Silence in Court (15 page)

Jeff Stewart made no attempt to sit down. He loomed up in the middle of the room, and dominated it with that bright, dangerous gleam in his eye and the soft drawl of his voice.

“What case?” he said.

Aylwin told him, putting the unbelievable accusation into brief, methodical words. The penniless girl, not too sure of her health or her ability to earn her living, a fortune just within her grasp, the prospect of ease and plenty. Then something—nobody knew what—coming up out of the past to wreck it all, and the temptation to save herself and be secure.

When he had done, Jeff Stewart said,

“If Carey wanted money, there was mine. I've plenty. We were going to be married. There's no motive.”

“That will be for the defence.” Aylwin did not look at him. “The case is strong enough, even if the jury believe what you have just said. Two witnesses identify her with the person Mrs. Maquisten would have cut out of her will if she had lived over Monday night.”

Jeff turned away from him.

“You think she did it, Dennis? Why?”

The muscle twitched again.

“She knew about the sleeping-draught—I came down and told her. If I hadn't done that I could have said she couldn't have known Aunt Honoria was going to take anything. But she did know. She knew Magda was going out, and that the draught was going to be left for Ellen to give her. I came down and told her the whole thing myself. She had only to walk into the bathroom and put the extra tabloids in.”

“Are you going to tell them that?”

“They haven't asked me yet.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

Dennis looked away, looked down, stared at the blotting-pad and the blank sheet that lay there. He said,

“She did it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When Carey looked back she could see all the things which led up to her arrest. They were quite clear and distinct. One followed upon the other, inexorably, logically. But she stopped short always before the actual moment. It was like the step between life and death. Up to one particular moment you were alive; after that moment you were what people called dead—somewhere else. But would you remember the actual step between these two states? She didn't think you would. Up to one particular moment and one particular day she was one of millions of other people who had their troubles and their difficulties, but who were free and who could look to the law for protection. Then, with a sudden jarring shock, she had passed a barrier which irrevocably divided her from all these people into a state where the law no longer existed to protect, but to restrain, to punish, and to kill. She could not force her mind to the moment of transition.

Memory took up again on the other side of it. Moments passed—minutes, hours, days, weeks—with a dragging slowness, but somehow outside time. Because in time its divisions are related, linked with the past and with the future. But to Carey there was only now—a present which imprisoned her more surely than her body was imprisoned. Now it was Monday, now Tuesday. Now it was December, now January. It didn't matter what they called it, it was Now.

There were interruptions—days on which for a brief space the outside world of time broke in. There was the day when she was told that her solicitor was waiting to see her, and when she said she hadn't got a solicitor the wardress said firmly of course she had, someone would see-to that, and she must come along and talk to him.

Mr. Mordaunt, sitting at one end of a long, bare table, had his first sight of his client as the wardress brought her in, indicated a chair at the other end, and withdrew out of earshot to keep an eye upon her charge through a glass panel in the upper part of the door. He thought Miss Carey Silence very young, very pale. If he knew anything about it—and having been a warden all through the blitz, he was not without experience—she was suffering badly from shock.

He was about to address her, when she lifted a pair of very beautiful dark blue eyes and said,

“I'm so sorry—I don't know your name.”

Mr. Mordaunt began to explain himself, but he had not got beyond the name of his firm, when she spoke again.

“I haven't got any money.”

“You haven't got to trouble about that, Miss Silence.”

“I have only six pound ten, and that wouldn't be enough.”

Shock—that was what made people talk like that, straight out of whatever it was they had on their minds. It destroyed the ordinary inhibitions, and they just came out with whatever they were thinking. Could be useful, or precious awkward.

Suppose she started to tell him that she'd done it—people in a state of shock will tell you anything. He began to talk in a hurry.

“Miss Silence, will you listen to me. I can't stay very long, and there are a number of things I want to say, but before I say any of them let me assure you that you do not have to trouble about the money side of this. If, as we hope, we are able to bring this off, you will yourself have ample means.”

She interrupted quite gently.

“But if you don't bring me off—”

Her eyes were fixed steadily upon his face. He found it a little disconcerting. He said,

“I should have said at once that a member of your family is making himself responsible.”

“Dennis?”

“Mr. Harland? Well, no.”

She echoed the last word.

“No—Dennis thinks I did it.”

Mr. Mordaunt made haste to block this uninviting path.

“It is not Mr. Harland. It is Mr. Stewart—Mr. Jefferson Stewart.”

Her lids wavered and fell. She leaned back. Very slowly a faint colour stained that very white skin. Very slowly it ebbed again. All through the interview that followed she was quiet, gentle, lifeless.

Mr. Mordaunt went away and told Mr. Jefferson Stewart that if she went into court that way they might as well throw in their hand.

“There's a stiff case against her. We shall try and shake their witnesses of course, but in the long run the witness who matters most in a murder case is always the accused. And a young girl's got a pull. She's got her youth, she's got her looks. If she makes a good impression she'll get the benefit of the doubt—and we ought to be able to contrive a useful doubt or two. Then she can take advantage of it. But not if she goes into court like this. They'll take one look at her and make sure she did it.”

Jeff Stewart, standing up tall against the mantelpiece, looked down on him and said,

“Is that what you did?”

Mr. Mordaunt rubbed a jutting chin. Rather thick horn-rimmed lenses concealed the expression of his eyes.

“Well, no, Mr. Stewart. But then I had a reason, and if you're going to expect reason from a jury—”

“What reason had you?”

“Well, I don't mind telling you. When she came in I thought she looked crushed, and I thought very likely it was remorse—and that's what the jury's going to think if she doesn't pull up out of it. But I didn't go on thinking it, and for the reason that when she began to talk I could see the state she was in, and it was shock. I've seen too many people like it not to know. She just said everything that was in her mind like a child of five, and at first I was afraid of what she might be going to say. And then I wasn't, because there wasn't anything that mattered. If there had been it would have come out, the way she was. That's my belief, and I feel pretty sure about it. I don't think she did it, because if she had she'd have come out with it. We've got to rouse her up. She's got to fight.”

Mr. Stewart nodded.

As a result of this conversation another and very different one took place a couple of days later. Just what Jeff Stewart did to bring it about is neither here nor there. He had some good friends, a persuasive tongue, and a considerable latent force of perseverance upon which to draw. In the end he found himself sitting where Mordaunt had sat some forty-eight hours before, looking down the length of the same bare table at Carey Silence, only this time the wardress stood inside the door and could certainly hear everything they said. His mind registered that and put it away. It didn't matter at all. What mattered was that Carey should want to live and be ready to fight for her life. If anything he could do or say would subserve this end, the whole of London might listen in for all he cared. He was, in sober fact, prepared to tell the world and Carey Silence how much he loved her.

He greeted her across the long, cold distance with the same informal nod, the same half lazy smile, the same “Hullo, Carey!” as if they had parted yesterday and were meeting again tomorrow.

Carey didn't speak at all. She sat down, she laid her hands in her lap, she looked in his direction, but he might have been a table or a chair, or he might not have been there at all. Something in him was appalled at her remoteness. She seemed to be already withdrawn beyond his reach. But he meant to reach her.

He leaned over the table.

“Now look here, honey, we've got to talk. And you've got to listen. You're not listening. You've got to wake right up and listen.”

She did look at him then, but it was with an effort. Her eyes focussed slowly.

He said, “That's better. Now you keep listening to me, because I shan't be able to come again for quite awhile. I've got to go back to the States and make a report, but I'll be over again before the case comes on. Have you got that? Well now, Mr. Mordaunt will look after everything for you. He is said to be the best man we could get—Mr. Aylwin recommended him. He sees to the preparation of the defence, and he briefs counsel to defend you in court. We don't do it that way in the States, but that's the way it's managed over here. Well, he's briefing Hugo Vane. He'll be your counsel—counsel for the defense. You'll be having a conference with him presently, but Mordaunt fixes all that. In fact Mordaunt fixes everything—you don't have to bother. Have you got that?”

“I don't have to bother—”

“That's right—Mordaunt takes care of everything. There's just one thing you've got to do, honey.”

“What?”

Well, he had her attention for what it was worth. He had a moment of wondering how much it was worth. She looked like a sleep-walker. His mind shied violently away from Lady Macbeth. He spoke in a hurry.

“You've got to help him.”

“How?”

“Honey, you've got to wake up! Where have you got to? You're in some kind of a dream. There isn't any fight in you. You've got to wake up and fight! What's come to you?”

She looked faintly startled.

“I'm so tired, Jeff—I think it's that. The doctor came to see me this morning. He says they let me out of hospital too soon. He's going to send me to bed again. He's very kind.”

He felt a certain relief. She did look desperately tired. If she was in a sick ward she'd be taken care of. He said,

“That's fine. You rest all you can, and then you get ready to fight. Promise?”

“I'll try, Jeff.”

“I want to tell you why you've got to try. You're feeling weak and tired, and you've had a shock, but there's a lot of life left for both of us, honey, and I'm never going to believe that you haven't got the guts to put up a fight, because it isn't just your life, it's mine. If you throw your life away you're throwing mine after it as far as its being any use to me goes. Let's get down to brass tacks. Everything in my life that matters depends on whether you're going to fight this or not. I reckon I'm looking at it from a very selfish point of view, but if I have to go on living without you for the next fifty years—and as a family we run well into the nineties—there won't be one minute of all that time that I won't know I've missed what we're meant to get out of life, and that I won't feel you let me down because you hadn't got the guts to fight. As I said, it's my point of view, but there are times when you've got to put your point of view, and this is one of them. The first time I saw you I knew that I was going to marry you. I don't mean to say that I fell head over ears in love with you at first sight, but I knew I was going to, and I did. That sort of thing doesn't happen in just that sort of way unless there's something pretty strong between two people. I don't think it's all on my side either. Things don't happen that way—not with the kind of feeling I've got about you. So we've got something to fight for.”

When he began to speak she was looking at him, but as he went on she leaned forward over the table and put up her hands to cover her face. When he had finished and she looked up again her eyes were wet.

“Jeff—”

“Yes?”

“Don't mind so much.”

He smiled at her.

“It's no good—the mischief's done. It's up to you. What about it?”

“I'll try.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The court was crowded. Carey looked down on a sea of heads, a sea of faces. Most of them were looking at her. She had that moment of feeling that she had been stripped and set there for them to see. She turned giddy, but she held herself quiet and straight. Whatever happened, she mustn't shrink, or let them see that she felt naked there. She had come to an inner strength that held her up. When things were so bad that they couldn't be any worse, something came to you—some courage, some control.

She looked over the heads of all the people and rested her eyes upon the judge—the crimson of his robes, the grey horsehair of his wig, the little brown wrinkled face that reminded her of a squirrel.

She stood up for the indictment, and then they gave her a chair again. Sir Wilbury Fossett made his opening speech, which was rather like the day of judgment, because it set out all the things which had happened in that November fortnight, and instead of being innocent they were sinister—things she had forgotten, things that didn't mean anything at all, things it would be quite easy to explain if they would let her speak. He was building them up into the case against Carey Silence. All his skill, all his experience, his big handsome presence, his fine voice, his bland and easy manner, were being used for just one end—to prove that Carey Silence had done murder.