The Twenty-Third Man (21 page)

‘Did what?’

‘Punched Everard in the eye, so that he staggered towards the top of the stairs. Then Clun held on to the top banister post with his left hand and upper-cut Everard with his right so that the fellow simply went crashing down the stairs on to the stone floor of the foyer. Of course, nobody thought…’

‘In your opinion, then,’ said counsel hastily, ‘the accused fully intended to knock his victim downstairs and injure him seriously?’

‘Well, I couldn’t honestly swear to that. I shouldn’t think he thought of actual injuries, don’t you know, and, of course, he was devilish tight at the time.’

‘He was …?’ inquired the judge.

‘Too drunk to be responsible,’ translated the witness.

‘Yes, yes. Thank you, Mr Lockerby,’ said counsel. ‘His Lordship understands you, I am sure.’ Counsel for the defence rose.

‘When you say that the accused was too drunk to be responsible, do you mean that he would not have acted in the same way if he had been sober?’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t.’

‘That is a matter of opinion, not of fact,’ said the judge dryly. Counsel bowed.

‘When you said that you were “slung out” – that is the expression I think you employed – you mean, I take it that the management requested your party to leave?’

‘That’s about the size of it. We were pretty well tanked up, most of us …’

‘Will the witness confine himself to the Queen’s English?’ suggested the judge mildly.

‘Pardon, my lord,’ said the witness sulkily. ‘I should say that we had all had a fair amount to drink and were not altogether sober.’

‘Your party was requested to leave,’ pursued counsel. ‘What effect did that have?’

‘The blokes were a bit sore. That is to say’ – the witness glanced towards the judge – ‘some dissatisfaction was expressed. Then, when some of us were at the top of the stairs, after we’d got our things from the cloakroom, Clun hit Everard and Everard rolled down the stairs. He lay there, and when some of us went to help him and see what the damage was, we could see he’d busted his skull – er – he’d received a severe knock on the head which had broken the skin. We phoned the hospital but when the ambulance came it turned out that he was dead.’

The next witness was the doctor. He explained that the ambulance men had brought Everard to the casualty department of the local hospital, that he had been called at once to attend to him, but that he was dead.

‘How long, would you say, Doctor?’

‘A matter of half an hour, possibly less.’

‘In other words, he was dead before he was removed from the hotel foyer to hospital?’

‘Yes. I should say that something must have killed him immediately.’

‘Was it the injury to his head that killed him?’

‘No. That was severe, but the actual cause of death was, in common parlance, a broken neck.’

‘A result of the fall?’

‘It is not possible to say definitely.’

‘Will you explain that, please?’

‘From the nature of the injury, death
could
have been caused by a punch under the angle of the jaw, but I am not able to say that it
was
so caused.’

‘Upon what do you base the supposition that such a punch might have broken the man’s neck?’

‘I saw the same thing happen at a boxing match once, and have heard of other instances.’

Counsel for the defence asked:

‘Would it be a rare occurrence?’

‘I have experience only of the one instance. I have heard of two others.’

‘Were there not multiple contusions upon the body?’

‘Yes, but they were superficial injuries. The serious injury, apart from the knock on the head, was a broken jaw.’

‘Might not that also have been an effect of the fall?’

‘Well, I deduced that it was the result of a heavy punch, but one cannot be sure.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ Counsel sat down.

‘Call Charles Emden,’ said the prosecuting counsel.

It was too beautiful, thought Dame Beatrice, re-reading her grandnephew’s full and sufficient notes. That Clun, Emden, and Lockerby were all sewn up in the same parcel was matter more suitable to the dramas of Ancient Greece than to the world of the present century.

Karl Emden, it appeared, could not speak to the
fracas
at the top of the staircase, but he could, and did, provide
contributory
evidence in that he had been present at the beginning of the argument between Clun and Everard.

‘You are Charles Emden?’

(Surprising what a difference an anglicized baptismal name could make, Dame Beatrice thought).

‘Yes, I am Charles Emden.’

His home address followed and the witness acknowledged it.

‘You were present at a dinner-party held at the
Crown
Hotel, Pawsey, on the evening of 18 March?’

‘I was.’

‘At the conclusion of the meeting you went to the cloakroom for your overcoat and hat.’

‘And scarf and gloves.’

‘Quite so. While you were in the cloakroom you overheard an exchange of remarks between the prisoner and the deceased?’

‘Yes. They had a difference of opinion.’

‘Can you tell us the subject of this disagreement?’

‘Yes. Clun called Everard a dirty interloper and said he ought not to have gate-crashed the dinner, and Everard said that he’d paid as much as Clun had, and had a right to come. They argued like that for a bit, and then things got more personal, and they were shouting at one another, and then Clun hit Everard in the eye.’

‘You are certain that Clun was the aggressor?’

‘Well, I didn’t blame him really. Everard had just called him a …’

‘Never mind that. Answer the question.’

‘Yes, Clun hit him first.’

‘Did you see what happened at the top of the staircase?’

‘No.’

‘How was that?’

‘I couldn’t find my cloakroom ticket, so I waited until everybody else had claimed his things and mine were left.’

‘When did you next see Clun?’

‘When I got to the foyer. He and some others were
standing
beside Everard, who was stretched out on the floor at the bottom of the stairs – well, not so much stretched out, I suppose, as crumpled up. I said, “Has he conked out?”’

‘What did you mean by that?’

‘Well, we’d all had drinks.’

‘Answer the question.’

‘I meant he was drunk. I also thought he’d tumbled down the stairs because I saw there was blood on his head. Clun said, “Lord! I’ve been and gone and done it now! Get a doctor, quick!”’

Defending counsel rose.

‘You are certain those were the words Clun used?’

‘Quite certain.’

‘What interpretation did you put on them?’

‘Well, I knew he’d hit him in the cloakroom so I thought he was referring to that.’

‘You did not think he meant he had killed him?’

‘Oh, no. I thought he meant perhaps Everard had been partly stunned by the first punch and had stumbled downstairs.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Call Inspector Truebody.’

Inspector Truebody’s evidence amounted to a disclosure of the accused’s words when he was confronted by the doctor’s verdict that Everard had been killed. These, it seemed, were:

‘Well, I’ve bought it this time. I never meant it like this.’

Then the accused himself was called.

‘Your name is Clun?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are twenty-six years of age and you live at number seventeen Murray Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘You attended a club dinner at the
Crown
Hotel on 18 March?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the dinner you learned that a non-member of the club was present?’

‘Yes.’

‘You took exception to this fact?’

‘I don’t like gate-crashers.’

‘Answer the question.’

‘I thought the dinner should be confined to members only. That was the rule.’

‘Did you strike the deceased in the cloakroom of the hotel after dinner?’

‘Well, he called me a …’

‘What he called you is immaterial at the moment.’

‘But it isn’t immaterial! It’s the whole point! How would
you
like to be called a …’

‘The witness’, said the judge weightily, ‘is not called upon to ask questions, but to answer them.’

‘Did you strike the deceased, as I said?’

‘Yes.’

‘And again, at the top of the stairs leading down to the foyer?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘With the result that death ensued?’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘I put it to you that if he had not been struck he would not have died.’

‘That’s for the doctor to say.’

‘According to the evidence, you said, when you knew Everard was dead, “Well, I’ve bought it this time. I never meant it like this.” Do you agree that those were the words you used?’

‘I suppose so. I don’t remember.’

‘Do you agree that, in the light of those words, you knew you had been responsible for his death?’

‘How was I to know a fall would kill him?’

‘I must remind the witness’, said the judge, ‘that he is here to
answer
questions.’

‘All right, then,’ said Clun violently, ‘have it your own way. I did know I’d killed him. I slammed him hard
enough
, anyway. But, of course, I never meant it. I was drunk.’

‘If you were in charge of a car and ran over somebody and killed him, do you think the confession that you were drunk at the time would exonerate you?’

‘The two things are quite different. Anyway, I don’t possess a car.’

‘I put it to you that you cannot control your temper.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘Well, if you can, shall we accept it that you did not?’

‘Hang it all, I tell you I was drunk! I suppose I did overstep the mark. All right, then! I did it, but I certainly didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t even
know
the chap very well. Do what you like! You can’t feel more upset about it than I do.’

‘Do I understand that the accused wishes to change his plea to one of Guilty?’ asked the judge.

‘Yes, my lord,’ replied the prisoner before his counsel could answer. ‘I plead guilty, and you can all go to hell!’

He himself went to prison for three years, and did not appeal against the sentence. He did not receive the good-conduct reduction of sentence. The report – Dame Beatrice’s grandnephew had been thorough – showed that he had served the full time, a fact which Dame Beatrice had already deduced, since he had not lost the prison pallor until he had basked in the sunshine on Hombres Muertos.

Important points arose out of the account of his trial. Neither Lockerby nor Emden could be called a malicious witness. Both had been prepared to insist on the fact that Clun had been drunk at the time and, to that extent, not responsible for his actions. It seemed unlikely that Clun, from what Dame Beatrice knew of his character, would bear either of them malice on account of their evidence. They had been called as witnesses for the prosecution, but it was more than an even chance that they would have preferred to be called for the defence.

Another point of importance was that Lockerby must
have
been killed while Clun was still behind bars. If Dame Beatrice’s theories were to remain tenable, and there was indeed a connexion between the murder of Lockerby and the later murder of Emden, then it hardly looked as though Clun could be involved.

‘No,’ said Dame Beatrice to Gavin, as she parted from him before returning to Hombres Muertos, ‘I think we can eliminate Mr Clun. It looks, on the strength of it, that the murder of Karl Emden evolved from the strange
ménage à trois
of which I heard from old Mrs Barstow, unless – but, no, it must! I must be right about that!’

‘You were thinking of Peterhouse, who, from all accounts, may be a deep one, and the mistakenly-named Mrs Angel, weren’t you, just now?’

‘Peterhouse might have thought of putting the body in the cave. It would fit with what I know of his mentality. And, if he did put it there, of course it would have been the obvious thing for him to conduct us to the cave while there were still only the rightful inhabitants there. He would have wanted to be sure that none of us had any reason to go and visit it when the twenty-fourth body had been added.’

‘What I
don’t
understand’, said Gavin, ‘is why there ever were twenty-four bodies in the cave at the same time. A sensible chap wouldn’t have taken the risk of leaving an extra one about. He’d have got rid of it as soon as he’d taken off its trappings to use them as a disguise for Emden’s body. That’s the bit that doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘But I think he did get rid of it as soon as that,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘The kid was lying, you think, when he came back and said he’d seen twenty-four bodies?’

‘I think he was, but that, of course, would need to be proved.’

‘I should like to meet that youngster. The toe of a good man’s boot wouldn’t do him any harm, I fancy.’

‘He doesn’t provoke that reaction as much as you might expect,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but his story could
stand
a more rigorous checking than any that I have so far given it.’

‘We shan’t be able to
do
anything, if you do pin the murderer down. There’s no extradition from Hombres Muertos, you know. Of course, if the same chap turned out to be the murderer of Lockerby as well –’

‘We must keep an open mind,’ said Beatrice.

HOMBRES MUERTOS PRESENTED
much the same appearance as it had done on the morning when Dame Beatrice had joined Caroline Lockerby on the boat deck to admire the view. There were the same itinerant and noisy merchants, the same shrill and persuasive diving boys, the same prospect of jumbled town, cathedral tower, and serrated mountain ranges behind green hills.

She reached the hotel to find both Peterhouse and Laura on the veranda steps. She had cabled for a room and the delighted Ruiz had broadcast the news of her return. That accounted only partly for the presence of Peterhouse, for he had dogged Laura’s footsteps unrelentingly ever since their botanic session in the hotel garden, and she had felt herself haunted and hunted. She greeted Dame Beatrice politely, as though they had no more than a passing acquaintance, since she did not know, until she had seen Dame Beatrice privately, whether their true relationship was to be made manifest to the other guests at the hotel, for Clun had been as good as his word and had kept the secret.