A Stroke of Bad Luck

by Diane Janes

  For some reason a vision of Mary slipped into his mind. He had not always been kind enough to Mary. Probably they should never have married – her still grieving for the husband she’d lost in the war, and him still hankering for the single life. He had been too young and she had been too sad, but there had been a baby on the way, so he had done the right thing. One bairn after another, but none of them had lived very long, saving for little Ethel, and though she had done her married duty, he often suspected that once she had Ethel, Mary had not really wanted him anymore, and so he had looked for companionship elsewhere, particularly after he went to work for young Fred Morton and began to live-in during the summer months, only going home occasionally – more to see Ethel than Mary – and once young Fred inherited the farm at Saxton Grange, the distance had been greater and his trips back to Huddersfield had become rarer still. Mary had taken badly in the winter of 1932 and died at Christmastime. It had been a shock, but these things happened, and as a working man could not take care of a child on his own, Ethel had gone to live with his mother, and his own life had gone on much as before.

  There though… no sense dwelling on the past. What’s done is done.

  He was surprised to see that Dolly herself was not in the public gallery, but then he saw that she had been ushered into a place behind the table where the prosecution team was working. Her father, Harry Middlehurst, was sitting alongside her, glaring across at the dock, as if he would like to strangle Ernest with his bare hands. Dolly on the other hand was not looking his way at all. She was sitting upright and still, paying close attention to the proceedings, behaving in fact, as if she did not know that he was there at all. It was her ladylike, interested face, he thought. The one she would use in church and when dull company arrived, asking her to support a charitable concern, or inviting her to join in with some proposed social activity, against which she would ultimately make some excuse for non-attendance. He knew that face. He had seen her employing it plenty of times before.

  He pulled his attention abruptly back to the present, for his moment was at hand. He took his cue and rose to his feet.

  ‘Ernest Brown, you stand accused of the murder of Frederick Ellison Morton. How do you plead?’

  He straightened his back and squared his shoulders. He might have deserted from the army, but he had not forgotten the way they taught a man how to stand. His words emerged with confidence and conviction: ‘Not guilty, your lordship.’

  Once he had resumed his seat between the two warders, it was the prosecuting barrister, Mr Paley Scott’s turn in the spotlight. Ernest listened intently as he addressed the jury on behalf of the Crown. He had a way of speaking to them, Ernest noticed, which made it seem as if he had forgotten all about the people seated in the public gallery, the other gowns and wigs at the tables behind him, the scribbling shorthand writer, the man in the dock and even the judge himself: it was as if he was talking just to them, the most important people in the room.

  His own counsel, Mr Streatfield, had warned him not to stare at the jury. ‘Don’t do anything at all which might make them feel as if you are sizing them up. Juries don’t like that. They feel intimidated. You don’t want them to think that you are in any way a dangerous man.’

  So Ernest had barely glanced at the twelve men who would decide his fate. ‘You have to trust them to make the right decision,’ his solicitor, Mr Hyams, had said. ‘Twelve good men and true. And Yorkshiremen too.’ Ernest had once read that a man was entitled to be tried by a jury of his peers – which meant his equals – but of course he knew that was never going to happen, because jurymen were drawn from the list of local ratepayers, and ordinary working men, who lived in a tied cottage, or a rented tenement, or who lodged at the premises of their employers, as he had done until recently, would never appear on such a list.

  Mr Paley Scott was a yarn spinner all right. He reminded Ernest of a man he had once known who frequented the Dog and Gun in Huddersfield. That chap had been a local man, so of course he hadn’t actually sounded like Mr Paley Scott, but like the barrister, he could certainly tell the tale, always promising people that this or that horse was a sure thing. And not only horses. Candidates in the local elections, forthcoming football fixtures, why to listen to this chap you would think that he had the inside track on anything you should care to mention. It was never just his opinion, you understand. He’d always got the information from such and such a body, which proved without a shadow of a doubt that what he was about to tell you was correct. Ernest had been inclined to turn his back on the man in the pub at the first opportunity – Old Rattlebox, as he’d thought of him – but he paid the closest possible attention to every word from Mr Paley Scott. One of the problems they had faced all along, according to Mr Hyams, was not knowing precisely what the prosecution was going to say. Well now they would find out.

  Mr Paley Scott began by telling the jury that ‘the trouble’ had begun when he, Ernest, had first been employed by Mr Frederick Morton Jnr., back in the summer of 1929. Of course, he did not say Ernest, or Ernie, or even Mr Brown. Just Brown, plain and simple, as befitted a man employed by Mr Morton, as a groom. Mr and Mrs Morton had kept quite a number of horses, Mr Paley Scott told the jury, and Brown had been responsible for looking after them, because Mr Morton had been very much occupied with running his substantial cattle factoring business (an enterprise concerned with the selling and leasing of cattle to the farming community, the prosecuting counsel explained, for the benefit of a jury largely drawn from townsfolk). In addition to taking care of the horses, Brown’s duties had also included riding out with Mrs Dorothy Morton, in order to exercise the hunters. After this arrangement had been ongoing for some time, ‘a state of physical intimacy’ had developed between them, Mr Paley Scott said, to which Mrs Morton had initially been a willing party.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ernest could see the journalists, on their benches, scribbling frantically. Groom and mistress had an affair. That was the kind of headline which would sell an extra paper or two, though it might not be put in precisely those terms, because public delicacy must not be offended, for all that most of the public would secretly want to know all about it. So not those exact words perhaps. He himself had never been much of a man for words. He had never wanted to be.

  ‘The affair went on for almost a year,’ Mr Paley Scott continued, his tone carefully neutral, ‘but Mrs Morton finally decided that it must stop.’

  ‘Whatever is said, try not to show any emotion,’ Mr Hyams had advised him. ‘Even if you completely disagree, or feel that something has been said which is unfair or untrue.’

  ‘The man Brown refused to accept that their affair was over. He threatened Mrs Morton that if she discontinued their relationship, he would tell her husband. Imagine this poor woman’s dilemma. Mrs Morton now found herself completely at the mercy of this man, who had it in his power to destroy her marriage and ruin her good name. When she attempted to resist his advances, the man Brown offered her violence, sometimes punching and kicking her. Mrs Morton dared not let her husband see the results of these attacks upon her person. Instead she continued to conceal the truth from her husband, Frederick Morton, and continued to submit to those acts which she now found so odious.

  ‘Mrs Morton will appear before you, gentlemen of the jury and testify about this terrible ordeal. She will tell you how, as time went on, she became increasingly afraid of the man Brown, but of course, she still dared not tell her husband and so Brown grew ever more confident of his hold over her. Then in June, earlier this year, Brown abruptly left the Morton household, following an argument about his duties. Mrs Morton was of course, greatly relieved by Brown’s departure, but alas this respite from his unwelcome attentions was short-lived, because within a matter of three days Brown had returned, demanding that she get him reinstated and threatening her with violence, should she fail to do so. His position as groom had already been filled, so the best Mrs Morton could do was to p
ersuade her husband to take Brown on as a general handyman – a role which was not so much to his liking as his previous work had been. The Crown will bring witnesses who will testify to Brown’s increasing animosity and resentment towards Mr Frederick Morton from that time onward; and in the meantime of course, the unfortunate Mrs Morton was reluctantly forced to resume her previous relationship with Brown.’

  Mr Paley Scott paused theatrically allowing the full import of his words to settle in the minds of the observers in the public gallery, on the journalists (who were already deciding which euphemisms they would be forced to employ, in order to titillate, without offending, their loyal readers) and most of all upon the jury. Ernest resisted the temptation to glance over his shoulder at the public gallery, but he could imagine the way the various members of the Morton and Middlehurst families were all staring straight ahead, doing their best to retain composure, in the face of poor Dolly’s disgrace. A few indiscretions with your own kind was one thing, but being caught out with a man of the servant class was quite another.

  Instead Ernest fixed his eyes on the coat of arms above the judge’s head, the golden lion and unicorn standing out as if their gilding had been freshly applied. In spite of trying to apply his full concentration elsewhere, Ernest was aware that some of the jurors were weighing him up, considering his good physique, his obvious strength, the large, work hardened hands, which could be employed to calm a horse, caress a mistress, or slap a woman around, as their owner chose.

  Having allowed a moment or two for his words to sink in, Mr Paley Scott resumed. ‘The Crown will show that on Tuesday 5 September this year, Brown’s disenchantment with his position and his continuing obsession with Mrs Morton combined to fatal effect. That evening, having threatened and assaulted Mrs Morton, he lay in wait for Mr Morton to return home, terrorising Mrs Morton and her resident companion, Miss Ann Houseman, and cutting the telephone wires to prevent them from summoning help. When Mr Morton returned home that night, Brown shot him dead at close range, and later attempted to conceal this dreadful crime, by placing Mr Morton’s body in his car, then setting alight the garage in which it stood.

  ‘This fire was initially represented as a terrible accident, with Brown himself playing the role of hero – rescuing his late employer’s animals and alerting the local fire brigade – but gentlemen of the jury, fate can sometimes play a hand in the annals of justice. Though that fire was fuelled by petrol, and a whole variety of other combustibles, though the heat from it was so terrible, that the building itself, and the two motor cars within it were completely destroyed, together with almost every remnant of the unfortunate Frederick Morton’s body, a very small part of the victim’s torso had survived the blaze. The physician called upon to examine this charred fragment, the last mortal remains of Mr Frederick Morton, was Dr Sutherland, and he will appear before you and testify to finding a piece of wadding and a number of shotgun pellets, lodged near the victim’s heart. It seems little short of Divine Providence, that this one surviving section of the body, should be the part which would betray the truth of Mr Frederick Morton’s fate.

  ‘The Crown will demonstrate not only that Mr Morton died at another man’s hand, but also that the guilty party was the man who stands charged before you, Ernest Brown.’

  Divine Providence, Mr Paley Scott had called it. Ernest considered the phrase, while the final echoes of the prosecuting barrister’s oration rang around the court. He had not heard it called that before. He distinctly recalled that someone in the press had written a piece which said that from the point of view of the murderer, the fluky survival of that particular part of the body was a stroke of bad luck.

  Though he was careful not to turn and stare, Ernest had been able to glance over his shoulder a couple more times during the opening speeches, and noted that once the various close family members had been accommodated, the remaining seats in the gallery had been occupied by other members of the public: older women mostly (younger women would be at home, minding their children, and men of course, had to be at work). He was astonished to see that some of these old women had even come equipped with knitting, or were covertly fishing into paper bags for boiled sweets. The warders who accompanied him to court had told him that some of them would have been queuing up outside for hours, in order to get a place. Ernest had never thought of a courtroom as a place of entertainment before.

  During this first morning, the old biddies, as Ernest thought of them, had given their fullest attention to the commencement of the proceedings, and particularly to the swearing in of the jury and the all-important moment when he had been confronted with the charge and had registered his firm ‘Not guilty.’ There had been a palpable frisson of excitement in the room, when Mr Paley Scott had spoken of an affair between himself and Dorothy Morton, and he could almost feel the disapproving stares in his direction, when the prosecution counsel had talked of the violence he was accused of inflicting upon Dolly. Ernest, though well aware of the waves of hostility which were sweeping across the room towards him, had continued to listen intently to Mr Paley Scott, showing no emotion.

  No doubt the old biddies were all eagerly anticipating some more salacious revelations, because there was a distinct sense of anti-climax in the gallery, when the first prosecution witness turned out to be a draftsman, who had produced plans of the farm and the outbuildings which surrounded it, for the use of the court. The judge spent an age poring over the drawings, asking all manner of daft questions about the position of doors and windows, and grilling the fellow in the witness box as though he himself were the one on trial.

  ‘There are some gates shown here, are they in the right place?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Do you know which way they open?’

  ‘They open outwards.’

  ‘Is that indicated on the plan?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Ernest could see that the draughtsman was being patient and respectful, though he must have been thinking that the old fool could surely see for himself what had been plainly drawn on the plans. He sympathised with the fellow in the witness box. The likes of us are forever having to keep our voices polite and our faces straight, he thought, while silly old buggers who think themselves our betters, ask damn fool questions.

  When His Honour Travers Humphreys had finished deliberating over the farm house, the garages, the stables, sheds and barns, he turned his attention to the part of the drawing which showed the small hut to the east of the house and the main yard, where Ernest himself had slept. How many windows were there? Did they open? Were the windows particularly dirty?

  ‘They were neither particularly dirty, nor particularly clean, my lord.’

  Daft old sod. What on earth had the windows in his hut got to do with the price of fish, Ernest wondered?

  When the plans had finally been accepted into the evidence, it was the turn of the police photographer to take the stand. He had provided an album of pictures taken both at the scene and at the mortuary, which also had to be sworn into evidence. There was a flutter of interest among the old biddies when Mr Paley Scott, full of affected concern, commented that ‘Some of the photographs are of a distressing nature, my lord, and it may be possible to spare the jury from seeing them.’

  The judge spent a long time peering at the pictures himself, while everyone else covertly and vainly craned their necks in an unsuccessful bid to see what he was looking at, and eventually, after a brief discussion between himself and the senior barristers appearing for either side, the judge announced that it had been agreed to withhold the photographs which had been numbered nine and ten from the jury. From his position in the dock, Ernest fancied that he could sense disappointment from the old biddies. (Not that they would ever have been close enough to see the photographs for themselves, even if they had been put forward in the evidence.) They were the sort of women who would tut at his own conduct, Ernest thought, but were not ashamed to s
it in a public court room, in the hopes of wallowing in every sordid detail of another woman’s affair and another man’s death. He spared them the briefest of glances again, while he pretended to be flexing his neck. All got up in their best hats and coats, as if for an outing. You wouldn’t have caught his own Ma attending this sort of carry-on unless she had to.

  He guessed that it was the appearances of himself and Dolly Morton in the witness box, that the old biddies had really come for, but they still had a while to wait for that. First there was a procession of policemen, swearing that the various bits and pieces brought from Saxton Grange were one and the same with the things that were now being produced in court. Ernest had once been to see a music hall act, where a fellow got up in a red lined cloak and a silk top hat had produced a lot of unlikely looking stuff, one item after another, from out of a little box which looked far too small to have contained any of it, and he thought that this motley collection of objects, each of them placed in turn on a table midway between the judge’s platform and the enclosure where he sat himself, each of them labelled with a letter, so that they could be called ‘Exhibit A’ and ‘Exhibit B’, reminded him of the fellow’s act in a funny sort of way, except that here everyone sat rapt in silence, whereas at the music hall there had been raucous shouts: ‘Yon sword’s made of rubber’ and ‘There’s an hole in the bottom of your box, mate!’

  It was a funny collection of stuff, when you got right down to it. The photograph album, all new and pristine, a couple of kitchen knives, a length of old rope, a shotgun and a box of cartridges, a pair of badly burned pliers, found amid the wreckage of the fire, which had supposedly been used to loosen the plates on the bottom of the cars’ petrol tanks. A neat little pile of his own folded clothes and perhaps most incongruous of all, a pair of work boots, standing neatly at the end of the line. A right old jumble sale gone wrong, in fact.