My Name is Michael Sibley (31 page)

“It’s not a question of what I like, madam. A man’s life is at stake.”

“He looked ordinary, sir.”

“But you still maintain he had no newspaper in his hand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am going to ask you one last question. When I rose to cross-examine you, was I holding some papers in my hand or not?”

It was a clever question because the significance of it was at once apparent to the witness. Therefore very naturally she hesitated some seconds before answering.

Even had she given the correct reply, he would have pointed out how long she took to answer. As it was, she gave the wrong one.

Aldwick, of course, was on her like a ton of bricks.

“And yet you expect the jury to believe you, when you say you can remember today, many weeks after it happened, an exactly similar detail, but one of infinitely more importance?”

He did not wait for the answer, which he knew would not be forthcoming, before sitting down.

When the footsteps approached the door again, I expected them to go past, as they had so often done before, but they did not do so. We went up to the dock. I remember dropping my cigarette end at the foot of the steps and pausing a second to crush it with my shoe. Then we mounted the steps.

I stared at the various counsel with their juniors, and the counsel from other courts who had crowded in to hear the final stages of the trial, each dressed in his black gown and wig; grouped together or chattering in pairs; black gowns rustling, now whispering, occasionally smiling, nodding their heads, their noses like beaks under their wigs.

Sometimes they adjusted their gowns as a rook will flutter its feathers. Now and again they moved, black feathers twitching, beaks opening and shutting.

It was clear to me that they were not men; they were dark birds, possibly ravens. I looked in vain for the dark raven I had shot in the windy copse on the hilltop; or maybe they were rooks or carnivorous crows; or simply black cockatoos. I felt that if I banged the front of the dock they would take fright, fluttering up into the air. But I did not do so, because they would come down to earth again in two long rows, screeching and mocking and jeering, and I did not want to see Kate running the gauntlet between them.

“You all right?”

I felt one of the warders put his hand on my arm. I nodded. I tried to tell myself that it was just that I had eaten little or no lunch, but I felt certain now what the verdict would be. I had seen the dark birds again.

It was almost a relief to see the red robes of the judge.

I felt so certain of the verdict that I did not understand—indeed, I thought I had misheard—when the foreman said: “Not guilty.”

Then I realized that I had heard aright. All the dark birds in the court fluttered their wings, with a great flapping of feathers, and rose in the air, beaks opening and shutting, cawing and protesting at the verdict. Flapping and flapping. A voice shouted, “Order! Silence!” But they swirled round and round, higher and higher, up into the roof of the court, flapping, dying away, growing fainter, till they disappeared.

“Take it easy.”

I felt an arm at my back, supporting me. It was damned silly. Prosset would not have nearly fainted.

Just before I stepped from the dock to freedom I caught sight of Herbert Day standing near, among the spectators, waiting his turn to file out. His face above the black, dusty-looking suit was green. I saw him glance towards me. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His tongue quivered along his lips in the old, snake-like movement that was characteristic of him.

I did not know if he was green with relief that an innocent man had not been hanged, or with apprehension in case the hunt should still be on. But I did know, in that second, that he killed John Prosset, either alone or with somebody else. I knew it for certain.

He need not have worried. Once the police have shot their bolt, it is the end. Nobody was ever hanged for the murder of John Prosset on May 29th at Ockleton.

Kate and I were married by special licence a couple of weeks after the trial, and I resigned from my office. Happily, I had always written my fiction stories under another name. I had even carried on correspondence with editors under this name, and received cheques made out for that name. Thus, there was no question of this side of my career being affected by the trial.

I decided to gamble on making a living out of fiction; and I succeeded. I bought my present cottage, up in the Cotswolds, just months before war broke out, and in fairness to Kate I changed my name. In theory, if you leave a court after a murder charge a free man, you do so without a stain on your character. In practice, some mud always sticks. Some people are always inclined to think that the jury may have been wrong. So Michael Sibley had to die, so to speak, after all, but it has proved a pleasant enough death. I may add, in passing, that from what I heard later, one reason why I was acquitted was because I am a bad talker. It seems that I made such a faltering, tongue-tied, nervous impression in the witness box that the jury thought it unlikely that a calculating murderer would have been so lacking in coolness and self-possession.

When considering whether to change my name, I also had to bear in mind the probability that Kate and I would have children; I did not wish them to go through life known as the offspring of a man who had once been tried for murder. I am glad now that I acted as I did.

We have a fair-haired little daughter called Margaret, aged four, and a boy of nine called Francis, who is dark, like myself, but better looking than I ever was. He was born early in 1940, while I was stationed with the Royal Engineers at Aldershot, before I was posted to the Middle East. Poor Kate, the war was perhaps more trying for her than for most other wives. Having nearly lost me once, she seemed in peril of doing so again, and I think she was convinced I would not survive the hostilities.

As I write, with my typewriter in the garden, it is a glorious spring day. There is a fine view across the Cotswolds, and the sky is cloudless. At the bottom of the garden there is a little wood and a stream, and I can hear a pair of jays scolding each other. The trees are bright with that clean, crisp, green foliage peculiar to this time of year. Kate has gone down to the village on her bicycle to buy some groceries, and I am supposed to be “keeping an eye on the children,” whatever that means.

The short-story market is not what it was before the war, of course, owing to the paper shortage, but I was wise enough—or perhaps I should say I was sufficiently hard-up—to maintain my connections during the war years, and I cannot complain. I have also written a couple of books, one of which may be filmed.

So I am really extraordinarily lucky.

The dark days of the past, the inferiority feelings of school days and youth, have gone; I wonder now how I ever felt as I did about Prosset. The trial, too, has receded in my mind, and the war years are fading.

The village is only ten minutes’ walk away, and when Kate comes back I shall probably stroll down myself. I can see from my garden the little church steeple; opposite the church is the Crossed Keys tavern, where the beer is very reasonable, all things considered, and you can usually get a game of darts around midday or in the evenings.

I usually have a game with George Farrow, if he is about. He is a heavily built man, with a large moustache and dark, ox-like eyes. Thanks to him, I live a blameless life: my gun licence is always in order, my radio and car licences are renewed on the exact dates required of me, I have a dog licence for the spaniel, and I never under any circumstances whatever ride a bicycle “without a red rear light or reflector”; for, as PC Farrow says, once you’ve got a conviction, you’re a marked man for the rest of your life. You’ve got a police record.

“Of course, if you’re convicted of murder,” I once said to him, “I suppose the rest of your life hardly matters.”

He turned his heavy eyes on me in astonishment. “Murder, sir? Nobody’s ever been accused of murder around these parts.”

“They haven’t?”

“Not since I’ve been here, they haven’t. Nor ever will be, I hope.”

“Nor ever will be, I hope,” I repeated fervently.

“They’re friendly, steady folks around here. They’d no more think of doing a murder than you would, sir.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“No, sir.”

“No more than I would?”

“No, sir, they wouldn’t. That’s a fact.”

I looked round the bar, at the friendly faces, at all the evidence of good fellowship and good humour, of countryside self-reliance and tolerance.

PC George Farrow was classing me with all that. I felt a curious upsurge of spirits, almost of exultation, as of one who had somehow made good.

“Let’s have another round,” I said suddenly.

“Celebrating something, sir?”

I nodded. “Emancipation.” I laughed at the puzzled look on his face. But I could hardly explain, since I hardly knew myself what I meant. I only knew that it was somehow very important to me.