“I did say somethin’ like that.”
“Thank you. One final question. You cannotsay with any certainty that the man crouched over the victim wasthe defendant, Mr. Langford?”
“I could not, sir.”
Marc concluded by requesting permission torecall Crenshaw. Thornton looked puzzled, but not worried. He didnot even bother to rebut. No member of the jury would believe thatit had not been Brodie, in view of the lad’s own statement. And hewould tidy up the time-line and sequence of events in hissummation. But for Marc the departure times were significant. IfCrenshaw had been only three minutes behind Fullarton, he could notonly have witnessed the punch to the cheek but also heard enough torealize who Duggan was – and take the decision to finish him offafter Brodie ran.
Tobias Budge drew on his vast experience asfriendly tapster when he took the stand, smiling most cooperativelyand nodding knowingly at the prosecutor’s questions, as if theywere part of the natural order and begged answers that were obviousand incontrovertible. Thornton led him smoothly through the tale hehad spun for Cobb: he had gone down to the wine-cellar about aquarter to ten to look for a case of French wine, happened to peerout the tiny window looking onto the alley, and noticed two pair oflegs involved in a scuffle.
“And there were bodies attached to theselegs?” Thornton said with a nice smile for the jury.
“I assumed there had to be,” Budge said,“though the window wasn’t high enough fer me to see ‘em.”
Budge happily went on to say that he hadheard loud voices coming from one or both combatants, assumed hewas witnessing yet another drunken punch-up out there, and so wentback to his task.
“And then?”
“Maybe four or five minutes later, no more,I’m back in that part of the cellar again, and I peek out to see ifthe fight’s over.”
“But it wasn’t merely a punch-up?”
The plaster grin on Budge’s face dissolved.“No, sir. I seen a big stick or cane bein’ swung real hard, an’slammin’ down inta the head of the fella lyin’ face-down on theground. It was awful.”
A shudder ran through the galleries and thejury-box.
“Was the victim trying to escape thesedastardly, murderous blows?”
Budge actually hesitated for the first time,as if he had temporarily lost his place in the script. “I don’tknow . . . I can’t remember. I guess I was just lookin’ at thatcane slammin’ down.”
“And you say that no more than four or fiveminutes passed between the two events – that is, your seeing twomen grappling and then, later, one of them striking the other witha stick?”
“That’s right, sir.” The grin was back.
Thornton was now pleased to turn Budge overto the defense. In his opinion, Budge with his first sighting hadconfirmed for the jury Fullarton’s description of the grappling andshouting, conveniently provided four or five minutes in whichCrenshaw’s account of a fallen man and a crouching one seemedplausible, and then returned to become horrified witness to adeliberate homicide. Sir Peregrine would be brought on last to tellabout someone dashing wildly away up the alley.
Budge looked warily over at Marc. His wifewould have told him about her being cross-examined over theincident with Duggan in the taproom, and he no doubt feared adirect attack.
Thornton, of course, had skipped over a gooddeal of what Budge had told Cobb during his interview. The veteranbarrister, however, was not surprised that his neophyte adversarywent straight to it.
“You have described for us, Mr. Budge, whatappeared to be a cold-blooded and vicious assault. Did you goimmediately to the alley to try and prevent further blows beingstruck or to determine whether the victim was in fact dead?”
Budge was quick to respond. “’Course I did.Whaddya take me for? I didn’t say nothin’ about it because Mr.Thornton never asked me.”
“Just answer the counsel’s questions, Mr.Budge.”
“Tell us, then, what you did in that regard,”Marc said.
“I run to the cellar doors that open up intothe alley, but I couldn’t push ‘em open. They often jam from theinside, and I usually haveta go outside to open ‘em.”
“And did you?”
“Not right away. I looked around fer acrowbar. My heart was beatin’ a mile a minute. I couldn’t find it.I run back to the window. There’s only the fella lyin’ there on theground. Where the moonlight hit his head, I could see blood an’brains leakin’ out.”
This seemed like a self-serving embellishmentof what he had told Cobb, but it was, possibly, the truth. Cobb hadadmitted being somewhat hostile in his interrogation of the burlybarkeep, and may have cut him off before he got his whole storyout. It was also possible that Budge did get himself out throughthose horizontal double-doors and administered the beating himself.But Marc was not ready to go there yet, nor give the prosecutionany sign that he intended to.
“So you assumed he was dead?”
“Alas, sir, I did. And I was plannin’ to goupstairs and out to the alley, but I hadn’t got to the wine, and Ifound myself tryin’ to calm down a crew of rowdy sailors in thetaproom, an’ by the time I did, I seen the constable comin’ in thedoor an’ callin’ fer somebody to come back into the alley withhim.”
“So you knew then that the police haddiscovered the body?”
“Yes. An’ the wife an’ Nestor Peck went withhim, leavin’ me to tend the bar an’ deal with that ungrateful mobof sailors. I did try to do the right thing.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Marc noddedsympathetically, though he wished he could stride across the spacebetween them and give the fellow a good thrashing on Etta’s behalf.“Nothing more, Milord, though I may need to recall this witnesslater on.”
Budge grimaced through his smile. No doubt hethought that Marc would be recalling him to go after theimplications of his altercation with Duggan, and he must have beenwondering why Marc didn’t ask him whether, in that bright shaft ofmoonlight, he had not recognized what he could see of Duggan’sface. Well, let him stew a little, Marc thought.
The pompous baronet was next. Thornton’sattempt to lead him through his testimony with the affableefficiency he had used on the previous witness soon foundered, forSir Peregrine Shuttleworth’s responses were long-winded, tediousand rambling. He too claimed he had packed up and left the clubrooma mere four or five minutes after Crenshaw had done so, but he feltobliged to add that it would have been sooner if he had not had tobear the crushing responsibilities of club chairman andorchestrater of amateur theatricals. When Thornton finally got himcloaked and ready to depart, Sir Peregrine was pleased to reportthat he had indeed looked out the cloakroom window (“There was amoon out there that could have shone upon the lovers in Act Five ofThe Merchant!”). What he observed in its glow was a manrunning away north up the alley, with a hat in his hand. No, he didnot see a body lying in a pool of blood on the ground, as his “eyeswere on the stars.”
“You say, sir, that the fellow was slim andagile – and hatless?”
“The hat was flapping in his hand – must’vebeen hard to keep it on, running away that fast.”
“Did you get any impression of the colour ofhis hair – in the Shakespearean moonlight you so eloquentlydescribed for us?”
“By Jove, I did, come to think of it. It wasa very pale colour, very pale.”
“A gentleman with a slim build and very palehair,” Thornton murmured just loud enough for the jury to hear.“Not unlike the gentleman up there in the dock?” he added moreforcefully and swung his head up and around to indicate Brodie onthe far side of the room. Sir Peregrine’s gaze followed, of course,as did that of the jury.
Thornton sat down, well pleased with himself,for he had put in place the final detail of his elaborately spuntale. Over a fifteen-to-twenty-minute period, someone very likeBrodie had been observed arguing with Duggan (Fullarton), grapplingwith Duggan (Fullarton and Budge), crouching over a prostrateDuggan (Crenshaw), clubbing Duggan (Budge again), and hightailingit up the alley and away from the scene of the crime(Shuttleworth). With much of this admitted in Brodie’s ownstatement!