Months went by. The buzz bombs stopped, and we kept hearing that the end of the war was coming. Everyone at school was back from Somerset. We had a
One morning in the last month of the war, my mother told me to put on my gray flannel suit, because we were going to London. She wouldn’t say any more, and I convinced myself that we were going to Buckingham Palace to cheer the king and queen because it was Victory Day. Instead we made our way to Lincolns Inn. I was shown into an office where Superintendent Judd was sitting with two American Army officers and a man in a wig and a black gown. It was a terrible letdown. They spent the rest of the day going over the same old ground we’d covered in my previous meeting with Judd. Before we left, they told me I might be asked to appear in court soon, but there was nothing to worry about so long as I continued to tell the truth.
On the way home in the train we had a compartment to ourselves. In response to my persistent questioning, Mum finally told me that Cliff Morton had been horribly killed in Somerset and that Duke was charged with his murder. The Americans had picked him up in Magdeburg and brought him back to England. After allowing the British police to question him, they’d handed him over to be tried under English law.
I was speechless.
I told you earlier about my appearance at the trial to make an unsworn statement. It’s still disturbing to recall. I said my piece and answered the judge’s questions, and that was all I saw of No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey. I was ushered out immediately afterwards, catching only a glimpse of Duke in the dock. I wish I hadn’t seen him at all. He looked as if he’d been sentenced already.
I’ve read since that he was called to the witness box by the defense and made a poor impression, even before the prosecutor started on him. He was confused over dates, and he foolishly denied any attachment to Barbara, claiming that he only took her to the Columbus Day show on sufferance, to make up a foursome. He admitted that on Thanksgiving Day (the date of the murder, according to the prosecution case), he arrived at the farm with the intention of inviting Barbara to a party but insisted that he came out of loyalty to Harry, whose idea it was.
As for the rape, Duke conceded that he met me in the yard and learned from me that Morton was attacking Barbara. He claimed that he went into the barn to listen and formed the impression that whatever had been going on was finished, and he could hear no crying or sounds of distress, so he didn’t intervene. He kept insisting that he had no romantic attachment to Barbara. He seemed more concerned about his reputation as a married man than about the charge of murder, shouting angrily more than once at his own defense counsel. It didn’t go down well.
The court didn’t make any allowance for his state of mind after ten or eleven months fighting his way through France and Germany. In fact, they turned it into a point for the prosecution, getting him to admit through a monstrously unfair question that he cared more about every German soldier he’d shot in combat than he did about Cliff Morton. The defense objected, but the damaging admission was made. I’m afraid he came over to the jury as a callous man with an unconvincing story.
Here I stop, because Alice was outraged and wouldn’t let me go on. She was incapable of looking at the trial in a detached way.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, glaring at me through the glasses as if I had some influence over events. “If my daddy was guilty, as the court decided, he
I tried to show her the logic of the verdict. “The whole point is that Duke wouldn’t admit to killing Morton. If he had, there might have been more sympathy for him, but it couldn’t have altered the sentence. His best hope then would have been with the Home Secretary, who had the power to commute it to life imprisonment.”
She changed tack. “Isn’t there something called manslaughter for killing under extreme provocation on the spur of the moment?”
Wearily (it was after two A.M.), I explained the prosecution’s case. “They argued that Duke had a strong romantic attachment to Barbara. When he learned from me that she was being attacked, he rushed to the barn. On his own admission, he didn’t go up to the loft. He listened and decided that the attack was over. Then, the prosecution said, he made the decision to go to the farmhouse and fetch the gun from the hallstand, so there was premeditation. The delay put manslaughter out of the question.”
She said, “Justifiable homicide?”
I responded unkindly, “Any second now.” I’d passed the limit of my patience. I told her to give up and get to bed. I’d kept my promise and told her precisely what had happened, and I wasn’t prepared to sit up all night arguing about it.
With much reluctance, plenty of ifs and buts, she finally returned upstairs with her rucksack.
I smoked a cigarette, collected some cushions, and carried them up to the spare room.
EIGHT
My mind was too churned up for immediate sleep. For at least a couple of hours I fretted pointlessly over things that could never be altered. And when I finally dropped off, it was anything but restful. I was a child again, being pursued by familiar ogres: Mr. Lillicrap in his black tin hat, blowing a whistle; Mrs. Lockwood, wielding her slipper and mouthing threats I couldn’t hear; and, in a black Wolseley with a loudspeaker, Superintendent Judd, broadcasting a warning about the wages of sin. Whichever way I fled, whichever corner I turned, I’d be trapped in the Old Bailey with that staple ingredient of all my nightmares: the judge, leaning over me like a gargoyle.
I must have been reprieved towards morning, because I woke at nine-twenty, to the whir of the Kenwood Chef downstairs. My overnight guest was making breakfast. I’d firmly resolved to send her on her way by nine, but when I caught the whiff of fried bacon, I decided to compromise on a cooked breakfast and ten-thirty.
When I put my head around the kitchen door, she was turning a pancake. She’d dressed in her jeans and sweater and fixed her plait.
She said, “Hi. Would you happen to have any maple syrup?”
“With bacon?” I pulled a face.
“And pancakes. Sure.”
“In the fridge door, I think. Will I have time for a shave?”
“All the time you want if you won’t eat my pancakes and bacon.”
I was an instant convert to the American breakfast. Between us, we got through a pack of bacon, five pancakes, the rest of the maple syrup, and four large mugs of coffee. Alice was bright-eyed. I commented that she’d apparently slept well, and she told me she’d taken a sleeping tablet. She’d been up since seven. Doing what, I couldn’t imagine. The Sunday papers had arrived, and it was obvious that she hadn’t opened them. They waited, still folded, beside her plate.
I naively asked, “How did you pass the time?”
“Rooting around.”
I hesitated, rocked by the casual way she spoke. The acrimony boiled up in me again. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is that what you usually do when someone invites you to stay in their home?”
“No, this was special.”
Her manner simultaneously angered and alerted me. I was ready to throw a fit, but I needed to know more. I said as casually as I was able, “Find anything of interest?”
She pretended she was reading the newspaper headlines. Without looking up she said, “Two books on the Gifford Farm murder that you hid in the drawer of your writing desk.”
Still holding myself in check, I said, “And did it occur to you that I might have put them there to save you some distress?”
