courtyard beneath her window just before the shouting began down below. If true, this evidence clearly goes a long way toward exonerating the defendant. But is it true? Can you rely on Mrs. Ritter? Do not be swayed, members of the jury, by her unfortunate and untimely death. You must be objective. Remember what she said about Silas Cade. She felt betrayed by him, and it seems almost certain that she had only learnt of that betrayal minutes before she entered this courtroom to give evidence. Detective Clayton has told you about his ill-advised conversation with Mr. Blake in the cafeteria, and the way in which Mrs. Ritter ran from the room. It is not difficult to imagine her anger and distress, but did it lead her to lie?
“The question can be put another way. Was Silas Cade in the courtyard, or was he with Sasha Vigne in her bedroom? They both admit that they lied to the police, and Silas says that he lied to you when he first came here to give evidence. Perjury is a very serious offence not to be taken lightly, but both these witnesses have explained why they lied. Do you believe them? Again it is a matter for you, members of the jury. Silas told you that his fingerprints are not on the gun or the key. His brother’s are. And it was Stephen Cade who told their father that he deserved to die. You must decide who is telling the truth about this and the other questions that I have posed for you. And the answers should guide you down the road toward reaching a verdict on which all of you must be agreed. You shall have all the time you need for that purpose.”
The judge nodded to the two jury bailiffs who had taken up a position at each end of the jury box. Now they in turn held up a copy of the King James Bible and swore to keep the jury in a private and convenient place and not to ask its members anything about the case except if they were agreed upon their verdict.
And suddenly it was over. The jurors gathered up their notes and filed out of court, soon followed by the judge, who disappeared through a door behind his dais. There was a sound of chairs being pulled back and of conversations starting up in different corners of the courtroom as Stephen was led down the stairs at the back of the dock into the subterranean world of clanging gates and fluorescent lighting, where he would have to sit and wait for as long as it took for twelve strangers to decide his fate.
The jury was silent all afternoon, and at half past four Judge Murdoch called an end to the trial for the day and sent the jurors to a hotel for the night. Stephen went back to Wandsworth, and after walking up and down in his cell for the best part of an hour, he threw himself down on his bunk and fell into a fitful sleep. But he got no rest, tossing and turning all night in the grip of nightmares and apparitions. He dreamt he was back at home, searching for something. He knew it was there, but he couldn’t find it. He went from room to room turning the furniture upside down, but there was nothing. His father was dead downstairs and the murderer was still in the house, but Stephen couldn’t find what he was looking for.
There was shouting coming from down below. People were running this way and that. The housemaid, Esther, was at the top of the stairs. She was bleary with sleep, pulling a nightgown around her shoulders. And looking past her down the stairs, Stephen could see Jeanne Ritter picking up a hat and coat and hanging them on the stand by the door. He had no trouble recognising them. They belonged to his brother. But where was Silas? Here. Running across the hall. He looked up for a moment, and Stephen saw the expression on his face. The self- contained mask had slipped. Stephen saw fear and panic, but was Silas frightened because of what he knew or because of what he did not know? Where had he come from? Had he gone to his room after dropping the hat and coat? Or perhaps someone else had worn Silas’s clothes?
There was no time to try and understand, because here was Sasha Vigne coming down the stairs. She didn’t look like she had been to bed. Always so immaculately dressed. Trouser suits and high collars. And it was no different now. Who was she? Just his father’s personal assistant or something more? She’d said very little on each of the times that Stephen had been out to Moreton. But she had looked watchful at dinner. Was she waiting for an opportunity?
And lastly Mary. God, she was beautiful. Her chestnut-brown hair was tousled, framing the perfect oval of her face, and Stephen longed to put out his hand to stop her, but she passed beside him, almost through him just as if he wasn’t there.
The hall was empty now, and the shouting had died down. Stephen walked to the end of the hall and turned right into the corridor leading to his father’s study. There were people in the doorway, but he passed through them. Ritter was by the desk talking on the telephone. He was heavy-heavy and hard. And his hands were balled up into big fists like slabs of old meat. Stephen felt the stinging pain on his cheek where the sergeant had hit him as he effortlessly joined his shadow to himself and stood hopelessly by the french windows, looking down at his dead father and a game of chess.
What he was looking for was here in this room. Stephen was certain of it. It was right in front of him, but he couldn’t see it. Desperately he ran his eyes across the study. Past the hat and coat that he had left behind in the far corner, over by the window where Silas and he had eavesdropped two years before. Past the green reading lamp on the desk and the big black telephone. He saw the gun on the table by the door and the key that he had turned in the lock. He smelt the scent of jasmine on the air coming in from outside, and he examined the small round bullet hole in the middle of his father’s head.
The newspaper cutting lay on the low table beside the big chess box where his father had left it. Man fallen from train. Sudden death outside Leicester. And all around were the chess pieces spread out over the board and the table. Taken pieces and untaken pieces. Stephen had never realised how beautiful they were. The delicate carving of the knights’ heads and the queens’ crowns. The feel of the ivory between the fingers, and the richness of the black-and-white colours. It was another language. One his father spoke like a native but he and Silas could never learn. They had never understood one another. They had never been a family at all.
The police were coming. Stephen could hear the sound of a car on the drive. Jeanne Ritter left the doorway and walked away toward the front door. She was the housekeeper, after all. It was her job to let them in. There was no time left. Stephen couldn’t bear it. He looked at the chess pieces again. They held the key to what he needed. He was sure of it. But what key? Stephen couldn’t work it out and suddenly he felt too tired to think anymore, too tired to move. He leant against the wall for support and took hold of one of the thick curtains that were half drawn across the french windows. And then he stood there swaying, waiting for the police to come and take him away.
Stephen was fully awake now. In truth he had only ever been half asleep, and the feeling of frustration stayed with him, although the details of his dream faded. He felt more certain than ever that he had missed something. It was just beyond his reach, but try as he might, he couldn’t get to it.
Somewhere out in the half darkness the bells of Wandsworth Church rung out the hour of six. It was the beginning of another day, and Stephen wondered not for the first time how many he had left before the hangman came for him. But still there was hope. Stephen felt momentarily buoyed by the grey early-morning light seeping through his cell window. There was surely enough doubt for the jury to let him off. If it wanted to. But that was reckoning without the old judge, who seemed to want to squeeze the life out of him just because he was young. Stephen couldn’t understand it. Thompson too with his mean, pitiless little eyes. They had got to the jury. Stephen felt sure of it. Thompson had pushed him back and back until he’d done just what Swift had told him not to do. He’d lost his temper. And then Murdoch had gone in for the kill. The old judge was clever. Everything seemed fair and evenly balanced, but that was an illusion. He’d told the jury what to do as much as if he’d given them a written order to convict.
But maybe they’d refuse to do what they were told. There was hope yet. Summoning up all his energy, Stephen washed, brushed his hair, and put on the black suit and tie that his lawyers had brought to the prison before the trial. Then, on the way out, he glanced over at his reflection in the small mirror hanging over the sink. But just as quickly he turned away, trying to escape from the unwanted thought that he looked exactly like a man on the way to his own funeral.
They came for him at just after three.
“It’s a verdict,” one of the gaolers said. It was their custom. The jury could come back to ask a question or to receive a direction from the judge. Men awaiting their fate should be able to prepare themselves as they walked down the basement corridors and then up the steep stairs that led to the courts.
Emerging into the dock, Stephen felt the sudden force of the silence in the courtroom. Downstairs there had been constant noise: keys turning in old locks and gates clanging, the screws’ shouts echoing off the damp, whitewashed walls. But here there was silence. There must have been nearly a hundred people in the courtroom, but not one of them spoke. They were still as statues, waiting for what was to come. It was always like this just before a verdict came in on a capital charge, but Stephen wasn’t to know that. The tension frightened him. It was like ice on his soul.
