Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

‘You stalked her, didn’t you!’ demanded David Bartle, loudly. ‘You sought out Alyce Appleton in the South of France and pursued her until you got her into your bed!’

Totally unaware of any of the detailed evidence that Appleton’s enquiry team might have assembled to incriminate him, Jordan recognized that under cross-examination he had to test every word and innuendo, to avoid stumbling into traps. And never lose his temper. No danger from this first, exaggerated opening. ‘No, I did not.’

‘You knew Alyce Appleton was a married woman?’

Too easy to be caught, Jordan thought. ‘She wore a wedding ring.’

‘And a particularly obvious engagement ring, given to her by her husband.’

‘I did not know from whom she obtained the engagement ring,’ qualified Jordan, believing he saw a safe avoidance. ‘I believe widows – divorcees even – still sometimes continue to wear their rings.’

‘She told you she was married?’

‘Yes.’ He needed to repeat that he and Alyce had parted without any intention to meet again, one of the several points with which Beckwith had concluded his examination, minutes earlier.

‘But not until after you’d seduced her!’

‘Not until after we’d slept together,’ said Jordan, qualifying again.

‘At your persistent urging!’

‘I have already told this court the circumstances in which the affair began.’ Very slightly, although not easing any of his self-imposed safeguards, Jordan began to relax. He didn’t think Bartle was a particularly good interrogator but very positively refused to lapse into any false security.

‘You’re telling the court that Alyce Appleton was prostituting herself up and down the French Riviera?’

Jordan felt the burn of anger but quickly subdued it. ‘I am telling you nothing of the sort and you – and the court – know it!’ He should have stopped after the initial denial! Shit!

‘Before this examination is over I shall know a great deal about everything,’ threatened the lawyer. ‘Did you find Alyce Appleton attractive?’

Jordan hesitated, trying to anticipate the subsequent question. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you fall in love with her?’

Jordan managed to avoid the hesitation. ‘No.’

‘Did you think she might fall in love with you?’

Too obvious, thought Jordan. ‘No.’

‘What would you have done if she had indicated that she was falling in love with you?’

‘It wasn’t that sort of situation.’

‘Answer the question,’ Pullinger ordered, sharply.

‘I would have made it clear that the feeling was not reciprocated.’

‘But gone on sleeping with her?’

‘No,’ insisted Jordan.

‘What would you have done?’ persisted Bartle.

‘Terminated the situation.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘You are no longer married?’

‘I am divorced.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Four years. I have provided the court with all the legal documents and evidence.’

‘Were there children from the marriage?’

‘No.’

‘Are you the father of any children out of wedlock?’

It was a re-run of his first meeting with Daniel Beckwith, Jordan remembered. Wrong to regard that as a useful rehearsal. Alyce hadn’t known he had been married, he remembered. ‘No.’

‘It is customary for you to vacation every year in the South of France?’

‘Yes.’

‘Always at the Carlton at Cannes?’

‘I move along the coast.’

‘Until you find a woman to pursue?’

Fuck you, thought Jordan, not responding.

‘I asked you a question, Mr Jordan,’ pressed Bartle.

‘I inferred it as a totally fallacious and misleading statement, which, being both untrue and ridiculous, did not require an answer.’ Jordan thought he detected the slightest of facial expressions, a wince maybe, from Beckwith.

‘Indulge me with a comment, Mr Jordan.’

He shouldn’t have opened himself to the mockery, Jordan acknowledged. And the question could be the feared mantrap if they’d discovered previous holiday affairs. ‘I do not tour the Cote d’Azur seeking women to seduce.’

‘How many years have you vacationed in the South of France?’

Jordan genuinely had to pause, to calculate the period. ‘It’s not a figure I’ve ever bothered to record. I would estimate about ten… twelve, possibly.’

‘How many holiday romances have you had during the course of those possible twelve years?’

The trap was gaping open in front of him, feared Jordan. At once came a contradiction: why was it so much of a trap? He could even cover himself if they had discovered some of the other woman, before Alyce. ‘Three, I think.’ He hadn’t spent a single holiday alone.

‘Were any of them married?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did any of them wear wedding rings or engagement rings?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Does it matter to you if the women you pursue are married?’

Surely the lawyer would have pounced by now if he’d found a previous conquest! And so what if he had, Jordan asked himself again. ‘Every liaison in which I have been involved has been consensual. I do not, to use the word you persist wrongly upon using, pursue women.’

‘You didn’t know if it would or would not endanger Alyce Appleton’s marriage when you first went to bed with her, although you knew she was married!’

Jordan seized the ineptly presented opportunity. ‘Neither Alyce Appleton nor I regarded our time together in France as anything other than what it was, an adventure that would end with no attachments on either side. We parted, as the court has already heard at the end of my earlier evidence, without any intention of ever meeting again. I did not alienate Alyce Appleton’s affection from her husband. She no longer had the slightest affection for him.’

‘She told you that?’

‘She told me that papers upon which she had been working – signing – the day we met were divorce papers.’

‘Why did she extend her holiday in France for a further week?’ persisted Bartle.

Jordan shrugged and immediately regretted doing so. ‘We didn’t discuss it at any length. I was not returning to England for another week. She had no pressing reason to come back here to America.’

‘Wasn’t it that she was falling in love with you?’

‘Absolutely not. As I’ve told-’

‘But that you told her you didn’t love her?’

‘I repeat, absolutely not,’ denied Jordan.

‘You gave her a ring, did you not?’

‘A what?’ frowned Jordan, incredulous, conscious of Beckwith’s sudden jerk of attention.

‘During your stay in St Tropez didn’t you buy her a ring and put it on the finger upon which Alyce Appleton by then no longer wore her wedding or engagement rings?’ demanded Bartle. ‘And celebrate, as people do upon engagements, by drinking champagne?’

‘ What? ’ exclaimed Jordan, blocked on the same word in his astonishment.

Bartle beckoned the usher, handing the man a sheaf of photographs and itemizing their recipients. To Pullinger the lawyer said, ‘These were taken in St Tropez, your honour. The date clearly shown upon the prints coincides with that during which Alyce Appleton shared a room with Harvey Jordan at the Residence de la Pinade’

Momentarily Jordan stared bewildered at the two photographs he had been handed. One showed him and Alyce walking arm in arm by what he recognized to be the Place des Lices and the other at a table at the Mouscardins restaurant at the edge of the port. He was clearly holding her left hand, putting a ring on her wedding finger. There were half filled champagne glasses on their table, the bottle in its cooler alongside. And then he erupted into laughter. Alyce, at whose courtroom table another set of prints had been delivered, sniggered, leaning sideways to her lawyer. Reid didn’t laugh.