by Faith Martin
‘The door was open?’ Clement emphasised.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure it was. As I watched, something colourful – all blue and red – started fizzing about inside, and I realised it was a firework.’
Clement glanced around the room. On a grey, wet, Monday morning in November, his courtroom looked chilly and dull, but the atmosphere was as tense as he’d ever seen it.
‘What did you do, Mrs Wilcox?’ Clement asked quietly.
‘Nothing,’ Alice said simply. ‘I didn’t know what to do. At first, I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t think why Father would have let off a firework inside the shed.’
She looked down at her hands and shrugged. ‘I think I turned to Godfrey, who was standing closest to me, and asked him where Father was. I couldn’t see him, you see. I thought at first that he must just be standing in the dark, outside the light thrown up by the bonfire. But then I realised I couldn’t see him in the light from the kitchen window either. Then suddenly, there was this huge explosion of bangs and whizzes and coloured sparks, and it looked as if the shed trembled.’
The shed in question, he knew from the fire inspector’s report, had been a standard, six-by-ten foot wooden shed, common to gardens all over the country, where they were used to store garden tools, wheelbarrows, sacks of potatoes, winter logs and other odds and ends.
‘We all sort of … screamed. And then the shed roof began to really blaze,’ Alice said, gulping out the words now. ‘The smoke was really thick, and my husband, Kenneth, shouted out Father’s name and ran towards the shed, but as he did so, a rocket shot out of the door and veered off into the neighbour’s fence. It didn’t hit him, but it only missed by a few inches. I called at him to come back. I was afraid … You see, I didn’t want … I didn’t know, then, that Father was in the shed, and I didn’t understand why he was going so close and putting himself in danger like that.’
Her jerky words echoed around the silent room, as everyone digested her words – and the horror of the scene.
‘My brother Godfrey said something about Father not coming out of the shed, and then I realised … But by then, the whole shed was ablaze – the heat was infernal. And fireworks kept going off, explosion after explosion … It was like being back in the Blitz. I visited London once as a child during the war and I never forgot the air raid …’ She trailed off and shot the coroner a look of mute appeal.
‘Thank you, Mrs Wilcox, I think we’ll hear about the rest of the events from your husband now.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Alice said and left the witness box with such alacrity, Clement had no chance to ask the jury if they had any further questions for her.
He looked curiously at the man who stood up to reach for his wife and help her back into her seat in the front row. Her spouse then said something soothing to her, before striding across to take his place on the witness stand.
In stark contrast to his wife, Kenneth Wilcox looked very business-like and calm. If he felt at all nervous at having to give evidence, it didn’t show as he was sworn in.
Clement knew his age was fifty, but unlike his wife, he wore his age much better, and could easily have passed for a decade younger. He was around five feet ten inches tall, and huskily built. He had an abundance of sandy hair, which showed no signs of silvering, and bright, almost electric-blue eyes. A neatly trimmed beard and moustache, just beginning to go salt-and-pepper, only added to his overall attractiveness.
‘You’re Mr Kenneth Wilcox, son-in-law of the victim?’ Clement began mildly.
‘Yes sir, that’s correct.’
‘You’ve just heard your wife’s testimony. Perhaps you can now tell us what you saw the night her father died?’
‘I’ll do my best. Like Alice said, we had a little trouble getting the bonfire to catch light, so in the end we had to use a sprinkling of paraffin.’
‘Whose suggestion was that?’ Clement slipped in.
The witness blinked slightly, then shrugged. ‘I’m not altogether sure. I think mine – or else maybe Godfrey’s?’
‘Go on,’ Clement said.
‘Yes. Well, we got the bonfire going. The kiddies were pleading with their grandfather to start letting off the fireworks, and I think he was teasing them, pretending he was going to make them wait or something, but I saw him eventually head off to the shed to collect them. He usually brought them out in a wheelbarrow.’
‘Were the fireworks stored in tin boxes, for safety?’ Clement asked sharply.
‘I have no idea, but I doubt it,’ Kenneth said flatly. ‘Otherwise, I can’t see how so many of them would have gone off like they did when the shed caught fire,’ he added logically.
Clement made a note and sighed. If only people would be more careful! ‘And how do you think the shed did catch fire, Mr Wilcox. Did you see anything strike it – say, another firework from someone else’s display?’
‘No, I don’t think so. The only thing I can think of is that some burning newspaper from the bonfire must have blown in on the wind, through the open door, and landed on one of the exposed fireworks. I wish now we’d never used that damned paraffin. Mind you, it wasn’t only the embers from our fire floating about – the wind was so strong, I think plenty of other bright orange bits and bobs blew in from the neighbours’ bonfires too.’
‘Did you actually see any burning newspaper or embers blown into the shed?’ Clement asked sharply.
‘No sir, I didn’t,’ his witness admitted honestly. ‘But then, I wasn’t really looking or taking much notice. I didn’t realise at the time that it might be important, unfortunately. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?’
Clement nodded, acknowledging the truth of the man’s wry comment. He also knew from the police statements that none of the family there that night could tell them how the shed had caught fire, with such tragic consequences.
‘I see. Did your father-in-law carry an electric torch with him? It must have been dark inside the shed.’ Clement tried a new tack.
‘Yes, he did. A big, heavy, black rubber thing. He certainly didn’t go in there with a box of matches or a candle or an exposed flame, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Kenneth Wilcox said smartly. ‘No one could accuse the old man of being such a fool!’
Out of the corner of his eye, Clement noticed someone, he thought on the press bench, make a sharp movement of some kind, but when he turned his head to look more closely, saw only industriously bent heads as they took down the witness’s words in their best shorthand.
‘I see. Did your father-in-law seem himself that day?’ Clement asked next.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was he in good health? Did he have a cold, or was he in any way breathless?’
‘Oh, do you mean could he have been taken ill suddenly and somehow done something to set things in motion? No, I don’t think so,’ Kenneth Wilcox said, frowning thoughtfully. ‘He was always in good, hearty health as far as I know.’
‘I see. When were you first aware of there being a problem?’
‘When someone – I think it was Godfrey – said something like, “hoy, watch out, the shed’s on fire” or something along those lines. I looked, and sure enough, I could see smoke billowing out. Then the roof caught, and everything seemed to explode at once – whizzers and bangers, and what not. Rockets started shooting out – bloody dangerous it was, I can tell you. I realised at some point that my wife was asking everyone if they knew where her father was. And I suddenly realised that he wasn’t anywhere around, so he must still be in the shed. But it was impossible to get close to it. I yelled to Caroline to go inside and call the fire brigade. They arrived quickly, I’ll give them that, but by the time they arrived and hosed it down … well, they found my father-in-law’s body inside. Bloody awful it was, I can tell you.’
Clement didn’t think there was any point, in the circumstances, in upbraiding the man for his use of bad language, so instead merely nodded.
‘I think, at this point, that we should h
ear from the Fire Brigade, and then we’ll have the medical evidence,’ he said instead.
Chapter 2
The Chief Fire Officer was a tall, lean, calm man in his mid-fifties, who’d testified before Clement many times before. He was a clever man but he spoke plainly, so that the jury could understand even the most complicated evidence, which sometimes bedevilled arson cases.
Not that there was anything to suggest deliberate arson in this case, as was quickly made clear. In the Fire Officer’s opinion, the worst of the fire had started more or less in the middle of the shed, but with burn patterns that suggested multiple points of contact, consistent with fireworks shooting off in all directions and starting mini-blazes wherever they landed. These small fires were quickly acerbated by the likes of paraffin, bottles of white spirits, some bags of fertiliser and a supply of winter logs, which the family had all admitted were stored inside. Added to the fact that the walls, floor, roof and shelves were all wooden as well, it was hardly surprising that the shed had been reduced to a pile of ashes and bits of burned wooden planks.
When asked how, in his opinion, the fire was most likely to have started, the Fire Officer was reluctant to give any definite opinion. In his view, too little remained of the shed to provide any positive answer – but he saw no reason why either a stray spark, firework or ember blown in by the wind shouldn’t have ignited a firework and set off a chain reaction, as suggested by so many witnesses.
The coroner thanked him warmly and called his next witness.
Dr Marcus Borringer took the stand and glanced at Clement with a brief nod. The two men knew each other, of course. Clement had been a surgeon in the same hospital as Borringer before his own health problems (which he’d been careful to keep concealed from everyone) had made him retire from the medical profession and retrain as a coroner. Since then, Doctor Borringer had regularly been called on to give medical evidence in his court. Whilst the two men weren’t friends exactly, they each respected the reputation for professionalism which they both enjoyed.
‘Thank you, Dr Borringer,’ Clement greeted him cordially. ‘You performed the autopsy on Mr Thomas Hughes?’ he began briskly, confident that the pathologist would have done a fine job.
‘I did – two days after he was presented at my mortuary.’
‘And can you tell the jury about your findings as to cause of death, please?’ Having asked the question, he leaned back in his chair slightly, prepared to put in a clarifying question if need be, but confident there wouldn’t be too much to puzzle or flummox his jury.
‘Yes. Mr Thomas Hughes was a well-nourished male, seventy-one years of age, in reasonable health. That is, I found no signs of advanced heart or liver disease, or anything of a serious nature, that would normally have been causing him distress. He showed the usual signs of wear-and-tear as it were, for a man of his age – the first indications of arthritis in his wrist and elbow joints, for instance, and he had probably been diabetic, but had not been taking medication for this disease.’
‘I see. In other words, you found no evidence that he had suffered a heart attack or a stroke of anything of the kind that might account for his death?’ Clement clarified smoothly.
‘Quite so.’
Clement nodded and indicated him to continue.
‘Naturally, the body had been very badly burned indeed – not to say blackened – and had adopted what we term ‘a pugilist pose’; that is, his arms seemed to have been drawn up and his hands were fisted, as if he were about to start a boxing match. This, as you know, is due to the heat tightening the tendons in his arms.’
Clement nodded and turned briefly to explain – and demonstrate – the pose to the jury. ‘And what else did your autopsy discover?’ he prompted.
‘We found traces of scorching and evidence of smoke damage in both Mr Hughes’s throat and lungs. Also in his blood samples …’ The medical man proceeded to give a technical but clear account of a man who had died, most probably, from smoke inhalation.
‘You think then, that he was probably unconscious before he would have felt any pain as a result of his burns?’ Clement said, with one eye on the victim’s family, who were now sitting extremely pale-faced in their seats.
He caught the pathologist’s eye, who then gave a slow nod. If, privately, he wasn’t so sure that the victim wouldn’t have felt anything, he, like Clement, was in no hurry to cause pointless distress by lingering on the fact.
‘And was there anything else that caught your attention?’ Clement asked next.
‘Yes. I found a head wound on the back and to one side of Mr Hughes’s skull.’
At this, there was a quick stirring in the court, as Clement had expected there would be, when this particular snippet was announced. It was always the so-called ‘dramatic moments’ that people responded to most readily, but he (who’d already seen the doctor’s report) wasn’t taken by surprise.
‘Can you tell us more about this injury please?’ he asked, almost placidly, his matter-of-fact tone doing a lot to settle the mood in the room.
But he noticed that one of the journalists in particular was fascinated by the medical man’s testimony, and had been taking down every word verbatim, with an intense look of concentration on his face. He was a handsome young man who looked to be in his late twenties, with a thick head of black hair and pale eyes that Clement thought would, on closer inspection, probably turn out to be pale blue or grey. Perhaps he was less experienced than his more grizzled and world-weary colleagues, Clement mused. Or perhaps this was his first big story and he was keen to make a splash?
His attention quickly turned from the reporter to his witness as Dr Borringer began to speak once more.
‘Yes, the wound was fairy long but narrow, and angled along the right-hand side of his temple.’
‘Would it have been enough to kill him?’ Clement asked flatly.
‘Oh no. There was no actual fracture of the skull – or to be more precise, no fracture of the skull due to impact. As you know, the results of a fire can sometimes cause fractures in bones after death,’ the pathologist emphasised carefully. ‘I would say the blow would certainly have stunned him – and quite possibly have rendered him unconscious for a short period of time.’
‘I see. And do you have any evidence as to what might have caused this blow?’
‘I’m afraid not – there was too much damage done to the body.’
At this, there was a general sigh of disappointment from the onlookers, who probably felt cheated. People liked to have their facts dished up to them on a silver platter, but the coroner was far too experienced to expect things to always be cut-and-dried.
Clement nodded, but not without some sympathy for the pathologist, the police and the fire investigators. What with the near-total destruction of the shed, and the badly burned condition of the body, they were struggling to come up with any physical evidence at all.
‘It has been suggested,’ Clement began carefully, ‘that the deceased was in the shed when fireworks were going off in very close proximity to him. Is it possible that the long thin narrow wound you describe could have been caused by a firework – a rocket, for instance – grazing his head?’
Dr Borringer didn’t answer right away but clearly thought about it. He frowned slightly. ‘Well, it’s certainly possible,’ he said, a little uncertainly. ‘I’m not an expert on fireworks, naturally, nor am I overly familiar with the science of propulsion. But I imagine something like a rocket would be designed to exude considerable force, in order to lift it off the ground and high into the sky. So I imagine, if it hit someone a glancing blow, it might be powerful enough to cause significant injury.’
‘Did you find any foreign bodies or material in the wound?’ Clement asked.
‘No, I’m afraid not – the burns went too deep. Although we did find tiny fragments of burnt wood – but given that the man died in a wooden shed, that was only to be expected. I understand that there was not only firewood stored inside, but roughly c
onstructed shelves of wood also.’
Clement knew when to take a hint. He smiled slightly.
‘Are you saying the blow might more likely have been caused by the victim hitting his head on such an object?’
‘It’s certainly possible,’ the pathologist said, ‘and in my opinion, rather more probable. If the deceased had heard a fizzing sound and seen a firework explode, he would very likely rear back or duck instinctively, and thus could have hit his head on something wooden inside the shed. But that is pure speculation on my part.’
‘I see.’ Clement glanced at the jury and saw one or two of them nodding their heads. The pathologist finished giving his medical report, but nothing of any further sensational nature was forthcoming, and Clement dismissed him with a word or two of thanks.
Next, he called the local police officer, a sergeant at the Headington Police Station, to give his evidence. But since he spoke of little more than the routine aspects of any investigation following an unexpected death, there was now a distinct sense of anticlimax settling over the court.
The officer reported on the removal of the body by ambulance and touched on the witness statements. However, as none of the dead man’s family had taken particular notice of the dead man’s movements, they could add little to the proceedings.
By the end of the day, all that was left was for Clement to sum up by giving the usual warnings that people should take sensible precautions with fireworks, and encourage people to store such dangerous objects in fire-proof tins, before asking the jury to retire to give their verdict.
It didn’t take them more than five minutes to return a verdict of death by misadventure. The police looked satisfied, the family looked relieved and the usher looked happy to be able to bring the proceedings to a halt well in time for him to get home for his tea.
Clement gave his brief but sincere commiserations to the Hughes family for their misfortune, and there the matter ended.
Or so he thought at the time.
Chapter 3