The Man Whose Dream Came True (20 page)

At first Mr Hussick was sceptical about the telephone call from an inquiry agency he had never heard of, and one with a ridiculous name at that, but the excitement at the other end of the line communicated itself to him during the conversation, and when he had finished talking he picked up the receiver again and rang Magnus Newton who turned out to be attending a legal dinner in London. Newton was not pleased to be called away to the telephone, but when he heard what Hussick had to say he agreed to leave after the loyal toast and before the speech. He was in fact not altogether sorry to miss the speech, which was to be given by a retired Lord of Appeal renowned for his prolixity. The four of them met at eleven o’clock that night in Newton’s chambers.

Clarence Newhouse was a blustering red-faced man who wore a Guards tie. Newton listened to him for a couple of minutes and then said, ‘This is the man who got the information? Then I’d like to have the story from him.’

Dimmock had been sitting in a corner, overwhelmed by the occasion. The visit to a barrister’s chambers late at night, the pat on the back from the Chief and his warm words about good work, and now this request that he should take the centre of the stage – what a tale he would have to tell the wife tomorrow. He moved forward from his corner seat into the circle of light cast by Newton’s desk lamp. As he did so he sneezed.

‘You’ve got a cold,’ Newton said accusingly. He produced a little inhaler from his jacket and sniffed noisily up each nostril. ‘Well?’

If there was one thing that Dimmock knew he could do, it was to make a clear and succinct report, and afterwards he felt that on this evening he had really excelled himself. The great man lighted a cigar and offered the box to the rest of them (the Chief took one and lit up, but Dimmock felt that it would have been presumptuous in him to smoke at the same time as the Chief), but his keen piggy little eyes looked steadily at Dimmock even while the mouth puffed smoke from its fat tube. When he had finished Dimmock waited in awe to hear what the experts would say about it. The Chief began to expand on all the trouble that had been taken by the agency, but he was cut short by the solicitor, Mr Hussick, whose eyebrows seemed to be climbing up into his scalp.

The great man opened his mouth. What would he say?

‘Take anything for those colds, do you? Is it on your chest? Or just the nose?’

‘Nose. And throat.’

‘This may help.’ He wrote something on a piece of paper, pushed it across the desk. ‘Get it made up. Use it myself.’

For a moment Dimmock thought he must be light-headed, and that he was really in a doctor’s surgery. Then Newton continued. ‘This woman, Russell, she’ll give evidence in Court? And the boatyard man, what’s his name, Clegg?’

‘Clynes,’ said Mr Hussick.

‘I’ve got their signed statements.’ Dimmock drew the papers from his briefcase.

‘That was intelligent.’ Dimmock glowed. Newton’s words seemed to be a justification of his whole career.

‘All our operatives are intelligent,’ the Chief said with a jolly laugh. Newton swivelled to direct on him a gaze that was by no means wholly friendly.

‘Who’s paying you?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t reveal that.’ The jolly laugh was slightly uneasy. ‘Professional ethics.’

‘Never mind, doesn’t matter.’

‘I believe my employer is – ah – a friend of the accused.’

‘Didn’t know he had any friends.’ To Dimmock’s bewilderment Mr Hussick and the Chief laughed heartily as though this was a good joke. ‘We had a firm on to this and they turned up nothing, eh, Hussick.’ Mr Hussick nodded. He seemed to find this amusing too. ‘Must remember you next time. But insist that they put Mr Dimmock on to it, Hussick, insist on that.’

Newton’s hand fell like an accolade on to Dimmock’s shoulder as he said that they would need him also in Court. That was an exciting prospect, but Dimmock afterwards thought of the hour he had spent in those chambers, rather than the session in Court, as the crowning point of his career. He had the prescription made up, and although it had no effect upon his cold he treasured the piece of paper to the end of his life.

When they had gone Newton and Hussick got down to it. After Clynes and Sarah Russell had given evidence it would be necessary to recall Mrs Foster, and notification of this must be given to the prosecution. Then there was the matter of serving a subpoena on these two new witnesses. Hussick nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled. Newton’s cigar was out before they had finished.

‘About Mrs Foster,’ he said at the end. ‘She’s still going to be a tough nut. She was in Court today. I don’t want her there tomorrow.’

‘I’ll see to it.’

But there was no need for him to see to it.

‘I’ll drive.’ Jenny held out her hand for the keys.

‘The hell you will.’ Lands opened the car door and sat down heavily in the driver’s seat.

‘You shouldn’t drive. The breathalyser. If the police stop us–’

‘They won’t. Are you getting in or not?’

She got in and sat sideways on the seat with the door half open. She had begun a sentence saying that she was still sober and he was not when he started the car and it shot forward so that she had to slam the door to save herself from falling out. He went out of the drive into the road, ignoring a car which swerved and hooted.

‘Let me drive.’

He pushed down the accelerator. They were going at sixty. ‘You know what’s wrong with you? You don’t like men, you hate them, want to take everything away from them. You’re the boss, they dance when you tell them.’ He muttered something else.

‘What?’

‘Not going to drive my car,’ he shouted. ‘Going to drive my own bloody car.’ He turned on the radio and the Beatles came shrieking out of it. He hooted a Jaguar in the fast lane, then cut inside it just as the Jaguar moved into the slower lane. Lands tugged at the steering wheel to get back into the fast lane and the car responded. Their tyres screeched, the Jaguar driver yelled something as they passed him. Almost for the first time in her life she was frightened and cried out some words that he did not hear above the sound of the radio. But anger was an emotion that came to her more easily than fear, and as she heard him begin to sing some drunken accompaniment to the music she felt an access of rage against this feeble sot who was unable to carry through the small part given to him in her plan. She cried out that he should stop the car and leaned over trying to wrench the steering wheel away from him.

Mortimer held on to it, and raising his left hand chopped it down hard on hers. The cry she gave was pleasant to him. Did she think that he was not a man? Yet at the same time he wanted to tell her that he was sorry. He turned his head to say so when he heard her cry out, saw that they had strayed into the second lane, and heard the blast of the Jaguar’s horn. Again he tugged at the steering, but this time the car over-responded. They went straight through the central barrier into the path of an oncoming lorry.

As they broke the barrier Jenny had time to feel one last quick surge of anger against the absurdity of what was happening. How was it possible to make plans when they were at the mercy of other people? The last thing she saw was Mortimer take his hands off the wheel and put them over his face.

The lorry struck the car head on, turning it over and over in the road. The driver was carrying a load of machine tools, and the lorry suffered nothing worse than a badly damaged radiator. The collision forced open the passenger door of the car and Jenny was thrown out into the road. It was said at the inquest that she had died instantly of a broken neck, but her body went directly in front of an oncoming car in the middle lane, and his wheels passed over it. The steering wheel went through Lands’ chest, and he was trapped in the crumpled car. He was still alive when the police arrived, and it seemed to the sergeant that he was trying to say something, but in fact he never spoke. Before they had cut through the pieces of the bodywork that were holding him, he was dead.

Tony stared at Mr Hussick and repeated the word. ‘Dead.’

‘It creates, let’s be frank about it, an unusual situation.’ Mr Hussick was not a man easily overborne by events, but that late session with Newton and then the news about Mrs Foster had momentarily quelled even his exuberance.

Tony stared at the short paragraph headed:
Mrs Foster Dies in Car Crash,
and read it again.

‘We would of course have recalled her. And Lands. Now that won’t be possible.’ Mr Hussick gave a slight cough in deprecation at this statement of the obvious. ‘But the vital thing is the new evidence. I had a conference with Mr Newton last night long past the witching hour–’

‘What’s that?’ The young man looked quite dazed. Perhaps it was not surprising.

‘Long past midnight. A very late night, and a very early morning. I have somebody now talking to Miss Russell.’ Jones did not know the name, and he had to explain who she was. ‘I don’t mind telling you that Mr Newton is much more confident today than he was yesterday.’ He managed a little dance with the eyebrows. Jones nodded. ‘The firm involved is called the Second To None Agency. I’m bound to say that they discovered things which we had missed. I take it a friend of yours employed them?’ Jones said he didn’t know. Altogether, Mr Hussick was not sorry when the interview was over and he was able, as he said, to leave his client to digest the good news.

Those who were living are now dead.
Those words – were they a line from a poem? – remained in Tony’s mind after the lawyer had left him. Yesterday he had looked across the Court at the pale face and had felt hatred. Now that he knew he would never see her again the hatred had gone, everything had gone except a series of pictures which ran through his mind like lantern slides, showing their first meeting, the interview at the Villa Majorca, the bedroom scenes when her abandonment to pleasure had appeared complete. When people die those closely linked to them reconstitute their personalities in terms of what they wish to remember, and with her death Jenny became again instantly the woman who had loved him and whose plans were all devised for the fulfilment of their love. The dream of their life together in Caracas was omnipresent, a dream all the sweeter because now it would never know fulfilment in reality. Nothing could take the perfection of the dream away from him.

He had not really thought about the way in which the new evidence had been obtained. It was not until he was on the way to Court and one of the police officers asked how things were going and said that if there was anything he could do for Tony without stepping out of line he’d be glad to do it, that the mystery was suddenly clear to him. ‘If there’s anything I can do–’ he remembered those as being the General’s very words, and in spite of Tony’s reaction he had obviously gone on to do it, he had gone to the inquiry agency. Tears welled in Tony’s eyes. He murmured: ‘He’s a good man, a very good man.’

‘What did you say?’

He shook his head, said there was nothing he wanted done, and wiped away the tears. As the police officers agreed afterwards, he was a bit of a soppy type.

Sarah Russell wore her best clothes for the occasion, topped by a hat ornamented by red and white cherries. She followed Dimmock, whose evidence was confined to an account of his discoveries and the fact that he had interviewed Sarah. She was intimidated at first by the formality of it all and the fact that the lawyers were dressed so strangely, but the little man asked her such simple questions, about how long she had worked for Mrs Foster and what kind of work it was, that she soon felt at ease and even began to enjoy herself. After the preliminaries Newton got down to business.

‘Now, Mrs Russell, I want you to cast your mind back to that Friday morning, the morning of the murder. Is there anything you particularly remember about that morning?’

‘Something funny happened. I didn’t think much of it at the time.’

‘Yes?’

‘There was this bit of carpet in the hall, you see. It was all rucked up because some of the tacks had come out of it, so I thought I’ll tack that down. Mr Foster, he was no good at that kind of thing.’

‘Yes, I see. So what did you do?’

‘I looked for the hammer, it was always kept in the tool box out in the scullery. But it wasn’t there. So I spoke to Mrs Foster.’

‘Will you tell us what she said.’

‘Told me not to bother, she had a headache. And mind you, the day before she’d been saying she must get it done.’ Sarah looked round with an air of triumph and touched her hair, which she feared was untidy.

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I thought, what’s happened to it, must be somewhere, and eventually I found it. In one of the kitchen drawers, where it had no business to be.’

‘Will you tell us how you found it?’

‘It was wrapped in tissue paper.’

These words created some interest. The judge made a note. Hardy listened with a frown. Newton repeated the words and asked if she could remember anything further.

‘Yes, I called out to Mrs Foster and said “I’ve found it” and I was just taking off the paper when she came out into the kitchen and told me to leave it alone. She was quite sharp.’

‘You saw the hammer?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Did you touch it?’

‘No, I was taking off the wrapping when she said that. Said again she had a headache and told me to leave it. So I did.’

‘Exhibit fifteen, please,’ Newton said. The hammer was handed to Sarah. ‘Is that the hammer?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Had you ever known it to be put away like that before?’

‘Never.’

‘Can you tell the Court why you haven’t mentioned this previously.’

‘I didn’t think anything more about it. And nobody asked me about anything funny. Not till Mr Dimmock.’

The mention of Dimmock’s name launched Newton nicely on to the question of the raincoat. This was the really vital piece of evidence, for Sarah had recognised the fabric as coming from a raincoat that Mrs Foster had bought a week before her husband’s death, and Dimmock had confirmed this with the shop from which it had been purchased. The inference was overwhelming that she had visited the
Daisy Mae
after buying it, although in the witness box she had sworn otherwise. And there was something else, which Newton had been allowed to bring out without objection from Hardy. There were spots on the raincoat, and an urgent forensic examination had revealed that they were blood. The blood group had been identified as AB which was Foster’s blood group, although it was Mrs Foster’s blood group too.

In ordinary circumstances this information would have been kept from the prosecution, but the circumstances here were remarkable. When he heard of Mrs Foster’s death Newton thought it his duty to make the situation known to Hardy. There had been a conference that morning at which, slightly to Newton’s surprise, Hardy had refused to acknowledge that the new evidence made much difference to the case against Jones. But this was typical of Hardy who, for all his air of languor, was not inclined to drop a case once he had his teeth into it. Now he rose and looked for a moment silently at Sarah Russell, who returned his look with some belligerence.

‘Did you like Mrs Foster?’

‘We never had any argument.’

‘But did you like her, Mrs Russell?’

‘Didn’t like or dislike. She kept herself to herself, didn’t talk much.’

‘You know that she died tragically in a car accident last night, so that she cannot comment on your story?’

‘It isn’t a story. It’s the truth.’

‘I’m sure you are saying what you believe to be true.’ Hardy smiled at the witness, but the smile came out as ironic rather than friendly. ‘You say you fixed the date on which this hammer incident occurred as the morning of the murder. How can you be sure?’

‘It’s not a day I’m likely to forget.’

‘I suppose not,’ Hardy said humbly. ‘And you remember all the other details too. Are you sure the hammer was wrapped in tissue paper?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘It wasn’t just lying on it, with the tissue below?’

‘I said before it was wrapped round in tissue.’

‘So you did.’ Hardy was apologetic. ‘How did you know it was a hammer?’

‘How did I know – I don’t understand.’

‘It’s very simple.’ He spoke as though to a child. ‘You opened the drawer. There was some tissue paper. What made you think it was a hammer?’

‘I didn’t – I don’t–’ She made another false start and the judge told her to take her time. ‘I suppose I was poking about in the drawer. I don’t quite remember.’

‘You don’t remember that. Do you remember if you pulled aside the tissue?’

‘I must have, mustn’t I? To see the hammer.’

‘But you don’t remember doing it?’ Suddenly, sharply, he said, ‘You did see a hammer, you’re sure of that?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure.’

‘You saw the head of it? Or the handle?’

These are silly questions, she wanted to say, I know I saw the hammer and so do you, but she knew she must not say that. ‘I’m not quite sure.’

‘Not quite sure. But you identified the hammer, Mrs Russell.’

‘It was the same hammer. I know it was.’

‘Yet you can’t be sure how much of it you saw. Well, we will leave it at that.’ Hardy smiled at her again, then his voice hardened. ‘You did forget, though, didn’t you?’

She looked at him, confused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You’d been questioned already. And you didn’t mention it.’

‘Nobody asked me about anything funny. Not until I saw Mr Dimmock.’

‘Mr Dimmock, ah yes, we have heard Mr Dimmock,’ Hardy said in a voice implying that they wanted to hear no more of him. He went on to establish that she had seen the accused with Mrs Foster and that there was no sign of friendship between them, that the Fosters had never quarrelled in her hearing, and that Mortimer Lands had seemed on good terms with Mr Foster. But Hardy did not press this, nor did he ask more than perfunctory questions about the raincoat. His interest was not in demonstrating Mrs Foster’s innocence, but in showing Jones’ guilt.