A Stroke of Bad Luck

by Diane Janes

  The judge leaned forward an inch or two in his chair. ‘Can you explain to us what you mean by that?’

  Dolly appeared momentarily thrown off course by the interruption. ‘Well… we were very frightened of him…’

  Everyone looked expectantly at Mr Justice Humphreys. Did that elaborate the matter sufficiently? But the judge looked down at his notes, then up at the court in general, giving no clue and after waiting a moment, Mr Paley Scott prompted the witness with another of his invitations to explain what had happened next.

  ‘When he had finished cleaning the gun, he put it away, in its usual place in the cupboard. Then he went outside again. He must have gone to his hut, because when he came back in the next time, he was wearing his bedroom slippers. He brought the dog into the kitchen with him. Not our pet dog, but the guard dog, Zara, a great dane. Then, at around eleven thirty he went outside again and soon afterwards we heard the wheels of a car, coming past the kitchen.’

  Mr Paley Scott jumped in again, asking Dolly a series of questions which served to remind her listeners that the drive which led into the property from the lane came straight past the kitchen, so that any vehicles which came down the drive to the garage, had to pass with a few feet of the kitchen door and would therefore be clearly audible to anyone inside.

  ‘You heard only the wheels on the gravel, not the sound of the engine?’

  ‘Just the wheels. We often freewheeled the cars down the drive, with the engines switched off.’

  ‘And after you had heard the wheels of the car, what then?’ the prosecuting counsel asked.

  ‘Brown came back in again and I asked him if what we had heard had been my husband coming in. He said it was, but that my husband had told him that he was going out again. After that we all three sat in the kitchen. Several times, Brown tried to persuade Miss Houseman to go up to bed, but she refused to retire for the night without me. Eventually, at about ten minutes to midnight, we both went up to our respective bedrooms, but I was too afraid of what Brown might do to go to sleep and instead of undressing, I locked myself in the bathroom, which overlooks the yard. After I had been there for about half an hour, I saw Brown, creeping about in the yard. Later on I saw him unlock the kitchen door with his key and then I heard him coming upstairs and creeping about on the landing. After a while, Ann came to me in the bathroom and then we went and sat in her room. From time to time we heard Brown creeping about in the house. We were absolutely terrified.’

  Dolly paused, perhaps to catch her breath, perhaps to allow the import of her words to impress themselves upon the minds of the jurors. After a moment she continued: ‘At around three or half past three in the morning, I heard a bang and a cracking sound and when I went to the window, I saw that the garage was on fire. We ran downstairs to telephone for the police, but the line was dead. Ann ran back up to the nursery for the baby, while I fetched some rugs to wrap ourselves in. After that we ran out of the front door and into the garden, where we hid, under the front hedge. I could hear Brown shouting “Mrs Morton”, but we didn’t answer him.’

  ‘And after you heard him calling out your name, what then?’

  ‘We heard him shouting some more and running about and then we heard the horsebox starting up. At that point we set off for Towton, cutting across the fields the whole way. I could see the lights of the horsebox, as Brown drove it along the main road, towards the village. When Miss Houseman and I reached the village we went straight to Mr Stuart’s house – he is our farm foreman – and from there another of the villagers who has a car drove me back to the farm.’

  ‘And soon after you arrived back at the farm, did you and Mr Stuart search the house together?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And did you notice anything unusual in the house?’

  ‘I noticed that my husband’s supper was still on the dining table and that Brown’s was still on the kitchen table and that both meals were untouched. We also found a coil of rope, lying on the floor of the landing, outside my bedroom door.’ Dolly paused again in her recital. ‘Also the drawing room window was wide open and there was a muddy mark, like a footprint, on the cushion of the window seat.’

  ‘Had Brown also returned to the farm?’

  ‘Yes. He was helping to fight the fire.’

  ‘Did you have any conversation with him?’

  ‘Yes. Initially I told him to play the hose on the loose box, in order to prevent the fire from spreading. Later, I asked him if he had had anything to do with the fire. He said he had not. Then he said, “If you tell anyone anything, I shall hang you with that rope on the landing.”’

  Chapter Four

  Tuesday 12 December 1933

  Leeds Town Hall, The Yorkshire Assizes

  Mr Paley Scott signalled that he had finished his questions by thanking the witness and politely inclining his head. Good grief, Ernest thought, the man might have been acknowledging that she had provided him with a good luncheon or something.

  It was his own counsel’s turn now. Ernest leaned forward in the dock and watched intently as Mr Streatfield took his time, pausing to sip from his water glass, dab his lips with a white napkin, then spend a moment consulting his notes. Unlike Mr Paley Scott, whose tone had been encouraging, almost friendly, when Mr Streatfield eventually addressed Dorothy Morton, it was in the chiding voice of a schoolmaster, attempting to extract a confession from a recalcitrant pupil, when both parties know perfectly well that the scholar in question has been out of bounds.

  ‘Now, Mrs Morton, you have told the court that you were originally a willing participant in this… friendship… with the accused man.’

  ‘That is correct.’ Dorothy held her head erect and met his eye.

  From the rear of the gallery came a hiss which sounded suspiciously akin to ‘brazen hussy’.

  ‘But then something made you change your mind.’ Mr Streatfield cut across the attempted interruption, before the judge even had time to censure the offender, or threaten to have them removed from the proceedings.

  ‘Yes. I came to dislike him intensely.’ Dorothy too, behaved as if she had not heard the lone expression of condemnation.

  ‘I put it to you, Mrs Morton, that what changed your feelings for my client, was the discovery last summer, that he had been unfaithful to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t it the case that you had a number of conversations with Ernest Brown, in which you upbraided him for paying attentions to other women in the district?’

  ‘No, it is not.’ She spoke in the same quiet, firm voice that she had used throughout.

  There must surely have been something to bring about this change of heart on your part.’ Streatfield paused, but when no response was forthcoming, he put a further question: ‘Can you tell the court exactly when it was that you suddenly decided that you did not like Ernest Brown after all?’

  ‘Not the exact time. It was about three years ago.’

  ‘Three years ago? And yet you continued to be intimate with him?’

  ‘He forced me to.’

  ‘For three years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when did the last act of intimacy take place?’

  ‘In June, last year.’

  ‘So for almost three years,’ Streatfield repeated the claim with renewed emphasis, ‘this man – an employee – forced you to engage in these acts which you say you found so distasteful?’

  ‘I was terrified of him.’

  ‘Was there no means of avoiding his attentions? For example by say, locking yourself in the bathroom, as you have told the court that you did in the early hours of 6 September?’

  ‘If I had locked the door against him, it would only have made him worse, in the long run.’

  ‘And you say that your husband knew nothing of all this?’

  ‘No. I was afraid to tell my husband.’


  ‘Were you afraid of your husband too?’

  ‘No. I was afraid of what Brown might do to me if I told my husband.’

  ‘But surely, if you had told your husband, he would immediately have sent this man packing?’

  ‘If my husband had sent him away, or complained to the police, I knew that Brown would eventually come back and harm me.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that Ernest Brown voluntarily left your husband’s employment, in June last year? Why, when you thought him gone, did you not take advantage of his absence, to tell your husband all that he had done to you?’

  ‘I knew that Brown would come back.’

  ‘How could you be so sure?’

  ‘He had threatened me many times.’

  ‘Was that really the reason, Mrs Morton? Was it not the case that you wrote to him, asking him to return?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But when he came back – what, two, three days later – didn’t you help him get his job back?’

  ‘He left on the Tuesday and returned on the Friday. I did not want to take him back on, but he threatened to kill me, if I did not intercede with my husband and get him his job back.’

  ‘You have told the court, I think, that Ernest Brown made some kind of gestures, while you were on the telephone. Can I ask you how he could have done that, when in his own recollection, he was standing in the doorway, holding your baby daughter at the time?’

  ‘He was not holding the baby. She was upstairs, asleep in the nursery at the time.’

  ‘I am sorry to say that I shall have to ask you some more questions of a personal nature, Mrs Morton.’ Mr Streatfield’s voice took on such a note of solemnity, that he might have been giving notice of a bereavement. ‘You and your husband each rather went your own way, did you not?’

  For the first time, Dorothy displayed the very slightest hesitation before answering. ‘We were very happy together, most of the time.’

  ‘But not all the time?’

  ‘I think everyone has some difficult times.’

  ‘Was your late husband fond of female society, Mrs Morton?’

  ‘I really don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Let me put it another way. I think I am right in saying that your husband often came home very late and on some occasions, he did not come home at all?’

  ‘That was only on one occasion.’

  ‘What was only on one occasion?’

  Dorothy Morton’s voice dropped momentarily. ‘When he did not come home at all.’

  ‘But he was often very late…’ After a long pause, Streatfield added, ‘Kindly answer the question, Mrs Morton.’

  ‘I was not aware that it was a question. Yes, he was often away until late.’

  ‘And you too had various other friends?’

  ‘I am very fond of society.’

  ‘I am sure that is so. I am referring, as I am sure you are aware, to male society. Let us again consider the man Ernest Brown and the relations which existed between you. When this intimacy first occurred between yourself and this particular man, did you give him any encouragement?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you say?’ asked the defence counsel, who along with the rest of the assembly had heard the answer perfectly clearly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now come, Mrs Morton. You were the mistress and he was the groom. You ask us to believe that simply by going out riding with you, he came to be on these extremely familiar terms with you, the wife of his employer, without receiving any encouragement whatsoever from you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you ask us to believe that a groom can really get on intimate terms with his mistress, without any encouragement, and that this sad state of affairs can continue, for up to a year with your consent, but without your encouragement.’

  ‘Yes.’

  You had to admire her, Ernest thought. How many women could stand before a packed courtroom and answer questions such as these without betraying so much as a flush of embarrassment? There was none as could say that Dolly Morton lacked spirit, whether it be out on the hunting field, or facing up to a hawk faced fellow in an off-white wig.

  ‘As a matter of fact, you and Brown continued to be on intimate terms up until June last year, did you not?’

  ‘Not with my consent.’

  ‘Are you really saying not only that Ernest Brown succeeded in initiating this relationship without any encouragement whatsoever from you, but also that for the best part of three years, you then submitted to his attentions only because he was threatening you? And that during all this time, your husband never noticed anything which he questioned in your manner, and that you, yourself, never complained to your husband? You never suggested to your husband that he should get rid of this man, who was making such a hell of your life? You never attempted to hash up some sort of accusation, or excuse to get him fired?’

  Was it just a change in the light, or had the faintest flush appeared in Dolly’s perfectly powdered cheeks?

  ‘I should have been very pleased to get rid of him.’

  ‘But you did nothing to bring it about?’

  ‘I do not remember.’

  ‘Were you aware that Brown was paying attention to any other women at any time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are sure about that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Were you paying attentions to any other men?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am sorry, Mrs Morton, but I am afraid we shall have to go into this matter more deeply. Let me be more specific. Were you paying attentions to the man – we will not mention his name – with whom you told the court that you had bathed in the river, on the afternoon of Tuesday 5 September?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This man is married, I think. Was the man’s wife present when you met him to go swimming that afternoon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was anyone else present?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Last summer, were you and another man on the same sort of intimate terms that you had previously enjoyed with Brown?’

  ‘No.’

  Streatfield momentarily half turned to face the jury, his eyebrows raised, before returning his entire attention back to the woman in the witness box. ‘But is it not the case that you were surprised in an embrace with a man, in the nursery at Saxton Grange, last summer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, that is true.’

  ‘And this man with whom you were discovered in the nursery was not your husband, nor the groom, Ernest Brown, nor the man with whom you went bathing in the river.’

  ‘No.

  ‘This man with whom you were engaged in an embrace in the nursery was a different man, was it not? A man who had succeeded Ernest Brown in your affections, during the summer of this year?’

  For a moment Dorothy Morton said nothing, but Mr Streatfield stood before her, waiting in expectant silence, compelling a reply. Eventually she said: ‘I was intimate with this other man, yes.’

  It was the first real concession she had made. The old biddies in the public gallery leant forward as a body, but if they had hoped for any further salacious revelations they were destined to be disappointed. The man who had enjoyed Dorothy Morton’s favours last summer would not be named. Ernest spared a glance in the direction of Mr Justice Humphreys and immediately sensed his disapproval. Dolly Morton might have behaved like a common trollop, but she was a woman from a good local family and with all this talk of socialism and the like, Judge Humphreys and his kind would see no value in her public humiliation. Ernest experienced the strongest sensation that Mr Streatfield had just secured an almighty own goal.

  Fixing Mr Streatfield with a particularly steely glare, Travers Humphreys interposed to announce that the court would adjourn for lunch.

  C
hapter Five

  Tuesday 12 December 1933

  Leeds Town Hall, The Yorkshire Assizes

  Down in the cell below the court, Ernest sat with his usual pair of warders, chewing on a dry ham sandwich. Hopes of a good feed had been falsely raised when one of the warders had mentioned to him the day before, that their lunch each day was being provided by a local hotel, but any thoughts of a nice bit of pork pie and maybe a few pickles on the side, had soon turned to dust. He would have bet a bob or two that the judge would not be munching on yesterday’s bread and a lump of meat which was stringy with fat. Nothing but the best for the nobs, he thought.

  His solicitor Mr Hyams and his barrister Mr Streatfield had both popped in for a few minutes, bringing with them a spirit of cautious optimism and Mr Hyams had said that there was a chance that Charlie might be allowed in to see him for a few minutes. ‘I’ve explained that your brother-in-law wishes to discuss a matter to do with the management of the case,’ the solicitor said. ‘So it’s likely that permission will be given.’

  Charlie arrived just as Ernest was attempting to rinse the last of the stale crumbs from his mouth with a mug of lukewarm tea.

  ‘Well then,’ Charlie said. ‘Tea is it? I bet you can’t wait to get this lot over with and sup down your first pint of ale as a free man, eh, Ernie?’

  ‘You’re not wrong.’

  Ernest had stood up to take his brother-in-law’s outstretched hand, but resumed his seat without making contact at a look from one of his minders. Any form of physical contact with his visitors was prohibited by regulations. Charlie too got the message and retracted the hand before dropping into a vacant chair which faced his wife’s brother across the table that filled most of the room.

  ‘We haven’t but a few minutes so I’ll get straight to the point,’ Charlie said. ’Some of us are a bit surprised that we’re not to be called as witnesses. We’ve all made statements about what went on in June, as you know. Me and Doris, and your Ma and all.’

  ‘I know you have. I appreciate it, I really do.’