Flowers For the Judge (12 page)

‘What did he do with the letter?’

‘He put it in the fire, sir.’

‘And that’s all you know about this business?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Coroner glanced at the written page in front of him.

‘All you can tell us, then, is that a letter came for your employer at five-and-twenty minutes past three on the twenty-eighth, that it was marked “Personal”, and that after he had read it he thrust it in the fire, put on his hat and coat and went out and was never seen again alive as far as you know?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’ve taken a great deal of time to tell us that, Miss Netley. You’re not hiding anything, are you?’

‘Hiding anything, sir?’ The big dark eyes grew round and shocked. The small mouth trembled. The years dropped away from the girl until she looked a child. ‘Of course not, sir.’

‘All right. You may sit down.’

Miss Netley returned to her seat with all eyes upon her and Mr Campion wondered. She was not quite the ordinary notoriety-seeker, and once again he made a mental note of her name.

The next witness was Detective-Inspector Tanner. He was tall, thick-set, and the possessor of a figure predestined to wear a uniform. His face was expressionless, but forbidding in structure, while his light blue eyes looked shrewd
and
obstinately honest. He gave his evidence in a flat careful voice, obviously different from the one in which he usually spoke. He made his statement with the awful conviction of the slightly inhuman, while the Coroner nodded to him from time to time and wrote it all down.

In the beginning it was the same story told from yet another angle. Gina glanced restlessly round the court and was startled to catch Mike’s eyes resting upon her. He looked away abruptly, but she had seen and turned back to the witness, her body suddenly cold.

Mrs Austin leant against her.

‘Bear up, dear,’ she murmured.

The Inspector was making a great point of the fact that the body had been moved by the doctor after its discovery. Doctor Roe was recalled and stated amid much self-conscious protestation that the step had been necessary, or so he had been assured by Miss Curley and Mr Michael Wedgwood.

Having successfully shifted the blame from his own shoulders to theirs, he bustled back to his seat and the Inspector was recalled.

As soon as he reappeared a tremor of interest passed through the whole court. The Press men scribbled vigorously and Mr Lugg leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the Barnabas party seated in front of him.

‘After I and my colleague, Sergeant Pillow, had taken statements from the witnesses present on the premises at Number Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard, I made a detailed search of the said premises.’

The flat voice droned out the words like a child reciting.

‘In the room where the deceased was discovered I noticed a small ventilator beneath one of the shelves which surround the room. The ventilator is situated three feet from the ground and five and a half feet from the ceiling. This ventilator is not easily observed by anyone entering the room because it is hidden by the projection of the shelf beneath which it is situated. I and my colleague removed the ventilator from its position and took it to headquarters as evidence.’

There was a sensation as the ragged piece of iron was produced and solemnly handed round to the jury.

‘I observed,’ Inspector Tanner continued, ‘that two of the centre bars of the ventilator had been recently broken. The sharp metal edges were bright and there were signs indicative of force having been used upon them. I also noticed a quantity of soot of a certain nature sprayed over the papers and other debris on the lower shelf beneath the ventilator. My colleague and I then examined the lock of the door of the room and found that it had not been tampered with in any way. We then traced the outside wall of the building and discovered that the ventilator gave into a garage used by the directors of the firm. In the garage was a twenty horse-power Fiat car, number PQ 348206, which we subsequently discovered belonged to Mr Michael Wedgwood, junior partner in the firm of Barnabas, Ltd., and first cousin to the deceased.

‘Continuing our search, we entered the building next door, known as Twenty-one, Horsecollar Yard, where the residences of Mr Michael Wedgwood, Mr John Barnabas and the deceased are situated. Among some miscellany in the passageway outside the heating plant of these premises we found a length of rubber pipe, eight feet three inches in length and one and a half inches in diameter. As far as we could ascertain it had once formed part of a shower-bath apparatus, but did not appear to have been used for this purpose for some considerable time. One end of the pipe had been hacked off recently and the other end, which was fitted with a nozzle designed to fit over a water-tap, had been considerably stretched and mutilated.

‘This pipe was black with soot on the inside and the nozzle end showed signs of burning.’

He paused again and the length of tubing was passed round.

The inference was obvious and the Inspector proceeded to show how the cut end of the tube had passed through the ventilator and was able to point out the indentation some six inches from the end where it had been held by the ends of the broken bars.

Gina closed her eyes. It seemed to her for a moment that everyone was staring not at the exhibit but at herself. She dared not look at Mike. At her side Mrs Austin was breathing heavily, her eyes snapping with excitement.

The Coroner took the Inspector over his statement very carefully.

‘In your opinion, Inspector, this pipe was passed through the ventilator recently?’ he suggested.

The Inspector stated that in his opinion there was no possible doubt whatever about the matter; he went on to say that the other end of the pipe had been tested in connection with the end of the exhaust pipe on the Fiat and finished up by producing that part of the car.

The jury stared at these three component parts and on their faces there appeared a gleam of something that could only be called satisfaction.

The Inspector stepped down and for a moment the court was full of whispers. Old Mr Scruby was talking to John with an animation and authority quite foreign to his nature. Two or three reporters slipped out of their places and Mr Lugg turned to Campion triumphantly.

‘What did I tell you?’ he murmured. ‘Here it comes.’

Mr Salley restored order and the next witness was thrust forward. He was a small square person with a large head, respectable clothes and innocent baby-blue eyes. It transpired that his name was Henry Cecil Pastern and that he had an expert knowledge of central heating plant.

He made his statement with machine-gun rapidity.

‘On the evening of the third day of this month, at the invitation of Detective-Inspector Tanner, I made a detailed investigation of the boiler situated in the basement of the premises known as Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard. It is a type of stove well known to me and when I examined it I found no defect of any kind whatsoever. Nor did I find evidences of any repairs having been made to it at any time. The stove is a comparatively new stove, not more than eighteen months installed. I do not see how any water gas or carbon monoxide gas could have escaped from it into the basement at any time.’

Careful and scrupulously fair questioning by the Coroner made it clear to the jury and the court that Mr Pastern knew perfectly well what he was saying and that even if his words had a slightly official flavour they did in fact represent his true and honest opinion.

It was during the interval after this evidence that Gina caught sight of Ritchie leaning forward in his seat, a bewildered expression upon his face. The sight of him almost made her laugh. He was so hopelessly out of place. So were they all, John, Curley and certainly poor Mr Scruby. She found herself wishing desperately that it would end. It was a nightmare which had gone on too long.

The midday adjournment came unexpectedly. Miss Curley came bustling over, consternation on her plain plump face and her tricorne thrust unbecomingly to the back of her head.

‘I’ve got to talk with Mr John and Mr Scruby. They want to talk,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Will you be all right, my dear?’

‘No one shall touch an ’air of ’er ’ead while I’m beside ’er,’ said Mrs Austin valiantly but unnecessarily.

Gina was amazed at herself. One part of her mind was half irritated, half amused by the banality of the woman. But there was another which was timidly grateful for her support.

As she came out of the court clinging to Mrs Austin’s arm she caught a glimpse of Ritchie mooching along, his hands in his pockets, his chin thrust out, and his lean, rangy figure looking unexpectedly distinguished. He did not see her but wandered over to Mr Campion, who was standing in the lobby with a funereal individual whose face was only vaguely familiar to her.

The two women came out into the bright sunlight completely unaware of the extraordinary picture they presented. Gina, with her hair sleeked beneath her Schiaparelli hat and her severe black suit clinging to her exquisitely fashionable figure, made a contrast with Mrs Austin’s exuberant Sunday Best which was positively arresting.

For a moment they stood hesitating, startled by the
staring
group on the pavement and the battery of cameras thrust mercilessly into their faces.

Glancing round her wildly, Gina suddenly saw Mike.

He was standing on the fringe of the crowd, his face turned towards her. As their eyes met he made an involuntary step forward, but immediately afterwards, as though a sudden recollection had occurred to him, he turned away and made off down the road at an exaggerated pace.

Somebody in the crowd laughed hysterically and Mrs Austin gripped her firmly by the arm.

‘If you ask my opinion,’ she said firmly, ‘what you want is a small port.’

THE WOMAN CAME
forward to the stand self-consciously, constraining her natural gait into little mincing steps and holding her large hands, exaggerated by impossibly ornate gloves, in an affected position neither comfortable nor becoming.

John Widdowson turned to Mr Scruby.

‘Who’s this?’ he demanded with the startled expression of an author at rehearsal finding an unexpected character in his play. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘Ssh,’ said Mr Scruby apprehensively as the Coroner’s glance shot towards them.

John gobbled in silence and the witness took her place.

She was a large woman, asthmatic and unhealthy looking, with a white face, a pursed mouth, and gold pince-nez looped to her ear with a small chain. She wore a cheap black fur coat much too small for her and had filled up its deficiency in front with a heavily frilled blouse. She gave her evidence in tones of staggering refinement.

For a moment she was so absorbed by her unusual prominence and a delicacy either real or assumed that she did not hear the Coroner when he asked her name, but was at length prevailed upon to inform the court that she was Mrs Rosemary Ethel Tripper, that she lived in the basement flat at Number Twenty-five, Horsecollar Yard, and that her occupation was assistant caretaker with her husband of the two blocks of offices, Numbers Twenty-five and Twenty-seven. She also took the oath.

Once again the sense of outrage crept over Gina. She realized that the police were under no compulsion to broadcast their affairs, but when those affairs were so very intimately her own it seemed unnecessarily cruel to have kept her so much in the dark.

At the Coroner’s request Mrs Tripper cast her mind back both to her statement and the evening of the twenty-eighth.

‘I had been to the pictures with a lady friend,’ said Mrs Tripper with the air of one recounting an interesting social experience. ‘I parted with her at the end of the street – at about five minutes to seven o’clock, I should say it was – and then I entered my flat and went straight into the kitchenette, where I made myself a cup of tea.

‘Going into the bedroom to change my shoes, a habit I have had from a girl, I suddenly said to myself, “Why, there’s that car started up!”’

She paused triumphantly and the Coroner coughed.

‘Perhaps you’ll explain to us, Mrs Tripper,’ he said, ‘what exactly you mean by that?’

Mrs Tripper was taken off her balance.

‘I was referring to the car in the garage at Number Twenty-three,’ she said sharply, her refined accent temporarily deserting her. ‘Although we can’t hear the car in the daytime, of course, because of the traffic, any time after six o’clock the Crescent is so quiet you could hear a pin drop and of course you can hear the car then, because the walk are so thin – I often say it’s a disgrace.’

‘The Crescent?’ said the Coroner inquiringly.

The faint colour flowed into Mrs Tripper’s pale face.

‘Well then, the Yard,’ she said defiantly. ‘Horsecollar Yard. It’s really a crescent.’

‘I see,’ said the Coroner and bowed his head over his papers. ‘What time was it exactly, Mrs Tripper, when you thought you heard the car start up?’

‘I heard it start up at ten minutes past seven,’ said Mrs Tripper. ‘I left my friend at five minutes to. Five minutes to walk up the street, five minutes to make myself a cup of tea, and five minutes to go into the bedroom.’

‘Five minutes to go into the bedroom?’ inquired the Coroner in some astonishment.

Once again Mrs Tripper was put off her stride.

‘Well, let’s say five past seven I heard the car,’ she temporized.

‘Are you sure you heard the car start up soon after you came in?’ said the Coroner with some asperity.

‘Yes I did. I heard it as plain as anything, when I was in the bedroom after I’d had my cup of tea.’

‘I see. And how long did you stay in the house?’

‘Till about half-past seven,’ said Mrs Tripper promptly. ‘And the car was running all the time. It was running when I went out. I noticed it because I said to myself, “It’s bad enough to hear that engine being turned on and off, without having it running in your ear the whole time,” and I meant to speak to the janitor at Twenty-three about it.’