Trial by Fire (11 page)

Antony had resisted, been charged, and her guinea pig-faced employer found the case straightforward despite gaps such as the absence of a murder weapon. Helen did not: she felt that the evidence was brutally incomplete, the conclusions drawn so far woefully inadequate; she was determined to watch and see if her judgement proved correct, but she was a kind of prisoner, unable to discuss the case either at home or at work, since after a few early forays, Bailey discouraged her interest and Redwood forbade it.

Looking at Geoffrey now as he sat in an armchair after supper, reading a book, the way he was most often seen at leisure, she saw the concentration in his eyes. Sitting upright, reading a novel in hardback, while she felt in her veins the old but still new tide of love for him, she decided to speak.

`Geoffrey Bailey, I know that's a book and therefore the most precious thing on earth, but can you put it down for a minute? Talk to me, you brute. This doesn't feel like a talking house at the moment. Let's go to The Crown.'

He smiled at her with the whole of his face as if he had been waiting for his cue, stood, kissed her lightly, made for the door before she had time to draw breath. 'Come on then, woman.'

Such impressive sacrifice, putting down a book, made her gallop out of doors after him into the evening, grabbing his hand as he swung away up the street. Tradition of a sort dictated they walk to The Crown, a habit winter would change but a pleasant mile for now.

Bailey pressed her hand inside his own, put it in his pocket with the usual show of embarrassment as they walked up the road. He, who was slower to volunteer affection and all those signs of possession, responded and returned them with interest, conditioned for ever by a childhood and adult life in which they appeared to have been forbidden. Helen felt the warmth of him, and no, she would not mention Antony Sumner, not on the way. Let them simply walk in the sweet-smelling light while it lasted, along the road that had become deserted.

Then sit in the motley company of the garish bar and listen to the Featherstones fighting, or something of the kind. Normality, please, something to remind her of the daily release his company provided in assuring her she was not mad after all. Maybe she would tell him about Redwood and the humiliation of being removed from the murder case. Maybe not.

He would worry on her behalf, jealous of her professional pride. For the minute it did not matter. She was back in her native state and happy to be alive.

But it was Geoffrey himself, in some faint effort to clear the air, who shifted the conversation to forbidden ground. 'Saw your boss about our local murder,' he said once a bottle of wine was open before them. 'You know, the man without a profile, Red Squirrel.'

`Redwood,' she corrected, laughing and sensing his irritation with the man in question.

`He has his legal credentials framed on the wall in case we humble policemen should doubt them,' Bailey continued.

`Some people do doubt them,' said Helen, 'especially other lawyers. And whatever the diplomas, they don't include any in the art of conversation.'

Òr the appreciation of humour, I noticed,' Bailey added.

A pause for wine, a sigh of satisfaction, speech resumed more hurriedly. 'He told me he considered the investigation complete — a sort of well-done-chaps-but-leave-it-alone-now lecture. Considers it all wrapped up. Advance disclosure of written evidence will be presented tomorrow, only a few scientific statements outstanding. Leave it to us from now on. He's instructing Queen's Counsel and junior, of course, wouldn't condescend to tell us who, mandatory expense for murder, I suppose. Asked me if I thought Sumner would plead to manslaughter. Arrogant man, Redwood. Had you noticed that he looks like a guinea pig?'

`Yes,' said Helen, 'I had noticed.'

Ànyway, ' Bailey went on, speeding over his subject as if to subdue it, 'I told him a plea for Sumner was as likely as a good English summer.' He paused and grinned. 'I saw Mr Guinea Pig as a good vegetable gardener; that seemed about the right level.'

Ì'm hedging,' said Helen. 'I do want to talk about it and I don't, if you see what I mean. Do you think Sumner would plead guilty but provoked, or diminished responsibility, or whatever? No, I don't really mean that; you've answered me already. What I mean is, did he really do it?'

There was palpable hesitation, a long pipe-lighting and examination of wine label.

'The evidence appears to show that he did.' Carefully said.

`The evidence as far as you've told me?'

`The evidence, as far as it goes.'

`You don't believe it, Geoffrey, do you?' She subdued a rising note in her voice.

He sighed as if he'd been anticipating this conflict for the whole three weeks of its incubation. 'Yes, I do believe it. As far as I need. I believe in evidence. Nothing else works.

Speculation, doubt based on loyalty, affection, or hunches, they don't have the same validity.

Besides, it doesn't matter what I believe.'

Ì've heard you say that before, and it's the only time I catch you lying.'

He turned his brown perplexed face to hers, determined against seriousness, happy to be sitting next to her and suddenly preferring to be talking about nothing.

Òf course it's true, Helen. I record, I investigate, I repeat in court what I have found. I'm not asked for my opinion. I'm a highly trained parrot — homing pigeon, more like, carrier of messages that amount to the nearest thing you ever get to truth —as far as Red Squirrel and the whole panoply of the judiciary are concerned.'

Àll right, all right, point taken for the evasion it is. But what do you believe about Sumner?

You must believe something. You, not the parrot.'

Ì believe what I've seen. What the evidence indicates.'

`You'll drive me mad. What about Mrs Blundell, then? What was she like?'

`Hardly Sumner's type, I'd say. The only thing they had in common was a blood type.'

He was attempting to end the conversation, and she was well aware he would succeed. He was becoming remarkably skilled in doing just that.

From behind the bar, the Featherstone insults rang out, transcending the desultory conversation of the customers whose own sentences became subdued out of both deference and curiosity. 'He said a pint, Harold, not a half, you git.'

`Shut up, Bernadette, shut up, put a sock in it, will you?' — all delivered in hisses the one to the other, louder than any stage whisper. Beer drinkers always confused Harold. His face was red, tension in the fist that slammed down the drink into relative silence, frightening the customer with a glare. In the kitchen, there was a sudden resounding crash.

"William Featherstone appeared like a bolt from the blue from the kitchen door, ran across the dizzying carpet toward the stairs, darting glances to left and right as he went.

Bernadette moved from the bar towards him. He shook his fist and she stepped back, pretending she had not noticed. William paused in mid-flight on sight of Geoffrey and Helen, pirouetted, granted these familiar customers the benefit of an inane grin, and disappeared up the steps three at a time. The noise of him was thunderous.

Àggressive lad,' said Bailey.

`Poor boy,' said Helen.

Harold Featherstone shrugged comically: Bailey and Helen chuckled simultaneously at the oddity, the chuckle growing into hidden and uncontrollable giggles in the face of Bernadette's withering look. No reason for it to be so funny, but it was.

`That's why I like this place,' said Bailey, watching Harold beginning to dry a glass half full of whisky, Bernadette watching him aghast, preparing words. Helen, suddenly almost content, placed her hand on the back of Bailey's neck and laughed into his shoulder. The smell of Bailey laughing, the touch and taste of him, was like a patent faith restorer. Let them speculate about the Featherstones and the neighbours, then.

Let him win for now; she would not disturb the peace with talk of Blundells and Sumners, murders and lawyers. Dangerous ground, a smooth-surfaced cesspit. Varnish it with laughter, while in her mind there grew a dull sense of compromise. It had been the love affair to end all others; it was beginning to slip, the way of all others.

In the posh house, love was a much insulted thing. Blundell's dwelling was three-quarters of a mile from The Crown and owned by a modern man who did not think in yards but made measurements in metres for anything but grief and liquid. Liquid was brown and ordered in inches, with or without ice. John Blundell stood in a room as distant in spirit from The Crown as Mrs Blundell could have made it. She had been addicted to
Good
Housekeeping
and
Vogue
, her house bearing souvenirs of the former as much as her clothes reflected the latter.

The widower was in their bedroom, which was filled with the same ominous silence that suffused this house and filled it with accusations. His daughter was asleep, he supposed: she had retired to bed an hour since with the minimum of goodnights. The house had become speechless, his own breathing noisy. John had opened the wardrobe — fifteen metres of wardrobe —belonging to the late Mrs B. Inside there were yards of clothes whose existence she would have denied in pursuit of more; a small selection, she would have said.

She had favoured camel, cream, and black ever since her figure had reverted to youthful proportions in the last eighteen months. Before that, and for the last ten years, she had taken size sixteen and favoured fluffy pinks and reds. Expensive reds, but shrouds nevertheless. The new image had been streamlined and the new face almost sweet company.

Nevertheless he had preferred the old — less demanding, less expensive.

John Blundell moved from the wardrobe to the dressing table where jewellery spilled from a box, slightly dusty but otherwise tidy. The accompaniments reflected the clothes.

Unburnished gold was typical, earrings that resembled brass globes, but cost infinitely more, belcher chains in large but elegantly dull links, nothing shiny, the most flamboyant thing of all a double row of old pearls with a gleam only slightly less subdued than the rest.

Notable for their absence were the solid gold choker, bracelet, and gold hoops, all discreetly heavyweight and worn on the night she had left, the same plain jewellery he had described to the superintendent. Bailey, having acquired Helen's habits, had made the subject draw the objects in mind, fixing them in Blundell's eye for ever. Fixing, too, his fury at their cost. He had bought them to placate her.

She had donned the gear of more established riches, turned herself into an old-style lady of the manor, with none of the traditional parsimony. The habits of dress had not extended to fornication with the gardener, not as far as her spouse knew, in any event. She had found herself another touch of class instead, had she not? She wore her precious dull metals in rebellion against diamonds, tried to improve her mind, she said. And then taken up poetry in motion in the form of some bloody man who read it. And thought John had not noticed.

John Blundell moved back to the wardrobe. Looked at the line of neatly pressed clothes: lean linen for summer, cashmeres for cool evenings, nothing if not organized, colour against colour in fully ironed harmony, not like his own shirts, buggered by the cleaning lady.

He took a dress from a hanger, removed the belt, looked at both, then inserted the spike of the belt at the neck of the dress and tore it from collar to hem. Rich cloth ripping made a satisfying sound. With slow deliberation he destroyed two silk blouses in the same fashion, hung everything back in the same wardrobe as neatly as before, along with the other clothes, some already torn, most not, and walked unsteadily to his side of the kingsize mattress.

On the reproduction table stood the whisky decanter, which he grasped in one pudgy fist. Now that she was gone — dead, if not buried — at least he could drink in bed. He might as well have done so for the last four years. Sweet fuck all else going on, always moaning on about housekeeping while spending all this. He wept into the pillow: You could have had anything you wanted; I told you I didn't mind. You kept wanting me to talk to you all the time., and then you wouldn’t talk at all

You deserved what you got

Post was slow. That was why it fell to Amanda Scott at the behest of Redwood, whom she would never have compared with a guinea pig, to deliver a copy of the evidence in the case of R. v. Sumner into the offices of Messrs Amor and Harmoner, Branston High Street.

The title of the firm suggested love to all men with harmony thrown in for free, but Mr Amor was dead and if his name had ever influenced the practice with sentiment it was not apparent now. Henry Harmoner was the mainstay, a deceptively slow-mannered man who was grateful to John Blundell for the swift turnover of houses in Branston and thereabouts, which had trebled his conveyancing practice and his clientele. He was not yet grateful for the legal aid clients who followed, leaving these to his brother George, who for reasons best known to himself, appeared to like that distasteful kind of thing.

Henry had been less than delighted to discover that George was the inheritor of Antony Sumner, murderer of Mrs Blundell, whom Henry himself had always fancied, especially at size sixteen: fine figure of a woman before she went thin. Been to dinner in his house after all. Husband author of much good fortune while remaining a frightful little shit, mean as hell when standing a round, but not to be displeased.

So Henry ranted briefly at George for accepting the client and hoped John Blundell would understand how business was business and all that, the way he usually did without great show of scruple and hopping from one leg to the other. Henry and George Harmoner quarrelling, even as briefly as they did, resembled two bulls locking horns and swaying around with a certain lack of conviction, for the sake of an audience, grunting every now and then.

Both spoke in short sentences while beetling their very full eyebrows, the only characteristic of a family not renowned for anything else except a healthy pomposity. This characteristic was passed on to all clients as a kind of reassurance. George was the brighter of the two, which made him very bright indeed although less prosperous for his slightly younger thirty-three years, graced with middle-aged stockiness nevertheless. He resembled his brother in weight, short phrases, and a perfect if painless passion for the way he earned his daily bread and wine. 'Nothing like the law,' he enthused once. 'Nothing like it, Henry, nothing at all.'