The Namedropper (32 page)

‘What happened after that?'

‘We swam.'

‘To do which you had to change. Did you change together, in the same cabin? Or separately?'

‘Separately.'

‘You didn't suggest that you should undress together?'

‘No.'

‘Did it not enter your mind that you might suggest it, Mr Jordan?'

‘No.'

‘Did you not find Mrs Appleton attractive?'

‘Yes.'

‘Sexually attractive?'

Jordan hesitated, looking at the woman, who looked directly and expressionlessly back at him. ‘Yes.'

‘Yet it did not occur to you, in the circumstances in which you found yourself, to suggest you undress together: make a sexual approach to her?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘It did not seem … I don't know … I didn't.'

‘Did you fear that she would rebuff you?'

‘I didn't think about whether she would rebuff me or not.'

‘And in the early evening you sailed back to Cannes, arriving around dinner time?'

‘Did you suggest dinner?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did she accept?'

Jordan felt hot, hotter than he had when he'd first stepped, his mind blank, on to the witness stand. ‘No.'

‘What were her precise words?'

‘As best as I remember, she said she was not hungry after the lunch.'

‘What else do you remember her saying, Mr Jordan?'

‘That she was tired.'

‘And?' demanded Beckwith, the frown deepening.

‘That she wanted to go to bed.'

‘And …?'

Jordan did not immediately reply. Alyce was still looking at him without any expression whatsoever.

‘Mr Jordan?' demanded Beckwith.

‘But not by herself,' Jordan blurted.

‘Mrs Appleton told you she wanted to go to bed but not by herself?' insisted the lawyer.

‘Yes.'

Twenty-Four

‘Y
ou stalked her, didn't you!' demanded David Bartle, loudly. ‘You sought out Alyce Appleton in the South of France and pursued her until you got her into your bed!'

Totally unaware of any of the detailed evidence that Appleton's enquiry team might have assembled to incriminate him, Jordan recognized that under cross-examination he had to test every word and innuendo, to avoid stumbling into traps. And never lose his temper. No danger from this first, exaggerated opening. ‘No, I did not.'

‘You knew Alyce Appleton was a married woman?'

Too easy to be caught, Jordan thought. ‘She wore a wedding ring.'

‘And a particularly obvious engagement ring, given to her by her husband.'

‘I did not know from whom she obtained the engagement ring,' qualified Jordan, believing he saw a safe avoidance. ‘I believe widows – divorcees even – still sometimes continue to wear their rings.'

‘She told you she was married?'

‘Yes.' He needed to repeat that he and Alyce had parted without any intention to meet again, one of the several points with which Beckwith had concluded his examination, minutes earlier.

‘But not until after you'd seduced her!'

‘Not until after we'd slept together,' said Jordan, qualifying again.

‘At your persistent urging!'

‘I have already told this court the circumstances in which the affair began.' Very slightly, although not easing any of his self-imposed safeguards, Jordan began to relax. He didn't think Bartle was a particularly good interrogator but very positively refused to lapse into any false security.

‘You're telling the court that Alyce Appleton was prostituting herself up and down the French Riviera?'

Jordan felt the burn of anger but quickly subdued it. ‘I am telling you nothing of the sort and you – and the court – know it!' He should have stopped after the initial denial! Shit!

‘Before this examination is over I shall know a great deal about everything,' threatened the lawyer. ‘Did you find Alyce Appleton attractive?'

Jordan hesitated, trying to anticipate the subsequent question. ‘Yes.'

‘Did you fall in love with her?'

Jordan managed to avoid the hesitation. ‘No.'

‘Did you think she might fall in love with you?'

Too obvious, thought Jordan. ‘No.'

‘What would you have done if she had indicated that she was falling in love with you?'

‘It wasn't that sort of situation.'

‘Answer the question,' Pullinger ordered, sharply.

‘I would have made it clear that the feeling was not reciprocated.'

‘But gone on sleeping with her?'

‘No,' insisted Jordan.

‘What would you have done?' persisted Bartle.

‘Terminated the situation.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘You are no longer married?'

‘I am divorced.'

‘How long were you married?'

‘Four years. I have provided the court with all the legal documents and evidence.'

‘Were there children from the marriage?'

‘No.'

‘Are you the father of any children out of wedlock?'

It was a re-run of his first meeting with Daniel Beckwith, Jordan remembered. Wrong to regard that as a useful rehearsal. Alyce hadn't known he had been married, he remembered. ‘No.'

‘It is customary for you to vacation every year in the South of France?'

‘Yes.'

‘Always at the Carlton at Cannes?'

‘I move along the coast.'

‘Until you find a woman to pursue?'

Fuck you, thought Jordan, not responding.

‘I asked you a question, Mr Jordan,' pressed Bartle.

‘I inferred it as a totally fallacious and misleading statement, which, being both untrue and ridiculous, did not require an answer.' Jordan thought he detected the slightest of facial expressions, a wince maybe, from Beckwith.

‘Indulge me with a comment, Mr Jordan.'

He shouldn't have opened himself to the mockery, Jordan acknowledged. And the question could be the feared mantrap if they'd discovered previous holiday affairs. ‘I do not tour the Cote d'Azur seeking women to seduce.'

‘How many years have you vacationed in the South of France?'

Jordan genuinely had to pause, to calculate the period. ‘It's not a figure I've ever bothered to record. I would estimate about ten … twelve, possibly.'

‘How many holiday romances have you had during the course of those possible twelve years?'

The trap was gaping open in front of him, feared Jordan. At once came a contradiction: why was it so much of a trap? He could even cover himself if they had discovered some of the other woman, before Alyce. ‘Three, I think.' He hadn't spent a single holiday alone.

‘Were any of them married?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Did any of them wear wedding rings or engagement rings?'

‘I don't remember.'

‘Does it matter to you if the women you pursue are married?'

Surely the lawyer would have pounced by now if he'd found a previous conquest! And so what if he had, Jordan asked himself again. ‘Every liaison in which I have been involved has been consensual. I do not, to use the word you persist wrongly upon using, pursue women.'

‘You didn't know if it would or would not endanger Alyce Appleton's marriage when you first went to bed with her, although you knew she was married!'

Jordan seized the ineptly presented opportunity. ‘Neither Alyce Appleton nor I regarded our time together in France as anything other than what it was, an adventure that would end with no attachments on either side. We parted, as the court has already heard at the end of my earlier evidence, without any intention of ever meeting again. I did not alienate Alyce Appleton's affection from her husband. She no longer had the slightest affection for him.'

‘She told you that?'

‘She told me that papers upon which she had been working – signing – the day we met were divorce papers.'

‘Why did she extend her holiday in France for a further week?' persisted Bartle.

Jordan shrugged and immediately regretted doing so. ‘We didn't discuss it at any length. I was not returning to England for another week. She had no pressing reason to come back here to America.'

‘Wasn't it that she was falling in love with you?'

‘Absolutely not. As I've told—'

‘But that you told her you didn't love her?'

‘I repeat, absolutely not,' denied Jordan.

‘You gave her a ring, did you not?'

‘A what?' frowned Jordan, incredulous, conscious of Beckwith's sudden jerk of attention.

‘During your stay in St Tropez didn't you buy her a ring and put it on the finger upon which Alyce Appleton by then no longer wore her wedding or engagement rings?' demanded Bartle. ‘And celebrate, as people do upon engagements, by drinking champagne?'

‘
What?
' exclaimed Jordan, blocked on the same word in his astonishment.

Bartle beckoned the usher, handing the man a sheaf of photographs and itemizing their recipients. To Pullinger the lawyer said, ‘These were taken in St Tropez, your honour. The date clearly shown upon the prints coincides with that during which Alyce Appleton shared a room with Harvey Jordan at the Residence de la Pinade'

Momentarily Jordan stared bewildered at the two photographs he had been handed. One showed him and Alyce walking arm in arm by what he recognized to be the Place des Lices and the other at a table at the Mouscardins restaurant at the edge of the port. He was clearly holding her left hand, putting a ring on her wedding finger. There were half filled champagne glasses on their table, the bottle in its cooler alongside. And then he erupted into laughter. Alyce, at whose courtroom table another set of prints had been delivered, sniggered, leaning sideways to her lawyer. Reid didn't laugh.

‘Perhaps your client would share the joke with the court, Mr Beckwith?' said Pullinger, who wasn't smiling either.

‘There's an open air market on the Place des Lices in St Tropez on two days of the week, Tuesdays and Saturdays,' explained Jordan, patiently. ‘It caters for tourists as well as local residents, selling all sorts of things: cheap clothing and a lot of local produce, cheeses and meats. And there are bric-a-brac stalls. From one of them, at a Tuesday market, I bought a plastic ring, in imitation marble. It was a joke between us. Play-acting, the way people do.'

‘Play-acting the way people do when they feel they are falling in love?' said Bartle.

‘
No!
' refused Jordan. ‘It wasn't like that.'

‘Like what, Mr Jordan?'

‘A serious declaration of love: a declaration of anything of the sort you are trying to make it into.'

‘Why didn't you mention it, in your written statement?'

Hold your temper, Jordan told himself. ‘Because it was so inconsequential: so meaningless. I had totally forgotten the incident: didn't even remember it when I first saw the photographs.'

‘You claim it was a joke?'

‘It
was
a joke: a silly, harmless joke.'

‘People laugh at jokes,' said Bartle. ‘You and Alyce Appleton look very serious at your restaurant table, with your celebratory champagne.'

‘This is a ridiculous attempt to create a situation where no situation existed,' insisted Jordan.

‘Did Alyce Appleton continue to wear your meaningless plastic joke ring after that day in St Tropez?'

There'd be more photographs, Jordan guessed. ‘She might have done. I don't remember her doing so. As I have tried to make clear, it was totally inconsequential, something over in a moment and forgotten.'

‘Alyce Appleton doesn't appear to have forgotten it,' said Bartle, summoning the usher to distribute another selection of photographs.

The second batch was thicker than the first and Jordan was surprised that his initial reaction at flicking through them was not apprehension at the questioning they were going to prompt but the briefest moment of nostalgia.

‘Do you recognize – remember – these photographs?'

‘Of course I do!' replied Jordan, unthinkingly.

‘Of course you do,' again mocked Bartle, as he looked up to the bench. ‘I would particularly invite your honour to look at the ring upon Alyce Appleton's finger as I go through the numbered sequence. Here – dated as they all are – is Mrs Appleton boarding a yacht to another sailing excursion, this time to the lies de Porquerolles. And print five shows Mrs Appleton and Mr Jordan at Cagnes. Print six has them at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo and this,' declared Bartle with the enthusiasm of a conjuror groping into his top hat for the rabbit, ‘is the photograph of Alyce Appleton passing through Nice airport for her return to America …' Bartle paused, to create his moment. ‘Each of the photographs before you, your honour, very clearly show Alyce Appleton wearing the joke, inconsequential plastic ring so seriously slipped upon her finger by the defendant, the gesture celebrated with champagne.'

And he hadn't once been aware of it being on Alyce's finger after that one fun lunch at the Mouscardins restaurant, thought Jordan.

Alyce walked unaided but with her lawyer attentively close at hand to the witness stand, her doctor tensed forward from his chair behind, took the oath in a controlled voice and settled herself demurely in her seat, knees discreetly covered by her mid-calf skirt, hands crossed in her lap. Despite the lack of make-up, there was a tinge of natural colour to her cheeks. In a steady, controlled voice she went through the identifying formalities before looking expectantly to Daniel Beckwith. On her trip to France, she agreed, she had had an affair – the first in which she had engaged after her marriage to Alfred Appleton – with Harvey Jordan. She could not recall a time in her life when she had felt so lost, so abandoned. Having initiated the divorce proceedings after discovering she had a sexual disease and undergone successful treatment, she had tried to distance herself as far away as she could from a husband she despised and for whom she no longer had any feeling other than contempt. When she'd got to France she'd realized it was not the good idea she had imagined it would be. She was lonely, her confidence gone: there'd been days – specifically two, she admitted, under Beckwith's questioning – when she hadn't bothered to bathe or even get out of her hotel bed. Harvey Jordan had been kind. At no time had his attitude towards her been that of a predatory seducer. She'd been intrigued by his invitation to what emerged to be the prison in which the man in the iron mask had been held, never for a moment considering the possibility of his making a sexual advance. Which he didn't. Feeling as she did because of her personal circumstances – the circumstances of being betrayed and abandoned – she had been deeply moved at seeing the cell in which someone had been shut off from the world, as she at that moment felt herself to have been.