by Gitta Sereny
“Did you think that was naughty?” asked the Judge. “She nods her head, yes.”
“Yes,” Norma said.
It had been their phrasing, not hers—but—if that was how they put it, she was obviously prepared to agree: it was naughty.
(Mary was questioned much later about the sandpit. She claimed that, not only had she never touched the children, but that she was playing behind a hut nearly all the time and saw nothing. “I’m not saying Norma did it. All . . . I’m not saying anybody did it, because I don’t want nothing to do with that. . . .” she said.)
It was Norma who was questioned first about Martin Brown during the trial, and the prosecution had already made it plain that, while fibers of Mary’s dress had been found on Martin’s clothing, there was nothing whatever to connect Norma with Martin’s death, apart from those macabre notes.
On that Saturday in May 1968 when Martin Brown was found dead he had been seen many times by a large number of people. The last time, by all accounts, not more than twenty minutes before he was found lying spreadeagled and dead on the floor of an empty room on the first floor of a derelict house two hundred yards down the street from his home. The room was up two flights of stairs. The boy looked as if untouched; no sign of violence, or struggle. . . .
(Martin’s mother, June Brown, said to me later that they had never been able to understand how it would have been possible for Mary, on her own, to get Martin up to that room and kill him. “When Martin was two,” she said, “we’d just moved into this house—we hadn’t been here more than a few days—he stumbled on top of the stairs and fell down. I tried to catch him, but I couldn’t. Ever since then he was dead frightened of stairs. He’d never go up any stairs by himself. That’s why I knew that someone had to take him up them stairs in that old house that day—he wouldn’t have went up of his own accord—I knew . . . And then you know, Martin, he was a big bairn,” she said. “He wasn’t the sort you could push around. He was so tall, like a six-year-old—we realized that again, when he was dead like, you know, because of the coffin. If it’s small bairns up to six, they can put the coffin in a car—but we had to get the hearse, because he was too big. He was so strong, was Martin, that when he played around with his dad—he could quite often push him off.
“A child’s instinct is to protect himself. Martin, he’d have kicked and screamed unless somebody sat on him to stop him. And never, never would he have ventured up them stairs . . .”)
Mr. Smith asked Norma about Martin almost immediately after he finished questioning her about the sandpit incident.
“. . . I want to ask now about the day little Martin Brown was found in one of the old houses.” Norma turned her head away and covered her face. “Now don’t get upset. Did you see little Martin Brown that day?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” Norma whispered after a moment.
“Was it before dinnertime or at dinnertime or after dinnertime?” Again Norma turned away. “Was it before or after?” Mr. Smith repeated.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Both.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Well, first one was in our back and once beside the workman’s—that’s twice.”
“Once in your back?”
“Yes.”
“Was that by the fence?”
“Yes.”
“And the next time was by the roadwork men. Was that in St Margaret’s Road?”
“Yes, but when I seen him the second time I was just by myself then, on the second time.”
“Now the second time you saw him is the time I want you to tell the ladies and gentlemen of the Jury about. What were the workmen doing in St Margaret’s Road, do you remember?”
“They were sitting down having a cup of tea.”
“Yes?”
“’Cos Mr. Hall asked what time Davy’s shop opens and I said ‘I don’t know,’ so I went along the street and it was still shut. . . .”
“. . . And did you go back and tell the workmen?”
“Yes. It was around about something to two.”
“Yes? In the afternoon?” She didn’t answer. “Was Martin still there when you went back to tell the workmen?”
“Oh no, he wasn’t there.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Not until the nighttime when he was found; when he got carried into the ambulance.”
“He was taken into the ambulance?”
“Yes.”
“You say it was something to two?”
“Yes, Davy’s shop doesn’t open until around ten past or half-past [two], around about there.”
“I want to ask you about something that happened a little later. Were you near your house when Mary’s mother wanted Mary to do something?”
“I was there.”
“About what time was this?”
“About something to three; it wasn’t three o’clock yet; it was still something to three.”
“What did Mary’s mother want Mary to do?”
“She wanted a loaf of bread and something for the dog and a small tin of pease pudding.”
“Did you go with Mary to the shop?”
“I went right there with her. Yes, I went up with her.”
“Is it far from your house? How long does it take you to walk there?”
“Just a couple of minutes—about two—depends how fast you walk.”
“Did it take you a couple of minutes on this day or longer or . . .”
“A good couple of minutes.”
“Were you served straightaway in the shop?”
“Yes.”
“Or I should say was Mary served straightaway?”
“A man was served and then it was her turn next. There wasn’t very many in the shop. . . .”
“. . . And then where did you go?”
“Me and her walked down the street and we got down the street ’cos she gave me the things to take home, and the corner of the street, she went down there.”
“Which road was that?” asked the Judge.
“I am going to find that out.” Mr. Smith turned back to Norma—“You and Mary separated?”
“Got separated.”
“Now which road was it that you were in when you separated?”
“Me going down Whitehouse Road and her going down Crosshill Road. . . . She gave me the things to take home.”
“And you were going to take the things home, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do when you had got these things? Did you take them to Mary’s home?”
“In her back was C. and D. (Mary’s sisters) and I remember giving them to one of them two. . . .”
“. . . And where did you go?”
“In the house, ’cos my mam was ironing. . . .”
“. . . In your house?” Mr. Smith repeated—emphasizing her reply.
“Yes.”
“. . . How long did you stay watching your mother doing the ironing—a long time?”
“Five minutes—no, it wasn’t a long time.”
“No, it wasn’t a long time?”
“No.”
“Did someone come along?”
“Mary Bell.”
“Where did you see Mary Bell, in your house or in a garden or where?”
“Well, there’s a hole in a fence.”
“Is that this back way down to St Margaret’s Road?”
“Yes.”
“You saw Mary there, did you?”
“Yes, ’cos she peeped her head through the hole.”
“Did she want something?”
“She wanted me to go down to Number 85.” (From Mary and Norma’s houses down this way to St Margaret’s Road would take less than a minute.)
“Do you remember what she said?”
“There’s been an accident.”
“Did she say anything more about it at that time?”
“Well, we went down. She took us down 85. Both o
f us went down to 85 and we went through the door and then we got out. There’s a hole in the toilet. We went through there and through—no, just through the hole and up the steps. . . .” Norma began once again to twist her body to and fro, almost as if trying to get out of her own skin.
“Did she say . . .” Mr. Smith paused and waited while Norma’s police escort handed her a handkerchief which in her peculiarly childish way she handed back, wet, after blowing her nose.
“Did Mary say something more to you about the accident,” Mr. Smith continued, “before you went through and out into the back and through the hole in the wall?”
“No, but she knew the name, ’cos she said Martin Black.”
“That is what I want you to tell the Court about.” (This was the sort of detail which most people had already become convinced Norma could not possibly have invented, and it was therefore of great significance for her defense.) “She had said something, had she, before you went through the hole?”
“Yes, she said, ‘It’s Martin Black who has had the accident.’ But I don’t know who she really meant.”
“Did you know any little boy called Martin Black?”
“I don’t know Martin Black.”
“But you knew Martin Brown, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that was him.”
“And you found out later that it was Martin Brown and not Martin Black, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“What about going into the back and through the hole in the wall? Who was leading the way?”
“Me, ’cos we went up the steps.”
“Did you say ‘me’ or ‘May’?”
“May, ’cos me and May went up these steps.”
“But who knew the way? Did you know the way?”
“Did I know the way in? No, Mary Bell.”
(“I felt sick and went to the window to get some air,” Walter Long had said in evidence: While standing with his head out of the window which gave onto St Margaret’s Road, he saw two girls coming down the street which at the time was empty. “I knew the smaller one,” he said. They stopped directly underneath the window, and the one he knew, Mary, said to the other one; “Shall we go up,” and the other one replied, “Howay then, let’s go up.”)
“Now there were some steps. What happened when you got to the steps?” (This was in the back of the house.)
“May said, ‘Away up’ and I said, ‘Away then.’”
“So you did go up?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Well, you could hear the workmen’s voices and some other voices.”
“Did any of them say anything to you two girls? Do you understand, Norma? You heard some voices of the workmen and some other voices. They were talking to each other, were they?”
“I could hear them talking.”
“Did they talk to you?”
“Told us, Mary and me, to get away.”
“They told you to go away?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it that told you? Was it one of the workmen or somebody else?”
“I can’t remember.”
“And so did you go away?”
“Yes.”
“How far into the house had you been, Norma?”
“Not the first steps, but going onto the second ones.”
“We heard the other day, you see, that there were some stone steps outside and some wooden steps inside. Which steps did you get onto?”
“On the wooden ones.”
“Did you ever get up to the room upstairs in Number 85?”
“I never went in.”
“Well now, when you were told to get away and you went out, did you go out straightaway in the same way, that is, through the hole in the wall and back through the downstairs flat?”
“Yes.”
“And out into the street?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened in the street?”
“Well, when we got out there was a crowd.” (This whole part of Norma’s testimony differed sharply from the evidence Mary was to give the next day but, as far as the emptiness of the street is concerned until they got back out there, it coincided with Walter Long’s evidence.)
“Did you talk to anybody in the crowd or did you go somewhere?”
“I was just in the crowd. I was not with Mary Bell then, not in the meantime.”
“Will you just tell the Court what happened when you got into the street and there was this crowd?”
“Well, they wanted to know whose little boy it was and Mary went up—but I never went up. She went up into the room and she named the boy.”
“What do you mean by ‘she went up into the room’?” Mr. Smith asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“She went upstairs where little Martin was.”
“How do you know she went up, Norma?”
“I saw her going through the wall and she told me ’cos those boys . . .” again Norma stopped and cried.
“You had come out into the street,” R. P. Smith went on after she had composed herself, rephrasing his question to help her clarify her reply, “because the workmen or somebody had told you to go away, and there was a crowd of people and somebody wanted to know whose little boy it was. That’s right, is it?”
“Workmen wanted to know.”
“And you said that Mary went off and went upstairs to the room. What did you see Mary do?”
“Just go through but I never went with her.”
“You saw her go through where you had just come out of?”
“Yes.”
“You and Mary were told to go away by the workmen, is that right?” asked Mr. Justice Cusack.
“Yes.”
“And you went away and arrived in the street, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Did Mary come with you?”
“Back in . . .”
“Did Mary come down with you,” he repeated, “and arrive in the street? Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“What happened, did she come down with you?”
“She came all the way with us.”
“She came all the way back with you?”
“Yes.”
“And then did she go back inside again?”
“Yes.”
“That is what I was not sure about,” the Judge said.
“Did you see Mary come out?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Did I see her come out? No.”
“Did you yourself go to Rita’s house that afternoon?”
(It was part of the prosecution’s contention that, after Martin Brown’s death, both girls had taunted Martin’s mother and aunt and had behaved as if the little boy’s death was “a big joke.”)
“I went to Rita Finlay’s house with Mary Bell,” Norma conceded.
“When was that?”
“After May came back again.”
“So she did come out and the two of you went to Rita’s house?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“May wanted to tell Rita that there had been an accident, ’cos she said there’s been an accident and Martin and something about blood all over something.” Again Mr. Smith stopped for a moment when Norma—as was to happen time and again—became very agitated at the mention of death and blood.
“That’s what Mary said, is it?” he finally continued.
“Yes.”
“Did she say that to Rita?”
“Yes.”
“Norma, I do not want to ask you anything else about that afternoon.”
Mary’s examination-in-chief began after the lunch recess on the sixth day of the trial. “My Lord,” said Harvey Robson, her defense counsel, “I now call Mary Bell.” The public and press galleries were very full, the only day when the atmosphere in the Court—unlike all the other days—was faintly tinged with that morbid fascination one associates with certain types of murder trials. As Norma the day before, Mary too was pale, her lack o
f color emphasized by the yellow cotton dress she wore which, she had told Policewoman Barbara O. the night before, had been made for her by her mother. That night too, Mary had asked Policewoman O. the meaning of the word “immature.” “The lawyer said Norma was more immature,” she’d said. “Would that mean that if I was the more intelligent I’d get all the blame?”
If it had been apparent all along that the attitude toward Mary of many of those in Court was very different from that toward Norma, this became even more obvious now when Mary took the stand. Norma’s obvious bewilderment evoked the protective instincts any adult feels toward a helpless child. Mary’s extraordinary self-possession, on the other hand, seemed to bar this reaction and resulted in many people—rather than showing or even feeling compassion—watching her with a horrified kind of curiosity.
“Mary,” said Mr. Justice Cusack, “I want to ask you some questions.” Throughout the trial whenever he addressed remarks to the children, he would alter his position in his chair so as to turn his whole body toward them, a gesture which underlined his determination to deal with them individually and personally, and which never failed to focus their entire attention on him. “Have you been taught about God?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Her voice was clear and distinctive, with the slightly singsong and melodious Northumberland inflection which meant that the “sir” of the always recurring “Yes, sir” of the next two days was two tones above the “Yes,” which gave it a particularly childlike sound.
“And have you been taught that at school?” asked the Judge.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you go to Church at all?”
“Sometimes, sir, to the Mission.”
“Sometimes to the Mission. Do you know what the Bible is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you take the Bible and promise before God to tell the truth, what do you think that means?”
“You must tell the truth, sir.”
“You must tell the truth. Very well, she may be sworn.”
The general public did not know, but the Court and several members of the press were aware that the Bible had a very special meaning in Mary’s life: Norma, the day before, had with great difficulty been questioned about “a book Mary used to like to look at.” But she had resisted all attempts at persuading her to pronounce the name of this book. The book in fact was the Bible. Billy Bell was to say later, “She had five of them, she was always reading the Bible.” But he did not know that what apparently mesmerized Mary in one of the Bibles was a list of names, dates, and addresses that had been glued in—the list of relatives who had died.