Desperate Acts (30 page)

Marc sighed, but knew it was useless to keep
popping up like a petulant child. He glanced up at Brodie in the
dock, but the lad’s eyes were fixed on the witness-box.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but he
was
anxious,” Sturges said.

“Curious, is it not, sir, that he wanted to
confess to a punch and to do so with dispatch. Was it perhaps
because he knew what Cobb would find in the alley and would be
reporting to you within minutes?”

“He didn’t looked scared to me,” Sturges said
defiantly. “Just upset with himself fer losin’ his temper.”

“And lose it he did!”

“But he told me – ”

“No more questions, Milord.”

Marc gathered his thoughts, and as much wit
as he could muster, and said to Wilf Sturges, who was still
steaming silently from his treatment at the hands of the
prosecutor, “After Constable Cobb’s return, did Mr. Langford deny
doing anything other than striking Albert Duggan on the cheek?”

“Yes, he did. He insisted over and over that
he’d done nothin’ but punch him once.”

“Did he provide any plausible reason for
wanting to make a formal statement of his guilt concerning that
punch?”

“He did. He told me he’d been raised to
revere the law by his father an’ his guardian, who were lawyers in
New York, an’ that he felt he’d broken the law by strikin’ Duggan
without due cause, when all along he’d been plannin’ to bring the
culprit to justice.”

“And you found this explanation consistent
with the Broderick Langford you have known for almost a year?”

“I don’t see how the chief constable can be
expected to answer such a question, Milord,” Thornton said, rising
a few inches off his bench.

“Milord, Mr. Sturges is well acquainted with
the defendant.”

“Answer the question, then,” the judge said
to Sturges, “but only if you feel you can.”

The Chief did not hesitate. “Broderick
Langford has shown himself to be an honest, brave an’ principled
young man.”

Thornton let out a huge, theatrical sigh and
rolled his eyes at the jurors.

Marc carried on. “Chief Sturges, did you and
Constable Cobb, while discussing the crime with Mr. Langford in
your office that Wednesday evening, mention the possibility that
someone other than the defendant may have or could have committed
it?”

“This is not at all relevant!” Thornton
protested.

“The witness may answer yes or no,” the judge
said.

“Yes, we did.”

“Would you indicate what those possibilities
were, please?”

“Mr. Edwards,” the judge interjected, “unless
you have evidence to support anything Mr. Sturges may speculate
upon, I must halt this line of questioning.”

Well, it was worth a try, Marc thought.
Besides, he didn’t really want to alert the Crown or its witnesses
about the particular defense he might have to use later on.

“One final but very important question,” Marc
said, much buoyed by Wilfrid Sturges and his considerable savvy as
a witness. “We have heard that Mr. Langford immediately identified
the blood-smeared walking-stick as his own when he spotted it in
Constable Cobb’s possession. Did it cross your mind, at the time of
this incident, that a man guilty of a vicious murder – who had
confessed
only
to an assault – would not leap up and
identify the murder-weapon as his own?”

“Milord, this is outrageous!” Thornton was up
and a-quiver.

“I will decide what is outrageous in my
court,” said the judge. “Mr. Edwards has asked the witness if such
a thought – not irrelevant to the case – occurred to him at that
moment in the police quarters. Surely he may answer yes or no.”

Thornton looked over at Marc, and there was
something close to respect in his gaze.

“Yes, sir,” Sturges said, “I did think it
odd, ‘specially when he kept denyin’ he done it, afterwards.”

“You thought, did you, that it was more the
reaction of a surprised and innocent man?”

“I did.”

Marc thanked the Chief and turned him over to
Thornton for rebuttal, more than satisfied that he had done no
worse than a draw so far. Up in the dock, Brodie returned Marc’s
brief smile. Both Beth and Diana were beaming.

Marc now watched with grudging admiration as
Kingsley Thornton probed for a weak spot in Sturges’s testimony
during cross-examination.

“You say, sir, that you knew the accused
quite well?” he said amiably.

“Very well,” Sturges said, bracing
himself.

“And you have seen this young bank clerk
promenading about the town as young men are wont to do?”

“From time to time,” Sturges said slowly.

“And was Mr. Langford often seen walking
abroad with the assistance of a walking-stick, as is the current
fashion, I’m told?”

Sturges hesitated, seeing the trap but
helpless to avoid stepping into it. Finally, he said softly, “He
was.”

“Would you say it was distinguished in any
way?”

“Just a walkin’-stick.”

The ingratiating smile with which the
previous questions had been delivered vanished from Thornton’s
face. “Come now, Chief, you’re under oath.”

“It had a silver tip and a carved knob on it
– shape of a wolf’s head,” Sturges said in something close to a
growl.

“Exactly. A very unusual shillelagh, eh? One
that dozens of citizens and customers of the Commercial Bank would
notice and recognize as belonging to young Langford?”

“Milord?” Marc found himself on his feet but
was not sure why, except to forestall the inevitable.

“Is this going somewhere, Mr. Thornton?” the
judge said.

“I’ve reached the main point to this line of
questioning, Milord,” Thornton said.

“Continue, then.”

“Chief Sturges, as the accused, sitting there
in your office and knowing that Constable Cobb was about to arrive
any minute with news of the real crime, realized that he had left
the murder-weapon behind, that it would be found by Cobb, and, more
importantly, would be identified sooner or later as belonging to
him – would it not have been more incriminating for him
not
to have evinced surprise at seeing it in Cobb’s hand,
not
to
have called it his own, and
not
to have admitted leaving it
behind in the alley? In short, was not his reaction here simply
another part of his overall attempt to deceive the police and
extricate himself from the charge of murder?”

“But he may’ve been tellin’ the truth!”
Sturges shot back.

“Just answer Mr. Thornton’s questions,” the
judge said sternly.

And just like that, the prosecution had
undone much of what Marc had wrought. Thornton had prepared the
jury to at least consider the possibility that Brodie’s behaviour
immediately following the crime had been a skein of deception from
start to finish. All he had to do now was orchestrate the
eye-witness accounts to verify the damning bits of Brodie’s
“confession” and highlight what the lad had conveniently left
out.

It was now eleven-thirty. Since it was close
to the noon-hour and since the prosecution was expected to begin
detailed examination of the members of the Shakespeare Club, Marc
assumed that Justice Powell would call for a recess. Instead, the
clerk stood and read out the name of the next witness:

“The Crown calls Miss Celia Langford.”

***

Pale and nervous, Celia clutched the rail before her
and steeled herself for what was to come. Thornton, however, did
not approach her as a hostile witness. Instead, he did everything
he could to calm her down and have her relax.

“I realize, Miss Langford, that answering my
questions when your brother’s life might be at stake is difficult.
But I have for you only a few queries, all of which deal with
simple, straightforward facts that must be provided the jurors so
that they may bring in a fair and proper verdict.”

He smiled like a pet uncle, looked down at
his notes, then raised his elegant head. “You were present when
your brother received the extortion-note on the Wednesday evening
one week before the crime?”

“Yes,” Celia said. Her voice was soft but
amazingly calm.

Then with infinite politeness Thornton led
Celia through the events of that evening. She told the jury that
the note had been delivered secretly, that she herself had read it,
and that it had been torn up and discarded. In an unwavering voice
she recited what she remembered of its contents, fleshing out the
sketch made by Brodie in his statement but adding nothing new of
significance. Marc, whose heartbeat had threatened to drum out all
thought, was beginning to relax, though he knew that Thornton was
after something more damning that he had elicited so far. Sure
enough, Thornton moved slyly from facts to implication.

“What did your brother have to say about the
note and its demands?”

“He said that I was not to worry, that Miss
Ramsay had nothing to hide. He said this fellow was trying to get
money off us because we were rich, and that the threat in the note
was just a stab in the dark.”

“So he didn’t look at all worried? Or
angry?”

“No, except that he tore the note to
shreds.”

“By which action you assumed the nasty
business was over?”

“Yes. Brodie said he would take care of
it.”

“He didn’t mention anything about entrapping
the blackmailer and bringing him to the police?”

So, Marc thought, this was where Thornton was
heading: letting the jury see there was no evidence that Brodie’s
intentions had been honourable, indeed had not been revealed even
to his sister and confidante. The prosecutor was leaving nothing to
chance as he constructed his deadly scenario. And, still, the real
danger had not yet passed.

“No,” Celia answered. “He just said he’d take
care of things.”

“And you and your brother did not discuss the
note or what, if anything, he was planning to do about it – over
the seven days between that Wednesday and the next one?”

Celia looked down. Her lower lip began to
tremble. Ten seconds went by.

“Miss Langford,” the judge said kindly, “you
must answer the question, and whatever your personal feelings and
loyalties, you must tell us the truth.”

Celia looked up at last, not at the judge or
the prosecutor but at Brodie high in the prisoner’s dock. She tried
bravely to squeeze her tears back in. Brodie did not move, but some
message, perceptible only to brother and sister, passed between
them.

“We talked a little bit the next Wednesday,
just before Brodie went off to his club.”

“And what prompted such a discussion at this
time? Remember, you’ve told us he alone would ‘take care of’ the
threat, and he had apparently not raised the matter in the
intervening seven days.”

In a barely audible voice, she said, “A
second note had just come.”

Sensation: in the side-galleries and among
the jurors, whose attention had begun to flag. The judge had to use
his gavel.

Kingsley Thornton was so accustomed to
feigning surprise that he hardly knew how to register the genuine
thing. “Well, now,” he said, trying to throttle down his
excitement, “as there is no mention by the accused in his
true
confession
of any such note, you had better tell us all about
it yourself.”

“It was nothing really. I read it before
Brodie tore it up. It was one sentence, reminding Brodie to come to
the alley or Miss Ramsay’s life would be ruined. Nothing that
wasn’t in the first one.”

“I see, even though the accused deliberately
excluded it from his
confession
?”

“Nothing more.” Celia was starting to tremble
all over.

“What did your brother say to you about this
second
threat – just moments before setting out for his club
and the alley behind it?”

In a choking voice Celia said, “He told me he
was going to make sure this scoundrel didn’t ever get the chance to
blackmail anybody ever again.”

SIXTEEN

Marc did what he could on cross-examination. There
was no way to mitigate the effect of Brodie’s omission of the
second note from his statement – Marc might be able to address that
in his closing remarks – but he made some headway towards blunting
the stunning revelation of what Brodie’s intentions and mood had
been early that Wednesday evening. Thornton had compelled a tearful
Celia to admit that his “threat” against the blackmailer had been
said in anger, and it was here that Marc began.

“Given your brother’s character and customary
behaviour, Miss Langford, is it not more probable that his remark
about stopping the blackmailer and his criminal activities was
intended to convey to you that he planned to catch the villain and
hale him before the courts, and that the anger you’ve described was
his outrage at such unconscionable behaviour?”

Despite an apoplectic interjection from
Kingsley Thornton, Marc had been able to make his point, small as
it was after the dramatic impact of Celia’s surprise testimony.

When the noon-hour recess was called, Marc
sat in his seat for several minutes. It had been a dark morning for
the defense, but he could not see how he could have defended Brodie
any better. Somehow, though, he found that assessment offered him
scant comfort. He would have to do better in the afternoon.

***

At two o’clock Thornton began to build up the
details of the story he wished the jury to believe. Gillian Budge
was called first. As expected, she testified to the departure times
of Dutton and Fullarton, and speculated upon the likely times for
Crenshaw and Shuttleworth – paving the way for the accounts to
follow.

Marc asked her how she could be sure of the
exact times, and managed to have her admit that they were very much
approximate. Still, as Marc knew, it was the sequence of departures
and what the departing club-members saw in the alley that was
critical. He then shifted tactics.