‘No, sir.’
‘You never flirted with her?’
The momentary pause cast doubt on Robert’s answer. ‘No, sir, not really.’
‘Be precise, if you please,’ Forster drilled into his man, his voice dry and sharp.
‘Only for a lark, sir.’
‘Did your brother, Ernie, see you flirt with Daisy, “for a lark”, as you say?’
‘How would I know?’ Robert felt himself being led helplessly into muddy insinuations. He reacted sullenly.
‘Let’s say he did. He saw you with your arm around her, let’s say. Yet according to your own words, the accused would “die for that girl”. Isn’t that what you said? Wouldn’t he then feel jealousy when he came across you two spooning together?’
‘We never spooned!’ Robert interrupted.
‘Well, call it what you will. We reach the point where Ernie, dimly perhaps, begins to realize that you’re the sort of brother who will steal a girl from a fellow the moment his back is turned.’ Forster allowed Robert to glare at him for a few seconds before going on. ‘So he must seize his opportunity in double-quick time. The bees are buzzing round the honey-pot, you might say.’
Judge Berry, who until this point had sat resting his chin on his hand, forefinger to his lips, suddenly leaned forward. ‘Where is this colourful metaphor leading us, Mr Forster? Bees and honey-pots; what’s the point, if I may ask?’
‘The motive, m’lud. That’s where we’re leading. “By indirections . . .”’
‘“Find directions out.” Yes, quite, Mr Forster.’ Judge Berry sighed but allowed him to proceed.
‘Now, Mr Parsons, we’ve reached the night of the murder. The accused loses sight of you in the theatre. But he heads for the girls’ dressing-room in any case. You admit that he could view this as an unlooked-for opportunity?’
‘What are you getting at?’ Robert frowned and twisted a finger inside his uncomfortably tight collar. He felt hot and flustered.
‘I mean, he has Daisy all to himself, doesn’t he? We all know how much he adored her. But what would Daisy make of Ernie’s advances, there in the dressing-room, all alone?’
Robert let out a short laugh. But before he could frame an answer, Forster forged ahead.
‘Exactly! Let’s just say, she wouldn’t respond well. And who can blame her? She’s a popular girl. She has the pick of all the East End scuttlers. Surely she would prefer you to your brother, Mr Parsons; a good-looking ladies’ man like yourself? After all, wasn’t it you she liked to flirt with? Wouldn’t she make these feelings quite plain to Ernie? And then what?’
‘Then, nothing!’ Robert found his voice. ‘I’m telling you, you’re going about this the wrong way!’
Forster glanced sharply at the jury, as if to say, Pay attention. The witness is rattled. Then he concentrated his sharp gaze on Robert once more.
‘Do you believe that Daisy O’Hagan would reject Ernie’s clumsy advances, Mr Parsons?’
‘Course she would!’
Forster cut back in. ‘Would she laugh at him? Would she put up a fight?’
Robert looked helplessly towards Duke. The old man’s gaze was fixed on Ernie.
‘Does Ernie panic in a fight?’ Forster insisted.
‘How should I know?’ Robert couldn’t find the right answer to put his finger on and clear Ernie of these ridiculous suggestions. Everything he said just dropped him deeper into Forster’s trap.
‘Well. We know the murder is the action of a man who suddenly loses control. We can tell that by the number of wounds inflicted on the corpse. This is no professional, premeditated act.’ Forster took time to glance around the court. ‘Would you agree, Mr Parsons, that this murder was committed by someone who did not accurately judge his own power to inflict harm? Would you say that it was a frenzied attack, from what you yourself saw of the body?’
Robert took a deep breath and nodded. ‘But Ernie never fights! He ain’t never hurt no one!’
‘Quite.’ Forster’s jaws snapped shut. He paused. ‘He never fights. But he is a strong young man. Therefore he has no idea of how much damage his violent actions can inflict, when his temper is provoked beyond restraint. His thin thread of self control snaps when Daisy rejects him. A sudden idea takes hold; if he can’t have her, then no one else will. Maybe she is laughing at him even now. He takes a knife he carries in his pocket; a common or garden kitchen knife available at the local ironmongers’. He advances. He’s surprised by how easily the sharp blade plunges into the soft flesh. And by the blood. He steps quickly to one side. But there’s no turning back. Again and again he plunges the knife into Daisy. Then the struggle is done. He releases her. She slumps dead to the floor.’
Hettie hid her head in her hands and wept at the description. Frances felt pure hatred for the prosecutor. Sadie and Jess sat holding hands, stunned as Robert began to shout; incoherent words of rage that offended the jurors’ ears and challenged the authority of the court.
‘He can’t bleeding well say that! He’s a bastard, he is, putting pictures in their heads. This ain’t what I call justice!’ Robert ranted, raising his fist in an impotent, destructive gesture as Duke rose from his seat, intent on being the first to reach his son’s wheelchair. He spun the chair on the spot and rushed him down the aisle.
‘Easy, take it easy.’ Duke slammed the chair through the double doors at the back of the courtroom, to the sound of the gavel rattling down on to the desk and to the rising consternation of spectators in the gallery. Duke leaned his head back against the closed door. It had been too much to expect. ‘I’m sorry I put you through that, mate,’ he said.
Robert sagged forward in his chair, hot tears stinging his eyes.
‘A pity,’ Mayhew said to Sewell, shuffling papers into order on his desk. ‘If he could just have kept his temper . . .’ The gamble hadn’t quite paid off. He cast a cool eye over the jury to assess the effect of Robert’s outburst, getting ready to repitch his summing-up speech. Meanwhile, Forster was making his own last push.
The jury heard again the mountain of evidence pointing to the guilt of the accused; the time, the opportunity, the motive, the forensic reports. They would recall the words from the accused’s own lips: ‘I never meant to do it’, and his intense secrecy after the event, so clumsily covered up by the sister, Jess. It was a poor defence, was it not, to simply ‘forget’ one’s exact movements in the room where the murder occurred, but it was the typical defence of a guilty man, not too bright, who saw all the fingers of accusation lining up ready to point in his direction.
Forster polished off his final speech with a common-sense touch, a sad but true tone which spoke regret that these things happened when men of this type were pushed beyond their limit. Nevertheless, a conviction was imperative. ‘Despite your inevitable softer feelings of sympathy, gentlemen, which are perfectly natural when you see the distress of the accused as he sits in the dock listening to horrific accounts of his own actions, do not lose sight of the decision you must reach.
‘Do not believe, as defence counsel would have you believe, that Ernest Parsons is incapable of committing this crime. They say he is a simple man, unable to negotiate the streets of London alone. Certainly, he is simple, but not incapable, as we have seen from the testimony of Mr Henshaw. No, Ernest Parsons can hold down the very sort of job which requires detailed knowledge of these streets, as Henshaw’s errand boy. Moreover, we are sure that he harbours the ordinary feelings of men towards the gentler sex; this much is clear. Those feelings include possessiveness and jealousy, do they not, gentlemen? No, you may discount the view proposed by Mr Mayhew that this is a saintly simpleton, a kind of divine idiot. This is a man; a man who snapped, who killed in a frenzy the woman whom he loved “not wisely but too well”. Can there be any reasonable doubt left in your minds that this is so? And likewise any hesitation that this man must pay the ultimate penalty which the law demands? Your duty is not a pleasant one, gentlemen. No man here says that it is. But it is plai
n, and it is a duty which we must carry out without flinching, in the name of justice: We must find the defendant guilty as charged.’
There was a terrible hush in the courtroom. Forster’s speech was delivered watertight. It sent hopes spiralling down in the public gallery. It numbed the Parsons women, so that Mayhew’s own summing-up speech had to beat its way with heavy wings through the gloomy atmosphere of the court.
He must rely on the unblemished family history, he must recall for the jury the whole-hearted support showered on the accused by his own family and community, not least from the mother of the supposed victim. ‘An unprecedented thing, in my experience,’ Mayhew said. ‘A brave and selfless act by a woman who has suffered much, yet driven here by her belief in the innocence of the man whom the prosecution would hang.
‘He sits before you, as he has sat through all these long weeks in prison, more boy than man, in utter sorrow and confusion. He denies nothing that is true, yet he does deny this brutal murder. His statement takes you as far as his own memory can possibly take you, and what this amounts to is that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a result, his entire world collapsed, wiping out any observation of detail which might have helped him escape this charge; a shadow in a corner of the alleyway, a struggle overheard, a name called out in terror.’ Mayhew’s gaze raked the courtroom and the gallery, seeking out the guilty name to no avail.
He lowered his eyes to the jury once more. ‘No one can deny the hideousness of the crime you have to consider; the brutal murder of a beautiful and defenceless young woman by a man without a conscience, a man sufficiently cool and cruel to let another stand accused here, who would let his blame hang the man who stands before you now. Two victims of one crime, gentlemen; consider that. The shadow of doubt looms large under the hangman’s noose, and so it should, for this is an irrevocable act. This is a decision which may colour the rest of your lives.’
‘Look around this court, gentlemen, and let your gaze rest on Ernie Parsons. Study him.’ Mayhew led them with a gallant gesture to where Ernie sat looking at his sisters with a fixed stare, waiting for them to tell him what to do next. ‘This man is no liar, this man is no murderer. He is simply trapped by circumstance.’ His final appeal was low, almost inaudible to all except the jurors. ‘For God’s sake, gentlemen, release him from that trap, and find him not guilty!’
Forster turned to his own assistant, as Mayhew returned, head bowed, to his seat and the jury received the judge’s directions. ‘Heart versus head,’ he said drily. ‘Let’s see which way they swing now.’
When word came back that the jury had reached a verdict, Sewell took Duke aside one last time. ‘There is a procedure,’ he warned. ‘In all these cases it is the same.’
‘The black cap? Is that what you’re getting at?’
‘Yes. Innocent or guilty, the cap will be there in readiness. You mustn’t jump to conclusions.’
Duke nodded. ‘I’ll tell the girls,’ he promised as they took their places in court. The unreality of the occasion was only heightened by speaking of these things, when in truth he thought his heart must stop dead at the awful irresistibility of it all.
The jury returned to complete silence, each man in procession, his gaze set straight ahead, tight-lipped, narrow-eyed. They sat as three loud knocks announced the re-entry of the judge. The Sheriff and Mayor followed in robes of crimson and ermine. An official carried the square of black cloth ceremoniously outstretched, and last of all came the chaplain, all in black.
Then Ernie was brought up from the cells into the dock. He looked anxiously for Duke, found him in his usual place, and fixed his eyes upon him.
The thing was played out in a daze. They knew in their hearts by the grim, fixed look of the foreman what the verdict was to be.
At last the clerk to the court cleared his throat. ‘How do you find the defendant?’
‘Guilty, m’lud.’
A scramble began in the gallery. Reporters left to be first on the telephone to their editors with the news. Uninvolved spectators nodded and drifted off into the next courtroom. Friends stood stock-still. The morbid hung on for the last details.
Judge Berry placed the cap on his head. It was over. He was satisfied, reciting the words which sealed the man’s fete.
‘Taken from this place . . . Eight o’clock on the fifth day of January 1915 . . . hung by the neck until you are dead . . . and may God have mercy on your soul.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ernie was taken stumbling from view, and life lurched on around the vortex, the black certainty that he was to die.
Mayhew came to shake hands with Duke. He felt it had come about partly through lack of other suspects. ‘There’s a strong urge to convict when public opinion is roused. They need to blame someone, and of course we were unable to implicate anyone else.’ He shook his head. ‘I am truly sorry, Mr Parsons.’
Duke couldn’t trust himself to speak. The girls wept and clung to one another. Robert covered his face with his hand.
‘Can I see the boy?’ Duke said at last, turning to Sewell, who went off to arrange it.
Maurice came down to help Jess and the women. Walter came for Robert. Annie sat in the rapidly emptying gallery next to Florrie and Dolly. She’d sent Tommy off home with the news, and now she turned to comfort Duke’s sister. ‘You go ahead, have a good cry, girl.’ The old woman’s stricken face streamed with tears. Annie put an arm around her shoulder.
Florrie choked back the tears, for the family’s sake. She didn’t want to make a fuss. ‘Only, when I think what they’re gonna do to Ern, it breaks my heart!’ she wailed, overcome once more.
Annie drew a sharp breath. ‘Don’t say that, girl. I can’t bear it.’
And it was Dolly’s turn to put her strong arms around skinny Annie and let her weep.
Duke was taken along dark, bare corridors to the cells below the courtroom. Two warders guarded the door to Ernie’s cell, and they avoided the father’s eyes as he was silently marched inside the room. One officer remained there with them.
The boy seemed bewildered. He sat hunched over the table, hands clasped. He looked up at Duke in mute appeal, then turned away. At last he realized that even Duke couldn’t help him now. For the first time in his life, Ernie recognized the limits of his father’s power; up till now he’d thought he was invincible.
The turning away was too much for Duke. He stood by the door immobile, as cold as stone. In that windowless room, where condemned men accepted their fate, the electric light glared.
Ernie looked back and saw his father’s weariness; the shadows on his face, his weakness and age. He got up and approached him. ‘Don’t worry about me, Pa. Tell Ett I remembered my prayers. Tell them all to come and see me.’
Duke nodded. ‘We’ll be there, mate.’ He held his son close to him. ‘We won’t let you down.’
The weeks in prison had taught Ernie new rules. You did as you were told and never spoke your fears. He glanced at the warder. ‘I gotta go now, Pa.’ He began to ease himself free.
Duke released him. ‘We never let you down, did we, son?’ He wanted to be able to walk out with Ernie’s trust restored.
‘You never, Pa. I let myself down. I never remembered, what happened to Daisy. I think I should’ve.’ Ernie had walked across to the warder, but he turned again for a moment. ‘That’s right, ain’t it, Pa? I should’ve remembered?’
Duke nodded. ‘I know you tried, Ern. But it ain’t easy for you, and it don’t do to think of it now.’
Ernie shook his head. ‘Would it’ve helped her? Would my remembering wake her up?’
‘No, son, but we could’ve helped you.’
Ernie sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Pa.’
‘Don’t be, Ern. What’s done is done.’
The boy bowed his head and submitted to being led away. Another warder came in for the old man, gave him one brief, sympathetic glance, turned and took him off up the corridor, up the stone steps back into the cou
rtroom. Duke heard heavy doors slam and lock. They battered his heart with grief and loss.
There was no cheer in the court as Christmas week drew near. People drifted in and out of the Duke, but they lost their natural rhythm when talking of Ernie and the terrible outcome in court. Some, like Arthur Ogden and even Syd Swan, refused to mention it at all, though it must have preyed on their minds.
When Syd took Amy out to the Gem in the week after the verdict, her heightened sense of drama made her want to chatter to Syd about the awful prospects facing Ernie now; the hangman’s noose and the condemned man’s last request before he went to meet his Maker. Syd refused to listen, as he ushered her through the shiny doors, relieved when their turn came up at the ticket office and they could sidle in for the latest Keystone adventures. Amy was all very well, but she never knew when to stop. Maurice Leigh watched them take their seats without his usual courteousness, and at home, later, he openly warned Amy off her association with Swan.
Dolly Ogden treated the subject of Ernie with an outpouring of powerful sympathy. She went the opposite way to Arthur and Syd, but her interest wasn’t prurient, like Amy’s. ‘You come and tell that girl how sorry you are,’ she chivvied Charlie. ‘You gotta act like a man. They need all the help they can get these days.’
So Charlie went up to the Duke and asked to see Sadie. He was shown up to the living room, where the women sat. He said his awkward sentence, cap in hand, aware of the inadequacy of the words. He wondered for a moment if Sadie would turn on him.
But Frances thanked him for her, and said they appreciated his coming. It was a kind thought. Sadie sat in a chair by the fire, looking young and lost.
‘Is there anything I can help with?’ he faltered.
Sadie looked up at him through her grief.
‘I don’t think so, Charlie,’ Frances said softly. ‘But we’re very grateful for the offer.’ She showed him downstairs and closed him out of their misery.
If Dolly talked too much, running through the trial time after time with Flo at the bar, pouring out venom against Forster and the prosecution witnesses, it was accepted in good spirit and taken as a sign that Dolly realty did care. In one way, Flo was glad to talk about things. She trod on eggshells around the place herself, now that the verdict had sunk in, not knowing how anyone was going to react in the long run. ‘I went up the Post Office and telephoned to my Tom,’ she told Dolly. ‘He couldn’t hardly believe it, said for me to save the newspaper account for him to read, but I told him I couldn’t bear to have it near me. Not with the things they write!’
Paradise Court Page 32