The Man Whose Dream Came True (21 page)

The passage that most struck the wise men in the Court (and there is always a number of wise men in any Court) about Hardy’s final speech was that in which he ingeniously combined defence of Mrs Foster with a demonstration that even if she had lied it gave no assurance at all that Jones was telling the truth.

‘Genevieve Foster, as you know, is tragically dead. She cannot be here to answer the matters raised by the last defence witnesses. But what did the points they raised really amount to? That indefatigable investigator Mr Dimmock discovered that she occasionally dined out with her cousin in a place, it was suggested, that was “significantly far away”. But what is there significant about this when you remember that both she and Mr Lands were members of the same golf club? And then, what do you think of Sarah Russell’s evidence about the hammer, that hammer which was so curiously wrapped up in tissue paper? Isn’t it strange that while she recalls all this so clearly she can’t remember why she thought the thing in tissue paper was a hammer at all, or whether she saw the whole of it or just the handle or the head? I am not attacking her sincerity – nobody who heard her would do that – but I suggest that what she saw was the handle of some quite different tool and that when Mrs Foster said she did not want the carpet tacked down at that moment it was simply for the reason she gave. She had a headache. When we have that good common sense explanation why should we look for something sinister?’

Hardy looked about with an air of mild triumph, and continued more seriously. ‘And then we come to the raincoat. There are spots of blood on it, and you may have noticed that my learned friend was not very precise about how they may have got there. Let me be as precise as possible. If those spots on the raincoat have any meaning in the case at all Mrs Foster must have attacked her husband with the hammer while wearing the raincoat. She must also have been wearing gloves, since her prints were not on the hammer. Now you will remember that she was a slim, I might almost say a frail woman. Can you really picture her putting on the raincoat and gloves and then using the hammer to commit this brutal murder? Isn’t it far more likely that she made a mistake in saying that she hadn’t visited the launch for three weeks before the murder, that she went there for some completely innocent purpose, tore the raincoat and cut her hand at the same time so that some blood spilled on to the raincoat? And that when she noticed this she stuffed it away so that her husband shouldn’t notice that the new raincoat was ruined?’ Hardy paused. ‘And mark this. Even if you accept that she took part in her husband’s savage murder, it does not follow that Jones is innocent. If her association with him was really an adulterous one, is it not overwhelmingly likely that he was a partner in her husband’s murder?’

Now Hardy turned to the prisoner in the dock and appeared to be addressing him directly, using a tone of withering scorn which made him almost visibly shrink. ‘If you prefer to believe the tale that Jones told, you will acquit him. But can you believe it? Didn’t he impress you when he gave evidence as a rather intelligent young man, and also as one who would tell any lie to save his own skin? Listening to his account of the charade in which he says he took part, and which he says utterly deceived him, the dummy wrapped up as a body and the rest of it, ask yourselves: can any man have been as big a fool as that?’

Although Newton had the advantage of the final speech, his task was not an easy one. He had to decide just how far he could go in attacking Genevieve Foster without alienating the jury. In the end, after a long discussion with his junior, he decided to play it low and calm. As he asked the jury to accept the story told by the man in the dock, and recalled just what that story was, Newton did not once look at his client, who felt at times that he was being attacked rather than defended.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard my learned friend Mr Hardy, and I will take up at once his last words: “Can any man have been as big a fool” as to act as Jones did. Just look at this question in another way. You must all of you have wondered when you heard my client give evidence why a man should concoct so clumsy and so discreditable a story in his own defence. I do not put him before you as a particularly virtuous man, or as a man whose intentions were anything but wicked. But, as my learned friend says, he quite obviously does not lack intelligence. To admit that, in the stress of passion, he entered into an agreement to murder Eversley Foster, and then to leave the country and wait for his criminal partner in a foreign land – to tell this tale that he knew would have little chance of belief because it was bound to be contradicted at every turn – can you believe that a man of reasonable intelligence would tell such a story unless it were true?

‘For some time this story rested on his own word, and probably it was a word that few of you would care to accept. Happily, it is now supported by evidence. You have heard that Mrs Foster was sufficiently friendly with Lands to dine with him sometimes at a place which, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, was I repeat significantly far from her home. You have heard what Sarah Russell had to say about the hammer with which the crime was committed, and you may feel that there is no doubt at all that she did see a hammer and not the “other tool” which had been mentioned. If you accept that she did see the hammer you will make what you think right of the strange fact that, once having got Jones’ fingerprints on it, Mrs Foster preserved this hammer in tissue paper. You have heard the story of the new raincoat, a small piece of which was found in the motor launch
Daisy Mae.
You will remember that Mrs Foster said at a time when the matter did not seem important, that she had not visited the launch for three weeks before the murder. You have heard that the raincoat had on it those damning spots of blood and you have heard where it was found, stuffed away in a junk room.’

Newton lowered his voice, his tone became sepulchral. ‘It is painful for me to have to say these things. I do not wish to accuse the dead. But the points I have mentioned are some of those I should have questioned Mrs Foster about. Do you think, can anybody think, that she could have given satisfactory answers?’

There he left the question of Genevieve Foster, and went on to a peroration which certainly did not spare his client.

‘I cannot put him before you as anything but a contemptible character, but I ask you to accept his story as true. And if you do accept it the important thing, the vital thing, that you must remember is this. He has told you frankly that he was prepared to enter into a conspiracy by which he would take part in the murder of Foster. That is, of the man he knew as Foster, for in fact he never met the real Eversley Foster. But if you accept his story he
did not take part in it,
he was deceived into thinking that he was taking part in a murder plot when in reality he was the dupe of the real murderer and of her accomplice Lands. If you find that this is really what happened, that Jones agreed to take part in a murder but really participated only in a charade, as my learned friend rightly called it, then I am telling you as a matter of law – and I am sure my lord will make reference to this later on – that he is not guilty of any crime at all, and that you must acquit him. You may think whatever you please of his character, but his character is not in question. I submit to you, members of the jury, that Anthony Jones is completely innocent of the crime of which he is accused.’

Had Newton really pitched it too low? That was the general opinion of the wise men. Looking at the jury, at Blue Rinse and Iron Hair and the others, noting slight signs of impatience while they listened to Newton in comparison with the close attention paid to Hardy’s bell-like lucidity, they really hadn’t much doubt about it.

This assessment of the jury was quite wrong. Iron Hair had been on his side from the first. He bore a strong resemblance to a nephew of hers who had gone out to Australia and sent a splendid food parcel home to her every Christmas. Blue Rinse and Pretty But Fatuous had been inclined all along to think that Mrs Foster was too good to be true, and the man resembling Clinker, who was a director in a firm of woollen merchants, thought that Jones looked too intelligent to have behaved so stupidly and by an odd jump in reasoning therefore believed him innocent. Most of the others had thought he was guilty, but they were shaken by the raincoat evidence. They talked about it for an hour and a half, but there was never much doubt about which side the waverers would come down on.

The ‘Not Guilty’ verdict caused little surprise. Hardy congratulated Newton. Clerks tied up the briefs with bits of tape, white for the DPP’s file, pink for all the others. Tony stepped down from the dock and Mr Hussick came over to him, eyebrows dancing. He shook hands with Mr Hussick, then with Newton and Newton’s junior. Newton spoke a few words and turned away. It was all rather anticlimactic. The only people who seemed really pleased were Bill and Joe, the prison officers.

‘You’re away then,’ said Bill. ‘I knew that was the way it would be. I could feel it in my water. Had to get up to pee in the night, that’s a sure sign. Never wrong, the old water.’

Tony felt like a departing guest who should thank his hosts for their hospitality, but it turned out that he had to collect various belongings from the cell below the Court.

‘What’ll it be then?’ Bill asked. ‘Off for a night on the town, a bit of a celebration?’

He shook his head. There was nobody for him to celebrate with. Bill and Joe agreed afterwards that they had never seen a man acquitted on a murder charge take it so quietly.

Standing outside the Old Bailey in summer sunlight he wondered what he should do. He owed his freedom to the General. Should he telephone to thank him, or go down to Leathersley House? A Rolls-Royce car nosed down the road and slowly drew to a halt. The judge’s car, perhaps, or would he be trying the next case? A chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. Tony stared at him. The man made a gesture indicating unmistakably that he should step inside.

He got in. The woman already in the car leaned over to kiss him. It was Violet Harrington.

‘Aren’t you going to say thank you?’ She was wearing a peacock blue dress with short sleeves. Her bare brawny arms touched his.

‘Thank you, yes, I didn’t realise–’

‘When I saw you were in real trouble I thought, I’m going to try to get him out of it even if it does cost money. When a friend’s in trouble money doesn’t matter.’

‘This is a different car,’ he said inanely.

‘I’ll tell you a little secret. There was a takeover bid for Harrington’s companies. A handsome offer. I can afford anything I like now, Tony.’ She placed a hand on his and he saw that there was a new diamond bracelet round her wrist. She indicated the neck of the chauffeur, who was separated from them by a glass partition. ‘Including Meakins. I think it’s a bore to drive yourself about when you can be driven.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Home. To Burncourt Grange. Everything’s arranged.’ Her hand on his was hot and faintly moist, but the rings beneath the flesh were hard. ‘You can leave it all to me now. You don’t have to worry about anything.’

You don’t have to worry about anything.
The seat was soft, immensely luxurious. He closed his eyes.

How The Dreams Came True

They were married within a fortnight. There were no guests, no reception, not even a notice in
The Times.
‘We’ve got each other,’ she said. ‘We don’t need anybody else.’ He started to write a letter to Widgey and then tore it up. She belonged to the past, and he felt such a revulsion against the past that he could not bear to do anything that brought it back to him.

We’ve got each other:
but the truth was, as he quickly realised, that she had him. He was not the squire of the village but a kept plaything. The servants – there were four of them, as he had imagined, although only two lived in – treated him with barely concealed insolence. No doubt Meakins had told them about the trial, or they had seen pictures of him in the papers. Meakins himself, a spare man with slicked-down hair, had a slightly twisted lip which made his expression appear to be fixed in a sneer, and his manner had a familiarity which made it seem always that he was on the verge of asking some intimate question, like whether Mrs Harrington, now Mrs Jones, was a good lay.

About this there was in a sense no question. He was expected to be on duty at night, often in the morning and occasionally in the afternoon. It might have been like the paradise promised to believers by Mahomet, but in reality these encounters made him feel like a stallion condemned to endless servicing of a single mare. There was also something profoundly unsatisfactory to him about the form of their love-making. He closed his eyes and thought of Jenny, but the contrast between her almost angry dominance and the whimpering eagerness of Violet as her shuddering bulk lay beneath him was so disagreeable that he tried instead to make his mind completely blank.

He would have felt better if there had been any sign that she meant to carry out the promises she had made in the days before their marriage. On the second day after his release he had suggested that they go abroad. She bit into her breakfast toast and nodded. Her Pekinese eyes were bright.

‘I still can’t believe this is real. That prison hospital–’ He left the sentence unfinished. In retrospect the hospital seemed horrific, whatever it had been like at the time.

‘Poor boy.’ She snapped off another piece of toast, crunched it up. ‘It was lucky I decided to help, wasn’t it?’

‘I owe everything to you.’ The words were true, although they seemed merely dutiful. ‘I ought to get away. People talk.’ He was aware already of the servants’ attitude.

‘Not if we were married.’

‘You’re sure you want–’

‘Ever since I first saw you.’

‘We could go abroad for our honeymoon. To Venice perhaps.’

‘Don’t you like it here?’ He said truthfully that it was a wonderful house, but he meant really that it was wonderful to be waited on, to have the cook inquire in the morning about what they would like for dinner, and to order tea by ringing a bell.

‘Then that’s settled.’

Within a week of their marriage he knew that he had made a mistake. He should have seen to it that the tickets to Venice were bought before the ceremony, he should have made a firm arrangement about a monthly allowance. He realised too late that he had failed to realise his potential value and had sold himself for nothing. When he spoke of the honeymoon abroad she said that she hated travelling and that just to be with him was honeymoon enough for her. He had spent the last of his own money on an eternity ring, which seemed a nice symbolic touch, and he waited for her to say that they would have a joint bank account which he could use, but she said nothing of the kind. At last he raised the matter at what seemed an appropriate moment, after one of their afternoon sessions.

Her hand, with all the rings on it, including now his eternity ring, stroked his arm ‘Smooth. Not much hair on your body, is there? Harrington was a hairy man.’

It was not easy, but he said it. ‘We’re husband and wife. I ought to have my own bank account. Or a joint one.’

Her hand moved, touched his nipples, then moved down to his stomach. In her brown bulging eyes he saw nothing of what he looked for, but only greed and pleasure. ‘Kiss me.’

He knew that this was not what she meant, but with an effort he did as she wanted. As she lay back afterwards, panting with satisfaction, she said, ‘Five pounds a week.’

He was about to protest, even to strike her. Then he saw that she would enjoy this too, and that protest would be useless.

Within a few weeks he knew that he was trapped in a net from which there was no escape. The Grange was a mile outside the village of Burncourt, and the village itself was in the Dorset countryside five miles from the nearest small town. She had told him that the Rolls was to be driven only by Meakins, but there was another car, an old one, and in this he went out two evenings a week. He spent his allowance on drink and an evening meal. It was very much like life with the General, except that he was paid less money. Violet said nothing about these evenings out, until one night he took the Rolls. Driving it gave him less pleasure than he had expected, because he had a schoolboy’s feeling that there would be trouble when he returned. He came back slightly drunk to find her waiting for him.

‘I told you that the Rolls was to be driven only by Meakins.’ He had rehearsed a scene that began something like this, and he should have said now that as her husband he would drive any car he wished. In fact he said nothing. When she held out her hand for the keys he gave them to her. ‘I have told Meakins to keep the garage locked up in future. There is another thing.’ She had a glass of brandy in front of her and invited him to have some. He shook his head. She spoke slowly, savouring the words and watching him.

‘You were tried and acquitted. But I remember that you admitted that you were ready to plan with that woman to kill her husband. I think I should tell you that I have made a will leaving my money to charities. Not to you. Do you understand me?’ Her painted mouth curved in a smile. ‘Of course it’s possible that I might change my mind.’

Looking at her fat fingers twisting the stem of the glass as though she might break it, he knew what she felt for him was not love but hatred. She spoke as though she read his thoughts.

‘You remember that afternoon in the car? I haven’t forgotten. I told you, didn’t I, that I usually get what I want.’

She put down the glass, got up and walked out. That night he slept in one of the spare bedrooms. In the morning he heard the maid who lived in giggling with one who came daily, no doubt telling her that husband and wife were occupying separate rooms. He went for a long walk through the woods that were part of the estate, and wondered whether any thought of Violet’s death had crossed his mind. Perhaps he could withhold his services, a male Lysistrata? But he knew that his persistence was no match for hers, and that this was a fantasy. He sat on the grass in a clearing, broke up some small twigs and said aloud: ‘I could leave her, I could just walk out.’

Yet he knew that this also was not possible. Something had been destroyed in him by those weeks in the prison hospital. The mainspring of his being had broken, so that he could not seriously contemplate either resisting her or leaving the undoubted comfort in which he lived to face the world again without money. He had no confidence any more in his ability to charm old Generals or to please women, and he shuddered at the thought of selling insurance again. He was imprisoned in this house as effectively as if he were in a cell. Two nights later he went back to her bedroom.

He had given his address to Hussick, and it was a week after this that the letter came. He stared unbelievingly at the cheque and then read the relevant lines of Hussick’s letter. ‘…happy to say that we were able to obtain a refund on the air ticket you booked to Caracas…cheque for this amount is enclosed…’ The cheque was for a hundred and forty pounds.

At lunchtime that day he said to Violet, ‘I shan’t be in this afternoon, I’m taking the car. Not the Rolls.’ She looked at him smiling, and he felt it necessary to say something more. ‘I thought I’d go to Cerne Abbas. I believe it’s very pretty.’

‘It is.’ She crunched celery. ‘You didn’t ask if I wanted to come. You’re looking very nice.’ Her smile broadened as she saw his expression. ‘Don’t worry, I shan’t. What is it, a girl?’

He was able to make his denial all the more convincing because it was true.

‘I wouldn’t mind. You can take the Rolls if you like. It might impress her.’

You’re very sure of me, he thought as he said that he didn’t want the Rolls, you know I’m caught. Her desire to touch him was something he had come to know and hate, and he had to restrain himself from flinching when she patted his shoulder as they got up from the table.

‘If you’re a good boy, Tony, you won’t find I’m unreasonable.’ The bitch, he thought as he drove away down the drive, the bitch thinks she’s got me but she hasn’t. The feeling of elation lasted as he parked the car at the tiny Burncourt Road Station and bought his first class ticket, lasted even half the way to London. It was succeeded by a depression which deepened as the train approached Paddington Station. He had drawn a hundred pounds from the bank and it was in his pocket, but what did it give him but an illusion of freedom? He could stay away from her until the money was spent, but after that what could he do but go back? He looked at himself in the railway carriage glass and was slightly cheered to see that he was still a very good-looking young man. ‘You can decide what to do when the time comes,’ he said to this young man. ‘What you need first of all is a good strong drink.’

From Paddington he took a taxi to the Ritz. There he settled down with a vodka-based drink called a gimlet, drank it quickly and ordered another. He could feel the horrors of Burncourt Grange peeling away from him. He had got away and he would stay away, at least for that night. Ought he to telephone Violet and tell her so?

‘Tony,’ a voice said. ‘It
is
you.’

A girl stood beside the table, smiling down at him. She wore dark glasses as she had done long ago. Fiona.