A Stroke of Bad Luck

by Diane Janes

  ‘Quite so. Very well, hand it over. Let’s see what Miss Morton has to say.’

  Featherstone shifted his weight from one foot to the other, while the Home Secretary began to read.

  ‘Are we still getting many letters of protest about this one?’ Gilmour asked, without looking up.

  ‘Quite a few. The usual complement who claim to have received communications from the spirit world or via dreams, the blue crayon and completely dotty brigade obviously, a handful ratting on neighbours who could not possibly have been anywhere near the scene of the crime at the right time, and a significant number who wish to inform you that the outcome has shaken their confidence in British justice.’

  ‘Indeed. I get the impression that the man Brown must have a lot of friends and supporters, who are committed to doing some rabble rousing in the immediate locality. There were some very unpleasant scenes outside the court, after the verdict, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘A great many of the letters we are receiving do not appear to come from the immediate area, or indeed from the class of person to which Brown and his friends presumably belong, sir.’

  ‘Really?’ The Home Secretary’s response was half hearted. He was still engrossed in the letter. ‘Never any sign at all that my sister-in-law was afraid of Brown, or indeed anyone else…’ he read aloud. ‘This is quite interesting… after receiving the telephone call from Miss Houseman, telling us that there had been a fire, my father and I drove straight to Saxton Grange. When our car turned into the drive at about half past nine that morning, we immediately came upon Dorothy, standing out on the drive, talking to Ernest Brown, and not apparently in the least afraid of him. Afterwards she was going about telling everyone that he had been perfectly splendid, getting the horses out. PC Broadhead was there at the time, and if Dorothy had been so afraid of him, why did she not simply get him arrested?’ Gilmour looked up, apparently expecting some kind of comment.

  ‘It would appear to be a reasonable point, sir.’

  ‘The first thing Dorothy said to myself and my father was, “Isn’t it awful? But you know, it’s all his own fault. I warned him repeatedly about coming home in that condition, running the car into the garage and falling asleep. I expect it was a cigarette which caused it. I kept on telling him something like this would happen and now it has. There is nothing left of him at all – nothing.” Later on Dorothy and I went into the house together. My father stayed outside, talking to Dorothy’s father, who had also arrived. When we entered the drawing room, Dorothy walked across and looked at one of Freddie’s photographs, which was in a frame on the piano. Then she said, “Everyone thinks that the child looks like him, but there is nothing left of him, nothing.” During all the time that we were together that morning, she said nothing at all in accusation against Ernest Brown, although there was ample opportunity. Tell me, wasn’t that point raised at the original trial?’

  ‘I believe it was suggested at one point, that Mrs Morton had not initially indicated her suspicions of Brown to the police.’

  ‘And was Miss Morton called as a witness? Ahh… no… she wasn’t. She says as much here. According to Miss Morton’s letter then, the widow doesn’t start telling people that she is afraid of the man Brown until after it was realised that her husband had been murdered. Here it is… When my father and I arrived at Saxton Grange to support Dorothy, on the day that the inquest opened, she had changed her attitude to Brown entirely, and instead of telling people that he had been positively heroic on the night of the fire, she tried to tell me that she did not want to go to the inquest, as Ernest Brown would be there, and she was afraid of what he might do to her. I was bewildered by this change of heart, and in any case, Brown was in police custody at the time… Having learned more of my brother’s married life, I now believe that Dorothy never loved him… when he was buried in Saxton Church, it was a hole-in-the-corner affair, and when the vicar asked Freddie’s age for the burial register, Dorothy said, “Oh put about thirty.” The Home Secretary glanced up, eyebrows expressively raised.

  ‘Hmm – not much love lost between Miss Morton and her sister-in-law, is there? Possible motive for the letter, could be jealousy. These spinsters can become extremely jealous of other women – especially those who are glamorous and have married well. Young women can sometimes get fixated on their brothers, in a quite unhealthy way, or so I’ve heard. Do you know anything about that sort of business, Featherstone?’

  ‘I cannot say that I do, sir.’

  ‘Ahh… here it comes… it was not pointed out to the jury that my sister-in-law benefitted under my brother’s will, and has inherited his entire estate, worth some £18,700. Well there we are.’ Gilmour placed the letter flat on the desk before him and tapped the relevant sentence with a fingertip. ‘Jealousy, Featherstone, what did I tell you? No doubt the sister and her father are upset that the farm and all the assets are passing out of the family’s hands.’

  ‘Circumstances which are likely to cause a great deal of resentment.’ The civil servant nodded, while trying to blot out the burning sensations, which continued to emanate from his chilblains.

  ‘Draft a letter for me will you, thanking the young woman for her trouble in writing, usual expressions of sympathy of course, every confidence in the verdict, all the points she raised thoroughly gone into at the trial and appeal and so on, and now the law must take its course. You know the line to take.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course.’ Featherstone waited politely, until the Home Secretary picked up the letter and handed it back to him. It would have been presumptuous to merely lean across and retrieve it from the desk himself.

  ‘I suppose the young woman has now developed some sort of crush on the man Brown.’ Gilmour shook his head. ‘These girls do get the strangest fancies, and of course he had initially been involved in some sort of affair with Mrs Morton, so I suppose there must be something about him which women find attractive. Married too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘A widower, sir. I believe his wife had not been dead very long at the time of the Morton murder.’

  ‘I see… What happened to the wife, do you know? The local police looked into all that, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh yes, Sir John. It was confirmed that she had died of natural causes.’

  ‘Is Miss Morton an attractive girl, I wonder? One tends to imagine a letter like this coming from a Plain Jane.’

  ‘I have no idea, sir,’ said Featherstone, who had never found any girls remotely attractive.

  ‘Very well,’ the Home Secretary said, adopting a brisker tone. ‘Is that the last of it for now?’

  ‘Yes sir, nothing else needing your immediate attention at the moment.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I have to get away for five thirty, or we will never make the dinner at the Mansion House.’

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Monday 29 January 1934

  The Home Office, Whitehall, London

  There was a bright fire burning in the grate of Sir John Gilmour’s office, but the young solicitor from Huddersfield was given scant opportunity to warm himself, for after extending a hand, accompanied by a greeting, Sir John announced: ‘I don’t have very much time, Mr Hyams, so I need you to make this as brief as possible. Please do take a seat.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course. It’s very good of you to see me at such short notice.’ Hyams perched on the edge of the chair which had been indicated, shuffled in his briefcase and brought out the neatly clipped sheaf of statements that he had gathered together. An interview with the Home Secretary had been almost more than he had dared to hope for. ‘If you would be so good as to look at these…’ he began.

  He got no further. Sir John made an impatient gesture with his hand, which stated more clearly than words that he did not have time to scrutinise several sheets of double spaced foolscap. ‘Summarise, Mr Hyams. Summarise. Perhaps you should begin by telling me why you have left it so late
in the day to make this approach on behalf of your client?’

  Hyams obediently retracted the hand that held the statements. ‘I do realise that it is very late in the day,’ he said apologetically. ‘You see I have been trying to trace the whereabouts of a young woman who used to work at Saxton Grange – a Miss Kathleen Holmes – who it is thought could shed more light on the relationship between my client and Mrs Morton.’

  ‘Are you telling me that after all this time, the police have failed to trace one of the servants who might have been a witness to the events that night?’

  ‘No, sir. Miss Holmes left the Morton’s employment in early July, in order to take up a position elsewhere. Unfortunately my client recalls only that it was somewhere in the south of the country. However, she had been employed at Saxton Grange throughout the period during which Ernest Brown was ahem… paying attentions to Mrs Morton, and so she was fully aware of the footing on which their relationship stood.’

  ‘But she was not actually working for the Mortons at the time of the murder?’

  ‘No, and I regret to say that we have been unable to track her down in her new employment.’

  ‘But this was the cause of the delay? Very well then, let us turn to this new evidence which you say you do have. Let’s begin by having the reasons why this evidence was not heard at Brown’s original trial, or indeed his appeal.’

  ‘Mr Streatfield did not consider the evidence admissible at the trial or at the appeal.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I am not entirely clear on the point, sir.’

  ‘And of course, you are a provincial solicitor, while Mr Streatfield is a King’s Counsel.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Hyams readily swallowed the insult. The important thing was the opportunity he had secured for his client.

  ‘So what is this important testimony, which was not heard?’

  ‘At the trial, sir, Mrs Dorothy Morton, wife of the deceased…’

  ‘I know who Mrs Morton is.’

  ‘Yes sir, quite so. Mrs Morton stated in her sworn evidence that when Brown left her husband’s employment in June, it was because of a dispute concerning a lawn mower. Essentially she claimed that he left in a hasty, ill-considered way, having lost his temper, and then thought better of the decision almost immediately and demanded to be reinstated. According to Mrs Morton, Brown initially wrote to her, asking for his job back, and when that met with a negative response, she claims that he returned to the farm and threatened her with violence, if she did not persuade her husband to reinstate him.

  ‘Brown tells a completely different story. He claims that he had decided to leave because he had grown tired of working at Saxton Grange and intended to obtain alternative employment, closer to his daughter and his family. According to Ernest Brown, two days after he left, while he was staying at his mother’s home in Huddersfield, he received a long letter from Mrs Morton, begging him to return, protesting her great affection for him and in particular saying that their child – the baby girl which had been born the previous year – was missing him. The child, she said, kept asking where “Brownie” was.

  ‘Brown was at home when this letter from Mrs Morton arrived and he showed it to his mother, and to his brother-in-law, Charles Wilson, who happened to be there at the time. Both of them read the letter and are prepared to swear to the gist of the contents. I have their statements with me here. Brown also discussed the arrival of the letter with a couple of his friends in the pub that evening, because he was still trying to decide whether or not to return to Saxton Grange. Brown apparently showed them the envelope, which he had been carrying in his jacket pocket and though he did not offer to show them the letter itself, he gave them an idea of what Mrs Morton had written. They too are prepared to swear to this conversation having taken place. I have their statements too.’ Mr Hyams tapped a forefinger on the sheets lying in his lap, as if to emphasise their contents.

  ‘As a result of the letter, ’ he continued, ‘Brown decided to return to Saxton Grange, travelling there by bus the following day, but in the meantime Mrs Morton had sent a further letter, again imploring him to return: a letter which of course then lay unopened at the home of Brown’s mother. When Mrs Morton discovered that this letter must have arrived after Brown’s departure that morning, she became extremely concerned about the possibility that it might fall into the wrong hands and she drove Brown all the way back to Huddersfield, in order to retrieve this second missive. Brown’s mother and sister were there when Brown arrived in Mrs Morton’s motor car, and have given statements to the effect that they saw Mrs Morton sitting outside in the car, waiting while Brown came inside the house to collect Mrs Morton’s second letter. No one of course knows what the contents of this second letter were, but they can no doubt be inferred by Mrs Morton’s enthusiasm to have it back.’

  ‘And what is supposed to have happened to these letters?’

  ‘Mrs Morton asked to have them back and Brown gave them to her. She told Brown that she did not wish there to be any chance of the letters falling into her husband’s hands, and that she therefore intended to burn them, which presumably she did.’

  ‘How convenient.’

  Mr Hyams affected not to notice the Home Secretary’s tone. ‘This does prove that Mrs Morton lied both in regard to her relationship with Brown and about the circumstances surrounding his return to the Morton household in June.’

  ‘With respect, Mr Hyams, I do not see that it does. In such cases it is hardly unusual for the family and friends of the accused to concoct extenuating evidence, which cannot of course be proved, one way or the other. Besides which, I do not see that what happened in June, has any great bearing on what happened in September. Irrespective of the precise relationship between Mrs Morton and the man Brown in early summer, the jury and the court of appeal concluded that it was Brown who shot her husband dead in early autumn.’

  Mr Hyams opened his mouth to speak, but the Home Secretary was already getting to his feet and extending his hand. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Hyams. I know that your journey has been a long one, and your efforts on the part of your client do you great credit, but I am afraid that there is really nothing more that can be done.’

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Sunday 4 February 1934

  His Majesty’s Prison, Armley, Yorkshire

  ‘I don’t envy you your job these last few weeks,’ Albert Henshaw swilled down the last of his tea, in readiness to resume his shift.

  ‘Only a day and a bit, now.’ Joe Fazackerley said. ‘I’ve not done duty in the condemned cell before and I don’t mind telling you, I hope I don’t have to do it again.’

  ‘They say in the paper as there’s nine thousand signatures on that petition now. Not that it will change their minds.’ Albert maintained a neutral tone. He remained curious about the bloke Brown, and the way his case seemed to generate doubts in a way which most convicted felons did not. Yet at the same time he knew that a man ought not to doubt the system. If it reached the chief warder’s ears that Joe Fazackerley appeared to have gone soft, he would probably be removed from that particular duty. The chaplain was one thing. The prison warders themselves, another.

  ‘Nothing will change now,’ Fazackerley agreed, quietly.

  The minute hand of the big wall clock jerked on another minute, reaching the quarter hour and thereby marking the end of their tea break. As Joe Fazackerley walked steadily back towards the condemned cell, his thoughts turned to the little newsagent’s shop which had recently gone up for sale at the end of his street. He had never seen himself as a shopkeeper, but perhaps it was time to think about a change. Elsie would be able to give him a hand in there, now that the youngest was off her hands, during school hours at least. They had enough put by in the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society to put up a deposit, and the place always appeared to do a brisk enough trade, situated as it was, right close to the tram s
top.

  As he approached the cell door, Eddie Bottomley who was on duty outside, rose to unlock it for him and as he stepped inside, George Tyler, his relief, rose to greet him, putting on his cap and straightening his collar as he did so, before exchanging farewells with the other warder, Harry Gregory, and the prisoner himself.

  ‘Good night, Ernest.’

  They all called him Ernest. A degree of familiarity was permitted between this particular prisoner and the small group of men who sat with him, always two at a time. It was their job to keep him calm. You didn’t want a prisoner in his situation to start getting upset or rattled, screaming or shouting out, or throwing a fit and getting violent. Trouble like that could easily spread. There was always a faint air of tension throughout the rest of the prison, when they had a man awaiting execution.

  In this case the whole thing had dragged on for far too long already. The date had been set back twice now, firstly for the appeal and then because there had been a letter from some doctor in Huddersfield, suggesting that there was insanity in Brown’s family; though of course that had all turned out to be something of nothing. Fazackerley unconsciously shook his head. They would spare the barmy ones, however many lives they had taken, but sometimes hanged the innocent ones. No, he did not think that, not really. Though assailed by creeping doubts over Brown’s conviction, you had to believe that the jury had got it right. It was a good system, the finest in the world.

  It must be slow torture for the condemned man, he thought, all this uncertainty over exactly when it would happen, though Brown had borne it well.

  ‘It’s because he still thinks that he’s going to get off,’ Harry Gregory had said, one morning, as they fetched their bicycles from the shed, ready to ride home at the conclusion of a shift. He had followed the remark up with an abrupt bark of laughter, adding: ‘And that is barmy.’

  Pulling himself firmly back into the present, Joe said, ‘Do you fancy another game of dominoes, Ernest, or are you about ready to turn in for the night?’