The Man Whose Dream Came True (17 page)

There was no fish on the breakfast menu and Dimmock ate eggs and bacon while he read the morning paper with its report of the first day of the trial. In the outline of the case given him it had been suggested that he should try to trace the movements of Mrs Foster’s car, but he rejected this as hopeless. What facilities did he have for making such inquiries, what could he do that had not already been done by the police? Immediately after breakfast he started on the trail of restaurants and hotels and pursued it until just after lunch, showing the photographs of Mrs Foster and Lands everywhere he went. It was after lunch when he finished. Nobody recognised either of the photographs. If the couple had spent evenings together they had not done so at any of the places on his list. It began to rain before lunch and by mid-afternoon, when he reached Beaver Close, the rain had been joined by a high wind against which he struggled in his slightly shabby coat, pushing his way up to the door with one hand clasped on his hat to prevent it from being blown away.

He’s selling something, Evelyn Bradbury thought as she watched him coming up the drive, but little as she liked door to door salesmen she felt sorry for him. One of Dimmock’s few advantages as an operative was that women often did feel sorry for him. He had a hangdog honesty that many women found sympathetic. When Mrs Bradbury, after looking at his card, asked what he wanted to know he flapped his arms in a hopeless way.

‘I’m not sure, Mrs Bradbury. I’ve been asked to make inquiries, that’s all.’

‘On behalf of Jones, you say. But who’s employing you?’

‘I’m not at liberty to reveal that.’ In fact Dimmock didn’t know, nor was he interested.

‘The police have been round, you know.’ Dimmock’s resigned nod said that he would always arrive second or third, never first.

‘And of course my husband has had to give evidence. He was quite upset about it, you know they were at school together, but I mean you have a duty, isn’t that right?’

‘I would sooner talk to you,’ Dimmock said truthfully. He found women much more responsive than men.

Few people said that to Evelyn Bradbury. She offered a cup of tea and took away Dimmock’s damp coat and hat. When she returned with the tea trolley and little sponge cakes she asked what he wanted to know. It seemed that he was not sure.

‘Well, of course you know it was here that they met. Bill says he will never forgive himself for bringing Jones back here. But they were old school friends, you see. He seemed quite a nice young man, although he spilled his tea. On the carpet, it’s almost new –’

‘A beautiful carpet,’ Dimmock said reverently and sipped the China tea. He preferred Indian. ‘Do you know Mrs Foster well?’

‘There is a Women’s Club in Southbourne, and we had met there. She was a new member, though she didn’t seem very interested. When she became a member we were hoping that she might bring her husband along at some time, he was something in the City you know, and Bill wanted to meet him. But we never did see him.’

‘You didn’t meet her cousin, Mr Lands?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Do have one of these cakes, I made them myself.’

‘She never mentioned to you–’ Dimmock was at a loss to know what she might be able to tell him that was useful, and continued lamely, ‘–anything interesting. About her husband.’

‘We didn’t talk about him. I am sure it was a very happy marriage.’ She looked away with an expression of distaste. Dimmock humbly transferred his gaze to the carpet. ‘Except that she was left alone a good deal. It may have been rather dull for her. But then I always say that if you keep busy you are never dull.’

‘That’s very true.’

‘And she had her golf.’ Dimmock looked up. It was the first he had heard about golf. ‘She belonged to the Mendwich Golf Club. I have seen a bag in her car.

‘A bag.’

‘Of clubs.’ She spoke as if they were implements used by a primitive tribe.

The secretary of Mendwich Golf Club was red-faced and stiffish, but in the end he was softened by Dimmock’s hangdog persistence. Yes, Mrs Foster had been a member of the club and came there occasionally in company with a friend of hers, or perhaps it was some sort of relative, named Lands. How often? At this point the secretary became restive and said that they did not keep a check on the presence or absence of members. Dimmock thanked him, withdrew, sat in his car and thought. There was a club within ten miles of the Villa Majorca, why hadn’t she joined that instead of the Mendwich which was thirty miles away? Because her cousin belonged to the Mendwich was the obvious reply. Probably there was nothing in it, but it was the first thing he had discovered that was of any interest at all, and Mendwich was outside the area in which he had visited restaurants and hotels.

He spent the rest of the day calling on those near the golf club. At the Great South Motel the head waiter recognised the photographs as those of a couple who had come in sometimes for dinner. Had they stayed the night? About this he was emphatic. They had not. A pound note, which he contemplated with the indifference that others might show to a half-crown, changed hands. Would his story have been different if the note had been a fiver? Dimmock did not think so. At the end of a long afternoon and evening in the rain he had learned nothing of real value, yet he had the feeling that he was on the edge of some discovery. He looked at the material prepared for him by the office and read:

‘Check housekeeper. Mrs Twining keeps house for Lands, lives in.’ Below this was: ‘Check Fosters’ maid Sarah Russell.’ He telephoned and found that Lands was up in London, no doubt attending the trial. It was a good opportunity to call.

It was twilight when he drove up to Land’s house, a rambling building which stood a quarter of a mile off the road at the end of a squelchy drive. Heavy rain fell out of a leaden sky. He could feel it seeping through his thin coat. The house was in darkness and there was no answer to his knock. He walked round and saw a light in what must be the kitchen, heard sounds of voices raised in high-pitched argument. He knocked on a side door and knocked again. There was a click. The radio argument was extinguished. A voice from behind the door said: ‘Yes?’

‘My name is Dimmock.’

‘Yes.’

‘If you’ll open the door I can give you my card.’

The door opened on a bolt and chain. A woman’s body, tall and bulky, was outlined against the light. She held something in her right hand. Dimmock fumbled under his wet coat and found a card which said that he was an insurance investigator. The voice, harsh and sexually neutral, asked what he wanted.

‘Could I come in for a moment and explain.’

‘Is it about this business of Mr Foster?’

Subterfuge seemed useless. ‘As a matter of fact it is.’

‘You want Mr Lands. He’s not here.’

‘You’re Mrs Twining, aren’t you? As a matter of fact it was you I wanted to talk to.’

‘I’ve said all I had to say. To the police.’

Rain from the guttering above was dripping steadily on to Dimmock’s hat, and from the hat downwards. He could feel a cold trickle on his neck. ‘It’s a wet night, Mrs Twining–’

‘I know your voice.’ He was so disconcerted that he stopped talking. ‘On the telephone. Sneaking round when Mr Lands is away.’

The drip ran under his collar. In desperation he moved forward and – a rare mistake on his part, for he was a man who respected the privacy of others – put his hand on the chain, not really with any intention of opening the door because that would not have been possible, but simply as a plea, a claim on her attention. The thing in her hand swung, and although he did not feel the blow his arm was suddenly numb. The door slammed shut, the radio voices started to argue again.

It was only the third time that he had suffered violence. Back in the car he told himself he deserved it. He should have left his call until the morning, he shouldn’t have stretched out his arm. In spite of these reflections he was conscious of an unreasoning anger that lasted all the way back to the Commercial Hotel. Dinner was finished by the time he got back and he had to be content with a sandwich which was made for him with a bad grace, and a bottle of beer. When he asked for a hot water bottle in his bed the maid stared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses and said that there wasn’t such a thing in the hotel. After all, she added, it was summer.

Up in his room he examined the arm, which showed a livid bruise between wrist and elbow. He wrote our his report in a hand less firm than usual, and went to bed. It was a long time before he slept. The day had been unrewarding, but that was not what kept him awake. He felt it to be monstrously unjust that a man making polite inquiries should be met with a blow on the arm.

Mobey had gone. His place was taken by an inarticulate lantern-jawed man with a permanent sniff, who was charged with arson. Tony tried to find out what had happened to Mobey, but the warders were evasive. In the end he found out from Hussick.

‘Mobey? The man who tried to poison his wife. He got ten years.’ Mr Hussick’s eyebrows danced. ‘Straight-forward case. Silly fellow.’

Tony found that he was upset by this. ‘He told me it was a mistake.’

‘Naturally he’d say that. Not true, I’m afraid.’ Mobey was dismissed. ‘Mrs Foster’s giving evidence today. Then Mr Newton will put your case to her.’

‘What does he think of the chances?’

‘We did very well yesterday, I thought. Moreston’s a tough nut, doesn’t give an inch unless he’s forced to, but he had to agree about the blurring. It sank in with the jury, oh yes, I’m sure it sank in.’ He seemed about to burst into laughter at the thought of the way it had sunk in, but refrained. ‘When Mrs Foster is giving evidence, keep calm. No display of temper, judge doesn’t like that and the jury don’t like it either. You’ve been very good so far.’ He might have been a dentist congratulating a patient on the way he was enduring a long session in the chair.

On the way to Court in the little van he thought about Mobey. How extraordinary it was that somebody could be in your company one day, talking cheerfully about getting rid of his wife so that he could live with his bird, and then on the next day a group of people chosen at random could decide that he was to be shut up in prison for years. Ten years – just think what it would be like to be shut up for ten years, or even seven which would allow for good conduct remission, shut up in one small room, let out only to do humiliating meaningless work, continually in the company of vulgar men, never seeing or touching a woman, your horizon bounded by the single cell, living in a world removed from bright light and colour. Would it be possible for him to endure such a world, and could it be right that anybody should be forced to suffer in that way? He saw the Morris wallpaper in his bed-room at Leathersley House, the colours brighter than they had been in actuality. When one of the two prison officers with him asked how it was going he said that he didn’t know, and saw the man look at his mate as though to convey an unspoken warning: ‘He’s been cheerful so far, but it’s getting to him now, he’s beginning to realise what he’s in for.’ The man offered him a cigarette but he shook his head. When the two of them talked about a cricket match to be played next weekend he listened eagerly, although he was not interested in cricket.

He had been braced for Jenny’s appearance, and was irritated when she did not appear in the witness box at once. Instead they had the girl from the travel agency where he had bought the ticket for Caracas. Then they had Bradbury to mention the thirty pounds he had promised to repay, and then Carlos Cotton talking about his unpaid debt to World Casino Enterprises. Newton’s cross-examination was brisk.

‘This debt was contracted at – ah – Landford, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you subsequently agreed to forgo it?’

‘I said he needn’t pay.’

‘But then you changed your mind, I understand.’

‘I found he was playing at Southbourne after I’d put the black on him.’ Cotton was wearing a tight black suit with very high lapels. His fingers played uneasily with a button.

‘Put the black on. What does that mean?’

‘I’d barred him from any of my gaming clubs.’

‘Your clubs. That is World Casino Enterprises, those are your clubs, are they not?’

‘Correct.’

‘And what is your position in them, Mr Cotton?’

‘Director. And general manager.’

‘With some special responsibility for bad debts?’

‘We don’t like them. Who does?’

‘Who does?’ Newton echoed and continued smoothly. ‘You know that gambling debts can’t be enforced by law?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how did you propose to enforce payment?’

‘I’ve told you. If he didn’t pay up he’d be barred. I’d barred him already.’ Cotton seemed to shrink into himself. He cast quick glances at Newton, the judge, the body of the Court, like a malevolent insect.

‘You didn’t threaten him with physical violence in any way?’

‘Of course not.’ Cotton turned his monkey face to the public gallery. Tony followed his gaze and saw Fiona, leaning forward in the front row.

‘So there was no reason why he should be specially worried?’ The judge had been tapping gently with a pencil. Now he said, ‘I don’t want to interfere, Mr Newton, but isn’t this line of questioning going rather far afield?’

‘I hope not, my lord. My learned friend’s purpose in introducing this evidence was I presume to show that my client was hard pressed for money. I am trying to bring out the point that one of these debts was to a friend and the other was not legally enforceable.’

‘I think we have taken the point, Mr Newton.’

‘Had threats been employed it would be a different matter. I am happy to have the assurance that there was no question of this.’

The judge bowed his head. Newton sat down and there was no re-examination. Cotton looked from one to the other of them and left the box. Shortly afterwards Fiona’s head disappeared from the gallery.

In a way Tony felt indignant about this. He would have liked to ask Cotton questions himself and to say ‘You threatened me, one of your thugs stubbed out his cigarette on my hand and two more tried to beat me up,’ but he understood that if there had been no threats it was a good thing for him, it meant that he had no reason to worry about the money. This meant also that it didn’t always pay to bring out the truth. Would it be right to say that truth was one thing and justice another? He was thinking about this when Jenny entered the box.

She walked through the Court with the care of somebody moving along a private knife edge, one foot placed before the other, her face a white blank and her head held high. She was wearing a dress in some neutral completely washed out colour, and as always she looked slight and vulnerable. The stir of anger he had been prepared to feel never flickered. He found himself as dispassionate as though he were watching a play. Hussick, looking up at his client, saw that there was no reason to worry.

For a long time the play was a repeat performance of what he had already heard, except that there were some details of her life before marriage. Most of what she had told him was true. She had been a not very successful actress, had met Foster when he returned to England from South Africa, and married him. She talked about this with a straightforwardness and simplicity that, as Tony felt, must impress the jury. Hardy led her like a dancing master through the tale she had told in the Magistrate’s Court, of his engagement, her husband’s discovery of the missing links, his determination to ‘have things out’ on Friday evening, her departure for dinner and her return to find the body in the living-room. For the first time Tony found himself wondering what had really happened. Had Lands come over, helped her, and then gone back in his own car before Tony’s arrival? Or had she done the whole thing herself? He could see Foster – but then he had never met Foster, he was thinking of Lands when he used the name – turning round in the sitting-room when she asked for a drink, the hammer in her gloved hand, the first blow that staggered him, and then the hammer coming down again and again. Was there sufficient strength in those thin hands? He had felt them gripping him, and knew that there was. And remembering the look he had seen sometimes on her face when they made love, the look that made it clear she did not regard him as another human being but only as an object to be used, he had no difficulty in seeing her striking Foster, unmoved by the blood that spurted out when the eggshell head cracked.

It was these thoughts, and recollection of what Moreston had said that made him scribble a note to Hussick: ‘She must have had blood on her clothes when she hit him.’ Hussick read the note, nodded, folded the paper into small pieces and smiled. Tony scribbled another note: ‘HAVE YOU CHECKED?’ Hussick read this, nodded again, and then set his eyebrows dancing and turned down the corners of his mouth. What did that mean? At Tony’s finger-beckoning the solicitor wrote a note of his own which his clerk passed up. When unfolded it read:

‘We checked with laundry, etc. Nothing.’

So how had she killed him? Naked, as the Liverpool insurance agent Wallace was said to have killed his wife? That was surely not possible. He found that it was hard to concentrate on the examination.

It was after lunch when Hardy had finished and Newton rose. His tone was friendly, almost paternal.

‘First of all, I wonder if you could tell me just a little more of what happened when you engaged Jones. You did engage him, isn’t that so?’

‘On my husband’s behalf.’

‘Naturally. I find that a little unusual. Why didn’t your husband interview him?’

‘He trusted my judgement.’ She twisted her hands. ‘God forgive me.’

That’s a bit corny, Tony thought, a bit too actressy. He took a quick glance at his four jurywomen, but to his disgust they were behaving as usual, Blue Binse looking at her nails, Pretty But Fatuous staring round the Court, Iron Hair waiting with pencil poised and Bolt Upright naturally bolt upright. What was Newton saying?

‘He accepted your recommendation. And your impression was favourable, you engaged him on the spot.’

‘He seemed pleasant. He could type. And I had met him at a friend’s house.’

‘You liked him?’

Thin shoulders shrugged under the colourless dress. ‘I had no feelings one way or the other.’

‘At least you didn’t dislike him?’

Again the shrug. ‘True.’

Newton looked at his notes for what seemed a long time and then spoke abruptly. ‘Were you happily married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your husband was twenty-five years older than you, but that made no difference?’

‘None at all.’

‘It was one of those marriages where age doesn’t matter because husband and wife have so much in common. Is that so, Mrs Foster?’

As she repeated in a neutral voice ‘We were very happy,’ Tony looked again at the jury, the men as well as the women. They were all keenly attentive. There was a man who looked ominously like Clinker the builder, short and swart with hairy hands which rested on the ledge in front of him. What was he thinking, what would Tony himself think if he saw the slim woman and heard her low-voiced replies? Newton struggled on like a ship ploughing through an icefield. Tony ceased to listen. He saw instead of the courtroom the confines of a cell nine by six – was that the size? – which would be his home for years.
I shall die,
he thought,
if they shut me up in a place like that I shall die.

Below him Newton, as he followed no particular line of questioning but probed with all the delicacy of which he was capable to find a chink in this bloodless woman’s personality through which he could attack, was conscious of attempting to make bricks not only without straw but even without the basic clay. At the same time he had the feeling, which comes to all advocates at some time or another and which they know they can trust, that in some essential respects the witness was not telling the truth. The problem then is to induce the same feeling in the jury. ‘You did not take up his references?’

‘No.’

‘We know that they were not genuine. Had you written, he would have been exposed at once.’

‘Believe me, I’m sorry I didn’t,’ she said in a low voice.

‘You engaged him after a short interview, you didn’t trouble to check his references. And you still say you didn’t find him attractive?’

‘I had no feelings, one way or the other.’

‘And then you saw him every day. Alone, since your husband was up in London.’

‘Yes.’

‘This young attractive man was alone in the house with you each day, but you still had no feelings about him?’

She raised her voice a little. ‘He was there in the mornings. To do a job of work.’

Hopeless, Newton thought, hopeless. He speeded up his questions and changed his tone altogether, using the bullying peremptory manner that came naturally to him. ‘I put it to you that you were bored with your elderly husband.’

‘That is not true.’

‘That you were bored with him, wanted to get rid of him and still enjoy his money. Isn’t that the truth?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘And you used my client as a tool for this purpose, a tool who was like putty in your hands.’

‘That is absolutely untrue,’ she said without emphasis.

There it goes, Mr Hussick thought as he listened to Newton putting to her the points about the hammer, about the plan to kill Foster and about the drive to the motor launch, to be met in every case by passionless negatives and a denial that she had been to the launch for three weeks before the murder, there goes our case. You couldn’t blame Newton, what could anybody do with a story that didn’t have the least fragment of fact to support it.

Although Tony had felt no emotion when Genevieve Foster gave evidence, the very sight of Mortimer Lands as he walked into the box and stumbled slightly over taking the oath made him so angry that he had to grip the sides of the dock to control himself. The weak delicate features, the lock of white hair conspicuous as if it had been painted on the dark head, could this possibly be what Jenny had preferred to him? And sexual jealousy was not the only cause of his anger. The thought of those mornings when this wretched little man had dictated to him in the study and he had typed out all the meaningless details from books was really too much to be borne. The prison officers behind him exchanged meaningful glances as he leaned forward, and Mr Hussick looked up with a smile which managed to be at once reassuring and reproving.

There was really very little substance to the evidence which Lands gave rapidly in a low voice, confirming that he was a second cousin of Mrs Foster, that he had worked for a public relations firm and had become a farmer after his father’s death, had sometimes visited the Fosters at the Villa Majorca, and had given Mrs Foster dinner on the night of the murder. Hardy elicited facts and times and then sat down. When Newton rose he did so this time with a flourish. He had sensed, as a counsel can do, that Lands was easy meat.