David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘Silence! Silence in court!’ Mr Justice Black looked livid, as if one of his famed finesses at the bridge table had failed to come off. ‘Any more noise and I shall clear the court of spectators and newspapermen alike! Mr Pugh.’

The barrister from Gray’s Inn carried on. He was on the second piece of evidence from Beaune now where Madame Yvette Planchon told of the stolen kiss, the unexpected arrival of her husband the sergeant, his threat to kill Randolph Colville and his disappearance from the scene.

Powerscourt was staring at the shorthand writers at the table below the judge. They, unlike everybody else in Court Two, had remained impassive as the new evidence was disclosed. Perhaps they had heard it all before. Powerscourt’s mind was racing. Yet another interpretation of events at Brympton Hall had just flashed through his brain. He picked up his pen and wrote a very brief message. He folded it carefully twice and wrote Pugh on the front. As his colleague made his way through the letter that had arrived from Beaune that morning with the astonishing news that the Colvilles in England knew about the other Colville wife in France, he leant forward and slipped it into the hand of Richard Napier, leaning back from his bench. Lady Lucy, sitting beside her husband with Cosmo’s solicitor on her other side, looked at him expectantly. Powerscourt spoke not a word.

Pugh had finished. He placed the three documents on the exhibit table where the gun was still lying as it had throughout the trial.

‘Call Mrs Colville, Mrs Cosmo Colville.’ Napier slipped the note into his hand. Pugh read it while the new witness made her way to the box. He squashed it up and put it in his pocket, then he turned and glanced enigmatically at Powerscourt.

‘Mrs Colville,’ he began, ‘Would you say that you were a close family?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we always have been.’

‘So perhaps you could tell the court, Mrs Colville, when you first became aware that your brother-in-law was a bigamist with a second wife in France?’

She blushed deeply. She seemed to find it difficult to give an answer. She began folding and refolding her hands. Powerscourt thought that had she been Lady Macbeth she would have been washing those hands by now.

‘Come, Mrs Colville,’ said Pugh in his politest tones, ‘I’m sure you can give us an answer.’

‘It must have been fairly close to the wedding,’ she said finally.

‘And did all the Colvilles attend the meeting?’

‘No,’ she was whispering now, ‘the first meeting was just the two brothers, Randolph and Cosmo, and their wives. We told the others in the days that followed. Everybody in the family knew by the time of the wedding.’

‘I wouldn’t want the intimate details of what was said at that first meeting, Mrs Colville, but perhaps you could just give us the broad picture.’ The more intelligent members of the jury realized that intimate details were exactly what Charles Augustus Pugh did want but knew he wouldn’t get if he asked for them directly.

Mrs Colville was now looking very distressed indeed. Only when Powerscourt turned round almost one hundred and eighty degrees did he see part of the reason. Cosmo Colville had hardly moved a muscle during the trial so far. But now he was sitting directly opposite his wife, he, Cosmo, in the dock, she in the witness box. The eye-lines of the court had been constructed for precisely this purpose. Before the arrival of gas lighting a mirrored reflector was placed above the prisoner in the dock to reflect light from the windows on to the faces of the accused. This, Pugh had told Powerscourt years before, allowed the court to examine the facial expressions of the prisoners during testimony. Cosmo was now bent forward in the dock, his hands leaning on the little wooden wall and making gestures to his wife on the other side of Court Two. These gestures seemed to be causing considerable distress. Powerscourt wondered how long it would be before the judge noticed them.

‘Mrs Colville,’ Pugh said in his mildest tones, ‘I can appreciate how distressing this must be for you, but I would remind you that you are under oath in a court of law. Could you please answer my question?’

Out of the corner of his eye Powerscourt saw that the dumb show in the dock was continuing. Cosmo might have chosen not to give evidence but he was trying his hardest to influence the court by other means.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Colville, ‘everybody was very cross, very angry. People said Randolph had ruined the family name, that Colville Wine would become a laughing stock. The firm might even go out of business.’

The judge had finally caught sight of Cosmo. ‘Prisoner at the bar,’ he said sternly, ‘please stop making signs to your wife. If I see you doing it once more you will be taken below to the holding cells and kept there until the end of this trial. I would remind you that this is a court of law, not some School for Semaphore.’ He turned back to the witness box. ‘Pray continue, Mrs Colville, Mr Pugh.’

‘And what,’ Pugh went on, any note of criticism or reproof removed from his voice, ‘was the reaction of your brother-in-law, Mr Randolph Colville?’

She paused. ‘If anything,’ she said finally, ‘he was the most upset of all of us. He kept saying, over and over and over, that he had destroyed the good name of Colville and ruined the lives of his family.’

‘I see,’ said Pugh, ‘and did that attitude continue when the other members of the family were informed?’

‘If anything, it grew worse,’ Mrs Colville replied, now looking at the jury, now at Pugh. ‘We kept telling him that there was no need for him to attend these terrible meetings. He could have gone for a walk or kept to his room. But he wouldn’t have it. He felt he owed it to all his relations to be there in person to be attacked and humiliated.’

‘Terrible meetings, you said, Mrs Colville?’

‘Well, there was a lot of shouting. One of the uncles said Randolph deserved a horse whipping.’

Powerscourt could see where Pugh was heading. Any minute now, he said to himself, he’s going to mention the S word. Or maybe he’ll try to bring Mrs Colville to say it.

‘And had Randolph’s attitude changed at all by the time of the wedding, Mrs Colville?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied, ‘if anything it got worse.’

Now, Powerscourt thought, surely he must say it now.

‘Mrs Colville, would you agree with me that your brother-in-law Mr Randolph Colville was weighed down by his circumstances?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘And would you agree with me that he found it hard to see a way out of his predicament?’

‘I don’t think he could see any way out at all.’

‘And over the ten days or so between the bigamy information reaching England and the wedding itself, did his mood improve at all?’

‘No, it didn’t. If anything it got worse.’

‘In view of what we know now, Mrs Colville, what is your view about Mr Randolph Colville’s conduct?’

Mrs Colville paused. She looked up at the dock where her husband was watching carefully. ‘I’m afraid to say, Mr Pugh, I think now as I thought then that it all got too much for the poor man. The shame and the disgrace drove him to suicide.’

Pugh was quick to reply. ‘Suicide, Mrs Colville? Are you sure?’

The word was out now. Suicide in shorthand was entered in a dozen reporter’s notebooks.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘Watching him through those ten days there was a very strong sense that he thought his options had run out, that he had come to the end of the road. So, yes, I think it is possible, indeed probable, that he committed suicide.’

Powerscourt had been watching Mrs Cosmo Colville intently for the last few minutes. He could have sworn that for a split second after the mention of suicide her face lit up with happiness. Then her surroundings pulled her back to the normal pose of conventional regret. If Randolph had indeed committed suicide, and the jury believed that, then her husband would be a free man, able to leave the gaunt surroundings of Pentonville for the delights of St John’s Wood and Lord’s Cricket Ground.