The End Of Solomon Grundy (16 page)

“He also lives in The Dell, I believe. Did you discuss your acquaintance Grundy at all?”

“His name was mentioned. I don’t think we discussed him particularly.”

“But his name was mentioned. He was in your mind. And now will you tell us exactly the circumstances in which you think you saw your friend’s Alvis. You were walking along Curzon Street. Was the car coming towards you?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Travelling at what speed?”

“Oh, well, really – an ordinary speed.”

“An ordinary speed. Would that be fifteen miles an hour, thirty, forty?”

“About twenty, I suppose.”

“And how far away was it when you recognised it?”

“Oh, a few yards, I suppose. Say fifteen yards.”

“Do you know how long it took the car to travel fifteen yards and pass you at the rate of twenty miles an hour, Mr Jellifer? Approximately two seconds.”

“But I commented on it to Peter Clements at the time. ‘Good lord,’ I said. ‘There he goes.’”

“So Clements had not noticed it at that time.”

“Well, no, I suppose not. He turned round to look.”

“Your identification, then, is based on what you saw during two seconds of time.”

“It was longer than that.”

“How can it have been?”

“Perhaps the car was going more slowly. Much more slowly.”

“So you are not sure of the speed. Are you really sure of anything, Mr Jellifer?”

“I tell you I recognised the car. I’d know it anywhere.”

“Mr Jellifer, you had drunk approximately a bottle and a half of wine, and a glass of brandy. You were talking about your friend Grundy. You saw this car for two, or at most three seconds. You did not notice the number. You could not see the driver. Are you seriously telling the jury that you recognised the car by the rent in its hood?”

“It wasn’t only that. The colour is very distinctive.”

Re-examined by Mr Hardy.

MR HARDY “Whatever counsel for the defence may say, you remain quite certain that it was the prisoner’s car you saw?”

“Absolutely sure, yes.”

THE JUDGE “Even though it has been demonstrated that you can have seen the car for only two or three seconds, that makes no difference to you?”

“No difference at all, my lord.”

“Very well.”

(end of transcript)

“You made a fine bloody fool of yourself,” Arlene Jellifer said when her husband got home that night. She had not gone to the Old Bailey because she refused, she said, to have anything to do with the persecution of old Sol.

“Not at all.” Jack sat down rather heavily in a chair and stared at the fish painting.

“You’ve been drinking.” She snatched up the evening paper and read, “‘A bottle and a half of wine and brandy on top of it, that wasn’t excessive?’ “Who do you think you’re fooling? You let him walk all over you.”

“Not at all.”

“If I’d known how much you’d drunk I’d never have let you give evidence.”

He murmured something as he bent down to untie his shoes.

“What?”

“Couldn’t have stopped me.”

“You’re an absolute fool, Jack. I love you, but you’re an absolute fool.”

“Peter’s giving evidence tomorrow. Then you’ll see.”

Arlene looked for a moment as though she would like to tear him to pieces with her parrot claws, then turned and went up the stairs. Jack sat where he was for a minute or two – holding one shoe in his hand.

“You said the other day you wanted to get out of giving evidence, and get old Sol out of trouble too. You seem to have shoved him farther in,” Lily said. They were lying naked on the bed in the Earl’s Court Square flat. Theo stroked her buttocks, shifted his hand. “No, shut up, I want to talk.”

“What is there to talk about? I had to give evidence.”

“Had to?”

“I am a foreigner. When you’re a foreigner in any country, doesn’t matter where, you try not to get into trouble with the police.”

“Why should you help the police? I hate those bastards.”

“My sweetiepie, you have to be a little realistic. Foreigners do what they’re told. And you ought to be realistic about something else too. He did it.”

“What?” She sat up on one elbow, and stared at him.

Theo said with apparent seriousness, “He didn’t get enough from Marion, so he had this other bit, and then – I don’t know what, she tried to blackmail him perhaps – and he did for her.”

“You don’t know, how can you?”

“I know Sol. I know his temper.”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “But if you think that, you ought to—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t believe you really think it.”

“I do, you know, my sweetiepie. And talking about not getting enough of it—” He moved over quickly and held her arms, “—I haven’t had enough either.”

Squared-off before a television set, and with food put in front of him, Cyprian would eat away steadily until everything was finished, almost irrespective of the quantity and the quality of the food. When he had done so on this evening he belched. “When’s Mummy coming back?”

“I don’t know,” Dick said, busy with the
New Statesman
. “She’s gone to see Mrs Grundy.”

“I’ll tell you something. Just been watching a play done by that old queer Clements.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Dick said automatically.

“I’ll tell you something about him.”

Cyprian told his father, and what he said was sufficient to make Dick put down his paper. After a little thought he telephoned Trapsell. When he came back he was smiling.

“Cyprian, old chap, I’ll never say again that there’s no point in watching television.”

“It’s a modern art form.” Cyprian turned on the set again. “Anything else to eat?”

Caroline Weldon sang in a loud, rather tuneful voice as she drove towards Hayward’s Heath, after paying a duty visit on an old aunt in Brighton. She cut in on other drivers and then smiled at them so happily that they were unable to resist smiling back. She was a happy woman – happy in her husband, whose work as an architect she regarded as socially valuable, happy in the cleverness of her children, happy to live in The Dell, which was for her the symbol of a new community spirit in England. Behind her happiness, it might fairly be said, was a complacent self-satisfaction at having managed life so well, but behind the self-satisfaction was a genuine desire to be of service to the community which was expressed in her work for half a dozen local welfare and artistic organisations, work which took her into the homes of the distressed, the maladjusted, the poor. Into these homes she brought her wide smile, her overwhelming physical vitality, her insatiable curiosity about people. Others might have been embarrassed by the idea of paying such a visit as hers, with such a purpose. Caroline felt simply the tingling of anticipation that for her preceded any sort of contact with other human beings. What would the house be like, what would Marion say, would she have any luck in getting her back?

The house was as bad as she had expected, a little semi-detached villa in a row of similar villas, set back a few yards from the main road. Caroline slammed the car door, opened the little wooden gate, walked briskly up the crazy paving drive. She had telephoned to announce her presence in the neighbourhood, and had been invited to have a cup of tea. Before she could ring the bell the door opened and Mr Hayward, solid, square, pork-butcherly, filled the space.

“You found us all right, then. Come along in.”

A hideous little hall, cream paint, a dado, an umbrella stand. How could people, people who had money to be elsewhere, live in such places? The living-room, which was two rooms knocked into one, had a square bay window in front and at the back french windows through which a small, carefully-tended garden could be seen. Tea things stood on a trolley. There was nobody else in the room.

“Did you have a good journey down? Which way did you come?”

Caroline, who had been exposed before to what she and Dick called the travel game, answered with caution, but did not stop Mr Hayward from describing an infinitely better route from Brighton. Her attention wandered. Where was Marion, where was Mrs Hayward? Even as these thoughts passed through her mind, Mrs Hayward came in carrying a silver teapot and a plate of bread and butter cut very thin. In response to Mr Hayward’s question, “Where’s that girl?” his wife said that she would be down in a minute. They drank tea, and Mr Hayward talked about the dryness of the summer, and about the harvest. Even Caroline, who was not susceptible to what people thought and felt, sensed something uneasy in the conversation.

When Marion did come in, while they were drinking their second cup of tea, Caroline was shocked. She had always admired the sharp prettiness and brittle elegance of Marion’s looks, and often said that she certainly had a sense of style. The woman who came into the room, walking as carefully as though she were treading some invisible line across the carpet, had untidy hair in which the streaks of grey were now obvious, a face thin as though with illness, twitching hands. Caroline got up, said, “Hallo, my dear,” warmly, kissed her. As she did so, she could not fail to be aware that Marion had been drinking gin.

Marion accepted a cup of tea but only sipped at it, crossed her hands over each other, and looked at the opposite wall. Her father and mother bent their gazes upon Caroline, rather as though she were a specialist who had been called in to give that vital second opinion. When Caroline, whose extrovert self-confidence was a little shaken, suggested that she and Marion should have a talk, they left the room almost eagerly.

“How are you?”

“I’m all right.”

Inane question, uncommunicative answer. Caroline was warm-hearted, and she was especially distressed by mental misery because she was really incapable of understanding it. She said, “Oh, my dear, what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. I feel—” Marion left the sentence unfinished. “I’ve been drinking, you know that, don’t you? I’ve been drinking for three days. But I can’t get drunk.”

“But why?”

“He writes me such terrible letters, no, I don’t mean that, it’s that he – he
accepts
everything so. I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand him.”

She took a letter out of a pocket, passed it over. Even in the midst of her deep, genuine sympathy for Marion, Caroline could not help feeling satisfaction as she read the lines on prison paper, with their acceptance of blame for whatever was wrong in their relationship, their assurance that nothing whatever should be done about it. This kind of satisfaction was something she and Dick always felt at glimpses into the recesses of other lives. She handed back the letter.

“I haven’t shown it to
them.
” Marion gestured in the direction of her mother and father, almost as if they were enemies. “I write back, but it’s no good. I keep thinking about the past, the way I’ve failed him.”

“Nonsense.”

“No. We were never – it was never – much good. In bed, you know. I think I’m frigid.” Caroline, the warmth of whose responses were such that frigidity was for her something almost unimaginable, was silent. “And yet it wasn’t like that, really. I mean, it wasn’t all my fault. He never thought about me. He wasn’t like these letters,” she cried out, protesting against the unfairness of the gap between what is written and what is done.

“Come back. My dear, do come back. You’ll be better at home.”

Marion turned upon her a dark anguished gaze. “It will be just the same anywhere.”

Caroline seized her advantage. “If it’s the same anywhere, then come back. People talk about you having left Sol. It will be better for him if you come back.”

“Better for him. But could I ever go on with it? Does he even want me to? I don’t understand, I’ve never understood him. Oh, help me to understand.”

Oh, dear, Caroline thought, she really is rather drunk. Firmly, practically, commonsensically, she said, “I’m going to take you back with me, that’s settled. You’ll stay with us for the time being, then you can decide whether you want to move back home. I’m quite sure you’ll feel better.”

So it was settled. They went upstairs and packed Marion’s things together. Caroline announced magisterially that Marion had decided that her proper place was in her own home, and the Haywards, far from objecting, seemed relieved. On the way back in the car Marion fell asleep. She did not wake up until they had reached The Dell. Caroline took her in, helped her to undress, put her to bed in Cyprian’s room. Then she went down and said triumphantly, “Mission accomplished.”

“Was she drunk?” Cyprian asked. “She looked drunk to me.”

Gloria rebuked him. “You don’t say that sort of thing. It’s disgusting.”

“Yes, it is,” Caroline said. “And don’t you dare to repeat what you’ve just said. If you do I shall be very angry indeed.”

She spoke with such uncharacteristic sharpness that even Cyprian was quelled. “Where am I going to sleep?”

“We’ll make up a bed for you down here.”

“Good, I needn’t go to bed yet then. Can I watch TV?”

“No.”

“Don’t be hard on him. I’ll tell you what he remembered,” Dick said. He told her.

Trial, Third Day

Trial Transcript – 6

PETER JAMES CLEMENTS,
examined by Mr Eustace Hardy.

“I am a television producer and I live in The Dell, where the accused lives also. The accused is well-known to me, and so also is his Alvis car. On the evening of the 23rd of September I had dinner with Mr Jellifer. After dinner we were walking down Curzon Street when he pointed out the accused’s Alvis car to me. I saw it myself, and I have no doubt that it was his car. I recognised the number.”

MR HARDY “What subjects were discussed during dinner?”

“Principally a possible television series featuring Mr Jellifer. I shouldn’t have been handling this myself, but another producer was interested. We talked about the idea.”

“Did you discuss the accused?”

“Not particularly. His name was mentioned.”

“In connection with the incident at the party?”

“And his odious behaviour at the garage committee on the following evening, yes.”

“But you discussed these matters only in passing.”

“Quite.”

“If it were suggested that the accused was very much in your mind, would that be correct?”

“No, not at all. We only mentioned him because he had been more boorish than usual.”

“There is one further point. If it were suggested that you had dined so well that you were likely to be mistaken about the car number, what would you say?”

“I should say it was nonsense. It was a pleasant dinner, no more than that. We weren’t in the least drunk, if that is what you mean.”

“And you are quite sure you recognised the car?”

“Quite sure.”

Cross-examined by Mr Newton.

MR NEWTON “Three bottles of wine between two people, and then brandy. Do you call that ‘just a pleasant dinner’, Mr Clements?”

“I’ve often drunk more, if that is what you mean.”

“Very possibly, but you haven’t always had to identify a car number afterwards.”

“I did recognise it.”

“Mr Clements, do you know anything about the way in which alcohol slows down human reactions?”

“I know I recognised the car number.”

THE JUDGE “Mr Clements, we have had it already that the car could have been seen for a few seconds, no more. Do you agree with that?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“What do you mean, you suppose so? Do you want to dispute it? Look at your watch, if you have one. Estimate the time. Does two seconds seem right to you?”

“I saw the car number, my lord.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I – no, I couldn’t dispute the time.”

“Now, turning round, as I understand you did, and looking at the back of this passing car for two or three seconds, did you look specially for the number?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“You must surely know whether you looked for it.”

“Well, no, I didn’t.”

“Then how did you happen to see it?”

“I just noticed it, that’s all.”

“You just noticed it. Very well.”

MR NEWTON “I must thank your lordship for eliciting answers to several questions I should have asked.”

THE JUDGE “We have had it all before, Mr Newton, with another witness. I thought it would save time.”

MR NEWTON “But I still have one or two more questions. Do you like the accused, Mr Clements?”

“Not particularly.”

“What does that mean?”

“He is very boorish, rude. I thought he behaved atrociously, both at the party and on another occasion, at the garage committee.”

“In your opinion, does he often behave badly?”

“He is often rude and always uncouth.”

“You don’t like him, then?”

“I certainly shouldn’t choose him as a friend.”

“Were you jealous of him?”

“What? That’s absurd?”

“Is it? Do you know a Mr Rex Lecky?”

“Yes.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“I—”

“Come along. Is he a friend or not.”

“We’ve quarrelled.”

“Mr Lecky was sharing a house with you, was he not?”

“Yes.”

“And now he has left it?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he leave? Did you quarrel about the accused?”

“No, it was nothing like that.”

“Did Mr Lecky say that the accused was an attractive man, and did that upset you?”

(The witness showed signs of distress.)

THE JUDGE “You may sit, if you wish.”

(Questioning was resumed after a short delay.)

MR NEWTON “Do you remember the incident?”

“No. I am not sure.”

“You are not sure. Your memory is hardly equal to your powers of observation. Do you remember that Mr Lecky disapproved of your going to the police?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“My lord, I shall be calling Mr Lecky, so that the jury will have an opportunity of hearing him. Is that why Mr Lecky left your house?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Why did he leave, then?”

“There were personal reasons.”

“Personal reasons! Well, I will inquire no further.”

“Would you agree that you had an argument about the accused?”

“I think that’s right. Yes.”

“Good. I am glad to have got so far. Now, we have been dealing with your memory. Let us consider your powers of observation. Had you ever seen the dead woman before that Friday night of the party?”

“No.”

“You are quite sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Will you please look at this paper, and see if you recognise it.”

“It seems to be a casting list.”

“It is a casting list for a television play called
The Springs of Justice,
is it not? Did you produce this play?”

“Yes.”

“My lord, I have further copies of this casting flist, which I should like to enter as Exhibit Number 61. Perhaps the jury would like to look at it.”
(Copies
of the list were passed to Mr Justice Crumble and the jury.)
“Now, Mr Clements, will you look at the second page, the second entry down. Will you tell us what actress was chosen to play the part of Celia Reston?”

“It says here Estelle Simpson.”

“Do you dispute the accuracy of this list?”

“No.”

“Below her name there is her address, and then it says here: ‘Availability. For a total of twenty rehearsals plus ampexing’. Will you tell the jury what that means.”

“It means that we had twenty days of rehearsal and then the play was ampexed, put on tape, ready to go out.”

“You were the producer, and Estelle Simpson, that is Sylvia Gresham, was in the cast. That means you saw her every day for three weeks?”

“Not every day, but most days. She had a very small part. I remember now.”

“You remember now, Mr Clements? You had no recollection of it?”

“It was two years ago. I’ve produced several plays since then.”

“Just think what you are saying. Two years ago you saw this girl almost every day, for three weeks. Yet it is only a few minutes since, speaking on oath in that witness box, you told me that you had never seen her before the night of the party. I asked whether you were sure of that, and you replied that you were absolutely sure. You were quite wrong, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Yet although you were utterly wrong about a girl you had seen for three weeks, you are still asking the jury to believe that you recognised the number plate and identity of a car which you saw for two or three seconds?”

“I – yes.”
(end of transcript)

Hardy did not re-examine. When Peter Clements, white and shaking, left the witness box, he knew that the damage done to his case by the stupidity of this wretched television producer might be considerable. He felt, as he said to Stevenage during the luncheon recess, that there was no cause for them to blame themselves. Clements was not an important witness, he provided no more than confirmation of Jellifer’s story. The fact that his recollection had proved faulty was not important either. But the effect on the jury of his equivocation and discomfiture, and of Newton’s adroit suggestion that Clements was a homosexual and that for some reason other inhabitants of The Dell were ganging up on Grundy, all this might be very important. The case was not going smoothly, yet Hardy was far from depressed. He was not a man who was ever greatly elated by a triumph or depressed by a defeat, being accustomed to treat those two impostors just the same. He did not, however, expect defeat.

Magnus Newton, on his side, had in his broad nostrils the smell of victory, which he was inclined to scent perhaps too easily. As he and Toby Bander carved away at their chump chops in a nearby pub he made grandiloquent gestures with his knife, which was one of his bad habits when carried away by enthusiasm. They wasted little time in consideration of the wretched Clements, except that Newton said Trapsell had done a good job in getting hold of the casting list.

“It was really that architect chap in The Dell,” Toby Bander said. “He found out about it somehow, yesterday.”

Newton took a large draught from his tankard of beer.

“The chap’s a regular detective.”

“None of this removes the real obstacle, does it?”

“No. He’s certainly no oil painting.”

They both contemplated without pleasure the appearance their client would present when he gave evidence, face brutish or sullenly louring, hairy hands gripping the edge of the box, body bearishly clumsy.

“I don’t like to think what Hardy will do to him,” Toby Bander said.

They drank the rest of their beer and talked about other, more important things. Magnus’s daughter had just won a scholarship to go to Cambridge. Toby had got his handicap down from eight to four.

Peter Clements walked out of the Old Bailey as unsteadily as a punch-drunk boxer. He took a taxi to a pub which was frequented a great deal by actors and boxers, and drank several whiskies. In the afternoon he visited other pubs and clubs, asking for Rex Lecky. He found him eventually in a club called the Fallout Shelter. Rex was with another young actor named Jackie Levine. He smiled his foxy smile.

“You made the headlines.”

Peter stood swaying, looking down at him. “You went to—” the word escaped him, “—to
them
.”

“I told you to be careful.”

“Betrayed me. Let me down. I’ve been humiliated.”

“Isn’t that what you like, humiliation?”

“Let him alone, Rex, he’s half sloshed,” Jackie Levine said.

“Judas.” Peter stretched his arms wide. “Judas, come back to me. I didn’t want you to go away.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, she’s maudlin.”

Jackie giggled. “Morbid.”

“Maudlin
and
morbid, both. And she’s wet. You can see it dripping off her.” The two young men got up. Peter put out a hand, Rex pushed it away, they went out laughing. The barman suggested that Peter had better go home. He was a good-looking boy and Peter smiled at him, but the barman did not smile back.

He had the same experience during what was left of the afternoon. He no longer felt sad, rather as though his head had been removed from his body. He wanted to explain this to people, and to tell them something of how he had been betrayed, both in his personal life and through that cruel ordeal in the witness box, but nobody would listen. Driven by the need to empty his bladder he went down into a lavatory, and there one man at whom he smiled seemed to smile back at him, but rudely shrugged him off when spoken to. Just by the exit another man, a boy really, seemed to be smiling at him.

It was unavoidable that he should go out that way, and really it seemed inevitable that he should speak.

“Thank goodness,” he said. “I thought I should never find anyone to talk to. Come back with me.”

“Where?”

“Home, of course, The Dell.”

“You were smiling at me.”

“Was I? You looked so nice.”

Now another young man, not so young really, was standing beside him, and the boy didn’t look nice at all. “We are police officers and we have been keeping you under observation,” he said. “We have seen you speak to several men, importuning them. Come along.”

He tried to tell them that it was all a mistake, that he was not really like that, but they took hold of his arms and he could not get away. In the street he became angry – after all, hadn’t he volunteered to give evidence, wasn’t he on the side of the police? – and at the station he protested quite vigorously. In the corridor leading to the cells they had to restrain him, which they were not unwilling to do, for neither of them liked queers.

That afternoon, also Inspector Ryan dropped in to have a chat with Kabanga, to tell him how things were going. The African felt, as he said, too personally involved to stay in court. Kabanga began to pace up and down the room as Ryan told him in detail of Clements’s debacle.

“The fool,” he said. “Why did he give evidence at all. Oh, it is all rubbish, this British justice of yours, it can let a guilty man get away.”

“Can happen.” Ryan used a toothpick.

“But what kind of justice do you call that? Grundy did it, he should hang.”

They had had all this before, more than once, and Ryan tried again to put Kabanga right about it.

“First thing to bear in mind is he won’t hang.” He pointed the toothpick. “And the next is, it’s not up to you to go on about Britain. We let you in here, Tony, let you make a fat living out of this country.”

“I know that.”

“You loved this girl, I know you did. All right. I respect you for it. But don’t you say anything about British justice, it’s the best in the world.”

“Listen, Buck. This man Grundy, we know he did it.”

“We
think
he did it. It’s the jury that
knows.
”

“We know, you and I. Don’t we? And you are saying he could be let off?”

“It could happen. I don’t think it will, but it could.”

“And you call that justice? The defence man twists and argues and lies and you call that justice?” Kabanga was trembling with passion. Ryan tried to argue with him but it was no use. In the end he got browned off with it, and left. He felt that he had had enough of Kabanga. You tried to make a friend out of one of them, he told himself, but really it was impossible, they just didn’t think the same way. East was east and all that. He might have imparted some of these philosophical reflections to Manners, but the superintendent greeted him with a quiet anger that forbade such observations.