The clerk of the court had a list of names placed in his tall black hat on the table in front of him. ‘Albert Warren,’ he said loudly. A small nervous-looking man in a tweed suit that had seen better days came forward to take the oath. With the Bible in his right hand and a card in his left he read the juror’s oath.
‘I swear by Almighty God to try the case on the basis of the evidence and to find a verdict in accordance with the truth.’ Albert Warren was the first man to take his place on the jurors’ benches. Twelve good men and true, their names picked out of a hat in Court Number Three of the Central Criminal Court. Ratepayers, property owners, summoned for a fortnight to see justice done, maybe to deprive a fellow citizen of his life.
Charles Augustus Pugh, now resplendent in wig, gown and wing collar, watched them carefully. Only once did Sir Rufus Fitch for the prosecution rise to his feet while the man was reading the oath. George Jones was stumbling through the words. It was obvious that he couldn’t read. ‘Objection! Stand by for the Crown!’ Sir Rufus’s high-pitched voice echoed through the courtroom. Pugh noticed the objection with interest. As George Jones was led away to the back of the court to be replaced with another name from the clerk’s hat, he wondered why the prosecution didn’t want a man who couldn’t read. Some prosecutors liked a stupid jury.
For the rest of the day Sir Rufus took the jury through the details of the prosecution case. Edmund de Courcy and Roderick Johnston testified that they had seen Montague in the late afternoon and early evening on the day of his death. Inspector Maxwell told the court of the discovery of the body, the vanished books, the empty desk.
Sir Rufus read out the sworn statements of the people who had seen Buckley in Oxford. Chief Inspector Wilson produced as an exhibit the tie found under the chair in Jenkins’ room, a tie similar to one previously in Horace Aloysius Buckley’s possession. He also read out Buckley’s admission that he, Buckley, had been in Montague’s flat on the evening of the first murder.
Mrs Buckley, dressed in a sombre black, testified briefly to her friendship with Christopher Montague. She gave details of the tie from her husband’s college, Trinity, in the University of Cambridge, that had gone missing with the stain on the bottom. Sir Rufus Fitch made it perfectly clear to the jury, without ever actually saying so, that sexual jealousy was the motive for murder.
When Sir Rufus was on his feet, he held himself absolutely still, like a human pillar. He stood in his place like some mighty Dreadnought of the law, fixing his eyes on the jury, speaking to them quite slowly. Trust in me, he seemed to be saying to them. I have been here before. I have long and distinguished experience in matters of this kind. This is all pretty straightforward. All you have to do is to bring in the guilty verdict.
Charles Augustus Pugh spent most of his time not watching the witnesses but watching the jury Some of the time the fingers of his right hand were playing the notes of a Mozart piano concerto on his gown. He watched the ones who looked disapproving as they heard of the friendship between Montague and Mrs Buckley. He watched two middle-aged men at the back who nearly fell asleep as the waves of Sir Rufus’s sonorous prose rolled across them. He watched the ones who spent their time looking at the prisoner in the dock. Pugh was certain that many jurors reached their final verdict, not on the basis of the evidence presented to them, but according to the look of the defendant. If he looked shifty or embarrassed, if he stared down at the floor, they would decide he was guilty. Pugh had told Horace Aloysius Buckley that at all times in the court, whatever his inner feelings, he was to look like a leading London solicitor, a regular worshipper at his local church, a respected pillar of his local community. Pugh smiled quietly to himself as he checked his client’s demeanour. Horace Aloysius Buckley gave his evidence clearly. He remained resolute as the evidence against him unfolded all through the afternoon. At four forty-five in the afternoon, as if Sir Rufus had to catch an early evening train, the prosecution case drew to a close.
‘Not too bad,’ had been Pugh’s verdict as he and the Powerscourts and Johnny Fitzgerald met in his chambers at the end of the day. ‘What do we have to bring to bear tomorrow?’
Johnny Fitzgerald passed him the name of the Corsican recently in the employ of de Courcy and Piper. Powerscourt said he had telegraphed to the chief of police in Calvi, the dubious Captain Imperiali, for any further details of the man. Powerscourt reported that he had had a fruitless interview with the Italian Ambassador. Scandals in Rome? the Ambassador had purred, impossible surely. Rome is the Eternal City. Scandals are simply out of the question. He had smiled pleasantly at Powerscourt throughout the exchange but said nothing. Johnny Fitzgerald was going to dinner with three Italian journalists based in London. Lady Lucy reported that she was on the verge of discovering more information about Alice Bridge’s relationship with Christopher Montague.
‘Will she give evidence?’ asked Pugh. ‘We could subpoena her tonight, if you think that would help.’
‘I think a subpoena might be a bit fierce. I have lined up her two grandmothers and three aunts for a family conclave tomorrow morning,’ said Lady Lucy, impressed herself by the amount of domestic firepower being brought into play. ‘I’m pretty sure she will.’
‘Excellent,’ said Pugh. ‘Tomorrow morning we begin to throw mud in their eyes.’
‘Call the Dean of Christ Church!’ The jury looked up with interest. Illicit love affairs, men garrotted with piano wire had been on the bill of fare yesterday. Now they were going to begin the day with a senior churchman. The Dean, the Very Reverend Oliver Morris, was an imposing figure, well over six feet tall. He was dressed in a black cassock with a silver crucifix hanging from his neck. The Dean looked as if he would have belonged to the Archdeacon Grantly party rather than the Proudie faction in the internecine doctrinal squabbles that had swirled around the Cathedral Close at Barchester. A hunting, port-drinking sort of Dean, rather than an evangelical parson, obsessed with individual sin and the need for a personal salvation. He took the oath in the confident tone of a man whose voice had filled the great cathedrals of England.
‘I, Oliver Morris, do solemnly swear that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
Pugh glanced briefly at the jury Four of them, he thought, were impressed by this patriarch of the Church, three indifferent, the rest curious.
‘Were you the minister taking the service of Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford on 9th November this year?’ said Pugh.
‘I was.’
‘Could you tell the court at what time the service commenced?’
‘The service started at five fifteen that day. It would have lasted about forty-five minutes.’
‘So it would have finished about six o’clock?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Dean, I would ask you to take a look at the prisoner in the dock. Please take as long as you like.’ Pugh paused while the churchman looked closely at Buckley. Buckley stared impassively back.
‘Do you recognize this man as a member of your congregation on that day?’
‘I do.’
‘Could you tell the court when you first saw him?’ Pugh thought the Dean was proving an impressive witness.
‘I usually take a brief look at the worshippers shortly before the service is due to begin,’ said the Dean, addressing the jury as though it were attending a service in his cathedral. ‘It sometimes helps to know the size of the likely congregation. I should say I first noticed him, sitting very near the choir stalls, at about five past five.’