The Massingham affair

by Grierson, Edward, 1914-1975

  feeling of personal involvement in what was about to happen, as though he were at the beginning of something that would claim him one day, perhaps after a long time.

  The Superintendent's evidence when it came was in amusing contrast to such thoughts. It was banal to a degree: more like an official circular than anything else:

  "As a result of certain information I went to Massingham Rectory at about five a.m. on the morning of the 7th February. I found the drawing-room window had been forced open. From the witness Clegg I received a chisel and a piece of newspaper which I now identify. Under a window I saw certain indentations in the soil. I covered these with boards. Going out of the grounds into the lane leading past Merrick's bothy I saw sets of footmarks. I traced these marks from the lane to the main road and along that road towards Smedwick for the best part of a mile. On the 7th February and again on the following day I took plaster casts of these footmarks and I produce these casts with the boots of the accused. They correspond exactly. I found it impossible to take plaster casts of the marks under the window. On 13th February I gave the chisel in question to Inspector Mathieson and P.C. Pugh with instructions to show it to the witness Piggott. On 20th February I was present when Dr Higson was examining Kelly's old coat (which I now identify), and a piece of paper (which I now identify) was found in the lining of the coat. It fits exactly into the larger piece given me by the witness Clegg. The accused when charged denied all knowledge of the offences."

  "Time for luncheon," murmured Mr Rees as the judge closed his notebook and laid down his pen. Justin allowed his thoughts to wander agreeably in the same direction. Lunch. A large one. Steak, kidney and mushroom pie for choice. With a pint of beer and apple tart and cream to follow. He had some hopes that the old buffer' would rise to that, and it was with a most grievous sense of deprivation that he saw they were not going out of court at all, but through the gate into the dock and downstairs into the bleak echoing world of cells, filled now with an aroma which he recognised authoritatively as Irish Stew. 'At least those two poor devils will be fed,' he thought, as the warder unlocked the grille, and with Rees leading they went in. A sad looking pair, though. Seen at close quarters they had an unprepossessing look. 'Capable of anything,' he noted to himself, 'though I expect it's only the knowledge that they're prisoners that makes me think so. A great leveller the dock: makes

  35

  THE MASSDJGHAM AFFAIR

  everyone look guilty. What villains we'd seem if we were there. And Garrowby. I know what a jury would think of him'

  "Now MiUigan, you're much the older," Gilmore was saying, "so I'll address myself to you. You've heard the evidence. Have you anything to say about it?"

  "It were lies, sir," the man said.

  "Was Piggott lying about the chisel? Wasn't he your friend?"

  No answer.

  "Was Dr Higson lying about the paper in the coat? Or the Ver-neys? Why should they identify you if it wasn't you?"

  "Because the Poliss had been talkin', sir. Poliss was sure we done it from the start. 'Come 'ere, you damned scoundrels,' the Superintendent says. That's the way 'e talked, sir. Then 'e comes back after a bit and knocks me down, sir. Says I been smokm in me cell."

  "And had you?" Gilmore asked, his face expressionless.

  "May 'ave 'ad a bit o' baccy like."

  "Why should he have a 'down' on you?"

  "We done a bit o' poachin' like."

  "Why should the Police risk their careers and conspire against you?"

  They stared at him, unable to answer. It was fortunate, thought Justin, that the law as it stood would not allow them to be called as witnesses in their own defence. He felt sorry for them and for their story. By all the processes of law it was untrue. And it sounded untrue—he could not avoid that feeling, however much sympathy he might have for the two forlorn and ignorant men. It was an instinctive feeling and he tried to analyse it, puzzling over in his mind the paradoxical fact that the Crown's case should have suggested to him the accused's innocence and the Defence case even more certainly their guilt. He wondered if he was alone in these feelings. He could see on the faces of his colleagues none of his doubts but only an enviable calm and attention to business.

  "Now see here, Milligan . . ." They were at bay now, just as they had been in the dock. "I want you to listen carefully. If you tell me that the Police abused you, and beat you, and had a grudge against you, then that's your case and I can put it to the Police witnesses in the box."

  "It's for you to say, sir."

  "No, it's for you. I'm your counsel. You instruct me. I must tell you, though, that in my opinion such accusations won't be believed,

  nor will an attack on this Police evidence as such. That cock won't fight. Ask Mr Rees."

  "No one will believe it," the old man replied.

  No one asked Justin his opinion: he was obliged for that. As he went up the stairs lunchless, with nothing in prospect but a sandwich before the judge descended from the grandiose meal the county had provided, he wondered what he would do in Gilmore's shoes. Fight, as Milligan and perhaps Kelly wished, and risk the heavier sentence? But with what? One had to have some weapons. A dead case. And yet the inner prompting of mind that had said to him at the beginning, 'Something is wrong', returned, and not all the magisterial appearance of Blair in the witness-box could quell it for an instant.

  Gilmore started quietly with the witness. "Correct me if I am wrong," he said, "but as I understand the matter a large sheet of newspaper was found in the Rectory on the morning of the crime, and later there was found a scrap of paper which fitted exactly into the jig-saw, if I may call it that?"

  "Exactly," Blair intoned.

  "Found in the presence of the Police at Police headquarters by the Police Surgeon in the lining of the prisoner Kelly's coat?"

  "In Kelly's coat."

  "Now you and your subordinates had searched that coat?"

  "Yes."

  "Several times?"

  "Several times."

  "And found nothing?"

  "Nothing at all."

  It was like a duet—one really needed and expected a chorus, Justin thought, though perhaps it was asking too much of the jury to fill the bill.

  "How long, Superintendent, had that coat been in the possession of the Police?"

  Blair began to think this out and Gilmore said: "Consult your notebook if you like."

  "I don't need to, sir. We had that coat between the 7th and the 20th February."

  "And in all that time you found nothing?"

  "We didn't search every day," Blair said.

  37

  THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR

  "Of course not. But you searched it. Did you search it thoroughly?"

  That was a clever 'Morton's Fork' kind of question, reflecting on Police skills, and Blair, forgetting other things and remembering honour, retorted hotly: "We try to be thorough, sir."

  "Of course you do. I've no doubt you were thorough. No one doubts it. You and your men searched thoroughly and searched several times and found nothing. Then you hand the coat to Dr Higson, an independent witness, and immediately something is found."

  "Don't know what you mean by that, sir?" Blair said aggrievedly.

  He would have done better to have kept silent. "Don't you?" Gilmore said. "Weren't you glad to have an independent witness to bolster up your case?"

  Paget lumbered to his feet as though he would object. Gilmore ignored him entirely and remained facing the Superintendent. "Because your case did need some bolstering, didn't it? You had two suspects and a scrap of paper—and what else?"

  "We had the chisel."

  "Oh yes: Piggott's chisel. And some marks in the soil under the drawing-room window. Aren't we to hear of those?"

  "I could make no casts from them," Blair retorted.

  "Why not? Is soil not a receptive medium for footprints? Is a lane better?"

  "As it happened, sir."

  "How did it happen? I am puzzled. Please enlighten
me."

  Justin began to grin delightedly as he felt the old solicitor beside him moving restlessly in his seat.

  "You see I am puzzled, Superintendent," the gentle, insistent voice went on, "by certain factors in this case. I am puzzled about the delayed discovery of that paper in Kelly's coat; the even more delayed finding of the cloth and button; the casts that were never made of the marks under the window. I must ask you formally if a mistake may not have been made about the guilt of the accused?"

  "Impossible, in my opinion," the Superintendent said.

  Gilmore smiled at him almost benignly. "You have a very decided opinion, have you not?" he remarked. "Didn't you have a decided opinion about this case from the start?"

  "On the evidence as it came in, sir."

  "Even before it came in, surely? Didn't you charge these men with this crime in the forenoon of the 7th February, before the Verneys had identified them?"

  "Yes."

  "Before you'd taken any plaster casts and compared them with the prisoners' footwear?"

  "That is so."

  "Before Dr Higson found the paper in Kelly's coat?"

  "Yes."

  "Before Piggott had identified the chisel or you had found the rabbits, buried, as the accused had said, on Bridewell Moor?"

  Blair nodded.

  "Isn't it a fact, Superintendent, that you charged these men with these crimes solely on the fact that your officers had discovered they were abroad on the night of the crime and might conceivably have done it?"

  "There's the other evidence, sir."

  "Try to be fair. That came afterwards, didn't it-after you'd arrested and charged them and made up your mind that they were guilty?"

  "I'd not made up my mind, sir."

  "Hadn't you?" Gilmore said, and Justin saw him turn directly to the jury. "You knew they were poachers, didn't you?"

  "I knew them for poachers, sir."

  "As a police officer you have a natural animus against the breed?"

  "One would scarcely expect a fraternal devotion," remarked the judge to sycophantic laughter, in which, Justin observed, only a few jurymen joined.

  "I would expect a proper attitude, neither more nor less, my lord," Gilmore replied, very grim, not smiling at all. "I would expect fair play: not prejudice."

  "I wasn't prejudiced," the witness said.

  "Try to remember. Didn't Kelly give evidence for the defence in another Police prosecution some weeks ago?"

  "I believe he did."

  "Didn't you lose that case? The man was acquitted?"

  "Yes."

  "What were your words to Kelly and Milligan when you charged them on the morning of the 7th?"

  "I charged them in the usual terms."

  THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR

  "Didn't you say 'Come here, you damned rascals, and I'll tell you what you're charged with? Is that the usual official charge?"

  "I certainly did not," Blair said, above, but only just above, a titter of laughter much louder than the judge had raised.

  "Didn't you strike Milligan in the cells?"

  "I may have corrected him for smoking."

  "Is that on the deposition?"

  "No, sir—I saw no need."

  "Only the adverse evidence appears on the depositions, is that it?"

  And so it went on. But whenever Justin felt that the witness's authority was weakening he looked at the jury and thought again. For the jury could see all the time, as he could not, the prisoners in the dock behind him. Even at the height of the Superintendent's admissions he had seen their glances straying towards them, as though asking themselves whether two such farouche and desperate looking men could possibly be innocent. Indeed the moment the last of the Crown witnesses was out of the box he began again to ask himself these questions and saw the persuasive nature of Paget's case, which depended not on one man's word but on many, from the saintly Mr Verney to P.C. Moffat hunting diligently for a trou-ser button in the snow.

  'Our turn now,' he thought, watching Gilmore rise to open the case for the Defence. No array of testimony here. There were only two witnesses in all.

  First Kelly's sister, Eliza Jane. Justin knew that this girl had sold almost everything she possessed to help her brother, and there was an intelligence and moral force about her that struck him the moment she appeared and remained in his mind for long afterwards. Perhaps Paget for the Crown recognised this also, for the moment it was his turn he struck at her. "You gave your name as Mrs Piggott, I believe." She had certainly claimed that status for herself. "But isn't your legal name Miss Kelly?"

  "I suppose it is, sir."

  "You just live with Piggott, is that it?"

  "I share with him."

  "So it would seem that you have not been frank with us, even in your first words in that box, but have claimed something that is not true. Is all your evidence like that?"

  "Like what, sir?"

  "Untrue evidence. Lies. Let's look at it. You tell us that your protector, Piggott, never owned the chisel which in his deposition he has sworn is his."

  "I never saw it in the house."

  "Has Piggott any grudge against Milligan or your brother?"

  "I don't think so, sir."

  "Is Piggott a deceitful or lying man?"

  "Not particularly, sir, not to mention."

  There was laughter in court, in which Justin joined rather more loudly than the rest. He was intrigued by this witness who could be cornered and browbeaten and yet managed to emerge foursquare.

  "You are not saying, are you," Paget persisted, "that the man you choose to live with is a cheat whose oath can't be relied on?"

  "He's a bit old, sir, and stupid like. He's had a hard life."

  "Does that answer my question?"

  "I don't know, sir. Doesn't it?"

  Again that laughter, and this time the judge intervened. "You had best not be pert. I am advising you."

  'The damned old Moloch!' thought Justin again. In the last few minutes he had become a convinced partisan, and he was to remember that years later, when other details about the trial had faded.

  Mr Paget had rested during the judicial intervention, but now re-entered the fray. "Miss Kelly" ('And he's a damned Moloch too!'), "Miss Kelly, you are not telling us that Piggott swore a false oath in his deposition?"

  "I'm saying I never saw the chisel."

  "Why should you have seen it? You'd hardly be aware of every tool of trade your man possessed?"

  "I'd see them, surely?"

  "How should you 'surely' know better than the man who swears he owned the chisel?"

  "He's not been here to swear it, sir."

  "My lord!"

  "Answer the question," the judge directed with a cold disgust that Justin found far more distressing than Paget's histrionics.

  "My lord, I'm trying. I never saw the chisel. Can I say more?"

  "Or anything that's truthful or pertinent?" Paget said, and forthwith sat down.

  A fairly even score. If the Defence had made no headway, it was

  41

  THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR

  as certain that the Crown had failed to break this clever and determined witness. But Kelly's fiancee, Amy Dodds, who followed her into the box, was a more vulnerable person and appallingly honest in her answers. Paget handled her with brutal brevity:

  "You say you are Kelly's fiancee?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Have you an engagement ring?"

  "No, no ring."

  "You live in the same house as Kelly?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You share the same bed?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "How long have you lived with him?"

  "Two year."

  "Was he the first man to possess you?"

  "Not the first."

  "Do you still sleep with odier men?"

  "Sometimes."

  "How old are you?"

  "Eighteen."

  Now in answer to Gilmore in chief, Amy had declared that o
f her knowledge neither Milligan nor Kelly had owned a gun, and that the bruising on her lover's body had come about when he had fallen on an icy patch of road some days before. It was testimony of a sort, quite favourable to the accused. Justin could see, however, that no one in such an exposed position as the jury box would believe a word she said once Paget had done with her. In a trice the fact of the real and homely Amy Dodds was blotted out under the licentious image of a naked harlot being subjected—rather forcibly and very pleasurably—to experiences of which the jury had only dreamed. Naturally they would discount her. As for the judge, one could hardly doubt what was passing behind that graven image of a face. He had suffered Amy Dodds and he would suffer the speeches, as the rules of the game demanded. When they were over he was not even in a hurry to begin his part, but arranged himself in his chair, with his robes tucked comfortably around him, like an old gentleman in a shelter at the seaside.

  "Members of the jury, let us first look at the indictment."

  It was a cogent charge. At times, in a stressed syllable or a turn of phrase, one could judge what weariness had possessed the old

  man all that day—"justice seen to be done . . . abundant evidence . . . repetitious, as you might think, but the prosecution's duty is to shirk nothing in putting all the facts before you, great and small." That duty was stressed time and again. "You must be certain. It is not enough to say 'Here is reason for suspicion: the Defence has not fully explained this or excused that.' You must not place burdens where they do not lie."

  Measured and judicious words. The Verneys' evidence called out another such display of them. "Members of the jury, you are the judges of fact. Yet I would be failing in my duty if I did not direct you to consider that evidence with the greatest care, and indeed some caution. Of its honesty you need have no doubt: but you should remember also the conditions in the Rectory that night: the fitful light, the terror and excitement of the moment operating on the minds of Mr Verney and his daughter. Could they have been mistaken? If you are not fully satisfied by the identifications they made, then you should dismiss them from your minds. Turn to the other evidence."

  A different note had sounded in the judge's voice, though perhaps only the very alert in court detected it. "Look at the footprints, members of the jury. It is not disputed that the same boots made the casts you have seen in court and the footprints in the lane and on the Deeping Road; and those boots were the property of the accused. How came those footprints there? How came the piece of paper into Kelly's pocket—that missing scrap that fitted into the large sheet found inside the Rectory? Of course it is not for the Defence to prove to you that there are innocent explanations for those footprints and the presence of the piece of paper in that coat. It is for the prosecution to satisfy you beyond reasonable doubt that the evidence adduced is proof of guilt. You are men of the world. You will weigh that evidence and the deposition of the man Piggott with regard to the chisel. Is it not cogent and persuasive evidence? What other explanations can there be? There was, you will remember, some suggestion of Police animus against the accused, though it is for you to say what relevance that could possibly have. On the other side you have heard two Defence witnesses. You have heard them say that they never saw the chisel in Piggott's house; that the accused men never owned a gun; that there was an innocent explanation of the bruising on Kelly's body; that the rabbits were dug up on Bridewell Moor in the exact place where the accused had