Take No Farewell - Retail (50 page)

‘I don’t know what to say, Mr Staddon. I really do not know what to say.’

‘I had no alternative. Surely you can see that.’

‘I can certainly see how you were able to persuade yourself that you had no alternative.’

‘What should I have done, then? Stayed and been arrested? Implicated you and Jacinta in a conspiracy against her father? Sabotaged Consuela’s defence by parading my love for her in open court?’

Hermione bit back a reply and turned away. Then, with a
sigh,
she opened the curtains to the watery dawn light and stared pensively through the window at Hereford’s roofs and chimneys as they emerged from the mist below us. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Victor – or the Roebuck creature – has outwitted all of us. I should not reproach
you
for
my
stupidity.’

‘We were both acting against our better judgement, Hermione. Neither you nor I would have helped Rodrigo but for the urgency of Consuela’s plight. At least this way there’s still some basis for hope.’

‘Not for Rodrigo.’

‘No. But for Consuela. Saving her was all he cared about. He’d have gladly died to achieve that.’

‘Yes. But now he has died – without achieving anything. So, what do you want me to tell Jacinta?’

‘That I’ll continue trying to help her mother in every way that I can.’

‘And you’re sure Victor will take no reprisals against her?’

‘How can he, without making her think he murdered her uncle rather than killed him in self-defence? No, Victor has to tread very carefully from now on. And Miss Roebuck will ensure that he does. For the same reason, you have no cause to fear any recriminations.’

‘You really think Miss Roebuck has him under her thumb to that degree?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What is she hoping to achieve?’

‘I don’t know. She’s clever, ambitious and utterly ruthless. Perhaps she hopes to marry Victor. It would make her much wealthier than any governess could ever dream of being.’

‘But only if Victor were free to marry her.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, she has a vested interest in ensuring that Consuela hangs.’

‘She may have. The question is …’

‘Whether she conceived the idea before or after the poisoning.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Whether she brought this situation about – or is merely taking advantage of it.’

‘Logically, it has to be the latter.’

‘But you suspect the former?’ Hermione turned to look at me. Her expression conveyed clearly enough that she knew what I suspected – and that she agreed.

‘There isn’t a shred of evidence.’

‘Then what can we do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘
Nothing?
’

‘Except hope and pray that the jury finds Consuela not guilty.’

Wednesday 23 January 1924 (1.30 p.m.)

And so the ninth and what is commonly expected to be the final day of the trial for murder of Consuela Caswell has opened at the Old Bailey. I am writing these lines during the luncheon adjournment, after a morning entirely given over to the thoughts of Mr Justice Stillingfleet. His summing-up has been a rambling affair, with no apparent sense of direction, imposing a mood of bathos as well as foreboding on the court. But it can surely have little longer to run. At its conclusion, the jury will be sent out to reach a verdict which is therefore, in all likelihood, only a few hours away
.

With the end of the trial suddenly so close, its beginning seems preposterously remote, overtaken and obscured by the thousands of words spoken in the course of it. The lady of many hats is back, however, adorned in the pink toque she wore on the opening day. I cannot help wondering if this is a conscious celebration of the cyclical nature of the law’s rituals or an unconscious admission of the limit of her millinery account. Either way, she is determined to be in at the death
.

Oh God, how one can instantly regret a jest! We may all be in at a death – the decision, at all events, that there shall be a death – before this day has ended. Perhaps that is what deterred Victor Caswell from attending. Perhaps it also has something to do with Geoff’s absence from London. But I still have no clue to my friend’s activities or whereabouts. He said in his note that he hoped to be
back
today, so for all I know he may be waiting for me at my club this evening. If he is, what news will I have for him, I wonder?

Of Mr Justice Stillingfleet, I shall be obliged to say that his summing-up has not been one of the most glorious passages in the history of English jurisprudence. He has achieved what I would have thought impossible. He has reduced the complexities and fascinations of this case to the level of tedium. I cannot accuse him of partiality. He has set out all the points fairly and squarely. Unhappily, he has done so with none of the verve and efficiency of Mr Talbot, let alone Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, whose closing speech seems now – as I feared it might – far longer ago than yesterday morning
.

The gist of the judge’s remarks – insofar as there has been one – is that, whilst the burden of proof lies upon the prosecution, the arguments advanced by the defence have not been convincing. To subscribe to them it is necessary to believe that the accused has been the victim of a conspiracy, which Mr Justice Stillingfleet is clearly not about to do. And that, I suppose, is his prerogative. But what is surely not his prerogative is to dwell more lengthily upon the deficiencies of the defence than upon those of the prosecution. To do so – as he has – is surely to flout the very principle he declared at the outset
.

It is also apparent to me that he dislikes Consuela. Perhaps dislikes is too mild a term. He has a powerful
distaste
for her that he manfully suppresses most, but not quite all, of the time. When his self-control falters, sinister associations spring up between his words. For instance, having described the murder of Rosemary Caswell as ‘a cruel and cold-hearted act’, he later remarked that Consuela’s testimony had revealed ‘a cold streak to her character’. Thus a dangerous and entirely false proposition may have been planted in the jury’s minds. The murderer is cold-hearted. The accused is cold-hearted. Therefore the accused is the murderer
.

Before this trial began, I would have declared confidently that High Court judges were rational, enlightened and intelligent beings, free of the bias and illogicality which afflict lesser mortals. Now, I find they are no better than the rest of us. Their training equips them to hide their prejudices, but it does not erase them. And their
office
gives them infinite scope to indulge those prejudices. Well, perhaps it was naïve of me to expect them to resist temptation. To be fair, Mr Justice Stillingfleet has, I think, made some effort to do so. But the effort has not been enough
.

Whether Consuela has been stung by any of his words, or has detected in them an animus against her, is impossible to say. She has seemed this morning more withdrawn than ever, distancing herself from events almost visibly as they near their climax. She is wearing the black suit in which she testified on Monday, but the matching hat is now a little lower over her eyes. Nor does she look straight ahead so consistently. Instead, she spends lengthy periods looking down at her hands folded in her lap. What she is thinking I cannot tell. Whether she is even following what is being said is uncertain. Yet she must know – as do we all – that her fate and future will be settled here, beneath Mountford’s vainglorious dome, this very afternoon. Nothing so far has seemed to penetrate – or even dent – the wall of insouciance she has constructed around herself. Yet, surely, before the day is out, something will
.

Until I reached Ross-on-Wye, the task I had set myself seemed a simple one. To call at Peto’s Paper Mill, posing as an amateur numismatist seeking guidance on whether a certain five pound note was printed on paper of their manufacture, promised to be a straightforward exercise. When I arrived, however, a mass of difficulties occurred to my mind. Would I arouse suspicion? Would I encounter Peto himself and be recognized? Would somebody cry out, ‘He’s the one they’re looking for in connection with the shooting at Clouds Frome’?

Defeated by my own trepidations, I retreated to an inn in the town and consumed a cheerless lunch, my first meal since dining with Rodrigo at the Green Man. What, I wondered, would they be doing now about his death? Questioning Victor? Opening an inquest? Conducting a
post mortem
? All that, and more, was bound in due course to be done. But when would they begin to suspect that the truth was being kept from them? Probably never, if Imogen
Roebuck’s
ingenuity were to be relied upon. How strange and disquieting it was to find myself hoping that she and Victor would be successful, in this if in nothing else.

It was whilst standing at the bar, weighed down by such thoughts, that I realized providence had guided my choice of inn. A tubby tweed-suited man of middle years had entered some time before, propped himself on a stool and ordered a pint of his ‘usual’. Now he and the barmaid were exchanging well-worn pleasantries. As I listened, at first idly, then intently, it became apparent that the fellow occupied a managerial position at the mill, though doubtless a less exalted one than he claimed. The barmaid called him Mr Howell, laughed wearily at his jokes and looked as if the person who took him off her hands would be doing her a great service. I decided to oblige.

Howell was an affable, self-centred man, as pleased by my interest in his work at the mill as he was incurious about the reason for it. Was it true that Peto’s had once been paper suppliers to the Bank of England? Indeed it was. Was it also true that a robbery in 1911 had ended the association? To his infinite regret, it was; if only the security of the premises had been his responsibility, it would, of course, never have happened. Would banknotes printed on Peto paper still be in circulation? He supposed so, although it was a long time since he had seen any. Did he mean, then, that he could actually tell the difference? Most certainly, and proud of it. To an expert eye such as his the Peto water-mark was unmistakable. How so? At last his garrulity reached its limit. That was a trade secret. His lips were sealed.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘But let me just try a small experiment – for my own satisfaction.’ I took a ten shilling note from my wallet and passed it to him. ‘Is this one of yours?’

He held it up to the light, squinted knowingly, then shook his head. ‘Definitely not.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘Never more so.’

‘What about this?’ I replaced the ten shilling note with a pound.

The inspection was repeated, with the same result.

‘And this?’ I proffered the five pound note I had taken from Victor’s safe.

‘I don’t even need to glance at it. It’s too new to be one of ours.’

‘It could have been hoarded away.’

‘Sock under a mattress, you mean?’

‘Something like that.’

‘All right, I’ll take a look. But there’s not a – Well, blow me down!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘The strangest thing. This fiver—’ He peered at it in evident amazement. ‘It’s got the Peto water-mark. I’d know it anywhere.’

Wednesday 23 January 1924 (3 p.m.)

Mr Justice Stillingfleet required only half an hour after lunch to draw together the threads of his summing-up and send out the jury to consider their verdict. So now we wait here in the great hall of marble and plaster, gathered in ones and twos and fours and sixes, some standing, some sitting, some talking, some not. Journalists, policemen, lawyers and hangers-on like me, embarrassed by our unity of purpose, trying not to look at each other or wonder what we are all expecting
.

Over lunch, the judge must have reproached himself for being too hard on the defence. Either that or food and wine mellowed his temper. Whatever the explanation, his concluding remarks were shot through with reminders for the jury to convict only if they are absolutely certain of Consuela’s guilt and to base their verdict on the facts laid before them, not on impressions or suspicions they may have accumulated during the trial. They are to bear in mind that the evidence against Mrs Caswell is largely circumstantial. They are also to bear in mind that circumstantial evidence is not to be despised and can often be compelling. And now, at last, they are to reach their decision
.

How long will it take them? Some of the journalists have organized a covert sweepstake on the time of their return. Thanks to Mountford’s acoustics, I can catch such phrases as
‘Tanner a ticket’, ‘On the dot of half four’
and
‘You must be joking’
rising in a vague babble towards the dome. But the figure of Justice seems not to hear. She stares down at us with stony contempt, scales held aloft in her left hand whilst, with her right, she firmly clasps the haft of a two-edged sword. Perhaps she knows what I am coming, more and more, to believe. Justice is merely the name we have given to the bizarre form of business we conduct in this place of Mountford’s devising. Its forms and conventions are faithfully adhered to. But they do not bestow truth or certainty upon its outcome. The only truth recognized here is what the courts define as such. And the only certainty is that their definition is often a long way from the truth
.

I drove out of Ross along the Ledbury road. I cannot say precisely what my intention was. The realization that I had been deceived, that all of us had been deceived, about the sort of man Victor Caswell was, had become overwhelming. I wanted to strike back at him, to denounce him before those who respected him.

Only when I reached the cross-roads where I would need to turn off for Hereford did I hesitate. I pulled to a halt beneath the finger-post and stared up at it. FOWNHOPE 5½. MORDIFORD 8. HEREFORD 12. Did I really want to go back again? Possession of a mint-condition five pound note printed on Peto paper proved nothing whatever. Even if I could show that it was a forgery, nobody would believe I had found it in Victor’s safe. And by now the police might have learned that Rodrigo had lodged with a companion at the Green Man in Fownhope. The landlord did not know my name, but he could probably give them a fair description of me – and of my car.