Ancestral Vices (30 page)

‘The man’s a fool,’ said Emmelia, but she left the police station convinced more than ever that he was also an innocent.

The events of the following day tended to confirm her belief.

The prosecution played their trump card in Rosie. It could hardly be said that Rosie Coppett, dressed in the widow’s weeds from the undertaker, made a wholly sympathetic impression either on Lord Broadmoor, who found it difficult to believe that so substantial a woman could have been married to a dwarf, or on the jury who found it impossible to believe that a passion for such a dowdy and dim-witted woman could provide anyone, let alone a professor, with a motive for murder. But on Yapp
the sight and sound of Rosie revived those feelings of pathos and pity which had, with her physical attractions for him, combined to render him so vulnerable. The process repeated itself now though with Lord Broadmoor’s help and when Yapp rose to question her on the adultery she had been programmed to admit the Judge intervened.

‘Mrs Coppett has suffered sufficiently at your hands already without being subjected to an inquisition on the exact physical actions involved in adultery,’ he said. ‘I find this lurid and bullying type of questioning most offensive and you will kindly refrain from it.’

‘But I have my doubts about her knowing what she’s said,’ Yapp replied.

The Judge turned to Rosie. ‘Do you know what you’ve said?’ he enquired. Rosie nodded. ‘And you did commit adultery with the accused?’

Again Rosie nodded. The nice policeman had said that she had and the police didn’t tell lies. Her mum had always told her to go to a policeman if she was lost. She was lost now and the tears ran down her cheeks.

‘In that case,’ said the Judge, addressing the jury, ‘you may take it that the act of adultery was committed between the accused and this witness.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Yapp. ‘You are wrongly accusing Mrs Coppett of an act which while not illegal nevertheless—’

‘I am not accusing Mrs Coppett of anything,’ snarled the Judge. ‘She has openly admitted, and I might add
with a frankness that does her considerably more credit than it does you, that she committed adultery with you. Now it is evidently your intention to reduce the witness’s morale and thereafter discredit her evidence by delving into the loathsome and prurient sexual details implicit in the very act of adultery which it is no part of the court’s business to consider.’

‘I’m entitled to challenge the prosecution’s allegation that adultery took place,’ said Yapp.

But Lord Broadmoor would have none of it. ‘You are here on a charge of murder. This isn’t a divorce court and the question of adultery is immaterial to the charge.’

‘But it’s being used to provide a motive. I am alleged to have murdered the witness’s husband precisely because I was having an affair with her. The question of adultery is therefore germane to my defence.’

‘Germane indeed!’ roared Lord Broadmoor, for whom the word was indissolubly and prejudicially linked with the feminist movement. ‘Your defence lies in convincing the jury that the evidence against you is groundless, without any foundation in fact and is insufficient to warrant their passing a verdict of guilty. Kindly continue your cross-examination without further reference to adultery.’

‘But I don’t think she understands what the word means,’ said Yapp.

Counsel for the prosecution rose. ‘My lord, Exhibit H is, I suggest, relevant to this particular argument.’

‘Exhibit H?’

Counsel held up the mutilated corsets and joggled them at the jury.

‘Dear God, put the damned things down,’ said Lord Broadmoor hoarsely before turning a rancid eye on Yapp. ‘Do you deny that the witness wore those . . . er . . . that garment in your presence as she has freely admitted?’

‘No,’ said Yapp, ‘but . . .’

‘But me no buts, sir. We can take it that the act of adultery is established. You may continue your cross-examination of this witness, but let me warn you that there will be no more questions relating to the physical acts that took place between you.’

Yapp looked wildly round the court but there was no comfort to be found in the faces that looked back at him. In the witness box Rosie had broken down completely and was sobbing. Yapp shook his head hopelessly. ‘No more questions,’ he said, and sat down.

In the public gallery Emmelia stirred. That change which had begun outside Cleete’s shop was continuing and, if then she had seen herself for what she was, a rich, protected and, ultimately, a smug woman, what she was now witnessing was so far removed from justice and the truth as she knew it that she was forced to do something. Impelled by her Petrefactian arrogance she rose to her feet.

‘My lord,’ she shouted, ‘I have something to inform the court. The woman in the witness box is in my employ and she has never committed . . .’

She got no further.

‘Silence in court!’ roared Lord Broadmoor, evidently venting feelings that had been particularly pent up by the corsets. ‘Remove that virago.’

For a moment Emmelia was too shocked to reply. Never in half a century had anyone spoken to her like that. By the time she had found her voice she was already being hustled from the courtroom.

‘Virago indeed,’ she shouted back, ‘I’ll have you know I am Miss Petrefact and what is more this trial is a travesty of justice. I demand to be heard.’

The court doors closed on her protest.

‘Call the next witness,’ said the Judge and presently Mr Groce from the Horse and Barge was giving evidence that Willy Coppett had, in his hearing, definitely stated that the accused was having an affair with his wife, Mrs Rosie Coppett. But Yapp wasn’t listening. He was too preoccupied with the strange and vaguely familiar figure of the woman who had shouted from the public gallery. She had claimed to be Miss Petrefact and Yapp had no reason to doubt her word, and yet her voice . . . He had heard that voice before somewhere. But that hardly mattered. The fact remained that she had called the trial a travesty of justice. And so it was, but for a Petrefact to announce this in open court put his whole theory of a conspiracy against him in doubt. He was still wrestling with this insoluble problem when the prosecuting counsel finished his examination of Mr Groce.

‘Has the defence any questions to put to this witness?’
asked Lord Broadmoor. Yapp shook his head and Mr Groce stepped down.

‘Call Mr Parmiter.’ The car dealer stepped into the witness box and corroborated what Mr Groce had said. Again Yapp had no questions for him.

That night in his cell Yapp succumbed to doubts he had spent a lifetime evading. Emmelia’s intervention threatened more than his ability to defend his innocence against the charge of murder: it put in jeopardy the social doctrine on which his innocence relied. Without a conspiracy to sustain him there was no rhyme or reason for his predicament, no certain social progress or historical force in whose service he was now suffering. Instead he was the victim of a random and chaotic set of circumstances beyond his powers of explanation. For the first time in his life Yapp felt himself to be alone in a menacing universe.

It was a haggard scholar who stood in the dock next morning and answered Lord Broadmoor’s reiterated statement that the defence could now present its case with a hopeless shake of his head. Two hours later the jury returned a verdict of guilty and once again the Judge turned to Yapp.

‘Have you anything to say before sentence is passed?’

Yapp swayed in the dock and tried to remember the denunciation of the social system and capitalist exploitation he had prepared so carefully but nothing came.

‘I have never killed anyone in my life and I don’t know why I am here,’ he muttered in its place. Among those listening only Emmelia, decently incognito beneath a hat and veil, believed him. Lord Broadmoor certainly didn’t and having delivered a series of vitriolic and unrelated attacks on the dangers inherent in further education for the working class, professors as a species, and student protests, he sentenced Walden Yapp to life imprisonment and went off to a cheerful lunch.

While Yapp was driven off to begin his sentence, life in Buscott resumed its even tempo. To be accurate, it had hardly lost it. Mr Jipson had certainly developed a positively compulsive zeal for cleaning his tractor and immediately dirtying it, and Willy was occasionally missed beneath the bar at the Horse and Barge, but for the rest the little town remained as peculiarly prosperous as it had been since Frederick first began to cater so anonymously for the lurid fantasies of the Mill’s customers.

But for Emmelia things had changed dramatically. She had emerged from the court to be confronted with further proof that the world, far from being a nice place as she had formerly supposed, was an exceedingly nasty one. Lord Petrefact was being wheeled down the steps in high spirits.

‘What a splendid outcome,’ he told Croxley. ‘Can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself so much. Two damned birds with one stone. Yapp gets a life sentence and Emmelia a bum’s rush. Though what the hell she wanted to make a scene for I can’t imagine.’

‘Possibly because she knew Yapp was incapable of murdering anyone,’ said Croxley.

‘Absolute nonsense. The swine practically killed me
with that confounded bath at Fawcett. I always knew the brute had homicidal tendencies.’

‘We all make mistakes,’ said Croxley, and from the expression on his face Emmelia judged him to think that Yapp’s failure with the bath was one of them.

‘Only mistake he made was not to have had a go at Emmelia,’ said Lord Petrefact bitterly. ‘Now, if he’d had at her with a blunt instrument and a sharp knife he’d have had my sympathy.’

‘Quite,’ said Croxley, and expressed his own feelings on the matter by allowing the wheelchair to bounce down the last two steps unattended.

‘Damn you, Croxley,’ shouted the old man, ‘one of these days you’ll learn to be more careful.’

‘Quite,’ said Croxley wheeling him away towards the waiting hearse. Behind them Emmelia made a mental note that Croxley was a man with hidden talents who might come in useful. But for the moment she was more concerned with Yapp, and that evening she phoned Purbeck at his flat in London.

‘I am making this call reluctantly,’ she said. ‘I want you to see that Professor Yapp’s case goes to appeal.’

‘You want me to do what?’ said the Judge.

Emmelia repeated her request.

‘Appeal? Appeal? I’m not some petty solicitor, you know, and in any case the fellow had a fair trial and was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of the jury.’

‘All the same, he’s innocent.’

‘Stuff and nonsense. Guilty as sin.’

‘I say that he is innocent.’

‘You can say what you please. The fact remains that as far as the law is concerned he’s guilty.’

‘And we all know what the law is,’ said Emmelia. ‘I happen to know he has been sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he did not commit.’

‘My dear Emmelia,’ said the Judge, ‘you may think he’s been wrongly convicted but you can’t know. Always supposing he has been, and I don’t for a moment believe it, only Yapp and the real murderer, if there is one, can possibly know it. That is the simple truth, and as for an appeal, unless the defence can produce new evidence . . .’

But Emmelia was no longer listening. She replaced the receiver and sat on in the dusk obsessed with the realization that, somewhere out there beyond the garden wall, another human being knew how, when and why Willy Coppett had met his death. It had never occurred to her to think about him or to feel his existence so tangibly. And she would never know who that person was. If the police with all their men had failed to find him it was absurd to suppose she could.

From there her thoughts whirled off along new and unexpected lines into a maelstrom of uncertainty which was adolescent in its intensity but which, in her protected youth, she had never experienced. For the first time she glimpsed a world beyond the pale of wealth and privilege where people were poor and innocent for no good reason and others rich and evil for even worse. In short the jigsaw-puzzle picture of society, a long and well-arranged
herbaceous border in which the great families of England were perennial species, crumbled into its separate pieces and made no sort of sense.

She wandered out into the dusk with a new and mad determination. If the world of her upbringing had collapsed and her family had revealed themselves for the craven cowards they were, she must somehow create a new world for herself. She would restore honour to the name Petrefact even if, apparently, she had to dishonour it. Of one thing she was determined, Professor Walden Yapp would not serve his prison term. She would reverse the course of so called justice until he was exonerated and set free.

All the time she remained aware of the anonymous figure of the real murderer. If he came forward . . . He wouldn’t. People who murdered dwarves didn’t give themselves up to the police because another man had been found guilty of their crimes. Her own family, with far less reason, had been happy to watch an innocent Yapp go to prison to save themselves from the unfavourable publicity attached to their ownership of a fetish factory. But without the real murderer . . . Emmelia’s thoughts were stopped in their tracks by the sudden apparition of a dozen dwarves gathered round the gold-fish pond. For a moment in the twilight she had the horrid impression that they were alive. Then she remembered she had given Rosie permission to bring her garden ornaments from Rabbitry Road and set them haphazardly round the pond, where their tasteless vigour
mocked the hermaphroditic fountain nymph. Emmelia sat down on a rustic bench and stared at the grotesque memorials to the late Willy Coppett and as she stared an idea burgeoned in her mind – burgeoned, blossomed and bore fruit.

Half an hour later Frederick, summoned from the Working Men’s Liberal and Unionist Club by telephone, was standing before his aunt in the drawing-room.

‘Dwarves?’ he said. ‘What on earth to you want with dwarves?’

‘Their names and addresses,’ said Emmelia.

‘And you want me to find them for you?’

‘Exactly.’