Sir Jasper was now holding his hand up, rather in the manner of a traffic policeman.
‘Forgive me, Mr Nash, were there any strangers you could see, milling about in the crowds?’
Sir Jasper thought that the only viable defence Pugh might be able to run would be The Mysterious Stranger and he was determined to nip it in the bud if he could.
‘Strangers?’ said Willoughby Nash, and he began stroking his chin. ‘Well, as my wife told you this morning, there were some people one didn’t know. It’s not possible to have made the acquaintance of all the groom’s family before these occasions, but the Colville people looked absolutely fine to me. Quite a lot of them you’d be happy to go hunting with. A lot of medals on display, one or two people who’d obviously been wounded in the Boer War. You’d be hard pressed to find a more respectable body of people. I’d have been more than happy to propose the lot of them for my own club in Norwich.’
‘I see,’ said Sir Jasper, asking himself briefly if Willoughby Nash would propose him for the club. ‘Could you tell us now about the sequence of events leading up to the murder?’
Pugh suddenly noticed the prisoner in the dock opposite Willoughby Nash, the low wooden walls keeping him in, the stairs just visible to bring Cosmo Colville up and down from the holding cells below. He had been slumped in his chair for most of the day. Now he was leaning forward intently as if this was the witness he was most interested in.
‘Of course.’ Any slight nervousness Nash might have had at the beginning had gone now. Pugh wondered if this witness might not be too grand for the jury. They might prefer plainer men and plainer fare.
‘There was a lot of trouble getting the guests to sit down in their proper places,’ Willoughby Nash went on. ‘I thought at the time it was rather like trying to get the horses lined up in the correct order before a race at Fakenham or Ascot or one of those places. There’s always some damned filly that won’t get into line. This jostling was still going on, guests not yet in their proper stalls if you follow me, when I heard the shot. It’s an unmistakable noise even if it was a bit muffled with the people all talking at the top of their voices. Next thing I know our butler Charlie Healey takes me to the room with the body and the silent figure of Cosmo Colville. We sent for a doctor and the police and all that sort of thing.’
Sir Jasper’s hand had risen slightly once more in the stop the traffic position.
‘And what was your impression, there on the spot? What did you think had happened, Mr Nash?’
‘Well,’ said the owner of Brympton Hall, ‘call me simple, call me naive, but I know what I thought then. It seemed to me to be perfectly obvious. I said to Georgina after the doctor had taken a look at the corpse and before the police arrived, “Cosmo’s killed his brother,” I said. “Randolph’s lying on the floor with blood running out of him like it might run out of a side of beef cooked rare, and Cosmo’s sitting in that chair like someone’s just cast a spell over him.” As I said before, that was my opinion then and it remains so to this day. All these theories about strangers and so on aren’t worth a brass farthing.’
Pugh had been wondering for some time if he should cross-examine or not. Another note arrived from Richard Napier. ‘The trouble is that there is really only one word for knowledge in the English language. In this case the knowledge that Randolph is dead in English seems to be the same sort of knowledge as Cosmo killed him. But it’s not. Could you try Plato? Episteme is knowledge, Randolph is dead, doxa is opinion. Cosmo killed him is doxa. Socrates often droned on about the difference. Too difficult for the jury? Flatter them into thinking they’re more intelligent than they are?’ Pugh looked across at his junior. He could suddenly see him lying on the grass by the Cam, volume of Plato in hand, progressing serenely towards his double first in Philosophy before he changed over to the law.
‘Just to sum up…’ Sir Jasper was keen to keep Willoughby Nash out of the clutches of Charles Augustus Pugh for as long as possible. This judge was always anxious to get away at close of play. ‘You’ve made it very clear what your views were on the day of the murder. In all the events since, the visits from the police and the detectives and so on, you say you haven’t changed your mind?’
‘No, sir. Just take a look at the facts on the ground. No guessing and speculating like these shifty young men who write for the newspapers nowadays. Get on the horse and head for the fox, that’s what I always say. No point wondering if you’ve got the wrong mount. Waste of time.’
Charles Augustus Pugh decided to take a chance. It was risky, he thought, rather like bringing the spinners on after only four overs on a fast wicket suited to the quick bowlers.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, I would like to remind you, if I may, subject to his lordship having no objections, of one particular element in the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher called Plato which I believe has bearing on this case.’
Pugh looked attentively at the judge. ‘As long as your detour doesn’t last too long, Mr Pugh,’ said Mr Justice Black, smiling slightly. ‘I always liked Plato at school, but that man Socrates sometimes went on too long.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ said Pugh, aware that Sir Jasper was rattling with fury beside him like a ship’s boiler.
‘I just want to remind you, gentlemen of the jury, of the distinction Plato drew between knowledge and opinion. Episteme in Greek meant knowledge, hard knowledge, hard facts. Randolph Colville is dead, that is episteme, the doctors and the pathologists would confirm it. Opinion for the Greeks was doxa. Opinion was what people believed to be true. It might be or it might not. Doxa, opinion, did not have the same weight as episteme, knowledge. Cosmo Colville killed his brother is opinion, doxa.
‘So, Mr Nash, do you accept Plato’s distinctions between different sorts of knowledge? And would you accept that Randolph is dead is not in the same category of knowledge as Cosmo killed him?’
Willoughby Nash had seen too many courtroom dramas in his own city to fall into the trap of trading philosophical niceties with the lead counsel for the defence.
‘You can stick to Plato, Mr Pugh. I thought his works were boring and unintelligible when I had to read them at university. I thought Cosmo killed him, as I said, and I still do. You just had to look at him sitting in that chair with the gun in his hand and a faraway look in his eye to realize what was going on.’
Not even Plato, Pugh reflected, could change Willoughby Nash’s mind. He wondered if the man’s bombastic manner might put the jury off. Perhaps they wouldn’t want to be on the same side. He wondered if he could launch one last question that might show the man in the worst possible light. He was aware of the judge shuffling his papers and gathering up his collection of pencils great and small.
‘And what, Mr Nash,’ he asked, ‘do you think of the people who read the matter differently from yourself, who think that while it is perfectly possible that the defendant killed his brother, nonetheless we have no definite proof that he did so and therefore he should be given the benefit of the doubt?’
Willoughby Nash had had enough. Questions to his wife that lacked what he thought of as the proper respect. Some damn Greek philosopher dragged into the case to confuse things. Willoughby Nash knew perfectly well what he would have done if he had been a member of the jury of Athenian citizens who tried Socrates for corrupting the young. He would have voted for the prosecution, for the death penalty and the richly deserved glass of the fatal hemlock. He would, furthermore, have burnt all the books written by that man Plato as well if he could. The life of the nation’s young, he felt, would be better and happier without philosophy of any kind.