Lockwood admitted ordering Morton off his land in September after he’d found him “interfering” with Barbara. He blamed him for her pregnancy and suicide. He’d stupidly failed to notify the police that Morton had worked for him. But he denied murdering him. And he denied possessing a pistol.
Despite the thoroughness of the search, no further remains were found on Gifford Farm. Nor was the murder weapon discovered.
But the exercise wasn’t wasted. After the bales of hay had been removed from the loft of the smallest barn, an alert constable spotted something embedded in one of the beams: a bullet.
Dr. Atcliffe was summoned to Gifford Farm, and he spent the rest of that day and the next alone in the loft, while Judd paced the farmyard like a dispossessed rooster. When Atcliffe finally emerged, he solemnly confirmed that a shot had been fired there. Forensic pathology is a cautious branch of science, but I strongly suspect that someone was being strung along. Judd blew his top, and Atcliffe waited for him to subside before announcing his second finding: traces of blood on the floorboards of the loft. The stains were not recent, and he couldn’t say yet whether they were human in origin, but the pattern of staining, so far as he could trace it, suggested that the victim had lain for some time with the source of bleeding close to the floor.
Judd was all smiles again. Atcliffe smiled back and told him that he wasn’t ready to identify the bullet. After photographing it in situ, he had sawn away a section of the beam and was taking it away for analysis.
The following afternoon he phoned through his preliminary report. The blood was human, from the group 0, common to about half the population. He’d identified the bullet as a 45, of U.S. Army issue, probably fired from an automatic pistol.
That bullet turned the investigation on its head. George Lockwood was questioned for another hour and then allowed home to rebuild his haystacks. The suspicion had shifted to Duke. He, too, had a plausible motive. He’d been dating Barbara. It was an open secret that she was slipping out in the evenings to meet him. He knew about Morton pestering her.
Moreover, Duke had opportunity. He was around on the crucial dates. And it emerged that he’d brought a gun out to the farm, a.45 service-issue automatic.
Superintendent Judd hated GIs. If that sounds to you like unfair comment, try reading his memoirs. According to him, they destroyed our culture and seduced our women. The fact that they fought our war isn’t mentioned.
He notified the U.S. Army base of his suspicions. The Americans agreed that there was a case to answer. They confided to Judd that Duke and Harry were “somewhere in Europe.” To invite them back for questioning in the middle of an invasion was a practical impossibility. The American Army Criminal Investigation Department would deal with it at the earliest opportunity. This wasn’t bloody-mindedness. Parliament had laid down a procedure under the U.S.A. Visiting Forces Act of 1942.
Judd must have gone spare with frustration. All he could do now was wait for the war to end. He went back to Gifford Farm and redoubled the search for the murder weapon and the rest of the body. The haystacks came down again, the silage was given another airing. Nothing surfaced.
I firmly believe it was only because time hung so heavily for Superintendent Judd that he decided to interview me.
By then we were into 1945. I’d been back in London over a year when the policeman knocked on our door. I’d come back from Somerset just in time for Hitler’s buzz bombs. We’d had one in our street that killed six people. After that, Gifford Farm seemed like another world. I’d stopped crying over Barbara; our minds have ways of adjusting to grief. But I sometimes wondered about Duke. Everything had happened in a rush at the end. I’d left without seeing him. I had no idea how he’d taken the news of Barbara’s suicide. I wished I’d had the chance to speak to him.
As I said, a policeman called. It was lunchtime, so I was home from school. When I saw the shape of the helmet through the frosted glass, I opened the door myself, remembering how it was a policeman who came in 1940 after Dunkirk to tell us that Dad was dead. I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have been killed, but I didn’t want Mum to faint again.
Instead of doing long division and nature study with Junior 5 and Miss Coombs, I spent that afternoon in the police station. Superintendent Judd questioned me for a long time. He told me at the beginning that God would be listening, but all I could see was a lady policeman with a shorthand notebook.
I remember Judd for his shaggy brown eyebrows. They twitched a lot, sometimes together, sometimes independently. I must have given him a few surprises.
Most of his questions concerned Duke and Barbara, and I told him everything I’ve told you. I had no reason to be evasive. You see, he didn’t say anything to me about the murder or his suspicions of Duke. I thought he was on about Barbara’s suicide. At the end he reminded me that God had terrible punishments in store for boys who didn’t keep His Commandments and asked me if everything I’d told him was the truth. It was.
Months went by. The buzz bombs stopped, and we kept hearing that the end of the war was coming. Everyone at school was back from Somerset. We had a Daily Telegraph colored map of Europe pinned to the notice board, and Mr. Lillicrap regularly shaded in the areas conquered by the Allies. When he announced to the whole school in assembly that General Patton and the U.S. Third Army had reached the Rhine, I had a strong intuition that Duke was with them.
One morning in the last month of the war, my mother told me to put on my gray flannel suit, because we were going to London. She wouldn’t say any more, and I convinced myself that we were going to Buckingham Palace to cheer the king and queen because it was Victory Day. Instead we made our way to Lincolns Inn. I was shown into an office where Superintendent Judd was sitting with two American Army officers and a man in a wig and a black gown. It was a terrible letdown. They spent the rest of the day going over the same old ground we’d covered in my previous meeting with Judd. Before we left, they told me I might be asked to appear in court soon, but there was nothing to worry about so long as I continued to tell the truth.
On the way home in the train we had a compartment to ourselves. In response to my persistent questioning, Mum finally told me that Cliff Morton had been horribly killed in Somerset and that Duke was charged with his murder. The Americans had picked him up in Magdeburg and brought him back to England. After allowing the British police to question him, they’d handed him over to be tried under English law.
I was speechless.
I told you earlier about my appearance at the trial to make an unsworn statement. It’s still disturbing to recall. I said my piece and answered the judge’s questions, and that was all I saw of No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey. I was ushered out immediately afterwards, catching only a glimpse of Duke in the dock. I wish I hadn’t seen him at all. He looked as if he’d been sentenced already.
I’ve read since that he was called to the witness box by the defense and made a poor impression, even before the prosecutor started on him. He was confused over dates, and he foolishly denied any attachment to Barbara, claiming that he only took her to the Columbus Day show on sufferance, to make up a foursome. He admitted that on Thanksgiving Day (the date of the murder, according to the prosecution case), he arrived at the farm with the intention of inviting Barbara to a party but insisted that he came out of loyalty to Harry, whose idea it was.