The End Of Solomon Grundy (18 page)

“I’m back, Sol,” she said. “For good. Caroline came down to see me and made me see I ought to come back. They’ve been wonderful, Caroline and Dick. I think she came down specially to see me, though she didn’t say so.”

“They like to stick their noses into other people’s business.”

“But Sol, you know they found out about—”

“I know, I know.” He ran a hand through his ginger hair. “Dell life doesn’t suit me, but you’re right, they’re good neighbours.”

She looked at the impassive policeman, lowered her voice. “I read about what happened, you ought to try and control yourself – you know, the jury will get a wrong impression, that’s what Dick said.”

“And of course Dick’s right.”

She felt the old barriers rising. “Please, Sol.”

“You don’t understand anything I’ve written to you, do you?”

“When you’re in the box, when, you know, you’re being cross-examined, you must keep calm then.”

“I told you it didn’t matter.”

“Oh, how can you
say
that? Of course it matters.”

“The purpose of living is what happens now,” he began, and then said as though he were humouring a child, “All right. Perhaps it does matter.”

They talked for another five minutes, but she could not be sure that he had taken in anything she said. Had it been worthwhile, she wondered afterwards, had there been any point in going, did he want to see her? Driving back in the car with Dick, who talked away with his usual enthusiasm, she could not be sure.

Trial, Fourth Day

Trial Transcript – 7

Detective-Constable
LEONARD SIMS,
examined by Mr Stevenage.
“I was instructed, with Detective-Constable Larkin, to go to London Airport, watch for the accused, and detain him for questioning. I discovered at the Airport that he had booked a single air ticket for Belgrade, and when the Belgrade flight was called, Detective-Constable Larkin and I detained him as instructed. He expressed surprise, and said that he was going for a holiday in Yugoslavia. He made no objection to returning with us, although he was annoyed.”

Cross-examined by
MR NEWTON. “You say he was annoyed. That would be the natural reaction of an innocent man, would it not?”

“It might be, sir.”

“Had he made any attempt to conceal his flight?”

“How do you mean?”

“Had he booked under a false name, did he try to board the plane at the last minute, anything like that?”

“No, sir.”

“In fact his whole behaviour was perfectly consistent with innocence, was it not?”

“I had simply been asked to detain him.”

“Let me put it this way. He behaved exactly like any other passenger?”

“That is so, yes.”

“Now, when you detained him, I believe he said something. Will you tell us what it was?”

“It was something like this. ‘I suppose it’s because of that stupid bitch Facey. She thinks I’ve killed my wife. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s got the police searching for her body.’ He said further that he and his wife had quarrelled, and his wife had gone to stay with her father.”

“And this was the truth?”

“I understand so, sir.”

“Mrs Grundy was understandably upset, and had gone to stay with her family?”

“I couldn’t say if that was the reason, sir.”

“So really this order to detain the accused was the result of a ludicrous mistake?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I was simply carrying out instructions.”

“The instructions of your superior officer, yes…”

Extract from the cross-examination of Superintendent
JEFFREY MANNERS
by Mr Newton.
“…So you had been told by this neighbour, Mrs Facey, of her suspicions. You had no warrant for making a search, had you?”

“The kitchen window appeared to have been forced, and in all the circumstances it appeared right to investigate.”

“I know, Superintendent, I know. And did you find anything suspicious when you searched the house without a warrant, anything at all?”

“No, sir.”

“The whole tale of the accused murdering his wife was absolute nonsense, was it not?”

“It proved to be untrue, certainly.”

“It came about because the prisoner quite naturally resented the insinuations of a silly neighbour?”

“There had been a quarrel, and Mrs Facey had heard it. Then Mrs Grundy disappeared. I think her conclusions were reasonable, a little alarmist perhaps.”

“But they were utterly wrong?”

“They were wrong, yes.”

“Now I want you to consider my next question very carefully, Superintendent. Supposing you had not been told this ridiculous story—”

THE JUDGE “The witness has already said he thought the conclusions of this Mrs Facey were reasonable, Mr Newton.”

MR NEWTON “If your lordship pleases. This story. Supposing you had not been told this story, would you have arrested the accused?”

“Yes. The proof is that when he was detained at London Airport, Detective-Constable Sims telephoned me and told me that he said his wife was staying with her family. I confirmed this within a few minutes. At the time he was charged, therefore, I knew that Mrs Grundy was unharmed.”

“But then why did you not arrest him earlier?”

“He hadn’t tried to leave the country then.”

“Had you told him not to do so?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“He knew very well that he was a suspect in a murder case. Such a warning was unnecessary.”

“This was a perfectly innocent and unconcealed flight, would you agree?”

“The most significant thing was that he booked a one way ticket.”

“Please answer my question.”

“He flew off at an hour’s notice. He hadn’t even told his partner.”

“Superintendent, I must put it to you directly that you made an appalling mistake here in taking notice of local gossip, and that when you realised your error you felt you had to go on and make an arrest.”

“No, sir. That is not correct.”

“I ask you again, then, why you had not arrested him before.”

“I have already explained that he had not then tried to leave the country.”

“You still maintain that this was a panic decision on his part?”

“I do.”

“In spite of the open way in which he did it, in spite of his spontaneous reaction at the airport that this had arisen because of Mrs Facey?”

“Yes, sir. I believe that he knew the net was closing on him, and that if he had got away he would not have returned voluntarily to England…”
(end of transcript)

Newton, Toby Bander and Trapsell considered the “Notice of Additional Evidence” at a gloomy conclave in the room set aside for the defence barristers. Their depression was caused chiefly by the fact that much the most damaging evidence against Grundy was that which professed to place him at Cridge Mews. Leighton was thus a far more important witness than Jellifer or Clements, and it was a pity that he had remained unshaken in cross-examination, but at least Newton had been able to convey the shadiness of Leighton and the doubtful character of his scrap metal dealings. Leighton unsupported was one thing, Leighton confirmed by a respectable witness who could have no possible motive other than a wish to see justice done quite another. It might, of course, turn out that Mrs Stenson was extremely short-sighted or that she was a lifelong enemy of Grundy’s, but these were far-fetched suppositions. Altogether, there was reason for gloom.

“Better put your amateur detective on to it,” Toby Bander said. Trapsell laughed dolefully. Newton sat with his little legs stuck out in front of him, his head sunk in his double chin. Toby continued, “Anyway, you might see what you can find out about her.”

“Of course. But there isn’t much time.”

They both looked at Newton for hope, for inspiration. At last he lifted his head and spoke. “That’s her story, and we’re stuck with it. We shall just have to do the best we can.”

It was hardly inspirational. Later Trapsell got busy, in the little time he had. He saw Grundy, who said that he had never heard of anybody named Olivia Stenson. He spoke to Dick Weldon, who had no knowledge of her. He had an inquiry, necessarily perfunctory, made in the area of Porchester Terrace. He found out that she was the daughter of a wealthy Irish peer, that stockbroker Stenson was wealthy too, and that she owned the house in which she lived. None of these discoveries was at all helpful.

During most of the day Hardy nursed his cold, spraying his throat with a product specially prepared for him on the recommendation of his man in Harley Street, preparing himself for the vital witness. It was Stevenage, therefore, who took Tissart through his examination, although to use such a phrase gives a wrong impression for Tissart was like a machine that, once started, could be guaranteed to run as long as was required, or even longer. His act, for it could be called nothing less, was impressive, consisting as it did of an encouragement to the jury to take part with him in a sort of guessing game about handwriting identifications with the aid of his enormous albums. Newton sat watching unhappily as the jury evidently warmed to the idea that they were the favourite and extremely intelligent pupils of a benevolent schoolmaster. Slowly Tissart led them through the maze of style characteristics and personal characteristics in handwriting, spoke of the mysteries of arcades and garlands, elaborated on terminal spurs and connecting strokes, pen-lifts and hesitations, shading and alignments. And when these technical points had been disposed of he told them of his own, not to be too modest about it, infallible system of handwriting comparison, a refinement of the old process by which every handwriting specimen was broken down and given a code number in terms of its precise characteristics in slope, shading, size ratio and shape. The infallibility, Tissart readily agreed, lay in the care and delicacy of perception with which his code system was carried out. An inferior sensibility would produce an inaccurate result.

“Do you claim that your system of giving a code number to each specimen is infallible?” Stevenage asked.

“By no means.” Tissart smiled broadly. “There is always a possibility of human error, since we are all human beings.”

“You have given evidence in many dozens, perhaps many hundreds of cases. Has your own evidence of identification ever been successfully queried?”

“It has been queried, sir. Never successfully.”

“And with your immense knowledge, and using your personal and exclusive system, will you tell us what conclusion you have reached?”

“The conclusion I have reached, sir, is that the specimens of handwriting given me were of the same authorship.”

“That is to say, that the accused wrote the postcard found in Miss Gresham’s flat.”

“That is the conclusion I have reached,” Tissart said solemnly, and then smiled at the jury.

Newton had seen juries blossoming before under the sun of Tissart’s smile. He would be able to cross-examine, but he knew from past experience that what he said was unlikely to smirch the image of infallible Tissart in the eyes of the jury. He left the cross-examination, therefore, in the hands of Toby Bander, as an indication of how little importance should be attached to the evidence of experts. It was twenty past three when Toby Bander rose, his light springy voice coming as an agreeable contrast to the ponderous weight of Newton’s attack. He followed the well-established rule that one expert may cancel out another.

“You are familiar, of course, with Dr Wilson Harrison’s classic work on
Suspect Documents?
”

Tissart bristled. “Of course.”

“Do you agree with Dr Harrison when he says, ‘The document examiner should insist on being provided with ample specimens, written over a fair period of time, before he ventures on the expression of opinion as to the authorship of a disputed writing’?”

Tissart smiled. “I think that Dr Harrison was referring particularly there to adolescent handwriting.”

“Please answer my question. Do you agree with the quotation?”

“In a general way, yes.”

“But here you have only one document for comparison, a postcard. Are there not immense possibilities of error?”

“When the examination is made truly scientifically, no.”

“Dr Harrison gives a special warning, does he not, about the dangers of being too positive ‘where the handwritings being compared are limited in amount’? And he says that even one dissimilarity, no more than that, just one, should make the examiner doubt the identification. What have you to say about that?”

“I have borne that warning in mind most carefully. I always do. But I have found no dissimilarity.”

It was no good, Toby Bander could see, the jury were against him, they positively radiated their confidence in this odious little man. He made some menacing remarks about what would be said by their own expert but as he made them he was aware that Borritt was of much lower jury-impressing calibre than Tissart. Then he sat down.

“Olivia Stenson. I’ve never heard the name,” Marion said. “Who is she?”

Dick stroked his nose. “Trapsell was mysterious, but I gather she’s an unexpected witness, prosecution witness that is. He wondered if we knew anything about her.”

“There’s a villain named Stenson,” Cyprian said, in that new crime series,
The Racketeers.
Last week he had a man killed by an electronic device which he operated from a thousand miles away. Frizzled the man up in the middle of a desert.”

“Shut up, Cyprian,” Gloria said. “Do you think Marion wants to hear about that sort of thing.”

“I don’t mind.” It was forty-eight hours ago now that Marion had come back with Caroline, and the change in her was remarkable. She had had her hair done, much of the tenseness had gone out of her manner, she was prepared to talk cheerfully about life after Sol’s acquittal.

“I just hope Sol keeps control of himself in the witness box,” she said after the children had gone to bed. She smiled at Dick and Caroline. “Something like this shows you who your friends are. I’m not very good at saying it, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“You saw about Peter Clements?” The producer had been charged with persistently importuning, and released on bail. “I must say I was surprised.”

“He’s split up with Rex,” Dick said. “You know what a thing like that can do to someone like Peter.”

Marion had been staying at the Weldons’, but now she returned home to sleep for the first time. It was strange to be in the bedroom without Sol, to be aware of his presence through clothes, shirts in the airing cupboard, shaving cream in the bathroom. The effect of all this unused maleness was confusing, rather as though Sol were dead and a compulsion rested on her to get rid of the things that belonged to him because they brought up recollections agonisingly painful. But that isn’t true, she said to herself as she fingered the rough cloth of a tweed jacket, it’s silly, it’s wrong to think like that. To prove how wrong it was, she got out the trousers belonging to the tweed jacket – they were baggy, like all Sol’s trousers – and pressed them. When he comes out, she told herself after she had bathed, taken a sleeping tablet and gone to bed, we shall have a really good relationship, and because she knew the importance of such a relationship she dwelt on images of Sol returning home in mid-afternoon and finding her stretched naked on the bed, of occasions when he forced her to submit to him as he had done sometimes in the past and which in imagination were not revolting as they had been in fact, but delightful. Thinking such thoughts, she fell asleep.