The Massingham Affair Part 3

"Physically at least."

"And you want to read his deposition-on which I can't in the nature of things cross-examine. When did he make it?"

"Nine weeks ago."

"Was he less crazy then?"

Justin, in high glee, was just applauding this, when the judge had the doctor called and admitted Piggott's deposition on the spot. "The d.a.m.ned old Moloch!" muttered Justin fiercely under his breath. There had been nothing in Piggott's deposition to suggest that he could be cross-examined to any useful effect, but the way the thing had been done rankled and left the feeling that the law had been unfairly stretched in favour of the Crown. The Crown needed no such patronage. It had the evidence on its side; it had Superintendent Blair, who now advanced into the box, a huge man but walking delicately, like Agag.

Now Justin had set out that morning because the managing clerk had detailed him. Like most pupils, he was a disenchanted soul who guarded himself against enthusiasms. Yet already he was changing. Reading the depositions in the train, he had felt a quickening of interest that had surprised him, and now, at sight of Blair standing in the box with the Testament raised high, he had the strangest feeling of personal involvement in what was about to happen, as though he were at the beginning of something that would claim him one day, perhaps after a long time.

The Superintendent's evidence when it came was in amusing contrast to such thoughts. It was ba.n.a.l to a degree: more like an official circular than anything else: "As a result of certain information I went to Ma.s.singham Rectory at about five a.m. on the morning of the 7th February. I found the drawing-room window had been forced open. From the witness Clegg I received a chisel and a piece of newspaper which I now identify. Under a window I saw certain indentations in the soil. I covered these with boards. Going out of the grounds into the lane leading past Merrick's bothy I saw sets of footmarks. I traced these marks from the lane to the main road and along that road towards Smedwick for the best part of a mile. On the 7th February and again on the following day I took plaster casts of these footmarks and I produce these casts with the boots of the accused. They correspond exactly. I found it impossible to take plaster casts of the marks under the window. On 13th February I gave the chisel in question to Inspector Mathieson and P.C. Pugh with instructions to show it to the witness Piggott. On 20th February I was present when Dr Higson was examining Kelly's old coat (which I now identify), and a piece of paper (which I now identify) was found in the lining of the coat. It fits exactly into the larger piece given me by the witness Clegg. The accused when charged denied all knowledge of the offences."

"Time for luncheon," murmured Mr Rees as the judge closed his notebook and laid down his pen. Justin allowed his thoughts to wander agreeably in the same direction. Lunch. A large one. Steak, kidney and mushroom pie for choice. With a pint of beer and apple tart and cream to follow. He had some hopes that the old buffer' would rise to that, and it was with a most grievous sense of deprivation that he saw they were not going out of court at all, but through the gate into the dock and downstairs into the bleak echoing world of cells, filled now with an aroma which he recognised authoritatively as Irish Stew. 'At least those two poor devils will be fed,' he thought, as the warder unlocked the grille, and with Rees leading they went in. A sad looking pair, though. Seen at close quarters they had an unprepossessing look. 'Capable of anything,' he noted to himself, 'though I expect it's only the knowledge that they're prisoners that makes me think so. A great leveller the dock: makes

35.

THE Ma.s.sDJGHAM AFFAIR.

everyone look guilty. What villains we'd seem if we were there. And Garrowby. I know what a jury would think of him'

"Now MiUigan, you're much the older," Gilmore was saying, "so I'll address myself to you. You've heard the evidence. Have you anything to say about it?"

"It were lies, sir," the man said.

"Was Piggott lying about the chisel? Wasn't he your friend?"

No answer.

"Was Dr Higson lying about the paper in the coat? Or the Ver-neys? Why should they identify you if it wasn't you?"

"Because the Poliss had been talkin', sir. Poliss was sure we done it from the start. 'Come 'ere, you d.a.m.ned scoundrels,' the Superintendent says. That's the way 'e talked, sir. Then 'e comes back after a bit and knocks me down, sir. Says I been smokm in me cell."

"And had you?" Gilmore asked, his face expressionless.

"May 'ave 'ad a bit o' baccy like."

"Why should he have a 'down' on you?"

"We done a bit o' poachin' like."

"Why should the Police risk their careers and conspire against you?"

They stared at him, unable to answer. It was fortunate, thought Justin, that the law as it stood would not allow them to be called as witnesses in their own defence. He felt sorry for them and for their story. By all the processes of law it was untrue. And it sounded untrue-he could not avoid that feeling, however much sympathy he might have for the two forlorn and ignorant men. It was an instinctive feeling and he tried to a.n.a.lyse it, puzzling over in his mind the paradoxical fact that the Crown's case should have suggested to him the accused's innocence and the Defence case even more certainly their guilt. He wondered if he was alone in these feelings. He could see on the faces of his colleagues none of his doubts but only an enviable calm and attention to business.

"Now see here, Milligan . . ." They were at bay now, just as they had been in the dock. "I want you to listen carefully. If you tell me that the Police abused you, and beat you, and had a grudge against you, then that's your case and I can put it to the Police witnesses in the box."

"It's for you to say, sir."

"No, it's for you. I'm your counsel. You instruct me. I must tell you, though, that in my opinion such accusations won't be believed, nor will an attack on this Police evidence as such. That c.o.c.k won't fight. Ask Mr Rees."

"No one will believe it," the old man replied.

No one asked Justin his opinion: he was obliged for that. As he went up the stairs lunchless, with nothing in prospect but a sandwich before the judge descended from the grandiose meal the county had provided, he wondered what he would do in Gilmore's shoes. Fight, as Milligan and perhaps Kelly wished, and risk the heavier sentence? But with what? One had to have some weapons. A dead case. And yet the inner prompting of mind that had said to him at the beginning, 'Something is wrong', returned, and not all the magisterial appearance of Blair in the witness-box could quell it for an instant.

Gilmore started quietly with the witness. "Correct me if I am wrong," he said, "but as I understand the matter a large sheet of newspaper was found in the Rectory on the morning of the crime, and later there was found a sc.r.a.p of paper which fitted exactly into the jig-saw, if I may call it that?"

"Exactly," Blair intoned.

"Found in the presence of the Police at Police headquarters by the Police Surgeon in the lining of the prisoner Kelly's coat?"

"In Kelly's coat."

"Now you and your subordinates had searched that coat?"

"Yes."

"Several times?"

"Several times."

"And found nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

It was like a duet-one really needed and expected a chorus, Justin thought, though perhaps it was asking too much of the jury to fill the bill.

"How long, Superintendent, had that coat been in the possession of the Police?"

Blair began to think this out and Gilmore said: "Consult your notebook if you like."

"I don't need to, sir. We had that coat between the 7th and the 20th February."

"And in all that time you found nothing?"

"We didn't search every day," Blair said.

37.

"Of course not. But you searched it. Did you search it thoroughly?"

That was a clever 'Morton's Fork' kind of question, reflecting on Police skills, and Blair, forgetting other things and remembering honour, retorted hotly: "We try to be thorough, sir."

"Of course you do. I've no doubt you were thorough. No one doubts it. You and your men searched thoroughly and searched several times and found nothing. Then you hand the coat to Dr Higson, an independent witness, and immediately something is found."

"Don't know what you mean by that, sir?" Blair said aggrievedly.

He would have done better to have kept silent. "Don't you?" Gilmore said. "Weren't you glad to have an independent witness to bolster up your case?"

Paget lumbered to his feet as though he would object. Gilmore ignored him entirely and remained facing the Superintendent. "Because your case did need some bolstering, didn't it? You had two suspects and a sc.r.a.p of paper-and what else?"

"We had the chisel."

"Oh yes: Piggott's chisel. And some marks in the soil under the drawing-room window. Aren't we to hear of those?"

"I could make no casts from them," Blair retorted.

"Why not? Is soil not a receptive medium for footprints? Is a lane better?"

"As it happened, sir."

"How did it happen? I am puzzled. Please enlighten me."

Justin began to grin delightedly as he felt the old solicitor beside him moving restlessly in his seat.

"You see I am puzzled, Superintendent," the gentle, insistent voice went on, "by certain factors in this case. I am puzzled about the delayed discovery of that paper in Kelly's coat; the even more delayed finding of the cloth and b.u.t.ton; the casts that were never made of the marks under the window. I must ask you formally if a mistake may not have been made about the guilt of the accused?"

"Impossible, in my opinion," the Superintendent said.

Gilmore smiled at him almost benignly. "You have a very decided opinion, have you not?" he remarked. "Didn't you have a decided opinion about this case from the start?"

"On the evidence as it came in, sir."

"Even before it came in, surely? Didn't you charge these men with this crime in the forenoon of the 7th February, before the Verneys had identified them?"

"Yes."

"Before you'd taken any plaster casts and compared them with the prisoners' footwear?"

"That is so."

"Before Dr Higson found the paper in Kelly's coat?"

"Yes."

"Before Piggott had identified the chisel or you had found the rabbits, buried, as the accused had said, on Bridewell Moor?"

Blair nodded.

"Isn't it a fact, Superintendent, that you charged these men with these crimes solely on the fact that your officers had discovered they were abroad on the night of the crime and might conceivably have done it?"

"There's the other evidence, sir."

"Try to be fair. That came afterwards, didn't it-after you'd arrested and charged them and made up your mind that they were guilty?"

"I'd not made up my mind, sir."

"Hadn't you?" Gilmore said, and Justin saw him turn directly to the jury. "You knew they were poachers, didn't you?"

"I knew them for poachers, sir."

"As a police officer you have a natural animus against the breed?"

"One would scarcely expect a fraternal devotion," remarked the judge to sycophantic laughter, in which, Justin observed, only a few jurymen joined.

"I would expect a proper att.i.tude, neither more nor less, my lord," Gilmore replied, very grim, not smiling at all. "I would expect fair play: not prejudice."

"I wasn't prejudiced," the witness said.

"Try to remember. Didn't Kelly give evidence for the defence in another Police prosecution some weeks ago?"

"I believe he did."

"Didn't you lose that case? The man was acquitted?"

"Yes."

"What were your words to Kelly and Milligan when you charged them on the morning of the 7th?"

"I charged them in the usual terms."

"Didn't you say 'Come here, you d.a.m.ned rascals, and I'll tell you what you're charged with? Is that the usual official charge?"

"I certainly did not," Blair said, above, but only just above, a t.i.tter of laughter much louder than the judge had raised.

"Didn't you strike Milligan in the cells?"

"I may have corrected him for smoking."

"Is that on the deposition?"

"No, sir-I saw no need."

"Only the adverse evidence appears on the depositions, is that it?"

And so it went on. But whenever Justin felt that the witness's authority was weakening he looked at the jury and thought again. For the jury could see all the time, as he could not, the prisoners in the dock behind him. Even at the height of the Superintendent's admissions he had seen their glances straying towards them, as though asking themselves whether two such farouche and desperate looking men could possibly be innocent. Indeed the moment the last of the Crown witnesses was out of the box he began again to ask himself these questions and saw the persuasive nature of Paget's case, which depended not on one man's word but on many, from the saintly Mr Verney to P.C. Moffat hunting diligently for a trou-ser b.u.t.ton in the snow.