A Little White Death (31 page)

‘It’s super. You really can cook.’

Head down, she was smiling. He wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t also blushing a little at the over-solicited compliment.

Afterwards she sat at the table and perused her book while he made coffee. Damn it, let caffeine and Mandrax fight it out in his bloodstream.

And when he set the cup in front of her she spooned in sugar and stirred. He could see the operation of thought as the spoon switched from clockwise to anticlockwise, and he knew, more or less,
what was coming.

‘I wonder if I should be there.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? To help him of course!’

‘In what way do you think you could help him?’

‘I could give evidence.’

‘Indeed you could. After all, the prosecution were only too keen to be able to call you. However they can’t find you and without you they’ve had to drop a charge. You’re
helping by not being there. If you were there I doubt there’s a thing you could do for Fitz.’

‘I could speak for the defence.’

‘There’d still be a cross-examination.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, let’s begin with the obvious. Did you have sexual intercourse before you were sixteen?’

‘Of course I did. Didn’t you? I mean it’s not illegal, is it?’

‘Yes it is. Did Fitz sleep with you?’

‘Yeah, but that’s different.’

‘How so? You were over sixteen?’

‘No . . . I wasn’t. But it was different. Me and him. Different.’

Troy thought better of asking what she meant. He did not wish to hear the mitigation of the ‘special’ – she surely meant special when she said different? He preferred not know.
Sixteen was a line, a legal line, an arbitrary line, below which the law stated that there was no basis of personal responsibility. It was arbitrary whilst trying to be accurate – there were
plenty of women knowing and responsible below it and plenty above it who would never be either – but it was a wilfully stupid man who ignored that line.

‘Did Fitz ever introduce you to men with whom you subsequently had sexual intercourse.’

‘What? You mean deliberately?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Fitz doesn’t even need to know you slept with them. The question is did he effect the introduction?’

‘Nah. Fitz didn’t find boyfriends for me. I don’t need anyone to find boyfriends for me. You may not have noticed, Troy, but I’m a looker. Men queue up to ’ave
me!’

She stopped, let the change in Troy’s expression sink in.

‘Wossamatter? Have I said something wrong?’

‘Not wrong. Awful. Damning. Imagine that it is not me talking to you across the dinner table, but Henry Furbelow, Queen’s Counsel and in this instance the prosecuting counsel at the
Old Bailey. Imagine the effect of your last remark upon him. Upon a jury of middle-aged men and women. If I were Furbelow, I would have a ready follow-up. Are you now or have you ever been a
prostitute?’

‘Nah. Leave it out!’

‘They don’t leave it out. Men like Furbelow leave nothing out. Have you ever accepted a gift in money or goods from a man with whom you have just had sexual intercourse?’

‘Yeah. Lots of women do that. If a bloke wants to bung you a few bob for a frock or some make-up it’s no different from if he brings you flowers.’

Troy shook his head.

‘As things stand Fitz isn’t facing a procurement charge. If you get up in court with all your good intentions, they’ll revive that charge and add another count of immoral
earnings. And if you ever tell anyone you slept with him before you were sixteen they’ll lock him up and throw away the key.’

‘Tell me what you think, Troy. Is Fitz going to get off ?’

‘If the case against him unrolls as I have seen it do to date, then it’s a shambles, but the judge is old school and cuts the defence no slack. And I’ve watched the jury. There
are no free thinkers there. They may just convict him despite all they’ve heard. Stay out of it, Clover.’

He gathered up the plates and stacked them in the kitchen. When he returned she was still sitting there.

‘What you mean is, don’t meddle. Leave well alone. That’s what my grandad says.’

She was angry. He had treated her as a child. What had appeared to be a promising evening without hostilities had just taken a turn for the worst. He pleaded tiredness, told no lies, and went
early to bed.

Clover caught him out again. By the time he was up in the morning she was already in the bathroom. He’d bought a spare toothbrush, so he pissed in the sink once more and
dashed off to the Old Bailey.

Caro stepped into the witness box, and Troy saw every head in the room turn to the head next to it in silent, wide-eyed amazement. She was dressed exactly like her sister. Down to the last
detail, from the hair pinned above her ears, via the chic black two-piece down to the flat-heeled shoes. And there the awe at identity ended for Troy. Tara had looked boldly around the court, her
surrender of a couple of inches in height had been the tall woman’s attempt to be unintimidating to short men like Furbelow and Cocket – a calculated move. Caro was simply trying to
make herself invisible. Invisible and inseparable, Troy knew. Troy knew most people in the room could not tell one sister from the other. A doubt only relieved when she stated, almost whispered,
her full name to the usher.

‘Caroline Alexandra Sarah Ffitch.’

And her date of birth.

‘September 3rd 1939.’

It was, as an English comedian of the old school had put it at the opening of so many lugubrious monologues, ‘the day war broke out . . . ’ Caro Ffitch, younger than her sister by
fifteen months, was the perfect war baby.

Troy did not think Furbelow would be long about this. He would get her to confirm her sister’s evidence and then Caro would face hell from Cocket, as he exploited the weaker sister as he
could not the stronger.

Furbelow skipped the family life of Caro, lingered a moment on the gap in their ages that had kept her at home for a year after Tara had escaped, and how Caro had wanted nothing more than to
forsake her home and her father to join her sister in the city. Then he moved quickly to her life at Dreyfus Mews.

‘Are you acquainted with a man known to your sister as the Professor?’

‘Yes,’ said Caro softly.

‘Am I right in saying that this man regularly gave you money?’

Cocket rose and objected.

‘M’lud. My learned friend is leading the witness.’

‘Sustained,’ said Mirkeyn.

‘Miss Ffitch. Did the Professor ever give you money?’

‘Yes, from time to time.’

‘Did you do anything for this money?’

‘Did I do anything? I don’t understand.’

‘Well . . . did you provide a service of any kind?’

Troy distinctly heard the old tricoteuse say, ‘Just like
What’s My Line
, dear,’ to her daughter.

‘No,’ Caro replied. ‘I didn’t.’

Furbelow was momentarily nonplussed by her answer. It was not in the script. He ruffled the papers in front of him, adjusted his glasses and came back to the issue.

‘Miss Ffitch are you familiar with the phrase sexual services?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Then let me ask you again. Did you provide any services to the Professor, services of a sexual nature?’

‘Do you mean did I sleep with him?’

‘Yes, but more than that, did you sleep with him for money?’

‘No.’

Furbelow rummaged among his papers again.

‘Miss Ffitch, I have here the statement you made to the police at Scotland Yard in June.’

Furbelow held it out to the usher who passed it to Caro.

‘That is your signature at the bottom is it not?’

‘Yes . . . but . . .’

‘There are no buts. It either is or it isn’t!’

‘But . . .’

Furbelow was well into his best bullying manner now.

‘Is it or isn’t it?’

Troy could see that Caro was on the verge of tears. She could not answer Furbelow. He should have waited her out, but his own impatience got the better of him.

‘In this statement you wrote, quite clearly, that the Professor gave you money after sex.’

Caro fumbled with the sheet of paper, opened her handbag, took an age to take out her handkerchief and blow her nose. When she looked up again tears were rolling silently down her cheeks.

‘The Professor did give us money. But not for sex. And not that often.’

‘How often?’

‘It was irregular. Sometimes he’d just open his wallet and say, “Treat yourself.”’

‘Was one way of treating yourself to pay money to the defendant?’

‘No. Why would I do that?’

‘Might you not have done it because he asked you?’

‘No, that’s not true. Fitz never asked me for money.’

‘Miss Ffitch. Would you look again at the statement you have in your hand and tell me, is that your signature?’

‘Yes,’ Caro said.

‘Yet you have just refuted two of the strongest statements to which you signed. Can you explain that?’

Troy thought Furbelow was tacking badly here. If he’d been the prosecuting counsel he’d have passed the matter up to the bench several minutes ago.

Caro looked at the statement, looked around the court as though she was utterly lost. Then she looked at the statement again, her lips opening soundlessly, as though she were making a desperate
effort to comprehend what she had written, as though the words were swimming like tadpoles in front of her eyes.

‘I . . . I . . . didn’t read it.’

The roar from the gallery and the press box felt to Troy like the coming of a hurricane – loud and airy at the same time, belief and disbelief in a single breath.

Mirkeyn pounded his gavel, and at last did what a good judge should have done by now – he addressed himself directly to the witness.

‘Miss Ffitch, are you saying you did not write this statement?’

‘I didn’t write it and I didn’t read it. I mean . . .’

Caro held up the piece of paper.

‘It’s typed,’ she said sadly. ‘I can’t type.’

The gallery exploded into laughter. Mirkeyn banged away once more. All the same, it took a couple of minutes to subside and another minute for him to spell out his power and his willingness to
clear the court if needs be. It was more than sad; it was pathetic. She could not type. It was a fundamental skill of many women of Caro’s class and age, learnt if only as a means to a
husband, and here she was waving a piece of paper and bleating pathetically that she could not type. A woman with no other known skills, save sex.

‘Miss Ffitch,’ he resumed, ‘it is an accepted practice in every police station in the land that a police officer types statements for witnesses based directly on what the
witness has said to them. It is for the witness then to read the statement and to ask for emendations accordingly. Once signed your signature is taken as assent that what precedes it is true. Do
you understand?’

‘Yes . . . but I didn’t read it.’

‘Why did you not read it?’

‘I was . . . I was . . . I was too upset.’

She thrust her hanky to her nose. Her tears now came in floods. Troy wondered how far they’d get with her. All the same, he would not put it past Mirkeyn to remind her of the meaning of
perjury, or to threaten her with contempt, when all a good judge needed to do was to adjourn for half an hour.

‘Why were you upset?’

It seemed to Troy as though he was now witnessing a private conversation. Mirkeyn looked only at Caro, Caro looked only at him. A ludicrous public intimacy. He was, Troy thought, not a man at
ease with women’s tears, and she was weeping buckets.

‘I’d . . . I’d been there all day . . . not just that day . . . lots of days . . . all on my own . . . all on my own . . . just being asked questions . . . over and over again.
I’ve lost count. I must have been called to Scotland Yard a dozen times.’

Troy looked across at the press box. Every Biro jiggled. They’d have a field day with this. The Yard would not come well out of it. Blood was an idiot.

‘Nonetheless . . . the police would not have typed up what you had not said.’

Careful, Caro. Mirkeyn is inviting you to call the police liars. If you do he will find some excuse to send you down for contempt or, worse, perjury. One must never call a policeman a liar. Even
though many of us are.

She wiped a hand over each cheek and the streams of her tears, her sobs still audible in every corner of the courtroom.

‘I’m sure they typed what I said, my Lord. It was I who did not know what I was saying. I was confused. I was very mixed up, I don’t know what I said . . . may very well have
said everything they say I said . . . but it was not what I meant to say . . . I was . . . hysterical.’

The word seemed to clunk down like a brick in front of Mirkeyn. Caro could not have chosen a better word. It was part and parcel of the vocabulary of men like Mirkeyn. Women were hysterical. It
was why they were intellectually unreliable. This seemed to tip the scales. Mirkeyn drew back and turned to Furbelow. He would not threaten to imprison Caro. She’d been damn lucky. A man less
contemptuous of women might not have been so susceptible to their ‘hysteria’.

‘Proceed, Mr Furbelow.’

Furbelow was startled. Proceed? Proceed where? He no longer had a witness.

After lunch Cocket, wisely, had only one question for Caro. The same one Troy had put to Clover the night before.

‘Are you now or have you ever been . . .?’

To which she gave a clear and unhysterical ‘no.’

It was a mess. A farce of a case. It made Troy angry. It offended his professional sensibilities. At the end of the day’s session Troy looked around for Blood, but he
wasn’t there. He had been dismissed. It was unlikely his workload would let him indulge his curiosity hanging around the court. Cocket could recall him in the light of Caro’s evidence,
but this would be to call the police liars, and no one was going to do that. More would be lost than gained.

Troy decided to visit the Yard on his way home. He would see if he could get five minutes with the Commissioner – and whilst he too would not call the police liars, he could at least air
his professional opinion.