Prudence (6 page)

‘Since you find her so alluring,’ said Pendle, ‘would you mind feeding and caring for her while I nip back to chambers and sign some documents?’

‘Delighted,’ said Jimmy Batten with such alacrity that it took away some of my disappointment at Pendle sloping off. After all, all the women’s magazines encouraged one to get on with
his
friends.

‘Don’t listen to a word Jimmy says,’ said Pendle, running a finger down my cheek. ‘Lawyers are the most frightful gossips.’

And he was gone. I felt myself go crimson both at the unexpected caress, and the speculative way Jimmy was looking at us.

Jimmy and I ate shepherd’s pie and shared a bottle of wine, crammed thigh to thigh in a panelled alcove. Jimmy was blissfully easy to talk to — particularly as he was just as interested in yapping about Pendle as I was.

‘I never expected him to be that good,’ I said.

‘He’s brilliant. Mind you, he’s a bit too cool to go down well with a jury. He hasn’t got an easy ingratiating personality, and he knows it, but he’s good at asking questions. He doesn’t say anything really offensive, but before the witness knows what’s happening he finds himself tied up in knots.’

‘He did it with my boss the other night. It brought the entire dinner party to a halt.’

Jimmy grinned. I noticed how many laughter lines he had on his face. It was sad Pendle had none. ‘I admire the way he never gives up on a case,’ he said, filling up my glass. ‘I bet he’s up to something now, trying to rootle out a piece of evidence that’ll blow my case sky-high. Not that it’ll do him any good; it’s obvious as hell Canfield’s guilty. Has he been taking you out for long?’

I knew he was pumping me now. I must be careful.

‘Since the summer.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen him with a girl.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said.

‘I sometimes wondered if he weren’t a bit the other way,’ said Batten, idly, ‘and he’s working hard to sublimate it.’

‘Queer you mean?’

He shot me a sidelong glance and nodded. ‘He refers to “the lovely Miss Graham”, for example, but he’s totally unmoved by her.’

‘Oh no,’ I insisted in horror. ‘He’s certainly not queer.’

‘You’ve got proof, have you? I must confess if you belonged to me, I couldn’t keep my hands off you. Have an enormous brandy and tell me more. I’m sorry to keep staring at you, not that it’s not a pleasure, but you remind me of someone and I can’t for the life of me think who it is.’

‘Pendle said that the first night we met,’ I said.

I had an uneasy feeling he knew a lot more than he was letting on, and such was the warmth of the room, and the amount I’d drunk and the cosiness in his manner, I was tempted to pour out my anxieties about Pendle. Then I remembered about lawyers being terrible gossips. I wasn’t sure I trusted Mr Batten, so I changed the subject.

After lunch it was the turn of the defence. As Pendle rose to his feet, straightening his gown and the papers in front of him, his hands shook, but he spoke calmly enough.

‘We intend to prove that my client has been the victim of a monstrous calumny. Not only has he been charged with a revolting offence, he has also lost his job, will no doubt have difficulty finding another one, been publicly humiliated, and privately diminished in the eyes of his family and friends — and all this on the testament of one girl. Her word against his. Her fiancé arrived too late and found a locked door. What we have to find out, ladies and gentlemen, was what went on beyond that door. Intercourse,’ he paused. ‘We have no doubt; the police medical report bears this out, but at whose instigation. Miss Graham looks like the innocent flower, but is she perhaps the serpent underneath?’ He paused again for effect and glared at Jimmy Batten who glared back, his lip curling with disdain.

I was hard put not to giggle.

Even as he took the oath, Canfield gave the impression of being a con man, a rep with his shiny shoe in the door. The Jury were looking at him with disgust.

Pendle stared at him thoughtfully.

‘Mr Canfield, was Miss Graham a good secretary?’

‘No,’ said Canfield.

‘Why did you keep her on then?’

Canfield smiled wryly. ‘I suppose I was attracted to her.’

There was a ripple of chattering round the court.

‘I told you so,’ muttered my fat neighbour, handing me a pack of Maltesers.

‘You wanted to sleep with her?’ said Pendle.

‘In a word, yes.’

‘But refrained from doing so?’

‘She was engaged to be married. I do have some principles. Besides, Ricky Wetherby is much bigger than me.’

It was a bad joke which did nothing to endear Canfield to the Jury.

‘And what happened on the day of the so-called assault?’

‘She said she’d lost her notebook; could I possibly dictate the letters I’d given her yesterday again. I said I had to go to a meeting. I came back at 5.30 and told her to come into my office.’

‘What was Miss Graham wearing?’

‘She’d changed into a new dress; it was very becoming.’

‘Can you describe it?’

‘Well it was very low cut, and made more so because she’d lost a button.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I said she looked smashing; was she going to meet her fiancé? She smiled and said not until much later. I said he was a lucky man, and we’d better get on with the letters or we’d both be in trouble. Suddenly she burst into tears, said she felt trapped, that her fiancé was a disaster in bed.’

There was a murmur of protest from the public gallery. The Judge told them to shut up. Fiona’s face was expressionless.

‘We heard a step outside. Fi — I mean Miss Graham said please lock the door, and then she went on crying. I told her she was crazy to marry him feeling like that. I put my arm round her to comfort her.’

‘Did she offer any resistance?’

‘God no, quite the reverse. She said she’d wanted me for weeks. The next minute we were on the floor.’

‘And intercourse occurred?’

‘It certainly did.’

The rustling and coughing always present in court had died away. People were leaning forward not to miss a word.

‘Thank you, Mr Canfield,’ said Pendle, and sat down. He seemed surprisingly elated, particularly since Batten took over next, and absolutely tore Canfield to pieces. Although Canfield stuck to his story, it looked pretty ragged by the end. White and shaken, he sat down.

Next Pendle called one of the pretty typists from the office. She came in giggling and patting her hair, and wearing far too much make-up. Pendle handled her with the utmost gentleness and soon her nerves disappeared.

‘We were both in the Ladies getting ready to go home. It was about 5.15. Fi — I mean Miss Graham was changing into this lovely dress, very low cut. She said she was going to meet her fiancé later. At that moment a button popped off, which made it almost, well, indecent.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

‘Course I’m sure. She said that was the trouble with buying cheap clothes. I offered to lend her a needle. I said once she was married to Ricky she wouldn’t have to buy cheap clothes any more. Besides, it looked more sexy without the button, and we had a giggle about that.’

The tension was beginning to mount in the court. The Jury were sitting up and taking notice.

The next witness was blond, handsome and brash, and said his name was Gerald Seaton. He described himself as a commercial traveller.

‘Have you seen Miss Graham before?’ said Pendle.

‘Yes, we met in the King’s Cross Hotel lounge exactly four months ago.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘She picked me up.’

Suddenly the court went very still.

‘I was working on some figures. She came and sat near me, and smiled at me. I smiled back. She was a very pretty girl; she said she was meeting her aunt off the Leeds train, but it had been delayed. We arranged to meet next evening.’

‘Did she tell you she was engaged?’

‘Oh yes, she made no secret of the fact. She was going to marry this rich bloke. Said he was no good in bed.’

I glanced at Ricky Wetherby. He looked as though he’d been turned to stone.

‘What happened next?’

‘I took her away to the Cotswolds for the weekend. We stayed in a hotel.’

‘How did you pass the time?’

‘We spent it in bed.’

‘Even though she was engaged to be married?’

‘Didn’t worry her; why should it worry me?’

Jimmy Batten, looking rather grim, got up to protest.

‘Surely, My Lord, this is utterly irrelevant. These events happened long before my client met the defendant.’

‘I can assure you it has the utmost relevance on the case,’ said Pendle quickly.

‘Proceed Mr Mulholland,’ said the Judge.

‘What happened after this weekend?’

‘We met once; then she suddenly refused to see me, pretending she’d decided not to cheat on her fiancé any more. Well that didn’t wash with me after her performance in the Cotswolds. So I waited for her outside her office one evening.’

‘Her new office?’ said Pendle.

‘Yes. She must have been working there about a fortnight. We went and had a drink; she got a bit bombed, and then it all came out. She’d got a thing about this bloke at work, said she was mad about him, but he refused to do anything about her.’

‘Do you remember what his name was?’

‘I can. It was the same village near my home. He was called Canfield, Bobby Canfield.’

There was not much Batten could do with Mr Seaton, nor did he have much joy with the hotel manageress in the Cotswolds, who remembered Fiona and Gerry Seaton staying there.

‘They signed in as Mr and Mrs Seaton. I remembered her because she was so pretty. We didn’t think they were married. I mean they stayed in their room all weekend. We just took their meals up.’

The Wetherby Camp looked thunderstruck. Next moment Fiona was on her feet.

‘They’re lying, they’re all lying. It’s a frame-up.’

Jimmy Batten put out a hand to hush her and, rising to retrieve the situation, said smoothly,

‘M’Lord, I should like my client to go back into the witness box to refute these charges.’

The Jury looked shaken and undecided.

Fiona went back into the box. She had regained her sangfroid now. She denied that she had ever been away for the weekend, or even met Mr Seaton. There must be some mistake. She remembered she’d had a bad cold that weekend, her fiancé had been abroad, so she’d stayed in bed without going out for two days.

‘It’s a conspiracy,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘I swear I’ve never set eyes on this man in my life.’

The barometer was wavering once again. I felt the Jury were going to believe her.

There was a long pause. Then it was Pendle’s turn.

‘Miss Graham,’ he said in his gentlest drawl, ‘you do realize that people who don’t tell the truth in court can be sent to prison?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

Pendle crossed the court and handed her a piece of paper.

‘Did you write this letter?’

She glanced at it. ‘Yes, it’s a thankyou letter for a wedding present.’

Pendle went back to his place.

‘My Lord, I have here a document in the same writing as this letter. Later I will call a handwriting expert to verify their similarity. Normally I wouldn’t resort to snooping and appropriating private documents, but when my client’s reputation is at stake…’

‘All right, Mr Mulholland,’ said the Judge irritably, ‘get on with it. What have you got to show us?’

Pendle picked up a kingfisher-blue, leather-bound book, which had been hidden in his papers; the lock was hanging from it.

‘I have here a diary belonging to Miss Graham in which she chronicles only too clearly the events of the past few months.’

Suddenly Fiona’s face twisted in horror. ‘No, don’t let him,’ she screamed. ‘He’s got my diary; he’s a thief.’

‘Be quiet, Miss Graham,’ snapped the Judge. ‘Proceed, Mr Mulholland.’

Jimmy Batten’s face never moved an inch, but he must have felt the floor give way beneath him.

‘M’Lord,’ he protested, ‘I must object to my learned friend’s methods.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ said the Judge. ‘Go on, Mr Mulholland.’

‘In a minute the ladies and gentlemen of the Jury can examine the diary themselves,’ said Pendle, ‘but first I’d like to read out one or two passages.’

The lack of expression in his voice made Fiona’s passionate outpouring sound even more dreadful. First there was her description of meeting Gerald Seaton and the weekend in the Cotswolds exactly as he had described them.

‘“It’s marvellous”,’ he read in his flat drawl, ‘“after Ricky, to find someone who knows what he’s doing in bed.” ’

Fiona’s lips were blue now. ‘It’s a forgery,’ she whispered.

Pendle flipped over a few pages: ‘Now,’ he said softly, ‘let us turn to her description of her first days of working for Mr Canfield: “My new boss is really sexy, I fancy him rotten.” Here on the 5th is a picture of Mr Canfield cut out of the
Investor’s Chronicle
.’

‘Nothing unusual in that,’ snapped Jimmy Batten. ‘Any girl would cut out a photograph of her boss.’

As detail followed horrendous detail of her growing obsession for Canfield, I couldn’t bear to look at her, or at Ricky Wetherby, sitting stunned and unbelieving. I was mesmerized by the distaste and cruelty in Pendle’s voice. How he seemed to hate her. I could only think of a cobra striking again and again.

‘And now,’ he said suavely, ‘if you’ll bear with me, I’ll read the entry on September 28th, the day before the alleged rape:

‘“Bobby’s wife came in today. God I loathe her, the old frump. Bet she bores him to death in bed. Tomorrow is my last chance. I shall die if I don’t get him. If only Ricky’d let me go on working after we’re married. I’ll wear my new blue dress, and pretend I’ve lost my shorthand notebook and ask Bobby to give me the letters again after work. If we’re alone in the building, something’s bound to happen. I know he fancies me.” ’