'Possibly they were there from last year or just happened to match somebody else's.'
Scott signalled to the usher to hand up a pair of brown brogues to Tom in the witness box. They had a label attached to them and up till then had sat on a table in front of the court, along with what I had assumed to be the other exhibits. Among them was the bronze statue with which Freddie had struck his father; it had been used to establish Edward's identity as the body in the boot. It had a polythene bag around it and no doubt it had been produced and examined earlier in the trial in the course of the forensic evidence.
'These are the shoes you were wearing that night?' asked Scott, with what I detected was a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
'They are. They're probably like a hundred thousand others in the country.'
'But you're the only owner of such a pair who had a motive for wanting Edward Pryde dead, aren't you?'
'I had no such motive.'
'You wanted to marry his wife, didn't you?'
'Yes, but I've told you, I realised and accepted it was impossible.'
'You knew that so long as he was alive there was no chance of Mrs Pryde giving up her son and leaving him?'
'I knew that and had come to accept it. In this world you have to accept there are some things you can't have and in my case Victoria was one of them.'
'You regarded her, then, as a possession?'
'Of course I didn't. She is the most wonderful person I've ever met.'
'So you would do anything to have her for your own?'
'Not anything. I would never have murdered her husband.'
'How can you explain the empty petrol can which the police found hidden in a disused box in your yard?'
'It wasn't hidden, at least not by me. There are probably endless pieces of machinery and things pushed out of sight in any large stable. I can certainly assure you that I had nothing to do with it.'
'That's not true, is it, Mr Radcliffe? I put it to you that after you left that pub you asked the deceased to give you a lift, that you forced him to drive his car to the chalk pit where you murdered him and set fire to the car in order to destroy the body.'
'I did none of those things.'
'That you returned to your own car and fabricated this tale about passing out.'
'I did not make it up. I did pass out.'
'That you murdered Edward Pryde in order that his wife would be free to marry you. To satisfy your own desires you were quite happy to rob a young boy of his father.'
'That's completely and utterly untrue. It was because of Freddie that I accepted Victoria's decision to stay with Edward. I am innocent of this charge against me.'
Counsel for the prosecution sat down and Tom's counsel tried his best to re-establish his client's credibility during re-examination. It was no easy task. It wasn't that he hadn't told the truth, it was just that he was in the invidious position of trying to prove a negative against a substantial weight of damaging circumstantial evidence. What was needed now was for Corcoran to come into the witness box and corroborate his story that he really did pass out in the car park of that pub. I didn't care whether Corcoran then went on to say that he had seen Brennan follow Edward in his car. I wanted revenge on the Irishman, but that could wait.
As Tom left the witness box and returned to the dock, I watched the jury for their reaction. It was incredible how their expressions gave so little away. I suppose they felt the eyes of the court were upon them and at least they had to give the impression of taking their duty seriously. I wondered whether they were really capable of analysing the issues, or knowing that their duty was to be certain of guilt before they reached a verdict to convict. Of course, they could only act on the evidence they had heard and seen for themselves. They knew nothing of Corcoran or of Musgrave's suspicious death or the link between my husband and Brennan. Who knows what feelings and emotions ran through their minds as they listened to the evidence? Had one of the male jurors himself been cuckolded and therefore hated any adulterer? Or had one of the women been cheated by her husband? It was a rare person who was able to leave his or her own prejudices and moral values behind as they stepped into a courtroom and passed judgement on a fellow man. I still hadn't given up hope. There was at least one woman who had appeared sympathetic as Tom had given his evidence.
Up ahead of me, Tom's counsel was now anxiously talking to his solicitor sitting in the row in front of him. Corcoran had obviously not appeared. The counsel rose to his feet and asked Snipe if the court would be minded to grant a short adjournment. Snipe was plainly not in such a charitable mood. He pointed out in acerbic terms that he had only allowed cross-examination on the entries in Edward's diary on the strict understanding that the individual in question, Corcoran, would be called by the defence. He saw no reason, if the witness was available, why he should not now be brought into court. Tom's counsel could offer no explanation for his absence. His application was refused by Snipe with unashamed enthusiasm. He then ordered that the usher should call out for Corcoran in case he was in the vicinity of the court. There was no response.
On that disastrous note the case for the defendant came to an abrupt end. The triumph envisaged by calling Corcoran had now turned into unmitigated disaster.
Chapter 17
That afternoon, the respective counsels made their closing speeches to the jury. Scott, on behalf of the prosecution, began by analysing the evidence coldly and clinically without displaying the slightest trace of emotion or passion. He delivered his speech without once appearing to look at a note and you could sense that he was gradually persuading the jury that whichever way they approached it, all the evidence pointed inexorably in one direction: the guilt of the accused, and therefore his just conviction for murder.
The jury now with him, Scott began to quicken the pace, cynically and rhetorically destroying Tom's defence. There was, he pointed out, ample motive and opportunity. Just as hell knows no fury like a woman scorned, who was to know what terrible deeds might be committed by an otherwise sensible and upright man driven by jealousy or despair? He poured scorn on Tom's attempts to answer the evidence against him. Asked about his whereabouts on the night Edward Pryde had disappeared, Tom answered that he was asleep, having passed out in the dark corner of the car park of a public house. How convenient! Pressed about the discovery of his footprints at the scene of the crime, he claimed feebly they must belong to someone else. Questioned about the petrol on his clothes, he explained it away as the result of an accident that same evening when filling up his car. Finally, when challenged about the incriminating contents of one of his letters to his lover, he is driven to claiming that there is a page missing.
By contrast, Scott argued, the attempt by the defendant to blacken the deceased's good name had deservedly failed. There was no sign of the mysterious Mr Corcoran who was going to tell the court what an evil blackmailer Edward Pryde was, and no doubt thereby seek to implant in the minds of the jury the notion that the world was a better place without him and that many people other than the defendant had a motive for wanting him dead. At the end of the day, urged Scott, it was simply a case of balancing facts, damning when considered in their entirety, against the word and demeanour of the accused in the witness box. There could be only one conclusion.
Tom's counsel, Fenton, earned his fee that afternoon. Reminding the jury throughout of their duty to convict only if they were certain beyond reasonable doubt, he proceeded to expose the truly circumstantial nature of the prosecution case. There was, he reminded the jury, no witness who had seen Tom follow Edward from the pub, no witness, even, who had seen them together after they had left the saloon bar just past closing time. It might well be that Tom had the opportunity to kill Edward Pryde, but so did hundreds if not thousands of other people. It was argued fiercely on behalf of the Crown that the accused alone had the necessary motive. What was that motive when analysed? An apparent desire to remove the obstacle between himself and marriage to Victoria Pryde. Was that, Fenton asked, really likely? His client had freely and frankly admitted everything from the outset, when questioned by the police about his affair with Victoria. He had told the court how he had accepted that so long as Edward refused to give Victoria a divorce, their love was impossible. It was Edward who had become aggressive and made a scene. If the prosecution case were seriously suggesting this was murder, Tom must have gone to that pub with a preconceived plan for disposing of his so-called enemy. And if that was so, why would he
