Case with No Conclusion (23 page)

Strangely enough, it was Mrs. Duncan's evidence which was the most damning in a way, for although she had very little to tell she stressed her late husband's devotion to the family so much that when she had finished it appeared that Duncan could only have committed suicide for one reason—to shield Stewart. Of course, she herself knew nothing, but I felt that her insistence on such phrases as “he knew a lot that he wouldn't tell,” and “the knowledge was too much for him,” could have only one interpretation placed on it by the jury.

The case for the prosecution, on the other hand, was brisk and to the point. One could see the hand of Stute behind it as each point was given and
corroborated by finger-print experts, doctors, policemen, and Stute himself. Beef moved restlessly in his seat, but he appeared to be taking more interest in the case than he had been at first.

“Can't you think of anything at all?” I asked despairingly, but he simply shrugged his shoulders heavily.

“What can I do?” he said. “They won't use all the evidence I gave them now. I'd like to see what that Fitz, whatever his name is, would say to me if I told him there was poison in the whisky. I can't understand Sir William at all, he doesn't seem to have established the possibility of it being someone outside the house.”

But the biggest surprise of the prosecution came when the last of their witnesses seemed to have been called and then we heard the name Wilkinson and remembered the “surly Tapster.” I looked at Beef in astonishment. Neither of us had any idea that Stute had got on to the man, and since Beef had obtained nothing from him, we had rather easily assumed that he had nothing to tell.

He came into the court-room and entered the box with a deep scowl on his face as though the whole business was a criminal waste of his time. The counsel had some difficulty in extracting any information from him at all, but in little growls and short grudging sentences his evidence was pieced together. In effect it was that he had been the witness of a quarrel between Stewart and Dr. Benson. It had taken place some months back
when he was still actively supervising the garden at the Cypresses. He was, he said, working in a part of the kitchen garden which was screened from the house by the row of cob-nut trees. Stewart and Benson had come out of the house in the middle of an argument and continued it on the lawn, so that he could hear the angry sound of their voices but could not gather what was the subject of their quarrel. Mr. Wilkinson was quite sure on this point. He did not know what the argument had been about—all he could say was that they had certainly argued. More than that, it had eventually become an almost uncontrolled fight with both men apparently threatening each other. At the height of it Dr. Benson had suddenly turned away and gone round the side of the house and Stewart had stamped indoors slamming the door behind him.

With this witness the prosecution completed their case. Watching the whole thing through, I was impressed by the widely different characters of the two lawyers and the methods they used to try to convince the jury of their case. It was not that either of them used anything else than the facts already produced in the court-room, but in their methods of seeing those facts one recognized something of the two men. Sir William Petterie spoke brilliantly, so that one felt behind his defence a great knowledge of men, a culture and an understanding that would perhaps, had he been a writer, have made of him one of the great humanitarians
of which Zola is the best example. He did not try to trick his audience into believing something which he himself did not feel to be completely true, he tried to show in clear, forceful, and persuasive language the real human side of the case which the police's evidence ignored.

On the other hand, FitzAllen was cold and efficient, giving no more or less than the full value of each piece of evidence. He seemed to be saying to jury, “I'm only here to extract this for you—it is for you to decide its meaning and its importance.” He had a straightforward case to present, the importance of which lay in the clear sequence of facts and evidence bearing on them. I thought he made his case in the shrewdest possible way. He too had much experience of mankind—but it was at the jury that he directed this knowledge. He seemed to have summed them up both as a group and as individuals.

At last came the judge's summing-up in cold concise terms, and then with slow and somewhat stiff dignity the jury rose to retire and consider their verdict.

F
ROM
the moments in which the jury filed slowly out of the Court I was convinced that there was no chance of an acquittal. Those twelve citizens, with two solid-looking women among them, would scarcely need to debate over the clear case which had been presented by the police. The brilliance of Sir William Petterie would in itself be suspect in their determination not to be hoodwinked by an obviously clever man, and a man of great culture and eloquence. They would automatically react against his persuasions. Shrewd little FitzAllen, who had contented himself with succinctly summarizing his powerful case and making no emotional appeal whatever, was far more what they wanted. For one afternoon at least he had played John Blunt, and though in fact I felt him to be the more cunning of the two great lawyers, this role would be the more likely to succeed.

Perhaps that was a more than usually solemn conscientious-looking jury, the sort of conclave of grimly pudding-like business men and women that one sees in American films being indifferent to the tearful verbiage of the hero's lawyer. They marched slowly out without looking back at the shrunken figure of Stewart Ferrers who was being removed by his warders.

“Time for a cup of tea,” said Beef, jerking his thumb unnecessarily towards the exit.

“I should scarcely have thought there would be,” I said with attempted irony, meaning to make him feel how completely the decision had already gone against the man he was defending.

“Oh yes, there is. A lot like that will want to have a good old talk over it. Besides, they wouldn't like to come back too quick as though they hadn't taken the time to go into everything.”

“All right,” I said, and we left the Court to find a basement café not far away.

I do not think that at any time during the case I was more convinced than then of Stewart's guilt, and if I was convinced, how could the jury be otherwise? But Beef sank lethargically into a chair and did not speak while we were waiting for the tea to be brought to us.

“Beef,” I said, trying to disturb this phlegmatic dullness, “are you certain he's not guilty?”

“Yes, I'm certain,” said Beef.

“Then, good Heavens, man, why can't you do anything? Do you realize that that jury is going to send him to the gallows as sure as fate?”

“I shouldn't be surprised if they found him guilty,” admitted Beef.

“Well, then…”

“It's no good,” Beef assured me, “I've done all I can. I found out everything there was to find out, and that's all there is to it.”

“But don't you realize what this means? I've
tried to make you see how awful it will be for both of us if they hang an innocent man. Peter chose you to get the evidence to defend his brother, and it's on your shoulders. If he's hanged because you weren't clever enough to get at the truth, you'll never forgive yourself.”

“Can't help that,” said Beef glumly.

“Besides, think of your reputation. It's absolutely unheard of for a novelist's detective to fail. It'll be the first time it's ever happened. You'll have made a fool of yourself and me.”

“Can't help it,” Beef said, pouring out the tea which had been brought for us. “Do you take sugar?”

At that point a new idea suddenly came to me. I can't think why I had never thought of it before, or if I had unconsciously done so, why it had never registered.

“Do you think,” I burst out, “that Stewart may be shielding someone? After all, there were a lot of things he wouldn't speak the truth about. Surely when a case is as desperate as this, even if the truth reflected badly on his character, he wouldn't consider it. Perhaps he knows who did it and is deliberately sacrificing himself.”

Beef grunted. “Do you think that Stewart is the sort of man who would sacrifice himself?”

“Frankly, I don't know what kind of a man Stewart is. He's mystified me from the beginning. I know that I ought to be able to give a complete and snappy psychological portrait of anyone who comes into your cases, but this man defeats me.”

“Ah,” said Beef, and took a giant bite from a Bath bun.

Just then some of the witnesses in the case appeared in the doorway. Ed Wilson and Rose had had the same thought as we had. Beef flourished a tea-spoon towards them to attract their attention. They came to our table at my invitation and sat down. They were more welcome than the antique-dealer's wife who followed them, and made straight for us.

“I was lucky to get a seat, wasn't I?” she said, “but then I deserved it. I more than half expected you'd have two seats sent to me like the Theatre Royal do when I show their card in my window. I mean, I have helped with the case, haven't I? Do you think he'll get off?”

“No,” said Ed Wilson, lighting a cigarette from the stump of another.

“He must have done it,” said the antique-dealer's wife. “I mean, it came out plain, didn't it? Fingerprints on the knife, and everything. I haven't read all the cases I have done for nothing, you know. Besides, you could see he was guilty.”

In spite of all this Beef remained stolid and indifferent. None of the woman's gossip, or of the obvious concern of Ed and Rose, seemed able to disturb his calm.

Ed Wilson in particular evidently felt the genuine concern of a decent young man faced by an abnormal tragedy.

“You know,” he said, “he was always a funny
fellow, and you never quite knew where you were with him. But I shouldn't like to think of his being hanged if he didn't do it. I didn't like the way things went with him. That little lawyer there was clever, wasn't he?”

“But how do you know he didn't do it?” burst in the antique-dealer's wife. “In my opinion he's as guilty as he can be. I mean, who else would have had any reason to, that's what I say.”

Rose looked very near tears. The strain of giving evidence, and seeing the man for whom she worked stand in the dock, had evidently told on her. “I think you're all horrible,” she said, “the way you treat it as a peep-show. Even if he did do it, it's nothing to come and stare at. And Sergeant Beef said he didn't do it, and he ought to know.”

Even that piece of flattery failed to rouse Beef to words.

“Ought to know, I daresay,” went on the more garrulous woman. “But if he knows so much, why can't he find out who did do it? That's supposed to be a detective's job.”

Ed Wilson made a gesture to silence her, for at that moment Peter and Sheila Benson came into the café together. They saw us and took a distant table, but I felt it my duty to go across and try to give them some encouragement. They asked me to sit down, and for the first time I was aware that on Peter Ferrers also the strain had told. He looked as though he had had a number of sleepless nights, and Sheila Benson was uncharacteristically quiet
and unhappy. She only made one remark. “What a dreadful place a court is,” she said feelingly, with a glance at Ferrers.

“I know,” I said, “I've been sympathizing with you both all through the trial. But don't lose hope yet. One can't foresee the verdict.”

“He will be found guilty,” said Peter grimly.

And after a few minutes in which I tried to produce a few words of brightness and enlivenment, he looked at his watch and said that the jury had been out for an hour and that we had better get back.

As it transpired, he was perfectly right, for we hadn't been in our places more than ten minutes when the usher appeared.

Beef spoke at last. “Now for it,” he whispered in my ear, and I realized that he was more deeply concerned than I had believed in the verdict which was to be given.

I knew that the correct thing for me to do was to study those jurymen's faces and try to discover in them some indication of what their verdict was to be. And I was relieved to find that they respected tradition sufficiently to show nothing. They sat comfortably in their places as though prepared for at least another hour of self-importance, and for a few minutes of real conspicuousness. They had been given, I reflected, for once in their lives, a chance to express themselves in a manner so profound and final that Dante or Shakespeare himself might have envied them. With one word they were to sway, not vaguely or remotely the emotions and
hearts of an incalculably small number of their fellows, but the actual destiny of a man. Their clay, their paint, their notes, their words, were a human life.

The foreman, a little sparrow-like man with a few long hairs streaked obliquely over a dough-coloured head, rose when summoned and admitted in an almost falsetto voice that he and his fellow jurymen were agreed. He kept his eyes fixed on the judge while the next question was put to him, and in answer to it piped “Guilty” much more loudly than was necessary.

There was complete silence. Nobody fainted, nobody wept, nobody rose from his place. The prisoner glanced once towards the jury and then let his head sink forward. The whole mass of people in that court-room were either too appalled, or perhaps too pleased with their own prescience, to move or speak.

The judge cleared his throat to pronounce sentence, and we walked out into the open air after having heard that Stewart was to be hanged.

I
DID
not see Beef for some days after the trial, as I had left London. The verdict on that last day had shaken me so that although I knew that I should be unable to work, yet I had to get away from the case for a while. It was with something of a jolt that I realized how facile had been my philosophy during this and previous cases. Everything will come right in the end, I had seemed to say to myself, and however unsuccessful Beef's investigations might look at any particular moment, and however agitated I might be over his waste of time, I had felt all through that by some miraculous discovery Beef would be able to produce sufficient evidence on the day to exonerate Stewart and round off the book satisfactorily. But nothing of the sort had happened, and I saw for the first time how foolish it was to suppose that it could have done.