The Paying Guests(160)
She was struggling to find something about him that she could pity, that she could like. At the same time, it seemed impossible to her that anyone could seriously believe that he had committed a murder: he was so puny, so youthful, so sham. All around the room, though, she saw people looking at him in fascinated horror. The three Barber men were bristling, Leonard’s brother leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the boy in a sort of malevolent challenge.
The magistrate called for the prosecution to make their case, and Inspector Kemp got to his feet. With his folder of papers under his arm he stepped smartly up to the witness stand, to take a Bible from the clerk and swear his oath on it. He was Detective Inspector Ronald Kemp, he said, of Metropolitan Division P, and he had been leading the inquiry into the murder of Leonard Arthur Barber. He proposed to read to the magistrate a number of witness statements that, in his opinion, would justify the committal to trial of the prisoner Spencer Ward.
He began with those documents relating to Leonard’s final hours, and to the finding of his body. He read the reports of Constables Hardy and Evans, the first policemen to arrive at the scene. He read the statements given by Lilian, by Frances’s mother and by Frances herself; Frances listened to the last with her gaze lowered, feeling herself grow hot. What a thing to blush about, she thought, with so much else to be ashamed of! But it was odd and uncomfortable to have her words, her lies, read back to her so publicly. It was odd, too, to realise how phlegmatic the inspector’s tone was, and to note how quickly he passed on from her statement, and even from Lilian’s, to those of the spooning couple who’d heard the scuffling in the lane; and then how briskly he moved on again, to what he plainly considered to be the meat of the case. For, once he’d gone through the principal points of the police surgeon’s report, he cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and uncovered the next document in his folder. The statement he was turning to now, he announced, was that of Charles Price Wismuth. It was the second statement that Mr Wismuth had made to the police, replacing an earlier, false statement which Mr Wismuth had since withdrawn.
Another rustle of anticipation went around the court. People had begun to look slightly glazed at the continuous reading. They had been here for twenty minutes, and the room was growing stuffy; the inspector had told them nothing that they hadn’t seen already in the News of the World. But now they all became more alert. Leonard’s brother drew his challenging gaze away from the boy in the dock, and his father and uncle grew braced. And it was only as she looked from their faces to those of the men seated around them that Frances realised that Charlie himself was not here. He must have been too ashamed to come. Or did the police have him locked up somewhere?
Christ, what a mess it all was!
Then Inspector Kemp began to read, and she understood why Charlie had kept away.
The statement described how, back in the summer, he and Leonard had become acquainted with two women in a Holborn public house. The women were Miss Mabel Grey, commonly known as Billie, and her elder sister Mrs King. ‘“I knew that Mrs King was married,”’ the inspector read out, in his bland, unvarnished way. ‘“She said that she and her husband did not get along; that they had an understanding, that he went his way and she went hers. I did not tell her that I was myself engaged to be married. I did not consider it important. I did hear Mr Barber telling Miss Grey that he was married. I heard him telling her that he and his wife had a similar arrangement to that of Mrs King and her husband. I heard him profess the belief that such an arrangement was a good idea.”’
Unable to help herself, Frances glanced again at Lilian. She was sitting with her head lowered, blushing slightly, but apart from that her expression was a dead one.
‘“Mr Barber and I,”’ the statement ran on, ‘“continued to meet Miss Grey and Mrs King over a period of four months, between June and September this year. We would meet them once or twice a week, generally at public houses or for walks in the Green Park. We several times made them gifts of jewellery, or of items of female clothing.
‘“On Saturday the first of July this year Mr Barber and I spent an evening with Miss Grey and Mrs King at the Honey Bee night-club at Peter Street, Soho. Here we were approached in a threatening manner by two men. The men identified themselves as Alfred King, Mrs King’s husband, and Spencer Ward, who claimed to be the fiancé of Miss Grey. I had never heard Miss Grey mention a fiancé previously, but I had the impression that she and Mr Ward were well acquainted. The two men spoke in angry terms to Mr Barber and myself, and an argument ensued, during which Mr Barber and I thought it wisest to leave the Honey Bee. We travelled together to Camberwell Green, where I left Mr Barber to return to his home at Champion Hill, while I continued on to Peckham to visit my fiancée Miss Elizabeth Nixon. I did not see Spencer Ward again that night, but the next time I saw Mr Barber he had an injury to the face, and he informed me that Mr Ward had pursued him to Champion Hill and had there assaulted him. During the assault Mr Ward had warned Mr Barber to keep clear of Miss Grey, or he would be sorry. Mr Ward’s words, as reported to me by Mr Barber, were something like, ‘If you do not stay away from Billie I will do something to make you sorry. In fact, I will knock your bloody head off.’ He may have said bloody, or he may have used a coarser word —”’ Here the inspector paused for a second, as the boy in the dock let out a snort of laughter, ‘“— but he definitely, as Mr Barber related it, threatened to knock his head off.