Painting The Darkness (40 page)

How long we stood there, staring at each other over Thompson’s crumpled body, I cannot say. For me, the instant seemed as measureless as the dream that had gone before it. It only ended
when
, with one parting rake of his eyes, Quinn turned and retreated into the darkness
.

At that moment, I remembered the gun. I reached into my coat and grasped its butt. Then I remembered also that it was not loaded. Quinn had reached the end of the alley by now. I saw him turn into the square beyond, glance back over his shoulder, then vanish from sight. He was gone – and I was powerless to pursue him
.

Thompson was lying face down, a dark patch of blood seeping through his coat. When I pulled him on to his side, he looked up through bleary flickering eyes and spat some of the cobble-grit from his mouth to speak
.

‘
Why … why d’you send him after me … old man?
’

I stooped closer, to make sure he could hear me. ‘I sent nobody, Thompson. Believe me
.’

His voice was hoarse and faltering, all its cock-of-the-walk vigour drained by a knife in the dark. ‘Makes no difference … who sent him … He’s done for me … Funny, ain’t it?’ He grinned through clenched teeth
.

‘
What is?
’

‘
Gerry’s … finished me off … in the end … Him … or his damned secret
.’

I leaned closer still, willing him to live long enough to tell me. ‘What is his secret, Thompson? What is it?
’

‘
Wouldn’t you … like to know?’ He winced, squeezing his eyes shut to ward off the pain. When he opened them again, they were filmier than before, focusing weakly on me and the world they were seeing for the last time
.

‘
Tell me. For God’s sake, tell me
.’

‘
No cause to worry … old man.’ I was losing him now, watching him surrender his grip on life, hearing him bid his adieus in stray mumbled words that had no meaning. ‘Bit of a joke, what? Bit of a bad God-awful joke … Take it … Take it back, Gerry … We all … all make mistakes …
’

‘
Thompson?
’

‘
Go ahead … I’m ready …
’

I heard the last breath gasp out of him and felt his body sag into oblivion. I closed his staring sightless eyes and lowered his
head
gently to the ground. He was dead and I, in all but name, had killed him. His blood, staining black the rivulets of rainwater that coursed between the cobblestones, reached its jagged fingers through the filth and fruit-mush of the alley to twitch and clutch at the circle of my guilt
.

I stood up. My left hand, with which I had supported his neck, was smeared with blood. Instinctively, I closed my eyes to spare myself the sight of it. But, as I did so, another vision leaped from its hiding-place, another accusation found its voice
.

‘
You may punish me now you’ve told me.’ Her black hair, her pale flesh, her body beneath me on the bed. ‘You may do whatever you wish.’ I beat my hand against the rain-damp brickwork of the alley wall. ‘Whatever you wish.’ But all I wished was what I could not have: a dream retrieved, a betrayal rescinded, a temptation resisted
.

Harvey Thompson lay dead at my feet, murdered to seal for ever his forty-year-old secret. I looked down at him and wept for all the evil I had not intended and might not yet avert. There was nothing I could do for him, even in death. The barmaid would say I had come looking for him; the police would take me for his killer
.

I pulled some sacking from one of the empty baskets nearby and draped it over him, not to conceal his body but to afford him the only kind of comfort I could. Then I walked away and left him to be found by another
.

In the Piazza, the first of the stallholders’ carts was arriving. Within a few hours, the Market would be clogged with people and horses, stacked high with barrowloads of produce. Sooner or later, somebody would venture down the alley and discover what lay beneath the sacking. I hurried to the other side of the square and headed south, towards the home Thompson had never reached, towards the river where Norton’s conspiracy had found its dark beginning, towards whatever way I might yet find to avenge myself and an old soldier whose blood was on my hands
.

Chapter Eleven

I

RICHARD DAVENALL SAT
where duty required him to be, near the front of the court, as the second day of the
Norton versus Davenall
hearing opened at Lincoln’s Inn. Nobody could have told from his hunched attentive posture that he was seriously contemplating a course of action which might decide the case more effectively than any legal argument so far presented.

For Richard Davenall was labouring under a burden which no lawyer can support: a call upon his conscience. He faced a stark choice forced upon him by all the flaws of character and failures of nerve which comprised his life. But in the motionless torment of his face there had been reflected so far only an agony of indecision.

Small wonder that Richard could not concentrate on the examination by Mr Russell of the plaintiff’s next witness, Dr Duncan Fiveash. The voices of the two men, Fiveash gruff and professional, Russell lilting and interrogative, reached him as if from a great distance. Although he knew the tactical subtleties which lay behind their exchanges, the Doctor’s testimony seemed to him almost insignificant, a mere interlude between the vitality of what had gone before and the decisiveness of what would follow. For nearly an hour, while Fiveash discoursed on the characteristics of syphilis and Russell obliged him, time and again, to confirm Norton’s account, Richard sat in silent witness to a charade: in all he said, Fiveash
never
once suggested how James Davenall might have contracted the disease, for the simple reason that Russell never once asked him to do so. Richard wondered how much this most eminent of barristers really knew of his client’s case. Was he, perhaps, as much a victim of evasion as its practitioner?

At length, Sir Hardinge Giffard commenced his cross-examination, and the tone of the proceedings altered. There was something blunt and uncompromising about his questions. Russell’s dexterity was all very well, they implied, but it was time to come to the heart of the matter.

‘How long was the late James Davenall your patient, Doctor?’

‘From birth.’

‘You were well acquainted with him, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Better acquainted than had you known him merely on a social footing?’

‘Of course. The relationship between a doctor and his patient is necessarily intimate.’

‘You would expect to recognize him without difficulty?’

‘Naturally.’

‘When you look at the plaintiff, do you recognize him as the late James Davenall?’

‘No.’

‘When he visited your surgery on the twenty-sixth of September this year, did you have an opportunity to examine him?’

‘I did.’

‘Did that examination lead you to believe that he was the late James Davenall?’

‘No, it did not’

‘In short, then, Doctor, what is your professional opinion as to the likelihood that the plaintiff is your former patient of more than twenty years’ standing?’

‘My professional opinion, and my personal belief, is that he is not.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

Richard winced at the clinical efficiency with which Giffard had gone about his business. He had inflicted another wound where there were already too many for comfort. Strive as he might by supplementary questioning to emphasize that only James Davenall could know as much as Norton knew, Russell was helpless to repair the damage done, and a strangled note in his voice seemed to confirm that he knew as much. Richard began to feel sorry for him and sorrier still for himself.

Not that he believed Russell would be found wanting where stamina was concerned: the top barristers seldom were. Sure enough, the next witness brought out the best in him. Miss Esme Pursglove, combining vigour and frailty in her finest tea-time style, inspired in Russell an avuncular fluency that progressively restored his confidence. She, after all, had known James Davenall quite as long as Dr Fiveash and, in her opinion, a good deal better. She was prepared to support Norton’s claim just as dogmatically as Fiveash was prepared to deny it. She, in short, was in no doubt. Until, that is, Sir Hardinge Giffard began to cross-examine her.

‘How old are you, Miss Pursglove?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ She had not heard him. It was understandable, considering how softly he had spoken, but Richard recognized the success of a simple ploy.

‘I’m sorry. Are you a little hard of hearing?’

This time Miss Pursglove did hear the question. Her reply was indignant. ‘Certainly not.’

‘It would be perfectly understandable in a lady of your age. What did you say that age was?’

‘Eighty-one next birthday.’

‘Quite. Permit me to congratulate you on how lightly you wear your years. Of course, a deterioration in some faculties is inevitable, would you not agree?’

Miss Pursglove evidently did not agree. ‘I … I don’t rightly know what you mean.’

‘Let us turn to something else, then. The plaintiff visited you at your home during the afternoon of the twenty-sixth
of
September. Do you happen to remember what day of the week that was?’

The reply came back tartly. ‘Tuesday.’ A point to Miss Pursglove.

‘And you recognized him as your former charge, the late James Davenall?’

‘He’s my Jamie.’ There was a bird-like nod of the head to stress the point.

‘What enabled you to recognize him? Was it the sound of his voice? Or have you come to rely more on sight than on hearing?’

‘I know my Jamie.’ She was not to be moved.

‘Let us agree on a combination of the two, then.’

‘H’mm. Well … if you say so.’

‘Incidentally, Miss Pursglove, what time is it?’

‘What’s that?’

‘What time is it? I should be most obliged if you would tell me the time shown on the courtroom clock.’

Miss Pursglove glanced around desperately.

‘It’s on the wall above the door by which you came in.’ Suddenly, Russell was on his feet. ‘My Lord, I protest! What possible relevance—?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Mr Justice Wimberley. ‘What is the relevance of this question, Sir Hardinge?’

‘The relevance, my Lord, resides in the poverty of the witness’s eyesight and the doubt it casts on her powers of recognition.’ Giffard beamed. ‘Naturally, I do not wish to press the point.’

Nor did he need to. He had closed with a flourish, leaving Russell to flounder in his wake. When Miss Pursglove eventually left the box, Richard knew, as most in the court did not, that she was Norton’s last witness. Her final aggrieved squint towards the clock was, to him, unbearably symbolic. Time had run out for the plaintiff – and for him.

Mr Justice Wimberley chose that moment to adjourn for luncheon. As soon as he had vacated the bench, there welled behind Richard a chair-scraping, coat-gathering
murmur
of collective departure. But Richard did not move. Giffard jogged his elbow and asked if he would join him outside: he shook his head. He could hear Hugo’s braying voice somewhere behind him and felt a flood of relief as it dwindled into the distance. The last of the clerks were gathering their papers now, the swing-doors slamming behind the final stragglers. Richard flattened his hands on the table before him and pushed himself upright. The decision, he knew, could no longer be deferred. He turned to go.

A woman was standing halfway down the aisle between the rows of seats, staring at him with such a wan, pinched intensity as to suggest that necessity, not curiosity, had brought her to Lincoln’s Inn. Yet Richard did not recognize her. If she did have an interest in the case, he could not say what it might be.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ he ventured.

‘You are Mr Richard Davenall?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am Emily Sumner.’

‘Sumner?’

‘Yes, Constance’s sister.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Sumner.’ They shook hands awkwardly. ‘What brings you—?’

‘He’s going to lose, isn’t he?’

‘I really don’t—’

‘James is going to lose this hearing, if nobody else speaks up for him.’

Her very solemnity seemed to rule out prevarication. ‘I believe he is, yes.’

‘That must please you.’

‘No. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m not sure I can explain.’

‘It’s because you know he’s James, isn’t it? Constance has confided in me completely, Mr Davenall. I am here to represent her interests. She has told me that you, of all James’s family, may be the one to see reason.’

Her frankness shocked him. Was he so transparent? ‘My position … is a delicate one.’

‘So delicate that you will let him lose?’

‘I am Sir Hugo Davenall’s solicitor, Miss Sumner. You must appreciate—’

‘Will you speak up for him?’

Her vehemence shamed him. Why could he not decide what to do? Why could he not share her certainty?

‘Will you?’

Then he heard himself reply: ‘Yes.’

She clutched his hand. ‘Constance is here, Mr Davenall. She needs your advice, now that we can be sure you will not condone a miscarriage of justice. Will you speak to her?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then, come with me.’

As Miss Sumner bustled ahead of him out of the court, Richard managed his first weak smile of the day. That anybody should look to him for advice seemed, just then, uniquely absurd. With nobody else to support his claim, however, Norton would lose: Richard was sure of it. His conscience told him he could not permit that to happen. Yet, if he was to prevent it, he must turn his back on his own son. For one reared on the compromises of the Law, the path out of such a thicket seemed impossible to find. Now, in the determination which he remembered Constance Trenchard displaying, and which her sister evidently shared, he believed he might have found the guide he needed.

II

Thoughts of luncheon were far from the mind of Mr Charles Russell, QC, as he sat in Hector Warburton’s office at Staple Inn, seeking by every means at his wide command to break the eerily tranquil fatalism which seemed to have gripped his client.