Indictment for Murder

by Peter Rawlinson

  ‘Morning, luv.’ The young juror squeezed into his seat beside her. ‘I thought I wouldn’t make it. What would they’d’ve done if I hadn’t? Cut me head off?’

  Everyone rose as the judge entered the court. He doesn’t look well, the middle-aged jurywoman thought. His face was very pale, with dark patches under his eyes. Colonel Basildon, who had taken his seat on the judge’s right, had also remarked to himself on the judge’s pallor when he had collected him from the Lodgings in the official car. What had that bloody woman said last night? he wondered as they drove in silence to the castle.

  At a nod from the judge, Richard Bracton called out: ‘Dr Oliver Mitchell, please.’

  The doctor was a large man with a rosy complexion, bald, but with some grey hair smoothed back over his ears. He was smartly turned out in a dark green tweed suit, check shirt and knitted yellow tie. In one hand he held a pair of heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, which he put on as soon as he had taken the oath, and in the other a file, which he placed on the ledge of the witness-box in front of him. After stating his qualifications, he said he specialised in the treatment of cancer, and that Colonel Trelawney, who was seventy-eight, had been referred to him by a local GP about a year ago. He had arranged for the colonel to be admitted to the Malmesbury General Hospital, but the colonel insisted upon being privately treated at the King George VI Memorial Hospital for Officers at Windleshot. No bed at the George VI was available until June 26th.

  ‘How were the costs of this private treatment to be met?’ Bracton asked.

  The doctor replied that all the medical bills were submitted to a firm of lawyers (here he consulted his notes in the file), Messrs Symes and Lester of Lincolns Inn Fields, London, to whom was also sent a report on the patient’s condition, with estimates for the future as well as the immediate costs.

  ‘Did you ever meet and speak to the lawyer, Mr George Symes?’

  ‘Careful now,’ growled Shelbourne. ‘We can’t have what was said.’ The judge heard him and looked up.

  ‘I have no need to be warned by my friend about what I ought to do or not do, or what I may ask or not ask,’ snapped Bracton.

  ‘You did yesterday,’ Shelbourne said loudly.

  ‘I do not intend to ask the witness what was said,’ Bracton replied. ‘I shall ask him only what he did as a result of that conversation. That is perfectly proper.’

  Graham rapped sharply on his desk. ‘I won’t have bickering between counsel. Mr Shelbourne, if you wish to object or make any submission,’ he said with an asperity that he had not shown on the previous days, ‘please make it on your feet.’

  Shelbourne half-rose, bowed and then sat again.

  ‘Testy young gentleman we are this morning, aren’t we?’ he said to Benjamin from behind his hand.

  ‘As a result of that conversation, what did you do?’ Bracton was asking the doctor.

  ‘I prepared a report and prognosis on Colonel Trelawney’s condition, the course of treatment he would have to undergo in hospital and the residential care he would need thereafter, which I considered would last for the rest of his life. At my patient’s insistence I had reserved a place for him at St Edward’s Residential Home at Send in Surrey, which is one of the most expensive in the country.’

  ‘Were your fees subsequently paid, and if so by whom?’

  ‘By Mr Symes’ firm on behalf of the trustees.’

  ‘While Colonel Trelawney was waiting to go to the King George VI Hospital was he in pain?’

  ‘Yes, he was. He had fallen and broken his ankle and was confined to bed in considerable pain.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I arranged that while he had to remain at home in bed he should be fitted with a syringe driver which would supply him intravenously with regulated but sufficient doses of diamorphine to alleviate the pain. These syringe drivers can be battery operated but, as Colonel Trelawney was bedridden, in his case the supply of the drug was managed by a dial on a syringe barrel holder positioned on the table by the bed. The syringe normally contained some 60 milligrams of diamorphine which were fed through a small tube cannula taped to his chest or vein, at the rate of 2 milligrams per hour. The apparatus was monitored by Nurse Langley, a trained state-registered nurse, an excellent nurse, in whom I had complete confidence.’

  ‘Had Nurse Langley previous experience with this apparatus?’

  ‘Oh yes, on at least three occasions with three other patients. That was why I was glad she was free to come to nurse Colonel Trelawney.’

  He and Sylvia Langley had spoken on the telephone the night before, and she had told him about how Shelbourne had questioned her. He had also read about it in the morning newspapers, and he had spoken to her again outside court. It was a pity, he’d thought, that she’d gone off to the barman’s bedroom on that afternoon, but he was not going to let her down. She was a good nurse. And, ultimately, she was his responsibility.

  ‘She was thoroughly conversant with this apparatus,’ the doctor said stoutly, ‘and a very responsible, professional nurse.’

  ‘On the weekend of June 20th to June 22nd were there any special circumstances which led you to adopt a different system with regard to the supply of diamorphine than you had on the three days prior to June 20th?’

  ‘Yes. On the afternoon of Friday the 20th I had to attend a medical conference in Bristol…’

  At this Shelbourne gently nudged Benajmin, who half-turned towards him. Shelbourne nodded.

  ‘As a result I knew I’d be unable to pay a daily visit to Colonel Trelawney to top up the supply of the drug, so on the morning of Friday June 20th I charged the apparatus not with 60 but with 220 milligrams. This meant that the supply of diamorphine would last until I next saw him on Monday 22nd. It did not, of course, affect the passage into his system of the normal dose of 2 milligrams per hour. All it meant was that the system did not need the usual daily topping-up. Instead it contained a supply for three days.’

  ‘Who was aware that you had done this?’

  ‘Nurse Langley and Colonel Trelawney. She also knew that there is a mechanism which makes it impossible for more than 2 milligrams of morphine to enter the body every hour.’

  ‘Was any of this said in the presence and hearing of Colonel Trelawney?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘On Friday June 20th, during my morning visit.’

  Graham tapped on his desk with his pencil. ‘One moment, Mr Bracton,’ he said. He looked at Shelbourne. ‘Mr Shelbourne, I do not know if Mr Bracton is going to argue that what was said on this occasion was part of the res gestae, but are you proposing to object to this conversation being given in evidence?’

  Shelbourne rose. If he did object he would be drawn into a technical argument on the rules of evidence for which he was not prepared. What passed between the doctor and Trelawney ought not do much harm. Better, therefore, to make a concession, and do it graciously. So, in a different tone than he had previously used when addressing the judge, he replied politely: ‘I’m grateful to your lordship, but I have no objection. I think it would be best for the jury to hear all that was said by the doctor and the deceased on the Friday so that we know his state of mind when the accused visited on the Saturday. I have no wish that anything relevant should be kept from the jury.’

  Two of the older jurymen nodded approvingly.

  ‘Very well,’ said Graham. ‘You may continue, Mr Bracton.’

  Shelbourne sat. ‘I don’t think it’ll do much harm,’ he whispered to Benjamin. ‘The jury liked it,’ Benjamin whispered back.

  Bracton was going on. ‘Tell us, doctor, what was said.’

  ‘I must explain,’ the doctor began, ‘that he and I were on very friendly terms. He was a great one for jokes, and for pulling my leg and the nurse’s. For instance, he was always joking about his prostate condition, and the particular organ involved in that. Not in very good taste, but good-humoured.’

  The young juror smiled. The blue-rinsed j
urywoman behind him looked stolidly to her front. She wasn’t sure what ‘prostate’ was, but it didn’t sound nice.

  ‘For the court to understand what was said, I must explain that one of the colonel’s jokes was always to call me “the quack”. He called all medical men quacks, for he used to say that the quacks in his war, World War Two, had killed more of his own men than had the enemy. That was a joke, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Shelbourne, loud enough for the jury to hear.

  ‘On Friday morning June 20th,’ the witness continued, ‘he said, as he was always saying, that he was sure I was just experimenting on him with what he called my “bloody Heath Robinson contraption” so that I could write it all up in the medical journal and get what he called “a gong”.’

  ‘Another joke,’ Shelbourne muttered. Bracton looked down at him but kept his temper. Graham looked up, but said nothing. To the witness Bracton said, ‘So on this morning he was still quite light-hearted about his illness?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was a military man and during his life, he said, he had seen a lot of life and death and pain. He even made a joke of that.’

  ‘Did he make a joke that morning of what you’d told Nurse Langley about filling the apparatus.’

  ‘He did. But first he asked what would happen if all the drug went into him “in one go”, as he put it. I replied, imitating, you understand, his jocularity, “You’d be a goner, colonel”, or something like that.’

  ‘What did you mean by that?’

  ‘I meant that if by any chance all that diamorphine was pumped into him in his then condition—’ the doctor paused and pulled off his horn-rimmed glasses – ‘he would lapse into an irreversible coma, and would die.’

  ‘Which,’ said Bracton drily, ‘was not a joke?’

  ‘As it turns out, it was not. It was a prophecy. Because that, in the end, is what must have happened.’

  ‘Could that have happened through the operation of the apparatus?’

  ‘Certainly not. I explained to him that it was quite impossible for all the drug to be emptied in one dose by the operation of the apparatus.’

  ‘But if that did happen, how could that have come about?’

  ‘Only by it being emptied manually. In other words, by someone deliberately raising the clamp and pressing the plunger until all the diamorphine had been emptied into him. It couldn’t have been done accidentally, and it was impossible for that amount of diamorphine to have been administered through the normal operation of the apparatus.’

  Shelbourne got to his feet. ‘My lord, I didn’t catch the last part of the witness’s answer. Could the witness repeat it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Graham said shortly. ‘Will you repeat your last answer, doctor?’

  ‘I said that couldn’t have happened through the normal operation of the apparatus,’ the witness repeated.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Shelbourne. ‘That’s what I didn’t catch. The word “normal”. It couldn’t have happened through the normal operation of the apparatus. Thank you. Yes, I see.’

  Bracton went on: ‘Did Colonel Trelawney say anything when you told him, jocularly, that if all the diamorphine got into him he would be, as you put it, a goner?’

  ‘He did. I remember it very well, for it amused me. He said, “Well, for God’s sake, nurse, listen to the quack and make sure his damn contraption doesn’t go ape.” Those, I’m sure, were his exact words. I told him he need not worry.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “Thank God for that”, and something, as I remember, about his number not yet being up. It was all very light-hearted.’

  ‘On Friday June 20th, did he say anything about going to the George VI for the chemotherapy?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he repeated what he’d said before – that he’d been a fighter all his life and intended to fight the disease to the end so I was to make damn sure, and he said it again, that the machine didn’t go ape before he got to hospital. I re-assured him that couldn’t happen. At this he chuckled and said, “Jonathan Playfair won’t thank you for that”. I asked him what he meant.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said the cash to pay me and the hospital and St Edward’s would use up the money in a trust which would otherwise go to a connection of his called Jonathan Playfair. That’s why, Colonel Trelawney said, he’d chosen St Edward’s. This seemed to amuse him, because, as he said, Jonathan Playfair would now be kept from the money.’

  ‘Tell me, doctor, what was the general condition of Colonel Trelawney at this time?’

  ‘He was quite comfortable, but the drug might cause him to doze now and then.’

  ‘Would he do this regularly?’

  ‘Yes. He was often sleepy, and he’d drop off from time to time, sometimes even when I or Nurse Langley were talking to him. There was nothing unusual about that.’

  ‘What was the last thing you did before you left him on June 20th?’

  ‘I checked the machine. Then I drove directly to Bristol to attend the conference.’

  ‘Did you ever again see Colonel Trelawney alive?’

  ‘No, when I next saw him, which was at about midnight on June 21st, he was dead. It was a great shock.’

  ‘At midnight on the 21st, when you found that Colonel Trelawney was dead, did you examine the apparatus?’

  ‘I did. I at once realised that he had died from a massive overdose of diamorphine. The syringe was empty and I saw that the strapping to the cannula on his chest had been interfered with. It was clear to me that the overdose had been administered manually.’

  ‘Did you check the operation of the apparatus?’

  ‘I did. I found it was in perfect operating order. The safety mechanism which prevented more than 2 milligrams an hour automatically being fed intravenously was working properly. There was no fault in it whatsoever.’

  ‘You have told us, doctor, that he often used to doze off even when you were talking to him. Would it have been possible in your judgement for that syringe to have been emptied manually without rousing him?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘How long would it have taken for anyone manually to have emptied the contents of that syringe into the body?’

  ‘Just as long as it took to depress it. A mere second or two, no more. He would then have sunk into an irreversible coma and death was inevitable.’

  * * *

  Jonathan was no longer listening. Once again he was far away. When Dr Mitchell had said that David Trelawney had told him he had seen much pain and death during his life, Jonathan began to think of David during the war. He had cut a great figure then. Only once after Nicola had told him she was pregnant by him had Jonathan seen David in London. It was in the crowded bar at the Berkeley hotel, where you ran into everyone at that time of the war – friends back from the Atlantic convoys or from Cairo and the desert. Because there might never be a next time, money was for burning on those Saturday nights which began at the bar of the Berkeley in Piccadilly. From there, dinner at Quaglino’s. Then on to the Four Hundred in Leicester Square, where the whisky bottles were labelled with each customer’s name and the level of liquor marked when last it had been poured, and dancing to the small band on the small, crowded floor in the dim, shrouded light. Or it might be the Café de Paris. Rory had been there the night the bomb had hit and the bodies of dead dancers lay amid the debris while the wounded staggered about, covered in blood. Rory had escaped without a scratch. ‘I’ve a charmed life,’ he had said. ‘Nothing can get me now.’ But the machine-guns had, on the mountain two years later.

  There were other places. The Suivi near Claridges, brighter, faster, louder, the place for the fighter pilots with the top button of their jackets undone to show they were the elite of the elite. Or the Nut House in Soho, seedier, less respectable, where the girls pirouetted wearing only two fans, one in front and the other behind, waving them cheerfully at the customers. But David, Jonathan was thinking, would never have taken Nicola there.

 
When he had met Nicola again the war was long over, her hair grey and his white. It had been in Connecticut, at a dinner party in a yellow clapboard house with black shutters, to which he had been taken by friends. The dinner guests were standing on the terrace overlooking the garden and the fields and drinking highballs in the warm summer evening. He was talking to his hostess when he looked up and saw Nicola coming out of the house, stepping over the sill of the wide ground-floor window that opened on to the terrace. She was followed by a stout, white-haired man wearing rimless glasses.

  Jonathan’s hostess had seen him stare over her shoulder. She turned. ‘They’ve arrived at last,’ she said, and went to greet them. Nicola had seen him. ‘Jonathan,’ she cried. ‘Jonathan Playfair! It can’t be!’

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ he said, kissing her cheek. She laughed. ‘Oh, but I have. Ted.’ she called out, ‘come and meet Jonathan Playfair from England. The boy I grew up with in Sussex.’

  The stout man came to them. ‘Edward van Holtz,’ he said.

  There was a buffet, and when they had their food he and Nicola went into the garden. Ted, his plate in his hand, came and stood in front of them.

  ‘Jonathan took me to my first dance,’ Nicola said to him. ‘A century ago.’

  ‘You must have a lot to catch up on,’ Ted said, and wandered away.

  She told him she’d been married to Ted for fifteen years. He was a broker in Los Angeles and had been married before, so she was a step-grandmother several times over.

  ‘Have you children together?’ Jonathan had asked. She shook her head. ‘I’ve only ever had Tom. He died, you know. Years ago.’

  ‘I had heard, through Annette Trelawney.’

  When he spoke the name, Trelawney, he wished he hadn’t. She turned her head away. ‘And you, Jonathan,’ she asked, not looking at him. ‘What about you? Are you married?’

  ‘No. I’m an old bachelor, living in the Temple.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Quite alone.’

  He thought of her by the stream on the day of the accident with the tractor; and at Plimpton’s when they had caught Beau with the headmaster’s wife; and at the May Ball at Cambridge.