Man with the Dark Beard (23 page)

The little man hesitated a minute, turning the beard about in his hands, his puckered face contorted. Then, with a sudden air of resolution he put it on the counter again and snapped the glass from his eye.

“There is only one man I know who could have made this article, sir, for unless you were in the trade yourself you could not appreciate the fine workmanship of it, and the way it is finished. Such a beard, properly put on, would be almost impossible of detection. As I say, I have never known more than one man capable of this work – a little French-Swiss who was the greatest artist I ever heard of. I feel sure this is his.”

“And his name?” the inspector questioned sharply.

“Pierre Picquet. But he went back to his own country and it is years since I heard of him.”

“You know his address?”

“No.” Lesson shuffled his feet. “I had one or two letters from him from Geneva, but he was not much of a hand at writing English, and I cannot read French, so we lost sight of one another. But he was an artist – a real artist.”

“And you can tell me nothing more about him?” the inspector asked in a disappointed tone.

Simon Lesson wrinkled up his brow.

“I heard of him once afterwards, yes. He had what he called a studio of his own. But that was in Brussels, and then came the Great War and the German occupation.” He spread out his hands. “Everything was swept away. I have never heard of my friend Pierre Picquet since. I fear, I very much fear that he is numbered amongst those departed, for whom we offer Mass every day in our little church in Maiden Lane.”

There was evidently nothing more to be gleaned from Simon Lesson.

The two detectives walked back to Scotland Yard. As they came in sight of the entrance Stoddart turned to his junior.

“You will be ready to go to Brussels this evening, Harbord. There is not one moment to be lost. Spare no expense. If Pierre Picquet is alive we must have him over for the trial. Let me know of your success by wireless at the earliest possible moment.”

The trial of Basil Wilton for the murder of his wife had been fixed to take place at the Old Bailey early in November.

The court was crowded; the streets were thronged with disappointed sightseers. No trial of late years had so taken hold of the public imagination as this of Basil Wilton. The youth and good looks of the accused, combined with the fact that he was popularly supposed to have murdered his late employer as well as his wife, had aroused an enormous amount of excitement; and the fact of his love affair with Hilary Bastow – which had been allowed to leak out – had done nothing to allay it.

The judge was Mr. Justice Ruthven, as women whispered to one another with a pitying glance at the pale, delicate-looking young man in the dock.

There was a formidable array of counsel on both sides. The Attorney-General, Sir Douglas Wilshere, was for the Crown, and with him were Edward Davies, K.C., and James Francis Conroy. Arnold Westerham defended, one of the greatest – some said the greatest cross-examiner at the Bar. With him were James Backhouse and Huntley Sparkes. Villiers Lamb held a watching brief for Dr. Sanford Morris.

The case was opened by Sir Douglas Wilshere in studiously temperate language. There were those among the spectators who whispered that Wilshere was most dangerous when seemingly most moderate. In a quiet, unemotional voice he marshalled the facts against the prisoner, fitting each one into its place with deadly precision. Most damning of all was the question of time. The maid had testified to taking in tea for two, and to leaving Basil Wilton alone with his wife. She had then gone out and the medical testimony was decided that within a very few minutes of that time Iris Wilton had died. The evidence of the lift man and the hall porter, though in itself merely negative, further strengthened the case against the prisoner. They had caught sight of him in the hall and had not noticed that he carried a bag, they had seen no one go up, and in the case of the lift man he had taken no one up near the suspected time.

Inspector Stoddart, in spite of his strong belief in Wilton's innocence, was one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution. His description of the state of the flat, when he was called in, and of the finding of the bullets that had killed poor Iris Wilton – one lodged in the wooden mantelshelf, one in the wainscoting of the room – and of the subsequent fitting of them into the revolver concealed on the top of the wardrobe, was of absorbing interest to the listeners. His search of the prisoner's room, and the finding of the cloak-room ticket in the coat pocket there, were of course weighty points in the case for the Crown. The clerk in the cloak-room, contrary to expectation, did nothing to help them. He failed to identify Wilton as the man who took in the bag, and, more, declared his absolute certainty that he was not the man. On Wilton's being told to stand up, the clerk said he might be about the same height, but there all likeness ended.

Iris Wilton's will, made after her marriage and leaving everything to her husband, was put in as supplying the motive for the crime, but this was considerably discounted, as the cross-examination showed, by the fact that the fortune Iris Wilton had spoken of possessing had disappeared and nothing was left but a hundred or two in the Argentine Loan and a comparatively small sum of ready money in the Bank.

Still, there was no doubt the case did look black against the prisoner, and when Arnold Westerham rose to open for the defence most people felt that he had a hard job before him. He was not a great speaker. He would never emulate Felix Skrine's forensic triumphs, his strong point was the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. He outlined his case very briefly, pointing out the weak points of the prosecution, making the most of the fact that, though the revolver had been found in Wilton's bedroom, no previous purchase or possession had been traced home to him. The failure of the cloak-room clerk to identify him was also made the most of, and then the witnesses were called.

Basil Wilton had elected to give evidence, and he was naturally the first put in the box. But, briefly, his evidence was little more than a blank contradiction of that put forward by the prosecution. He told how his wife, pleading a headache, had insisted on his leaving her alone and going to his brother's. Like the maid, Alice Downes, he spoke of the total absence of visitors to the flat and stated that he knew no friends or relatives of his wife's. He positively denied knowing anything of the revolver and its concealment in his room, or of the cloakroom ticket in his pocket, and the Attorney-General's cross-examination entirely failed to shake him on any of these points.

Altogether it was conceded on all sides that Basil Wilton made a good witness, giving his testimony clearly, and not varying his story one iota under the most vigorous questioning. When at last he was allowed to step down from the box it was recognized that he had made a distinctly favourable impression.

The next witness called by the defence was Pierre Picquet. The sound of his name created rather a sensation. This was an entirely new name, as far as the public was concerned, and there was a general craning forward of heads at the little Swiss as he made his way to the stand and took the oath, kissing the book with an energy that made those near him smile.

Arnold Westerham hitched up his gown as he turned to him.

“Your name is Pierre Picquet?”

Picquet made an elaborate bow.

“Pierre Jean Picquet, monsieur.”

“And you are a Swiss?”

“But no, monsieur. I was born in Switzerland – at one time I live in Berne, zat is true. But my fazer and mozzer are French and I – I am French too. And now I live in Paris also.”

“Will you tell us what you know of this case?”

“Me? I do not know anysing.” Pierre Picquet spread out his hands. “All I am acquainted wiz is ze brown beard. I make it.”

“You made the brown beard?” Arnold Westerham went on, amid a silence in which you might have heard a pin drop.

“Oui, monsieur, oui. I made it – I make two and sell them to a tall blond Englishman.”

Westerham took up the brown beard ticketed Exhibit No. 6 from the table beside him, and handed it to an usher, who took it to the witness.

“Is this one of the brown beards you made?”

Pierre Picquet took the beard, examined it with care; then, as he looked up, his face was irradiated by a wide smile.

“Oui, monsieur, it is as I say. I make dis beard, I make anozer too, anozer just like it.”

“And did you sell them at once?” Westerham pursued.

Picquet's smile widened if possible.

“I make zem, what you call, to order, monsieur, for ze tall Englishman. He want zem, he say, for a fancy ball, and he not want ze friends to know he is zere, so he buy my beard to disguise himself zat people not know him.”

“Why did he buy two?”

Picquet was still turning his beard about.

“Do you not see, monsieur, zat he is only on a visit to Paris, zat he lives in London, and zat – perhaps, I do not know – he will lead ze gay life at home? And for zat my beards are convenable.”

“Quite, quite,” Arnold Westerham assented. “Now, Mr. Picquet, I want you to look round the court and see whether you recognize the tall, blond Englishman for whom you made the beards.”

Pierre Picquet produced a pair of glasses and put them on.

“Me – I am not so young as I was,” he observed apologetically. “My eyes, zey grow dim.” He looked round, stared straight at Basil Wilton, then his eyes wandered round the crowded court. At last he looked back at Westerham. “I do not know. I am not quite sure. He wears a wig now like all ze ozzer gentlemen, like you do yourself, monsieur.”

“A wig!” Westerham stared. This was the last thing he had expected to hear.

He asked Wilton to stand up, and as the prisoner obeyed the counsel looked at Picquet.

“Now take your time. Be quite sure, look well at that young man. Is he the tall Englishman who bought your beards?”

“But assuredly not, monsieur. Dis gentleman, he is not so old, not, I sink, so nice-looking as ze ozzer. But I will show you.”

Before anyone in the court had realized what he was about to do he had bustled out of the witness-box and across to the dock, brown beard in hand.

“Zis is for zis gentleman much too big. See, it fastens here and here. You clip it so and so,” twisting it about and fixing it on Wilton's face. “But it is big, much too big. Everybody see at once zat it is not growing, zat it is what you call mock. No, no, no! It was not made for zis gentleman. But now, now I do think I see ze gentleman. He sit dere.” He pointed an accusing finger at the row of counsel not engaged in the case, but listening to it in the seats reserved for them in the front of the court. Conspicuous among them was Sir Felix Skrine. Picquet finally pointed directly at him.

“Zat – zat is ze man,” he announced dramatically.

Sir Felix Skrine! A laugh, instantly suppressed, ran round the court. Sir Felix appeared to be absolutely unmoved. A faint smile curved his lips as he looked at Westerham. There he sat with his arms folded, gazing straight before him. Arnold Westerham shrugged his shoulders and moved his hand as if to brush the suggestion aside.

Mr. Justice Ruthven interposed.

“Witness, do I understand that you swear positively that the prisoner at the bar is not the man for whom you made the beard?”

Pierre Picquet turned himself about and bowed profoundly.

“Yes, my lord, it is so. I have never seen de young gentleman there” – pointing again to Basil Wilton – “I have never seen him before.''

Nothing more was to be got out of Pierre Picquet, and Westerham signified that his examination was over.

The closing speech for the prosecution was little more than a recapitulation of the evidence that had been given. And the Attorney-General pointed out that, though Pierre Picquet positively swore that Basil Wilton was not the man for whom he made the beards originally, there was nothing to have prevented them from coming into Wilton's possession later through some other channel.

The judge's summing-up was a clear, masterly presentment of the case, brushing aside every irrelevance that had been imported into it, and pointing out to the jury that they were there to say whether the prisoner at the bar had murdered his wife or not and that no other issue must be confused with this. The beard, of which so much capital had been made by the defence, was not really of much importance in the case, since its only connexion with the murder lay in the few words written in the blotting-book and the beard found in the bag at the railway station, and there was no definite proof that either bag or beard was ever at the flat in Hawksview Mansions. It was a very fair, passionless summing up, but it made it plain that the weight of evidence was against the prisoner; and, when with a few solemn words about the gravity and importance of their task he dismissed the jury to consider their verdict, there were few people in court who did not feel that Basil Wilton's fate was sealed.

With a bow to the court Mr. Justice Ruthven retired to his room behind the Bench, the jury – ten men and two women – filed out of court, their faces showing that they were oppressed by the magnitude of the duty that lay before them.

The prisoner was taken to the cells beneath.

A momentary silence fell upon the spectators, and then they began to discuss the probable result of the trial, the general opinion being that Basil Wilton would be found guilty without any long delay. Therefore when the minutes passed into an hour, then into two, there was a general feeling of surprise. Once the jury sent to ask the judge a question about a point of law, and when it was answered resumed their deliberations. When at last they were heard returning it was realized that they had been absent nearly three hours.

The judge took his place, the prisoner was brought back, and the scene was set for the final act of the tragedy, when the foreman intimated to the judge that they had been unable to agree upon a verdict.