Silence in Court (26 page)

The illumination died. His mind was dark again—quite dark. Because there was no way by which Ernest Hood could have contrived Honoria Maquisten's death. If all these assumptions were true, he might most ardently have desired it, but it could have got no further than that. If she died before she could alter her will and disinherit Honor King—well, that was just his luck. If he lied afterwards to bolster up that luck, it was as far as you could push it. There simply wasn't one shred of evidence to connect him with the death itself.

Unless—A pin-point pricked the dark. He looked down at Nora, who had been wondering if he was ever going to speak again, and said,

“Did Hood know Ellen Bridling? What sort of terms were they on?”

Her voice sounded surprised. She said quickly,

“Terms? Why none at all, I should think. I suppose she may have seen him when he came to the house.”

“Why?”

“I—don't—know—” The words came out with a heavy weight on them, slow and widely spaced.

Nora tilted her head to look up.

“Why, Jeff, what are you thinking of? You must be crazy! Do you think Ernest Hood came out of Aunt Honoria's room, bumped into Ellen in the passage, and said, ‘Just poison Mrs. Maquisten for me, will you'.”

He stared down at her.

“It sounds a bit sudden when you put it that way.”

Nora stamped her foot.

“It's crazy! I tell you Ellen didn't know him—not to speak of. And she loved Aunt Honoria. She was all broken up when she died. You're crazy.”

He nodded.

“I expect I am. But I don't think I'll come any farther with you. I'm going to see Mordaunt.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

After all, he couldn't see Mordaunt. He wasn't in his office, and he wasn't at his house. They were expecting him back, but they didn't know when.

He went on walking until the dusk turned to dark. By the time the last of the light was gone a cold rain was falling, and after that the wind swept the sky clear and the stars came pricking through.

He came back again to Mordaunt's house, and found him not too pleased to be pursued, but thawing into hospitality.

“Better dine with me now you're here.”

“No, thanks—I didn't come for that. There's something—”

Mr. Mordaunt shook his head. He smiled, but he was determined. “If you don't want to eat, I do. I'm not talking shop until we've fed. Come through and meet my wife.”

A nightmare meal, but it did him good. Everything very well cooked. Mordaunt full of pride, introducing his comfortable, placid wife as “Our chef. Didn't know how to cook a potato six months ago, and look at her now!” They had soup, meat, and vegetables fried in batter, and a cheese flan. Mordaunt produced bottled beer, and they waited on themselves. Afterwards Mrs. Mordaunt would wash up.

She brought them some excellent coffee to the study and left them. Jeff plunged into his crazy tale. When it was finished he got a shake of the head.

“Nothing doing, I'm afraid. If we'd known a bit earlier, Vane might have made a pass or two at Hood when he cross-examined him, but there's nothing we can rake up now. We ought to have known of course—Miss Silence ought to have told us. You say she knew?”

“Nora says so.”

Mordaunt's eyebrows went up.

“What can you do if your client won't help you? It might have been used to shake Hood's credit. It would have shown that he had a substantial interest in turning suspicion on Miss Silence. I'll have to see Vane, but I don't know that there's anything to be done about it now. But we might be able to use it if there was an appeal.”

The word crashed into Jeff's mind like a stone through breaking glass. After a minute he said, “It's as bad as that, is it?”

Mordaunt put down his coffee-cup.

“No, no, my dear fellow, I didn't mean that at all—you've taken me up all wrong. As a matter of fact I thought she did very well today. Very important for the prisoner to make a good impression in the box. Juries are only supposed to go by the evidence, but of course they don't. Equally, of course, it's quite arguable that the way the accused gives his evidence is inseparable from the evidence itself. Commonest example—counsel always asks accused, ‘Did you do it?' Fifty ways of answering that. At least fifty ways of saying, ‘No, I didn't,' and quite half of them negative or damaging. I thought Miss Silence did pretty well over that. Some of them drop their eyes, drop their voices. Make it a virtual admission of guilt. She spoke up, and she looked Vane straight in the face. Of course she'll get a stiff cross-examination tomorrow.”

He broke off to fill his cup again. As he set the coffee-pot down, the telephone bell rang sharply. He stretched out his hand, picked up the receiver, and inclined his ear. From where he sat Jeff Stewart heard a voice rustle in the telephone—“Is that Mr. Mordaunt? Can I speak to Mr. Mordaunt?”

“Mordaunt speaking.”

The rustling began again—a woman's voice, insubstantial, bodiless. But he could hear what she said.

“Mr. Mordaunt, you won't know my name—it is Janet Gwent. I have just returned from the Middle East. I expected to be away a good deal longer. I have only just heard of the Maquisten trial, and I want to talk to you. Mr. Aylwin tells me you are the solicitor for the defence. You see, I have been out of England since November 17th, but on the afternoon of the 16th I left a letter for Mrs. Maquisten at 13 Maitland Square.”

The receiver jerked in Mr. Mordaunt's hand. He said,

“What!”
And then, “Do you mind saying that again?”

The voice said it again.

“I left a letter for Mrs. Maquisten at 13 Maitland Square at just after two o'clock on Monday November 16th.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Tuesday morning. Carey in the box again, but no longer under the cheerful, friendly guidance of Hugo Vane. The time she had dreaded so much that she had really never let herself think about it had come. As Sir Wilbury Fossett got up to cross-examine her she had a moment of panic in which she saw him as she had seen him on the first day of the trial—a skilled, implacable enemy, armed at every point, wholly bent on destroying her. He had every weapon, and every art in using them. She held herself against the panic by saying to herself over and over, “I've only got to tell the truth.” She turned to him with a grave, attentive look which was not without dignity, and the questions began. Everything she had said and done and thought, everything she hadn't said and done and thought, everything that the prosecution wanted to prove about those words and thoughts and actions, came at her in the questions, sometimes rapped out sharply, sometimes sliding in to take her by surprise, sometimes fired at her point-blank to terrify and break her down.

“When you came to stay with Mrs. Maquisten, what was your financial position?”

“I hadn't very much money.”

“Indeed? Now, I wonder what you would call very much—these things are relative. Had you a banking account?”

“No.”

“No banking account. Perhaps you had money in the Post Office?”

“No.”

“In National Savings Certificates or one of the other government loans?”

“No.”

“You had no savings of any kind?”

“I didn't get a very high salary. I'm afraid I didn't save any of it.”

“You had no savings. What money had you when you entered Mrs. Maquisten's household?”

Carey's head lifted. She said in a young, proud voice,

“I had thirty shillings. Afterwards Mrs. Maquisten gave me five pounds to go shopping with. It was very kind of her.”

“And that was all the money you had?”

“That was all the money I had.” Courteous agreement in her voice, nothing more.

“Thirty shillings, and—how much had you left out of the five pounds by November 16th?”

“I had three pounds left altogether.”

“Three pounds between you and destitution if you had been suddenly turned out of the house next day.”

“There was no question of my being suddenly turned out of the house.”

“If there had been, three pounds would not have gone very far, would it? Would it, Miss Silence?”

“I didn't have to think about that.”

“Because another way out had occurred to you? Because you knew that when that next day came Mrs. Maquisten would not be there to cut you out of her will or send you out of her house?”

“No.”

“Then why didn't you have to think about it?”

“Because there was no need. I didn't think of having to leave. There wasn't any quarrel.”

“Mrs. Maquisten wasn't angry with you?” His voice expressed the liveliest surprise.

“Only when I didn't want to telephone to Mr. Aylwin.”

“You heard Nurse Brayle's evidence?”

“Yes.”

“She stated that Mrs. Maquisten was shouting at you in a great state of excitement and anger. That was so, was it not?”

“She was excited and angry, but not with me except when I wanted to wait until she was quieter before ringing up Mr. Aylwin.”

The questions went on and on. Pressure to make her admit that Honoria Maquisten's anger had been directed against Carey Silence—

“You knew that you would benefit under Mrs. Maquisten's will?”

“Yes—she told us all.”

“You knew that she proposed to alter that will—to cut out one of the legatees? Which of them?” His voice rang on the words.

“She didn't say.”

“She shouted at you in her anger and excitement? She said that she had been deceived—that she was altering her will to cut the deceiver out—and in all that anger and excitement she didn't tell you who it was?”

“No—she didn't tell me.”

“So you came out of her room quite happy?”

“No.”

“Dear me, how surprising! You were not happy! But you wouldn't be if you knew you were going to be cut out of a legacy of fifty thousand pounds—would you?”

“I didn't know that.”

“You knew that Mr. Aylwin's head clerk was on his way to take instructions for that altered will?”

“Yes.”

“And you were not at all happy?”

Carey said in a grave, quiet tone,

“I was unhappy about Cousin Honoria. I was afraid she would make herself ill.”

“That was very altruistic! You had no thoughts to spare for your own predicament?”

“There was no predicament.”

“Oh, come, Miss Silence—you are not as dull as that! If you, had lost Mrs. Maquisten's favour and your legacy, and stood in danger of being sent packing—wouldn't that constitute a predicament?”

“There was no predicament, because none of those things were true.”

“But if they had been true, there would have been a predicament?”

“Yes.”

“If they had been true, Miss Silence—what would you have done?”

“I don't know—I never had to think about it.”

“Will you swear that you did not think about it—that no picture came up in your mind of what you would do if you were turned out penniless? No, I am forgetting—you had three pounds.” His voice rolled on the words. “You had three pounds—you had no near relatives—and you were not strong enough to get a job. Can you swear that you did not think of these things?”

“Not after I came to Mrs. Maquisten's.”

“Ah—you had thought about them, then! I thought so! When you were in hospital perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“You had been troubled and anxious about the future?”

“Only whilst I was ill.”

“You were still not strong during that fortnight in November?”

“I was getting stronger.”

Sir Wilbury leaned towards her, his hands on the skirts of his gown, his voice on a confidential note.

“Miss Silence—what would you have done if Mrs. Maquisten had turned you out?”

“There was no question of her turning me out.”

“But if there had been, what would you have done?”

“I suppose I should have tried to get a job.”

He repeated her words in a measured manner.

“You would have tried to get a job.” And then quick and sharp, “Then you were not going to marry Mr. Jefferson Stewart?”

She was tiring, and he had taken her by surprise. She had a sort of black-out in which she lost the connection between the two questions. She stood there, groping for it in her mind, her eyes on Sir Wilbury's face. She looked very young and very desolate. Jeff Stewart's heart contracted. His hands clenched. To see her like that—to be able to do nothing—nothing at all—

As the thought went through his mind, gripping it like cramp, she said, her voice still clear but a little shaken,

“This wasn't a real case. This was something you were supposing.”

“I must ask you for an answer, Miss Silence.”

“I don't quite know what you are asking me.”

Sir Wilbury raised his voice.

“I will repeat my question. I said, ‘Then you were not going to marry Mr. Jefferson Stewart?'”

“It is very difficult to answer a question like that. He had asked me to think about marrying him, and I was thinking about it. I can't say what I should have done in a case which didn't arise.”

“Miss Silence, it is the contention of the Crown that that case did arise—that you found yourself in imminent danger of being turned out of Mrs. Maquisten's house.”

“No.”

“And that in those circumstances you did not feel that you could count upon marrying Mr. Stewart.”

“I knew that I could count upon him. I didn't want to be hurried.”

The questions went on, and on, and on. Every word that had been spoken on that Monday afternoon and evening, every movement, pulled out and twisted. The time she had spent with Honoria Maquisten between Ellen's going out and Honor King's coming in.…