The Crime of Huey Dunstan Read Online Free

He had exposed a basic weakness in the defence case.
    The prosecutor continued: “Then before leaving the scene he remembers to draw the curtains and put out the light so the crime won’t be discovered. How do you explain that in terms of ‘flashback’, Mr Chesney?”
    “I think the witness would prefer to be addressed as Professor Chesney,” the judge interposed.
    “Professor Chesney. I beg your pardon.”
    “I can’t explain it,” I said. “But what seems clear from the evidence is that after Mr Dunstan left the cottage in the deceased’s car, he had no idea what to do, where to go. He drove like a madman. He abandoned the axe, after smashing a telephone box with it, he then climbed a tree and spent some hours in the tree with a rope contemplating suicide. It is obvious to me he was in a blind gibbering panic.”
    “Yes. I will come back to that, professor. Tell me: did he describe the alleged incident that produced the so-called ‘flashback’?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “No details?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Did he name the perpetrator?”
    “Not till I asked. A man called Glen.”
    “No other name?”
    “No. He said he didn’t know any other name.”
    “Anything else he told you about this mysterious Glen person?”
    “No.”
    “Then we are no further ahead than we were when Dr Wilson the psychiatrist was here yesterday. I take it you have read Dr Wilson’s testimony?”
    “Mr Starling,” the judge gently rebuked him. “You forget. The witness cannot see to read.”
    “It’s quite all right,” I said. “There’s a convention about these things, Your Honour. Yes, I have ‘read’ a transcript of what Dr Wilson told the court. I read it on my PAC Mate. It’s the blind man’s personal computer. But I have to disagree with the Crown that we’re no further ahead,” I said. “Nobody knows anything about what happened in the caravan except what Mr Dunstan told the prison doctor in Cornford jail. It came out I understand in the course of a routine medical examination. Had it not been for the prison doctor who learned that an inmate was in distress banging on his cell door and having nightmares, we would not know even the little we do know. Mr Dunstan had apparently resolved never to talk about it. And then having let slip that he had been bound and beaten, he swore the doctor to secrecy and made him promise not to tell his lawyer. It was only with reluctance that he allowed himselfto be persuaded and his lawyer told. Even now he refuses to divulge more. I am but the latest in a chain of doctors and counsellors to come up against this wall of silence, and that more than anything convinces me that the flashback is genuine.”
    “He is in denial. Is that it, professor?” The judge spoke.
    “Yes. But for the best possible reason. He doesn’t want to bring more shame on his family. What did he do? He stole a sum of money. What followed? He was sent away to live with a stranger. He couldn’t divulge what happened—”
    “Couldn’t?” the prosecutor said.
    “Not ‘couldn’t’ but ‘wouldn’t’. My mistake. Wouldn’t . Because he thought it was being done with the parents’ approval. The parents were colluding with the perpetrator. He thought it was part of his punishment.”
    “With respect professor, this isn’t a diagnosis. This is pure hypothesis.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you put this cock-and-bull story before the jury in all seriousness?”
    “You may call it that, sir. It’s significant I think that the parents don’t know what happened, any more than we do. Mr Dunstan has never told them. I have never thought that traits that are strong in childhood disappear. They don’t vanish. On the contrary they persist and may appear even more strongly in adulthood. Yesterday when I was withMr Dunstan I asked about his schooling. He told me his school motto: KIA KAHA , KIA TOA . It means be strong, be a man. It seems to me that whatever was done to him in the caravan,