Declared Dead

'That's right, but that was four years before our relationship began.'

Scott didn't seem to take any notice of the answers, leaping into his next question. 'In fact, without the support of the deceased, your career as a trainer might never have got under way?'

I could see Tom considering his reply carefully. If he said no, he would appear ungrateful. If he answered in the affirmative, he would appear even more ungrateful and treacherous. 'He was one of a handful of people who had faith in me and at the time I was very grateful for his support.'

I wished he had added how, for the next four years, Edward had tried to do him immense damage by bad-mouthing him to anyone on the racecourse who would bother to listen.

'When you realised the nature and depth of your feelings for Mrs Pryde, did you still continue to offer her rides as a jockey on your horses?'

'I did.'

'There are not many women jockeys riding professionally, are there?'

'Two or three.'

'Am I right in thinking that they enjoy considerably less success than their male counterparts?'

'You are. On the whole, they are less strong and less effective in riding a finish.'

'And Mrs Pryde is an exception?'

'Yes, I think she is. She has excellent tactical judgement and what she lacks in a finish, she more than makes up for by the way she sets a horse right before a fence.'

'Did you deliberately offer Mrs Pryde rides at courses which would necessitate her being away from home for the whole day, not returning often until late evening?'

'What are you suggesting?'

'It's my prerogative to ask the questions, Mr Radcliffe, but since you ask I'll put my suggestion to you. I suggest that the reason you continued to put up Mrs Pryde on your horses was not because of her riding ability but to create opportunities for you both to cheat on the deceased.'

'That's a monstrous suggestion. I choose the best jockey available on each occasion. I owe that duty to my owners. I never gave Victoria a ride other than on the grounds of ability.' There was an incongruous giggle from someone in the gallery.

'You were very much in love with her, weren't you?'

'Yes, but eventually I had to accept that in the circumstances it was impossible, and had to end.'

'Would you please look at the letter dated 22nd December, exhibit seven, My Lord. Do you see the final paragraph on page two and the opening sentence of the next page?'

'I do. I've already told this court that there is a page missing and what you have here completely distorts what I was writing about. I never threatened to end Edward Pryde's life.'

'Would you agree with me that if there is no missing page those words read very much like a threat to do just that?'

Tom turned to the judge. 'Must I answer that, My Lord?'

For the first time in the trial, Snipe was sympathetic: 'No, you don't have to. You're being asked your opinion and this court is concerned solely with facts.'

Scott produced one of the most obsequious smiles I've ever seen and returned to the attack. 'Did you ever seriously think that Edward Pryde would give his wife a divorce?'

'No, not really. It was well known that he thoroughly disliked me and I knew from Victoria that he relied upon her heavily for financial support.'

'Nonetheless, you often asked Mrs Pryde to leave him?'

'That's not really surprising, is it? I hated the way he used to treat her and I genuinely thought that she would be better off without him.'

'And when you realised she wouldn't leave him, you killed him?'

'That's ridiculous. I never touched him, I tell you.'

'You accept that you argued with him that evening in the pub?'

'I lost my temper with him. He was taunting me about Victoria.'

'And you threatened him with violence?'

'That was only in the heat of the moment. If a man threatens to beat up the girl you love, even if she's his wife, you can't very well stand by and let him go ahead and do it. At least I couldn't.'

'Are you in the habit of passing out after a couple of drinks?'

'No, it's never happened before. I can only assume it was the combination of the alcohol and the tablets I had taken for my headache.'

'You were familiar with Melksham Pit, of course?'

'I had been there once before with Victoria.'

'What do you mean by once before? You accept, then, that you went there again?'

'It was a slip of the tongue. I've only ever been there once.'

'How can you explain the petrol stains which were found on the suit you were wearing that night?'

'I must have splashed myself when I filled my car up with petrol earlier in the evening. I'm a little clumsy and impatient and probably took the nozzle out of the tank before I'd finished filling. It's easily done with these self-service things.'

'And the presence of your footprints on the path leading to the pit, how do you account for that?'

'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.