A Matter for the Jury (30 page)

Cottage nodded. There was a silence.

‘Do I have to give evidence? Does Eve have to?'

Martin looked to his right and saw Barratt raise his eyebrows in apparent frustration.

‘Yes. I think you will have to,' he replied. ‘So will your sister. This is not a case where I can invite the judge to stop the case at the close of the prosecution case, so it will go to the jury. You have an alibi, but the only way we can put that before the jury is for you and Eve to give evidence about it. These were brutal crimes, Mr Cottage, and there is some evidence against you. The jury will need a basis to find you not guilty, and it is our job to provide it to them. Mr Schroeder and I are persuasive fellows, but even we can't persuade anyone without evidence.'

He looked directly at Ben.

‘I agree,' Ben said at once. ‘The jury needs to hear from you. They need to hear your side of the case.'

‘Can I do it without Eve having to say anything?'

Martin shrugged.

‘You could. But obviously the jury would want to know why Eve had not come to support you when she was at home at the relevant time. It would not look good.'

The answers took away the spark of light which had briefly ignited in the mind of Billy Cottage. The spectre returned. He turned his back and walked to his seat at the back of the cell, waiting for the words to return.

Success to every gentleman that lives in Lincolnshire,


Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare,


Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer,


Oh, 'tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year.

41

‘How did your
training go this afternoon?'

John smiled. ‘Very well, sir, thank you.
I took a knock to the ankle in the game last week and I wasn't sure how long I would last, but I came through fine.'

‘So you will be fit for the weekend?'

‘Looks like it, sir.'

‘Good.'

John had left the tray with his dinner on the small table by the window of Martin Hardcastle's room. The steak and kidney pie was still on the menu and there was a bottle of the house
vin ordinaire
to wash it down. Martin settled the white napkin, lifted the metal dish cover, and looked doubtfully at the food on his plate. It did not look particularly appetising; certainly nothing to write home about, but then again, he was in the country, and what could you expect? This wasn't London.

‘Ring down if you fancy a pudding, sir,' John said. ‘It's apple crumble tonight. Not bad.'

‘I will,' Martin replied. ‘Did you manage to get…?'

‘In your dressing table, sir, middle drawer.
I thought I wouldn't leave it out. You never know. One of the girls might come in to pull down the bed covers and, between you and me, sir, you can't always trust them not to gossip.'

Martin smiled as he handed John a note.

‘Good man.
Keep the change.'

‘Thank you, sir,' John said, with a bright smile. ‘Will there be anything else?'

‘I'll ring if there is,' Martin replied.

He locked the door as soon as John had left. He opened the middle drawer of the dresser, took out the bottle of Bell's, and placed it on the table behind his dinner tray.
John was a bright lad, he reflected, and dependable. Not many lads of his age would have thought of doing that. He would put in a good word for him with the manager of the hotel. He deserved a leg up. He placed a finger on top of the bottle of whisky. Reward time was drawing near, and he had earned his reward today. But he would have to eat something first. He contemplated the steak and kidney pie for some time.
Unappetising as it looked, it was a long time since his lunchtime sandwich, and he was hungry. The wine had been opened, and he poured himself a large glass. With the help of the wine he managed to force down most of the pie, with some dry mashed potatoes barely relieved by a thick brown gravy, and some overcooked green beans. He replaced his knife and fork on the tray. He could have eaten something more but, after some thought
, he decided that he could not face the apple crumble. He lifted the wine bottle from the tray, replaced the metal cover over the plate, carried the tray to the door, and set the tray on the floor just outside. He hung the ‘Do not Disturb' sign on the door handle, closed and locked the door.
It was a signal to himself that the day was over, that he did not have to deal with anyone until the next morning, that he had some time for himself. He could feel confident that he would spend the remainder of the evening without any further intrusion.

He had left his briefcase on the bed. He now opened it and took out his blue barrister's notebook. Moving to the wardrobe he took a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket, and settled back down at his table. He opened the
notebook and wrote a heading in bold letters. ‘Cross of Jennifer Doyce'. He underlined it for effect, once, then twice. He had gone over this cross-examination in his mind many times, but now the time had come to focus his thoughts and decide exactly what line to take. He re-filled his wine glass. He had to be gentle, no doubt about that. Jennifer was a victim, and the jury was bound to feel for her. Martin would have pounded her without a second thought, victim or not, if the case required it, but the case did not require it. Billy Cottage could afford to have nothing but sympathy for Jennifer Doyce.
She had been savagely beaten and raped by someone other than Billy, and he could condemn that brutality just like any other half way decent member of society. What was important – essential even – was that Jennifer had been raped,
and that the rape must appear to the jury to be the central event of the night of the 25 January – the prime, if not the sole reason, for the killing of Frank Gilliam.

Although it seemed bizarre, it was essential for both judge and jury to keep the rape in the forefront of their minds, and to push the gold cross and chain to the back.
If convicted of murder, Billy would get the death penalty if he had killed in the course or furtherance of theft, but life imprisonment if he killed in order to rape. Martin drained his wine glass. It was a strange universe in which that could be true, but you could only play the hand you were dealt, and in some ways it made his task easier. There was no reason to be anything other than kind to Jennifer Doyce – as long as he could get her to concede the possibility that she was mistaken about the
Lincolnshire Poacher
. That was the problem. He was about to write something, but suddenly put his pen down on the table. He had done well today
with Mavis Brown. It had been an unexpected break. What if he could re-think the problem?

The thought focused his eyes on the bottle of Bell's. The thoughts which were creeping into his mind demanded a real drink. He replaced the cork in the wine bottle. Somewhere between half and three-quarters empty, he noted. That was respectable enough.
He would leave it on the table, as a record of his official drinking for the evening. He twisted the top of the whisky bottle sharply, and unscrewed it. There was a clean tumbler on the dressing table. He poured a glassful and allowed it to swirl in the glass before taking an appreciative sip. The familiar feeling of warmth and reassurance ran through his body as he settled in his chair. What was he thinking? Had something shifted today? Was he being too pessimistic? He had started the trial with the assumption that nothing could be salvaged except life imprisonment rather than a death sentence.
The evidence against Billy Cottage was circumstantial, but it was compelling. To have a chance of achieving more, he had to undermine three pieces of evidence: the blood-stained fingerprint; the
Lincolnshire Poacher
; and the gold cross and chain. He had already undermined the fingerprint. The prosecution's forensic officer had been forced to concede that it could not be dated. The
Lincolnshire Poacher
was a deadly detail which no jury was likely to write off as a coincidence, but he had made progress today.
If Jennifer Doyce could be challenged as he had challenged Mavis Brown and PC Willis, the case was suddenly looking rather different – there might be some doubt. There was a chance – apart from the gold cross and chain; apart from the one aspect of the case he needed to go away. But Cottage's frantic and contradictory efforts to explain away the cross and chain to Detective Superintendent Arnold were not credible. The jury had not heard all that yet, but they would soon. There was no obvious way around that. But he had raised a question about whether the mark on Jennifer's neck was necessarily the result of the cross and chain being removed forcibly from her body.
Was she wearing that piece of jewellery at the time of the attack? Her mother thought that she wore it all the time, but had she worn it that night? She had intended to yield her virginity to Frank Gilliam on board the
Rosemary D
. Would she have taken her grandmother's memory to bed with her that night? Might she have taken it off before they started, perhaps even before she boarded the boat? In which case, might it have been lost, just as Billy Cottage claimed? Jennifer would not want to admit that, but the point could be made. If that worked, the prospect of the death sentence began to recede.

Then he had the problem of Cottage's alibi.
His conversation with Cottage that afternoon was fresh in his mind. Cottage did not want to give evidence, and he did not want his sister to give evidence. That much was obvious. But was it a simple and understandable nervousness? Or was it something more worrying? Martin had the proofs of evidence of Billy and Eve, carefully put together by Barratt Davis after more than one long meeting with each. The alibi stood up on paper. Barratt was an excellent solicitor with a good eye for detail, and the proofs of evidence read well. But the proofs of evidence would not go before the jury. Billy and Eve had to go into the witness box, give evidence, and subject themselves to Andrew Pilkington's cross-examination. Martin doubted that the orderly story set out in Barratt's proofs of evidence would stand up to that. The alibi was technically adequate, but desperately short on detail. Nothing about how Billy had got home, or what he had done on arriving home, except for having a drink and going to bed. Eve could say only that he was at home in bed when she awoke at around 7 o'clock the following morning – nothing about the time of his arrival home, how he looked, how he behaved. She had been in bed since early evening. It was the kind of cross-examination he would love to conduct. He would be disappointed if he left a single brick standing. Andrew Pilkington was Treasury Counsel. He would do it just as well. The chances were that the alibi would unravel, taking with it the last vestige of hope for a ‘not guilty'
verdict.

Yet, strangely, after today, Martin could not help feeling that his prospects had improved a little. He took a deep drink. How exactly had the world changed? He was pleased with the way he had holed the prosecution case today. If, by some miracle, he could repeat that result with Jennifer, the case might be holed below the waterline.
He smiled as the phrase went through his mind, thinking how apt it was to a case which had begun on the water. Case sinking. Case sunk without trace. Martin Hardcastle, pirate, strikes again and hoists the Jolly Roger to the top of the mast. He poured more whisky. What if he could get to that point? What if he could in fact dispense with the probably disastrous alibi evidence? What if the prosecution case did not call for a response?

He was entering murky waters now – another apt phrase, another smile.
God, he was on form tonight. Ideas were flowing. A bigger picture of the case was forming in his mind. Then a distraction. Memories of other cases in which he had done damage to the prosecution case, sufficient to mean that no response was called for from the defence. What a luxury that was! How often had it happened that Martin spent days chipping away at the prosecution case, using every skill at his command, winning the admiration of judge and counsel alike, only for all the good work to be utterly undone by thirty minutes of cross-examination of the defendant? Many such cases came to mind. God, practice at the Bar would be so easy if it were not for clients.
It was almost unbearably frustrating to lose a case because the client lacked the basic intelligence to get his story straight and stick to it. The prosecutor's cross-examination was usually like shooting fish in a barrel. There was no real doubt in Martin's mind that such would be the case with Billy Cottage. He could picture Billy treating the court to a rendition of the
Lincolnshire Poacher
. The picture made him laugh aloud. He had not met Eve.
Barratt described her as quiet. That could mean many things, almost all of them unhelpful. Billy Cottage and Barratt Davis no doubt saw the alibi evidence as the main hope of salvation. Increasingly, Martin was seeing it as the resource of last resort.

He was getting tired. He should make some notes for his cross of Jennifer Doyce. He drained his glass. One more, to keep himself awake. Then another distraction. The young waitress who had served him at breakfast.
She had worn a short black dress and a frilly white apron, with black stockings and shoes with a bit of a heel. Perhaps she would be willing. Perhaps John could arrange something. She would be all right for a night. Not that he could actually contemplate it. Far too much of a risk But there was no harm in thinking it. With all the stress he subjected himself to, he deserved some release.
In London, sometimes, he had found ways and means late at night. But here in the country, it was not realistic. So the procession of former partners through his mind began again. He tried to force his mind to focus on his cross-examination of Jennifer Doyce, but he was aroused now, and could not ignore it. Eventually he gave in, undressed, and got into bed, switching off all the lights except for the bedside lamp on the far side of the narrow bed.

He dozed off for some time in the aftermath and, when he awoke, his pocket watch told him that it was almost 1 o'clock. He made his way to the bathroom, washed his face and body
with warm water, and put on his dressing gown. He had failed to make any notes for his cross-examination of Jennifer Doyce. Switching on the lamp on his table, he gazed at the heading in his notebook. What was it he had been thinking about? He must set his alarm clock for the morning. He would do that as soon as he had made a few notes.
There was really nothing to the cross and chain, when it came right down to it. After what she had been through, how could anyone expect her to know the
Lincolnshire Poacher
from Beethoven's Fifth? And if she wavered on the
Lincolnshire Poacher
, he would be satisfied. All he needed was some rest. But after the sexual rush and his unplanned nap he felt disconcertingly awake. He would drink another glass of whisky to help him drift off. During that glass, the problem of the gold cross and chain returned. He had had a good thought about that, an insight, earlier. What was it? He finished the glass and poured another. Something to do with…? Yes, of course. Would she really have worn the gift her grandmother had given her when she was confirmed when she intended to lose her virginity to Frank Gilliam? How to put that to her without causing offence? He dozed off again. When he awoke it was 3.30. He had made no notes, but it all seemed clear. He really must take himself to bed. But not just yet, not for a few more minutes. He still needed to reward himself for what he had done today. When he finally fell on to the bed, it was almost 5.15.