Though I Know She Lies, page 23
“I pretended to be asleep when Auntie Barbara came in . . . I didn’t want to talk to her, in case she asked me questions.” She lifted her head a little but did not move from the shelter of Antony’s arm. “And next morning I remembered my promise, only I didn’t quite understand it then. So I never said anything about what happened until now.”
Sir Nicholas came to his feet. “Thank you, Miss Canning,” he said, at his most formal. He looked up at the judge. “Before offering my learned friend the opportunity to cross-examine, m’lud, I must respectfully submit that there is no case to answer . . . that the charge against my client should be dismissed.”
Mr. Justice Carruthers looked down at the scene below him . . . at Sir Nicholas, whose strained look was so very uncharacteristic; at the Solicitor-General, almost equally uneasy; at the unorthodox sight of a defence witness weeping in the arms of one of Her Majesty’s counsel . . . one, moreover, who wasn’t officially concerned in the case that was being tried. He wasn’t in any hurry to answer the question, he let his eyes wander round the court; they rested for a moment on the prisoner, on her feet now and leaning forward, as though there was comfort to be found in diminishing by even so little the distance between herself and the little girl. Then his eyes moved on. “Mr. Canning,” he said.
Douglas Canning got up slowly and came forward a pace or two. He was looking dazed, and he moved jerkily. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”
“I think,” the judge told him, “that you should take your daughter out of the courtroom for the moment, though I’m afraid you must remain within call for a little while, until we know if she is needed again.” His eyes moved back to the tableau in the well of the court. “We could probably dispense with your presence also, Mr. Maitland, if you find it impossible to disengage yourself,” he said, dryly.
There was a time when Antony would have been daunted by his tone; now he merely acknowledged the sally briefly, with a smile, hauled Clare to her feet, and moved to meet Douglas Canning, who was also on his way to the door.
As he went he heard the judge’s voice “Before we consider that point, Sir Nicholas, I think we are entitled to a little further explanation. According to the evidence we have just heard, Laura Canning killed herself. But why,” asked Mr. Justice Carruthers plaintively, “has everyone been telling lies?”
chapter 16
“And the judge accepted it . . . just like that?” said Jenny. She was so used to complaints of judicial incredulity that perhaps the surprise in her tone was not altogether to be wondered at.
“He had to,” said Antony. “It was perfectly obvious.” He turned to pick up his glass from the mantelpiece. It was Friday evening; and Sir Nicholas and Derek were with them, and they were all drinking the Christmas sherry by way of celebration.
“Naturally,” said Sir Nicholas, “I had had no expectation of being able to close the case at that point; but that was before I heard what the child had to say. She was utterly convincing, and the feeling in the court was quite unmistakable; they accepted her story without question, as I did myself.”
“Even Jeremiah,” said Antony.
“Even my learned and honourable friend. And if he hadn’t,” added Sir Nicholas, with some evidence of satisfaction in his tone, “one look at the jury would have convinced him it was hopeless to continue.”
“No child could have invented a tale like that,” said Stringer. “She even explained, without realising it, how it came about that only Barbara’s prints were on the medicine bottle. But the main thing she couldn’t have understood was Laura’s state of mind.” He had accepted the invitation to dinner with apparent pleasure, but he was ill at ease, and noticeably subdued.
“What you should have seen,” Antony told his wife, “was Uncle Nick and old Carruthers cooing over Clare like a pair of turtle doves. And, of course, I haven’t told you how Uncle Nick treated Douglas Canning as a hostile witness—”
“Lamb wouldn’t object to that,” said Derek. “As far as he could see at that point, we were doing his job for him.”
“—or about his masterly exposition on the subject of everyone’s motives . . . not that you’d be much wiser if I had.”
Sir Nicholas gave him his blandest smile. “I admit, I didn’t expect so much forbearance from Carruthers. As for the motives, there was really no need, my dear boy, to make the public as wise as we are,” he said gently.
“Well, I’m not the public,” said Jenny, “and I want to know.” She looked at each of the three of them in turn, weighing up her chances of getting the information. “Everything,” she added firmly, and sat back, waiting.
“In that case,” said Sir Nicholas, “you had better look to your husband. If his ways of attaining his ends were a little less enlivening, you would not find Stringer and myself in a state of such exhaustion.” he glanced at his nephew. “The floor is yours,” he said; not without malice.
“If you’d seen the people—” said Antony.
“Tell me from the beginning.”
“Well—” He looked down at Stringer, but obviously there was no help to come from that quarter. “You heard the beginning, just a week ago, from Uncle Nick. And it seemed obvious then that if it wasn’t Barbara, Laura must have killed herself; or why didn’t she say, ‘So-and-so was here and gave me my medicine’ when Barbara went in to see her? Because of the mix-up about the glass, the suicide theory seemed out; but that raised another difficulty, because when I saw Barbara I thought she was too intelligent to have made so obvious a mistake.”
“That would have applied to anyone else, too,” said Derek. “But people do make mistakes.”
“Yes, but whatever theory I tried, some inconsistencies had to be explained away. And then there were two completely contradictory statements: Clare said she was asleep, but surely she’d have heard if there had been a visitor before Barbara came home? And Mrs. Mills said she heard somebody come in and run up the stairs before a quarter to ten. But nobody was being very definite about times; it could have been Barbara . . . until that evidence turned up which placed her positively outside until ten-fifteen.
“So at first it didn’t seem very likely that anyone had been to see Laura after Brenda Mills left her. At the shop, Madame Raymonde was behaving oddly, and eventually I turned up a motive of sorts for her; unfortunately, at the same time I more or less proved it no longer existed by the time Laura Canning died.”
“You’re going much too fast,” Jenny protested. “I don’t see that at all.”
“Laura was putting pressure on her, threatening to tell that she’d never really been Mrs. O’Toole at all, and therefore had no right to Michael O’Toole’s estate. (That’s something I don’t know ‘of my own knowledge,’ by the way, and I don’t intend to take any steps to find out.) But before Laura’s death she had already heard that Stanley Prior knew about Etienne, so it hardly looks as if she had a motive . . . unless she meant to polish off the two of them. But there again there was the possibility of error; if she thought Laura was the one with the proof that her first husband was alive, she might have felt Prior’s knowledge was only hearsay, that he wasn’t in a position to implement his threats.”
“Far-fetched,” said Sir Nicholas, in a considering tone.
“I only said ‘a possibility,’ ” Antony pointed out. “And actually, of course, it was Prior who had met Etienne and could easily find him again. As for opportunity, that was practically non-existent, and that’s all about madame, really, except as she ties in with Stanley Prior. You’ve heard all about him . . . as we went on he was never really a suspect at all, though the police had their eyes on him for other reasons.”
“You’ll have to tell me what happened last night, though,” said Jenny.
“I did.”
“You started to,” she corrected him. “You came to bed dreadfully late and fell asleep in the middle of telling me.”
“How far—?”
“It’s Uncle Nick’s part of the story, really. You left him in chambers—”
“With two unconscious criminals,” said Sir Nicholas. He sipped his wine, in no hurry to continue. “You played that hand very badly, you know,” he told his nephew.
“I was preoccupied, sir. I mean, I really was bothered about Clare. And we neither of us thought Prior could have any further interest in me.”
“If you hadn’t assured Mrs. O’Toole so rashly of your silence—”
“I know . . . he’d have realised he couldn’t get away with it. As it was, he felt it safe to give his revengeful instincts play, I suppose; especially as he was in a position to call on Roberts’s cooperation.”
“That’s all very well,” said Jenny. “What happened?”
Sir Nicholas smiled reminiscently. “I think Mr. Prior was a little taken aback when he found me—er—watching by his pillow,” he remarked. “For which I don’t altogether blame him . . . he must have been as tired of my conversation as I was of his. I explained the situation to him and I regret to say that the thought of Roberts going free gave him no pleasure at all; nor were Roberts’s thoughts of you altogether kindly; until he came to a better understanding of the position.”
“If you ask me,” said Derek, suddenly, “it’s a disgraceful story.” Sir Nicholas looked gratified. “I only wish I could dine out on it,” he added, regretfully.
“There’s more to come,” Antony assured him.
“Very little. After Roberts had left us, Mallory summoned the police, and I explained to Mr. Prior that any mention of Mrs. O’Toole’s affairs would have the saddest consequences . . . for him. As it seems some money actually passed, it might be possible to substantiate a blackmail charge, though I doubt it. But there was no need to point that out, after all.”
“But he’s under arrest, isn’t he? For trying to kill Antony.”
“Well . . . no, not for that. You must remember there is no proof of the attacks in the square, and never could be. A charge of assault would lie, but that is being kept in reserve.”
“In deference to Mallory’s feelings,” said Antony.
“But I don’t think that’s right at all.” Jenny was indignant. “You’re forgetting Mrs. Edgecombe-Daly. I’m afraid Mrs. O’Toole must write off her losses to experience, but the defrauding of the other lady should be quite easily proved, and I now understand the victim is admirably vindictive.”
“That should hold him for a while,” said Derek with satisfaction.
“So we must hope. Does that answer your questions, my dear?”
“Yes,” said Jenny. “Except—” She broke off, and looked up at Antony. “It doesn’t matter now,” she told him.
“The important thing,” he said, rather hurriedly, “was the Canning household. But before I got to that point, of course, I thought a good deal about Laura’s character . . . and Barbara’s. And the first thing I realised, of course, was that all the people who had it in for Barbara were just repeating what Laura had told them; I mean, they may not actually have said they were quoting her, but I bet if you looked into it—”
“We’ll grant you that point,” said Sir Nicholas.
“Another thing (but this was later) was that their father must have had a very—a very unrelenting nature to cut Barbara off as he did. And I began to think—you’ll say I was guessing again, Uncle Nick—that perhaps Laura took after him.”
“And weren’t you?” asked his uncle.
“I think I was right, anyway.”
“What happened,” said Derek, “when you went to see the Cannings?” Sir Nicholas gave him an approving look. “It is high time,” he agreed, “that you got to the facts that Jenny asked you for.”
“Facts?” said Antony, doubtfully. “If you’d shown me a fact any time during the last week I’d probably have died of shock. And I’m not taking any responsibility for that, Uncle Nick; if you hadn’t roped me in, far too late—”
“I’ll concede that point, too,” said Sir Nicholas. “But—”
“The next bit’s more difficult, because it’s quite illogical.”
“I shouldn’t let that worry you.”
“No, sir, I won’t. The thing was, you see, I’d been busy collecting impressions about both the sisters. And then when we went to the flat, Derek—Laura’s flat—I became unreasonably convinced . . . well, I suppose it was just that I felt that, whatever Barbara was really like, it was nothing to do with what Laura had said of her.”
“And from there,” said Derek, “you leaped wildly to the conclusion that she was innocent.”
“I told you it was illogical. But from then on I made it the—the basis of my calculations, you see.”
“I can only be thankful that you didn’t tell me this before,” said Sir Nicholas, faintly.
“Well, the first time I went to Wood Green I was puzzled, as I told you, by what they said about Clare. And even apart from that, Douglas Canning was agitated. When I heard about his financial position it began to look as if a motive was emerging; and the one thing added to the other . . . it could have been quite a strong one. And he could quite reasonably have had a key, for all Barbara was sure he hadn’t.
“Emmie, when I saw her alone, was much more informative. She’s a surprisingly sensible person. For one thing, she asked me, didn’t I think people tended to see their own faults in others? And that was the key to the whole situation, really, between Laura and Barbara. And she said the jealousy was on Laura’s side—”
“A second wife talking about her predecessor? Not a very good witness, surely.”
“I didn’t want a witness, I just wanted some—some illumination. And I wanted to see Clare. That’s another thing about Emmie. I think she agreed with me really that it would be good for the child to talk about what had happened—”
“You’ve already told us you found her ‘sensible,’ said Sir Nicholas, dryly.
“So I have. But that’s why she let me see Clare, not because of any argument I put up. And, of course, it helped enormously, because I began to see possible answers to some of the questions that were troubling me.” He paused and looked at his uncle. “You’ll notice I said ‘possible,’ sir. I’ll admit I was still guessing.”
“You were guessing right up to the moment in court when Clare Canning told us what had happened,” said Sir Nicholas, flatly.
“Yes, I suppose—” He looked down at Derek and said in a troubled way, “There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.”
“It worked,” said Derek, unemotionally.
“What questions?” asked Jenny.
“Well, assuming Barbara’s innocence . . . and I believed in it by now, as I told you, though I wasn’t exactly convinced of it—”
“I should have thought,” Sir Nicholas remarked to no one in particular, “that any member of the legal profession would acquire, over the years, some slight skill in the logical presentation of facts.”
Antony caught his wife’s eye. “Assuming Barbara’s innocence,” he repeated, “what was she hiding from us? She certainly wasn’t telling all the truth. Douglas had a motive, had he also opportunity? Could he have gone to the flat that night without Clare knowing? (I didn’t think so.) And if she knew he had been there, would she have kept quiet about it? It even occurred to me that he might have considered having her declared insane so that she couldn’t give him away, which was an idea that didn’t please me at all. And when Clare talked about a promise, I thought at first she’d made one to her father, but then I began to see—”
“If your meditations were so vaguely directed,” said Sir Nicholas, who was beginning to get hungry, “I’m surprised you reached any conclusion at all.”
“I thought,” said Antony, “you were most likely right, Uncle Nick, with the suicide theory—”
“Even though I had adopted it only for want of a better.”
“—and I was already answering all those questions, tentatively. But when that final witness turned up, it seemed to clinch things.”
“The one who saw Barbara and Douglas talking in the street?”
“Yes. That was what she was lying about . . . and so was he, of course, but I was more puzzled by her motives, just then.”
“All right . . . why?” said Jenny.
“I can answer that positively now, not guesswork any longer, because Barbara told us herself, this afternoon,” said Antony. “She thought that Douglas had killed Laura—”
“But why should she protect him?”
“It was Clare she was concerned about. You see, Douglas rushed downstairs with straws in his hair, and it was pretty obvious there’d been a flaming row. And that explains, by the way, why he left no fingerprints in the bedroom . . . he was too angry to do anything but stand there and shout at Laura. That night, Barbara was just thankful to find Clare asleep; but next day she realised that with all the din there must have been, she must have heard something of what was going on. I imagine Barbara’s confidence in Douglas’s integrity got rather a shaking during the next few weeks; but what she couldn’t bear was the thought that if she told what she knew, Clare might be asked to give evidence that would convict her father. She said to us once—do you remember, Derek?—that that friend of hers, Maggie Something-or-other, gave her the first disinterested affection she’d ever known. And I found that rather revealing.”
“If you think she carried the attitude to extremes,” said Derek, “remember she’d been disillusioned with her own parents.” He looked at Jenny, trying to make her understand. “She’s naturally generous and affectionate, and I think that’s another reason she didn’t want Clare to find out that her parents weren’t perfect. Barbara was trying to protect her from something she understood only too well.”
Sir Nicholas was eyeing Stringer with a look of amused understanding. Antony thought he was going to remark, “More guessing,” but he said only, “She realised it anyway, poor child . . . what her mother had done, I mean.”
