A Stroke of Bad Luck

by Diane Janes

  ‘Did you ask him whether he had phoned the fire brigade?’

  ‘I did. He said “our phone’s wrong” or “our phone’s out of order”. Just then I saw Ben Robinson stick his head out of his cottage door, trying to see what all the ruckus was about, so I shouted to him to run over to Mr Hall’s, where they have a telephone, and call out the fire brigade. Then I went downstairs and drove back to the farm with Brown.’

  ‘And did you ask him about Mr Morton?’ prompted Paley Scott.

  ‘Aye. Though not until we’d reached the farm gate. Then I asked him where the boss was and he said he didn’t know. I also asked him where the women folk was to, and he said that he’d heard them shouting and screaming and that they must have fled.’

  ‘Can you tell us something about Ernest Brown’s appearance that night? Did he appear dishevelled perhaps, as if he had thrown on his clothes in a hurry?’

  ‘No. He looked neat and tidy.’

  ‘Not at all like a man who has just got out of bed in a hurry?’

  ‘No. His tie was straight and his hair was combed flat.’

  ‘Thank you. And can you describe what you saw when you reached Saxton Grange?’

  ‘It was a big blaze. We couldn’t get near, the heat was so intense. The roofs of both the garage and the barn had fallen in, but I thought I could see the outline of a car in the garage and I said, “I’m afraid that Mr Morton is in there.”’

  ‘And what did Brown reply?’

  ‘He said, “By God, if he is, then nobody will ever see him again.”’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘Well there wasn’t much as we could do, just the two of us alone, so we went back to the village, to fetch Constable Broadhead. On the way back I asked Brown when he’d last seen Mr Morton, and he said that he’d last seen him at about eleven thirty, when the boss had driven himself home.’ Stuart hesitated, but on receiving a nod of encouragement from counsel he went on: ‘He said that he’d met Mr Morton on the drive and told him about a heifer what he’d brought back from Greetland, and then he’d asked if he should put the car away, but Mr Morton had said not, as he might be going out again. I asked if the boss had gone back out, but Brown told me that he’d gone straight to bed after that, so he didn’t know whether Mr Morton had gone out again or not.’

  ‘Did he say anything else about Mr Morton?’

  ‘Yes. He said that when he’d seen him at half past eleven, he was “clever side out”.’

  From his elevated position on the bench, Travers Humphreys sounded an irritable note. ‘What side? What was he talking about?’

  Stuart paused, confounded, looking first at the judge, and then at Mr Paley Scott.

  The prosecution counsel adopted his most helpful tone. ‘The witness said he was “clever side out”, my lord. I believe it is an expression intended to suggest that Mr Morton had been drinking and was perhaps, the worse for drink.’

  ‘I see.’ The judge gave a disapproving sniff.

  The upper classes were always snooty about drink, Ernest thought. Or rather they were always snooty about it where others were concerned. Didn’t mind getting plastered themselves of course, but woe betide anyone born without a silver spoon in his gob who had over-indulged. He could clearly recall the face of the magistrate who had once pontificated on the subject when fining him for being drunk and disorderly, the fellow’s scarlet and purple nose proclaiming him to all the world for an imbiber and a hypocrite.

  When it was Mr Streatfield’s turn to put questions, he strode purposefully toward the witness box, clearly intending business. ‘Now then, Mr Stuart. I believe you sometimes accompanied Mr Morton on his trips to the cattle markets, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Aye, it is.’

  ‘When it came to buying stock, did Mr Morton ever take your advice on anything?’

  ‘I can’t say that he did. Mr Morton liked to make his own decisions.’

  ‘Did you always agree with his decisions?’

  ‘It wasn’t for me to say.’

  ‘I am asking whether you agreed with everything he did – in the line of his business?’

  Stuart hesitated. His voice dropped a little as he said: ‘No. Not everything.’

  ‘And presumably if you did not always see wisdom in every decision made by Mr Morton, you would think it reasonable for other employees to hold similar opinions?’

  Stuart opened his mouth then closed it again. Ernest noted that his hands rested a little more heavily on the polished front of the witness box.

  ‘Isn’t it the case, Mr Stuart that a group of you from the farm once got into a discussion, while you were drinking in the Crooked Billet public house, during which you said that you were Mr Morton’s longest serving employee?’

  ‘I may have done.’ The farm bailiff’s responses had become extremely cautious again.

  ‘Come now, Mr Stuart. Didn’t you say that you had worked longer at Saxton Grange than anyone else and didn’t Mr Morton correct you and say, “No, Ernest has worked for me the longest”?’

  ‘I think it happened as you say.’

  ‘Quite so. Now isn’t it the case that Ernest Brown sometimes travelled on these trips to cattle markets with Mr Morton?’

  ‘Aye, sometimes he did.’

  ‘Was Mr Morton friendly with Ernest Brown? Fond of him, even?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’ The farm bailiff’s customary flush had deepened.

  ‘Did you ever hear Mr Morton complain regarding Ernest Brown?’

  ‘I can’t remember anything.’

  ‘And he generally addressed him by his Christian name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now as for these remarks which you say that you heard Ernest Brown make about Mr Morton, was that comment about clouting the little bugger the strongest thing he ever said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And surely,’ Mr Streatfield’s voice was smooth as silk. ‘You didn’t take that as a serious threat?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the witness firmly. ‘I did.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stuart was so emphatic that his voice rose almost to a shout.

  ‘Have you never heard people – particularly after they have had a drink or two – saying, “I will swipe him one” or “I will clout him”?’

  ‘Not in that manner, no.’

  ‘Have you never made similar remarks yourself, when someone has annoyed you in some way, not meaning them in the least.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Stuart. Isn’t there a particular man from a neighbouring farm, of whom you would sometimes say, “I’ll have him one of these days?”’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘So you have made threats yourself about people without meaning them?’

  ‘No,’ Stuart said stubbornly. ‘Not like that.’

  ‘You are telling the court that you never lose your temper and you never make rash, or hasty remarks, not even after a few drinks?’

  ‘No.’ The farm bailiff’s stiff Sunday collar appeared to be pinching ever tighter, reddening his neck.

  ‘Now, you have already told us that you did not always agree with the decisions made by Mr Morton.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Stuart spoke reluctantly, perhaps sensing another trap.

  ‘Would it surprise you that Ernest Brown did not always agree with these decisions either?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Now I suggest to you that you may have misheard, or misunderstood that comment of Brown’s, to the effect that you would all be out of work in a couple of months?’

  ‘I understood it perfectly.’

  ‘I put it to you that what Brown actually said was that Mr Frederick Morton could wreck the business and put you all out of work in a couple of months.’

  Stuart shook his hea
d. ‘I didn’t misunderstand.’

  Bastard. Ernest silently framed the word in his mind. He wondered whether Mr Streatfield would do anything to remind the court that Murray Stuart still worked at Saxton Grange and therefore owed his living to Dorothy Morton, but the barrister had moved on again.

  ‘When you and Brown stood at the farm gates, looking down on the burning buildings, it was you, was it not, who first suggested that Mr Morton might be inside the blazing car?’

  ‘Yes.’ ‘Why did you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Now you mentioned in your evidence that Brown appeared to be fully dressed? That his hair was neat, and so on, and that from this, you concluded that he had not been to bed.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘When you were first awakened and looked out of your window, to find Ernest Brown out in the village street, it was dark, was it not?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stuart sounded hesitant, as if uncertain where this might be leading.

  ‘And having learned from Brown that the farm was on fire, you pulled your head back inside, threw on some clothes and went down to join him, where he was waiting for you in the horsebox – is that not so?’

  ‘Aye. Yes. That’s correct.’

  ‘Would it be fair to say, that during the few minutes when you were putting on your own clothes, Brown, while waiting in the horse box, would have had ample opportunity to tidy up his appearance, straighten his clothing and run his fingers through his hair?’

  The farm bailiff glanced across first at the prosecuting counsel, and then up at the judge himself, before admitting in a voice of plain reluctance, ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  Chapter Nine

  Wednesday 13 December 1933

  Leeds Town Hall, The Yorkshire Assizes

  The next group of witnesses were the ones which Mr Streatfield had referred to as ‘the experts’, during one of those periods when he had come to talk with Ernest, while he was locked in the cells beneath the courtroom, waiting for the proceedings to begin. In times gone by, Ernest had always marvelled at the Leeds Town Hall, its palatial structure, the impressive clock tower which dwarfed everything else around it, but once inside the building, the court room itself had been smaller than he had expected, not full of columns and carvings and grandeur, but mere plain wood and plaster, which while not unpleasing on the eye, somehow failed to live up to the expectations which had been generated by the impressive façade. As for the rabbit warren of basement cells, they were just small and mean. In many ways it was like Armley jail, he thought, all got up to look like some sort of royal castle, but singularly lacking in accommodation that was fit for a king. There was no doubting the truth of his father’s old adage: You can’t judge a book by its cover.

  The first of these expert witnesses was a man named Robert Churchill, who hardly needed any prompting from Mr Paley Scott, in his enthusiasm to describe the workings of the shotgun, which had been brought from the farm and now lay upon the table, alongside all the other exhibits. Between them, Mr Paley Scot and Mr Churchill wasted no time in setting out a scenario in which Ernest Brown could have taken the shotgun from the cupboard, fired one cartridge into Freddie Morton and the other in the yard, then cleaned the gun and replaced it in the cupboard; but once Mr Streatfield got to work, he soon had Mr Churchill admitting that although the shot found in Freddie Morton’s body could have come from one of the Grand Prix cartridges which were kept in the kitchen cupboard, and might have been fired from the self-same gun which had been brought into court, it was impossible to say that this had definitely been the ammunition used, or even that the weapon from the kitchen cupboard had been the gun which fired it.

  After Robert Churchill came Professor Frederick Tryhorn, of Hull University, who had come along to tell the court about some experiments he had made with the Saxton Grange telephone wires. According to the professor, when you looked at the cutting edge of the white handled knife with the naked eye, it appeared to be a single smooth blade, but when you put that same blade under a microscope, it was possible to make out a series of serrations, like those on a saw. These, the professor explained, would leave a series of distinctive scratch marks on the cut ends of the metal telephone wire, and these marks could also be seen and indeed photographed by using a microscope. It was, he said, like a fingerprint. He had been given the two different knives which the police had recovered from Saxton Grange, and he had experimented with each of them, cutting through pieces of telephone wire which were identical in every respect to the wire which had been cut outside the drawing room window.

  ‘Can you identify these knives for us, please Professor?’

  Ernest had noticed the way Mr Paley Scott liked to keep drawing everyone’s attention to the things on the table, as if their very being there, somehow proved something against the man in the dock.

  ‘They are the two knives on the table.’ Professor Tryhorn indicated with a pointing finger.

  ‘One is the white handled knife, which the police discovered in a wheelbarrow in the farm yard on the morning after the fire and the other is the black handled knife which they recovered from a kitchen drawer,’ prompted Mr Paley Scott.

  ‘That is correct. I used each knife to cut the sample telephone wire in different places, then took photographs of the cut ends, which I then compared, under my microscope, with the damaged telephone wires from Saxton Grange. The pattern of cuts made with the black handled knife was quite different to those on the severed ends of the telephone wire recovered from Saxton Grange, but the cuts made with the white handled knife were a perfect match.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ernest could see that the jury looked suitably impressed, one or two of them nodding thoughtfully, as they passed around the album of photographs which had been prepared by the professor to demonstrate his point.

  When Mr Streatfield got to his feet, he began with deceptive kindness. Would the professor care to tell the court how many other criminal trials in England had so far benefitted from his expertise in this particular matter?

  Professor Tryhorn conceded that there had been no others so far, but hastened to add that he had previously performed numerous private experiments, involving this same technique.

  ‘But none of these experiments have ever been accepted in a British court of law – when presented by you, or indeed by anyone else?’

  ‘Not in this country, no.’ The witness hesitated again, before adding. ‘But I believe it has been done before in other countries.’

  ‘Other countries.’ Counsel for the defence managed to invest the words with the kind of contempt with which any decent Englishman would regard the customs of a head shrinking tribe in some distant jurisdiction, un-trod by civilised man. ‘And these photographs, professor, forgive me, but it is actually rather difficult to make out these matches between one pattern of cuts and another. The photographs are not particularly clear, are they?’

  ‘Well, you see, if you will let me explain what they show…’

  ‘They are, are they not, photographs of photographs, rather than the actual, original photographs?’

  ‘The originals were much clearer.’

  ‘Why then did you not bring these originals with you for the jury to look at?’

  ‘I endeavoured to use the images which best illustrated the similarity.’

  ‘I am looking at the images numbered four and five and it appears that in one case you have bent the original photograph before re-taking it, in order to make the pattern fit, rather than presenting the original image to the court.’

  Ernest could see out of the corner of his eye that the jurymen’s expressions of acceptance had been replaced by doubt, and that some of them were now gazing at the photographs with open puzzlement. It was like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, he thought. Mr Paley Scott had encouraged them all to go along with the professor, talking as if any intelligen
t fellow would be able to see at once, the way those scratches all matched up, whereas Mr Streatfield had given them permission to doubt the man of science – to subject the pictures to proper scrutiny and decide whether or not the fuzzy images proved anything at all.

  ‘Some sections of the original photographs have been cut out, have they not?’ Streatfield continued to challenge the witness. ‘And if you had not bent the original photograph, the two sets of marks would not have matched up, would they?’

  ‘It is true that I displaced one portion of the image,’ Tryhorn blustered. ‘But you see, I had to allow for the knife bending away, as it cut through the wire. The marks made by the black handled knife were quite different.’

  ‘I do not dispute it. But the fact that the black handled knife does not leave the same marks as the white handled knife, is hardly the same as being able to say that the white handled knife is the only knife in the universe which could have made those marks – marks which are supposedly much clearer in the photographs which unfortunately you have not brought along for the jury to see today – is it?’

  The professor glanced sideways and licked his lips. Like Ernest, he could see the expressions on the faces of the jury. They had closed the book of photographs now and were all awaiting his answer.

  ‘Let us make this as simple as possible,’ Mr Streatfield hooked his thumbs into the sides of his gown. ‘Are you prepared to rule out the possibility that there is some other knife, somewhere in the world, perhaps even within this county, capable of making those same marks when it cuts through a telephone wire?’

  ‘Well it is a question of probabilities…’

  ‘Is it possible that there is another knife in existence which could make those marks on the wire? Yes or no?’

  ‘I cannot rule it out completely, no.’

  And that’s sent him off with his tail between his legs, Ernest thought.