Fog of Doubt (29 page)

Mrs. Evans obliged with a spirited account of her recollections of the evening in question, beginning with the arrival of her supper tray. ‘Matilda, that's my grand-daughter-in-law, had a guest, this Frenchman. So I just sat quietly by my fire, reading.' A book by Robert Hichens, it had been.…

‘Just stick to the relevant facts, Mrs. Evans, please.'

Mrs. Evans indulged in a small, rather pitying shrug; let Counsel remember when the time came that it was he, not she, who had dismissed Robert Hichens as irrelevant. Very well, then, at a quarter past nine, Matilda had come to help her take off her dress and her hair.…

‘I beg your pardon, Mrs. Evans, I don't think we heard that quite correctly.'

‘To help me take off my hair,' said Gran. She elaborated gaily: ‘A sort of little pancake of hair on top of my own hair, or rather on top of my absence of own hair, if you see what I mean.' She laid her left hand on top of the flat, black hat, ignoring all interruptions, swivelling round to demonstrate to the jury. ‘You can't see it now because of my hat, but if you count the hat as one pancake, then there's another pancake of a bit of white lace, and then under that there's the pancake of hair: quite a little heap of pancakes, really, Crèpes Something the French would call it, only of course they'd smother it with melted butter and liqueurs and things, which would be delicious, no doubt, but would make me look most strange,
wouldn't
it?' A shadow passed over the eager, gay old face. ‘I'm so sorry; have I been talking nonsense? I'm getting muddled up.'

‘Let us just stick to events, Mrs. Evans; we want you to tell us quite shortly,
quite shortly
, what you saw and heard that evening.'

‘Rather like a pancake itself when you come to think of it,' said Mrs. Evans, thoughtfully. She nodded to herself, inwardly communing. ‘A little round white pancake, floating, floating, floating about in the gloom.'

Judge and Counsel exchanged glances of mounting despair. ‘Mrs. Evans,
please:
I asked you to tell me what you saw that night.'

‘But I
am
telling you,' said Mrs. Evans, pained. ‘A small, round white pancake, floating about down there in the gloom, floating about in the dimness of the hall.' She added inconsequently that night came swiftly in the desert; if they'd paid more attention to Robert Hichens, they would know that.

Sir William shrugged hopelessly. ‘I think, perhaps, m'lord …?'

The judge had one more try. ‘Let us keep calm, Mrs. Evans, try not to get muddled. You are telling us that you looked down into the hall that night, which we have heard was not very brightly lit; and saw____?'

‘A little white pancake floating about down there,' said Mrs. Evans. She smiled up at him confidingly. ‘Only of course it wasn't a pancake really,' she said.

You could see that Mr. Justice Rivett was glad of that. ‘It wasn't a pancake? Then what
was
it you saw?'

‘The bald top of that Frenchman's head, of course,' said old Mrs. Evans, all smiles.

Inspector Charlesworth tilted his chair back on its hind legs and, leaning perilously backwards, said over his shoulder to Inspector Cockrill: ‘So this is it?'

‘Yes,' said Cockie. ‘This is it: at least it's the beginning.' And he added: ‘Thank God it's come!' but there was no triumph in his voice and no gladness. ‘
You
'll be all right now; you've saved your bacon,' he said.

But it was Inspector Cockrill who had saved Charles-worth's bacon, and not for the first time. ‘You're a marvel, Cockie, honestly you are. What did you say to her: to the old girl?'

‘Me? I didn't say a word,' said Cockie, surprised.

‘But at lunch?'

‘She had her lunch by herself; I got some sent in to her, here. I haven't seen her, not to speak to, all day.'

The muttered discussion between Judge and Counsel and the gentleman from the Director of Public Prosecution's office, having reached a conclusion and Sir William being again upon his foot, heel tucked up, fists closed on gown, an usher shushed urgently and Charlesworth, still unsatisfied, perforce righted his chair. The Judge, most unfairly, since he himself was seething with excitement and curiosity, said irritably that this was a very serious case and if there were any further outbreaks of chattering and whispering, he would clear the court of all who had no special business there, and yes, Sir William, please continue. Sir William put it to Mrs. Evans, very civilly that she was now departing somewhat from her evidence in another court? Mrs. Evans said blankly what other court was that?—she was afraid her memory was dreadfully cloudy these days.
So
sorry if she was being a nuisance, muddling things up.…

‘You haven't told anyone before that you saw the deceased that night?'

‘Of course this would be before he became the deceased,' said Mrs. Evans earnestly. ‘Because I did see him afterwards, everyone knows that, when I went down into the hall with the rest of them.' His bald patch, however, had not been looking like a round, white pancake by that time, not a bit!

‘No, no,' said Counsel, hurriedly. ‘But you are telling us now that you did see him earlier—before he died?'

‘Just the top of his head, you know, when I looked down into the hall.'

‘And that would be—at what time?'

As the church clock struck half-past nine, Matilda had gone off to pot the baby; it had been immediately after that.

Mr. Justice Rivett intervened. He said that it might be helpful to the jury to just recall that the time of the telephone call—the call purporting to come from Raoul Vernet, saying that he had been attacked—had been, er, um, 9.18 p.m., yes, he had a note of it here, approximately 9.18. He sat up very straight with his finger still in the page, and looked alertly at old Mrs. Evans. Sir William looked desperately from his Lordship to defending counsel and back again to the witness. ‘Perhaps you had just better go on telling us in your own words, Mrs. Evans.… (Your Lordship will appreciate that I am completely in the dark.…?).'

The thin old voice tinkled out clearly through the hushed court. ‘From where I left off? It was about Matilda taking off my hair; and that's what led us to the pancakes,
was
n't it?' She might have been reciting Cinderella to a circle of children sitting round the nursery fire. ‘Well, now, that was at about a quarter past nine, just
before
that famous telephone call, you see. And then Tilda went off to her own room, and I think she tidied up her face a bit and so on, and after about five minutes she came back and I'd got into my nightgown by then, and she helped me into bed and gave me my Horlicks, and then she went off to do the baby. It was just half-past nine, because we heard the clock. So I sat there in bed, reading my Robert—my book,' corrected Mrs. Evans, glancing with mock apology at Sir William, ‘and suddenly I heard a noise. It seemed to be coming from the hall. I listened for Matilda but I didn't hear her come out of the nursery so I hopped out of bed myself, to have a look. But first I popped my hair on, of course, and my teeth in.' She went off into a fit of little giggles and, recovering herself, explained that she had nearly said that she'd popped her hair
in
and her teeth
on!
‘So silly!' said Mrs. Evans, biting on a knuckle looking up naughtily into the disapproving face of the Attorney-General. She added: ‘Because what
would
I have looked like?' and went off into giggles again. But her eyes were swimming with unshed tears of terror and loneliness: all by herself there in that little box under the pitiless glare of the bright, hard lights and the hundreds of bright, hard eyes, smilingly talking herself into a place of everlasting lights, of ever-watching eyes, where the windows would be too high to throw things out of and cheer life up.…

‘Why should you have been so careful of your appearance, Mrs. Evans? Who did you expect to see?'

Mrs. Evans pulled herself together. ‘Who? Well, that Frenchman, of course.'

‘You expected to see Raoul Vernet?'

‘There was nobody else in the house,
was
there? At least I didn't think there was.'

‘You thought you heard Raoul Vernet moving about in the hall? What did you think he could be doing there?'

‘I thought he was probably trying to find the downstairs huh-ha,' said Mrs. Evans, simply. She shrugged. Hospitality was hospitality, the shrug said, and in the absence of his hostess it was obviously up to anyone else in the house to see that no guest was permitted to wander wretchedly about in search of physical relief. ‘For all I knew, the poor man might be in agony.'

‘So you looked over the banisters …?'

‘One has to go just a little way down the stairs.'

‘And you saw …?'

The prisoner in the dock got heavily to his feet and said in a loud, clear voice: ‘And she saw—me.'

Reproof from Bench to dock, reviving sips of water for shocked witness, mutter, mutter, mutter between Judge and counsel and stage manager and accused's solicitors; mutter, mutter, mutter, unchecked, throughout the court. Matilda sat clutching at the sleeve of Thomas's overcoat. ‘What on earth does this mean, now? It's all too terrifying, what docs it
mean
….?'

‘They're both trying to protect each other, that's all.'

‘How could she have seen Tedward? Tedward was in the car at that time, with Rosie; we know that.'

‘Of course she didn't see Tedward; he's trying to stop her talking, trying to stop her giving herself away.'

Matilda's grip intensified on his coat-sleeve. ‘Giving herself away …? Thomas you don't think …?'

‘My darling Matilda, somebody killed this man. Why do you think I went to prison, why do you think I kept mum about the car, why do you think I went through all that hell.…? When you went up to tell her that Raoul had been killed—she had her wig on again,
did
n't she? You told me so yourself. Not pinned on properly, she couldn't do that: but perched on. Why?—if she'd just been sitting reading in bed.'

Mutter, mutter, mutter; whisper, whisper, whisper. ‘And I did think it was odd, Thomas, that she shouldn't have heard anything from her room; her hearing's so good.'

‘He probably did go out to look for the huh-ha. And she went out just as she says; and looked over and saw him there, and took the mallet and crept down.…'

‘But the mallet was in the desk downstairs.'

‘The mallet was either in the desk downstairs
or it was in the chest on the landing
—I told the police that, half a dozen times. So there's only one thing left, there's only one possible way of escape.…'

‘Because, Thomas, she couldn't have thought that he was Rosie's lover, she
could
n't have. Rosie'd told her some frightful tarradiddle about a strong, silent young fisherman, sweeping her off her feet.… And, I mean, anyone could see, even from upstairs looking down on his bald patch, one could see that Raoul couldn't have carried Rosie down to the water's edge in the moonlight, let alone ravaging her in the boat afterwards.…'

Shush, shush, shush! went the ushers all over the court; the prisoner had retired defeated, into a fretful silence, anxious, agonized, alert, the witness was on her feet pushing aside the cup of water. ‘No more to drink!' cried old Mrs. Evans, starting up in the witness-box in outraged virtue. ‘No more of your golden wines to take the memories from my mind and the ache from my heart! They desert you,' she confided to Mr. Justice Rivett, who sat electrified, gripping the arms of his chair, ‘and then they stand you a couple of champagne cocktails and think everything's going to be just as it was.' She added, as she had added to Matilda on the day of Raoul Vernet's death, that these Frenchified Arabs were always the worst. ‘The worst of the West imposed upon the worst of the East.' She smiled up at him brilliantly. ‘Quite an epigram! But difficult to say.' Especially with false teeth, she added frankly.

Mr. Justice Rivett thought that it would be best if the witness would now retire; but Mrs. Evans had no intention of retiring until she had had her say, and a witness giving evidence cannot, against his own will, be removed from the witness-box. Very well, then, if witness would come back to the night of the murder … She had looked over the banister? And she had seen …

‘I saw a mirage,' said Mrs. Evans. ‘A mirage. I saw a great sandstorm and in the stinging swirl of the sand I saw the Avenger with uplifted arm, I saw the sign of the lily upon his breast and the legend on his banner, Avenger of the Innocent. But it was a mirage. I looked again and there was nobody there but the dusky one, the evil one, the betrayer, the seducer.…' She quoted again: ‘He has broken his English Lily and left her there, weeping, on the golden sands.' She looked up at the Judge. ‘Only of course I was on the stairs, really.' She added: ‘But Madonna Lily was a Tiger Lily now; and—one blow from the tiger's claw …' There was a chair behind her in the witness-box and she sat down on it with a bump; to the policewoman in attendance behind the box, she said, ‘Have I been talking nonsense again?' in a puzzled voice.

Sir William gave up. He made a little bow to Counsel for the defence and himself sat down.

The Judge made a just-a-minute sign to Mr. Dragon. He sat for a long moment, silent, at his great desk, his face in his hands. He lifted off his little wig with the sticking-out, upward-curling pig's tail of a tail and passed his hand over his own scanty hair and replaced the wig again. He addressed himself to the jury. He thought he should remind them that no witness could be asked in court to give evidence that might incriminate himself. He thought the jury would agree that certainly nobody had invited the present witness to give the evidence they had just heard from her. Their present concern, however, was with the prisoner in the dock and nobody else; the truth or falsity of the witness's statement would doubtless be checked later by the proper authorities. But the man in the dock was entitled to a fair trial—and that meant a complete trial, and his lordship felt that they should just pursue this difficult matter to as rapid a conclusion as possible, after which, since Mrs. Evans was the last witness to be called for the prosecution, Counsel for the defence might or might not decide to put his client in the witness-box in his own defence—
in his own defence
, repeated his lordship, frowning over at the prisoner in the dock. Now—Mr. Dragon, matters must be left to your discretion and of course I shall assist you in any way possible in the conduct of this—I think we must agree—extremely, er, shall we say difficult situation.… Mrs. Evans, don't you think, in your own interests, it would be better if you remained seated? This must be most trying to you.…