the doctors had assured him that he would walk again before too long. In the meantime, he was under strict instructions not to put his injured foot to the ground. And Silas was no fool. He knew the value of his injury as well as the prosecutor. Lying in his hospital bed, he had felt the finger of suspicion moving inexorably in his direction. Inspector Trave had made no effort to hide his disbelief when he came to take the alibi statement. But Silas knew that it didn’t matter what the policeman thought as long as he could get the jury on his side.
He approached his evidence with a determination that had been completely absent the first time around. He kept his eyes up and didn’t hesitate when he gave his answers. Jeanne Ritter was dead, and he was not going to let himself be pulled down by her bitter ghost.
“Tell us how you got your injury, Mr. Cade,” asked Thompson, understanding the need to satisfy the jury’s obvious curiosity at the outset.
“I was shot in the foot by Reginald Ritter. We were in the library of my father’s house. He’d have killed me if Inspector Trave hadn’t shot him first.”
“Why did he shoot you?”
“Because he’d found out that I’d been seeing his wife. It sent him crazy. He killed her in their bedroom before he came after me.”
“Before her death, Mrs. Ritter told this court that she saw a figure dressed in your hat and coat cross the courtyard to the front door of the manor house, just before the shouting started on the night of the murder. Did you do that, Mr. Cade?”
“No, I did not,” said Silas, emphasising each and every word. “I never went into the courtyard that night.”
“Where were you, then?”
“I was with Sasha Vigne. Upstairs in her room. We were in a relationship together.”
“Now, you will recall that when you gave evidence before you said you were in your own room. Not Miss Vigne’s.”
They had come to the part of Silas’s evidence that Thompson had prepared most carefully. But he kept his voice even and methodical, as if he was dealing with a mundane part of the prosecution case that the jury did not need to worry about too much. Silas, however, could not hide his nervous anxiety.
“Yes, I lied,” he said eagerly. “I shouldn’t have, but I did. Sasha wanted to keep our affair a secret. She has a Catholic mother, and I didn’t see any harm in saying that I was in my room rather than hers. After all, it had nothing to do with what happened on the other side of the house.”
“That’s not for you to say,” interrupted the judge angrily. “Perjury is a serious offence. Not something to be taken lightly. Mr. Thompson, you must make the police aware of this matter.”
“I certainly will, my lord,” said the prosecutor, who was secretly resolved to use all his influence to ensure that no action was taken against the elder Cade brother, if he could only secure the conviction of the younger one.
“Do you know of any reason why Mrs. Ritter would’ve said you were in the courtyard if you weren’t, Mr. Cade?” he asked, turning back to his witness.
“Because she found out about Sasha. It’s the only possible reason.”
“Yes, I see. Now, you should know that the jury has already heard evidence this morning from Detective Constable Clayton about a conversation that he had in the cafeteria, which was overheard by Mrs. Ritter just before she gave her evidence. The officer talked about certain photographs of Miss Vigne which were taken by yourself without her knowledge. Did you take those photographs, Mr. Cade?”
“Yes. I’m not proud of it. But Sasha knows about them now and she’s forgiven me,” said Silas, lowering his head as if in contrition. “I didn’t think she would, but she has.”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Cade.” Thompson sat down. He knew that, injured or not, Silas was never going to look good. He’d admitted perjury and confessed to being a voyeur. But that didn’t make him guilty of murder. Mrs. Ritter had a powerful reason to lie about Silas on the day she gave her evidence, and Sasha Vigne would support Silas’s alibi. Nothing had happened to change the main picture. Silas’s character defects didn’t take the gun or the key out of his brother’s hand. That was what mattered when all was said and done.
John Swift got slowly to his feet. Now that he at last had the green light from his client to accuse Silas of the murder, to run the case as he had wanted to from the outset, it was difficult to know where to begin. And he wished that Silas wasn’t sitting down. It didn’t play well to the jury to attack a witness whose head was level with his waist, particularly when that witness had been shot in the foot less than a week before.
“I want to take you back to the day when you were last in this courtroom, Mr. Cade,” he began, speaking in an apparently friendly tone. “It was last Wednesday, and you were sitting in the public gallery. I don’t know if any of the members of the jury saw you like I did. Perhaps not. You were at the back, after all, near the exit, and you didn’t stay for all the evidence.”
Silas watched the defence barrister intently, but he remained silent, determined to say nothing until he had to. The judge was less patient.
“You’re here to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Swift, not to give evidence yourself,” he said, in a tone of angry rebuke. “Now what’s your question?”
“It’s simply this, my lord,” said Swift, keeping his eyes fixed on Silas. “Why did you leave the court in the middle of Mrs. Ritter’s evidence, Mr. Cade? Was it something she said that upset you?”
“I left because I knew I had to tell the truth about where I was when my father was killed. I couldn’t lie about it anymore.”
“Why not? You’d done so up to then. You’d lied to the police and to this court. Why not carry on lying?”
“Because Jeanne was practically accusing me of murdering my father. I had to defend myself.”
“You needed an alibi?”
“I needed to tell the truth.”
“Then why didn’t you ask to see a policeman? Inspector Trave was in court. He could’ve taken a further statement from you. That would’ve been the proper thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I was upset at the time. I needed to explain to Sasha why I couldn’t keep our relationship a secret anymore. I wanted her to understand why we had to tell the truth about where we were that night.”
“Come on, Mr. Cade. Are you really asking this jury to believe that you snuck out of this court and drove all the way down to Moreton in the fast lane because you were concerned for Miss Vigne’s feelings?”
“I wanted to do what was right.”
“No, you didn’t. You wanted her to give you an alibi that would take you out of the courtyard. And out of your father’s study as well. Because that’s where you went that night after you saw your brother leave. Isn’t that right, Mr. Cade?”
Swift had raised his voice as he accused Silas of the murder, but Silas held his gaze, and his voice remained firm and clear as he denied it.
“No, I was never in my father’s study,” he said. “I swear it.”
“Just like you swore last time you were in the witness box that you were alone in your room.”
“That was to protect Sasha.”
“From what?”
“Her mother. She didn’t want anyone to know that she was sleeping with me.”
“And you’re seriously telling this court that you were so worried about Sasha’s Roman Catholic mother that you were prepared to commit perjury to stop her finding out about you and her daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Perjury is a serious offence, Mr. Cade. You can go to prison for it. You knew that already though, didn’t you? You didn’t need his lordship to tell you.”
“I knew it was wrong to lie. I did it because Sasha asked me to, and I didn’t think that it mattered that much. It had nothing to do with my father’s death whether I was in my room or Sasha’s.”
“Unless you were in neither,” said Swift with a smile. “Mrs. Ritter said you were in the courtyard.”
“She made that up because she was jealous of me.”
“She loved you. That’s why she hung up your hat and coat in the hall. To cover for you.”
“I wasn’t wearing them.”
“The maid, Esther Rudd, saw her hanging them up.”
