The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [225]
Jeremy was shouting, “No, Richard, no! I can explain! Believe me, I can explain!” as Donald came running in. He came to an abrupt halt by the professor’s desk, but showed no interest in Jeremy.
“Don’t do it, Richard,” he pleaded. “You’ll only spend the rest of your life regretting it.” I remember thinking it was the second time he had ever called me Richard.
“Wrong, for a change, Donald,” I told him. “I won’t regret killing Jeremy Alexander. You see, he’s already been pronounced dead once. I know, because I was sentenced to life imprisonment for his murder. I’m sure you’re aware of the meaning of ‘autrefois acquit,’ and will therefore know that I can’t be charged a second time with a crime I’ve already been convicted of and sentenced for. Even though this time they will have a body.”
I moved the gun a few inches to the right, and aimed at Jeremy’s. heart. I squeezed the trigger just as Jenny came charging into the room. She dived at my legs.
Jeremy and I both hit the ground with a thud.
Well, as I pointed out to you at the beginning of this chronicle, I ought to explain why I’m in jail—or, to be more accurate, why I’m back in jail.
I was tried a second time; on this occasion for attempted murder—despite the fact that I had only grazed the bloody man’s shoulder. I still blame Jenny for that.
Mind you, it was worth it just to hear Matthew’s closing speech, because he certainly understood the meaning of autrefois acquit. He surpassed himself with his description of Rosemary as a calculating, evil Jezebel, and Jeremy as a man motivated by malice and greed, quite willing to cynically pose as a national hero while his victim was rotting his life away in jail, put there by a wife’s perjured testimony of which he had unquestionably been the mastermind. In another four years, a furious Matthew told the jury, they would have been able to pocket several more millions between them. This time the jury looked on me with considerable sympathy.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against any man,” were Sir Matthew’s closing words, his sonorous tones making him sound like an Old Testament prophet.
The tabloids always need a hero and a villain. This time they had got themselves a hero and two villains. They seemed to have forgotten everything they had printed during the previous trial about the oversexed truck driver, and it would be foolish to suggest that the page after page devoted to every sordid detail of Jeremy and Rosemary’s deception didn’t influence the jury.
They found me guilty, of course, but only because they weren’t given any choice. In his summing up the judge almost ordered them to do so. But the foreman expressed his fellow jurors’ hope that, given the circumstances, the judge might consider a lenient sentence. Mr. Justice Lampton obviously didn’t read the tabloids, because he lectured me for several minutes, and then said I would be sent down for five years.
Matthew was on his feet immediately, appealing for clemency on the grounds that I had already served a long sentence. “This man looks out on the world through a window of tears,” he told the judge. “I beseech Your Lordship not to put bars across that window a second time.” The applause from the gallery was so thunderous that the judge had to instruct the bailiffs to clear the court before he could respond to Sir Matthew’s plea.
“His Lordship obviously needs a little time to think,” Matthew explained under his breath as he passed me in the dock. After much deliberation in his chambers, Mr. Justice Lampton settled on three years. Later that day I was sent to Ford Open Prison.
After considerable press comment during the next few weeks, and what Sir Matthew described to the Court of Appeal as “my client’s unparalleled affliction and exemplary behavior,” I ended up only having to serve nine months.
Meanwhile, Jeremy had been arrested at Addenbrookes Hospital by Allan Leeke, deputy chief constable of Cambridgeshire. After three days in a heavily guarded ward he was charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice, and transferred to Armley