The Massingham affair

by Grierson, Edward, 1914-1975

  They shook hands: two professional men on parade and aware of it.

  "You've not met young Derry. He's articled with me. In his last year now."

  Justin found himself presented to a frock-coat of exquisite distinction adorned with a watch-chain and beautifully laundered bands and cuffs. The trousers were of bold grey check, narrowing above a pair of very slim elastic-sided boots. Such elegance was not to be found in Smedwick, even on the back of its resident duke, but belonged quite clearly to the world of Spy cartoons of statesmen and rising legal luminaries, with a dash of the Tailor and Cutter thrown in. Gilmore himself seemed plain by comparison, though he was an alert young man, already gifted with the sagacious expression that barristers must either have by nature or practise daily in front of a mirror if they are to survive. "First on the calendar, I see," this paragon remarked briskly. "Are the witnesses here?"

  "Young Kelly's sister."

  "Good."

  "And his fiancee, Amy Dodds. Their evidence is something. It's about the only evidence you've got. Apart from some rabbits. Mr Derry sets great store by the rabbits."

  At this moment they were interrupted by the arrival of the judges, and Justin found himself staring at a range of a few yards at the

  robed figures under the full-bottomed wigs advancing like images being borne in procession. He wondered to which of them Milligan and Kelly had been consigned. A couple of Molochs. That was apparently how Justice saw herself, to judge from the ceremonial and the craggy, impassive faces that might have been carved from stone. There was little to choose between them, though one idol was larger than the other and older, its eyes more deeply sunk between the massive nose and cheekbones, and the honour done to it seemed to be the more absolute, as though this were some particularly trusty and devouring idol that worked great works.

  "Looks sleepy today," Gilmore remarked as the procession departed from them into the robing-rooms. "Not a good weather sign with Garrowby. He won't take to things too readily."

  "He's a sound man," said Rees.

  "Oh quite, quite. Very fair according to his lights. We could have done with someone a little less Messianic though. It's a case that wants understanding."

  "A very clear case, surely? All too clear."

  Gilmore considered this. "In a way," he admitted at last. "The crown's evidence is very strong: identification, motive, opportunity, Piggott's chisel, the footprints, the piece of paper and the button. It all adds up. Yet somehow the total seems wrong. If only I dared take a flyer at that evidence."

  "It would be dangerous."

  "Oh yes. There's not the shadow of a proof anywhere that anyone is lying. Why should they he? The Verneys are transparently honest. Piggott was a friend of the accused. To attack the purity of the Police evidence is the simplest thing, and we all know it's usually the silliest. No one would believe me. Besides, Garrowby wouldn't like it. It could mean a stiffer sentence."

  There was a flurry of movement near the doors and Justin perceived that the crowd had begun to press into court. He followed, and from just behind Mr Rees he heard the Queen's commission read and saw Mr Justice Garrowby take his seat in the chair under the royal arms between his marshal and the High Sheriff. "He was born in the Rectory," Mr Rees whispered over his shoulder.

  "Garrowby? You can't mean in Massingham?"

  "Certainly: in that very house. A strange coincidence, wouldn't you say? I wonder what hell think as he sits up there and hears the story told . . . how much he'll remember?"

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  Justin wondered too. But all at once a number of things were happening. Mr Rees was elbowing his way forward towards the benches behind Gilmore; the Clerk of Assize was reaching for the court calendar; and soon there appeared in the dock a middle-sized, wiry fellow with a domed forehead and a fringe of whisker under the chin, and on his left a much younger man, not yet twenty, from whose lumpy, unformed face the ears stood out like jug handles.

  "Patrick Milligan, Michael Kelly, you are jointly charged . . ."

  They might be innocent. Yet it would have been a comfort, Justin thought, if they could have looked the part a little better. Where virtue had so lamentably failed to announce itself by outward and visible signs there was obviously a great need for cynicism in a young man, and he was easily able to maintain the mood through prosecuting counsel's opening for the Crown and the arrival of Mr Verney.

  The Reverend Thomas James McMichael Verney. Aged sixty-eight. Rector of Massingham since 1859. Yes, he remembered the early hours of February 7th. His daughter woke him with certain news. He found a candle and an old sword, came down the stairs, saw through the open door of the dining-room the two men standing Tike soldiers in a line'.

  As he told the story, his earnest eyes fixed on the judge, his white beard wagging above the witness-box as it must have done above his pulpit in the Norman church on score upon score of unremem-bered Sundays, the simplicity and courage of his actions came home to everyone. There had been no hesitation. He had come down with his candle and his blunt sword, and when the shot was fired and he felt his wound he still lunged out against his enemies, but gently, he insisted again and again, as though he fancied that those in court might make an aggressor of him. And then, when the first burglar had decamped through the window and he heard the second—the one with the gun—quite distinctly ramming home another charge of shot, he had struggled with his daughter to get free and had gone in alone to him, to what seemed likely to be his death.

  The court stayed absolutely silent through all this. Mr Verney had risen above farce. It was impossible not to respect him. Justin could feel Mr Rees moving uneasily on the seat beside him. "You'll have to be careful with him, Mr Gilmore," he heard him whisper.

  "I know."

  "A highly respected man. A good witness too."

  And a dangerous one, from the Defence point of view. For the Rector had moved on to a description of the visitors in the night, and whereas at the famous confrontation scene he had seemed doubtful, now, under the questioning of Edward Paget for the Crown, he was far more certain:

  "As I came down the stairs I saw the lower parts of the men distinctly, but not the upper parts. One was dressed in a light coat, more of a grey colour. The other man had a dark coat. The men were just the same size and dress as the prisoners. I identified them by their height and bearing and the military positions they took up, as if they were trained men."

  This was not altogether new: some of it was on the depositions. Nor did Justin find anything surprising in this hardening of opinion, since he knew it was what so often happened to the thing men call memory, which is less a snapshot of an event than a mosaic made up of all sorts of bits and pieces of hopes, prejudices, facts, imaginings. It was Gilmore's turn to sift them, for Paget had sat down and the judge, high up on his bench, was looking at him with his lowering expression.

  "Mr Vemey," Gilmore said.

  Justin saw him shift a little in the box to face this new antagonist and one could see what a benevolent old man he was.

  "Mr Verney, I am sure that everyone in court feels for you and your daughter in the grievous circumstances that befell you both, just as everyone rejoices in your recovery."

  "It should be a matter for general satisfaction," remarked the judge, with a sharp look at the prisoners in the dock. "This might have been a capital charge."

  "As your lordship so truly says, and no one would minimise the gravity of what happened." He turned to the witness. "Mr Verney, you have told us that you lunged out several times with your sword at the man in the dark coat? And you felt the blade penetrate some inches, as you thought, into the flesh?"

  "Of his breastbone, it felt like."

  "Then you had wounded him?"

  "So I believed."

  "Later you lunged at the other man, the one in the light coat who had remained in the dining-room. Did you wound him too?"

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  "I
believed it at the time."

  "Are you surprised today to learn that no wounds were found on either of the prisoners?"

  "The sword was blunt. Some kind of mark was found on Kelly, I believe."

  Gilmore was glancing at the jury. They were listening intently. "But not the wounds you had imagined?"

  "That is so."

  "Let me go back a little. You saw the intruders for the first time from the landing half-way down the stairs. You saw them through the open door of the dining-room?"

  "I did."

  "And you saw the lower parts of their bodies?"

  "Distinctly. I had a candle and so had they."

  "Mr Verney, do you remember writing a letter on February 17th to the SmeduAck Mercury?"

  He replied at once: "I do. I wanted to put a stop to all the idle and misinformed talk."

  "So you wrote this letter to clear things up, to put the truth of the matter on record?"

  "That exactly describes it."

  "Thank you. Now in this letter did you use the following words: '. . . the lower parts of their bodies being all that I could see, and that not distinctly'?'

  There was a stir of excitement in court of the kind usual when a question explodes under a witness, and in the public gallery it may have been believed that counsel had quite blown the old man up. Gilmore knew better. It was a score, but a small one.

  "You did write that, Mr Verney?"

  "I did. The light wasn't very good."

  "So now we arrive at this—correct me if I am wrong. You saw only the lower halves of their bodies 'and that not distinctly'? And the top parts of their bodies not at all?"

  "That is so."

  "How did you identify the accused?"

  "Partly by the clothes they wore. Partly by their bearing, the way they held themselves, like trained men."

  "And by their height also, I think you said just now?"

  "Certainly."

  "Pray tell me, Mr Verney, how you manage to judge the height of a man when you can't see the top half of him?"

  Justin saw a dawning smile on the faces of some of the jurymen, until they caught the judge's eye on them.

  "I had an impression of size," the Rector managed to get out lamely.

  "When did you get it?"

  "At the time, naturally."

  "Isn't it a fact that on the evening after the crime you hesitated to identify the two accused?"

  "I was doubtful, slightly doubtful."

  "But you're not doubtful now? Your memory gets better and better as time goes on?"

  Again that laugh—and this time Garrowby took note of it and looked very deliberately round the court like an old lion that has been stirred up. Before he had got as far as Gilmore, that wary gladiator had sat down, well pleased with himself, as he had every right to be; but when Justin glanced round behind him he saw only the impassive faces of the prisoners in the dock and poor Rees looking quite flustered at this success. 'God knows what he'll think if Miss Verney gets the treatment too,' he said to himself. 'Another highly respected one, I shouldn't wonder.'

  Just then he heard her name called and saw her coming past the press into the witness-box, which was on the judge's right and on the same level as the bench. She was about twenty, with dark hair and fine brown eyes which hardly seemed to belong to the tight angles of the mouth and jaw below them. A strange personality, he thought, studying her as she took the Book in her right hand: impulse and determination at war with one another. There could be no doubt which side of her character was winning.

  "Miss Charlotte Matilda Verney?" Paget was booming out with the greatest gallantry.

  "Yes."

  "Miss Vemey, will you tell my lord and the jury in your own words of the events of the morning of February 7th?"

  She did so very factually without a flourish of any kind, doing her distasteful duty in a low incisive voice, very well bred. At the dramatic moments Paget would utter small exclamations of astonishment and admiration, as though drawing the jury's attention to her many excellencies, but she ignored him every time and spoke to the

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  court as she might have spoken to some rather backsliding parishioners who had missed Matins three Sundays running. The substance of what she said was not as damaging to the prisoners as that given by her father in his evidence in chief, for she had only had the briefest glimpse of them before their candle was blown out, and after that had seen only one man by the light of the moon through a window still partly shuttered. Yet she too had the Verney memory which seemed to thrive on the passing of time. Her assailant, she said, resembled the prisoner Milligan whom she now saw. The resemblance was something that had struck her forcibly when he was paraded for her in her bedroom. Paget was nodding his head at this and commending her quick eye to the jury along with her pluck and good breeding. And still nodding, he sat down and left it to the Defence.

  "You have spoken of resemblances," Gilmore began. "Was the resemblance you observed between your assailant and the accused man Milligan one of size?"

  "It was a general impression," she corrected him severely.

  "But size was part of it, surely?"

  "Yes."

  "Were there any other elements in your 'general impression'?"

  She thought for a while and produced the word 'bulk', then corrected it to 'build'.

  "Size again, surely?" Gilmore remarked. "You are saying that your assailant and Milligan were much of a size?"

  "I suppose I am."

  "Very good. Will you please look at the man, Miss Verney?"

  She did so very calmly with her 'parish visiting eye, and Milligan, finding it fixed on him, glanced nervously away.

  "You'd hardly call him a particularly small man, would you?" Gilmore said, watching the two of them.

  "No, I wouldn't."

  "Yet I think you told us that when you reached straight out ahead of you in the darkness you grasped him by the hair?"

  She saw the point at once and answered: "Of course he was stooping—doubled up—and that accounted for it."

  "Why 'of course', Miss Verney? Did you see him stooping as he came towards you?"

  "That was my impression."

  "Pray what is an impression?" Gilmore said.

  "An impression is simply an impression."

  "But surely it can't exist in a vacuum? To receive an impression of an event one must presumably hear it, or see it, or smell it, or touch it. Would you agree?"

  "I suppose so: yes."

  "But your assailant never spoke, and what you saw of him was seen in a room lit only by moonlight shining through one window? In near pitch darkness?"

  "It was nearly dark."

  "Smell we may ignore. But you touched your assailant. You held him by the hair?"

  "I did."

  "Which assumes, does it not—forgive the levity—a certain length of hair to hold?"

  There was a titter in court as everyone took in the point and Milligan's bristly crop.

  "Perhaps he's had it cut," she said.

  "Is that another 'impression', Miss Verney? You must forgive me. More is at stake here than a discourtesy or two. Let me ask you this. You remember that on the evening after the crime the accused man Milligan was brought to your room and he asked you to take hold of his hair and compare it with your assailant's?"

  "Yes."

  "What were your comments on that occasion?"

  She didn't hedge, as so many would have done, but replied straight out: "I said that I thought the man in the passage had the longer hair."

  "And didn't you say that you thought him broader in the shoulder too?"

  "I did."

  "More like Kelly, more Kelly's build?"

  "Yes."

  "But of course you don't claim to have touched or been near Kelly at any time?"

  "No."

  "Thank you, Miss Verney."

  There followed her into the box the witnesses who formed the link between the Verneys
and the Police evidence to come—the 'odd job men and discoverers', as Justin dubbed them. On a techni-

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  THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR

  cality the judge refused to have the evidence of Bulwer, the tailor who had examined the rent in MiUigan's trousers and had compared it with the piece of cloth found in the flower-beds. But James Bell deposed to finding the torn sheet of paper in the Rectory hall. Dr Higson, the Police Surgeon, had unearthed the missing scrap of that same paper from the lining of Kelly's coat. The cook, Jane Clegg, produced the chisel: the same chisel which old Piggott (in whose house Kelly lodged) had identified in the depositions as his own. But where was Piggott himself? Not at the Moot Hall, apparently: they were tendering a medical certificate, along with the old man's sworn evidence before the magistrates. "You mean my friend is not calling this vital witness before the court?" Gilmore exclaimed in outraged tones.

  "The man is destitute."

  "Can't the Crown afford his fare?"

  Mr Paget managed a sickly smile. "If my friend will but exercise his patience," he lamented. "The old man is too infirm to make the journey here. I have the doctor to testify to that."

  "You're saying he's physically and mentally infirm?"

  "Physically at least."

  "And you want to read his deposition—on which I can't in the nature of things cross-examine. When did he make it?"

  "Nine weeks ago."

  "Was he less crazy then?"

  Justin, in high glee, was just applauding this, when the judge had the doctor called and admitted Piggott's deposition on the spot. "The damned old Moloch!" muttered Justin fiercely under his breath. There had been nothing in Piggott's deposition to suggest that he could be cross-examined to any useful effect, but the way the thing had been done rankled and left the feeling that the law had been unfairly stretched in favour of the Crown. The Crown needed no such patronage. It had the evidence on its side; it had Superintendent Blair, who now advanced into the box, a huge man but walking delicately, like Agag.

  Now Justin had set out that morning because the managing clerk had detailed him. Like most pupils, he was a disenchanted soul who guarded himself against enthusiasms. Yet already he was changing. Reading the depositions in the train, he had felt a quickening of interest that had surprised him, and now, at sight of Blair standing in the box with the Testament raised high, he had the strangest