He looked round at the solemn watching faces and wondered how they would change if he got suddenly to his feet and called out what he knew. He would say it firmly, confidently. They wouldn’t be able to frighten him. He would say, “My Lord. The accused is innocent. He did knock and go away. I, Gabriel, saw him.”
And then what would happen? It was impossible to guess. Would the judge stop the trial so that they could all adjourn to his chambers and hear his evidence in private? Or would Gabriel be called now to take his stand in the witness box? One thing was certain—there would be no fuss, no hysteria.
But suppose the judge merely ordered him out of the court. Suppose he was too surprised to take in what Gabriel had said. Gabriel could picture him leaning forward irritably, hand to his ear, while the police at the back of the court advanced silently to drag out the offender. Surely in this calm, aseptic atmosphere, where justice itself seemed an academic ritual, the voice of truth would be merely a vulgar intrusion. No one would believe him. No one would listen. They had set this elaborate scene to play out their drama to the end. They wouldn’t thank him for spoiling it now. The time to speak had passed.
Even if they did believe him, he wouldn’t get any credit now for coming forward. He would be blamed for leaving it so late, for letting an innocent man get so close to the gallows. If Speller were innocent, of course. And who could tell that? They would say that he might have knocked and gone away, only to return later and gain access to kill. He, Gabriel, hadn’t waited at the window to see. So his sacrifice would have been for nothing.
And he could hear those taunting office voices: “Trust old Gabriel to leave it to the last minute. Bloody coward. Read any naughty books lately, Archangel?” He would be sacked from Bootman’s without even the consolation of standing well in the public eye.
Oh, he would make the headlines, all right. He could imagine them: OUTBURST IN OLD BAILEY. MAN UPHOLDS ACCUSED’S ALIBI. Only it wasn’t an alibi. What did it really prove? He would be regarded as a public nuisance, the pathetic little voyeur who was too much of a coward to go to the police earlier. And Denis Speller would still hang.
Once the moment of temptation had passed and he knew with absolute certainty that he wasn’t going to speak, Gabriel began almost to enjoy himself. After all, it wasn’t every day that one could watch British justice at work. He listened, noted, appreciated. It was a formidable case which the prosecution unfolded. Gabriel approved of the prosecuting counsel. With his high forehead, beaked nose, and bony, intelligent face, he looked so much more distinguished than the judge. This was how a famous lawyer should look. He made his case without passion, almost without interest. But that, Gabriel knew, was how the law worked. It wasn’t the duty of prosecuting counsel to work for a conviction. His job was to state with fairness and accuracy the case for the Crown.
He called his witnesses. Mrs. Brenda Kealy, the wife of the tenant of the flat. A blonde, smartly dressed, common little slut if ever Gabriel saw one. Oh, he knew her type, all right. He could guess what his mother would have said about her. Anyone could see what she was interested in. And by the look of her, she was getting it regularly, too. Dressed up for a wedding. A tart if ever he saw one.
Snivelling into her handkerchief and answering counsel’s questions in a voice so low that the judge had to ask her to speak up. Yes, she had agreed to lend Eileen the flat on Friday nights. She and her husband went every Friday to visit his parents at Southend. They always left as soon as he shut the shop. No, her husband didn’t know of the arrangement. She had given Mrs. Morrisey the spare key without consulting him. There wasn’t any other spare key that she knew of. Why had she done it? She was sorry for Eileen. Eileen had pressed her. She didn’t think the Morriseys had much of a life together.
Here the judge interposed gently that the witness should confine herself to answering counsel’s questions. She turned to him. “I was only trying to help Eileen, my Lord.”
Then there was the letter. It was passed to the snivelling woman in the box, and she confirmed that it had been written to her by Mrs. Morrisey. Slowly it was collected by the clerk and borne majestically across to counsel, who proceeded to read it aloud:
Dear Brenda,
We shall be at the flat on Friday after all. I thought I’d better let you know in case you and Ted changed your plans. But it will definitely be for the last time. George is getting suspicious, and I must think of the children. I always knew it would have to end. Thank you for being such a pal.
Eileen
The measured, upper-class voice ceased. Looking across at the jury, counsel laid the letter slowly down. The judge bent his head and made another notation. There was a moment of silence in the court. Then the witness was dismissed.
And so it went on. There was the paper-seller at the end of Moulton Street who remembered Speller buying an Evening Standard just before eight o’clock. The accused was carrying a bottle under his arm and seemed very cheerful. He had no doubt his customer was the accused.
There was the publican’s wife from the Rising Sun at the junction of Moulton Mews and High Street who testified that she served the prisoner with a whisky shortly before half-past eight. He hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough to drink it down. He had seemed very upset. Yes, she was quite sure it was the accused. There was a motley collection of customers to confirm her evidence. Gabriel wondered why the prosecution had bothered to call them, until he realised that Speller had denied visiting the Rising Sun, had denied that he had needed a drink.
There was George Edward Morrisey, described as an estate agent’s clerk, thin-faced, tight-lipped, standing rigidly in his best blue serge suit. He testified that his marriage had been happy, that he had known nothing, suspected nothing. His wife had told him that she spent Friday evenings learning to make pottery at evening classes. The court tittered. The judge frowned.
In reply to counsel’s questions, Morrisey said that he had stayed at home to look after the children. They were still a little young to be left alone at night. Yes, he had been at home the night his wife was killed. Her death was a great grief to him. Her liaison with the accused had come as a terrible shock. He spoke the word “liaison” with an angry contempt, as if it were bitter on his tongue. Never once did he look at the prisoner.
There was the medical evidence—sordid, specific but mercifully clinical and brief. The deceased had been raped, then stabbed three times through the jugular vein. There was the evidence of the accused’s employer, who contributed a vague and imperfectly substantiated story about a missing meat-screwer. There was the prisoner’s landlady, who testified that he had arrived home on the night of the murder in a distressed state and that he had not got up to go to work next morning. Some of the threads were thin. Some, like the evidence of the butcher, obviously bore little weight even in the eyes of the prosecution. But together they were weaving a rope strong enough to hang a man.
The defending counsel did his best, but he had the desperate air of a man who knows that he is foredoomed to lose. He called witnesses to testify that Speller was a gentle, kindly boy, a generous friend, a good son and brother. The jury believed them. They also believed that he had killed his mistress. He called the accused. Speller was a poor witness, unconvincing, inarticulate. It would have helped, thought Gabriel, if the boy had shown some sign of pity for the dead woman. But he was too absorbed in his own danger to spare a thought for anyone else. Perfect fear casteth out love, thought Gabriel. The aphorism pleased him.