Twenty-three
I had not seen my father for some days. I found him busy with thingsother than the Leonides case, and I went in search of Taverner.
Taverner was enjoying a short spell of leisure and was willing to comeout and have a drink with me. I congratulated him on having cleared upthe case and he accepted my congratulation, but his manner remained farfrom jubilant.
“Well, that’s over,” he said. “We’ve got a case. Nobody can deny we’vegot a case.”
“Do you think you’ll get a conviction?”
“Impossible to say. The evidence is circumstantial—it nearly always is ina murder case—bound to be. A lot depends on the impression they makeon the jury.”
“How far do the letters go?”
“At first sight, Charles, they’re pretty damning. There are references totheir life together when her husband’s dead. Phrases like—‘it won’t belong now.’ Mind you, defence counsel will try and twist it the other way—the husband was so old that of course they could reasonably expect him todie. There’s no actual mention of poisoning—not down in black and white— but there are some passages that could mean that. It depends whatjudge we get. If it’s old Carberry he’ll be down on them all through. He’salways very righteous about illicit¹ love. I suppose they’ll have Eagles orHumphrey Kerr for the defence—Humphrey is magnificent in these cases—but he likes a gallant² war record or something of that kind to help himdo his stuff. A conscientious³ objector is going to cramp⁴ his style. The ques-tion is going to be will the jury like them? You can never tell with juries.
You know, Charles, those two are not really sympathetic characters. She’sa good-looking woman who married a very old man for his money, andBrown is a neurotic⁵ conscientious objector. The crime is so familiar—soaccording to pattern that you really believe they didn’t do it. Of course,they may decide that he did it and she knew nothing about it—or altern-ately that she did it, and he didn’t know about it—or they may decide thatthey were both in it together.”

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