The Case Against Owen Williams

by Allan Donaldson

  Drost stopped and looked at McKiel.

  “Mr. Magistrate,” McKiel said, “we have photographs which were taken at the scene by the RCMP photographer.”

  From behind, one of Whidden’s assistants passed McKiel a heavy brown envelope. He extracted a pile of photographs and murmured something inaudible to the assistant, who made his way to the bench and placed one pile in front of Thurcott and another in front of Dorkin.

  Nothing in Dorkin’s experience had prepared him for what he saw. The first photograph had been taken near the feet of the body. The white dress was pushed up almost to the waist and except for a garter belt, stockings, and one shoe, the body below that was naked. One leg was lying straight out, the other slightly bent. The arms were spread a little to the sides. The chest seemed thrust upwards, the head thrown back. The mouth was open, forming an almost circular black hole, around which the lips seemed somehow to be rolling outwards from inside. The eyelids were partly open, but between them there was only an obscure darkness. The face was covered with patches of discolouration so that it would have been impossible for the uninitiated to know whether it was the face of a woman of eighteen or eighty or the face of a woman at all.

  The next photograph was a close-up of the face, making its hideousness more hideous still. The next one was of the extended leg, and Dorkin saw that what he had taken in the first photograph to be dirt of some kind on the stocking below the knee was in fact a place where the stocking had been torn away and the flesh beneath hideously lacerated.

  Dorkin went quickly through the rest of the photographs.There were three taken from further away designed to show the location of the body in the pit. There were photographs from each side showing the peculiar arch in the back, in one of which Dorkin noticed the second shoe lying beside the outstretched leg. There was one taken from the head looking down the body in which the face was thrown backward, pointing straight at the camera, as if blowing towards it its foul breath of decay.

  Dorkin turned the pictures face down on the table and pushed them to one side. He became aware that Drost was concluding his testimony, explaining in his flat policeman’s voice how he had summoned expert assistance from Fredericton.

  Drost descended, and his place was taken by Detective Staff Sergeant Grant, who had sat on many witness stands and did not carry a little notebook. Unlike Drost, he was not in dress uniform but in everyday brown. Even McKiel shifted his tone of voice a little in the direction of deference when talking to him.

  Grant crossed his legs casually, leaned one elbow on the arm of the chair, and continued the account of the investigation: the photographing of the body, the collecting of the nighttime debris around the pit, the failure to locate the missing undergarment, the futile attempt to pick up a trail with the dog, the futile attempts to find footprints or car tracks clear enough to take casts of for later identification.

  “Is it your opinion,” McKiel asked, “that Miss Coile met her death at the place where her body was found?”

  “We found no evidence to suggest otherwise. My own opinion is that she did. If someone had been carrying the body away from some other site, I presume that he—or they—would also have taken more pains to conceal it.”

  “Thank you,” McKiel said.

  Grant recrossed his legs, surveyed the courtroom, and resumed.

  “Once the investigation at the scene was well in hand and the staff was available, it seemed obvious that the first line of inquiry should be concerned with Private Williams, who was the last person known to have seen Miss Coile alive. I was naturally concerned that he might have heard of the discovery of her body and that this might have consequences which I wished to avert. Consequently, while the search was still continuing at Broad Street, I dispatched an officer to check the story which Private Williams had given to Corporal Drost the previous day.

  “As a result of this inquiry, we found a number of serious discrepancies in Private Williams’s account of his movements on the night of July 1. Witnesses will be called later to testify to this. As a result of what we had learned, in company with other officers, I went to interview Private Williams again about nine-thirty on the evening of July 5, when darkness had made further operations at Broad Street impossible.

  “I asked Private Williams if he were willing to describe again his movements on the night of July 1. He agreed, but he seemed very nervous. He then gave substantially the same account which he had given Corporal Drost, and he agreed to sign a statement which we had drawn up summarizing his testimony. When I pointed out that his account did not agree in the matter of times with what others had said of his movements that night, he seemed to become even more confused and said that he had been drinking and that he must have been mistaken in the account he had given of these times. He also asserted for the first time that he and Miss Coile had stopped to talk for a while outside the dance hall. I should make clear that Private Williams had been issued the customary warnings.

  “We then told him about the discovery of the body of Miss Coile and informed him that he was to be charged with her murder. I secured a warrant for his arrest, and he was remanded in custody to the county jail.

  “At the same time, I seized the uniform which Private Williams had been wearing the night of July 1 together with his other clothing and boots. These were sent to the forensic laboratory for testing for blood stains and so forth. I also seized Private Williams’s personal possessions, and I have submitted an itemized list of these. We did not find among them anything which we know to have belonged to the deceased. On the day following the arrival of the body at the mortuary, an autopsy was performed by Dr. Pierre Bourget.”

  Grant departed and Dr. Bourget ascended the witness stand. He was a man in his middle fifties, lightly built with a long Gallic face and immaculately dressed in a grey suit. His expression, his manner in general, created an impression of detached, sardonic melancholy. Like Grant, he sat his chair with negligent ease. He summarized for McKiel his qualifications as an expert witness and began.

  “On Thursday, July 6, I conducted an autopsy on the body of a young woman which I was told was that of Miss Sarah Coile of Hannigan Road, George County. I was told that she was sixteen years old. She was five feet six in height, and she weighed one hundred and fifty pounds at that time. She may have weighed more earlier. At the time of her death, she appeared to have been in good health. However, she was well into the second month of pregnancy.”

  There was a rustle of whispering in the court, and Bourget waited imperturbably for it to subside.

  “At the time of my examination, I would say that the subject had been dead four or five days. I understand that she was seen alive around eleven o’clock on Saturday evening, July 1, and I would say that death must have occurred within twenty-four hours of that time. Because of the lapse of time and the hot temperatures to which the body was exposed before it was discovered, it is impossible to be more accurate than that. An examination of the contents of the stomach suggests that the subject had not eaten anything substantial within four hours of her death. Blood tests revealed the presence of alcohol in the blood in a concentration of .09, but the accuracy of that measurement might be open to question in the circumstances. If this were accurate, it would be enough to cause some impairment of physical function and no doubt of judgement, but would not result in what could be called real drunkenness.

  “The subject had been the victim of a succession of acts of violence. The cause of death was unquestionably suffocation, apparently by having a cloth, perhaps an article of clothing, stuffed into the mouth and held over the nose. Small fibres were found in the subject’s teeth, which under microscopic examination proved to be rayon. In addition, the face and upper body of the subject had been battered by a blunt object of some kind—a club, a piece of metal, a stone perhaps. There were fractures of the left cheekbone and the front of the skull, and there were thirteen contusions on the upper body and arms. In view of the absence of bleeding, it would seem that these injur
ies were inflicted after death. In addition, the right ankle of the subject had been gnawed through almost to the bone by some scavenging animal. This had also clearly happened after death.

  “Examination also revealed the presence of semen in the vaginal tract, indicating that an act of sexual intercourse had taken place sometime within a few hours before death although it could conceivably have been afterwards. There were no signs of violence in the genital area, but minor abrasions there, or elsewhere, might have been obscured by the deterioration of tissues after death.

  “In summary, the probable sequence of events was that the victim had sexual intercourse at some point not long before her death. She was then suffocated, at some time not later than twenty-four hours after she was last seen. After death had occurred, she was subjected to a violent battering with some kind of blunt object.

  “Naturally the post-mortem examination revealed other things about the subject of a purely medical kind, and I have confined myself to those which seemed relevant to this hearing.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Bourget,” McKiel said. “A few supplementary questions, if you would be so kind. Did you find any evidence that the victim had struggled against her suffocation? Or do you think that she was perhaps already unconscious?”

  “There was no sign of a struggle—no broken fingernails, for example, no evidence of hair or skin under the fingernails, nothing of that kind at all. No evidence of blows other than those inflicted after death. However, it is possible that the victim had been struck a blow which had been sufficient to stun her before she was killed. In combination with the alcohol she had ingested, this might have left her incapable of defending herself before she lost consciousness completely.”

  “Did you see any evidence that the body had been moved from some other location?”

  “There were no abrasions that would have been consistent with the body’s having been dragged. Nor any tearing of her clothing. If she had been carried, of course, none of these signs would have been left.”

  “In other words, all of the evidence which you found was consistent with the victim’s having been murdered where the body was found?”

  “Yes, but it would not rule out the body’s having been moved provided it hadn’t been dragged. By car, for example.”

  “In your opinion,” McKiel asked, “would the victim have bled much as a result of the injuries that were inflicted?”

  “No,” Bourget said. “I think that there would have been virtually no bleeding.”

  “In other words, the murderer would not likely have had blood-stains on his clothing as a result of his attack.”

  “Probably not.”

  “You testified that the victim was pregnant,” McKiel said. “Was that far enough advanced that the victim would inevitably have been aware of it?”

  “Nothing, I suppose, is inevitable,” Bourget said. “But if she did not know it, she must have been singularly ill-informed on the subject.”

  There was a titter of laughter in the court, which was silenced by Thurcott, who so far had listened without comment to the testimony.

  “The injuries to the ankle,” he now asked. “What do you think caused them?”

  “Some small animal, I should think, such as a dog or a fox,” Bourget replied, and then allowed himself a small, macabre joke. “Not, I feel sure, by the murderer himself. And a bear would have done more damage and would probably have dragged the body, which there was no sign of, as I have said.”

  “I see,” Thurcott said. “Horrible.”

  “Quite so,” Bourget said. “The surprising thing is that not more damage was done given the time the body lay exposed.”

  “And that it was not found by some person in that time,” Thurcott said.

  “Perhaps,” Bourget said. “I am not familiar with the locality.”

  “Members of your laboratory also conducted an examination of articles of clothing seized from Private Williams,” McKiel said. “Could you give us the results of that examination?”

  “On July 6, Staff Sergeant Grant turned over to the laboratory a Canadian Army battle dress uniform, three shirts, two neckties, two undershirts, three pairs of shorts, five pairs of socks, four handkerchiefs, and a pair of boots, which I was told were the property of Private Owen Williams. All of these articles were tested for blood stains, and none were found. We also examined the boots for blood stains or other human matter and found nothing. We also examined the traces of earth on the boots, but found nothing that could be of any use in determining whether the wearer had been in the gravel pit where the body was found.”

  “The boots, of course, could have been cleaned,” McKiel said. “And even if these were the clothes worn by the murderer, the absence of bloodstains would not be surprising.”

  “That is so.”

  “The only material found on the clothing that might be of some relevance were faint traces of semen on the inner seam of the fly of the trousers,” Bourget continued. “But how long exactly these had been there, there was no way of knowing since the trousers had been recently pressed.”

  “Nor,” Bourget added, “could one know by what means the stains came to be there.”

  “They could be consistent,” McKiel said, “with someone’s engaging in an act of sexual intercourse without taking off his clothes, as might happen if the act were taking place in a semi-public place.”

  “Of course,” Bourget said. “But there could be other explanations.”

  “I understand that,” McKiel said. “I was merely suggesting this as a possible explanation. Not everyone goes around, after all, with dried semen on their trousers.”

  Bourget glanced at Williams with his sad, sardonic eyes and made no comment.

  “Thank you, Dr. Bourget,” McKiel said. “Your evidence has been most useful. And, as always, presented with exemplary brevity and lucidity.”

  Bourget inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment.

  “I have no further questions,” McKiel said.

  Thurcott turned to Dorkin.

  “Lieutenant Dorkin, you are at liberty to ask any questions you may have.”

  “Thank you,” Dorkin said. “I have no questions.”

  Thurcott studied his pocket watch and considered.

  “It is nearly twelve o’clock,” he said. “If it is agreeable to every-one, I think we should adjourn for lunch and recommence promptly at two o’clock.”

  Even as Thurcott was speaking, there was a clatter of chairs as the newspapermen began edging their way out to get copy filed. Thurcott glanced at them with distaste, rose and departed, and the courtroom became an uproar of voices.

  At their table, Whidden’s entourage were packing their brief-cases, and as Dorkin rose to leave, he became aware that he had be-come the object of Whidden’s attention. Ignoring Dorkin’s aware-ness of him, he continued his study, then came across and held out his hand.

  “Dorkin,” he said, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Dorkin. We’ve met somewhere before.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dorkin said. “You spoke at the law school three or four years ago. I was introduced to you afterwards.”

  “That’s right,” Whidden said. “Saint John boy, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Father was a butcher, was he not?”

  The tone of voice was bland, innocent of malice, the put-down adroit. Dorkin was ashamed to feel the flush that overspread his face.

  “No,” he said. “He’s a tailor.”

  “Yes, yes,” Whidden said. “Had a little shop in one of those streets down near Market Square.”

  “Yes,” Dorkin said. “He still does.”

  “Good,” Whidden said. “Good. Ken Meade sent you up to keep an eye on things here, did he?”

  “Yes,” Dorkin said.

  Whidden chuckled.

  “Good old Ken,” he said. “How is he?”

  “Fine, I believe.”

  “Good,” Whidden said. “That’s good. Yes. Well
, give him my regards when you next see him.”

  He chuckled again to himself and strolled back to join McKiel. He murmured something to McKiel, and McKiel paused in the packing of his briefcase and glanced up at Dorkin, who was still standing where Whidden had left him, feeling a fool and filled with an impotent and ancient rage.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Back at the armoury, Dorkin went along the landing to the bath-room, stripped to the waist, and ran water, still cold, into the basin. Then, looking at his face in the mirror, he experienced an unsettling moment of dissociation. The face that looked back at him seemed suddenly unfamiliar—not the face that he had accustomed himself to see and that he assumed that others saw, but a different face, somehow lesser, somehow ridiculous, like the shameful faces foisted upon the ego by adolescence.

  Although he did not look it, Bernard Dorkin was Jewish. He had dark-blond hair, blue eyes, broad features, so that if he looked anything definitive, he looked Slavic, as in part no doubt he was. Moreover, his father was a socialist and a militant atheist, and Dorkin had been in a synagogue only once in his life. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the world he remained intransmutably Jewish, and, if only because of that, he was Jewish in his own eyes as well. He would have preferred not to have been Jewish in anyone’s eyes, not because of any sense of shame or inferiority, but simply because it involved him in difficulties (such as his brush with Whidden) that got in the way of what he wanted to do with himself.

  His father had been born in the Ukraine, the son of a village tailor, and at the age of thirteen he had already been working with his father for three years and might well have lived out his life as a village tailor if it had not been for a bizarre accident. One morning, just before dawn, his father, Dorkin’s grandfather, a pious man, had gone out alone to a remote millpond, perhaps for some private act of purification, and when he had not returned three hours later, a search was begun from the village. Somehow, in some way no one was ever to know, he had been caught in the millwheel. When they found him, his body had been beaten to a pulp, and Dorkin’s father had decided that whoever it was who ruled the world, it was not the God of Israel, nor any other god an honest man would want anything to do with.