Flowers For the Judge (19 page)

‘Imagine the thoughts which must have come into his mind as he entered that room and realized that she was above him, closeted – so he thought – remember, with the husband who neglected and had no respect for her.

‘Then, just as he was about to take the key, what happened? The telephone bell rang and he heard her voice. He went down, turned off the car, and these two young people went out together. Is that the sort of man who would have gone to see a moving picture if he knew that down in the strong-room beneath the office, in the very house next to the one in which he was going to sleep that night, a man lay suffocated to death? Of course not! It is not feasible!’

He allowed the last word to die away and then quite surprisingly dropped his artificial manner and became a different sort of person altogether.

‘That’s the truth, you know,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened.’.

John pulled a crisp white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead.

‘I think you’re right about Mike,’ he said. ‘You convinced me.’

A smile, pleased and schoolboyish, appeared upon Cousin Alexander’s handsome face.

‘It’s effective, isn’t it?’ he said, including Campion in the question. ‘Awfully effective, and true. But we can’t possibly use it.’

Mr Campion said nothing. A purely academic consideration concerning the importance of technique in all phases of modern life had sprung unbidden to his mind.

‘Not use it?’ said John in exasperation.

‘Oh, no, we couldn’t use it.’ Sir Alexander was quite definite. ‘Not in this case, not in London. It’s not suitable. We simply must not admit any love at all. In law love is suspicious. Bendix – he’s going to be one junior and is devilling for me at the moment – points out that that is absolutely without question, and I see that he’s right. I was only telling you privately why I know Mike’s innocent. We’ll think of something else. But that’s the truth of that point, I’m sure of it. Who is that?’

The final remark was made with a trace of his old manner and both John and Mr Campion turned towards the door, through which faint sounds, as of a slight scuffle, reached them.

‘Come in,’ said John peremptorily and, the handle turning abruptly, the door burst open and Mr Rigget was precipitated into the room.

It was evident at once that something more than the business of the Accounts Department had occasioned his sudden appearance. He was neat, as usual, but considerably more pink and clearly a little above himself. He was also breathless.

At the sight of the K.C. he wavered and for a moment it seemed as though his determination would desert him, but a glimpse of John’s stony face seemed to pull him together.

‘I thought it my duty to come to you at once, sir,’ he said in a squeaky rush, his eyes snapping behind his pince-nez and his phraseology oddly stilted. ‘I reached the decision to tell something of which I had become cognizant to the
police
only this morning and now that I have done so I thought it would be only fair to tell you as well.’

He stood for a moment wavering. John was looking at him as though he were some particularly unpleasant species of life, repellent but not dangerous.

Cousin Alexander, on the other hand, was staring over his head, no doubt considering Truth from yet another angle. Mr Campion alone remained politely interested.

From pink Mr Rigget became crimson and a dappling of sweat appeared upon his forehead.

‘I’ve just told Sergeant Pillow about the quarrel I heard,’ he said sulkily. ‘It was on the Wednesday morning before the Thursday on which Mr Paul was killed. The door between Mr Paul’s room and the File Copy Office was ajar and I didn’t like to shut it.’

Cousin Alexander bent his gaze upon the wretched man for the first time.

‘Eavesdropping?’ he inquired blandly.

‘I happened to hear certain words,’ said Mr Rigget indignantly. ‘And,’ he added, a suggestion of a snarl appearing for a fleeting instant across his mouth with the surprisingly white teeth, ‘I thought it was my duty to repeat them to the police.’

‘Get out!’ said John, suddenly losing his temper. ‘Get out! Get straight out of the office.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Cousin Alexander’s voice had become pleasant again. ‘Let’s hear what this gentleman has to say. You’ve come here to help us, haven’t you? That’s extremely kind of you. My cousin appreciates it. What did you hear when the door was ajar? First of all, who was speaking? You were sure of the voices, were you?’

‘Yes, I was,’ said Mr Rigget, considerably taken aback by this mercurial change in the magnificent-looking old gentleman in front of him. ‘Besides, I’d seen Mr Paul and Mr Mike when I went through the room first.’

‘Mr Paul and Mr Michael …’ said Cousin Alexander soothingly. ‘And what were the words you heard?’

‘Well, they’d stopped talking when I went in first,’ said Mr Rigget truculently, ‘and then I suppose they thought
the
door was shut, so they went on with their quarrel.’

‘Or conversation,’ murmured Sir Alexander pleasantly. ‘And then what?’

Mr Rigget swung round on John. There was intense satisfaction upon his ignoble face.

‘Mr Paul said, “You mind your own damned business, Mike. She’s mine and I’ll manage my own life in my own way.”’

There was complete silence in the room after he had spoken and he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had achieved a sensation.

‘And did you hear anything else?’ Cousin Alexander’s voice was cloying.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Rigget, blushing to the roots of his black hair. ‘He said, “Make love, to her if you want to – God knows I’m not stopping you.”’

‘And then?’

‘I didn’t hear any more,’ said Mr Rigget. ‘I came out then. But I could see what Mr Mike was thinking.’

‘That’s not evidence,’ said Cousin Alexander.

AFTER A TEDIOUS
magisterial hearing Michael Wedgwood was committed for trial, and on the afternoon before the day on which he was to appear at the Old Bailey, Mr Campion, with Ritchie at his side, steered the Lagonda through the traffic in New Oxford Street. It was one of those warm blowy days when every street corner is a flower garden presided over by a stalwart London nymph still clad in the wools and tippets of winter and the air is redolent with an exciting mixture of tar, exhaust and face powder.

However, neither of the men in the big car was in the mood to appreciate the eternal hopefulness of Spring.
Ritchie
was talking, curbing his gestures with considerable difficulty because of the confined space.

‘Want you to see her,’ he said. ‘Don’t like her like this. It’s getting her down, Campion. She’s fond of him, you know. Loves him and probably feels responsible. Women always take responsibility. It’s a form of vanity. Can’t help it. Natural with them.’

His anxiety seemed to have loosened his tongue and the fact that he now considered Campion an old friend made him more coherent.

‘Bound to get him off, don’t you think?’ he added, cocking a wistful eye at the young man beside him. ‘Terrible experience anyway. All terrible,’ he went on, waving a tremendous arm between Mr Campion’s eyes and the windscreen. ‘All this. All these people. They’re all in prison. All miserable. All slaves. All got to work when they don’t want to, eat when they don’t want to, sleep when they don’t want to. Can’t drink until someone says they may. Can’t hide their faces, got to hide their bodies. No freedom anywhere. I hate it. Frightens me. Knew a man once who chucked it. I couldn’t.’

‘It’s a feeling one does get sometimes,’ Mr Campion conceded.

‘I always feel like it,’ said Ritchie, and hesitated on the brink of some further confidence, but thought better of it and was silent.

They found Gina sitting by the open window in the big studio, and Campion, who had not seen her for some weeks, was shocked by the change in her. She was harder, more sophisticated, older. Nervous exhaustion had been replaced by general deterioration. She looked less chic, less graceful, less charming.

Her greeting was artificial and it was not until he had been sitting on the big white sofa for some minutes that she suddenly turned to him with something of her old genuineness.

‘It was good of you to come,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to cry or do anything silly and I shall be perfectly composed in the witness box. It’s not hearing from him,’ she added, her
defences
suddenly collapsing. ‘No mental contact at all. He’s just gone. He might be dead.’

The natural embarrassment which the confidence might have engendered was swept away by the relief which Campion felt at seeing that her artificiality went no deeper. This was only a warning then of the damage which might be done to her and had not the awful finality of the accomplished fact.

‘You – you haven’t found out what really happened? I know you haven’t. You’d have told me, of course. But haven’t you got just an inkling – haven’t you got a clue? When I asked John he said something about a new witness. Can’t you tell me about that? Or is it all a secret, like everything else?’

The mixture of bitterness and pleading in her deep voice was disturbing. Mr Campion wished in his heart that he had better news for her.

‘The new witness may be useful,’ he said. ‘His name’s Widgeon. I had an awful job getting hold of him. He didn’t want to talk but when he realized how much depended on it he shelved his private considerations like a sportsman and came out with all he knew. He’s employed by the Tolleshunt Press people. They’ve got a small office on the second floor of Number Twenty-one. Apparently he got tight at lunch on the Thursday and it took him all the afternoon to sober up, so that he came to himself about five with a splitting headache and all the afternoon’s work on his hands. So he stayed behind and did it and was still hard at it between six and nine, when Mrs Tripper was making herself cups of tea and coming home from pictures and trotting along to the fried-fish shop.’

He paused and smiled at her encouragingly.

‘His story is that he heard the car start up soon after six – he can’t say how soon – and that the engine was running continuously until eight or thereabouts, and that he didn’t hear it again until ten to nine, when it ran for only a short time.’

‘But that lets Mike out! That bears out Mike’s story!’

For the first time during the interview a faint tinge of
colour
appeared in her pale cheeks and she seemed to take new life.

Campion looked uncomfortable.

‘It bears out his story,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t let him out. He can’t establish his alibi between six and the time you phoned him, remember.’

‘I see,’ she said. She sank back again, her slender body in the sleek, man-tailored gown lifeless and pathetic.

‘It’ll help,’ said Campion, anxious to be reassuring. ‘Apart from fixing in the jury’s mind that the whole thing probably happened on the Thursday, it refutes the evidence of the Tripper woman, or muddles it at any rate.’

‘And you’ve discovered nothing else?’

‘Nothing of value,’ he confessed. ‘There’s been so little to go upon. Usually in these things you can get your teeth in somewhere and worry the whole thing out, but in this business there hasn’t been a gripping place. I had great hopes of Miss Netley, but either she can’t talk and simply tried to look as though she could out of vanity, or else there’s no earthly reason why she should and she doesn’t want to.’

‘Netley,’ said Ritchie and, getting to his feet, walked out of the room.

His exit was so abrupt that they both looked after him. Gina’s eyes were wet when she returned to Campion.

‘He’s been so kind,’ she said. ‘I used to think he was inhuman, a sort of creature; not a lunatic, you know, but – well, just not quite the right thing; but since – since Paul died he’s been the only person who’s behaved normally, to me at any rate. He’s genuinely sorry for me and terrified for Mike. The others, John and even dear old Curley and Mrs Austin and the doctor and all the other normal people who I always thought were ordinary and real and who I expected to have ordinary human reactions, have their own points of view so strongly that they have no room for mine or Mike’s. D’you know, John’s
only
thinking about the publicity and the firm, and Curley follows him. Mrs Austin’s thinking about her personal appearance. It’s as though she was going on the stage …’

Mr Campion looked sympathetic.

‘They’re in it, you see, old dear,’ he said. ‘It’s touched their lives.’

She nodded gloomily. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything terrible close to,’ she said. ‘I haven’t shown up very well to myself.’

There was a silence which Mr Campion did not like to break, and presently she spoke again.

‘John brought that man he calls Cousin Alexander up here. I got hysterical and they sent a doctor to me. I didn’t mean to, but he just wasn’t human as far as I was concerned. He was like an author planning a book or a play. They talked about hostile witnesses and witness for the defence not as though they were people but as though they were stray ideas, little pieces of construction.’

‘Sir Alexander is convinced that he’ll get an acquittal,’ said Campion.

‘I know,’ her voice became strident. ‘Insufficient evidence! And what good’ll that be? I talked all this out with Ritchie and he was as appalled as I was when he realized it. Don’t you see an acquittal will only save Mike’s life? The great damage is done.’

She leant forward, her intelligent face turned to him and her eyes very steady.

‘Don’t you see,’ she said, speaking carefully, as though he were a child, ‘if they acquit him without finding the man who did the murder everyone will always believe that Mike did it, and if ever he is seen speaking to me that’ll prove it from their point of view.’

‘I suppose what other people think matters?’ said Mr Campion, weakly.

‘Of course it matters,’ she said angrily. ‘It becomes the truth. What everybody thinks
is
the truth.’

Mr Campion was silent, knowing from experience that a discourse on ethics is rarely comforting to anyone in genuine distress.