Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

Before I could absorb the full ramifications of what Sophie had said, Seymour was in the picture, striding up the track from Kington to Hergest Ridge. “So, according to Lady Paxton’s best friend, Shaun Naylor’s account of how they met is feasible. What’s more, we know she met at least one other man that evening under similar circumstances. Up here, on Offa’s Dyke, where solitary male walkers are often to be found.”

Then my face was staring out of the screen at me, the sitting-room at Greenhayes visible in the background, including part of the very television set I was watching. And I was saying what Seymour wanted to hear. “Lady Paxton was friendly and approachable. She seemed to want to talk. Not just about the weather. About something else. But she was reluctant to talk at the same time. As if… Well, I’ve never really been able to describe her state of mind, even to myself. It was so difficult to assess. When she offered me a lift, I thought it was just a kindly gesture. Now I’m not so sure. I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her.” Then we were back with Seymour on Hergest Ridge. Leaving me to shout at his video-recorded face: “Hold on. What about the rest? That’s not all I said, you devious bastard.” Just how devious he’d been sunk in only when I replayed the interview several times. Then, at last, I was able to recollect exactly what I’d gone on to say. “I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her. To give her some disinterested advice about a problem she was trying to solve. To listen while she talked whatever it was out of her system.” What I’d recounted couldn’t possibly be regarded as a sexual proposition. But Seymour’s edited version of it could be. “I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her.” The phrase echoed in my mind as Seymour quoted it to camera. “Failing to find that somebody in Mr. Timariot, did Lady Paxton strike luckier half an hour later at the Harp Inn? The evidence available to us suggests she may have done.”

The film cut to the frontage of Whistler’s Cot. Seymour strode into the picture. “The prosecution argued at the trial that Lady Paxton would hardly have risked using somebody else’s house for illicit sex. But her relationship with the owner was never explored. We know she was in effect his patron. He owed her a good deal. Might he have been willing to repay that debt by making his cottage available for her use? Or might she have known he wasn’t going to be there until later that night? With both of them now dead, we cannot hope to find out. But Lady Paxton’s friend, Mrs. Marsden, did say this.”

Sophie returned to the screen. “Louise and Oscar got on well together. There was a spark between them. An understanding. That’s why she appreciated his paintings better than most. You’d think they had nothing in common to look at them. In fact, there was an intuitive bond between them. Platonic, but genuine.”

Then we were back with Seymour. “If the jury had heard that, they might not have been so sure Shaun Naylor was lying about being brought here by Lady Paxton. But they’d still have come up against a substantial objection to his version of events. If he didn’t murder Oscar Bantock and Lady Paxton, who did? And why? Until three months ago, there seemed no other conceivable suspect or motive. Then this book”-he brandished a copy of Fakes and Ale -“was published. And suddenly the situation became rather more complicated.”

Henley Bantock I recognized at once. A caption identified his pudgy bow-tied companion as Barnaby Maitland. They seized the chance of a free peak-time advertisement for their book with ill-disguised glee. But they also set out their alternative explanation for the Kington killings with undeniable facility. “Fine art and the criminal underworld have many points of overlap,” expounded Maitland. “Forgery is perhaps the most remunerative-and hence the most dangerous.” “My uncle often told me he could humiliate the art establishment if he chose to,” contributed Henley. “Only when I found his journals did I realize it was true.” “It has to be said,” Maitland resumed, “that there were many reasons why poor old Oscar was worth more dead than alive in the summer of nineteen ninety.”

“Many reasons,” echoed Seymour. “None of which were considered at the trial. If they had been, would they have made any difference to the outcome? Shaun Naylor’s solicitor, Vijay Sarwate, thinks they might have done.”

We switched to the cramped and crowded interior of Sarwate’s office. He was a lean weary-sounding man who looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or bitter about the legal-aid lottery that had handed him such a case. But about one thing he was sure. “Evidence concerning Oscar Bantock’s activities as a forger would have been very valuable to my client. It would have supplied the missing link in his defence: a credible explanation for the events that took place that night after he left Whistler’s Cot. Circumstantial evidence is often the most difficult kind to refute because, at the back of the jury’s minds, the unspoken question is always there: If he did not do it, who did? That question went unanswered at the trial, to my client’s undoubted detriment. Obviously, in the light of these revelations, it would not go unanswered again. Indeed, I am already exploring with counsel the possibility of seeking leave to appeal against the convictions on precisely those grounds.”

“While his solicitor takes advice,” Seymour went on, “Shaun Naylor’s wife and children wait and wait for the husband and father the law decided should be kept away from them for at least twenty years. By then, Mrs. Naylor will be nearly fifty years old.”

The Naylor flat in Bermondsey. Garishly decorated and littered with discarded toys, but clean and homely in its way. Carol Naylor, a thin, haggard and obviously hard-pressed young woman, perched on the edge of a black leather-look sofa, drew nervously on a cigarette and glanced at a framed photograph of Shaun dandling their youngest on his knee four Christmases ago. “What makes you so certain of his innocence?” asked Seymour. “I’ve known him all my life,” she replied. “We grew up six doors apart. I’ve been married to him eight years. I know him better than he does himself. He can be short-tempered and arrogant. But he’s not a rapist. Not a cold-blooded murderer. It’s just not in his nature.” She fought back tears. “He didn’t do what they said he did. He couldn’t have done. I’ve known that from day one.”

“And from day one,” said Seymour, taking up the story outside a prison wall, “Shaun Naylor has consistently denied committing rape and double murder that night in July nineteen ninety. He’s been held here, at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, since his conviction. Home Office regulations prevent us visiting him, but we have exchanged letters with him. In his most recent communication, he says this.” Seymour held up the letter and read from it. “‘I’m hoping this forgery business will make the authorities reopen my case. It’s the first chink of light there’s been since I was sent down. In the end, they’ll realize I really am innocent. I have to believe that. Otherwise, I’ll go mad thinking about the injustice of what’s happened to me.’ ” Seymour paused for effect, then said: “Shaun Naylor still maintains he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Faced with what we now know and can legitimately conjecture about the events of July seventeenth, nineteen ninety, there may be many who agree with him and who feel he has been denied that most crucial component of justice: the benefit of the doubt.”

As the credits rolled, I switched the set off and stared blankly at my reflection in its screen. My few minutes of air-time solidified in my mind as a single hideous recollection, irredeemable and unalterable. In forty-eight hours, I’d be seen and heard in thousands of homes. Those of my colleagues and subordinates. Those of Naylor’s friends and relations. And those of Louise Paxton’s. To them I wouldn’t be fanning a flame of hope. I’d be betraying a fine woman’s memory. And my own solemn pledge. Sophie Marsden’s candour would probably do more damage than mine. But mine was the less forgivable. And complaints of selective editing would probably only make it worse.