possible to warn the man of his loss of control. Jordan saw, too, that for the first time since she had been in court that Alyce was smiling.
‘When, how, did you tell her?
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember when you told a wife with whom you wanted a reconciliation that you were having her watched!’ spelled out Beckwith, spacing every word to stress his incredulity.
‘We were arguing.’
‘Over what?’ seized Beckwith.
Appleton shifted, too late realizing the trap snapping closed behind him. ‘When she accused me of infecting her.’
‘Which you did, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ denied Appleton, loudly again. ‘She infected me!’
‘Go on.’
Appleton shrugged. ‘That was it.’
‘No it wasn’t it, was it, Mr Appleton? You were arguing about who had infected whom and you told her you were having her watched. Tell the jury of that occasion.’
‘She said I’d given her a complaint and wanted a divorce and I said I’d got it from her and that I was going to find out who her lover was and that I was going to have her watched. And she said she was having me watched.’
Jordan saw Alyce suddenly come close to Reid as Beckwith said, ‘Was going to have her watched? Not that you already had her under surveillance?’
‘I don’t remember the precise words.’
‘What was the date of that confrontation?’
‘I don’t remember that, either.’
Beckwith paused as Reid passed him a note, smiling up from it. ‘Can I help you with the date? It was April fifth last year, wasn’t it?’
‘It might have been.’
‘You really can do better than this, giving testimony on oath, can’t you, Mr Appleton?’ persisted Beckwith, sorting through papers and material in front of him. He came up, a diary in hand. ‘April fifth was a Saturday. You would have been home in Long Island on a Saturday – a weekend – trying for your much sought reconciliation with your wife, wouldn’t you?’
‘It could have been April. I don’t know the actual date.’
‘You can’t remember the date when you still wanted a reconciliation with your wife?’
‘No.’
‘How many days are there in the month of March?’
Appleton looked anxiously to his lawyer, who shook his head. Appleton said, ‘Thirty-one.’
‘And April?’
‘Thirty.’
‘Yesterday you admitted to the court that during March – the precise date you couldn’t remember it starting – you were in a sexual relationship with Sharon Borowski?’
Appleton nodded.
‘The court requires an audible reply,’ said Beckwith.
‘Yes,’
‘For six weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘So at the same time as desperately trying for a reconciliation with your wife, you were committing adultery with the party girl, Sharon Borowski?’
‘I’d ended the relationship with Sharon Borowski when we agreed to a reconciliation.’
‘Yesterday you told his honour and the jury that your affair with Sharon Borowski extended over six weeks.’
‘That was a mistake. I meant we slept together maybe six times, all during March.’
Beckwith didn’t hurry shuffling again through his papers, all the time keeping the note that had been passed to him by Reid very obviously in his hand. Beckwith finally stopped at something among the documents. ‘Sharon Borowski was the first of the two women with whom you admit adultery. The second is Ms Leanne Jefferies, who is a defendant in the criminal conversation claims brought by your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘I really do need your help in establishing a time frame, as I am sure the court does,’ said Beckwith, once more consulting the note that had been passed from the adjoining table. ‘Even giving you the benefit of your corrected recollection that your sexual relationship with Sharon Borowski began and ended in March, we’ve still got your confrontation with your wife on April fifth. At which you each accused the other of transmitting a sexual disease to the other. When, exactly, did you fit in your affair with Ms Jefferies?’
‘It’s wrong!’ shouted Appleton.
‘Something is very definitely wrong,’ commented the lawyer. ‘What, very exactly again, is wrong, Mr Appleton?’
‘All the dates. All the dates are wrong. It all didn’t happen in as short a period as you are suggesting.’
‘Suggestions to which you have agreed, under oath, Mr Appleton.’
‘I was confused. Am confused. Not thinking properly.’
‘Isn’t the confusion caused by you lying about the sequence of events and trapping yourself into a time frame that is too tight for you satisfactorily to fit in two separate affairs at the same time as supposedly trying a reconciliation with your wife?’ demanded Beckwith.
‘No!’
‘And isn’t the only way to make it work to tell the truth, that there was no sequence but that you were conducting your affair with Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies not separately but simultaneously? And at the same time as you claim you were attempting a reconciliation which your wife rejected because she contracted chlamydia from you?’
‘No!’
‘And isn’t it also the truth that trying to suggest that my client, Harvey Jordan, gave your wife chlamydia is blatant nonsense, because at the time that you, she and Leanne Jefferies suffered the infection, Harvey Jordan – who is not a sufferer of the disease – had not even met your wife!’
‘It proves she is promiscuous.’
‘And isn’t it also blatant nonsense that Harvey Jordan caused the breakdown of your marriage, which by the time he met your wife had already irretrievably broken down?’
‘No!’
‘You were honest, when you admitted affairs with Sharon Borrows and Leanne Jefferies, weren’t you?’
Appleton didn’t reply, genuinely confused on this occasion.
‘The court requires an answer,’ insisted Beckwith.
‘Yes,’ Appleton finally said.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re asking me.’
‘Why did you tell the truth about those two affairs before you had been accused of them?’
‘Because… it’s the truth… I believed I had to.’
Beckwith glanced at the paper that had been handed to him and which he still held. ‘Isn’t it that having contracted chlamydia your wife told you at that confrontation on April fifth that she already had you under surveillance? That you knew you had been caught conducting your simultaneous affairs and decided to admit to them in the hope that those two admissions would be sufficient and you wouldn’t be accused of any others?’
‘No!’
‘So, before being challenged, you told the truth.’
‘Yes.’
‘The truth with which you are having so much difficulty now.’
