My Name is Michael Sibley (29 page)

“My fiancée can vouch for it.”

“Yes. And I should think it may be true.”

For the first time since the interrogation began I felt a slight feeling of relief. Here was something that he accepted without quibble. He believed it to be true. He had said so.

“The only thing is, Sibley, you told me at our first interview that Prosset was killed around midnight.”

I looked at him in bewilderment. “So he was.”

“No, he wasn’t,” said the Inspector.

“It said so in the papers,” I said quickly. “It said so!”

“I dare say it did; but he was killed around four o’clock in the morning. For some reason the first newspaper report mentioned midnight, and the others repeated the mistake. It’s not a bad idea to let a mistake like that go unaltered, see? In case somebody is preparing an alibi, as it were. See? A lot of people think I’m a bloody fool, but I’m not. Not always.”

After a while, during which I said nothing for I had nothing to say, he threw his pencil on the desk.

“Well, Sibley, want to make another statement?”

“You needn’t, if you don’t want to,” said the Sergeant, “but if you do, it can be used in evidence.”

My third and final statement ran as follows:

At ten minutes past eleven that night I recalled the kind of words I had spoken to Charlie Baines at lunchtime that day: “Mr. Sibley, who has been assisting the police in their investigations into the murder of Mr. John Prosset at Ockleton, accompanied police officers to Scotland Yard last night, and was still there at a late hour.”

Something like that; the old, old stuff. I had written it often enough about other people.

The Inspector had taken my statement out of the room an hour before. Maybe two hours. I cannot remember exactly.

When he came back, accompanied by others whom he left at the door, he said, in almost a friendly voice, “Michael Sibley, I now charge you with the murder of John Prosset at Ockleton in the early hours of May 29th, and I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and may be used in evidence.”

I said, “Yes.”

He turned to a uniformed sergeant who came in. “See he gets a cup of tea and some sandwiches or something.”

The Inspector was no longer fighting for himself. He was no longer dangerous and ruthless. He had won. He had solved another case, at least to the satisfaction of his superior officers. He was a step nearer promotion, a better pension, a better house. It had all been very satisfactory. He could afford to relax until the next job, when the tooth-and-claw battle for better things would be resumed.

But for the moment the Inspector could permit himself to think not only of the Inspector, but even of Sibley: let Sibley be brought a cup of tea and some sandwiches! The Inspector wasn’t wicked. He was merely unimaginative, insensitive, and ambitious.

A
criminal trial is in at least one respect like a war in that the aggressors, the prosecution, never begin one unless they think they have a more than reasonable chance of victory.

The accused, waiting in another part of the building for the jury’s verdict, inevitably going over in his mind the points which his counsel has made for the defence, is apt to forget this.

He may feel that the judge has been unfair in his summing up. He may, and frequently does, think that his own counsel could have done better, but he consoles himself with the hope that the jury will note all the weighty points which are in his favour and which are so palpably clear to him. If he is innocent, as I was, it seems almost impossible to him that the jury could come to any other decision than the one which is correct from the standpoint of justice.

He has a fervent belief in justice, of course, and is certain that right will triumph. He sees himself being set free by the judge, possibly with a few comforting words to the effect that on the evidence no other verdict could have been arrived at; he pictures himself the centre of a circle of congratulatory friends and relations, imagines the warders, gruff but kindly, bidding him the best of luck, and his own counsel declaring how admirably he gave evidence in the box.

If it is a quick verdict, these rosy dreams may last right through the period of waiting. In my case they lasted about twenty minutes. But if the jury are slow in coming to a decision he begins to have doubts.

He becomes increasingly disquieted and petulant at the errors he thinks were made by counsel for the defence; and, reviewing once again the summing up, he acquires the beginnings of a nice sense of grievance at the unfairness of the whole thing. I remember thinking very bitterly that the judge had not stressed nearly strongly enough the fact that almost the entire evidence was circumstantial and consisted, when you examined it, of a series of unfortunate incidents aggravated by my own admitted foolishness. He should surely have pointed this out, not once, as he did, but several times. Certainly, as a judge, he knew the dangers of circumstantial evidence. He must also have known that even perfectly normal actions could be worked up by astute police officers and a clever prosecution so as to look damning.

I had had plenty of time for thinking, during the period of remands, of police court evidence, and of waiting for the next session at the Central Criminal Courts. In addition to the evidence, I had gone over in my mind the parts which everybody had played in the case, and I saw nothing to astonish me. Each had acted primarily in the ways which accorded with his own interests or feelings, regardless of other people. It had been, over and over again, a case of “Pull up the raft, Jack. I’m all right.”

I was tempted to the conclusion that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred people do react in this way if the matter is important, but eventually I modified the view. It was too sweeping and too harsh. Many people were quite prepared to keep the raft available provided that they themselves were on it; they might even extend a helping hand to a fellow swimmer on the condition that they themselves were not only on the raft but also secured, and in no danger of falling off it.

I had tried to save Kate from publicity. But when I saw myself in danger I had thrown all considerations for her reputation aside and without the slightest hesitation had stated things which could not but be a veritable gift to scandalmongers. When Sibley was in danger, it was Sibley who came first, last, and all the time, and it didn’t matter about Kate.

The Inspector had been less concerned with justice than with his career and his pension. He had selected the most likely suspect, and he had built up his case slowly, methodically, and with all the considerable skill at his command.

I think the Inspector must have had, at the very least, certain doubts about whether I was the guilty man. There is something about an innocent man, as compared to a guilty man, under interrogation which an officer of his experience would have learnt to detect. I recalled the curious look he had given me when I had so readily admitted asking the cleaners about the bloodstains.

I do not think he was worried about justice, or the community, or crime; he would have found it difficult to put himself emotionally in my position, and it would never have occurred to him to try to do so. When he was, in his own way, in peril, that is to say when his reputation was at stake, he built up a case against me using the available evidence and all his experience to do so.

If he thought about the matter ethically, which is highly doubtful, he no doubt considered it was his duty to act as he did. It was not for him to decide whether I was guilty or not. That was for the jury. All he had to do was to collect the evidence, weave it to fit a prosecution, and convince his superior officers that he had solved the Prosset case. Why should the Inspector worry what happened to Sibley so long as the Inspector was on the raft?

It was not as if Sibley was a kid. Sibley was a grown man, able to take care of himself. It was the Inspector against Sibley, man against man, as it always had been in the fight to get on in the world; and if Sibley went down, and if the charge was a capital one, well, that was just too bad for Sibley, wasn’t it?

Cynthia, too, had acted in her own interests. She thought she had found a man who would marry her and raise her higher in the world. It didn’t matter to her if it was fair to marry for mercenary reasons. When he let her down, quite apart from any feelings of spite, she was not going to get involved in any way by hushing anything up. In fact, as I learnt during the trial, she had gone out of her way to keep the record straight: she had communicated with the police and told them all about my sudden visit to her.

Herbert Day, of course, had acted purely and simply to save his own skin, if my theory was correct. As far as he was concerned, he was quite prepared to see a man hang if only his own activities remained hidden. How far, if at all, he was involved in Prosset’s death was a matter for speculation.

Only Kate had come out of it all without a blemish. There is no doubt that but for my suggestions to her she would have told the truth the whole time. She had struck at nobody, hurt nobody, had been loyal all the way along. But then Kate had not been in any particular peril. How would she have acted if she had been? Although I disliked myself for doing so, I could not help wondering.

It was strange that, as I sat there in the cells thinking of Kate, there should come to my mind the dream of the black cockatoos. I also thought, probably through an association of ideas about dark birds, of the black carrion crow or raven I had shot in a wood, and of the curious feeling I had had that I had done something forbidden by age-old lore.

I shook these thoughts off.

The jury had been out an hour now, and the strain was beginning to tell heavily. There was a circle of cigarette ends at my feet. Even the warders had given up any attempts at conversation, either between themselves or with me. Outside in the stone corridor there came the occasional tramp of feet passing by. Each time I thought it was the summons to go up into the dock once more.

Mr. John Aldwick, KC, my counsel, had done quite well, but I was now in grave doubts as to whether he had done well enough. The prosecution was in the hands of Christopher Smerton, not at that time one of the most eminent KCs, but a youngish man who was making a name for himself. I recalled with some misgivings points from his final speech to the jury.

“Let us imagine for a moment,” he had said in his quiet, reasoning tones, “the state of mind of the accused man when he was first interviewed by the police. I think it is permissible to assume—and you, members of the jury, may agree with me—that even though, as I submit the evidence shows, he had on his conscience the murder of his schooltime acquaintance, his state of mind was composed. He may even have been happy and confident. The police visit would be no surprise to him, of course. On the contrary, he would have been daily, hourly, expecting it. His story was complete. He knew exactly what he was going to say. No wonder he was composed and confident!

“Remember this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is no clumsy killer whom you see in the dock, no rough individual of low mentality who has blundered into the crime of murder more by ill-luck than design. You have before you an intelligent man, a reporter by profession, a man trained by his calling to be analytical and careful; a man, moreover, with more than a nodding acquaintanceship with at least the rudiments of police methods.

“I have drawn your attention to this aspect of the case, members of the jury, because in his very able address to you my friend the counsel for the defence has laid considerable stress upon the circumstantial nature of the evidence. Goodness me! What other evidence, against a man of this kind, did he expect us to produce?

“Does he seriously think that a prisoner of this man’s mental calibre would leave fingerprints on chair legs for the benefit of the police? Does my friend think that the accused, after carrying out a carefully planned if somewhat crude murder, would retain bloodstained clothing in his possession? That he would allow himself to be seen, shall we say, in the neighbourhood of the crime, or that, in case somebody may have seen him, he would fail to provide himself with a suitable alibi in order that that evidence might be contested? An alibi, I may add, which he has not hesitated to produce at the expense of the reputation of the unfortunate Miss Marsden. However, in view of that position in which he found himself, why should a man guilty of murder, as the Crown submits that he is, shy at a little thing like that?

“Or maybe,” said Mr. Smerton, KC, “my learned friend thought we could produce incriminating letters as in the case of the stupid Bywaters and the neurotic Mrs. Thompson? Or something of an equally convenient nature, such as an entry in the prisoner’s own diary, which could be used against him? There was, indeed, an entry or two in a diary, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but hardly of the kind which the accused could expect!”

He looked round, hitched his gown a little higher, and continued, “I have said that the accused was in all probability in a happy frame of mind that memorable evening when, did he but know it, the police were already on his trail. Why not, indeed?

“The man he had, by his own confession to the witness, Miss Harrison, so cordially detested all his life, a detestation he had cunningly and hypocritically hidden—this man was dead. Prosset, whom he envied as a youth because Prosset was a better man than he; whom he had, I submit, grown to hate even more strongly in manhood because Prosset threatened to win from him the affections of the woman, Kate Marsden—this man was dead! He was no more. Sibley had had his revenge. It had been a long time coming, but it was complete. It was about as complete, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as any revenge could be.”

He paused for a moment to allow his words to sink in, his head bent in thought. He gave the impression that he was visualizing Prosset lying battered and lifeless. He was a master of timing, and, after just the appropriate pause, his voice rang out loudly with a note of triumph in it. “Unfortunately for the accused, as in so many horrible cases of this kind, he made one or two mistakes for which we must be grateful. He forgot that Prosset kept a diary. He tried to be too clever in concealing his visit to Ockleton on the Saturday. He tried to rid himself of a knuckleduster in a particularly stupid manner. He asked a very foolish question at the dry-cleaners. Believing from a newspaper account that the murder had taken place around midnight, he arranged his first alibi, unfortunately for himself, at that hour.

“Little knowing that evidence would be forthcoming to prove its falsity, he advised the unfortunate Miss Marsden to make a statement denying any exclusive association with Prosset. How convenient it would have been for him if this evidence, this pointer to his jealousy, could have remained unknown! Is it difficult to imagine this reasonably intelligent prisoner saying to himself: ‘They need not know about it, and they must not know about it. Without this there is no motive!’?

“What is his attitude now, when all is discovered? How, if it comes to that, did he pose to Miss Marsden? Why, as the chivalrous knight, disinterestedly advising her to lie to the police in her own interests to avoid being called as a witness at an inquest! How convenient indeed that his chivalry coincided so admirably with his own interests.”

I remember looking at the jury while he made this point and noting with uneasiness a faint smile on a juryman’s face.

He went on, “But let us see, members of the jury, how this pose of knightly virtue compares with the other actions of this gentleman, for by doing so we may assess what worth to place on his protestations that he acted, at least partly, in Miss Marsden’s defence. What, to our utter astonishment, do we find?

“We find that although, in his alleged anxiety to save his fiancée the necessity of answering a few simple questions at an inquest, he is prepared to advise her to lie to the police, he is not averse to her declaring that he was with her until a late hour on the night of the murder—and when that alibi proves useless, he has no scruples in attempting to provide evidence that he stayed all night! A fine Sir Lancelot, indeed!

“What else do we find this very parfit gentil knight doing? We find him engaged to Miss Cynthia Harrison. You have seen Miss Harrison in the box. You have formed your own opinion of her. Perhaps your opinion coincided with mine. To me she seemed, and I say this without offence, a simple, trusting, provincial girl, who had placed her future, as she mistakenly thought, in the hands of the prisoner, Sibley. Poor, foolish child!