Piper had decided that this was the only way in which they might rescue the business. Even then, he was not sure it would work. De Courcy was to take the blame for everything. He was the sacrificial lamb, slaughtered to keep Piper afloat. ‘Think of it like this, Edmund,’ Piper had said to him as they stared in horror at the dinner menu in their Wolverhampton retreat on Saturday evening, ‘greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his partnership for his friend. I can keep you on as a sleeping partner. I’ll pay whatever it takes to bring your mother and your sisters back from Corsica. You will still get a share of the profits if we survive. If we give in now the entire value of our stock will simply disappear. Nobody will ever buy any of it. They’ll think they’re all bloody fakes. It’s our only chance.’
At a quarter past nine William Alaric Piper made his way slowly along Old Bond Street to his newly named gallery. He was wearing a new suit in dark grey. There was an orchid in his buttonhole. He nodded genially to his acquaintances. He was going to bluff it out. Already at the back of his mind he could feel a strategy emerging for handling his clients. He sat down at his desk and waited for the American invasion.
By the same hour a long queue had formed around the entrance to the public gallery of the Central Criminal Court. There were law students come to watch the last day of what was bound to be a famous trial in the annals of London’s jurisprudence. Maybe they would read about the case in faded red leather volumes in years to come when they were senior members of their profession, Queen’s Counsel at least, if not High Court Judges. Today they could see it for themselves and tell their future juniors that they had watched all the proceedings in person. There were drifters, people who always turned up to watch a great procession or a military parade because they had nothing better to do. There were phalanxes of society ladies whose loud greetings echoed up and down the streets.
‘Darling, haven’t seen you since Freddy’s party!’
‘They say that Mr Pugh is frightfully good-looking!’
‘Somebody told me at the Devonshires’ that the police know de Courcy did it. They’re just about to arrest him.’
‘Nonsense, darling. Everybody knows that poor man Buckley was the murderer. Pugh’s just trying to confuse the jury.’
At twenty past nine a dishevelled-looking Johnny Fitzgerald burst into Charles Augustus Pugh’s chambers. Pugh was deep in conversation with Powerscourt, fastening his gold watch chain into place, making final adjustments to his wig. Fitzgerald thrust two sheets of paper into Pugh’s hand.
‘That’s the Italian connection,’ he said, looking around desperately for coffee. ‘Got some of it from Italian newspapermen here in London. Got the rest from a man who’d worked as a footman at the house in Rome. Man drinks like a fish, maybe a bloody whale. Had to keep refilling his glass, if you follow me.’
Pugh read it quickly and placed it carefully at the top of his papers. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’
The judge, Mr Justice Browne, had had his hair trimmed over the weekend. He always tried to have a haircut before he gave his summing up and pronounced sentence on his victims. Powerscourt had heard somebody refer to him over the weekend as Hanging Browne. The jury looked refreshed after their two days away from court. The foreman was wearing a smart suit, as if his wife had told him he must look his best with all those press men watching. Horace Aloysius Buckley looked as though he had hardly slept at all. His face was gaunt, his eyes staring from their sockets. But he held himself well on this, the last day of his trial. The area reserved for the gentlemen of the press was meant to accommodate six scribes at most. There were eleven of them there this morning, crammed tightly together like galley slaves at their oars, fresh notebooks at the ready. The judge glared at them balefully as if he was thinking of reducing their number. The journalists avoided his gaze and began scribbling on their pads. The public gallery was crammed to the rafters, a long line waiting outside in case some of those present decided to leave.
Charles Augustus Pugh, veteran of many a courtroom drama, was feeling rather nervous that morning. He looked at his tall glass and decided to wait.
‘Recall Mrs Horace Buckley!’
The society ladies peered forward to see what she was wearing. The rustle of their skirts sounded like a small breeze blowing through Mr Justice Browne’s courtroom.
‘Mrs Buckley, forgive me if I just take you through some of the details of your friendship with Christopher Montague.’
Rosalind Buckley was wearing a long dress of very deep grey, with a small black hat. The colours suited her. She looked like a widow in mourning.
‘You had known Mr Montague for some fifteen months before he died, is that correct?’
‘It is,’ said Rosalind Buckley in a firm voice.
‘And could you remind us what plans the two of you had made for your future?’ Pugh was at his silkiest, talking as if he had just met Mrs Buckley sitting next to him at a fashionable dinner party.
‘We were going to live together in Italy,’ she said. ‘Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, was going to write there.’
‘You were going to live there out of wedlock? Or out of wedlock as long as your husband was alive?’
The newspapermen looked at each other in amazement. Yet another possibility crossed their minds, far faster than it struck anybody else in the public gallery.
‘We were,’ said Rosalind Buckley, staring at the floor beneath the witness box.
‘Were you planning to have children with Mr Montague, Mrs Buckley? Bastard children born on a foreign shore?’
‘Objection, my lord, objection.’ Sir Rufus Fitch had been reflecting over the weekend that he had let Pugh get away with far too much. Today would be different. ‘The question is purely hypothetical. It has no bearing on the case.’
‘Mr Pugh?’ The judge turned to the defence.
‘It is our contention, my lord, that such questions may have featured more and more heavily in Mr Montague’s mind in the period before his death.’
‘Objection overruled. But I warn you, Mr Pugh, that I shall expect some evidence from you that this was the case.’
‘Yes, my lord, I believe we shall be able to satisfy you on that score. I have no more questions for Mrs Buckley for the moment. With your permission, my lord, I would like to call Miss Alice Bridge.’
The judge grunted and fiddled with his pens.
‘I, Alice Bridge, do solemnly swear that the evidence I shall give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
Powerscourt looked around the visitors in the public gallery. Was the formidable Mrs Bridge in court? Pugh was several steps ahead of him. He had already spotted Mrs Bridge from Powerscourt’s description, staring at the proceedings through her lorgnette, her vast bosom protruding into the courtroom. He edged a pace or two to his left, blocking out all sight of mother.
‘Miss Bridge,’ Pugh began, ‘I believe you too were a friend of Christopher Montague?’
The girl blushed slightly. ‘I was.’
‘And how long had your friendship been going on?’
‘A little over four months.’ Alice Bridge had brought a diary to court in case she needed it, a diary that detailed every single meeting she ever had with Christopher Montague.