Late Delivery, page 2
‘You may know the Golden Fleece in Netherwick? It has a considerable hotel trade and sometimes has difficulty in finding reliable cleaners for domestic work. I heard of such a vacancy, our committee had Isabel Marshall on its books – she was then living in far from happy conditions in a big industrial city – and I recommended her to the management. They were ready to give her a trial, but are short of residential accommodation for their staff. It happened that a cottage in Netherwick that belongs to me fell vacant, so I was able to offer it to Mrs Marshall. She came with her son some eighteen months ago, and I may say has given every satisfaction – indeed, she is such a cheerful, willing worker that the hotel now feels it could not do without her. There was no job for the boy, but in a village like ours there is always work for anybody willing to undertake gardening. I gave the boy some casual work myself, and he, too, was so cheerful and ready to turn his hand to anything that some of my friends began offering him work. In a few months he had as much work as he could handle, going to different people on one day a week, though old Mrs Lamont, who has a lovely garden but is sadly crippled by arthritis, wanted him on two or three days each week. He has proved utterly reliable – if he says that he will come at a certain time to do a particular job, he always comes. He will be sadly missed in the village – he is missed already. I cannot believe that he could possibly have committed this brutal murder. He and his mother are not rich, but they had no particular need of money. Simply, I cannot see Eric being involved in such a crime, and as in a sense I feel responsible for him I want to do anything in my power to help.’
‘It is a generous, kindly attitude, but in the light of all the evidence I’m afraid it is not enough to believe that previous good character proves innocence,’ Piet said.
‘Yes, of course I understand. That is why I thought of engaging a private detective.’
‘There is no need for that in this country. If any fresh evidence comes to light the regular police will at once pursue it. In spite of what some people seem to think the police are as concerned to see that the innocent do not suffer as to see the guilty punished.’
‘Yes, but will you go on looking for fresh evidence? As far as you are concerned, is not the case now closed?’
Piet did not reply directly. In a sense, no case is ever closed, but in practice conviction for a crime means that investigation is over, and that particular case is regarded as finished. But Piet had an instinctive sympathy for this obviously deeply unhappy man, and he was still puzzled by his concern. So he said, ‘Can you explain a bit more fully why you think that a private detective might uncover evidence that the police have missed?’
The man glanced at his watch. ‘It is rather a long story and I don’t want you to feel that I am wasting your time.’
‘If I felt that you would not be here.’
‘I suppose not . . . I have held high office myself. Well, to begin as nearly as I can at the beginning, I must explain that I was the last Governor of Moruga, the ex-British colony in the Windward Isles before it achieved independence. Eric and his mother – her name is Isabel, but she is always called Bella – are from Moruga, so I feel that I have a sort of duty to help them if I can. But there is more than that. I myself was born in the West Indies, where my family were sugar planters from early in the eighteenth century. As a community the old planters have not been well regarded by history – they were slave-owners (though that was not exactly their fault, since it was the custom of the time), they were extravagant, many of them drank too much of the rum distilled on their plantations. But we were not quite all like that. Of course, my own family thought of themselves as English, sought wives in England and sent each generation of our children to England to be educated. But we were also West Indians, living on our own land, with a relationship to those who worked for us that may be sneered at as feudal but that, in our own case, at any rate, was certainly paternal, like that of the best of old English squires towards his tenants.
‘I was born a few years before the First World War, before the old plantation life had gone for ever, and in my early childhood, before I was sent to England to go to school, my beloved nurse was a black woman, and all my playmates were little black boys. We sailed fishing boats, swam in the sea and hunted together. Of course, I was the young master, but that never affected my own relationship with my friends. We had no colour bar as it was known in other parts of the world; there was no need for one, for the European community in our part of the world was so small, possessed, if you think in such terms, of so much economic power that there was no competition between us and those of other races. You must believe me when I say that I do not think of Eric and Bella as black – they are fellow countrymen, fellow West Indians.
‘The war of 1914–18 changed the sugar trade. Britain, and other European countries, unable to import the cane sugar they wanted because of the war at sea, all turned to the development of beet sugar, and after the war beet sugar farmers were naturally reluctant to abandon what had become for them a lucrative crop. The day of the independent sugar planter in the West Indies was over – with freight charges across the Atlantic to be met we could not compete with the beet sugar farmers of Europe. Also, I fear, we were mostly incompetent. We had not modernised plantation methods and machinery as we should, and it was more profitable for the big sugar merchants and refiners in England to buy up sugar plantations for themselves than to buy sugar from independent producers. My father who, of course, had been in the OTC at school came back to England in September 1914 to join up, and was killed on the Somme in 1916. After the war there was nothing to keep us in the West Indies. My mother, whose home was not far from Netherwick, came back to live in England. I did fairly well at Oxford and went into the old Colonial Service. I served in Africa and in Hong Kong, and then, as I told you, became the last Governor of Moruga. I had already bought the Old Rectory at Netherwick as a home to retire to, and when the Union flag was hauled down in Moruga I left the Service. But I did not lose interest in those whom I still regard as my people and, with a few friends, established Commonwealth Self-Help to do what we could for Commonwealth immigrants here. We do not limit our help to West Indians, but for various reasons, partly their knowledge of English as their own language, the West Indians have proved most suitable for the kind of help that we can give.’
The man spoke with a simple dignity that Piet found moving. His story seemed scarcely relevant to the Marshall case, but Piet did not want to hurt his feelings.
‘Did you regret Morugan independence?’ he asked.
‘Regret? No. It was my job in nearly five years as Governor to prepare the Morugan people for independence, and I did it as well as I could. Inevitably, in many ways I was sad but I could sympathise with the political desire to cut loose from Britain. In my private view we should have done better, both for ourselves in England and for our ex-Colonial subjects, if after the war we had done more to encourage investment and to strengthen rather than to weaken the old links with the Crown. But it may be that events had gone too far to be re-directed. In any case, I was a servant of Her Majesty and it was my task to carry out the policy decided by Her Majesty’s Government. How much do you know about cutlasses?’
The sudden change of subject took Piet by surprise. ‘In what context?’ he asked.
‘In the context that matters, that has brought me here, the Netherwick murder case. Eric is supposed to have killed the Postmistress by hitting her on the head with his cutlass. But I was brought up with cutlasses from my earliest childhood, and I tell you that no West Indian would ever use a cutlass like that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cutlass – or you may think of it as a machete – is the most important tool of life to a West Indian country dweller. It is a little different in the towns, but even a townsman is brought up to use a cutlass properly. For one thing, he keeps it sharp and uses it for its cutting edge – to cut down trees and bushes, to chop firewood, to trim planks for building, for everything. Eric’s cutlass was very sharp. If he had used it to kill old Mrs Denny he would almost have cut her head off, not battered her with the flat of the blade.’
‘How can you know?’
‘Because I am a West Indian, because I was taught to cut through the husk of a coconut with one stroke of a cutlass. Eric was a country boy, and he was ten when his mother brought him to England – she had come a year or so earlier for domestic work in hospitals. She saved money to bring Eric here, believing that an English schooling would give him the best chance he could have in life. She could not know of the economic forces making for unemployment and limiting the opportunities for boys like Eric. He would have been unemployed in Moruga. And he was not unemployed in England, for he had built up a trade for himself as a garden boy. He and his mother were quite comfortably off, and they deserved to be. Eric had no wild or extravagant tastes. He had a pushbike, no motorcycle. He loved music and he spent a little money on records, mostly classical, though he had some West Indian songs. He had a guitar which he had taught himself to play, and he was saving up to try to buy a piano. I encouraged him by saying that when he had a piano I would pay for him to have lessons.’
‘Did you tell the police what you thought about the cutlass?’
‘No. I wasn’t asked, and I did not know about the kind of wounds Mrs Denny had until I heard them described in court today. I did tell your sergeant one thing about the cutlass – that it was normal for a West Indian boy to use a cutlass for weeding a garden. He came to see me because he had learned that I brought Eric and his mother to the village, and I told him what I knew about their background. He said it seemed funny for the boy to be carrying a long knife if he was just going to work in a garden and I explained that Eric used his cutlass for everything. I could give no evidence about the crime in the Post Office, and although he was polite he didn’t stay long.’
‘You have an interesting point about the wounds on Mrs Denny’s head and I think defence counsel might have cross-examined the doctor who gave medical evidence in more detail. But I can’t think that it would have made any difference to the verdict. The woman was killed by blows on her head, and a blood-stained weapon capable of inflicting the wounds was found.’
‘Yes, but it wouldn’t have been used in that way.’
‘I respect your feelings, Sir Gordon, and your experience. If there is an appeal the point you make can be gone into – I shall see that it is gone into. But I don’t know if the boy’s lawyers are considering an appeal. They may feel, and on the evidence I should be inclined to agree with them, that it would be wasting the time of the Appeal Court, that it could do the boy no good and might count against him if there were ever a question of his release from prison.’
‘That may be a legal view, but I know Eric is innocent.’
In spite of himself Piet was impressed. This distinguished old man might be talking like a fanatic, but he was certainly not mad and however valueless his views might be as evidence they raised – not exactly a doubt, but a feeling that the case against the boy might have been taken a little too much for granted. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I came to you for advice.’
‘You asked if I could recommend a private detective and I said that I could not. I also said that there was nothing to stop you from engaging one if you wished.’
‘Do you think a private detective might be able to find evidence that the police have missed?’
‘Possibly – God knows, we are not infallible, and sometimes private detectives have succeeded where the police have failed. But I think this happens more often in novels than in real life. It is partly a matter of resources – no private agency can match the organisation of the police. My own feeling is that you would do better to leave things in our hands. Frankly, I don’t see much hope of upsetting the verdict in court today, but I shall think over what you have said and if any new line of inquiry suggests itself I shall see that it is followed up. The police are concerned with justice as well as with getting convictions. That may not be a fashionable view of the police, but I am a policeman, and it is the truth.’
‘I do not doubt you, Chief Constable. I said when I came that it was good of you to receive me, and your reception is not at all what I expected – I expected politeness, but I expected you to dismiss me as quickly as you could as an old man with a bee in his bonnet. Instead, you have given me a patient, sympathetic hearing. I am content to leave matters in your hands. May I come to see you again if anything else should occur to me?’
‘Of course.’
*
Piet was profoundly worried. Trying to analyse why he was unhappy about the case he said to himself, ‘I am a policeman. I must go by the evidence. On the evidence here the boy is guilty, and could not be anything else.’ Really, there had been next to no defence. The boy pleaded Not Guilty and went into the witness box. He repeated his story about cutting his wrist, seeing the Post Office door open, and going in to find the Postmistress dead. He stood up to cross-examination well enough. Why did he not call the police? Because he was frightened that he would be blamed for the killing. How did he explain the money found in his drawer at home? He could not explain it, and he had not put it there. That was about all. No one in court except Sir Gordon Gregory had believed his story. The judge had summed up fairly, saying that while the jury might find the boy’s story hard to accept he had told it consistently, and his excuse that he ran away because he was frightened was, in the circumstances, not unreasonable. He was entitled to the benefit of any doubt that the jury might feel about the prosecution’s case. The jury had felt no doubt, and in passing sentence the judge had remarked ‘You have been convicted on the clearest possible evidence.’ Obviously the judge was in complete agreement with the jury. Yet Piet had felt no sense of triumph, only an unhappiness that he could not explain. The visit by the old Colonial Governor had offered nothing in the way of evidence, unless one could accept that West Indian habits in the use of cutlasses was evidence. It was not. Rifles are normally used to shoot with, but men have been killed by being hit on the head with the butt of a rifle. A heavy knife may be normally used for cutting, but it does not follow that it cannot equally be used for hitting with the flat of the blade. The old Governor’s belief in the boy’s good character was touching as faith in humanity, but it could be dismissed as sheer sentiment, compounded by the old man’s nostalgic memories of his own childhood. And yet Piet remained unhappy. He did not believe in hunches, and he could not admit to anything as strong as a hunch that there had been a miscarriage of justice. And yet the evidence seemed somehow almost too perfect. How could it be too perfect? Piet remembered the old maxim that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred the obvious explanation is the true one. There could, of course, be that hundredth case. But there was simply nothing to indicate that rare occurrence when all the inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence are wrong.
And what could now be done? Piet could not simply reopen the case and send officers to investigate all the ground that had been covered already, to repeat an investigation that had led to conviction by the unanimous verdict of a jury. He had not been speaking in comfortable platitudes when he told Sir Gordon Gregory that the police were concerned with justice as well as getting convictions. That was perfectly true, as well as being deeply ingrained in his own personal feelings as a policeman. Where there was public doubt about a conviction the Home Secretary could order an inquiry, and the police could properly reconsider all the evidence, and look for previously unknown facts to justify a new interpretation. That was not likely here. The thin racial demonstration outside the court was a cardboard show, put up by some ‘dial-a-protestor’ group. Piet did not see any reputable body claiming that the evidence had been fabricated and that an innocent black youth had been convicted. There was public horror at the crime and public satisfaction that a demonstrably justified arrest had followed so quickly. No sane person could regard the jury’s verdict as reflecting any racial animosity.
*
There was one thing he could do, indeed ought to do, and that was to see Detective Chief Inspector Gray and Sergeant Clifford to congratulate them on the judge’s commendation of their work. There was time for that before this horrible day ended, so he sent for them both. ‘I just want to tell you personally how proud I am of the honour you have brought upon the Force,’ he said. Then, ‘I am going to rule that we are not on duty. I’d like you both to have a drink with me.’ There was a small drinks’ cabinet in his room for occasions when he had special guests, and he went across to it. ‘Whisky, gin or sherry? I can offer all of them, I think.’ The two officers settled for Scotch, and Piet poured three glasses. ‘Well, here’s to a couple of good policemen, and to our Force as a whole,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the chief inspector.
‘It was a horrible case to investigate,’ Piet said.
‘Well, sir, we were lucky in being called so quickly, and lucky in finding so much evidence on the spot.’
‘Luck, perhaps, a little . . . But it was good police work to follow up the evidence at once. Did either of you ever have any doubts?’
‘Not a shadow of doubt,’ the chief inspector said. ‘That boy is as guilty as hell.’
‘And you, Sergeant?’ Piet asked.
‘Well, sir, you can’t doubt the evidence. But I must admit the boy seemed a steady, quiet lad, and everyone in the village gave him and his mother a good name.’
‘Clever devils, they were,’ said the chief inspector. ‘There was no evidence against the mother and nothing to charge her with, but I bet she’d been watching the Post Office as well as the boy. They knew when the pension money was delivered, and just when there’d be enough in the safe to make a break-in worthwhile. The only time the boy told the truth was when he said he panicked . . . But he panicked because the Postmistress came down, and that was why he hit her over the head. If he’d had the sense not to run home but to go somewhere else to clean himself up we might never have got on to him. It’s a good thing the real bad ’uns often don’t have much sense.’
