The Killing of Katie Steelstock (33 page)

“You mean that he had ceased to be friendly?”

“Yes.”

“How had this happened?”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“I mean that where a friendship between a young man and a girl ceases, it is usually because one of them cools off.”

“It was Kate who dropped Mr. Limbery.”

“And that,” said Jonathan, “is a damned lie.”

Mavor ignored him.

“Could you suggest a reason for her doing so.”

“Certainly. She had come to the conclusion that he was an immature and self-important young man.”

“And that is a bloody lie. What does an old crumb like you know about young people, anyway?”

Mr. Appleton said, “You must not interrupt the proceedings.”

“Have I got to sit here and listen to a lot of crap talked about me by people whose heads are stuffed with maggots?”

“There’s a remedy for that. I can have you removed from the court and the proceedings can go on without you.”

Jonathan subsided with a grunt.

Mrs. Bellamy said, “Tell me, Mrs. Steelstock, would you have described Kate as a confiding girl?”

Mrs. Steelstock circled around it for a bit and then said, “Sometimes.”

“I am right in thinking that she didn’t live at home.”

“She had her own house. Yes.”

“Did she tell you about all that happened up in London? All about her television programme and her friends up there.”

“Well, no.”

“Did she discuss Mr. Limbery with you?”

“Not in so many words.”

“If she didn’t discuss him in words, how
did
she discuss him?”

“I meant,” said Mrs. Steelstock coldly, “that I gathered what her feelings were by her conduct.”

“What conduct?”

“She no longer invited him to the house.”

“But she could, of course, have been meeting him elsewhere?”

“I suppose so.”

“Thank you.”

“No doubt at all,” said Mr. Mapledurham. “Not a scrap of doubt. Capital T slightly worn at the foot, lower-case ‘b’ tilted. ‘S’ fractionally out of alignment. Those are the obvious ones. A careful analysis would probably give you half a dozen more.”

“You’re quite certain it’s the same machine?”

“Swear to it in any court of law.”

“You might have to do just that,” said McCourt.

A quarter to four. The first day’s proceedings would be coming to an end soon. The quicker he got back to Hannington the better.

A quarter past four. The Magistrate looked at the clock. He said, “I understand from your opening remarks, Mr. Mavor, that you will next be calling what you described as your third set of witnesses, dealing with the movements of the accused on the night of the killing.”

“That’s right, sir,” said Mavor. “I shall call Superintendent Knott to put in a statement made by the accused and follow that with three or four witnesses who will deal with various aspects of that statement.”

“I normally rise at four thirty, but in the circumstances—” The Magistrate looked around the room at the public – overheated, drooping and sated.

“It would perhaps be convenient to start with this new section of evidence tomorrow,” agreed Mavor. He was unaffected by the heat. Like a naval officer, he did much of his work on his feet in uncomfortable surroundings.

The usher said, “The court will rise.”

As they were going out, Mrs. Havelock said to Group Captain Gonville, “I should call that level pegging so far.”

“A lot’s going to depend on Knott. I could see that female gorgon licking her lips when she heard he was going to be called as a witness.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it, how the whole thing seems to have developed into a private battle between the two of them. Jonathan seems to have been relegated to the role of extra.”

“An extra, if you like,” said Group Captain Gonville. “But not a non-speaking part.”

“It’s interesting,” said Knott shortly, “but it’s not conclusive.”

McCourt stared at him. The Superintendent’s face was more grey than white and the lines of fatigue and strain were bitten into it, but his voice was as flat and as expressionless as ever.

“The Documents Division was quite definite, sir. They’re reporting in writing. It’ll be with you first thing tomorrow.”

“I’ll read it with interest, son. But what does it actually prove, except that the note was written on Mariner’s typewriter? Anyone could have got at it. He made a habit of keeping people waiting. I could have typed it. You could have typed it. The Chief Constable could have typed it. So what’s to prevent Limbery snatching a chance when he was alone there?”

“Why would he do that?”

For a moment Knott looked as though he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “If you were planning to send a note and you didn’t want it found, but there was a chance it might be, wouldn’t you type it on someone else’s machine? Particularly if you loathed his guts.” He climbed to his feet and lumbered out.

McCourt turned on Shilling, his face set in unusual lines of anger. He said, “So the charade goes on.”

“Curtain up at ten sharp tomorrow.”

“And nothing can stop it?”

“I don’t say it couldn’t be stopped,” said Shilling, carefully, “but it’s going to take more than this last bit of evidence to do it. After all, there’s some truth in what he said. Almost anyone could have used the machine. All you had to do was ring the bell. Polly lets you in and you’ve got anything from two to twenty minutes available, according to who you were. When I called recently I was kept waiting for twelve minutes.”

“Yes, but why did he—?”

“I know what you’re going to say. The answer’s panic. When he heard that inquiries were being made, he had to get rid of the machine. Stupid thing to do, but understandable. And his conscience wasn’t all that clear if he’d been out doing a spot of voyeuring. And a word of advice. I don’t think I should try any more bright suggestions on the old man. Not just at this moment.”

“I heard he had some rough handling in court.”

“That wouldn’t worry him. It’s something else.”

He stopped and McCourt noticed that his face was unusually grim.

“The Steelstock boy has killed himself. His mother found him when she got back from court. He’d cut his throat with one of his father’s old razors and made a filthy mess of it. He left a note, too. Blaming the police in general and you in particular.”

It might have seemed impossible that the crowd should be larger, but on the second morning the waiting line stretched far back, down the street beside the court building, along the back of the building and fifty yards out into the road beyond. The people at the head of the queue had been there all night. They had left the court at the end of the hearing and had immediately taken up their positions outside the door. There were half a dozen policemen on duty now.

The crowd was not only larger. It was in a different mood. Somehow the news of Peter’s death had got out. It was a garbled account passed by word of mouth. Katie’s kid brother had killed himself. It was something to do with the police. They hadn’t wanted him to give evidence (or, in another version, they had wanted him to give evidence). They had bullied him. They had tried to break him down. The boy could take no more and had cut his own throat. The crowd was angry.

When the police judged that the courtroom was full and tried to shut the door of the public entrance, there was a scuffle. A woman said, “Why won’t you let us in?” A big red-faced man who had his foot in the door preventing it from being shut said, “We know why. You don’t want us to hear the truth, do you? How many more kids are you going to kill?”

The policeman at the door summoned help and they got it shut. The crowd outside refused to disperse. When Knott arrived he was recognised and a storm of hissing and booing broke out. Knott ignored it and pushed his way through toward the side entrance. The policeman on duty there held the door open for him. He said, “I don’t know what’s come over them.”

“Mass hysteria,” said Knott.

“I understand, Superintendent,” said Mavor, “that the accused made a statement.”

“He made two, sir. An earlier statement in answer to some questions which I put to him in the course of my investigation. A later and more formal statement after he had been charged and cautioned.”

“The second statement was taken down?”

“In his presence, sir. And signed by him as being correct.”

“Then perhaps you would read it out to us.”

“’As the result of a telephone call from the news editor of the Reading
Sun,
I left my house at approximately ten o’clock that evening—’”

“The evening he referred to being August fifteenth?”

“That is correct, sir. ‘—at approximately ten o’clock that evening and drove over to Quantocks Paper Mills outside Goring to report on a fire which I was informed had broken out there. I proceeded to the scene of the fire, arriving at about half past ten. I was engaged in making notes and conversing with the fire officers until about a quarter to twelve, when I drove to a call box on the Oxford road and dictated my report over the telephone to the newspaper. I then had a quick snack at the King of Clubs roadhouse, which is also on the Oxford road. I left the roadhouse at approximately a quarter to one and proceeded back via Whitchurch and Pangbourne, getting home at about half past one.’ Signed and witnessed.”

“Thank you, Superintendent. I’ll put in a copy of this statement.” A document was handed up to the Magistrate, who added it to the pile on his desk. “Now tell us, Superintendent. Did this statement coincide with the earlier informal statement which you mentioned?”

“It was a good deal shorter, sir. But it coincided in every material particular.”

“Then I would like to draw your attention, sir, to three points in it. First, that the accused says he spent an hour and a quarter at the scene of the fire. Secondly, that he telephoned his account to the paper from a call box on the Oxford road. Thirdly, that he returned home through Whitchurch and Pangbourne, which would involve crossing the Thames at this point. It is the contention of the Crown, sir, that the accused has lied, and lied deliberately, on all these three points. The remaining witnesses will be directing their testimony to those matters.”

Knott made a move to leave the box, but Mrs. Bellamy was already on her feet.

“I have one or two questions which I should like to put to this witness. I was not clear whether this was to be his only appearance, or whether he is to give evidence on other points later.”

“If you have any questions to put to the Superintendent, do so now by all means,” said Mavor.

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Bellamy had brought out a pair of old-fashioned pince-nez glasses, which she perched on her nose, alternately looking through them at her notes and over them at the witness. There was something mesmeric about the bobbing up and down of her head.

(“Like a wasp eating marmalade,” whispered Mrs. Havelock.)

“Could I direct your attention to the pathologist’s reports which we have had read to us.
Both
reports, Superintendent. Particularly the second one. You remember it?”

“Yes.”

“A report by one eminent pathologist, endorsed by a second, a very eminent one, which stated that
two
people had been killed by the same weapon, at about the same time and probably by the same person.”

“It was not a statement. It simply suggested the possibility.”

“When two eminent experts suggest a possibility, you don’t think it becomes a probability?”

“I think it remains a theory.”

“But it was a theory based on facts. The shape and depth of the wound.”

“Yes.”

“Relevant facts.”

“If you like.”

“And is it not your duty to inform the defence of all relevant facts which come to your notice?”

“It would only have been relevant if the accused was charged with the second killing.”

A man at the back of the court said loudly, “Nonsense.”

The Magistrate looked up. Then he said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand that myself, Superintendent. If there was evidence that the same man had killed two people, surely this was relevant.”

“All that we had to go on was a theory put forward by Dr. Carlyle that the blows could have been produced by the same instrument. We did not consider this to be strong enough evidence definitely to connect the two.”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Bellamy, “you thought you knew better than Dr. Carlyle.”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“And than Dr. Summerson.”

“Yes.”

“Who are acknowledged experts in their own field.”

“I agree.”

“And what training in forensic pathology have you had, Superintendent?”

“I have listened to a lot of pathologists giving evidence and have believed exactly half of them,” said Knott.

(“Not bad,” said Group Captain Gonville.)

“This second man, whose death you regarded as unimportant, has been identified, I believe, as being a certain Gabriel Lewson, employed as a runner by a society photographer named Rodney Ruoff. Is that right, Superintendent?”

“That is so.”

“And did you also regard it as totally irrelevant that Ruoff was himself murdered a few days ago?”

“We hardly thought it likely that the accused had had any part in that killing, since he was in custody at the time it occurred.”

“Quite so. But did it not occur to you as a relevant fact that
three
people, all of whom were closely connected, should have been killed within a few days of each other?”

Knott said, “There was no connection known to us—” and stopped.

“You were going to say that there was no connection between Miss Steelstock and Ruoff?”

“No close connection.”

“Although he was her photographer and the man who had set her on her way to stardom.”

“No close connection,” said Knott obstinately.

A murmur came from the crowded listeners. It was difficult to distinguish words, but “rubbish” was certainly among them. Mrs. Bellamy listened to it with her head cocked. The reporters wrote, “Raking cross-examination,” and “Police witness under fire.”