My Name is Michael Sibley (30 page)

“Scarcely has he come to London than he renews his friendship with Miss Marsden. He finds now that he does not love Miss Harrison after all. With hardly a thought for her, he abandons her and calmly announces to her that he made a mistake. He does not love her after all. It is Miss Marsden whom he really loves all the time!”

Mr. Smerton stopped, looked at the jury, and tightened his lips. “But now follow me closely, please. We can all make mistakes; most of us, indeed, have made grievous ones of one kind and another. Let us not blame Sibley for honestly avowing his change of heart, callous though we may think it. But what do we find? Suddenly, for some reason which may be clear to him, and which may, unfortunately for him, also be clear to you, we find him rushing up to Palesby a few days after the murder.

“Why? You have heard his explanation in the box, and an incoherent and curious story it is, of a kind of mounting remorse for which he wished to make amends. Do you believe it? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that, knowing the kind of evidence which Miss Harrison could give, he went up there, armed with his chequebook, in a desperate attempt to buy her forgiveness and possibly even her friendship? You know the high-spirited reply he justly received from her.”

The accused, said Mr. Smerton, had tried to build up a picture of panic, of an innocent man filled with fear, striking blindly in all directions as he saw the net undeservedly closing around him. Was that picture in keeping with the intellectual level of the prisoner, of his past experiences, of one who had had enough dealings with the police in the course of his work not to be in awe of them? Why should he panic if he was innocent and why all the evasiveness at the beginning? But if he was guilty, as the Crown submitted, then indeed there was a reason to lose his head.

Sitting in the cells below the court, I thought: first, it is the Inspector
v
Sibley, and then it is Smerton
v
Sibley.

Smerton was only interested in my conviction because it would enhance his reputation, lead to more briefs, more publicity, a fatter income. It was not a case of Rex
v
Sibley. It was Smerton
v
Sibley, man to man, but while Smerton was only fighting for greater glory, Sibley was fighting for his life. But that would not matter to Smerton. Like the Inspector, he could throw off any doubts in his own mind, and place the whole ultimate responsibility in the hands of the jury.

As for Smerton, so for Aldwick, my counsel. I did not know how he felt about the case. I had only seen him once. Perhaps he thought me guilty; that did not matter. Even if he thought me guilty, but could have me proved innocent, he would be pleased enough. On the other hand, if he thought me innocent and they found me guilty, well, it couldn’t be helped. Unlucky, but they might still say: “Aldwick put up a magnificent fight.”

It was only Sibley who would really care. Sibley and Kate.

I did not like the prosecution’s aspersions on Kate. Smerton accused her, in effect, of perjury, but his method was heartless.

“And now we come to the chief witness for the defence, the young woman, Kate Marsden. Her, too, you have seen in the witness box. I say seen advisedly, because it is somewhat important that you should not only have heard her, but have had an opportunity of observing her. It is important because you must decide how much weight you propose to give her evidence.”

He paused and shuffled momentarily with his papers.

“I do not wish to seem unkind to a girl who has already had a great deal to go through, but I would ask you to put yourselves in her place for a moment. She is not, you may think, a glamorous type of young woman. She was not very happy at home. She was living alone. At the moment when, as it may have seemed to her, life was passing her by, the prisoner first paid serious court to her, then offered her marriage. Would it not be natural if this unfortunate young woman were prepared to do anything to defend the man for whom she may genuinely feel some affection, and whom she may well see as the one man likely to provide that fuller life to which every girl legitimately aspires?

“How much weight, I ask you again, should we attach to her evidence? How much weight to the alibi upon which the prisoner relies as the main prop of his defence?

“Much as we may wish to do more, how much reliability dare we place on that evidence if justice is to be done? She made, you will remember, two separate and somewhat different statements. In the first, she said she had never been alone for any length of time with Prosset. And that Sibley had been with her up to one o’clock on the night of the murder. In her second, however, faced with the prisoner’s own third and final statement, in which he tells an entirely different story, what does she do? ‘Oh,’ she says, in effect, ‘that is quite right. It is just as the prisoner says. My previous statement was all a mistake! I now wish to make a statement to fit in with his!’ The Crown submission concerning the written and verbal evidence of this young woman is that it would be wiser to disregard it—let me put it no stronger than that—and in coming to your verdict consider as more pertinent those other aspects of the case to which I have drawn your attention. If, however, you feel that some consideration is called for, then I submit that her first statement, in which she describes Sibley as leaving her flat around one o’clock in the morning, is the one which merits your attention. He would, you will observe, members of the jury, have had time to spare to journey down to Ockleton by four o’clock, and, having established, as he hoped, his presence in London, to go about his carefully premeditated crime.”

Mr. Smerton was, of course, sardonically scathing about the three separate statements which I had signed. His speech bristled with such phrases as “for reasons which we can well guess at,” and “realizing the truth could no longer be concealed,” and “correcting the results of a very conveniently bad memory.”

Were there any reasons to believe, he asked, that the third statement which the accused had made was in essence any more truthful than the first two? Was not the whole thing a tissue of lies, and could any reliance be placed upon anything which he said in the box, on trial for his life, when he had so manifestly told a packet of lies and indulged in concealments and evasions even when he was in no immediate danger?

The jury had heard medical evidence to show that at least one of the wounds on Prosset’s temple could—in fairness, he would put it no higher than that—could have been caused by a knuckleduster. Why had Sibley so hastily discarded what he would have them believe had become a cherished talisman? Let them not be astonished at the absence of blood on the knuckleduster; aluminium was the easiest thing in the world to wash clean. What had happened to that brown suit? Who was the mysterious outcast to whom the accused alleged he had given it? Did he even exist? The jury had heard of the strenuous efforts made by the police to trace the man, in workhouses, hospitals, dockland, Labour Exchanges, even in ships at sea and in highways and byways. He must repeat: did the man exist? The jury might well doubt it. They might consider this yet another of the lies with which this case was cluttered, and that in all probability the incriminating and, they might think, bloodstained suit had been disposed of in a way which they might never now discover.

I thought sadly that on the films an excited old tramp would be seen, at this point, pushing his way through the crowds around the court room, muttering that he must get through; it was a matter of life and death. At first they would hold him back, but in the end he would burst in; and he would be wearing my suit. The prosecution would collapse and I would be discharged without a stain on my character.

But it didn’t happen like that in real life.

Actually, the old man might not be able to read properly, or if he could perhaps he only read the racing results. He might be on some remote farm helping with the crops, or he might have sold the suit for a few coppers, or he might be dead. He might even turn up later; when I was dead myself. I recalled Mr. Martin’s views on capital punishment. It is funny how your views change with your own position. I thought of Kate, who would have nothing to look forward to, not even in twenty years’ time, for if I was found guilty I did not visualize a reprieve.

When I died, Kate would die, too, in a way, as Mr. Martin had said.

I had long since decided that if the verdict went against me I should consider it the end. I would brook no suspense in my heart. I would prepare my mind, so that when the final act came it would be carried through with dignity. Oddly enough, the analytical side of my mind had long since come to the conclusion that, from the point of view of pure justice, I could hardly complain if the jury found against me. I had killed Prosset in my heart and in my imagination. Only a chance phrase or two had saved me from killing him in practice.

I looked at my watch. The warders stirred restlessly. It was unusual for a jury to be out so long. I could imagine the early evening papers coming out with a bit in the Stop Press: “Sibley: jury still out after 1 hr 40 mns.”

John Aldwick had done his best. The trouble was that, due to the strain, my early optimism had given place to pessimism. That was why I remembered more of Smerton’s points, towards the end of the long wait, than my own man’s. But my counsel had scored some highly successful points. As I recalled them, my optimism returned slightly.

It turned out, for instance, that one person did know about the knuckleduster: Ethel the maid. She said that one morning the postman had demanded some money for a letter, and I, half asleep, had told her to take it from my trouser pocket. She had come across the knuckleduster, but did not know what it was. The significance of this had escaped her at the Magistrate’s Court—until indeed, she had heard, that very day, the prosecution put forward the view that I had acquired it specially for the murder.

Her evidence went to corroborate, at least partly, my own evidence that I had had the thing a long time. More important, it was psychologically useful as a surprise refutation of prosecution theory.

My counsel made a good deal of smuggling, “imports,” the mysterious Max, and Prosset’s unknown “friends” on the coast. But he would not touch the Cyprus cigarette angle.

“Juries don’t like us to smear a man’s character who is not in the dock,” he said, shaking his head. “Makes a bad impression—very bad impression. Judges don’t like it, either. No proof, Mr. Sibley. No proof, see? All theory.”

Of course, so many of the facts had been admitted that all he could do was to try to strip them of their sinister import, and to explain them away as natural, normal things which could have happened to anybody. But some witnesses he had challenged outright; notably Ethel, concerning when she had last seen my brown suit, and the girl in the cleaners.

It is terrifying how significant can sound a phrase like: “Is it possible to get bloodstains out of clothing by dry-cleaning?” I had asked it in a normal, casual sort of voice. But nothing could remove the sinister implications when it was repeated in the cold, clinical silence of the court.

“You have said,” John Aldwick, KC, asked the girl from the cleaners, “that the accused had no newspaper in his hand when he spoke to you, and that therefore his evidence was false when he ascribed his question about bloodstains to something he had just read in the paper?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, what? Yes, he had a paper, or yes, he hadn’t?”

“He hadn’t, sir.”

“How long afterwards was it that the police questioned you?”

“About two or three days, sir, I think.”

“You think? You can’t remember that, but you do remember for certain that the accused, only one of many customers, had no newspaper in his hand?”

“Yes.”

“You have a curiously selective memory, have you not?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“All right. We’ll leave that. Do you still wish to say that you know for absolute certain that the accused had no newspaper, or will you say, perhaps, that as far as you recall he had none?”

“No, he hadn’t one, I’m sure.”

“You have heard him say that he was carrying one?”

“Yes. Well, he wasn’t.”

“You realize the importance of the point? He says that he only asked you about bloodstains because he had been reading of a murder case in his newspaper.”

“Well, he hadn’t one.”

“What sort of voice did he ask the question in?”

“Just an ordinary sort of voice.”

“Just an ordinary sort of voice? Did he seem anxious or nervous?”

“No, sir. I don’t think he did.”

“Did he look pale or overwrought? Did he look like a killer with a bloodstained suit at home?”

“No, sir.”

“In fact, he looked like a normal person might who had just called to collect some ties and had been reading about a murder case in which bloodstained clothes had been involved; and who might well have been asking a very natural question—considering he was in a dry-cleaners? Do you agree with all that?”

“Well, yes, I suppose he did, really. He might have done.”

“What do you mean, you suppose he did, he might have done? Surely he either did or didn’t? Did he look a normal person asking a normal casual question, or didn’t he?”

“Well, all right—he did, if you like.”

Mr. Aldwick, KC, sighed patiently.