Minor Corruption

by Don Gutteridge

  “You feel I went too far in suggesting Mullins and Clift were possible rapists?”

  “My God, Marc, you don’t really believe that either of them did it, do you? Mullins has the freckled face of a youngster, one that melted the jury’s heart instantly.”

  “What I think in that regard is irrelevant, is it not?” Marc replied. “You have indeed taught me well. My task is to defend your innocent uncle against this ghastly charge. Surely I am free to use all the instruments allowed me by the court and our legal tradition? To do less would be to break my oath as a barrister.”

  “That’s true, I know. But step back a moment and look at the situation. If you get an acquittal by haranguing and insinuating malfeasance against ordinary citizens just doing their civic duty, what good will it do us? We’ll be seen in the same light as the Family Compact, who manipulate and manoeuvre the law for their own benefit, not society’s. It will be a Phyrrhic victory.”

  “But your uncle’s life is at stake, Robert. You saw him in the dock today. He couldn’t stand without the aid of a bailiff. How long would he last in prison? A week? We’re dealing here with a question of life and death.”

  “I know. And it is near to destroying me, old friend. But I can’t forget what my father taught me. None of us is above the law, and the law itself must be preserved, whatever the human cost.”

  But how am I to do that, Marc sighed, and save Uncle Seamus?

  TWELVE

  Marc left chambers without resolving the matter between him and Robert, and returned to the Court House, determined to do his duty. In the courtroom, the Crown’s eye-witness was, at last, ready to testify. With several hundred eyes upon him, expectant and judging, Jake Broom began to sweat, even as he was being sworn in. While stocky and heavy-jawed, Broom resembled an overgrown kid more than he did a twenty-year-old. His large round eyes gazed at the world with unflinching innocence, matching his beardless chin and wispy brown hair.

  Neville Cambridge began gently. “Just tell us in your own words what happened on August the third, starting from the moment you left the office at twelve-fifty or thereabouts.”

  Broom had a strong, deep voice, but appeared to be holding it in check, as if it might overwhelm him or the courtroom. “Yes, sir. A few minutes after Mr. Whittle and Burton left to repair the sluice and Joe went out fer a smoke, I finished my lunch. I looked up at the clock. It said ten minutes to one. I told Sol I thought I ought to go and take a look at Ginger, our horse that had the heaves. He said, ‘Take yer time.’ I went back through the mill, through the flour room where we’d been baggin’ flour after cleanin’ up the mornin’ spill, and out through the back door. There’s a direct path to the barn from there. I went into the barn through the door on the southwest corner and walked along the stalls till I came to Ginger.”

  “Your sick horse?”

  “Yes. Beside her stall was Blackie, the little pony that Betsy often come out to see.”

  “But you yourself did not see Betsy turn north towards the barn that day?”

  “No. I couldn’t see outside the office window. I figured she’d gone straight to Spadina.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Ginger was doin’ fine. I gave her a good strokin’, then fer some reason I can’t remember I decided to stretch my legs by walkin’ back to the mill the long way – out the back door and around the barn. I got to the back doors. Both of ‘em were open. I stood there fer a second, just enjoyin’ the warm sun, when I heard a rustlin’ noise. I knew the stall facin’ the doors some ways away was empty, so I figured it might be a rat. So I turned and had a look.”

  Jake paused and took several gulping breaths.

  “Take your time, young man. We know how hard this must be for you.”

  “I’m all right, sir, I can do this.”

  “Good lad.”

  “What I saw first was just a tangle of arms and legs and bare skin.”

  At this, the jurors and everyone in the room except the defendant eased forward.

  “I blinked, and then I saw it was a man on top of a girl, doin’ . . . doin’ – ”

  “They were engaged in sexual union?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Embarrassing as it may be, Mr. Broom, I want you to tell the court exactly what you observed. Leave nothing out.”

  Broom wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I seen a man’s buttocks goin’ up and down.”

  A woman in the galleries cried out involuntarily. The judge glowered.

  “Did you get an impression of this man? His size? His age? His colouring?”

  “I thought he couldn’t be young. The legs seemed a bit scrawny. The skin, what I could see of it, looked quite pale.”

  “Were the arms tanned?”

  “I couldn’t really see them too good, sir.”

  “Tall or short?”

  “I’m sure he was short. Certainly not tall.”

  “He was naked, then? Did you see his clothes anywhere about?”

  “He hadn’t a stitch on that I could see. But his clothes must’ve been lyin’ in the straw, ‘cause I didn’t see any.”

  “In your statement to the police, you described another prominent feature of the rapist’s anatomy.”

  Marc stirred, but did not rise to the bait.

  “I did. As the head bobbed up and down, I couldn’t see the face, but all around the head was a great bush of whitish-grey hair, big as a halo.”

  All eyes followed Broom’s up to the gentleman in the dock – elderly and short, with a huge spray of whitish-grey hair.

  “Do you know anyone fitting the description you’ve just given us?”

  “I do. And I thought so at the time. I was certain it could only be Mr. Seamus Baldwin.”

  Following as it did the communal gaze up at the dock, this bombshell was close to a dud, but it seemed to seal the old man’s fate nonetheless.

  “Do you know anyone else in your neighbourhood who resembles Seamus Baldwin?”

  “No, sir. I’ve never seen hair like that on such a little fella.”

  “And you had seen Mr. Baldwin before August the third?”

  “All through July, sir. He come to angle fer trout up by the weir or down in the ravine.”

  “Let us turn our attention to the girl. Did you immediately recognize her?”

  Broom blushed and sweated some more. “No, sir, all I could see – ”

  “How far away were you, by the way?”

  “It’s about twenty-five feet from the doorway to the facin’ stall.”

  “And there was plenty of light?”

  “With the doors open on a sunny day, I could see easily. And the sun comes through the cracks in the barn-board and a high window.”

  “But the stall itself was in shadow?”

  “With some sprinkles of sunlight.”

  “Very good. Now, please tell us about the girl you saw.”

  “All I could see was her legs, kinda wavin’ in the air. But they looked . . . they looked awful tiny.”

  “She was hidden behind the rapist?”

  “And the straw.”

  “When did you suspect it was Betsy Thurgood? Did she cry out?”

  Broom’s heavy frame drooped. “No, sir. That was the queerest thing. All I heard was little gaspin’ sounds.”

  “But you concluded at some point that it was Betsy?”

  “Yes. I saw her blue gingham dress draped over the wall of the stall. And in the straw was the wicker basket she brought the lunch in and a bit of her yellow apron showin’ through – the clothes she had on when she first come into the office.”

  Cambridge paused and appeared to be checking his notes. Behind and around him, not a limb stirred.

  “Tell the court, Mr. Broom, what you did after recognizing the pair and realizing you had stumbled across an older man having illicit intercourse with a fifteen-year-old female.”

  “I know what I shoulda done, but I didn’t. I should’ve run over to the stall shoutin’ my lungs out.
It was too late to save Betsy from what’d already happened, but I could’ve caught the – the – ”

  “Culprit?”

  “Yes. But to my shame I didn’t. I decided to run fer help. I knew he hadn’t seen me, so I reckoned there’d be time to run to the office and get Mr. Whittle.”

  “But he was at the weir with Burton Thurgood?”

  “In my panic I’d forgot that. I got there and the room was empty. Sol was in the mill where it was too noisy to call to him. I looked down towards the ravine but didn’t see Joe. I turned and raced back to the barn. This time I thought I’d save Betsy myself. But when I got back there they were gone. The stall was empty. I could see where the straw’d been mussed up, but that was all.”

  “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Broom. You are a very young man, you had a moment of panic, but you did return determined to do your duty, to put yourself in danger.”

  “Are you summing up, Mr. Cambridge?” the judge said with an ironic tilt of an eyebrow.

  “No, Milord.” Cambridge turned back to the witness. “Did you now go looking for Mr. Whittle at the weir?”

  Broom hung his large head again. “No, sir. I should have. But I got to thinkin’ that Mr. Whittle might not believe me. What if it wasn’t Mr. Baldwin, even though I was certain it was? I’d be accusin’ a prominent gentleman with no proof, only my say so.”

  “And you assumed, I’m sure, that the young lady herself would make a complaint.”

  “And when she did, I could help her prove her claim, couldn’t I?” Broom said eagerly.

  Marc was about to interrupt this cozy, mutually satisfying dialogue, but he wasn’t quick enough: Cambridge got in one last jab.

  “And you had no way of knowing, as we now do, that the gentleman in question had been lurking in a ravine nearby with a hidden route to that stall, did you?”

  “Milord!”

  “Mr. Cambridge, you’re summing up again. This is your last warning.”

  Cambridge apologized without really doing so, then looked back at Broom.

  “No, sir. I didn’t know he’d been around that day.”

  “Still, you had a duty to report a crime.”

  “I know I did. And on my way home that afternoon, I made up my mind to tell it all to Mr. Whittle the next mornin’.”

  “And why did you not have an opportunity to do so?”

  “There was a letter waitin’ fer me. It said my father was dyin’ and the family needed me – in Port Talbot. I left at five o’clock the next mornin’.”

  “And you did not return here until October the fifteenth?”

  “That’s correct. Mr. Whittle, he took me back on at the mill, and I soon heard all about Betsy losin’ the babe and dyin’. I was very angry. I knew what had caused that babe and led to her dyin’. I went straight away to the police.”

  “You’ve been a brave witness, young man. Thank you. Now I believe defense counsel may have one or two questions for you.” Cambridge smiled disingenuously at Marc as if to say, I really haven’t left you much more.

  Marc did not begin gently. “Mr. Broom you assumed what you saw was an illicit sexual encounter. But was it? You said you heard no scream or cry for help, is that right?”

  “No. She didn’t cry out.” Broom looked thoroughly frightened, like an overweight rabbit staring into the ferret’s eyes.

  “Did you not think that strange? A girl getting raped and giving out nothing but little gasps? Did the man have his hand over her mouth?”

  “No – no, sir. They were both in the straw, holdin’ him up.”

  “You described her legs as waving in the air. Did you mean to say she was thrashing about?”

  “Yes . . . I mean, no. She wasn’t thrashin’ at all.”

  “I see. Strange behaviour, wouldn’t you say, if this was fifteen-year-old Betsy?”

  “It was. I saw her dress and the basket and the apron.”

  “A gingham dress, yes. Tell me, do other young ladies in your township wear gingham?”

  “It was blue gingham.”

  “My questions still stands.”

  Broom dabbed hopelessly at his sweating brow with his right sleeve. “Yeah. Lots of girls wear gingham.”

  “And you saw only a scrap of yellow cloth in the straw and assumed it was part of an apron?”

  “Well, it looked like – ”

  “And it was an ordinary wicker basket that you observed from a distance of twenty-five feet, lying half-buried in the straw?”

  “She brung her pa’s lunch in it!”

  “I submit, sir, that you made a quick, hasty and panic-stricken guess that you were looking at Betsy Thurgood in that stall.”

  “Who else could it’ve been?”

  “You said in your statement that those rear barn doors are always open?”

  “To let in the breeze.”

  “And below the barn is a screen of trees along the shore of the creek?”

  “Y – yes.”

  “Could not anyone, local or stranger, have been walking along the creek with his lady love and a picnic basket, sneaked up to the barn unobserved, and made ordinary, if unorthodox, love in the straw of an empty stall? A lovemaking without cries for help or any sort of thrashing resistance?”

  Broom hung his head. Reluctantly, because an answer was expected, he mumbled, “I guess so.” Then he brightened and said, “But nobody in the area has big grey hair!”

  “Ah, let’s have a look at that, shall we? You claim the so-called attacker was older, short, and had a shock of whitish-grey hair. Are old people the only ones with scrawny legs?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “But Mr. Clift, for example, is a tall and very slim man in his twenties. I’ll bet his legs might look scrawny from a distance of twenty-five feet?”

  One of the jurors tittered. They were all riveted to this critical dialogue.

  “But he’s near bald!”

  “Which brings us to this business of the hair, doesn’t it? You said the stall itself was in shadow except for what you called ‘sprinkles’ of sunlight. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a barn, the sun comes slanting through cracks in the barn-board, doesn’t it? And all sorts of strange beams and pools of light result, don’t they?”

  “I guess so.” Broom was looking more and more bewildered. What had seemed so straightforward to his mind was being twisted and made to look otherwise. More and more his replies seemed to be coming from an automaton.

  “Are you certain, then, that you were not actually seeing a halo effect around the man’s head? The light dazzling off his hair and making it look large and whitish, whatever colour and however bushy it might have been?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I swear.”

  “Or consider this, sir. You men all work in the mill. You grind grist into flour and you put the flour into bags and barrels. Do you not in the course of your work become covered in wheat chaff and flour?”

  “Of course we do. I don’t see – ”

  “Would not anyone, whatever colour their hair, who worked in that mill look as if he had a spray of whitish hair, especially in a dark stall sprinkled with confusing halos of light?”

  Cambridge was on his tiptoes. “Milord. Mr. Edwards is putting words into the witness’s mouth and then dashing off on flights of fancy.”

  “Try to restrain yourself, Mr. Edwards.”

  “Yes, Milord,” he said humbly, but he had already milked his flight of fancy. “Now I wish to turn to a more serious aspect of your testimony, Mr. Broom.”

  The witness flinched, and Marc held his gaze with as fierce as stare as he could muster. He could feel the ghost of his mentor, Doubtful Dick Dougherty, hovering near. “If this was a rape, as you claim, why did you turn and run away?”

  Jake Broom fought back tears as he said, “I told Mr. Cambridge. I figured it best to get help. I reckoned they’d still be in the office a while yet.”

  “I suggest, sir, that you were e
ither a despicable coward or that what you saw was not rape but two strangers having intercourse in a manner that shocked and disgusted you!”

  “It wasn’t like that! It wasn’t!”

  “You staggered back to the office, which you knew perfectly well was empty, and sat there trying to hold your lunch down. You did not tell Mr. Whittle because there was nothing to tell!” Marc glared at Broom. “You never went back to that stall, did you?”

  “Milord, counsel is harrowing the witness.”

  “Mr. Edwards, Mr. Broom is not a hostile witness. Let him answer one question at a time, and please refrain from embroidering.”

  “I did go back there,” Broom mumbled. “And I was ashamed I didn’t try to help poor Betsy.” Tears welled up and filled both large, innocent eyes. “When I heard she died like she did, I almost died myself. It was her, I know it!”

  Marc stood back. Something was amiss here. A truant thought suddenly entered his head. He peered down as if consulting his notes. Broom was trying desperately not to sob.

  “Mr. Broom do you have a reputation for making up stories?”

  Broom was stunned. Even his quiet weeping was stinted. “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “Remember, sir, you are under oath.”

  “Milord, this is highly irregular. Counsel is fishing.”

  “It speaks to the witness’s credibility,” the judge said. “Mr. Edwards, I’m giving you some latitude with this critical witness, but I do have boundaries. Answer the question as best you can, Mr. Broom.”

  Broom said almost inaudibly, “I’ve always liked to make up stories. I even write them down.”

  “Very much like Betsy Thurgood?”

  A moment of pure terror flashed through Broom’s eyes, then vanished. “When I first come to the township, I got a job at Whittle’s mill. Mr. Whittle asked me if I was related to Jimmy Broom, a notorious drunk and reprobate. I told him no.”