The Massingham Affair Part 22

"What else?" Gilmore asked. "Were you at Ma.s.singham on the morning of the crime?"

"Aye, sir, I worr."

"Did you inspect the lane past Merrick's bothy?"

"I seen it, sir."

"Were there footprints on it?"

"Aye: gay little uns."

"A lady's prints, perhaps? Miss Verney's?"

"Aye, a leddy's sawtenly. And Mr Merrick's too."

"No other prints?"

"None that I seen, sir."

There remained young Merrick. And when he had been called and cross-examined about the shot he had heard and the ensuing silence till Miss Verney had come ranning to his door, Gilmore rose and said laconically: "That is the Crown's case, my lord."

"My case, unlike my learned friend's," said Mr Jessop, giving the jury the benefit of his most encouraging smile, "is very simple. I shall not take up days in calling before you what you may think was the most remarkable batch of rascals of one breed and another ever a.s.sembled to swear by Almighty G.o.d to anything. Members of the jury, you have seen them, and what a privilege!-an old man in his dotage with a police record; a.s.sorted poachers; two men convicted in this very place of attempted murder and two others now undergoing penal servitude. These are not Defendants, gentlemen; they are Crown witnesses on whose evidence you are asked to say beyond reasonable doubt that police officers of unblemished character conspired. Now you shall hear these officers. Less than two years ago, before the pa.s.sing of the Criminal Evidence Act, they could not have gone into the witness-box to tell you of their entire innocence, but now they can, and you will be able to judge for yourselves who is likely to have conspired and for what. I will call Superintendent Blair."

It was almost four o'clock and the rain was still rattling on the high windows above the gallery when Justin saw his old enemy come out of the gate at the back of the dock and cross the court into the witness-box. Very calm and paternal he looked, with his drooping jowls and comfortable spread of stomach under the ill-fitting tunic. "Superintendent," Jessop greeted him in a tone that invited the jury's respectful attention, "is your full name Josiah Blair?"

"It is, sir."

201.

THE Ma.s.sIXGHAM AFFAIR.

"I think you have been in charge of the Smedwick division these twelve years past and your total service is nearly forty years?"

"That's so, sir."

"What do you say to these charges that you conspired to pervert the course of justice?"

"It's all lies, sir."

In effect, what followed was a root and branch denial of the Crown case, except that some slight irregularity over the matter of the chisel was admitted, though excused in the same breath as the land of thing the Police were sometimes forced to do in their unending struggle against criminals. "You have to be as sharp as them, sir," was how Blair expressed this. For nearly an hour in the deeply attentive court the Superintendent told his story of what had happened. The gruff unhurried voice, the frequent pauses for thought, were strangely impressive and suggestive of truth. It seemed a denial of the natural order of things that this upright, official man could have come from the dock with charges hanging over his head or that the jury listening so raptly could have been called there to p.r.o.nounce on him.

"Must get at this fellow," Gilmore whispered over his shoulder as Defence counsel sat down. "Must knock him off his perch." The afternoon was drawing in, and at the back of the court an attendant had appeared with a lighted taper. There came the hiss of gas, the gentle plop of explosions as the mantles came alive, and soon the court was ringed with points of light shining on the dock and on the chair under the royal arms where the crimson of the judge's robes caught the eye, like some figure in an exotic tapestry. "We had no lights last time: it was early afternoon if I remember," Gil-more remarked aloud as the man with the taper came down past the witness-box on his way out of court. "Do you recall it, Superintendent?"

"Recall what, sir?"

"I'm speaking of the last time we met. It was here, wasn't it, some eight years back?"

"That's right, sir."

"You told me all about the sc.r.a.p of paper Dr Higson found in a coat you handed him?"

"That's right, sir."

"Did you tell me about the 'ruse' of the chisel down at Mr Pig-gott's?"

A blank look had come into the Superintendent's eye but he answered stoutly: "I was never asked, sir."

"So if you're not specially asked to tell the truth you don't tell it, is that right?"

Blair could find no reply to this.

"Suppose I ask you now? Wasn't the trick you played on that old man a disgraceful and dishonest one?"

"No."

"You have to be as sharp as them', the criminals-is that your philosophy of life?"

"Plain common sense, sir."

A murmur of approval came from certain quarters of the court, but Gilmore took no account of it. "What you are saying," he insisted, "is that it is right for police officers to practise criminal behaviour."

"No, sir."

"Let us examine your actions, then. I will ask you about the footprints you found at Ma.s.singham. The first you came upon-soon after dawn-were marks in the flower-beds under the drawing-room windows of the Rectory, but those you rejected for some reason?"

"I did, sir."

"But on the lane and highway you discovered marks made by two pairs of boots you thought were Milligan's and Kelly's?"

"That's right, sir-so they were."

"When did you discover those footprints on the lane and road?"

"I'd traced the last of them by afternoon, soon after three."

"Some hours after you'd arrested Milligan and Kelly?"

"Yes."

"Were you alone when you discovered them?"

"I had young Moffat with me."

"Where did the footprints in the lane lead to?"

For some time the witness's answers had been getting slower, and this time there was quite a lengthy pause before he answered: "They led down the hill, sir, to the Smedwick road."

"Past Mr Merrick's cottage?"

"Right past it, sir."

"Yet you heard Mr Merrick say in evidence that though he heard the shot from the Rectory and then the sounds of Miss Verney's footsteps, he heard no other footsteps on the road?"

"He should ha' done, sir."

203.

"You see I am suggesting to you, Superintendent," said Gilmore very slowly, "that apart from Miss Verney's prints and Merrick's, which P.C. Pugh saw, there were no others on the lane or road until you put them there?

There was a gasp almost of horror, then a silence so profound that Justin could distinctly hear the hiss of the gas and the scratching of the judge's pen. Only the witness seemed unmoved and replied contemptuously: "Quite absurd, sir-with respect, sir."

"Absurd? But wasn't it necessary, because you had so little evidence to support your charge? Weren't the marks in the soil under the window useless from your point of view?"

"Unhelpful," Blair corrected him.

"Weren't they the marks made by Sugden and Henderson when they jumped through the window with sacking on their feet?"

"I don't agree, sir."

"But by that afternoon, when you 'found' the marks in the lane, you'd arrested Milligan and Kelly?"

"So I had, sir."

"And at that time, didn't you have with you at Ma.s.singham a bag containing the boots of both accused?"

"No, sir," the Superintendent said.

Gilmore looked at his brief, turned over a page, then slowly straightened up and faced the witness, saying: "I want you to think very carefully. You are on oath. You know the truth and perhaps it is known to others. Let me ask you again. Did you have in your possession at Ma.s.singham the means of putting those footprints on the road?"

Before Blair could reply, Mr Jessop had bounded to his feet, trembling, with vexation and alarm. "My lord, I must protest, I really must. My friend has no right to repeat his question in that form or otherwise. He had an answer and he must abide by it."

"Even if it were a lie and there happened to be evidence to prove it?" enquired Gilmore with the utmost cheerfulness.

"But my friend has no right to call evidence in reb.u.t.tal in such a case," cried Jessop, bouncing like a dervish under the sting of that confident smile. "He has no right even to refer to evidence he hints he knows of but has not called. It is the duty of the Crown to open all the facts it intends to prove; not to save things up and lie in ambush for witnesses."

"Aren't those strong words," remarked the judge mildly, "for exhortations to the witness to think about his answer?'

"They should never have been made, my lord, never. It was a threat: a ruse, if you like; an attempt to confuse my client."

The judge leaned forward in his chair, looking down at the small indignant figure below him. "Mr Jessop," he said, "I think you exaggerate the heinous nature of what Mr Gilmore has done. It seems to me that no harm would have come if the witness had been allowed to answer. However, it is vitally important that nothing should be said or done that is in any way unfair to the accused, and if it is your wish"-the judge was speaking very slowly, emphasising every word-"if it is really your wish that your client should not answer Mr Gilmore's question, then I shall certainly direct he need not do so."

Jessop bowed his head and his murmur of "As your lordship pleases" had a dutiful and complacent ring. Only the quick glances he shot first at the jury and then at the witness betrayed the fact that below the grat.i.tude he was thinking hard. Gilmore knew it, and so did Justin. Calculations were racing through that agile mind: a profit and loss account of what had been won for the witness-time -and what might be lost if the jury were to suspect he had something to hide. It was a matter of instants only: the bow; the quick a.s.sessment of risks; and Mr Jessop had decided.

"My lord."

"Yes?" said the judge, an interested spectator ot what had happened.

"My lord, if I have appeared to rely on technicalities the blame must He on'me, not on my client, and I am sure that is appreciated by the jury as much as by your lordship. I felt I had to intervene, since the question was improperly conceived. But if your lordship feels, as your lordship has indicated, that it should be answered, then'of course it shall be answered. My client was always ready to do so. No reluctance should be attributed to him."

"None will be," replied the judge. "Superintendent, do you recall the question?"

There was no answer. The witness, staring across the court like a ship's figurehead, had apparently not heard. "Superintendent?" "My lord?"

205.

"Did you have the boots, man?" Gilmore demanded with a sudden pounce.

"Aye, I had 'em," the witness said.

And next moment, before Jessop's horrified gaze, he had slumped forward in a dead faint over the ledge of the witness-box.

For over ten minutes the hearing was suspended, the witness-box empty, no judge on the bench, while the corridor outside the court hummed with excited talk. There was a school of thought that held that Blair was dead-and indeed there had seemed very little life in him as they carried him into the robing room of the Civil Court, to which a doctor was hastily summoned. Others looked to new sensations of an elevating nature when the repair work had been done. But what everyone seemed to be agreed about was that the Superintendent had d.a.m.ned himself in the jury's eyes by his admission, which was fairly generally put down to an Act of G.o.d or softening of the brain. "My dear Deny, to borrow a word from that unfortunate man, it was a providential answer," was Gilmore's opinion as they paced the corridor together. Apparently there had been no definite evidence to go on. "Except this, Deny. I got wind of the fact that the Rectory odd-job man, Bell, had some tale about a bag of boots, but the judge would almost certainly not have let me call him and who would have believed him anyway, coming so late on the scene? Our friend had only to stay dishonest a few minutes longer."

"Why didn't he?"

"You may well ask. Perhaps he thought I had something nasty up my sleeve and decided he'd best admit things while he had time. Or perhaps it was just the old Adam of honesty at work in him. I've often seen it happen. At heart most people prefer to tell the truth, and in the witness-box after a while, if you persist long enough, they need to tell it or bits of it. Don't ask me why." He broke off. "h.e.l.lo, there's Perkins wanting us. Our friend must have recovered."

Near the doors of the court Gilmore's clerk, a small grey-haired man dressed like an undertaker, was making signs. People were scurrying for their seats, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the Superintendent as he came back into court, his face as yellow as an idol's in the gaslight and his eyes curiously wide and expressionless.

Justin felt saddened by it all. He had not forgiven Blair. It was not in his nature, as it had been in the Vicar's, to feel charitable to the trial: 1899 wards a man who had acted with such disregard for justice and human suffering, no matter how strong the temptation and even the need might have been to punish someone for the burglary, to check the wave of violence that had cost Luke's life at Hannington. But the spectacle of retribution, the packed court charged with emotions of excitement and pleasure, repelled him. Though Gilmore asked no more questions, he found it just as painful to watch Jessop trying to rea.s.semble something irretrievably broken and to hear the halting voice proclaim an innocence he was sure no one believed in any longer.

But there he was wrong. The next witness, to his consternation, was Miss Verney.

As she went into the box, holding herself very erect like a pale and diminutive grenadier, he felt all the emotions of a lover. He feared terribly for her. He prayed without much hope that she would avoid disaster. It even crossed his mind to wish that she had chosen something more appearing than the dark dress that had made so dismal an impression on him at Ma.s.singham, and at the same time he wanted to defend that dress and the matching bonnet against the ignorant prejudices of the world. What they would make of her evidence he hardly dared to think-and he was right.

For what she had come to do was to repeat her testimony of '91: how, awakened by the sounds below, she had followed her father down on to the landing and seen the burglars standing in the dining-room in line; how the candles had gone out, the shot had been fired, and one of the men had come rushing out into the hall where she had grabbed him by the hair.

"Who was that man, Miss Verney?" Jessop asked.

She replied that she believed it was Milligan.

"Not Henderson? Could it have been?"

"Certainly not. He's a much bigger man."

"Could it have been Sugden?"

"No."

"I suppose that he's too small?" suggested Gilmore as he rose to cross-examine her. "Miss Verney, you made this identification eight years ago?"

"Yes."

"And then you identified only one of the two men?"

"Yes."

THE Ma.s.sIXGHAM AFFAIR.