Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

Alyce was listening intently now to every word, Jordan saw, actually with a pen in her hand although she did not appear to be taking notes. Both opposing lawyers were, as well as Pullinger. Appleton and Leanne Jefferies were gazing directly ahead, as if oblivious of each other.

‘And in France this lonely, betrayed and humiliated woman met my client, Harvey Jordan-’

‘A gambler!’ broke in Pullinger. The inference was of accusation.

Beckwith managed to pick up practically without pause. ‘That is indeed how Mr Jordan makes his living, which some might regard as an unusual career: certainly out of the ordinary to those of us who follow a more mundane profession. But I would suggest that at this very moment those working on the trading floors of Wall Street – Mr Appleton himself, as a commodity trader – could be described as gamblers. The very men who made America the world leader it is today, the Astors and the Vanderbilts and the J.P. Morgans, were chance-taking entrepreneurs, which is an interchangeable word for a gambler…’

‘Quite so,’ nodded Pullinger.

‘Harvey Jordan was an entirely innocent party in a long ago divorce, the papers of which are before you,’ resumed Beckwith. ‘He was on vacation in the South of France, a region he knows well and in which he vacations most years. He always stays, when he is in Cannes, at the Carlton Hotel. Where, by total and absolute coincidence, Alyce Appleton was also staying. Their meeting was not pre-arranged. It was a chance encounter, like so much is in life. Harvey Jordan took Alyce Appleton on the shortest of excursions along the coast. They had an affair, the briefest of episodes which ended with her return to her country, his return to his country. They did not exchange addresses or telephone numbers. Neither considered it as anything more than what it was: a holiday liaison. Harvey Jordan was not engaged in criminal conversations, intent upon alienating the affection of Alyce Appleton from a husband in name only, for whom her only attitude of mind was contempt for what he had inflicted upon her. To be judged guilty – liable – for an offence, your honour, there surely needs to be evidence produced that a law has been contravened. Here I respectfully submit that there is nothing in law that supports the accusation against my client.’

For several minutes after Beckwith sat – which seemed to catch the opposing tables by surprise – there was the necessary silence for everyone to digest what Beckwith had said. Pullinger broke it. He said, ‘That was an address too eloquent to have been kept from a jury, which must, I suppose, forever remain their loss. What you have told me is, of course, based upon the pre-hearing statements of Mr Jordan and Mrs Appleton. Do you not intend calling them, to support what you just said?’

Jordan’s impression was that for the first time Beckwith was disconcerted, although he concealed it well. Quickly rising again the lawyer said, ‘My address was upon the admitted and uncontested facts, your honour. They require, of course, to be subjected to the examination of the other side.’

For someone who had always until now existed as Mr Invisible, never to be seen and even more importantly never to be recognized, Harvey Jordan’s feeling at being the sole object of everyone’s unrelenting attention lurched into the surreal. He was confident that he had his hand upon the Bible and was correctly reciting the oath, but his mind suddenly blanked of everything he had so carefully memorized to word-rehearsed perfection. The bewildering out-of-body experience remained throughout the early, officially required formalities and only began – and then very slowly – to ease when, straining for concentration, Jordan forced himself to respond to Beckwith’s gentle, yes or no confirmation, of his already provided statement.

Beckwith’s abrupt departure from that statement: ‘Did you consciously, predatorily, set out to seduce Alyce Appleton?’ – finally brought Jordan back to the reality of his surroundings.

Every answer had to be thought through, although without any obvious hesitation, Jordan warned himself: he couldn’t risk once being caught out in a lie. ‘No, I did not.’

‘How, then, did you look upon Alyce Appleton?’

Jordan gave an uncertain gesture, to give himself time. ‘As a fellow guest at the hotel, someone with whom I got into casual, passing conversation.’

‘Yet you lunched together the first day of your meeting?’

Jordan gave another delaying shoulder movement. ‘She’d prevented me losing the book I was reading. It was a snack rather than lunch. It was entirely inconsequential.’

‘What gave it consequence?’

‘Nothing happened specifically to give it any consequence. We talked about books and writers. I knew from my knowledge of the area that Alexander Dumas’ novel, The Man in the Iron Mask, was based on fact and that the victim was at one time imprisoned on an island just off the coast of Cannes. I invited her on a surprise trip to see it.’ Beckwith was building up to how he and Alyce went to bed that first time, Jordan accepted. It hadn’t been ugly, as it would sound here now, in a cold court. It would make Alyce appear a whore, which she wasn’t. Abruptly Jordan remembered Beckwith’s ballpark estimate of the potential damages if Pullinger found against him and Beckwith’s angry insistence that Alyce’s words made her out to be the pursuer, not the pursued.

‘You chartered a yacht, sailed to the Ile St Marguerite and saw the prison in which the man in the iron mask was incarcerated?’

‘Yes.’ He’d limit his answers as much and as best he could, Jordan decided.

‘Then what did you do?’

‘We had lunch.’

‘On the yacht?’

Beckwith was looking very directly at him, Jordan saw, with what he gauged the beginning of a warning frown. ‘It was a catamaran. And yes, that’s where we lunched.’

‘What happened after that?’

‘We swam.’

‘To do which you had to change. Did you change together, in the same cabin? Or separately?’

‘Separately.’

‘You didn’t suggest that you should undress together?’

‘No.’

‘Did it not enter your mind that you might suggest it, Mr Jordan?’

‘No.’

‘Did you not find Mrs Appleton attractive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sexually attractive?’

Jordan hesitated, looking at the woman, who looked directly and expressionlessly back at him. ‘Yes.’

‘Yet it did not occur to you, in the circumstances in which you found yourself, to suggest you undress together: make a sexual approach to her?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It did not seem… I don’t know… I didn’t.’

‘Did you fear that she would rebuff you?’

‘I didn’t think about whether she would rebuff me or not.’

‘And in the early evening you sailed back to Cannes, arriving around dinner time?’

‘Did you suggest dinner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she accept?’

Jordan felt hot, hotter than he had when he’d first stepped, his mind blank, on to the witness stand. ‘No.’

‘What were her precise words?’

‘As best as I remember, she said she was not hungry after the lunch.’

‘What else do you remember her saying, Mr Jordan?’

‘That she was tired.’

‘And?’ demanded Beckwith, the frown deepening.

‘That she wanted to go to bed.’

‘And…?’

Jordan did not immediately reply. Alyce was still looking at him without any expression whatsoever.

‘Mr Jordan?’ demanded Beckwith.

‘But not by herself,’ Jordan blurted.

‘Mrs Appleton told you she wanted to go to bed but not by herself?’ insisted the lawyer.

‘Yes.’