ebullient manner and theatrical flair; charcoal-complected Adderley, a hulking presence surveying the courtroom as if he owned it, sitting next to the dour Attorney General, Hallinan, with his long, expressionless face and tiny twitching mustache.
And Freddie? He was sitting in his mahogany cage, chewing idly on his ever-present wooden match, his suit lightweight and blue, his tie bright as a Bahamas sun. The only indications of the toll all this had taken were his paleness and the fact that somehow the lanky Count had managed to lose weight.
For all his cheerful manner-grinning, winking at acquaintances-he looked damn near skeletal.
Adderley opened the Crown’s case with a lengthy and, frankly, powerful address to the court. He arranged the prosecution’s sorry jigsaw puzzle of circumstance into a picture of remarkable clarity, stressing Freddie’s “desperate financial condition,” and his “burning hatred” for Sir Harry.
“The details of this murder,” he said in his commanding, more British than British tones, “surpass by far any misdeed previously recorded in the annals of the history of crime in our fair land.”
Now his voice boomed.
“Murder is murder, and a life is a life,” he said, “but this murder is, as Shakespeare says, ‘as black as hell and as dark as night’ in its foul conception…a deed which could only originate in a depraved, strange and sadistic mind…a mind indeed which is
Nice piece of shifty work, I thought, the way he emphasized the word “foreign.”
Adderley, hands clutching the front of his black robe, moved with a kind of lumbering grace, stalking the courtroom, intimidating the jury even as he wooed them. Beneath the eloquence and the so-very-proper accent was a latent brutality that gave the melodrama of his words credibility.
“Return a verdict of guilty,” he told the mesmerized jurors, “without fear or favor, knowing that you will be doing the thing which will satisfy your God…your conscience…and the demands of British justice!”
He sat, heavily, craning his neck, jutting his chin.
This stirring if pompous preamble was followed by a dull recital of familiar testimony from the RAF photographers and draftsman, and from Marjorie Bristol, who looked charming in her floral print dress with pearls, but seemed a little nervous.
On the other hand, she did grant me the briefest smile as she walked away from the witness box and up the aisle.
Over the lunch break, I sat in the B.C. dining room with Di and Nancy de Marigny-again, barred from the courtroom until her testimony-a procedure I would repeat over the coming days, reporting what I’d seen and giving my views.
“Adderley was good?” Nancy asked.
“Better than good. Even Erle Stanley Gardner was spellbound. I think it may have thrown Godfrey, a little.”
“He may have to lean on that boy Callender,” Di said. “I hear before he went into law, he was considering a stage career in London.”
Nancy was nodding. “Ernest was actually a newscaster with the BBC for a while. He’s got a fabulous personality-never at a loss for words….”
I’d spent enough time with Ernest Callender to know Nancy was right; but neither Higgs nor Callender was a match for Adderley’s showmanship.
“Christie should be up next,” I said.
Nancy smirked. “I wonder if he’ll make a better showing, this time around.”
“I wonder, too,” Di said, arching an eyebrow. “As good as Harold is with potential land buyers, you’d think he’d be able to sell a better bill of goods from the witness box….”
But Harold Christie’s showing, second time around, was if anything worse: he looked as if he hadn’t slept for weeks, his voice quavery and weak, requiring frequent requests from the bench for him to speak up as he gripped the rail, shifting in search of balance or comfort that would never come. If his double-breasted white linen suit with pearl buttons and his dark four-in-hand tie made him seem better groomed than usual, his flop sweat and fingering of that tie betrayed him as incredibly ill at ease.
He told his by-now-familiar tale of the murder night; he denied having been invited to de Marigny’s; nothing new.
But Adderley, knowing that Captain Sears would be testifying, did his best to deny the defense one of its bombshells.
“What would you say,” the prosecutor asked his witness, “if Captain Sears said he saw you out on the night of the murder?”
Christie’s knuckles were white at the railing as he summoned righteous indignation. “I would say he was seriously mistaken, and should in future be more careful of his observations.”
Adderley’s smile was wide and dazzlingly white; he nodded sagely, turned to the jury and played to them as he spoke to the bench: “My lord, that is all!”
This tactic from Adderley may have thrown Higgs somewhat, because at first his cross-examination of this uneasy witness seemed unsure. For example, he wasted five or ten minutes exploring which end of a towel Christie had used to wipe Sir Harry’s face, until Christie finally exploded with, “For heaven’s sake, Higgs, be reasonable!”
Yet Higgs pressed on, in an apparent attempt to convince the jury that Christie’s memory was unreliable. Fishing expeditions about why Christie had parked his station wagon in the country club lot that night, as well as whether or not the decision to stay at Westbourne was a spontaneous one, brought forth nothing. Nor did Higgs’ efforts pay off to underscore the absurdity of Christie’s claim that the stench of burning wasn’t present until he stepped into the murder room itself.
It was frustrating to see a sharp lawyer like Higgs do so little with an already off-balance witness.
Finally Higgs found his own footing.
“Mr. Christie, did you leave Westbourne at any time that night?”
“I did not.”
“Do you know Captain Sears, Superintendent of Police?”
“I do.”
“You are friendly with him?”
Christie shrugged. “I’m not friendly or unfriendly. I see very little of him.”
“Isn’t it true you’ve known each other since boyhood?”
Now he swallowed. “Yes.”
“He has no ill will against you, that you know of?”
“No.”
“I put it to you that Captain Sears saw you at about midnight in a station wagon in George Street!”
Christie swabbed his endless forehead with a soggy handkerchief. “Captain Sears is mistaken. I did not leave Westbourne after retiring, and any statement to the effect that I was in town that night is a very grave mistake.”
Higgs was pacing before the jury, now. “Would you say Captain Sears is a reputable person?”
“I would say so.” He swallowed again. “Nevertheless, reputable people can make mistakes.”
Higgs allowed the jury-in fact, the entire court room-to chew on the possible meanings of Christie’s last statement before saying, “I’ve finished with this witness, my lord.”
Over the rest of that day and extending throughout the next morning, Adderley continued to lay the foundation of his case. First came medical evidence from Dr. Quackenbush, much of which was centered on an unresolved discussion of whether or not Oakes was set afire alive or dead, based upon blister evidence. A little time-just a little-was given to the unsuccessful laboratory efforts to identify the “four ounces of thick and viscid” black liquid found in Sir Harry’s stomach.
The best moment came when the Chief Justice solemnly asked Dr. Quackenbush, “How long would it take for a normal, healthy person to die?”
And Quackenbush replied, “A normal, healthy person wouldn’t die, my lord.”
The tension in the courtroom disintegrated into much-needed laughter, over the cries of “Order! Order!” I found it a relief that the bland Quackenbush was finally living up to the Groucho Marx persona his name
