Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (39 page)

He stood there, reeling, his hand going slowly, automatically to his breast pocket, his eyes still fixed on the young, scared, pleading face across the courtroom. An usher proffered the glass of water, all eyes were riveted on the scene where he stood there in the witness box. Across the turned heads she stared back at him. Daddy would never give her away. Daddy would rather die than do harm to his golden Daffodil….

Over the turned white wigs, the averted faces—begging, beseeching, almost imperceptibly she shook her head.

The hand reaching for the life-saving drug, dropped to his side. Daddy would die for her.

And he died. Like a ruined building, slowly toppling, crumbling, with horrible acceleration tumbling at last into a crumpled heap on the floor of the witness box, out of their sight. The heart for so long a traitor to its own harbouring body, looked into the fair face of treachery and broke and bled: and beat no more.

The photographs on the front pages of the evening papers were terrific! Freesia’s hair-do was wonderful, just like a halo. It made her look like an angel, honestly it did….

But by the next morning the whispering had begun. And it grew and it grew and it grew…

T
HEY COULD SCARCELY BELIEVE
their ears. ‘He was driving quite
slow
?’

‘Well, not fast, Sergeant. I can’t say that. And a country road, very little traffic—’

‘Constable Evans—Jellinks here, he says himself that he was driving fast.’

‘Not all that fast,’ said Jellinks quickly.

‘He’s confused,’ said Constable Bill Evans. ‘Shocked, I daresay, doesn’t know what he’s saying.’ Natural enough, he added, his big, strong, middle-aged face gone so white and pudgy now in the evening light. Jellinks having just run down—just killed—a girl and her little kid.

‘For God’s sake, Bill—
your
girl and her little kid.
Your
daughter.’

‘That’s right,’ Evans said woodenly and moved apart, suddenly, and stood with clenched hands, his back turned to them.

Jellinks seized the opportunity. ‘You heard what he said. Driving quite slow, he said, and him a copper. And he ought to know!’

‘Perhaps it’s him that’s shocked and confused,’ said the sergeant.

‘Well,
I
thought you were driving fast,’ said a woman, coming forward. A couple of cars had drawn up, and a small group of onlookers stood wretchedly around. ‘He passed me ten miles back, going at the rate of knots.’

‘I could’ve slowed down later,’ said Jellinks, growing from wary to a little cocky.

‘Yes, well… Just come out of the Pig and Whistle, Jellinks, had you?’ said the sergeant. ‘At closing time.’

‘Yes, I had. I come out of the Pig and Whistle most nights of my life at closing time,’ said Jellinks. ‘But I wasn’t drunk, I never get drunk, they’ll tell you so—and you’ve done all your breathalysing.’

‘And for once it was not a stolen car?’

‘I’ve shown you all the bumph, haven’t I? It’s me own car. All right, so it was stolen originally, getting away from that job on the shoe shop. But I bought it after I’d done my time. Made a pretty good mess of it, but I could patch it up myself. So I went, honest, to the owner and he was glad enough to get rid of it.’

‘And you had the proceeds of the till to pay for it?’

‘I’d done me stint for that,’ said Jellinks, shrugging.

The sergeant stood, waiting. Two constables were nosing about the road—looking at the car, the tracks, making notes, taking names and addresses. He watched them but he knew his men—they were efficient and thorough; he could safely leave it all to them. And Bill Evans was under control again and had turned back to him. ‘We went into that, Sergeant, when Constable Jones turned up—it’s Jellinks’ own car. And he’s right about the breathalyser too. Just under the margin.’

‘I know the score,’ said Jellinks.

‘You’d have to,’ said the sergeant, ‘wouldn’t you?—driving the way you do and for the reasons you do.’ And to Evans, ‘So he took the bend okay?’ Passing cars had obscured the tiremarks in the road, swinging out to avoid the group gathering around the scene of the accident.

‘That’s right, yes.’ The attendants had closed the ambulance door with a slam, and more to distract him than anything else, the sergeant suggested, ‘Just run through it once again for me, before we get to the station. If you can manage it,’ he added compassionately, looking at the sick white face watching the ambulance with its pathetic burden driving away.

‘That’s all right, Skip. Well, like I told you, I was on my bike, just at the end of my beat. I knew I’d meet them, our Jenny and the baby, coming back from the Other Granny’s. The Other Granny, that’s what we call her. Lives just down the road—on her own she is now, since her Tom married our Jenny and moved in with me and the missis.’

‘Yes—so?’ said the sergeant, gently interrupting; he knew all about Bill and Bill’s missis and Tom and Jenny and the baby; and the Other Granny too. The officers were all local men.

‘Yes, well he—the car—was coming up behind them. Came round the bend—not fast, I can’t say he was going too fast. But…’ He made a huge effort. ‘They saw me coming. The little one—she ran forward to meet me, ran into the road, and her mother went after her to catch her.’ He looked at Jellinks steadily. ‘I got to say it,’ he said.

It was beginning to get to Jellinks. He looked ill now in the evening light. But he clutched greedily at salvation. ‘Okay, well, you’ve heard him. I was going slow enough, the kid ran into the road and the girl after her—it wasn’t my fault.’

‘And you stopped at once. You weren’t driving on?’

‘The—well, the jolt like, that stopped me—’

‘Two jolts,’ said Evans with murder in his voice.

‘—and anyway, there he was, biking towards me. I had to stop. Well, I mean I’d’ve stopped anyway, of course I would.’

‘Something like this happened to you once before—and you didn’t.’

‘Nobody was hurt that time. What would I stop for?’ said Jellinks.

‘But this time you had to?’

‘I didn’t have to. I could have… well, there you are, you see!’ he said, improvising triumphantly. ‘I could’ve driven straight on, couldn’t I? Run him down on his bike and driven straight on and no one the wiser. But I didn’t, did I? I had nothing to be afraid of. He says himself, I was driving quite slow, the kid run across in front of me.’ But the triumph died and he looked at Bill Evans uneasily. ‘You’re not going to go back on that in court and say anything different? Don’t you try anything of that, mate! I’ve got friends—’

The sergeant looked from the white face, set and stern, to the narrow white weasel-face, vicious in self-defence. He said slowly, ‘Well, that’s a good thing, Jellinks—you hang on to them. I think you’re going to need them from now on—need all the friends you’ve got.’

There was a good deal of confusion in the coroner’s court, opinions of the minor witnesses varying, as such opinions tend to do. The car was—was not—going fast. They had lain here—lain there—the two pitiful dead bodies. The child’s little push-chair had been all smashed up—in the center of the road—on the grass at the verge. The mother had been wheeling the baby—had been leading her, holding her little hand. But Evans stood in the box, four-square, ashen-faced, hands horribly shaking but—positive.

‘As honest a witness,’ said the coroner, summing it all up, ‘as it’s been my privilege to listen to in all my experience. The constable saw the whole thing from beginning to end. He tells his story clearly, he says frankly that the driver was not to blame. Other witnesses may be confused by shock but Evans is a trained observer and trained in reporting his observations; and none of you will suppose that he could be biased in favour of the driver who had run down his daughter and her child. There can be only the one verdict—accidental death.’

And outside the court he sought out P.C. Evans and with deep respect shook his hand. ‘You set us all an example, Evans,’ he said, ‘of absolute honesty. You’ve earned our admiration and our thanks.’

‘I have to do what’s right, sir,’ said Evans, and, expressionless, he moved away.

And the weeks passed and the evenings drew in and dark fell early. Pitch-dark, that night weeks later when the landlord threw Jellinks out of The Pig and Whistle a good hour before closing time. Pitch-dark with only the lights of the pub shining across the blackness of the country road.

The landlord stood in the doorway. ‘And don’t bloody come back! I’m sick of having to chuck you out, you’re-wrecking my custom here.’

But there wasn’t that much doing in a small wayside pub and Jellinks drank spirits these days and rang up quite a packet on the till before it was time to get rid of him.

‘I don’t want to refuse him altogether, Sam,’ the landlord said to one of his regulars who, with a friend, was on the way out. ‘He pays. But what’s got into him these days, I don’t know. Never used to overdo it the way he does now. Most nights he spent in here—’

‘Most nights he spent in the jug,’ said Sam. ‘In and out like a yo-yo. Chuck a brick in a window, grab a handful and make a getaway—’

‘Getaway seems not just the word,’ said the friend, laughing.

‘Still, it’s true. Whenever he was out—well, he was in. In the Pig, I mean. But I never saw him tight, never.’ The two men started together down the steps. ‘My opinion—he’s scared of something.’

‘He’s the chap that ran down some girl and a child?’

‘That’s right. Her father, Evans—resident copper, he is—Evans saw it happen. But he still gave evidence—villain wasn’t going too fast, all the rest of it. He could easy have said he was, but he didn’t. Stood up there in court—I could scarcely believe my ears—’

They could scarcely believe their ears. ‘
Not
going fast?’

‘No, Sergeant, not fast at all.’

A different officer this time, new in the division. ‘But he must have been, to catch the man a wallop like that!’ He threw out a hand toward the dark hump in the center of the road. ‘He’s dead.’

‘His own fault. We both saw it,’ said Sam earnestly, ‘me and Jim here, coming down the steps. Tight as a tick he was. I was saying so to Jim, tight as a tick.’

‘Reeling all over the road,’ said Jim. ‘You couldn’t miss him.’

‘What do you mean?—you couldn’t miss him.’

‘You couldn’t help hitting him,’ said Jim. ‘That’s all. What else?’

‘And that’s your story too, Constable Evans? He reeled out in front of your car?’

You could see the fingers tighten, the slight recoil. But Evans said evenly, ‘That’s right. My story, like you say.’

‘I don’t mean to offend you,’ said the sergeant. ‘I don’t mean that. But… these two gentlemen—they’re friends of yours?’

‘Never set eyes on him in my life,’ said Jim, ‘whatever it is you’re suggesting.’

‘
Not
a friend of his?’

‘No, I am not. And not a liar either.’

‘All right, well, I’m sorry.’

‘He drove round the bend doing—thirty, forty—not more. The landlord had told the other chap to clear out—’

‘All according to cocker, Sarge,’ said the landlord righteously. ‘I don’t have to serve a customer that’s drunk. And Jellinks is drunk every night, and every night I chucks him out. Right, Sam?’

‘To the great relief of all,’ said Sam.

‘So you didn’t like the man?’

‘Nobody liked the man,’ said Sam. ‘Not unless they was fond of snakes. But that doesn’t mean I’d stand and watch him murdered in front of my eyes, and me and my mate tell lies about it. Evans was driving regular, Jellinks was staggering around, and that was the end of it.’

‘And the end of Jellinks.’

‘That’s right,’ said Constable Evans. ‘And am I sorry for it? No, I’m not.’

‘No,’ said the new sergeant thoughtfully. He suggested, but tentatively—they seemed to be a touchy lot round here—‘You just happened to be driving this way?’

‘Yes,’ said Bill tonelessly. ‘Up to the cemetery.’

‘At nine o’clock at night?’

‘Night or day, it makes no odds to me. I go when I’m off duty.’ And now the tone of his voice did question: any objection?

‘To visit your daughter’s—’ The sergeant broke off. ‘Yes, I know about that. I understand.’

‘Yes, well… That’ll save me explaining then, in so many words, that I drive out to the cemetery to say my prayers by the grave of my girl, lying in her coffin there, with her baby in her arms.’ And he jerked the toe of his solid, black, hobnailed boot toward the figure, laid out now, by the side of the road. ‘Killed by—him.’

‘Of course. Yes, I know. I heard about it. But it was an accident. You yourself gave evidence—the car was not driven too fast, the child ran across his path—’

‘That’s right. Just like tonight. An accident. Car not driven too fast. But—’

‘—the man reeled across your path.’ The sergeant thought it over. ‘A coincidence. Extraordinary coincidence, Constable—you’d have to agree to that?’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Constable Evans, poker-faced.

‘And yet—’

In the brightness shining across from the pub, lighting up the small group standing there facing one another, tense and still, the men were lifting the stretcher into the ambulance; the hush was absolute as the throbbing of the engine died away into the night. The sergeant could begin herding them all off down to the station now.

And yet—And
yet
—

‘The accident to your daughter, Evans, and her baby—you were the only witness, isn’t that so?’

‘Me and that—me and the driver, yes.’

‘Yet you gave evidence that certainly saved him from a prison sentence. And now—’

‘And now he’s dead. A second accident,’ said Evans.

‘Coincidence,’ said the sergeant again. He thought it all over quietly. Extraordinary. But coincidences did happen. And what else—? He could ferret around, he could inquire, but how much would that tell him? A man driving on a routine journey. A man reeling drunkenly across his path. Two unbiased witnesses on the spot, seeing it all happen. Collusion?—only collusion could offer any other explanation.

But these were not people to get together to hatch up a plot—to plan, to carry out a thing like this; and one of them was, in fact, a ‘foreigner’—anyone from across the county border was a foreigner here; he could check but he knew he would find it was true—the second witness was a stranger to them all.