The Hung Jury Read online

  The Hung Jury

  Robert Innes

  Published by Robert Innes in 2018

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Robert Innes.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact [email protected]

  Contents

  About This Book

  Also by Robert Innes

  Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Thank You!

  Newsletter

  Also by Robert Innes

  About This Book

  Released: February 20th 2017

  Words: 33,000

  Series: Book 1 - Gold & Silver Murder Mystery Series

  Standalone: Yes

  Cliff-hanger: No

  Rebecca Winters is on trial for the murder of her husband, Simon. He was found stabbed to death in the bedroom of their home, and with the evidence mounted up around her, she is soon found guilty by a jury.

  But one member of that jury is confused by the outcome. Nicola Golding is a budding blogger, her focus being on murder and crime. She does not believe that Rebecca is a murderer, and she decides to investigate the possibility that Simon’s killer could still be out there somewhere.

  With nobody there to help her, Nicola recruits a reluctant companion; new chef at the restaurant she works at, Alex Silverstone. But then, more deaths occur. Members of the jury that made the decision to send Rebecca down are found hanged in their homes, and Nicola soon finds herself in a race against time to find the killer before she becomes a victim herself…

  Also by Robert Innes

  The Blake Harte Mystery Series

  Untouchable

  Confessional

  Ripples

  Reach

  Spotlight

  The Gold & Silver Mystery Series

  The Hung Jury

  The Poison Pen

  Newsletter

  If you want to be notified about Robert Innes’ future releases, sign up to his newsletter below!

  Sign me up!

  1

  The courtroom was hot and stuffy. It was also full, as it had been since the trial started at the beginning of the week. The case had been reported nationwide, with much debate and exaggeration on the facts, perhaps why so many people had come to find out the truth for themselves.

  All eyes turned to the prosecution barrister as he stood up to address the jury. “I call to the stand, Rebecca Winters.”

  The accused, sitting behind a glass screen on the side of the courtroom, stood up slowly. Then, with her head held high, she walked across to the bar. The only sound in the room was a cough escaping from someone’s throat at the back of the public gallery.

  Rebecca reached the bar, and swore her oath. Dennis Tate was a tall, distinguished-looking man with a deep, rich voice. A bushy moustache bristled under his nose whenever he spoke. He studied Rebecca carefully, his eyes narrowed. When the bible had been taken away, he put his hands up to his lapels.

  “Mrs Winters,” Tate began. “I’d like to start, if I may, by establishing a few basic facts. You are, Rebecca Winters, forty-six, former wife of the deceased, Simon Winters?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long had you been married?”

  “Ten years. We recently celebrated our tenth anniversary, actually.”

  Tate looked down at his notes. “Ah, yes, your wedding anniversary. Three weeks before your husband’s death?”

  Rebecca’s expression did not change. “That’s right.”

  Tate turned to face the jury. “Would you say your marriage was a happy one, Mrs Winters?”

  Rebecca ran her hands through her mousey brown hair. “Fairly. We got two children out of it, after all.”

  “Well,” Tate replied, chuckling, “children in a marriage is not necessarily an immediate indication of happiness.”

  “We argued,” Rebecca said hotly. “Of course we did. Name me a couple who don’t. I’m sure even you have the odd row with your other half.”

  “Indeed,” Tate replied, turning back to her. “But, I’d like to focus, if I may, on one specific argument the two of you had on the day of your husband’s death, or murder, I should say. After all, he was murdered.”

  Rebecca sighed. “I’d discovered he was having an affair.”

  “An affair,” Tate repeated with gusto. “Ten years of marriage, fifteen years of what you, presumably, considered to be a strong and stable relationship, and you discovered that he was seeing somebody else.”

  Rebecca looked down at the ground for a moment, before recomposing herself. “Yes.”

  “And do you know who your husband was having this alleged affair with?”

  “There was nothing alleged about it,” Rebecca responded sharply. “But yes. She’s sitting over there.” She pointed towards the public gallery. All eyes in the room briefly turned to a blonde woman sitting in the centre of the front row. When she realised that everyone was looking at her, she shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, and stared straight ahead, shaking her head.

  “And did you know this woman?” Tate asked.

  Rebecca continued glaring at her adversary from across the room. “Yes, Bernice Stockport. She used to be a friend of mine. I thought a very close one.”

  Again, Tate turned to face the jury, a triumphant expression on his face. “So, on the very same day your husband confessed this complete and utter betrayal to you, he is found stabbed to death in a pool of his own blood on your bedroom floor!”

  Rebecca seemed taken aback by Tate’s relish. The defence barrister stood up and addressed the judge. “If I may, your honour, my learned friend is being unnecessarily graphic in his descriptions?”

  The judge nodded. “If you could reel in the over enthusiastic setting of the scene, Mr Tate?”

  Tate nodded respectfully. “My lord.” He then turned back to Rebecca. “Could you tell the court about your discovery of this affair?”

  Rebecca took a deep breath. “I’d finished work early that day. The kids were both out. Estelle, my daughter, she was out with friends, with it being a Saturday, and Ross, my son, he was at work. I thought I’d come home early and surprise Simon. As it was, he surprised me.”

  Tate leant forwards, a slight smile on his lips. “And how did he surprise you, exactly?”

  “I walked in on him packing a bag. He’d taken all his clothes out a drawer, and there was a pen and paper on the bedside table. Apparently, he’d been planning on writing me a letter.”

  “A letter telling you that he was leaving you for this other woman?” He checked his notes.

  Again, Rebecca glared at Bernice. “Yes.”

  “But,” Tate continued, walking towards the jury, “you had caught him in the act of leaving. So, instead of the coward’s way out, he was forced to break it to you, face to face.” Without turning around to face Rebecca, Tate smiled triumphantly at the jury. “Please, tell the jury what happened next.”

  Rebecca ran her hands through her hair again. “We argued.
I mean, of course we did, that’s hardly unreasonable. But you know what? Then we talked. We had been together for such a long time, I wasn’t about to let that just slip away, because of one fling with some bimbo.”

  A few eyes flicked briefly back to Bernice in the public gallery, who looked mildly affronted.

  “But he was about to walk out on you,” Tate replied, a faux confused expression on his face. “If you hadn’t arrived home when you did, early from work, surprising him, he would have been gone. And all you would have had to sum up your marriage, I imagine, would have been a tear stained scrap of paper, with some empty, sycophantic words upon it.”

  “My Lord,” the defence barrister snapped, standing up again. “It is surely not for my learned friend to analyse the defendant’s marriage, the quality of which we have no indication or evidence was anything other than happy, before the events leading us to here.”

  The judge seemed irritated by the interruption. “Yes, alright. Mr Tate.”

  “Thank you, my Lord,” Tate said, bowing slightly, his moustache bristling. “Mrs Winters, you admit yourself, that following the revelation of your husband’s affair, the two of you argued. I ask again, what happened during that argument?”

  Rebecca stared furiously at him. It was obvious that his relentless and careless way of questioning her was starting to take its toll. “Alright, yes! I screamed, I yelled, and to be quite honest, I also slapped him.”

  “Hard?”

  “Yes, of course. I was angry.”

  “So, you admit that when enraged, you resort to violent behaviour?”

  “No!” Rebecca exclaimed. “I’m never violent!”

  “No, except when confronted with a cheating spouse, of course.”

  “You’re twisting it, and you know you are,” Rebecca snapped. “We argued, I hit him, once, around the face. But after that, we talked. For at least two hours. Calmly, and reasonably. About our marriage, what had gone wrong, what was missing, what I could do to improve things, what he could do.”

  Tate shook his head in disbelief. “So, that being the case, how exactly did your husband end up stabbed to death on your bedroom floor?”

  Rebecca looked down at the ground again, fiddling with her fingernails. “I don’t know. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I left the house. I went to the shop and bought a bottle of wine for us to share. We ended things on a good note. We’d talked and began sorting things out.”

  “Ah yes,” Tate said, picking up his notes. “We come to the receipt for a bottle of white wine that you claim is your alibi.”

  “It is. I wasn’t in the house when Simon was killed!”

  “So, your suggestion is that when you left the house to purchase a bottle of wine to share with your husband, something I’m sure we’d all do when confronted with an affair, some unknown assailant crept in, stabbed your husband, then left, ready for you to discover on your return?”

  Rebecca sighed, and nodded. She looked desperate, like a woman who had told this story many times before, most likely to a similarly cynical response.

  “And what did you do then?”

  “When I found him, I rang my mum. I was in a terrible state, as you can imagine. She came straight over, and we called for an ambulance.”

  Tate turned back to the jury and shook his head, smiling. “And you expect us all to believe that?”

  “It’s true!”

  “Oh, I believe that you went to go and buy yourself a bottle of wine,” Tate replied coldly. “I believe that the shock and fury you had felt before brutally murdering Simon Winters was too much for you and you needed to calm yourself down, while you decided what your next move should be, or perhaps it was the opposite. Maybe you were cool, calculated, and the wine was a mere treat for yourself, like Hannibal Lecter enjoying a chianti after consuming his newest victim.”

  “It wasn’t -”

  “Either way,” cut in Tate, his tone and expression darkening. “I put it to you, Mrs Winters, that you stabbed your husband, on the discovery of this alleged affair. Hell hath no fury. You took a kitchen knife, and viciously plunged it into your husband, then after drinking your wine, considering your moves to the letter, you rang for an ambulance, and then the police. But, unlike how you’d rehearsed in your head, the police did not believe you. And frankly, Mrs Winters, it is my belief that any officer worth his badge would feel the same.” He turned away from Rebecca, who had now begun to cry, tears cascading down her cheeks. “No further questions, my Lord.”

  And with a flourish of his robes, his moustache bristling furiously, he sat down.

  For a few moments, the courtroom was almost silent, only the gentle sobs of Rebecca echoing round the room.

  The judge cleared his throat. “I think now would be a suitable time to break for a recess. We shall reconvene at two thirty.”

  “All rise!”

  The jury, along with the rest of the room, rose to their feet. All eyes were on the judge, as he shuffled off towards his chambers, except for one person. A member of the jury was watching Rebecca as she was led, still sobbing, back towards the glass screen.

  Nicola Golding frowned and scratched the back of her head. Something about Rebecca’s story was not making sense to her. As she followed the rest of the jury out the back of the courtroom, her brain was whirring. She could not shake off the feeling that Rebecca had not killed Simon Winters.

  2

  “You do realise that you’re not supposed to be telling me any of this?”

  Nicola rolled her eyes as she checked her short blonde hair in the mirror, with her mobile stuck to the side of her head. “It’s fine, I’m in the loo. There’s nobody here.”

  “It doesn’t matter that there’s nobody there, you daft cow,” Kath retorted. “You’re on the jury for a murder trial. In fact, I don’t think I’m even supposed to know that it’s a murder trial!”

  Nicola tutted as her hair, as usual, refused to respond to any amount of prodding and fiddling. “Kath, you’re my best friend, of course I’m going to tell you what’s been happening.”

  “Nicki,” Kath snapped. “The restaurant is busy. So busy. Busier than it’s been since the summer holidays. No, probably even busier than last summer holidays. I’ve got the new chef starting tonight, Dominic is badgering me about time off next week, I do not want my head bar woman unable to come into work because she’s been thrown in a dungeon because she couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.”

  The door to the toilet opened and Nicola quickly jumped down from the sink. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “You better had.”

  Nicola hung up the phone just as an elderly looking woman walked in. She was no stranger to Nicola. Dorothy Fountain was a fellow jury member. It was clear to Nicola that Dorothy had began the week with a set of preconceived ideas about the case, no doubt influenced by the local papers and television interviews. When the jury were not in the court and were on recess, Dorothy had been telling anyone who would listen how obvious it was that Rebecca Winters was nothing more than a cold, calculating killer.

  “Who were you talking to?” Dorothy asked, narrowing her eyes on Nicola.

  Resisting the urge to tell the old woman that it was absolutely none of her business, Nicola merely shrugged. “Just my boss. She wanted to make sure that I would be in tonight.”

  “I’m sure you will be,” Dorothy replied, walking over to the mirror, and examining her sky-blue eye shadow. “I should think it’s pretty evident to all and sundry what our verdict should be. What’s known in the profession as an open and shut case.”

  Nicola frowned. She had quickly realised at the start of the week that she was the only member of the jury who seemed to have any doubt.

  “Still though,” she said lightly. “Still another day to go they reckon. We could find anything out in that time.”

  Dorothy let out a little chuckle. “I don’t think so, my dear. That woman has ‘guilty’ written all over her. As far as I can see, those poor ch
ildren have had their hearts ripped out, and their father taken away from them, all because of a crime of passion.”

  “But if Rebecca goes down, they have no parents at all.”

  “That’s just the way of it,” Dorothy replied. “Why would they want someone like that in their life anyway? It’s tragic, but justice must prevail.”

  A loud tannoy announcement echoed around them. “All parties in the case concerning Winters, that’s Winters, reconvene in Court number one please.”

  Dorothy smiled cheerfully, looking up. “And off we go again. It’s gratifying, wouldn’t you say? Bringing the hammer of the law down on those that deserve it. I could get quite used to it.”

  Nicola raised a disdainful and pencilled eyebrow as she watched Dorothy totter out of the toilet.

  ***

  Estelle Winters looked terrified as she made her way towards the bar. She was tall and skeletal looking, and her hair was quite obviously spray painted black, sticking up in strange places as if she had also heavily lacquered it with hair spray. She was wearing a very crumpled suit jacket with what looked like a white school shirt underneath it. Nicola suspected that Estelle had had to be forced into this outfit, looking like she would be much more comfortable in something more befitting the gothic image she was clearly going for.

  The defence barrister, Bernard Sugars, looking far more approachable than Tate, stood up and smiled at the nervous looking teenager at the bar. “Could you tell me what your relationship is like with your mother?”