“Hall” to Pettigrew meant a lofty stone building in Victorian Gothic, panelled with highly varnished wood, adorned with the escutcheons of by-gone celebrities and nonentities, and populated by large statues representing the nineteenth-century’s idea of medieval Knights Templar. Aesthetes had condemned it; Hitler had destroyed it; Pettigrew missed it very much. The familiar table was still in the same place, with the familiar faces around it. He noticed that one or two strangers had contrived not only to get themselves called to the Bar, but to insinuate themselves among his friends, but he was prepared for a reasonable amount of change in ten years. What he was not prepared for was the babel of sound that assailed his ears as he entered the shining, new, handsome building that was now “hall”. Everybody seemed to be shouting at the top of his voice. The clatter of knives and forks was deafening. The feet of the waiters hurrying across the floor thundered like charging cavalry.
“What’s happened to everyone?” Pettigrew bellowed to Manktelow. “I can’t hear myself speak.”
“Didn’t you know?” His voice came to Pettigrew with difficulty through the hubbub. “It’s something they call acoustics. Apparently this sort of floor and this kind of ceiling put together in a room this shape are guaranteed to produce this result. It’s a very interesting scientific demonstration. You’re jolly lucky to have heard it. They’ll do something to the place soon and spoil it.”
Pettigrew shook his head mournfully.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” he said.
“Yes I do. Eat up quickly and we’ll have time for a stroll round the garden.”
“What exactly are you going to say?” Manktelow asked as they walked across the great lawn.
“Hasn’t Mallett told you? Simply that I saw what appeared to be the body of a man on Bolter’s Tussock on the afternoon of Saturday the whatever-it-was, and when I came back later it wasn’t there.”
“What appeared to be?”
“That’s as far as I shall go.”
“H’m. I shall be producing a photograph of the body that certainly was there on the Tuesday morning. Do you think you will be able to identify it?”
“I might and I might not. But you’re not telling me that that’s the only evidence you’ve got to connect the two?”
“No, it’s not.”
“I thought not,” said Pettigrew.
“Why didn’t you tell the police what you had seen?” Manktelow asked.
“That’s cross-examination. If Twentyman asks me that, I suppose I shall have to answer, but I’m damned if I tell you.”
They turned under the plane trees overlooking the Embankment and started to walk back over the grass.
“You don’t seem to be interested in the case,” observed Manktelow reproachfully, after they had gone some way in silence.
“On the contrary, I am very much interested, and I badly want to know, but I don’t suppose you can tell me. Who or what killed Jack Gorman? Have you any ideas?”
“Good lord, no! The question never even crossed my mind.”
“It’s an interesting question, all the same, you know.”
“I dare say it is,” said Manktelow impatiently. “For those who care for such things. But it’s not my case. Not the case you’re giving evidence in. Aren’t you interested in that?”
“Dash it all, I’ve already heard you open it in court at some considerable length, and you and Mrs. Gorman between you have really told me all I need to know about it. Incidentally, unless we walk up, we shan’t be there on time. It’s getting late.” They quickened their pace as they left the garden and began to thread the Temple courts.
“But this is ridiculous,” spluttered Manktelow. He was stout and not in the best of condition, and the pace that Pettigrew had set was rather too much for him. “This is a remarkable case-a unique one, I should not be afraid to say, using the word for once in its strict and proper meaning. You could see for yourself how excited Puffkins was over it.”
“If by Puffkins you mean the Honourable Mr. Justice Pomeroy, I can only say that his ideas of excitement are not mine. I’m too old to start getting enthusiastic about base fees.”
They had emerged from the Temple precincts on to the pavement opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.
“You’re damnably cold-blooded,” said Manktelow. “For six months you must have been wondering how you came to see a dead man three days before he died. Now you know the answer, you pretend not to be interested.”
“We’ve only got three minutes,” said Pettigrew, looking up at the great clock. He plunged boldly on to the crossing, a protesting Manktelow beside him. “For six months,” he went on, “I’ve been running away from this case because it seemed to me irrational and, worse than irrational, thoroughly frightening.” He landed on the other side, sprinted with Manktelow to the robing-room door, and went on, “Never mind why I was frightened-I haven’t time to give you the history of my childhood now, and it’s none of your business. But as soon as I saw your sub poena, I realized that there must be a perfectly rational explanation to the whole thing.” He helped Manktelow on with his gown. “Now that I know what it is, I feel a fool not to have seen it before; but as I say, I wasn’t looking for it. On the contrary, I was looking away from it as hard as I could.”
They started on the narrow stairs up to the court corridor. Manktelow had his second wind by now and trotted up first.
“You ought to be feeling relieved, anyway,” he threw over his shoulder. “This case will have solved the problem.”
Pettigrew caught him up in the corridor.
“I don’t know what you call solving the problem,” he panted. “You’re going to persuade Puffkins to deliver a judgment which will disinherit Mrs. Gorman’s charming little daughters, if you’re not pipped on the post by a posthumous son. Great fun for all of you, and costs out of the estate. But it doesn’t satisfy me. Because now I have been compelled to look at this case again I feel that as sure as God made little apples there’s been murder done here, and nobody’s got within a mile of solving that problem yet.”
They reached Chancery Court VI just as Puffkins, punctual to the second, was taking his seat. Pettigrew made his way to his inconspicuous post at the back of the court, but he never reached it.
“My lord, I call Mr. Pettigrew,” said Manktelow with an evil grin, and thrust his hapless friend, still gasping for breath, straight into the witness-box.
On the whole, the experience was not quite so bad a one as Pettigrew had bargained for. At least, nobody referred to the possibility of precognition. None the less, he had some awkward passages to surmount.
“On the afternoon of Saturday the 9th of September,” Manktelow asked him, “were you at the place known as Bolter’s Tussock?”
Pettigrew agreed that he was, and after some business with a large-scale Ordnance Survey map identified the exact spot.
“You were on horseback, I think?”
“Er-yes. That is…”
“Well, were you or weren’t you?” interjected the judge. “You must know.”
“It was a pony, my lord.”
“Very well-on ponyback. Don’t quibble, Mr. Pettigrew. Please get on, Mr. Manktelow.”
“I am much obliged to your lordship. And as you reached this point did you see something on the ground?”
“I thought I did, yes.”
“Just look at this photograph, will you, Mr. Pettigrew? Does it appear to you to resemble in any way the object which you saw on the ground?”
“He hasn’t said he saw anything,” his lordship pointed out. “He says he thought he saw something.”
“Your lordship is very good. Looking at the photograph, do you now say whether you saw anything, and if so what?”
There is nothing in the world quite so definite and uncompromising as a police photograph. Jack Gorman’s face stared at Pettigrew from the print and told him very plainly that he could take it or leave it, but that there must be no shilly-shallying. He chose to take it.