The Paying Guests(179)
‘I think you rather enjoy giving people smacks, don’t you, Mr Ward?’ said Mr Ives, when he rose to begin his cross-examination. ‘Did you enjoy knocking out Miss Grey’s tooth, back in June?’
The boy’s narrow shoulders sank. ‘For God’s sake, I only tapped her to try and get some sense into her! Half the teeth in her head have fell out by themselves. She said I done her a favour, after it. She’s been putting money by for a set of uppers. She didn’t tell you that, did she?’
‘Did you enjoy going after Leonard Barber on the fifteenth of September?’
‘How could I have enjoyed it? I’ve already said, I never went near him!’
‘Did you enjoy pursuing him into that dark lane and striking him down, from behind, with your cosh?’
The boy appealed to the judge, to Mr Tresillian, to the clerks, to anyone who would listen. ‘This is mad, all of this is. I never done it. I never done it! Some bloke’s going about right now laughing himself sick over all of this…’
On and on it went, while Frances and Lilian sat and watched. It was like looking on at torture, Frances thought, knowing that with a word they could stop it; feeling the word wanting to come out, feeling it rise in her gullet, but swallowing and swallowing to choke it back down. For, of course, in saying the word they would simply have to take the boy’s place… By the time he had been released, they were limp and sweating. The court broke for lunch, and they let the Barbers go. ‘God! God!’ said Lilian softly. Her face shone white as a bone through the mesh of her veil.
Then it all started up again. The boy’s railway-porter uncle offered a feeble character reference. A man who ran a Bermondsey boxing club said that Spencer had been ‘willing to learn’ and ‘quick to get the hang of the punching’ – there were more snorts of laughter up in the gallery at that. And then the mother, Mrs Ward, was called to the court. She went creeping into the stand, to answer the counsels’ questions in a voice so faint and uncertain it was like the cobwebby voice of a ghost; the judge had to lean forward out of his chair in order to catch it. She confirmed that the cosh on display was one she had seen in her son’s possession. He had killed any amount of vermin with it at home. But as for carrying it about the streets with him, it was her belief that he did that – well, as he might have carried a boy’s pistol. In fun, she meant.
In fun, said Mr Ives. And on the night of the murder? Had Mr Ward been out having fun, then?
Oh, no. It was all just how he’d told the police. He had come home from work that day with his head hurting; he had spent the evening indoors with her. No, they hadn’t had no visitors, but – well, she had seen him there with her own two eyes.
Did he often suffer from headaches?
Oh, yes, he had them quite regular. He’d had them since he was little.
Could she refer the court to a doctor who might vouch for that?
She looked thrown. ‘Well, he never saw the doctor, sir.’
‘He never did. That’s a pity. And how did he pass the evening, precisely?’
‘He was on his bed, sir.’
‘In his bedroom?’
‘He has his bed in the parlour, sir.’
‘I see. And what was he doing?’
‘He was reading his British Boy, sir.’
Here Mr Ives paused, and the judge leaned further out of his chair, his hand cupping his ear. ‘What does the witness say?’
‘The witness was telling us, my lord, that on the night in question her son was reading a copy of the British Boy. I believe it’s a —’
‘Yes, I know what it is. My grandson reads it. Mrs Ward —’ Screwing up his face, the judge addressed the woman directly. ‘You are asking the court to believe that your son, a young man of nineteen years, used, as we have heard, to going about the town to night-clubs and dance-palaces, spent his Friday evening at home with you, reading a boy’s picture-paper?’
She looked at him doubtfully, clearly sensing that there was a catch in his question; but just unable, Frances thought, to put her finger on what it was.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
He sat back without comment. In the dock, Spencer hung his head. The jurymen whispered again, and Frances covered her eyes.
And when she uncovered them, and saw the next witness, and understood that he was some Bermondsey neighbour, here perhaps to offer another lacklustre character reference, the futility of it all nearly overwhelmed her. The man had a yellowish, underfed cast to his features, and shiny patches on his ill-fitting suit. He looked like the sort of ex-service man who asked for money on the streets – as though he might swear to anything for the price of a meal. And, yes, Mr Tresillian’s first questions were all to establish his War record, the campaigns he had fought in, the wounds he had received. He had been demobilised in February ’nineteen, he said, and had had various addresses after that. But since March of this year he had been living in the same building as the accused and his mother. He had a single room there, that he rented from another family.
‘Now,’ said Mr Tresillian briskly, ‘to get one unpleasant detail out of the way first: have you ever seen rats and black-beetles in the building?’
The man nodded. ‘You might say that. The place is crawling with them. The rats come up the drain-pipes. The beetles come out from behind the wallpapers at night.’