Jeffrey Archer - Twelve Red Herrings

“I see,” said Sir Matthew. He paused. “Do you love your husband, Mrs Cooper?”

“Really, Sir Matthew!” The judge was unable to disguise his irritation. “I must ask once again if this is relevant?”

Sir Matthew exploded. “Relevant? It’s absolutely vital, M’Lud, and I am not being assisted by your lordship’s thinly veiled attempts to intervene on behalf of this witness.”

The judge was beginning to splutter with indignation when Rosemary said quietly, “I have always been a good and faithful wife, but I cannot under any circumstances condone murder.”

The jury turned their eyes on me. Most of them looked as if they would be happy to bring back the death penalty.

“If that is the case, I am bound to ask why you waited two and a half hours to contact the police?” said Sir Matthew. “Especially if, as you claim, you believed your husband had committed murder, and was about to dispose of the body.”

“As I explained, I fainted soon after he left the room. I phoned the police the moment I came to.”

“How convenient,” said Sir Matthew. “Or perhaps the truth is that you made use of that time to set a trap for your husband, while allowing your lover to get clean away.” A murmur ran through the courtroom.

“Sir Matthew,” the judge said, jumping in once again. “You are going too far.”

“Not so, M’Lud, with respect. In fact, not far enough.” He swung back round and faced my wife again.

“I put it to you, Mrs Cooper, that Jeremy Alexander was your lover, and still is, that you are perfectly aware he is alive and well, and that if you wished to, you could tell us exactly where he is now.”

Despite the judge’s spluttering and the uproar in the court, Rosemary had her reply ready.

“I only wish he were,” she said, “so that he could stand in this court and confirm that I am telling the truth.” Her voice was soft and gentle.

“But you already know the truth, Mrs Cooper,” said Sir Matthew, his voice gradually rising. “The truth is that your husband left the house on his own. He then drove to the Queen’s Hotel, where he spent the rest of the night, while you and your lover used that time to leave clues across the city of Leeds — clues, I might add, that were intended to incriminate your husband. But the one thing you couldn’t leave was a body, because as you well know Mr Jeremy Alexander is still alive, and the two of you have together fabricated this entire bogus story, simply to further your own ends. Isn’t that the truth, Mrs Cooper?”

“No, no!” Rosemary shouted, her voice cracking before she finally burst into tears.

“Oh, come, come, Mrs Cooper. Those are counterfeit tears, are they not?” said Sir Matthew quietly. “Now you’ve been found out, the jury will decide if your distress is genuine.”

I glanced across at the jury. Not only had they fallen for Rosemary’s performance, but they now despised me for allowing my insensitive bully of a counsel to attack such a gentle, long-suffering woman. To every one of Sir Matthew’s probing questions, Rosemary proved well capable of delivering a riposte that revealed to me all the hallmarks of Jeremy Alexander’s expert tuition.

When it was my turn to enter the witness box, and Sir Matthew began questioning me, I felt my story sounded far less convincing than Rosemary’s, despite its being the truth.

The closing speech for the Crown was deadly dull, but nevertheless deadly. Sir Matthew’s was subtle and dramatic, but I feared less convincing.

After another night in Armley Jail I returned to the dock for the judge’s summing up. It was clear that he was in no doubt as to my guilt. His selection of the evidence he chose to review was unbalanced and unfair, and when he ended by reminding the jury that his opinion of the evidence should ultimately carry no weight, he only added hypocrisy to bias.

After their first full day’s deliberations, the jury had to be put up overnight in a hotel — ironically the Queen’s — and when the jolly little fat man in the bow tie was finally asked: “Members of the jury, do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty as charged?” I wasn’t surprised when he said clearly for all to hear, “Guilty, my lord.”

In fact I was amazed that the jury had failed to reach a unanimous decision. I have often wondered which two members felt convinced enough to declare my innocence. I would have liked to thank them.

The judge stared down at me. “Richard Wilfred Cooper, you have been found guilty of the murder of Jeremy Anatole Alexander …”

“I did not kill him, my lord,” I interrupted in a calm voice. “In fact, he is not dead. I can only hope that you will live long enough to realise the truth.”

Sir Matthew looked up anxiously as uproar broke out in the court.

The judge called for silence, and his voice became even more harsh as he pronounced, “You will go to prison for life. That is the sentence prescribed by law. Take him down.”

Two prison officers stepped forward, gripped me firmly by the arms and led me down the steps at the back of the dock into the cell I had occupied every morning for the eighteen days of the trial.

“Sorry, old chum,” said the policeman who had been in charge of my welfare since the case had begun. “It was that bitch of a wife who tipped the scales against you.”

He slammed the cell door closed, and turned the key in the lock before I had a chance to agree with him. A few moments later the door was unlocked again, and Sir Matthew strode in.

He stared at me for some time before uttering a word. “A terrible injustice has been done, Mr Cooper,” he eventually said, “and we shall immediately lodge an appeal against your conviction. Be assured, I will not rest until we have found Jeremy Alexander and he has been brought to justice.”

For the first time I realised Sir Matthew knew that I was innocent.

I was put in a cell with a petty criminal called “Fingers” Jenkins. Can you believe, as we approach the twenty-first century, that anyone could still be called “Fingers”? Even so, the name had been well earned. Within moments of my entering the cell, Fingers was wearing my watch. He returned it immediately I noticed it had disappeared. “Sorry,” he said. “Just put it down to ‘abit.”

Prison might have turned out to be far worse if it hadn’t been known by my fellow inmates that I was a millionaire, and was quite happy to pay a little extra for certain privileges. Every morning the Financial Times was delivered to my bunk, which gave me the chance to keep up with what was happening in the City. I was nearly sick when I first read about the takeover bid for Cooper’s. Sick not because of the offer of £12.50 a share, which made me even wealthier, but because it became painfully obvious what Jeremy and Rosemary had been up to. Jeremy’s shares would now be worth several million pounds — money he could never have realised had I been around to prevent a takeover.

I spent hours each day lying on my bunk and scouring every word of the Financial Times . Whenever there was a mention of Cooper’s, I went over the paragraph so often that I ended up knowing it by heart. The company was eventually taken over, but not before the share price had reached £13.43. I continued to follow its activities with great interest, and I became more and more anxious about the quality of the new management when they began to sack some of my most experienced staff, including Joe Ramsbottom. A week later, I wrote and instructed my stockbrokers to sell my shares as and when the opportunity arose.

It was at the beginning of my fourth month in prison that I asked for some writing paper. I had decided the time had come to keep a record of everything that had happened to me since that night I had returned home unexpectedly. Every day the prison officer on my landing would bring me fresh sheets of blue-lined paper, and I would write out in longhand the chronicle you’re now reading. An added bonus was that it helped me to plan my next move.