The Nine-Spoked Wheel, page 19
They had two ten-man inflatable life-rafts on board, one secured forward, one aft. With Dr Arbolent there were seven survivors, so they needed only one raft, and it would be better to stick together. Freemantle decided to use the forward raft. It inflated from a CO2 cylinder, and was soon ready. Lady Penelope was so near gone that water was lapping over the foredeck, and it was a simple job to float off the raft. Freemantle and two of the surviving crewmen held it while the others got in – Juliet and the one surviving girl from the crew were pushed in first, a piece of instinctive collective chivalry. Dr Arbolent had to be lifted in. Freemantle waited until the others were settled, then he climbed in, freed the painter holding them to the vessel, and pushed off. There were some wooden paddles in the raft, and they paddled clear as quickly as they could. They didn’t have much time. They had barely gone 100 yards when Lady Penelope heeled right over and disappeared.
Freemantle thought it just possible that one or other of the missing people might still be swimming, so for half an hour he kept men at the paddles to try to hold the raft against the wind, while they shouted and called. It wasn’t any good. Paddling made next to no difference, and they were blown steadily towards the surf breaking on the rocks. They were about half a mile from the rocks at first light, when they saw a yacht standing in towards them. Marryat had seen them a few minutes earlier.
*
Marryat had the sails down except for the steadying mizzen, and kept Clio under power while he closed the raft: he needed the foredeck clear to see what was happening, and under power he could manoeuvre more easily. The raft was being blown towards the central group of The Bishops and Clerks rocks, called Careg Rhoson. These rocks are high and steep, and there would be little chance for the occupants of the raft if they were swept on to them. Clio caught up with the raft when it was still a couple of cables off the rocks. Revers threw across a line, which Freemantle caught. Marryat, at Clio’s helm shouted, ‘Make fast to the line. I’m going to tow you clear before taking you on board.’ Freemantle saw the point of this, and raised his arm in acknowledgement. Giving Clio full power, Marryat turned and stood out to sea. The laden raft was a heavy drag, but Clio’s diesel could pull it, and slowly the gap between them and the rocks widened. When Marryat reckoned that they were clear enough to have time to tranship, he slowed down Clio until she just had steerage way, and Revers hauled the raft alongside. ‘Why it’s – Tony!’ Juliet cried.
‘I told you I’d see you before you got to Bristol,’ Marryat said.
*
Clio had a good freeboard and the raft was low on the water, so the survivors could not just step on board. Freemantle caught one of Clio’s shrouds and hauled himself up, to give a hand with the others. ‘Roger Freemantle, late of Lady Penelope,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘Tony Marryat and John Revers,’ Marryat replied, thinking how valuable such apparently absurd formalities are at the tenser moments of life. Freemantle was reaching down to try to get an arm round one of his mates who had been hurt when the spar fell, but Marryat stopped him. ‘I’ve only got half a left arm, so it’s a bit difficult for me – in any case I want to stay at the tiller. But just inside the companionway, to port, you’ll find a boarding ladder. Fix that, and it will be much easier.’
Freemantle got the ladder, and he and Revers fixed it. Revers went down and helped the hurt man up, then he steadied the raft against the ladder while the two girls and two of the men boarded the yacht. One figure lay still on the rubber floor of the raft. It was Dr Arbolent, and he was dead.
They got a line round his shoulders, and with Revers lifting his feet they got his body on board, and laid it down on the deck.
‘Poor old boy,’ said Freemantle. ‘I’ve never known anyone die of seasickness before.’
Revers, kneeling on the deck, sniffed at his lips. ‘People die not infrequently from cyanide poisoning,’ he reflected. He kept his thoughts to himself.
*
Marryat decided to make for Milford Haven. ‘It’s not much more than thirty miles,’ he said. ‘With this wind we can average at least six knots, and we should be there by midday.’ He worked out a course and asked Freemantle to take the tiller. To Revers he said, ‘John, you know where the slop chest is. Take everyone below and see if they can find some dry clothes – there won’t be enough to go round, but take the blankets from the bunks. Whisky for all hands, and don’t forget the helmsman. When you’ve done that, hot soup as quickly as you can make it. I’ve got to do some radio work. I must call up Portishead to report what’s happened, and I want the names of all survivors – written down, please.’
Marryat got through on his R/T quickly, and as soon as he said it was an emergency the operator stopped working other traffic and cleared everything for Clio’s call. Marryat reported the foundering of Lady Penelope, and gave her position as she went down, as estimated by Freemantle. There seemed no hope of survivors, but the sea-rescue services were at once alerted. The St David’s lifeboat went out, and so did an RAF helicopter.
Marryat read out the names of those picked up by Clio, said that he required no assistance, and that he was making for Milford Haven, expecting to get there about midday. Portishead radio promised to inform the authorities at Milford Haven and to ask for a doctor and ambulance to meet the yacht.
XI
Inquest
THERE WERE FULSOME obituaries of Dr Arbolent in Monday’s morning papers, and several leading articles reflecting with mingled sorrow and pride on the failure of his great experiment. It was assumed that he had died of shock and exposure, and perhaps also from a broken heart. The Daily Examiner, the Sunday paper’s weekday stablemate, concluded its leader, ‘If ever a man died for the advancement of knowledge, it is surely Ragmund Arbolent.’
The inquest on Arbolent brought a swift change of feeling. The small courtroom was crowded with Press, expecting to wind up his story with general eulogies of him and regret at the nation’s loss. The district coroner sat without a jury, and the proceedings were expected to be wholly formal. An audible shock ran through the court when there was medical evidence that the deceased had died from cyanide poisoning.
‘It is my duty,’ the coroner observed, ‘to determine how this poison came to be administered.’
Inspector Revers was then called.
‘Have you,’ asked the coroner, ‘been engaged on inquiries relating to the deceased?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you say what was the outcome of those inquiries?’
‘It would have been for a court to determine the outcome. As far as the police were concerned, the outcome was a warrant for his arrest.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Murder.’
*
There was such confusion as reporters raced to find telephones phones that the coroner adjourned the inquest for a few minutes and demanded order. When the proceedings were resumed, he said, ‘The deceased wrote a letter during the night before he died which I do not propose to read, since, I understand, it will be required as evidence in another court, and I do not wish to prejudice anything that may be decided there. There is no evidence to suggest that a lethal quantity of cyanide could have been given to the deceased by any third party. There is evidence in the document I have referred to that the deceased had formed an intention of taking his own life. I find that Ragmund Arbolent died from cyanide poisoning, self-administered. That concludes the proceedings in this court.’
*
Revers was besieged by clamorous reporters, but he said firmly that he could add nothing to the evidence he had given at the inquest. There was such general bewilderment, however, that the North Wessex Police issued a short statement saying that further evidence relating to the matter on which Dr Arbolent would have been charged would be given at the resumed inquest on Paul Clayton, who had been found dead at Avebury in June. ‘It will be understood,’ the statement ended, ‘that the nature of this evidence cannot be indicated at this stage in order not to prejudge the findings at the forthcoming inquest, at which the coroner will sit with a jury.’
*
Revers had found Dr Arbolent’s letter in the breast pocket of his coat. It was headed ‘To Whom It May Concern’, and was dated the night before his death. It had apparently been written on board Lady Penelope, while Dr Arbolent was sitting alone in his cabin.
It was a strange document. It began on a note of self-pity, saying that the motion of the boat which had caused his intense sea-sickness was due to the incompetence of the designer, who had translated his own plans badly. It continued,
‘In spite of my sickness I must write now, since I wish my achievement to be judged properly. What are the deaths of two men, neither of any importance to the world, compared to my creation of an entire civilisation?
‘I do not regret killing Jan Korsky. He had talent of a sort, but he was a disgusting drunkard and but for his stupidity I would not need to be writing this. His filthy smoking habits nearly endangered my whole enterprise, but more serious was his sheer stupidity over the cremation urn. I must, perhaps, blame myself a little here, for not realising Jan’s folly, but it was his fault and he let me down badly. He should have known that to engrave pottery after it has been fired was a stupid mistake. The jar was genuine, discovered by me in Tuscany. Jan, in his madness, engraved it with my proto-Etruscan lettering. At first I was pleased until I realised that the jar would have to go to the British Museum, and that examination would be bound to show that the lettering had been engraved after firing. I could put off letting the British Museum have the jar for some time, but not indefinitely. They were already clamouring for it. But I knew that Jan would have to be killed before I understood his madness over my jar. I could not leave the secret of my inscriptions with a drunken sot who might talk in his cups. I paid him well, and he should be grateful for the opportunity I gave him of contributing to my work.
‘I am a little sorry for young Clayton, but not much. Why was he so concerned with what he called “truth” when I could give the world the magnificent offering of my own imagination? He was a silly young prig. He would have grown into yet another of those precise academics who call themselves scholars, and the world already has more than enough of them.
‘I cannot understand why that stupid policeman could not see that the stone must have fallen when one of its timber supports broke. I had arranged for him to see this, and taken a great deal of trouble over it. Why was he so stupid? When I saw that he had taken away the broken support I did not like it, for I feared that he might be getting wrong ideas. When that snooping Marryat saw that there was a good support in the store still labelled “29” I was much concerned, and when he was not suffocated by the roof-fall I decided that it would be wise to start carrying with me the cyanide pill I had long kept in readiness in case I should become the victim of other men’s stupidity.
‘But I have decided to use my pill because of the cremation urn. When my boat delivers her cargo of great stones triumphantly to Bristol, I shall have departed. The triumph will be mine, but I shall deliberately forego it. I have earned immortality.
‘Ragmund Arbolent.’
*
The police had long conferences with lawyers about what ought to be done. Arbolent’s document was clearly a confession of guilt but it confessed to crimes with which he could not now be charged. It might be held to clear up Korsky’s death, but in the case of Paul Clayton it was not yet public knowledge that a crime of any sort had even been committed. The confession alone could be taken as the outpourings of a madman. Related to all the other evidence that Revers had so painstakingly collected, it gave a different picture – of a man who might in some sense be considered mad, but who was also a completely unscrupulous fraud, and a murderer of diabolical cunning. It might seem distasteful to blacken the character of a dead man, but it was even more distasteful to let Paul Clayton’s courageous honesty in seeking to expose the fraud remain unrecognised.
*
The coroner’s is the oldest legal office in England, and, still possessing certain medieval powers, a coroner’s court is not bound by the same strict rules of evidence as other courts. Coroner’s courts are sometimes criticised for this: they can be unfair to people who, in the end, are not charged with any crime at all. But, with a good coroner, the flexibility of a coroner’s court can equally help to clear individuals from unjustified suspicion, and serve justice by bringing out facts that it might be hard to establish otherwise. It was decided to leave the clearing up of things to the resumed inquest on Paul Clayton. The police would present their evidence in full, including Dr Arbolent’s confession, and the coroner would exercise his power to sit with a jury. If Dr Arbolent’s legal representatives wished to be represented by counsel, this of course, would be open to them.
*
Dr Arbolent appeared to have no relations except an elderly cousin living near Aberdeen. She said that she remembered him only as a horrid little boy, and wished to have nothing to do with the case. His college at Oxford, however, loyally decided to do what it could for his memory, and Sir Joslin Mattox, QC, was briefed to attend the inquest. The Examiner newspaper group also wished to be represented, and Mr James Borrowdale, QC, appeared for them. The police were also represented by counsel. Press and public interest was so great that the coroner arranged to hold the resumed inquest in one of the Assize Courts. Even so, only a small proportion of those eager to attend were able to get in.
He opened the proceedings with a brief address, recalling the evidence given at the adjourned hearing, and said that he proposed to begin by recalling the medical witnesses who had carried out the autopsy on Paul Clayton. They described the dreadful injuries again, and this time the coroner questioned them closely about the exact nature and position on the body of the injuries they found. When it came to the wounds on the temple and side of the face, the coroner asked the Professor of Forensic Medicine who was giving evidence, ‘In your opinion, were these wounds consistent with the body’s being crushed by a heavy stone?’
‘They were not inconsistent. But from the position of the body it was hard to see how these particular injuries could have been caused. Also, there was focal bruising and discolouration which suggested that the head had been struck by some object rather than crushed by a flat stone.’
Counsel for the police then asked, ‘Could they have been caused by a blow, or repeated blows, from a heavy hammer?’
Sir Joslin rose at once to say that he regarded this as a most improper question. The coroner refused to disallow it, and the professor answered simply ‘Yes.’
Sir Joslin then asked sarcastically, ‘Could they have been caused by a blow, say, from a flat-iron, or a golf ball?’
The professor answered patiently, ‘I doubt if they could have been caused by a golf ball. By the edge of a flat-iron, or any similar heavy object with a defined striking area, certainly.’
The next witness was a tractor driver, whose evidence at first appeared to have no connection with the case. He described the noise he had heard during the night of Paul Clayton’s death.
The coroner then called Inspector Revers. His examination, by police counsel, lasted all the rest of that day. Quietly and unemotionally, he described step by step his actions in the case, from his puzzlement at the position of Paul Clayton’s body, through his investigation of the fractured timber support, the cigarette end, the hole near the base of the stone, and the finding of the hammer, to his final chase after Dr Arbolent by sea. He was heard in an intensity of silence. Before adjourning the hearing, the coroner said that there were still a number of questions to put to the inspector, and he would continue his evidence in the morning. Cross-examination by either of the other learned counsel present could take place after that, if they wished to cross-examine.
There was a sensational start to the next day’s proceedings with a statement by the coroner that he had decided to permit Inspector Revers to be questioned on matters relating to another case, which, it might seem to the jury when they had heard the evidence, had a bearing on the case they were called to consider. He then referred to the death of Jan Korsky, saying that an inquest on Korsky had already been held, resulting in a verdict that he was murdered by a person or persons unknown. In reply to questions, Revers then described the finding of Korsky’s drawings and the money in his box, the sending of his shoes for examination by the forensic laboratory and for comparison with samples of soil taken from the Wansdyke tombs, and the sending of the hammer for expert examination.
Police counsel then said, ‘I shall be calling direct evidence from the scientists who carried out these various investigations. Can you, inspector, indicate what was found on the hammer?’
‘I have an official report from the forensic laboratory. It indicates that there were bloodstains on the hammer, from two distinct human blood groups.’
