‘It’s my difficulty.’
‘Quite so. Quite so. As to the, ah, major assault, would you wish to plead provocation?’
‘It was a disagreement.’
‘About what, might I ask? Your wife’s, ah, fidelity, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘We would need to be precise if pursuing this line, Mr Staddon. Perhaps would scarcely be adequate.’
‘I’d prefer to deny the charge without making counter-accusations.’
‘A noble sentiment, but imprudent, if you’ll permit me to say so. Given the admission of at least one assault—’
‘Mr Fellows-Smith!’ I interrupted. ‘When is this case likely to be heard?’
‘When? Well, that’s hard to say. Martindale’s no hare. More of a tortoise, if the truth be told. A date before Easter is unlikely. So, May or June would seem the earliest—’
‘Very well! These are my instructions. Inform my wife’s solicitors that the action will be contested. Then find a suitable barrister to represent me.’
A silence fell. He appeared to expect more. At last he said: ‘Nothing else, Mr Staddon?’
‘Not at this stage. I’m grateful for your advice. And now I’ll bid you good morning.’
May or June. What did I care about the events of two such distant months? What could I care when the trial opening in three days’ time would bring an end to matters of far greater moment than the survival of my marriage? I walked slowly back towards Frederick’s Place, oblivious to the steady rain, alone amidst the bustling, umbrellaed throng. Look where I might, the clouds showed no sign of breaking.
Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett’s chambers in Middle Temple Lane that afternoon seemed overhung with gloom. Sir Henry smiled as often and expressed as much optimism as before, but something had gone out of him, some breath of hearty combat that was vital to his success. At those moments when he thought nobody was looking at him, he sagged visibly, like a balloon losing air, and cast weary glances at the dusk settling on the courtyard beyond his window. Where still, without remorse, it rained. His strategy was in fact unaltered. Forensic minutiae were to be set aside in an unashamed appeal to the jurors’ hearts. Consuela’s own testimony would be the crux and essence of the case. As for my contention that Victor had had prior notice of the ladies’ arrival for tea on 9 September, Sir Henry was unimpressed. Without evidence to back it up, such a suggestion would create just the atmosphere of antagonism he would be at pains to avoid.
He and Windrush had visited Consuela earlier in the day; both were satisfied that she was well prepared for the ordeal that lay ahead. Yet clearly some aspect of their interview with her had perturbed them. There was an embarrassment in their account of it, an awkwardness which was only explained as our meeting drew towards a close.
‘The trial will be well attended,’ said Sir Henry, shuffling with his papers. ‘All-night queuing for places in the public gallery, I shouldn’t wonder. I have a small number of tickets for seats in the well of the court, however. In normal circumstances, Mr Staddon, you’d be welcome to one.’
‘But there’s a problem,’ put in Windrush. ‘Mrs Caswell anticipated you might wish to attend. This morning she instructed us to take all possible steps to prevent you doing so.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sir Henry, ‘but my client’s state of mind must be my prime concern. For that reason, Mr Staddon, and for no other, I would urge you to comply with her request.’ Seeing the look of amazement on my face, he continued: ‘As I’ve explained, her testimony will be all-important. We cannot allow anything to prejudice it. Her comments left me in no doubt that your presence in court would have a deleterious effect on her behaviour and hence on the impression she creates. Of course, nobody can prevent you queuing for a seat in the public gallery, but if, as I firmly believe, you have Mrs Caswell’s best interests at heart, you will, I hope—’
‘Stay away?’ I looked at Sir Henry and Windrush in turn, but both avoided my eye. This was a distasteful duty for them and in their silence they appealed to me to make it as easy for them as possible. And what alternative, after all, did they or I have but to do as we were bid? To the end, and perhaps beyond it, Consuela would hold me to the evasion I had chosen to inflict upon her. ‘Very well,’ I murmured.
‘Of course,’ said Sir Henry, ‘if there is a friend – a representative, so to speak – who could make use of your ticket …’
‘Yes. I’ll take it if I may. You have my word I shan’t use it myself.’
Sir Henry rose, rounded his desk and pressed a small envelope into my hand. It had not been sealed and, as he stood over me, I raised the flap and slid the ticket out far enough to read. It was printed on yellow card, serial-numbered and headed in stark capitals: REX v CASWELL. Sir Henry touched my shoulder. ‘I shall do my best for her, Mr Staddon,’ he said. ‘My very best.’
I looked up at him and wanted for a moment to ask: ‘Will that be good enough?’ But something in his expression warned me not to. Something in the crumpled weariness of his face signalled more clearly than he would wish that his answer would not be what either of us wanted to hear.
My possessions reached Hyde Park Gardens Mews on Saturday morning promptly and intact. I could not summon the heart or the energy for systematic unpacking and it was in a dispiriting chaos of tea-chests and suitcases that Imry found me when he called by late that afternoon. I was glad to see him on more counts than he could have imagined, but of his enquiries about my interview with Fellows-Smith I made short shrift. Instead, I ushered him into the only armchair that the sitting-room boasted, poured him a generous glass of scotch, perched on an up-ended portmanteau with a glass of my own and told him what, if my stock of favours had not yet been exhausted, I earnestly wanted him to do.
‘Attend the trial? Surely you’ll be there yourself.’
‘No. She’s expressly forbidden it.’
‘But … why?’
‘She doesn’t want to see me, even across a crowded courtroom.’
‘Does she know you’re paying Sir Henry’s fees?’
‘No. And I don’t want her to know. It’s the least I owe her. That and obedience to her wishes, however much I might like to defy them.’
‘Well, I’ll go, of course, if you want me to. But what will my presence achieve? I’ll just be another onlooker.’
‘An onlooker I can trust, Imry, that’s the point. The newspapers are unreliable. Sir Henry will tell me whatever he thinks I want to hear. And Windrush will follow his lead. For the truth about how it’s going – good or bad – I’ll have to look to you.’
‘Very well, then. I’ll attend.’
‘This will spare you a scrimmage at the entrance.’ I handed him the ticket. ‘It looks like it could be for the grandstand at Lord’s, doesn’t it? I suppose, in some respects, a trial for murder is a sporting event. But it’s a cruel one, more like bear-baiting than cricket. And there’s a great deal at stake.’ I drained my glass. ‘More, I sometimes think, than I yet know.’
Sunday 13 January 1924 dawned blood-red over London. I and most other residents of the city woke to a sky more apocalyptically coloured than any we could ever recall. This was more than a shepherd’s warning. This was a phenomenon that could not be ignored. A harbinger of tempests, according to my milkman. A precursor of national disaster, if my newsagent was to be believed. (He took the imminent prospect of a Labour government as confirmation of this.)
I described the dawn to Edward later that morning, standing by his grave. I asked him if he thought Consuela had seen it from her cell at Holloway and what it might portend for her trial. But he did not tell me. The dead, of course, have no need of omens. For them the future is indistinguishable from the past. The agony of our uncertainty is lost on them, because, in their world, every issue is settled before it is raised. Thus, to Edward, Consuela’s fate – and mine with it – was long since sealed. And the only kindness he could show me was to leave me in ignorance of what it might be.
Chapter Fourteen
IMRY LODGED AT his club for the duration of the trial. There, each evening, we met to discuss its progress. And there, each night, Imry committed to paper his recollection of the events in court and his reaction to them. Hitherto, his involvement in the case had been entirely vicarious. Now, all of a rush, he had a chance to see the people I had told him about, to listen to their testimonies and to gauge their honesty. For as long as the trial lasted, I was to see them through his eyes and to hear them through his ears.
Monday 14 January 1924
I had never entered the Old Bailey before this morning. I had passed it many times, of course, never failing as I did so to recall the controversy aroused by its design. Poor old Mountford got it in the neck from The Architectural Review for this jumbled piece of baroque and I have always felt sorry for him because of it. I could not see what alternative there was on such a cramped site. This morning, however, I changed my mind.
My disquiet began on the pavement outside. A crowd that looked as if it were queuing for a football match had gathered at the public entrance. On their faces and in their voices was something I did not like: a desire for sensation amounting almost to blood-lust. And inside, filling the great hall beneath the dome, was a seething ruck of lawyers, journalists and jurors, all tricked out in uniform for the occasion: baggy gowns, shabby raincoats and ill-fitting demob suits respectively. Their voices rose in a babble towards the painted ceilings and decorated arches, where truth and justice are celebrated in oil and plaster. And when I gazed about at all the lavish expanse of verd antique and cipollino, I thought: this is not right; this is not how it should be.
Within minutes, I was seated in the court, astonished to find myself so centrally placed, so very much part of what was about to unfold. Dark wood; green leather; lecterns; ink-wells; water-jugs; bustle and murmuration all around; and a sickly half-light descending from on high. These were my first queasy impressions of what I had blundered into: an over-sized and ill-aired schoolroom in which the furniture had been eccentrically re-arranged.
I sat quite still amidst the hubbub, letting the function and character of the chamber disclose itself to my mind, knowing that, as the days passed, what struck me now as bizarre and impractical would come to seem natural and inevitable. As with life, so with buildings: we adapt to the prevailing madness more easily and more swiftly than at the outset it seems possible to imagine.
My seat is in a row immediately behind the benches occupied by legal counsel. We are as close as we would be in the stalls of a theatre, their black-gowned shoulders and tasselled wigs comprising an unyielding phalanx a foot in front of my nose. Beyond them, at a slightly lower level, is the ushers’ table, where pink-bound documents and obese tomes are scattered apparently at random. At the head of the table, to my right, is a long desk occupied by a lean and supercilious gentleman whom I take to be the clerk of the court. To his right, in a tiny cubicle of her own, is the stenographer. Behind them is the wooden rampart of the bench, seemingly large enough to accommodate a whole platoon of judges, let alone the one destined to preside over events. On the wall behind the bench is the Royal Coat of Arms and the Sword of Justice.
On the far side of the court is the witness-box, raised and canopied in the fashion of a pulpit. To the left of it sit the jury, in two rows of six, penned in like reluctant pew-fellows. And somewhere to the left of the jury are the press-benches, obscured from me by the dock, the vast proportions of which are perhaps the single most striking feature of the chamber. If the bench could contain a platoon, the dock seems capable of holding an entire company of defendants. Steps within it communicate with the cells below, so that the arrival of the accused is immediately apparent only to the occupants of the public gallery. This is above and behind me, a cramped wooden balcony with little to commend it but the view.
The court was crowded this morning, every seat taken. According to the list displayed outside, Rex versus Caswell was to commence at 10.30 a.m. before Mr Justice Stillingfleet. Leading for the Crown was Mr M. Talbot, KC, assisted by Mr H. Finch, KC, and Mr F. Hebthorpe. The defence was to be led by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett, KC, assisted by Mr R. Browne and Mr G. Forsyth. Sir Henry I already felt I knew from Geoff’s account of him: rotund, smiling, patently at ease in such surroundings. His two juniors seemed in awe of him, Browne preposterously young and earnest, Forsyth sturdy and workmanlike. Talbot distinguished himself at once by casting superior glances in all directions and shaking hands with nearly everybody, including, amidst conspicuous guffaws, Sir Henry. Finch and Hebthorpe existed in his shadow and only slowly attained a separate identity in my mind. Various solicitors twittered on the margins, including Windrush, who, again, I recognized from Geoff’s description.
Looking to my right and left, I could see nobody who matched my expectations of the Caswell family. Perhaps, I concluded, they were not in court. Some seats next to the jury-box were filled by middle-aged men whose bearing and demeanour proclaimed them as policemen: definitely no Caswells there. As for the keen-eyed lady in the pink toque with whom I was shoulder to shoulder, and indeed every other occupant of the seats in my row, their general quiver of anticipation suggested a relish for the occasion entirely free of personal involvement. No doubt they had pulled strings rather than stood on the pavement all night to be where they now were, but their motive was the same, one I could not help feeling was indecent, if not downright obscene. If they did not have to witness the chilling spectacle of the law in action, why in God’s name did they want to?
The usher’s announcement caught me unawares in the midst of this brown study of my fellow humans. Rising later than most, I realized that all delay was now at an end. The trial of a capital crime was about to commence. Mr Justice Stillingfleet – tall, beak-nosed and implacable in full-bottomed wig and scarlet robe – swept into place. His first action, performed before some of us had even sat down again, was to snort into a huge sky-blue handkerchief with such deliberation that I could almost have believed it was a stipulated legal preliminary.
And then, as I looked back at the dock, I saw that it was no longer empty. Consuela Caswell – the woman I had heard so much about but had never met – was standing there, calm and erect, head raised, gazing straight ahead as if focusing on the very point of the blade of the Sword of Justice. She wore a black suit of some kind, trimmed to the waist, and a white blouse with a large bow at her throat. She was bare-headed, her dark hair cut short, and there was no trace of jewellery or make-up, except the slender gold band of her wedding-ring, which glistened in the light cast by the lofty chandelier as she rested her hands on the low rail running along the edge of the dock.
Austere and expressionless, she seemed to me in that moment quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. How could you have deserted her, Geoff? That question leapt instantly into my mind. How could you have brought yourself to betray her? At thirty-five she was still so lovely that I could scarcely take my eyes off her. At twenty-two how much more exquisite must she have been?
Suddenly, the charge was being read. ‘Consuela Evelina Caswell, you are charged on two counts: firstly that, on the ninth day of September nineteen hundred and twenty-three, at Clouds Frome in the county of Herefordshire, you did, feloniously, wilfully and with malice aforethought, murder by the administration of poison one Rosemary Victoria Caswell; and secondly that, on the same date and in the same place, you did, feloniously, wilfully and with malice aforethought, attempt to murder by the administration of poison one Victor George Caswell. How do you plead on the first count?’
‘Not guilty.’ She spoke softly but definitely, with no hint of hesitation.
‘And on the second count?’
‘Not guilty.’
Now, as a stern wardress touched Consuela’s elbow and she lowered herself onto a chair so that I could only see her head and shoulders; now, as gowned figures wheeled and circled below her like so many carrion crows and the usher cleared his throat explosively; now, for the
first time, the force and momentum of this ritual was borne in upon me. The juggernaut of justice was underway. And I shuddered in its wake.
The empanelling of the jury took more than an hour. Sir Henry objected to three men who were older and better dressed than the others. I found myself wondering why. Because they looked like the kind of husbands who might fear being poisoned by their wives? Because women might be supplied in their places? If the latter was his reason, he was disappointed. There were only two female faces among the final twelve.
The judge instructed the jury, after another extravagant nose-blowing, to disregard the fact that the trial had been transferred from Hereford at the request of the defence. ‘This should not be taken to imply a lack of confidence in their case,’ he concluded. I could not help feeling that, if he really wanted them to disregard the point, he would have done better not to mention it in the first place.
A little before noon, Talbot rose to address the court. I already knew, of course, what he was going to say. So, I imagine, did most of those around me. The essence of the Crown’s case was simple: that Consuela, her jealousy aroused by anonymous letters questioning her husband’s fidelity, had sought to poison him with arsenic, but had actually killed his niece instead. Talbot set the matter out in great detail, specifying dates, times, locations and logistics. Copies of the letters were distributed, then read aloud for the benefit of those, like me, denied a copy. They sounded as crude and predictable as might have been expected. ‘It’s time you knew the truth about your husband.’ ‘He’s been having an affair with another woman these six months past.’ ‘A pair of shameless adulterers, one of them your husband.’ ‘Closed bedroom curtains one afternoon a week at a certain house in Hereford.’ ‘I know what happens there. It’s time you did as well.’ ‘Think about this next time he demands his rights.’ More in the same vein drove the lady in the pink toque to her phial of sal volatile in a spasm of delighted prurience; this, one felt, was what she had come for.
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