucks out the moisture in it. Like Count Dracula in …”

“I think we'd better talk to the dean first,” said Sloan. All games involved keeping an eye on the ball but the detection one most of all. “Where's the porter's lodge?”

Dr. Adam Chelde, Dean of Cremond College, went out of his way to be helpful to the two policemen. “Of course I know Prince Aturu, Inspector. He's one of our post-graduate students. A very able young man, I understand. I think, though, that it would be fair to say that he is—er—something of a political theorist, too.”

“A firebrand?” Sloan translated this without hesitation.

The dean coughed. “Most of the students who come to us from the—shall we say—the emergent nations are—er—usually activists by inclination.”

“Not wanted at home,” said Crosby.

“And if they happen to be economists as well …” the dean opened his hands expressively.

“A heady mixture,” agreed Sloan.

“A difficult subject, economics,” observed the dean in a detached way.

“They don't seem able to get it right, do they, sir?” remarked Sloan affably.

“It's a relatively new study, of course,” said the dean. He was a distinguished palaeontologist.

Detective Inspector Sloan murmured something about Pharaoh's lean years. His mother was a great reader of the Bible.

“Ah,” said Dr. Chelde instantly, “like a lot of people you are confusing good housekeeping with economic theory.”

“Not the same thing?” enquired Sloan with irony.

“By no means.”

“There were the foolish virgins, too, of course,” said Sloan. He'd been made to go to Sunday School when young.

Detective Constable Crosby looked suddenly alert. Foolish virgins caused a lot of work down at the police station.

“The expression that I notice crops up most often in the Senior Common Room,” said Dr. Chelde, “is corn in Egypt.”

“What about ‘Coals to Newcastle,'” said Crosby more parochially.

“But all that the economists will say is that their aim in life is to put a stop to feast and famine alike.”

“Bully for them,” murmured Crosby. “Did you know that if you put all the economists in the world end to end they still wouldn't reach a conclusion?”

“Dlasa,” said Sloan firmly. “Where does the Kingdom of Dlasa fit into all this?”

The dean coughed again. “We do tend to find that most of our overseas students tend to relate all that they learn here in the first instance to their own home situations.”

“Very understandable that, sir.”

“Hopefully the—er—global view comes later.”

“I understand,” said Sloan, “that King Thabile is a hereditary monarch.”

“The situation,” said the dean, “where you have infant sciences married to newly developing nations does tend to make for difficulties.” Whenever the press asked for a statement from the University of Calleshire, Dr. Adam Chelde was always the one who was put up to make it. His pontifications were so general that it was practically impossible to isolate the particular.

“And,” said Sloan, policeman not pressman, “that the King has embarked on building a new capital city in Dlasa.”

“So I understand,” responded the dean. “The Prince has been—er—most eloquent on the subject.” He paused and added, “Not to say outspoken.”

Sloan cocked his head alertly. “He has, has he?”

“In spite of the fact that his tutor has constantly reminded him of the natural tendency of all men to strive to be remembered in—er—stone or some comparable long-lasting material …”

Sloan nodded. His mother would have reminded him of what had been said on the subject in Ecclesiastes: some there be who have no memorial.

The dean waved a hand. “The Pyramids, Stonehenge, this college …” Dr. Chelde achieved this step from the general to the particular with greater ease.

“But the Prince was unconvinced?” suggested Sloan.

“Totally,” said the dean. “However I understand he buckled down to work on his thesis all right in the end.”

“It wasn't on bride-prices by any chance, was it?” enquired Crosby, who was unmarried. The idea had tickled his fancy.

Dr. Chelde shook his head. “I am told that in the first instance there had been some discussion about its being on the relationship between the smaller Dlasian and English weights and measures.”

“Feet and inches?” said Sloan, who wasn't and never would be a thinker in metric.

“Barleycorns,” said the Dean. “There are three to the inch here.”

“I didn't know that,” said Sloan gravely.

“And the apothecary's grain. That has an agricultural base, too.”

“Rod, pole and perch,” said Crosby suddenly.

“In Dlasa,” said the dean, “I believe that the spear is the linear unit.” He brightened. “In Russia it used to be the vershok.”

“Really?” said Sloan politely. He wasn't sure if he needed to know that.

“And the vershok is the exact diameter of an American golf ball,” said the academic. “One point six eight inches.”

“But that wasn't what the Prince's thesis was about after all?” hazarded Sloan.

Dr. Chelde shook his head. “It was on something—er—rather less cognate, I fear.”

Sloan looked up enquiringly.

“And perhaps in the end less useful,” said Dr. Chelde.

Sloan asked what the Prince's thesis had actually been about.

“The political usury of foreign aid,” said the Dean sadly. “I don't know if he finished it.”

“We can ask him,” said Sloan, starting to move forward.

“I'm afraid that that will be a little difficult, Inspector.”

Sloan stopped. “How so?”

“Prince Aturu's not here any more.” The dean looked at the two policemen. “Didn't you know?”

“No,” said Sloan.

“He had to go back to Dlasa at the beginning of February.”

“Had to?” echoed Sloan.