“Culpable homicide is murder, first, if the offender means to cause the death of the person killed; second, if the offender means to cause to the person killed any bodily injury and is reckless whether death ensues or not. If this case is one of murder, it is because the accused either meant to cause the death of MacKenzie or it is because the accused meant to cause to MacKenzie some bodily injury which he, the accused, knew was likely to cause death, and that he, the accused, was then reckless whether death ensued or not.”
It didn’t take a genius to hear the presumption within the judge’s words. What if, I wanted to shout, there was no intention at all? What if a man—MacKenzie—had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had come running at the sound of Kennedy’s shot at the sea creature, been in the line of fire as I pivoted to look at him and my useless hand had slipped?
“This case is very simple,” the judge said. “There is no doubt that MacKenzie is dead; there is no doubt he is dead as the result of a bullet wound; and there is no doubt that the bullet was fired from a gun in the hands of the man in the box. He says so himself. That, gentlemen, is prima facie, murder. It is necessary, of course, that a man should intend to kill another in order that he be found guilty of murder, but the only way that we can judge of the intentions of a man is by what he says or what he does. Therefore, if you believe that this man fired that gun at such a distance from MacKenzie that any man would have known that the reasonable consequences of so doing would be the killing of MacKenzie or the doing of grievous bodily harm to MacKenzie, the accused being reckless whether he killed him or not, then gentlemen, that is murder.”
I looked over at Cook who sat amongst the spectators grim-faced. He did not meet my eyes. There were half a dozen of them who could have raised the issue of the distance from the beach to where MacKenzie had fallen, but would they? Why would they, indeed, if they believed, due to Kennedy’s perjury and Batterbury’s inability to ask the right questions, that I had shot a man on purpose? They had liked MacKenzie, I had liked him: He was a good man.
I looked away from them and examined the wood panelling, the polished tables, the unyielding face of the Irish judge.
“So far as I can gather from the evidence,” he said, “this was either murder or an accident, and if it were an accident the man ought to be acquitted. If the gun did accidentally go off without any intention whatever of killing MacKenzie, unless you find the accused was so reckless in handling the gun that he did not act like a reasonable man, and unnecessarily exposed people around him to danger, then you should acquit him. If you think he did not intend to kill MacKenzie but was handling that gun in a grossly negligent manner, and it accidentally went off, and killed the deceased, then in that view you could bring in a verdict of manslaughter.
“Now, what is the evidence? It is not incumbent on the Crown to prove motive. If that were so most of us could be killed, and there would be no after-result for the person who killed us, as motive is a very difficult thing to prove. There is, however, the question of the two shots, which strongly suggests intention. One shot could be accidental but that two are so strains credibility. What the Crown has to prove is that the dead man was killed by the person in this box, and also prove, in addition to that, that the accused man intended to kill the dead man, and the Crown proved that by bringing evidence before you what the man said and did, and as I say, you judge what a man intends to do by what he does and by what he says and the law says in addition to that, every man must be presumed to intend the reasonable consequences of his act.”
I turned my gaze on Kennedy, who sat at the back of the courtroom with his arms folded over his chest. A faint hope had sprung within me that now, with so much at stake, he would stand up and tell the truth. “It was my fault, Your Honour: I fired the first shot, I was drunk. Macaulay wrested the gun away, MacKenzie shouted, Macaulay turned and the gun accidentally went off.” Was that too much to ask? Whatever happened to me, he would have to live with it. He was a Catholic, and Catholics believed in hell. Would he risk eternal damnation because of an unfounded dislike? Liam Kennedy raised his eyes to mine, and smirked.
“You were told what occurred in camp, the prior quarrel with another worker, the accusations concerning the dog, the threats to MacKenzie shortly before the killing with demonstration of ill feeling towards the dead man. You were told about the accused’s possession of the gun and his own admitted use of it. You were told that the first man to come along after the killing spoke to the accused and asked him what happened. ‘I’ve killed MacKenzie,’ the accused said. He admits to this still.
“You have, therefore, gentlemen, if you believe the evidence of these men who have testified, indications as to Macaulay’s motive. In addition to that you have the actions of the man himself. You have what happened. Not long after he threatened MacKenzie and the others had gone away to work, two shots were heard and that is what caused the death of MacKenzie.”
I lifted my face to the judge, willing him to look at me: Mine was the face of innocence, how could he not see! Others had read my face before him: My mother who had nurtured me, who knew the depths of despair to which I had sunk and from which I had raised myself; the Reverend Duncan, who had seen in me not a sad man with a bad arm, but a person with abilities that could be put to good use in the New World; and Peggy Moffat, who had loved me. Did not that investiture of love count in the balance?
“The suggestion of the defence is it was an accident. The Crown has brought home to the accused the killing, and has brought such a quantity of evidence pointing to a motive. There is the onus on the defence to clear up in your minds the case which the Crown has made out against the accused. If it fails in doing that, then the Crown has fulfilled its duty.
“You are at perfect liberty to disregard anything I said about the facts. You must take the law from me.”
Quod erat demonstrandum. It was over. The fact that I was innocent had had no bearing on this trial. Innocence was not in question. The preservation of a single point of view was: that men, particularly Irishmen, who had lived in the community much longer than I had, did not lie under oath.
Frank murmured to me as I was taken out, “Don’t worry, Alan, I’ll take good care of Nellie.”
It took the jury less than an hour to return a verdict of Guilty of Murder. The judge pronounced sentence. I was to be kept in close confinement until I should be taken to the place of execution and there hanged by my neck until dead may God have mercy on my soul.
You will already be considering the irony of my position: that I, a man who had once tried hard to take his own life, should now be determined to fight for it: But so it was. I had been on the verge of making something of myself, of having a wife and family and making a contribution—one that might be remembered (either through my botanical work or through my business)—to society. I had come up the hard way, through poverty and shame and ill luck, to the brink of success, only to be brought down by the ill will of a single man—Kennedy—who probably couldn’t have said, if you’d asked him, why he hated me.
The police cart waited in the dark and the pouring rain. I was manhandled from the courthouse, handcuffed and shackled; my limbs trembled and I had to be helped up into it. Batterbury stumbled after me, and grabbed my arm: “I’m of the opinion,” he huffed, “that the judge charged very strongly against you.”
We drove away, water splashed up from the horses’ hooves, the road wound in a ribbon of pale gravel along the side of the mountain. Down below, the waters of the inlet surged and fell: In the distance were the few and scattered lights of houses. I thought of my own country with its several great cities and the empty hills and glens between them. I might have been driving into the north of it. I might have left behind, and had waiting for me, in Cramond, my mother and my friends and the Reverend Duncan and Peggy Moffat, all of whom might have been thinking kindly of me. I might have been travelling into the unknown some other time and in some other way. As it was, there was no one on earth who c
ared for me at that moment and who knew of my terrible fate.
At length, after hours of this rough and cold travel, we arrived at the new jail in Victoria. We came here, Sandy Grey, in the early morning hours as dawn flowered over the woods and fields and lit the turrets of the castellated redbrick prison.
I put down my pencil. It is late: Dimming light slants through the high windows of the hall giving barely enough illumination for me to read over what I’ve written. There’s the tinkle of cups beside me as the orderly gathers up the day’s accumulation of china and debris. John remains seated, sullenly, at the table by the door, waiting for the escort to come and relieve him of his charges.
“All done?” The orderly holds out his hand and I place into it—with a prayer for its safekeeping and delivery—the notebook and pencil. My personal hopes go with it, along with my dream for Alan Macaulay’s peace of mind.
“Justice,” Karl says to me, “has to be seen to be done.” I blink in surprise. Karl couldn’t have spoken. He is slumped over, tied with bandages to his chair. With his head shaven so as to make it easier to attach electrodes to the skull, the striped uniform and emaciated frame, he looks like a victim of Stalin or of the Nazis.
(I append the poem mentioned above for your enjoyment.)
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
FIFTEEN
May 8 and following, 1942
“Do you know why you’re here, Sandy?”
I absorb the words of the man in the dark suit, but I’m thinking, I’m in the West Wing! It’s a room new to me, on the second floor, with a view of spring green fields and of the corral where Ron Signet’s little daughter liked to practise her riding. A corner of the rabbitry’s tin roof reflects a ringing morning sunlight.
Dr. Love, seated in the corner, clears his throat and I pull my gaze back to the real world. I point to the window. “Yes, sir, sorry, sir, it’s just been so long since I looked outside.” As one, the four bodies behind the long wooden table (they sit with their backs to the light) turn to examine the view. They swivel back, each equally grim-faced. Clearly, it’s not spring for them!
“Would you answer the question please, Sandy,” the woman says. She wears a navy suit that’s a little too tight for her. Her several chins disappear into the cream ruffles at the neck of a rayon blouse. She keeps steady eye contact. She’s the spitting image of my old piano teacher.
“I’m here to see about my release, ma’am.” There’s a squeak from Dr. Love’s chair. I make a quick emendation. “That is, my release from the East Wing to the West Wing.”
“Why were you taken to the East Wing, Sandy?” My interlocutor, this time, is a thin gentleman in a pinstriped suit, balding and with wire-rimmed glasses. He looks, to my eye, a little scruffier than he should. A sea-spray of dandruff on the shoulders. A used handkerchief poking from his breast pocket. He won’t hold my eyes. He stares down at the papers in front of him.
“I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit.” He glances up with glittering ice eyes and I fear I may have misjudged. I regret the missed “sir.” His nostrils flare with arrogance, his thin lips purse. He’ll be the lawyer.
“What would that ‘crime’ have been?” he says.
“The rabbits in the rabbitry were slaughtered. Sir. I was suspected of having done it.”
“You were suspected, why…?” He thinks he’s pinned me; he leans back, ready for a litany of excuses. How many times must he have heard the jailhouse plea of innocence? But I remember the lessons I’ve learned from The Storehouse. When the narrative matters, stick to the facts. Don’t elaborate.
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Do you know who did commit this act?”
“Only what I’m told, sir.”
“And, that would be…?”
“I was informed, by Mrs. Jones-Murray, that it was another inmate.”
“Who is this lady?”
“Mrs. Jones-Murray is a friend of mine. I believe it was she, along with Dr. Frank, who launched the investigation….”
“Yes,” says a high voice from the end of the table—it’s the man I’d been thinking of as “the senator”—“that’s been taken care of. Can we move on?”
He shifts his heavy rump and adjusts his broad shoulders. His noble large head, with its thick wings of white hair, is giving me its full attention. I attempt eye contact, then have to grip my stomach muscles to quench a laugh when he looks at me. The senator is walleyed!
There’s a noise from the door behind me and someone slips in. No, two people, by the sound of the footsteps and the twin scrapes of chairs. I throw a glance their way as they take their places along the east wall. I have to steel myself not to react. It’s Dr. Frank and Pete Cooper. Dr. Love coughs a warning.
“Sandy, I see you’ve taken on our cause célèbre.” The senator turns the pages of my Alan Macaulay notebook and riffles through the manuscript left behind when I was moved from the West Wing. There’s a murmur along the table and they’re all turning pages. I notice they’re supplied with a typescript and carbons. A pang goes through me at the waste of the typist’s labour: I would have liked first to have made my edits.
“Yes, sir. The case of Alan Macaulay. I decided to write it up.”
“Tell us about it, Sandy.” He leans back and eases his braces.
I give him a brief, succinct rundown. I emphasize that the project has kept my mind exercised and helped me to develop my writing skills. I finish with, “Dr. Frank was kind enough to allow me to examine some of the files.”
“There’s more than files here,” the lawyer says, as if he’s caught me in a lie. The ruffled throat woman looks interested.
“I’m a writer, sir. I am learning to write.”
“Then we’re dealing with fiction?”
“Not when it comes to the actual facts. I made up none of them; I simply tried to fill in the missing colouration and to give a sense of what kind of person Alan Macaulay was.”
“You’ve done all this while you’ve been in the East Wing?” the woman says. A stupid question, since she should know the answer from what she’s read, if she’s read it.
“No, ma’am. Most of it was completed earlier. I’ve only written the last section here—that is, there.” She raises her eyebrows; turns left-right to the others, then leans back, as if to say, “See!” Although I’m not sure what a “see!” would indicate.
“Be more exact, if you please, Grey,” the lawyer says.
“Most recently, while I’ve been kept in the East Wing, I wrote about the trial and conviction of Alan Macaulay.”
“But you had no access to the files! How can you claim what you’ve written to be factual?”
The hearing is at a turning point and everyone knows it. Is Sandy Grey a lunatic liar or does he tell the truth? The four interrogators lean forward. Dr. Love recrosses his legs. I smell tweed and soap and lace and lavender. I can feel the burning smirk on Pete Cooper’s face and sense the sweat beading on the loose skin of Dr. Frank’s forehead.
“I didn’t say I had access to the files. I said the material was factual. I had read the files before, in the West Wing. I remembered what was in them.” I can’t say, mustn’t, mustn’t
say, that I’ve had contact with Alan Macaulay directly.
“Is that so?” It’s the first man, our chairman as I’ve been thinking of him, imprisoned in his expensive and poorly tailored suiting. “How could you remember such detail? I’ve read the pages, they follow a series of arguments, they quote judge—what was it?”—he shuffles his carbons—“Judge Flanagan verbatim.”
I say a quick prayer to Karl, and to golden Heather, and to Georgina and the admiral, and to the memory of Tom. Even to the merciless God of my parents. “I have a photographic memory. Sir.”
“Really?” The lawyer is sceptical. He adjusts the wire-rimmed spectacles and makes a show of searching through my file. “I see nothing here to indicate a photographic memory.”
“It hasn’t come up, sir.”
“Hasn’t come up?” He’s just too polite to snort. Instead, he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and gives his bony nose a blow.
“Well, then,” the senator says, “let’s have a demonstration!”
They fall silent. There’s a tug of wills going on. Are they going to make me show and tell or throw me out as a fantasist? The lawyer draws a breath. I have to act. I dart forward and take a page from the space in front of the woman. It’s an index of names, birth dates, incidents and medical opinions with the heading, Eugenics Board. She must be a member of that, too. “Give me a moment and I’ll recite this back to you.”
I read. Swallows fling themselves past the windows. Skylarks begin to nest.
“All right.” I hand the paper back, and recite. I’m a phonograph, a camera, a parrot, a freak.
“That’s enough, Sandy,” the lawyer says. “I don’t think any further purpose is served by having you…”
“The man’s done what he said he could do!” the woman says. “Honestly, Donald, let’s give him that!”
“This isn’t a circus, Mira.”
“Then don’t you treat it as one!” They glare at each other: her bulging eyes to his gold rims. The chairman and senator sigh, and adjust clothing and pens.
What It Takes to Be Human Page 20