by Owen Stanley
“Now,” said the Judge, looking fiercely at the sergeant, “let us get to the bottom of this disgraceful affair. Do I understand that you not only apprehended the prisoner, but that you actually questioned him without advising him of his rights?”
“What rights?”
The Judge’s pince-nez fell off with a plop on to the note-pad, and he blew his nose like a Pharaoh’s trumpet.
“You prevaricate, Sergeant. I refer to his rights to be informed that he was not obliged to answer any questions you put to him, of course, and to have a solicitor present.”
The sergeant looked puzzled, as well he might, for in the Statutes of Elephant Island there was no place for lawyers to help defendants dodge the sword of justice. This was because the Moroks regarded rape, arson, pillaging, malicious wounding, and homicide, not as crimes to be denied, or even to be excused as regrettable personal lapses, but as achievements to be celebrated and which brought renown to their families and villages. In the days before Fletcher, they received only modest terms of imprisonment even for murder, and the local jail had become a sort of club for exiled notables. So they liked nothing better than a court hearing where they could make speeches for hours about their heroic deeds, in endless and repulsive detail, to an audience of discerning red men. Suggestions by the Resident Magistrate that a particularly unpleasant atrocity might have been an accident, or possibly performed in self-defence, would be indignantly rejected as slurs on the manhood of the accused. These finer points of Morok jurisprudence were lost on the Chief Justice, however, who had comprehensively misunderstood the Statutes.
“But why is it good to tell a man he may keep silent, Sir, when you think he has done wrong?”
“Because it is not for ignorant men like you to say if a man has done wrong. That is for courts of law, for psychiatrists, for experts to decide. Leave the box! The evidence which you have given is worthless, and shall be disregarded.” His outburst produced a paroxysm of coughing, and it was some time before he could continue.
“Dr. Prout,” he wheezed at last, “will you kindly favor us with your evidence on this case?” Prout entered the witness box, and was sworn. “Now, please tell us all you know.”
“Well, your Honour, I’m afraid that, while the sergeant’s methods of extracting evidence were of course quite deplorable and inadmissible, the accused did give my wife and me a most minute and detailed description of the rape and murder of these young girls, and of how he used a drum of kerosene to burn the house.”
“No doubt he did, no doubt he did,” said the Judge, testily. “But have you reflected, Dr. Prout, that he was probably telling you all this while still in fear of his person after the interrogation he had just undergone? Had you considered that point, Dr Prout?”
“I must admit, that since he seemed quite composed, and in fact, almost eager to tell me the story, I thought he was speaking the truth, without compulsion.”
“Compulsion, Dr. Prout?” He looked very hard at the Commissioner over his pince-nez. “If only you had had my years of experience in the courts, and in the intimidation of witnesses by the police, you would not use that word so lightly. It would amaze the layman to be told that compulsion may be exerted not only by the fist and the boot, but in the most insidious ways. Are you aware, Dr. Prout, that even a policeman drumming his fingers on a table for ten minutes can induce such a state of hypnotic terror in a suspect that he may confess to anything?”
“Bullshit!” roared Fletcher. “If he’d drummed on the bastard’s head with a mallet for ten minutes he might ’a got somewhere.”
“Silence! Silence! One more word from you, Fletcher, and I’ll have you put in a cell!”
Jowls quivering, flecks of froth gathering in the corners of his mouth, the Chief Justice stared at Fletcher with glowering malice, and at length, returned to the matter in hand.
“No, Dr. Prout, I fear you have been deceived. I intend nothing to your discredit, of course, but your transparent goodness of heart has been abused by baser forces, which we shall soon unmask. Pray leave the box.”
“As you wish, your Honour.” Prout stepped down from the teak and rosewood witness box, and resumed his seat among the Mission personnel.
“Now,” resumed the Chief Justice, “We shall get to the heart of the matter in the only way possible, by hearing the facts from the mouth of the accused himself. Let him be called to give his evidence.”
When Ajang had been told that he must tell the absolute truth and leave nothing out, and had made it plain through the interpreter that he understood what was expected of him, the Chief Justice, beaming genially, said:
“Now, tell us all you know about that afternoon. Take your time, take your time.”
Encouraged by the kindly tones, and realising that this new and terrible kiap was for some reason the enemy of Fletcher, Ajang naturally concluded that the red man was looking forward to hearing about his adventures at some length. So he began to describe in luxuriant and rhetorical detail the heat and stillness of that Saturday afternoon, when the whole station drowsed in its siesta, his boredom, his casual glimpse of one of the girls, with bare breasts, washing some clothes in an oil drum cut in half outside her shack. How lust overcame him, how he crept up on her, forced her into the house, and raped her and her two little friends. The third of them was only ten years old, and when she resisted his advances, he struck her in the face with his axe. The torrent of blood drove him into a frenzy, so that he butchered her two companions as well in a flurry of axe blows, which he demonstrated to the court in a pantomime of mindless savagery. Finally, after mutilating them further, he robbed the hut of the few coins he could find and poured paraffin over the bodies and the floor, setting it all alight.
When he had finished this recital, he looked openly and proudly around the court. The Chief Justice was silent for some time, his bewigged head sunk in his hands. Finally, he spoke.
“A cry from the heart, ladies and gentlemen, a cry from the heart, that is what we have heard today. I cannot recall a more melting description of loneliness and despair than that which this man has given us, of his deprivation of female society, his alienation in the strange white man’s world of Ungabunga, his cultural shock and bewilderment. Is there one of us here—I mean men, of course—who can swear that, faced with this sudden temptation, he would not have acted precisely as did this unfortunate man? Is there?” he roared.
The men of the Mission looked embarrassed, nagged by self-doubt.
“We must ask ourselves, is this unpleasant matter not a judgement on us all, are we not all guilty? Did we extend the hand of friendship to our lonely brother, did we take him into our homes, feed him and clothe him? And if we are as much to blame as this wretched man, can we condemn him? No! Compassion and humility, but above all compassion, forbids us to condemn one who has been the victim of countless humiliations and deprivations, like his unfortunate people, for so many years. It is the spirit of the law that gives it life, and that spirit is compassion. The law charges me alone on this island with the functions that a jury normally performs in more privileged quarters of the globe, but I think that I can safely claim to speak for you all when I say that he is Not Guilty.”
Ajang, who during this tremendous philippic had begun to fear that the strange kiap was disappointed with his story, recovered his spirits as it was translated to him, and by the end was positively bouncing.
“Now, my good fellow,” said the Chief Justice, “Is there anything you would like, to compensate you for your ordeal? Anything at all, you have only to ask.” He beamed ingratiatingly on the accused.
Ajang, who had not anticipated this turn of events, had to think for a while, but then he brightened, and said:
“I want a shirt.”
“Certainly, certainly, a most modest request. Dr. Prout, will you please have a man go to my lodgings and bring the shirt which is drying in the bathroom.” Prout despatched a clerk at the double, and in a few minutes he returned carrying a handsome popl
in shirt, with thin red stripes. The Chief Justice beckoned Ajang to approach the bench, and arrayed him in the shirt. After playfully offering him a pinch of snuff, which Ajang refused, he dismissed him, telling him to come and see him whenever he liked. Flushed with success, Ajang could not resist prancing down the court before his accusers of the Mission, who tried to look as if they had been on his side all the time. Putting out his tongue at Fletcher and the sergeant, he fled through the door, whooping and yelling, with a handful of his kinsmen who had come down to witness his fate.
“And now,” said the Chief Justice, suddenly grim, “We come to the most important business of the day. You, Roger Fletcher, sometime Resident Magistrate of this unhappy island, are charged that on a day between 19– and 19–, you did wilfully murder three men of Niovoro, at that place, the men being Pajok, Mangar, and Rumbek.”
Fletcher slowly got up and sauntered over to the dock, where he lounged at his ease. The Chief Justice looked severely at him and asked:
“Do you plead Guilty or Not Guilty?”
“Before I plead anything, I’d like a jury.”
“What?”
“You heard. A jury. Any white man here is entitled to a jury of four male European residents.”
“Could such a law be possible, Mr Moncreif?”
“Yes, Your Honour, it is very clearly the law under the Statutes of Elephant Island.”
The only Europeans who met the stringent residence qualifications were Oelrichs, Erny, Smith and Oakley, who were duly sworn amid much good-humoured chaff with the accused that the Chief Justice was unable to quell.
When the disturbance had died down, the Chief Justice said:
“Now, I ask you again, how do you plead?”
“Not Guilty.”
The Mission staff were radiant with expectation. At last the brutal ruffian who had terrorised and degraded a whole people was about to receive his just deserts at the hands of the very law which he had so abused. They settled down to their banquet of retribution.
Clearing his throat like a hippopotamus snorting in the swamps, the Chief Justice ordered the principal witness to be summoned to give his evidence. From the back of the court one of the Mission staff went out, and came back in a few minutes leading Snail Slime by the hand. When he was sitting comfortably, the Chief Justice began his examination, with the aid of the interpreter.
“What is your name?”
“Snail Slime.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Snail Slime.”
“Yes. I see. Well, er, Snail Slime, what village do you come from?”
“Niovoro.”
“Were you born there?”
“Yes.”
“Have you lived there ever since?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew Pajok?”
“Yes, he was my father, my true father.”
“What do you mean, your true father?”
“I have many fathers. Pajok begot me on my mother.”
“Ah, I see. Now, how old were you when he was killed?”
“I was this high.” He indicated a boy of about twelve.
“Do you remember the day well?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Tell us about it.”
“We had been fighting the Sapo people. We raided them, and burnt their village, and killed many of their pigs, yes, very many of their pigs and had many of their women.”
“But you were only a little boy.”
“Yes. I stayed at home, I was small, but we all knew. All my fathers went to Sapo, to burn it and kill the pigs and have the women, and we killed a man and his wife in their garden, and chopped them into pieces, into very small pieces.”
“Yes, yes, and what happened then?
“Mr Fletcher heard, and he was very angry, and he came with the police to Niovoro, and killed many pigs, and burnt the houses, and the women were crying because of the pigs, and the police took the knives that are on the end of their guns, and heated them in the fire, so that they became as red as the tavala flower, and we were all afraid.”
“Yes, go on.”
“And Mr. Fletcher told us to make a line, all of us who were big, big enough to kill. And the police hit us with pieces of wood, on our backsides, because we were afraid, and did not want to make the line.”
“But why did you have to stand in the line?”
“I did not have to go in the line. I told you, I was too small.”
The Judge looked slightly baffled, but pressed on:
“What happened then?”
“We made the line, and the police took their gun knives from the fire, and they were very hot, and Mr. Fletcher said we must lick the knives.”
“You mean, he told the men in the line to lick the knives?”
“Yes, that is what I just told you. And he said, ‘You who killed the man and woman at Sapo, and chopped them into little pieces, your tongues will curl up like leaves in the flames, and they will swell and choke you, and you will die, but the men who did not kill them, you will feel nothing, not even pain.’ And all the men licked the knives, and some men felt no pain, but my true father, and Mangar his brother, and his cousin Rumbek, they all cried out, and fell on the ground, and the blood came out of their mouths, and they were very sick. And Mr Fletcher, he said they were bad man, and they would die. He came and stood over them, and made them look into his eyes, and they were the eyes of death. He cursed them, and said that when the sun came up they would be dead. And it was as he said. My fathers, all my fathers, were dead when the sun came up. And they cried all night, and were very sick, and our women were crying and they brought water, but they could not drink, because their tongues swelled up. That is all my talk. I talk true.”
The Chief Justice glared at Fletcher from under knotted brows, and if his pince-nez had been burning-glasses Fletcher would have been utterly consumed.
“Well, you have heard this man’s evidence, which as a narrative of terror and the degradation of one’s fellow human beings eclipses anything I have ever heard in thirty years in the courts. Can you deny it? Can you deny that you caused these men’s deaths by inflicting such terrible burns on their tongues that they shortly after died of the effects—or do we need to call more witnesses?”
“Yeah, well, this kanaka’s had it in for me since I took a swipe at ’im a year back.”
“Are you confessing to further acts of brutality?”
“I’m just sayin’ that he’s got a motive for tryin’ to blacken me reputation.”
There was a flutter of laughter in the court, and even the Judge permitted himself a smile.
“Well, Fletcher, I’m sure we’re very concerned about your reputation, hence the present proceedings. Now perhaps you’ll come to the point, and tell us if you can find any fault with his evidence.”
“No, not as far as it goes…”
“As far as it goes?” erupted the Chief Justice. “By God, Sir, it goes far enough to hang you… or… or… at least imprison you for life!” He fell back panting, his face liver-colored and sweating, and taking out a great horn snuff box he indulged furiously, until his whole body was convulsed with sneezes.
“When yer’ve finished blowin’ yer hooter, may be ye’ll let me get a word in. Everythin’ that little shit said is true, for once, except that those three blokes didn’t die from lickin’ the bayonets.”
“What did they die of, then?”
“My curse.”
This time there was a roar of outraged laughter, and much exchange of sniggering comments among the Mission staff.
“You pitiful wretch. If ever there was proof of the saying that all power corrupts you see it before you in the dock. Look at him, look at him, drunk with power, crazed with the most deluded superstitions of those he ruled. It’s a tale out of Bedlam, a warning to us all.”
“So what you’re sayin, Judge, is that those three blokes died of physical injuries, inflicted under my orders?”
“Of course that is
what I am saying.”
“Just let me get one thing straight. If I could prove that I killed ’em by my curse, just for argument’s sake, would I be guilty of murder?”
“I really do not see the point of this line of questioning at all”
“Perhaps I can elucidate it, your Honour,” said Moncreif. “What the accused means is that according to Section 37 of the Statutes of Elephant Island it is deemed impossible for any person to cause the death or illness of another ‘by witchcraft, magic, or other pretended necromantic arts.’ Therefore if, hypothetically, a person were in fact to bring about the death of another by such means, he could not be charged with murder.”
“I see,” said Robinson, with some astonishment.
Fletcher got up from the dock and walked over to Snail Slime, who was still sitting in the witness box, and fixed him with a deadly stare. The native’s eyes dropped, but Fletcher’s unwavering gaze forced him to raise them again, and he sat staring at Fletcher, transfixed. Fletcher reached into his pocket and brought out a pointed splinter of bone, dirty and yellowed; violently, he stabbed at Snail Slime’s face, and hissed:
“By the power of the bone, may thy bowels be knotted.
By the power of the bone, may thy bladder be ruptured.
By the power of the bone, may thy blood turn to pus.
By the power of the bone, may thy windpipe be clogged.
By the power of the bone, may thy body swell up, and fester, and die”
Snail Slime seemed to crumple under the malefic blast and, clutching his throat, he staggered from the witness box, making gargling noises, and tottered across the court, seeing nothing. As he approached the Judge’s Bench his legs swerved under him and he fell heavily, his limbs twitching spasmodically. Smith ran forward and bent over the plainly dying man, and after listening to his heart beat and taking his pulse he looked up at the Chief Justice.
“I know such cases, sir, they are hopeless. It is psychosomatic influence, of course, but the natives’ belief is so strong that unless the spell is taken away the man will die in a few hours.”