A Stroke of Bad Luck

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A Stroke of Bad Luck Page 13

by Diane Janes


  ‘Again, all three of the witnesses who were at the farm that night have told you that by half past eleven that night, Ernest Brown had cleaned the only gun on the premises, and replaced it in the kitchen cupboard, where it was found the next morning. It therefore stands to reason that if Frederick Morton was shot shortly after arriving home, Ernest Brown cannot possibly have been the guilty party, since the only weapon available to him was shut in a cupboard, in full view of two witnesses who did not see him take it out.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that the prosecution have not provided a shred of evidence which shows that it was Ernest Brown who fired the fatal shot that night. Irrespective of whether Mr Morton left the premises again, as he had suggested that he would to Ernest Brown, or whether he remained in the garage, perhaps sleeping in his car, as he had done on more than one occasion in the past, it would appear far more likely that some other person, possibly someone who had brought along their own gun for the purpose, was responsible for the shot which killed him.

  ‘Dr Sutherland has told you that any person who shot Frederick Morton at close range would be very likely to have blood on his clothes, yet my client, who had no opportunity to change his clothes at any point that evening, and who was still wearing those exact same clothes the following day, right up until his arrest, had no blood on him, save for a tiny amount which as his lordship has rightly pointed out, could have got on there at any time, in the ordinary course of his working life.’

  Mr Streatfield retreated momentarily, for a sip of water from the ever ready glass on his table, before continuing. The jury must ask themselves, he said, whether it was really likely that Mrs Morton could determine, by the light of the single oil lamp which was burning in the kitchen that night, the colour of the handle of a knife, taken from a drawer in a dresser which stood on the opposite side of the room to where she was sitting.

  ‘Why would she even have taken any notice of such a detail? You have heard from Ernest Brown that he had frequently used the black handled knife, which you see here in court, ever since mislaying his own pocket knife, several weeks before. It was a routine thing. He has told you that the horse, whose head collar he needed to replace, had often broken free before – another routine matter – an occurrence so ordinary, that he did not even think it worth mentioning, when the three occupants of the kitchen were chatting, later that evening.

  ‘I wish to particularly draw your attention to this period during which the three witnesses sat talking together, in the kitchen. Gentlemen, does this sound to you like a situation in which one man has recently shot another? Having finished his chores for the night, Ernest Brown sits in the kitchen, chatting about the everyday business of the farm, just as he does every other night, while his mistress does her sewing, and the young woman employed as a mother’s companion, boils up a pan of jam. Mrs Morton and her companion would have you believe that they were terrified of Ernest Brown and of what he might do to them, but when asked to provide examples of this so-called terrifying behaviour, they can only tell the court that Ernest Brown merely sat and talked to them, in a perfectly normal, ordinary way.’

  Ernest stole a look at the jury to see how they were taking all this and noticed that the thin faced chap, who always sat at the end of the bench nearest to the dock was surreptitiously picking something out of his teeth. Was that a good sign or not? Perhaps he had already made up his mind in Ernest’s favour, but all the same, Ernest wished that the fellow would sit up straight and give his full attention to what Mr Streatfield was saying.

  ‘Earlier on that evening, Brown asks his mistress’s help in shutting up some ducks for the night, and she declines to give it. Does he immediately lose his temper, this man who is supposedly so “mad”, so “wild”? Does he start to threaten and bluster? Not at all. He accepts her excuse and goes outside to do the job himself. When he returns the shotgun to the kitchen, does he threaten the women with it? He does not. Indeed when Miss Houseman asks him to hand her the gun, he is perfectly willing to do so. In what way does any of this constitute threatening – nay terrifying – behaviour?

  ‘This is a man who has spent his entire evening going about his chores, seeing to the stock, stoking the boiler, replacing a horse’s harness when it was needed. For Ernest Brown, this has been just another ordinary night on the farm. If something was troubling Mrs Morton, then he was unaware of it.’

  Mr Streatfield paused, as if allowing the jury to consider the point. He took another sip from his water. From somewhere in the public gallery, came a fait, rasping squeak, of boot leather scraping against boot leather, as someone fidgeted their cramped legs and feet.

  ‘Consider the reaction of Ernest Brown, on realising that the garage was ablaze. His first thought was for the animals. At not inconsiderable risk to himself, he entered the buildings nearest to the inferno, and made certain that every last horse and cow was saved. This, gentlemen, is surely the act of a loyal servant, a true countryman, not that of a maniac, intent on murdering his employer and destroying his farm. With the animals safe, he attempted to telephone for assistance, and when that failed, he drove into the nearest village, sounding the horn in order to get help as quickly as possible. In the meantime, for reasons best known to themselves, his employer’s wife and her companion had fled the premises.

  ‘Gentlemen, Ernest Brown’s fate rests with you today. It has been suggested that he is a jealous man, that he is a violent man, who forced Mrs Morton to become intimate with him, and forced her to continue in this state of intimacy – against her will – for a period of several years. Saxton Grange was a busy place, employing numerous people, and visited by many more, yet the prosecution has not produced one single witness willing to testify to this strange – one might say, this incredible – state of affairs which allegedly existed between Ernest Brown and the wife of his master. Mrs Morton’s supposed great and longstanding fear of Ernest Brown, rests upon her testimony alone. Even if it were the case that Ernest Brown was jealous of the attentions being paid to Mrs Morton by several other men, what possible reason did this give him for shooting her husband that night? Apart from a couple of remarks, made in jest, there is no evidence at all, of any animosity between Ernest Brown and his employer. On the contrary, they were on unusually friendly terms, with the man Brown being accustomed to address his employer by his Christian name. They had known one another for a very long time and there was no animosity between them.

  ‘I put it to you that there is not a shred of evidence that this man in the dock before you, shot his late employer. Gentlemen, there is no lack of suspects in this case. Jealous lovers, and disgruntled customers alike. Anyone might have arrived at some point that evening, lain in wait until the time was ripe, committed the deed, set fire to the buildings and then made good his escape, perhaps by means of a motor car parked a couple of fields away, or even just a quarter mile or so down the lane. My learned friend is unable to state with any certainty, either the hour at which Frederick Morton was killed, or whether the bullet felled him as he sat in his motor car, or whether he was killed elsewhere and his body then placed in the motor car. He cannot be certain which gun was used to fire the fatal shot, whether there was a single cartridge fired, or more than one. He has completely and utterly failed to bring this dreadful crime home to the man who stands on trial before you today’

  As Mr Streatfield resumed his seat Ernest experienced a surge of confidence. Surely anyone could see that there was a lack of hard evidence against him? But as Mr Paley Scot rose to make his final address to the jury, the expression on the prosecuting barrister’s face sent an icy sliver of doubt into his mind. It was much the same as the one which Paley Scott had adopted at the outset of his own cross examination, confident, as befits a man who knows that he has the upper hand. He watched as Mr Paley Scot took the couple of steps necessary to cross the floor and take up the position from which he could best address the jury.

  ‘Gentlemen
, the fact of the matter is, that on Tuesday 5 September this year, someone took a gun and used it to shoot Frederick Morton in the heart. Later that night, this same person set fire to the garage at Saxton Grange, hoping that the body would be completely destroyed and the death mistakenly attributed to an accident. But the killer was unlucky. Fate took a hand, gentlemen, and though much of Mr Morton’s body was destroyed, the portion of his chest in which the shot had lodged was preserved – in such a way that it will be possible to bring the perpetrator to justice. It does not matter whether this dreadful act occurred when Mr Morton was sitting inside or standing outside his motor car, or even at precisely what hour the fatal shot was fired. The important question is, whose hand was on the trigger of the shotgun?

  ‘The defence in this case has envisaged the existence of some sort of phantom lover. A mysterious, unidentified person who managed to arrive at the farm that night without anyone seeing or hearing him. A man at whom the guard dog does not bark. A man who uses a knife from the kitchen drawer – which he has somehow managed to obtain without being seen by the two women who are sitting in the kitchen the whole time, or by the manservant who is moving around between the kitchen and the yard – and this mysterious person cuts the telephone wires, and by some unaccountable coincidence, he does this at around the exact same time that Ernest Brown claims he was using a completely different knife from that same kitchen drawer, to cut a rope in the stables.

  ‘The only person seen to handle a gun at Saxton Grange that night was Ernest Brown, who when asked for an explanation for the shot heard by the women in the house, came up with a ridiculous story about shooting at some rats. Are we to seriously believe that a man who has spent so many years in service on a farm, would waste his time, blasting away at rats, with the dusk fast falling? That shot had a much more sinister purpose, gentlemen, and the victim was not a rat, but Mr Frederick Morton, who on his arrival home that night, met with a violent death at the hand of a man who had more than once threatened to do him harm.

  ‘The defence has attempted to paint a picture of an ordinary night, in which the man in the dock, Ernest Brown, engages only in perfectly ordinary things. Gentlemen of the jury, put yourselves now in the place of these two young women. Picture that lonely house, with only one lamp burning, as the hour grows later and later, and they await the long delayed arrival of Mr Morton. Their home has been transformed into a place of mystery and terror. Brown’s eyes were wild, his demeanour mad. First the women heard a shot ring out, and soon afterwards, the man Brown was seen fetching a knife from the drawer. Is it any wonder that these women were terrified of him, fearing all the time what he might do next?

  ‘You have seen the considerable courage exhibited by these women, as they told their story to the court. Was the whole of Mrs Morton and Miss Houseman’s evidence a pack of lies? Mrs Morton has stood before you and admitted that she was not always a faithful wife, but because Mrs Morton had been unfaithful, this does not mean that she cannot be believed.

  ‘Members of the jury, you have heard the evidence and I put it to you that there is only one logical interpretation of it all. The man who shot Frederick Morton that night is the man in the dock before you. In the name of justice, I must ask you to bring in a guilty verdict against Ernest Brown.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friday 15 December 1933

  Leeds Town Hall, The Yorkshire Assizes

  ‘You don’t fancy another game of cards, or anything, Ernest?’

  It was a pity, Ernest thought, that the regulations didn’t allow them to play for money, because he would have made a fortune out of Bottomley and Jordan, the two warders who had been assigned to accompany him to and fro from the prison for most of the hearings, first at the magistrates’ courts and now at the assizes. Of course it had occurred to him once or twice that they might be letting him win, because they felt sorry for him and thought him likely to hang, but he had pushed the thought away, and in any case he did not think that either man was capable of dealing a crooked hand. A pack of cards had often helped them to while away the time they had spent just waiting around, but it didn’t seem fitting to play just now – not with a dozen men somewhere close by, deliberating upon his fate. Besides which, the sensation in the pit of his stomach would have proved too much of a distraction – it would have been impossible to fully focus on the cards.

  It was a good sign that they were taking their time, Ernest thought, because then there has to have been a discussion. It was not unknown for a jury in a murder case, having listened to several days of testimony, to take no more than twenty minutes to decide that the man in the dock was guilty. Five minutes to make up their minds and have a vote on it, and the other quarter hour to have a quick cup of tea and smoke a pipe, so one of the warders had said.

  It was very quiet, sitting alongside the familiar guards, with whom he had declined to play the usual games of whist, during the hour or more that they had been sitting in the little tiled cell, beneath the court room. You couldn’t hear anything down there. Not from the court room, or the teeming streets outside. There might have been nothing else going on in the world, though with Christmas fast approaching, Ernest knew that the streets would be packed with people. He pictured the crowds and the excited faces of the kiddies. Imagined the lights shining out of the frosted glass windows of the pubs, and the bursts of laughter from every doorway. Smells from the hawkers with their chestnuts, roasting atop street corner braziers. Fried fish from the fish shops, the cries of the newspaper vendors, the clang and trundle of the trams. Never again would he take any of that for granted.

  Soon now, he would be going home to stay at his mother’s – the worry of the last few weeks erased from her face. Probably all the family waiting to greet him, and little Ethel, running to him with her arms outstretched. By God, he hoped they’d managed to keep all this business from her.

  He knew he would be going home, because that was what the law said. For a man to be found guilty of murder, the jury must be sure of their verdict, beyond reasonable doubt – and they could not possibly be. He would walk from the court a free man. People in the street would come up and want to shake his hand. They might even cheer him, when he came out of the front door and down those steps out front. He’d read about such things happening, in the newspapers.

  ‘They’re ready.’

  The announcement at the door generated a scramble of activity, for though they had been tensely awaiting the summons, now it had suddenly come, it was a bit of a rush to get back up into the court.

  It was a relief, Ernest told himself, that this was the last time he would have to come up those stairs, the last time the whole cast of the circus would reassemble. The judge in his ridiculous robes and his wig. A horrible old bastard, Ernest thought, who had certainly not summed up in his favour – but all the same, all the same, the jury could not possibly find him guilty, because it had to be beyond reasonable doubt. The barristers, with their smaller wigs, each finished off with a little white tail at the back, not pointing straight down, but curling away, forced into shape by repeated contact with the wearer’s collar or shoulders. Mr Paley Scott’s had reminded him of a curly pig’s tail. The old biddies, who would have to get off home to their shopping and their laundry, their little bit of excitement over and done until the next assizes rolled around.

  From force of habit, he did not look across at the jury, but he allowed himself a glance at the bench in the well of the court, where Dolly had been allowed to sit alongside her father day by day, listening to the case, and he realised that she and her little entourage were missing. Didn’t want the press to see her face, he supposed, when the jury brought in a verdict that made her look a liar. Even so, her unaccustomed absence gave him an uncomfortable jolt.

  When the order came for him to stand, he stood at attention in the dock, his shoulders squared.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoner, Ernest Brown, guilty
or not guilty?’

  The foreman was on his feet. And suddenly everything was happening in slow motion. The verdict given, a gasp from the public gallery, followed by what sounded like a scuffle of some kind. The fellow who had announced the verdict was glaring across at him, as venomous as if it had been his own son, whose life had been taken.

  Now the judge was addressing him, in a hard cold voice, asking if he had anything to say, before sentence was passed. Ernest hesitated. He ran his tongue around his lips and looked down again, at the empty place, until recently occupied by Dolly. Then he gave the slightest shake of his head.

  ‘Ernest Brown, you have been found guilty of a cruel and brutal murder. I think it is only right to say that I agree with the verdict.’

  Though his eyes remained fixed on the judge, the man in the dock saw not the face of Travers Humphreys, nor the shining coat of arms behind his head, nor even the square of black cloth, as it was placed atop that ridiculous wig, but the blindingly bright, orange and yellow flames as they leaped from the roof of the garage, and the sinister outline of the Chrysler car which stood inside, as the fire consumed the mortal remains of Frederick Morton.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Martin’s Nest

  Holywell Green

  Yorkshire

  6 January 1934

  To the Governor, His Majesty’s Prison, Armley, Leeds.

  Dear Sir,

  I am writing on behalf of myself and my father to ask whether it would be possible to require Ernest Brown, currently under sentence of death for the murder of my brother, Frederick Ellison Morton, to provide a blood sample, which could be checked against a sample from Mrs Morton’s daughter, Diana Morton, in order to establish whether or not Ernest Brown is the father of this child. This knowledge would help to put our minds at rest.

 

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