Death of an Old Master

27

London’s finest sign writers went to work very early on the Monday morning. By a quarter to nine, a busy time in the streets of the capital, the board that previously said de Courcy and Piper had been removed from the front of the gallery of that name. The staff in the artistic world round about gazed in astonishment as a new sign was erected. The Salisbury Gallery, it announced to Old Bond Street, Art Dealers and Suppliers of Fine Pictures, London and New York.

Piper and de Courcy had spent much of the weekend in hiding at a grubby hotel near Wolverhampton. Nobody, Piper had announced gloomily, would come looking for them in Wolverhampton. Nobody did. On Sunday evening under cover of darkness they returned to London and crept down into the basement where their stock was stored. De Courcy had devised an original code to tell his partner about the pictures. Alpha meant that it was genuine. Beta meant that it was a copy of an original in the gallery’s possession. Gamma meant that it was a copy of an original not in the gallery’s possession. Omega meant that it was a total forgery, not based on any original, but born out of the artistic knowledge and creative energies of Orlando Blane in the Long Gallery in northern Norfolk. After that Edmund de Courcy left the gallery that had borne his name.

Piper had decided that this was the only way in which they might rescue the business. Even then, he was not sure it would work. De Courcy was to take the blame for everything. He was the sacrificial lamb, slaughtered to keep Piper afloat. ‘Think of it like this, Edmund,’ Piper had said to him as they stared in horror at the dinner menu in their Wolverhampton retreat on Saturday evening, ‘greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his partnership for his friend. I can keep you on as a sleeping partner. I’ll pay whatever it takes to bring your mother and your sisters back from Corsica. You will still get a share of the profits if we survive. If we give in now the entire value of our stock will simply disappear. Nobody will ever buy any of it. They’ll think they’re all bloody fakes. It’s our only chance.’

At a quarter past nine William Alaric Piper made his way slowly along Old Bond Street to his newly named gallery. He was wearing a new suit in dark grey. There was an orchid in his buttonhole. He nodded genially to his acquaintances. He was going to bluff it out. Already at the back of his mind he could feel a strategy emerging for handling his clients. He sat down at his desk and waited for the American invasion.

By the same hour a long queue had formed around the entrance to the public gallery of the Central Criminal Court. There were law students come to watch the last day of what was bound to be a famous trial in the annals of London’s jurisprudence. Maybe they would read about the case in faded red leather volumes in years to come when they were senior members of their profession, Queen’s Counsel at least, if not High Court Judges. Today they could see it for themselves and tell their future juniors that they had watched all the proceedings in person. There were drifters, people who always turned up to watch a great procession or a military parade because they had nothing better to do. There were phalanxes of society ladies whose loud greetings echoed up and down the streets.

‘Darling, haven’t seen you since Freddy’s party!’

‘They say that Mr Pugh is frightfully good-looking!’

‘Somebody told me at the Devonshires’ that the police know de Courcy did it. They’re just about to arrest him.’

‘Nonsense, darling. Everybody knows that poor man Buckley was the murderer. Pugh’s just trying to confuse the jury.’

At twenty past nine a dishevelled-looking Johnny Fitzgerald burst into Charles Augustus Pugh’s chambers. Pugh was deep in conversation with Powerscourt, fastening his gold watch chain into place, making final adjustments to his wig. Fitzgerald thrust two sheets of paper into Pugh’s hand.

‘That’s the Italian connection,’ he said, looking around desperately for coffee. ‘Got some of it from Italian newspapermen here in London. Got the rest from a man who’d worked as a footman at the house in Rome. Man drinks like a fish, maybe a bloody whale. Had to keep refilling his glass, if you follow me.’

Pugh read it quickly and placed it carefully at the top of his papers. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’

The judge, Mr Justice Browne, had had his hair trimmed over the weekend. He always tried to have a haircut before he gave his summing up and pronounced sentence on his victims. Powerscourt had heard somebody refer to him over the weekend as Hanging Browne. The jury looked refreshed after their two days away from court. The foreman was wearing a smart suit, as if his wife had told him he must look his best with all those press men watching. Horace Aloysius Buckley looked as though he had hardly slept at all. His face was gaunt, his eyes staring from their sockets. But he held himself well on this, the last day of his trial. The area reserved for the gentlemen of the press was meant to accommodate six scribes at most. There were eleven of them there this morning, crammed tightly together like galley slaves at their oars, fresh notebooks at the ready. The judge glared at them balefully as if he was thinking of reducing their number. The journalists avoided his gaze and began scribbling on their pads. The public gallery was crammed to the rafters, a long line waiting outside in case some of those present decided to leave.

Charles Augustus Pugh, veteran of many a courtroom drama, was feeling rather nervous that morning. He looked at his tall glass and decided to wait.

‘Recall Mrs Horace Buckley!’

The society ladies peered forward to see what she was wearing. The rustle of their skirts sounded like a small breeze blowing through Mr Justice Browne’s courtroom.

‘Mrs Buckley, forgive me if I just take you through some of the details of your friendship with Christopher Montague.’

Rosalind Buckley was wearing a long dress of very deep grey, with a small black hat. The colours suited her. She looked like a widow in mourning.

‘You had known Mr Montague for some fifteen months before he died, is that correct?’

‘It is,’ said Rosalind Buckley in a firm voice.

‘And could you remind us what plans the two of you had made for your future?’ Pugh was at his silkiest, talking as if he had just met Mrs Buckley sitting next to him at a fashionable dinner party.

‘We were going to live together in Italy,’ she said. ‘Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, was going to write there.’

‘You were going to live there out of wedlock? Or out of wedlock as long as your husband was alive?’

The newspapermen looked at each other in amazement. Yet another possibility crossed their minds, far faster than it struck anybody else in the public gallery.

‘We were,’ said Rosalind Buckley, staring at the floor beneath the witness box.

‘Were you planning to have children with Mr Montague, Mrs Buckley? Bastard children born on a foreign shore?’

‘Objection, my lord, objection.’ Sir Rufus Fitch had been reflecting over the weekend that he had let Pugh get away with far too much. Today would be different. ‘The question is purely hypothetical. It has no bearing on the case.’

‘Mr Pugh?’ The judge turned to the defence.

‘It is our contention, my lord, that such questions may have featured more and more heavily in Mr Montague’s mind in the period before his death.’

‘Objection overruled. But I warn you, Mr Pugh, that I shall expect some evidence from you that this was the case.’

‘Yes, my lord, I believe we shall be able to satisfy you on that score. I have no more questions for Mrs Buckley for the moment. With your permission, my lord, I would like to call Miss Alice Bridge.’

The judge grunted and fiddled with his pens.

‘I, Alice Bridge, do solemnly swear that the evidence I shall give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

Powerscourt looked around the visitors in the public gallery. Was the formidable Mrs Bridge in court? Pugh was several steps ahead of him. He had already spotted Mrs Bridge from Powerscourt’s description, staring at the proceedings through her lorgnette, her vast bosom protruding into the courtroom. He edged a pace or two to his left, blocking out all sight of mother.

‘Miss Bridge,’ Pugh began, ‘I believe you too were a friend of Christopher Montague?’

The girl blushed slightly. ‘I was.’

‘And how long had your friendship been going on?’

‘A little over four months.’ Alice Bridge had brought a diary to court in case she needed it, a diary that detailed every single meeting she ever had with Christopher Montague.

‘Would you have described yourself as a passing acquaintance? A friend you might bump into from time to time? Or was it more substantial than that?’

Powerscourt looked round. Mrs Bridge was twisting herself into contortions as she tried to catch her daughter’s eye. But Charles Augustus Pugh’s broad well-tailored back stood between her and her daughter.

‘It was more substantial than that, sir.’ Alice Bridge was speaking quite confidently now.

‘Would you have said that you were intimate with Mr Montague, that you were lovers?’ Pugh was speaking very slowly, looking closely at the jury.

‘I would,’ said Alice Bridge proudly, now staring in triumph at the grey figure of Rosalind Buckley.

‘Had Christopher Montague, and I don’t need to remind you, Miss Bridge, that you are under oath here . . .’ Pugh paused so the jury could appreciate what he knew was coming next. ‘. . . had he asked you to marry him?’

Alice Bridge did not hesitate. ‘He had. We were planning to marry in St James’s, Piccadilly, sir.’

There was a mighty snort at the back of the court. Mrs Bridge had risen to her feet and was trying to make her way forward to the witness box. ‘What nonsense, child,’ she began. The judge smashed his gavel on to his desk.

‘Silence in court! Remove that woman! At once! She is interfering with the course of justice!’

Two officers of the court moved swiftly. ‘I am her mother, she’s only a child . . .’ Mrs Bridge’s voice just reached the front of the court as she was led away.

‘This is not your drawing room, madam!’ Mr Justice Browne was furious. ‘It is a court of law!’ He paused and wiped his brow with a large blue handkerchief. ‘Mr Pugh.’

‘So,’ said Pugh, ‘you were planning to marry. Were you also planning to have children, Miss Bridge? Children who would have been legitimate rather than bastards?’

‘We were.’ Alice Bridge’s replies were firmer with the removal of her mother.

‘One final question for you, Miss Bridge.’ Pugh was caressing her with his eyes, the fingers of his right hand playing another imaginary piano concerto on his gown. ‘As far as you know, had Mr Montague told Mrs Buckley about your relationship?’

‘He had,’ said the girl.

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Pugh.

‘Mr Montague showed me bits of the letters she wrote him. She said he’d betrayed her, that her life was ruined.’

‘Thank you, Miss Bridge. No further questions.’

Sir Rufus had the sense that he was being outmanoeuvred again. He rose slowly to his feet. ‘Miss Bridge,’ he began, ‘would you describe yourself as a truthful person?’

‘Objection, my lord.’ Pugh realized he might be able to throw Fitch off balance if he protested right at the beginning of the cross-examination. ‘Unfair line of questioning.’

‘Objection overruled. Sir Rufus.’ The judge looked stern. Up in the press area one or two of the reporters were looking at the two women. Lucky Montague, they thought to themselves. Not just one beautiful woman, but two.

‘I put it to you, Miss Bridge, that your entire story is pure fantasy, the kind of thing young girls have daydreams about, the kind of thing they enjoy reading about in the magazines and popular fiction. Is that not so?’

The girl did not blush. She did not look down. She was, for once, her mother’s daughter. She felled Fitch with six words, looking him up and down as if he had come to clean the coal cellar. ‘No, Sir Rufus, it is not.’

She smiled at Pugh. Fitch felt he should beat a retreat. ‘No further questions,’ he said and sat down grumpily in his chair.

This, Pugh, knew, was the trickiest bit of all. Mrs Buckley was recalled to the witness stand.

‘Mrs Buckley, you have heard the statement from Miss Bridge. Is it true?’

There was a long pause. A whole series of emotions, fear, doubt, anger passed across her face. Pugh hoped the jury were watching carefully. At last Rosalind Buckley spoke.

‘No,’ she said quietly.

‘Really?’ said Pugh, looking carefully at the jury. ‘Are you sure?’

There was another long pause. Then the words came out in a rush.

‘I mean it’s true and it isn’t. I did know Christopher, Mr Montague I mean, was seeing this other person.’ She stopped and looked round the courtroom to stare at Alice Bridge. ‘I knew it was only an infatuation, I knew it would pass. I may have written him some letters, I’m not sure. I knew he would come back to me in the end.’

‘And if he didn’t, Mrs Buckley?’

‘I knew he would come back to me in the end.’

Pugh paused. Three of the newspapermen who worked for the evening editions crept slowly from the courtroom to file their reports.

‘Mrs Buckley, I wish to ask you about the period of time you spent in Rome before you were married, when you were still Miss Rosalind Chambers.’

‘Objection, my lord.’ Sir Rufus was up once more. ‘I fail to see what relevance this period in Rome can have to the present case.’

‘Mr Pugh?’ said Mr Justice Browne wearily. He knew that the juniors often placed bets on the number of successful objections, keeping score as if his courtroom were a tennis court. He had done the same thing himself as a young man.

‘My lord,’ said Charles Augustus Pugh, ‘if my learned friend would permit to me to complete the line of questioning I am more than confident that the relevance will become apparent to him. And,’ he added quickly, ‘to the members of the jury.’

‘Objection overruled. Mr Pugh.’

‘At the time of your residence in Rome, Mrs Buckley, you were between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosalind Buckley. Suddenly she looked very very frightened.

‘And for most of your nineteenth year, Mrs Buckley, Rome was convulsed with a society scandal. You will forgive me, Mrs Buckley, if I convey the briefest of summaries to the court.’

Pugh paused and took a long drink from his glass. ‘A young nobleman, Antonio Vivarini, from one of the oldest families in Rome, was found dead at the bottom of the Spanish steps. It transpired that he had promised to elope with the wife of a high lay official in the Vatican. Then he broke his promise. He had laid plans to elope with another, the heiress to a great fortune. The scandal went on for a very long time because the police were unable to find the murderer. The Romans said the police had been bribed, by the heiress’s father, or by the Vatican, it doesn’t really matter. Can you remember who was convicted of the murder in the end, Mrs Buckley?’

Mrs Buckley looked as if she wanted to run away. ‘The wife,’ she said finally, ‘the wife of the man in the Vatican was convicted of the murder.’

‘And can you remember, Mrs Buckley, how Antonio Vivarini was killed?’

‘He was garrotted,’ she whispered.

Pugh had moved over to the table where the Exhibits were displayed. ‘Garrotted with what?’ he said in a loud voice.

The pause was almost interminable. Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald both knew the answer. They knew that Rosalind Buckley must know the answer too. And they knew what the answer would mean.

‘With piano wire,’ she murmured.

‘Did I hear you correctly, Mrs Buckley? Piano wire?’ Pugh bent down and picked up the length of piano wire on the table, Exhibit A in the trial of Horace Aloysius Buckley for murder. ‘Piano wire,’ he was holding it up for the jury to see and twisting it slowly round his wrists, ‘piano wire, rather like this?’

Rosalind Buckley nodded. Some members of the jury were staring entranced at the length of piano wire, bending its way backwards and forwards round Pugh’s hands.

‘No further questions for the present. Call Samuel Morton.’

Samuel Morton, although he had not realized it, had been in protective custody all morning. William McKenzie had arrived very early at his little house in Richmond. He accompanied Morton to the railway station. He brought him to the Central Criminal Court well before the queues had formed. They had one of the best views in the house until this moment when Samuel Morton took the stand. Nobody in the court knew who he was. People asked their neighbours if he had been mentioned earlier in the proceedings. Sir Rufus Fitch felt his case slipping away from him, as more and more exotic and dangerous rabbits were pulled from Pugh’s hat.

‘You are Samuel Morton, of Morton’s Musical Supplies of George Street, Richmond?’

Morton had a clear voice. He sang in the local church choir every Sunday of the year. ‘I am.’

‘Perhaps you could tell the court what sort of musical instruments and other musical requirements you supply, Mr Morton?’

‘Of course, sir. We sell pianos and harpsichords, a few violins, recorders, flutes, the odd viola. We also supply all the relevant accessories.’

‘Do you sell piano wire, Mr Morton?’

‘We do, sir. Mostly to the piano tuners, sometimes to ordinary members of the public.’

‘Mr Morton, do you recognize anybody in this court to whom you have sold piano wire in the last few months? Take your time, Mr Morton.’

Powerscourt had been watching Mrs Buckley very carefully. Morton took less than a minute to reply. ‘I do, sir.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Pugh, ‘you could point the person out to us.’

Morton pointed his finger straight at Rosalind Buckley. ‘That lady there,’ he said, ‘the one in the black hat, sir.’

‘And did she come just once? Or were there several visits?’

Samuel Morton took out a notebook from his pocket. ‘I always make a note of the date of the purchases, sir. It takes a long time to order piano wire from our suppliers. We have to place the order well in advance if we aren’t going to run out.’

He turned over a few pages. ‘Her first visit was on 4th October, sir. Then she came back on 6th November, sir. Said she needed some more.’

‘Let me remind the gentlemen of the jury, my lord,’ said Pugh, speaking in his most measured tones, ‘that 4th October was a day or so before the murder of Christopher Montague.’ He paused briefly. ‘And that 6th November was three days before the murder of Thomas Jenkins.’ Pugh paused and took a sip from his glass.

‘One final question, Mr Morton. Remember you are under oath here, if you will. Are you absolutely certain that the lady you have identified in this courtroom is the same lady who came to your shop in Richmond and bought two separate lengths of piano wire on the dates you have given us?’

Samuel Morton did not hesitate. ‘I am certain,’ he said.

‘No further questions.’ Charles Augustus Pugh sat down.

‘Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus was on his feet once more. ‘Would you say you were a successful merchant in the provision of musical services?’

‘I think we do all right, sir.’ Morton sounded like a very decent man. ‘My family have never lacked for anything, if you understand me.’

‘Quite so, Mr Morton, quite so.’ Sir Rufus managed to force out one of his rare smiles. ‘So how many people would you serve in your shop each day, Mr Morton? A successful man like yourself.’

‘Well, it varies, sir. We always do very well in late August and September when the parents are putting their children in for music lessons. And at Christmas when people sometimes buy pianos as a family present. On average I should say I serve between thirty and forty people a day, sir.’

Pugh was scribbling a note as fast as he could. He passed it back to Powerscourt, sitting one row behind him.

‘So in a week, Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus went on, ‘in an average sort of week, you would serve about two hundred and fifty people or so?’

‘Somewhere between two hundred and two hundred and fifty, I should say, sir.’

‘Quite so,’ said Sir Rufus. ‘So in the ten weeks between the first alleged visit of Mrs Buckley to your store and today, you would have served between two thousand and two thousand five hundred people, Mr Morton. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Morton replied.

‘I put it to you, Mr Morton, that it is absolutely impossible for anybody, however well they know their business, to remember the faces and the appearance of all their clients over such a period. Particularly two thousand five hundred clients. Is that not so?’

Powerscourt passed the note to Johnny Fitzgerald, sitting by his side.

‘It’s not quite like that, sir, if you’ll forgive me.’

Sir Rufus’s eyebrows described a quizzical upward movement.

‘You see, sir,’ Morton went on, ‘almost all my customers are known to me by sight. Some of them have been coming to the shop for years and years. We always try to make them feel welcome, you see, sir. Nine out of ten are known to me personally, maybe more. Some of the ones I don’t know I may have seen about the town, or at church, or at the children’s school.’

Johnny Fitzgerald handed the note back to Powerscourt. He passed it on to Lady Lucy, sitting on his other side.

‘Nevertheless, I put it to you, Mr Morton, how could you possibly remember this lady in court here today, from the vast numbers you serve, and at such a length of time?’

‘Why, sir,’ said Morton, as if this was perfectly obvious. Powerscourt looked quickly at the jury. Samuel Morton came from their world. He was one of them. Perhaps they too were shopkeepers keeping a careful eye on their regular customers. ‘Strangers from outside are quite rare in Richmond. It’s not like the West End shops, sir, where every customer every day is a stranger. We don’t get customers like the lady here more than once or twice a year. She was a society lady, sir. I’m not saying there’s anything cheap or wrong about the good people of Richmond, sir, but she was different. She was class, if you follow me.’

Powerscourt read the note once more. ‘The tide is running very strongly in our favour. If I put Mrs Buckley back in the witness box now, we might finish the case before lunch. If we wait, she may compose herself or even come back with her own bloody lawyer. Yes or No? CAP.’

Powerscourt saw that Johnny and Lady Lucy had both put Yes at the bottom. He added a third one and passed it back to Pugh.

‘Indeed, Mr Morton,’ Sir Rufus carried on. ‘But I must ask you the question once again. Are you one hundred per cent certain – and remember that a man is on trial for his life here – are you absolutely convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the lady here was the one who came into your shop ten long weeks ago?’

Morton stood his ground. Sir Rufus had failed to shift him. ‘I am certain, sir,’ he said, looking at the jury. ‘If I hadn’t been certain, I wouldn’t have identified her in the first place, would I?’

The jury smiled. William McKenzie beamed with delight. Horace Buckley was looking very worried indeed. Chief Inspector Wilson was checking his notes. The bookmaker among the ranks of the press gallery was changing his odds. After the prosecution case he had offered two to one on for a conviction. He thought he might lose quite a lot of money with that one. Now he offered his colleagues even money on an acquittal. He found no takers. The gentlemen of the press did not like the odds.

Charles Augustus Pugh rose to his feet and requested the recall of Mrs Buckley. He took another long draught from his glass. Johnny Fitzgerald had been looking at the vessel with some scepticism. He sent a quick note to Powerscourt. ‘Fellow’s not drinking water at all. Look at the colour of the stuff. He’s got bloody gin or something in there. Lucky blighter.’

‘Mrs Buckley,’ Pugh began with his most unusual question yet, his witness shaking slightly in the box, ‘I believe that you are an expert archer and travel extensively in the pursuit of your sport. Would you say this leaves you with very strong wrists and arms, stronger wrists and arms, let us say, than those of a sedentary man like Christopher Montague?’

Mr Justice Browne looked astonished. Sir Rufus stared open-mouthed at Pugh. Pugh’s junior, a bright young man called James Simpson, had wanted to bring a bow into court. ‘It would be like the end of the Odyssey in reverse, sir,’ he had said to Pugh. ‘You remember the bit where none of Penelope’s suitors can draw the bow. Only Odysseus disguised as a beggar can do that. Here none of the jury can pull the bow. Neither can you. But Mrs Buckley can. It would be fantastic.’ Pugh doubted if he could have imported a bow into the Central Criminal Court. He saw that the scheme could backfire if Mrs Buckley either couldn’t, or pretended to be unable to pull the bow either. But he wanted to convince the male jury and the male judge that a woman might be more powerful than a man.

‘Archery does give you strong wrists and arms, sir,’ she said demurely. ‘But I fail to see what that has to do with this trial.’

Charles Augustus Pugh looked carefully at the jury He felt he had made his point. ‘I want to put a hypothesis to you, if I may, Mrs Buckley.’ Pugh paused. The fingers of his right hand were back at the imaginary piano on his gown, working their way through Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. He was speaking more in sorrow than in anger, as if he sympathized with Rosalind Buckley’s plight.

‘I put it to you that you were furious, more than furious, with Christopher Montague for jilting you in favour of a younger woman, a woman he might have been able to marry before God, blessed in church by the Holy Sacrament, a woman with whom, forgive me, he could father legitimate children rather than bastards. I put it to you that you remembered the details of the case in Rome, not so many years before, when revenge was extracted with a piece of piano wire. I put it to you that you did indeed go to Richmond and complete your first purchase of this deadly material. On the night of the murder I suggest that you went to Christopher Montague’s flat, as you had done so often in the past. I put it to you that the knowledge of what was going to happen in there only served to fuel your anger even further. For your husband was going to ask Montague for his decision about whether to give you up or not. Montague would have told him that the affair had ended some months ago. You would have been humiliated in front of your husband from whom you were already estranged. Think how he might have mocked you.

‘So, I put it to you, Mrs Buckley, you entered the flat that evening with your own keys. I suggest that you took precautions to give yourself a better chance of success. The police found two wine glasses that had been washed up in Mr Montague’s kitchen. His cleaning lady had not cleaned them. Mr Montague was not in the habit of washing up his glasses. I suggest you put laudanum or some similar drug into the wine to make him sleepy and less able to resist. Then you murdered Christopher Montague. You removed all the papers on his desk to confuse any investigation that might follow. You removed some of his books that might have given clues about the article he was writing on forgeries in the Venetian exhibition. The police might assume that the murder was intimately connected with what Montague was working on at the time of his death.’

Pugh paused. The jury were staring transfixed at Rosalind Buckley. So was the judge. So were the gentlemen of the press, preparing vivid descriptions in their minds of the demeanour of the witness. Only Powerscourt was not looking at Mrs Buckley. He was looking at the prisoner in the dock, Horace Aloysius Buckley opening and closing his mouth very rapidly as if he wished to speak.

‘I further put it to you, Mrs Buckley,’ Pugh’s eloquence rolled on, ‘that you also found it necessary to commit a second murder. Maybe Thomas Jenkins was in London that night and met you after the murder in Montague’s flat. Maybe you thought he knew that you were the killer and could not be sure that he would keep his mouth shut. Maybe you thought he would betray you to the police. I put it to you that you took a further trip to Richmond to purchase more piano wire.’

Pugh picked up the piano wire labelled Exhibit A from its table and began twisting it slowly in front of Mrs Buckley. Powerscourt could have sworn that Pugh was bending it into the shape of a noose.

‘And furthermore, Mrs Buckley, I put it to you that you brought with you to Oxford not just the wire, but also one of your husband’s ties. You left it there at the scene of Thomas Jenkins’ murder to incriminate your own husband. Again we find the washed-up cups at the scene of the crime, suggesting that you put laudanum or some similar substance in Mr Jenkins’ tea. You removed the papers from the desk as you had removed the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk in order to confuse any investigation. I put it to you, Mrs Buckley, that you committed both these murders. Is that true?’

The only sound in court was the sobbing in the witness box. Pugh pulled out a large white handkerchief and offered it to his witness. ‘Compose yourself, Mrs Buckley,’ he said. ‘You only have to answer one question. I put it to you once more that you committed both these murders. Is that true?’

Still Rosalind Buckley gave no reply.

‘I ask you once more, Mrs Buckley.’ Pugh was now talking to her as he might comfort a crying child. ‘Is it true?’

Rosalind Buckley looked up at the judge. ‘Do I have to answer that question, my lord?’

Mr Justice Browne knew his duty. ‘You need not incriminate yourself, Mrs Buckley,’ he said firmly, ‘you have a right to remain silent if you choose.’

Rosalind Buckley looked down at the floor. She wiped her eyes once more. Powerscourt noticed that everybody around him seemed to be holding their breath.

‘Yes,’ she whispered finally, ‘most of it is true.’

There was a sudden shout from the prisoner in the dock. Horace Buckley might not have wanted to die, but he felt nothing but overwhelming pity for his wife at this moment.

‘No! No!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not true! It’s not true! I killed them! I killed them both! Please believe me!’

‘Silence in court! Take the prisoner away! Take him below!’ Sir Rufus was to say afterwards that he had never seen Mr Justice Browne so angry. Horace Aloysius Buckley was weeping as they led him away. Mrs Buckley was prostrate in the witness box. The judge took up his gavel once again and banged it furiously on the desk.

‘This court is adjourned until three o’clock this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Sir Rufus, Mr Pugh, Inspector Maxwell, Chief Inspector Wilson, I wish to see you all in my chambers at half-past one.’