The Massingham Affair Part 5

"My lord, he is," Gilmore said. "But he has desired that in this, my last opportunity of addressing your lordship, I should convey to you his own heartfelt feelings."

"Very well."

Gilmore gave a hitch to his gown, a habit which he only gave way to when he was ill at ease. Obviously he had not liked the discouraging tone of the judge's voice, but he went on in his usual bold, straightforward way: "My lord, these accused are not entirely unknown to him. One, Milligan, was once a parishioner of his. My lord, Mr Verney instructs me that he does not believe these men intended to injure him. He thinks the gun was fired either by accident or out of bravado, to frighten him, when they saw him advancing sword in hand. Mr Verney is an elderly man. In the circ.u.mstances of that night he was in the power of these fellows, both much younger and stronger than he. They could have beaten him, killed him with a second shot or by clubbing him. But they did not. He struck out with his sword, and it is his belief still that he wounded or at least touched them, yet no violence was offered him. They sought to escape, not to kill, for neither is a violent man by disposition. There are only minor crimes against them. My lord, Mr Verney is mindful of these things, and because of them he has come to court today to ask for mercy. I ask your lordship for it too."

The judge had listened broodingly, his head slightly on one side, an arm under the scarlet sleeve extended along the bench towards the nosegay of flowers that had been presented at the opening of the a.s.size. As soon as Gilmore had sat down, he had the Clerk call formally upon the prisoners, and then addressed them: "Milligan and Kelly, you have been found guilty after a most patient hearing of one of the gravest offences known to the law, and it is only thanks to Providence that you are not charged with murder."

Now as soon as the judge got to Providence Justin knew that it was all up with the prisoners. He glanced at them, but obviously the words meant nothing to them. Kelly's lips were moving, but both stood at attention, indeed like 'drilled men', in Mr Verney's words.

"I have heard with pain, and at the same time with satisfaction," the judge was saying, "the observations made by learned counsel, communicating to me the desire of Mr Verney, and I am sorry to say that I do not think I ought to act upon that recommendation. The offence is one, as I have said, of the highest and gravest character, and I have sought in vain for any redeeming circ.u.mstance."

"Twelve years," hazarded one of the Police behind Justin in a whisper. It was not Blair, who was sitting nearer the door among the Smedwick contingent.

"The circ.u.mstances were overwhelmingly against you. The verdict was, in my opinion, perfectly correct. Your crime is burglary-breaking into the peaceful abode of a venerable old man and his daughter, with no one, as one of you at all events knew, there to protect them."

"Make it fifteen," the policeman murmured, and indeed Justin was ready to agree with him. Peaceful abode . . . venerable old man . . . unprotected daughter-it only needed Providence to rear its head again. He was filled with awe and almost with admiration at the way the judge had even turned Mr Verney's appeal on behalf of his ex-parishioner into an added argument for severity.

"The offence," the judge continued, "consists of burglary, accompanied by violence, and if ever the law ought to take its course to the extreme, this is the case. Unquestionably, if death had ensued,

47.

as it might, both of your lives would have been forfeited. Miss Ver-ney's life was undoubtedly in great danger, and it is almost a miracle that you are not now being condemned to death. I do not hold out any hope, but if the Crown in the exercise of mercy should think it right to act upon the recommendation of Mr Verney, I think that belongs to the Crown and not to me. In order to deter bad characters who break into peaceful homes, and endanger the lives of persons, and steal their property, I must pa.s.s upon you the severest sentence, and that is penal servitude for life." "Well I'm d.a.m.ned!" the policeman said.

THE QUEST 1899.

One January morning, nearly eight years later, Justin was in his office when Harris, his managing clerk, came in to tell him that there was a 'person' outside to see him. Though a kindly man, Harris was p.r.o.ne to such distinctions, probably in an attempt to teach his employer his station, to instil in him a proper understanding of what was expected of a solicitor. It would have been too much to have expected him to relish so easy-going a princ.i.p.al after a lifetime spent in serving a firm of the old school. As well expect such a man to doubt the sanct.i.ty of contract or the intrinsic beauty of a conveyance. He never ceased to try to improve on nature.

Now that morning Justin was busy. He had come a long way since he had sat at the trial in Belcastle Moot Hall in the last year of his articles. He had his own practice now, with Mr Harris in the lobby in the glory of a frock-coat. He even had an office boy called Pete, or Spinks, or Mr Spinks, depending upon who was present and how they happened to feel about him-which was usually homicidal, for Pete was an idle and somewhat dissolute youth.

The office near the centre of the town, in the cobbled market-place where it narrows towards the Bolbec Gate, was a thing of beauty which solicitor and clerk would contemplate on arrival and departure with the tender care that is only lavished in the early and very last days of tenancy. Is not this Great Babylon that I have builded!' Justin remembered how his younger sister, a girl of lively and astringent mind, would tease him about his feelings for that building and the gold lettering on its windows. It was a second home to him. Inside its doors, in the rather dark ill-shapen room which he had crammed with the oldest deed boxes he could find and cartoons from Vanity Fair of judges fat and judges angular in gorgeous scarlet robes, he would feel borne up with the dizzy sense of making his way in the world. In that room he felt fulfilled and triumphant. And it was there that he met Margaret Binns.

She was a small woman, undoubtedly a person' within Mr Harris's meaning of the Act, about twenty-eight years old, with a peaked little face from which two dark eyes gazed out in an expression half sullen and half terrified. Probably she had never been in a solicitor's office before and was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the thing and by the presence of Harris looming beside her rather in the style of a warder presenting a criminal in the dock.

"Miss Binns," he announced in a sepulchral and disapproving voice.

Justin rose and offered her a chair facing him across the desk, which he had mounted with a rare a.s.sortment of the bulkier legal textbooks. It was a sight calculated to impress, and indeed, flanking him on either side, were bookcases containing even dustier tomes which he had managed to pick up at a knock-down price. Directly behind his head, over the mantelpiece and the fire which Mr Harris's economical soul hated to see lit, was a framed certificate announcing professional competence, in case anyone had any doubt about it. The setting was as nearly perfect a replica of an old-established firm as Justin's savings and Mr Harris's memory of the real thing could make it.

"You want to see me?" he said encouragingly to the girl as soon as they were alone.

He had had a few clients like her before. Sometimes they came into a small-pathetically small-legacy and wanted to know what to do; sometimes their menfolk were in trouble. One had been beaten by her husband and had shown him the bruises with a freedom that scandalised Harris when he came to hear of it. "Really, one cannot be too careful, sir," he had remarked, after making sure that the office boy was out of earshot. Even the hint of a scandal alarmed him. "I have known of a case, sir-not in this town, I am thankful to say-where a professional gentleman was actually threatened with a writl For an impropriety, sir!" Clearly nothing could possibly be more shocking, and from that time on, whenever Justin had clients of the female s.e.x alone with him, he was aware of the watchdog on guard on the other side of the door.

To have had such thoughts of Miss Binns would have required a real effort of imagination. She was such a sad little thing. And so silent. She was so tiny that Justin could only just see her head and scrawny neck above the piles of books that lay between them. It was hard to establish any kind of contact. She wanted to speak, but ob- viously she was having second thoughts. 'Perhaps,' he said to himself, 'she has no money to pay me,' and he tried to broach this to her and suggest it was not a matter she need trouble herself about unduly. But she shook her head.

"Is it some trouble you're in, Miss Binns? Some problem you have? Come now, don't be nervous, don't be afraid of me. Do I look the sort of person to be afraid of?"

She looked at him, weighing him up, and a.s.suredly she must have thought that he did not look that sort of man. There was a mildness about him, though it could be deceptive sometimes, and then he was young, with a smile of great charm and kindliness. Suddenly she made up her mind and said out of the blue: "It's about Mr Milligan and Mick Kelly."

She had a.s.sumed that he remembered them, and of course he did. The furore of that case had never quite died down in Smedwick, kept alive by an occasional paragraph in the local paper reporting the transfer of the prisoners from one gaol to another; and there was an undercurrent of rumour and resentment that still moved below the sluggish waters of official satisfaction. Besides, Justin had never forgotten his own emotions at the trial. His belief in justice had been put to a test it had not fully overcome, and he was never a man to put an idea aside merely because it was uncomfortable and hard to live with. He was puzzled all the same by this sudden reappearance.

"Are you a relative of theirs?" he asked. It was naturally his first thought. Both prisoners had a quiverful of all s.e.xes and sizes.

"No, sir."

"A friend, perhaps?"

"Not particular. I've met them like."

"Is it some message you have from them?"

"It's something about them, sir."

Justin with difficulty restrained his impulse to ask why she had come to him. He saw that if he once stopped her or put obstacles in her way she would dry up completely. So he smiled at her encouragingly and said: "So what's your message? You can tell me, you know."

"They're innocent."

He gave a sigh at that, for something about the girl and her air of nervous excitement had roused his curiosity, and yet here she was, repeating gossip eight years stale. "I know there are people who

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THE Ma.s.sESTGHAM AFFAIR.

think that," he answered as kindly as he could. "The court didn't, and we can't change that, now can we?"

"Why not, sir?"

"My dear child!" he nearly exclaimed, though they were almost of an age. But a certain suggestiveness in her voice intrigued him, and instead of embarking on a set speech about the immovability of established things, he said: "All right. Suppose you tell me how."

"I'm George Sugden's niece."

Immediately he sat up in his chair, every critical faculty alert. He knew that name. Sugden had been one of the first suspects of the burglary at Ma.s.singham.

"Your uncle?" he said, anxious not to frighten her with too much knowledge. "I seem to have heard the name."

"Most people in Smedwick have," she answered surlily. "He's been in the papers, sir."

"Oh?"

"In trouble, as you might say. He poaches, sir."

"Is he in trouble again?"

"He soon will be."

This time there was no mistaking the note of menace in her voice. 'Not exactly a devoted niece,' said Justin to himself. 'Doesn't seem to like uncle much. Now why? And what's it all about? Some family quarrel?'

"Is it on your uncle's behalf you've come?" he said aloud, knowing perfectly well it wasn't. "Is it something he might do that troubles you?"

"Something he's done, sir."

It was a riddle, but he had already begun to guess.

"Some action of his?"

"Yes."

'Some crime?' he wanted very much to add. But at this point his professional rect.i.tude overcame him. It was one thing to encourage the girl to confide in him, but quite another to invite her to make accusations which might lead her and others into trouble. He had no right to ask such questions: he had a duty to listen, that was all.

So for a moment silence fell on the office, behind whose door Harris could be heard announcing his presence and state of watchfulness with sundry coughs and clearings of the throat. Miss Binns looked down at her lap. Justin regarded the wall behind his client's head, on which hung a cartoon of Lord Esher, Master of the Rolls, an inspiring and conscience-encouraging sight. If the silence prolonged itself much longer he felt sure that his clerk would mount some rescue operation and ruin everything, but Lord Esher's gaze, gentle yet restraining, was there as a reminder of the better path. And like most good actions, which are usually wise ones, this silence paid a handsome dividend. Suddenly the client spoke. "You'll remember the night of the crime, sir?"

In Smedwick parlance 'the crime' was the Ma.s.singham burglary and had remained so in spite of the fairly constant efforts of the local criminals. So spirited an attempt to despatch a cleric with a blunderbuss had struck a new note, as crimes must do if they are to be remembered; crime being very like haute couture in this respect. Justin of course knew this and replied at once: "You mean what happened at Ma.s.singham?"

"That I do, sir."

"Yes, I remember it."

"Do you mind that early that morning the Poliss called at where I lived? At Geordie Sugden's place, sir."

"I think I heard of it."

"I mind they called about five o'clock. I lived downstairs with me Grannie-that was Geordie Sugden's mam, sir. And Geordie, he lived upstairs wi' his missus, and still does."

Her voice, once so hesitant, had become quick and light. No need to prompt her now: not even the entry of Mr Harris could have stopped her.

"Well, I heard Poliss go up, sir, and then they come down after a bit, and it got light, and when it got light George Sugden's wife, sir, she come running down and she says to me and me Gran that the Poliss would come back, and when they did we was to say her man had niwer stirred out a step that night."

Justin waited.

"But he had, sir," Miss Binns said; "he'd been out a while. It were about four in the mornin' when I heard him come in."

"Did you tell Mrs Sugden what you knew and what you'd heard?" asked Justin, taking up the thread.

"Yes, sir."

"Did you ask why she made you such a request?"

"I did."

"What did she say to that?"

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THE Ma.s.sINGHAM AFFATB.

"That blood were thicker than water, sir. That her man was in trouble. That she hoped he hadn't murdered anyone."

"Indeed!"

"And then she come down again, sir-it were mornin' then; it'd be nine or more. And she says to me Grannie and me that Geordie and his mate had been out at Mr Verney's seekin' about the room, and the old man had heard 'em and come downstairs and that they'd fired a gun."

"Who was his 'Mate'?"

"Don't know, sir."

Now Justin was a man who usually got his priorities right. He did not enquire why his client, a niece of Sugden's, had come with this story, since he guessed that some family row had blown up. What was required was to take the evidence formally; so while Harris coughed himself almost into a decline in the outer office he set himself to get the client to make her statement in legal shape, with the sequence correct and her signature at the foot of it. In this way, without pressing the witness, he discovered that on the night before the crime Sugden had been wearing a light grey coat, and that this coat had been destroyed by Sugden and his wife in the small hours. There were also hints of other evidence and certain names were given, including that of a roadman called Green who had lived on the same stairhead as Sugden, though he had since moved.

In retrospect and alone, Justin sat down and thought what he should do about his most recent client. He was no longer excited by what he had heard. It seemed to him probable that the evidence he had so laboriously taken down was no more than a tissue of lies born of some grudge or feud, and he had a horror of such things. Furthermore, though he was a man of wide sympathies and something of a rebel at heart, he was no Crusader; having in him a strong leaven of north-country caution, which is in the last a.n.a.lysis a dread of being made to look foolish.

"Do you know George Sugden?" he enquired of his clerk on the way out to luncheon. "I mean his record and so on?"

"I believe he has a record, sir. I have read of it."

"That was his niece you showed out a while ago."

Mr Harris nodded. It was clear that he had invested her with criminal connections from the start. "Is she a client, sir? Shajl I open a file?"

"There's only this statement. You'd better read it yourself and then put it in the safe. I don't want young Spinks to see it."

"Very good, sir."

"And don't be alarmed. I'll probably take no action on it."

He returned an hour later, confident of finding gloom in the outer office and the silence of disapproval. It was Harris's maxim that only long-established firms could afford black sheep among the clients; newcomers must beware of them and discourage all but the 'good-cla.s.s work'. Wasn't Miss Binns pre-eminently the wrong sort? Justin wondered. He feared very much she was. Yet the clerk's face, instead of being reproachful, was bland and welcoming. Either a miracle of character transformation must have taken place or some outstandingly good news had reached the office during the last hour: a client of the right sort, perhaps, with a deed box fit to stand beside those of Sir Miles Curvis, Mr Freeze-Urquhart and Colonel Deverel, whose names in bold white lettering adorned a corner of the office where the light fell best.

"Miss Deveral called, sir. I showed her in," Harris announced in his most unctuous voice.

So that was it. Justin took fright at once, exclaiming: "My G.o.d! Has she been waiting long?"

"Not long, sir. Ten minutes or so. I offered to fetch you, but Miss Deverel said she was quite content to wait."

He gave a sigh of relief, glanced quickly in the mirror to straighten his tie, and went in to his fiancee with what he hoped was the right blend of devotion and professional gravity. "Dearest Georgina . . ."