The Massingham affair
Page 5
43
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
claimed they lay. Well, what impression did that evidence and the two women themselves make on you? Were you impressed by them? If you are in reasonable doubt, you must give the accused the benefit of that doubt. Such is the law of England—that beneficent system of Justice, perhaps the most perfect the wit of man has ever devised to protect even the poorest and most humble from arbitrary actions, to ensure a fair trial before God and the law."
"Stuff and nonsense!" snapped Justin in a voice that to his horror was audible. Fortunately Mr Rees was rather deaf and so intent on his lordship that he would have missed the Last Trump if anyone had chosen that moment to blow it. In front of them Gilmore sat in an attitude of elegant repose.
"Well, members of the jury, there is your task. You have my directions on the law. That is all I can do to assist you."
When they had gone, and the judge had retired, the tableau of the trial broke up. Paget came hurrying past; the court was emptying; the prisoners had gone from the dock, and attendants were turning down the gas jets above the bench and in the well of the court.
"Could be an omen, though personally I doubt it," Gilmore remarked to Mr Rees, who was gathering up his papers and securing them neatly with tape. "They don't seem to expect the jury back too soon."
"And rightly, rightly. The jury listened to your speech, sir."
"Did they? I wonder."
"Ask young Derry here."
Gilmore looked at him: it was a friendly glance. "Well, Derry?" said he.
"They listened."
"Perhaps they did."
"And wondered about Blair a little."
"Yes."
"But trusted the judge."
"Till death do them part," answered Gilmore, smiling.
Just then there was a stir below them on the left, where the Prosecution witnesses had sat after giving evidence, and the Superintendent's burly form was seen coming towards them on his way out of court. Not even in the witness-box had the man looked more official: his rather bulbous eyes stared straight ahead, he held himself very erect, his chest thrust out aggressively, so that it needed a per-
ceptive eye to see in him something defensive and wounded by the events of the afternoon.
"Nearly over, Superintendent," Gilmore greeted him with his usual urbane politeness. "I expect you'll be glad of it."
"Depends, sir. Depends on the jury."
"Think they'll be out long?"
"Not for me to say, sir."
"Oh, come now," Gilmore urged, "surely you'll chance a guess. Guilty or innocent?"
"I think they'll convict 'em, sir, since you insist."
"You may be right."
"And not take long about it," the Superintendent added in a much firmer and louder voice: "not if they've a grain of sense in 'em. It's plain enough: plain as a pikestaff to any honest man with eyes."
Gilmore let him go, smiling a little at that rigidly retreating back. He forgave the impoliteness and the rancour, though he was surprised to have found them in a man as disciplined as Blair. "Seems I am not forgiven," he observed to Rees. "Of course, I asked for it. And I was a little rough on him in court."
"Professionally, as was your duty—he knows that well enough, or should do. No, he was just impudent," said Mr Rees, affronted to the depths of his soul by the breach of class decencies and distinctions he had had to witness. "He forgot himself, forgot himself entirely. Most unlike him."
"You saw that too? He must feel it strongly to take it personally to heart like that. He hates those fellows. Poachers. He remembers he never caught the murderers of P.C. Luke. Will he win this time? We'll know in about an hour, I think."
But three hours had passed and it was close on ten o'clock at night before the jury finally made up its mind and found both prisoners guilty.
The jury's verdict had been given in the judge's lodging, to which Garrowby had retired for the night—an unusual arrangement to say the least. Sentence was reserved for the morning in open court. The prisoners arrived early from the gaol near by, and Justin saw them hurried in by the side door. At ten came Garrowby in his carriage,
45
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
huddled up in his robes as though he felt the cold. A sleepy and surly old Hon he looked as he strode in procession to his room and emerged a few minutes later on to the bench to take his seat in the great chair below the royal arms. Milligan and Kelly came up the steps from the cells as their case was called and stood with their hands gripping the rail, their eyes fixed on him. The court was full. A strong contingent of Police was present, and there were others outside in the corridor. Flutters of rain beat against the windows above the public gallery, and the gas was on in the well and on the bench behind the judge's head. The tableau had recomposed itself, even to the tune of returning Blair into the witness-box to detail the past crimes of the accused—a number of poaching offences of a minor character.
Then Gilmore rose. "My lord."
Perhaps Garrowby had not expected to hear from him again, but he made no particular show of being displeased; merely lowered down at him as he had done throughout the trial.
"You wish to address me in mitigation?"
"I have been asked to," Gilmore said. "By Mr Verney, my lord."
"Indeed? Is he in court?"
Justin glanced behind him, and there, in the last row of seats below the gallery, he saw the old man leaning forward, his hands clasped in front of him as though he were about to lead a prayer.
"My lord, he is," Gilmore said. "But he has desired that in this, my last opportunity of addressing your lordship, I should convey to you his own heartfelt feelings."
"Very well."
Gilmore gave a hitch to his gown, a habit which he only gave way to when he was ill at ease. Obviously he had not liked the discouraging tone of the judge's voice, but he went on in his usual bold, straightforward way: "My lord, these accused are not entirely unknown to him. One, Milligan, was once a parishioner of his. My lord, Mr Verney instructs me that he does not believe these men intended to injure him. He thinks the gun was fired either by accident or out of bravado, to frighten him, when they saw him advancing sword in hand. Mr Verney is an elderly man. In the circumstances of that night he was in the power of these fellows, both much younger and stronger than he. They could have beaten him, killed him with a second shot or by clubbing him. But they did not. He struck out with his sword, and it is his belief still that he wounded or at least
touched them, yet no violence was offered him. They sought to escape, not to kill, for neither is a violent man by disposition. There are only minor crimes against them. My lord, Mr Verney is mindful of these things, and because of them he has come to court today to ask for mercy. I ask your lordship for it too."
The judge had listened broodingly, his head slightly on one side, an arm under the scarlet sleeve extended along the bench towards the nosegay of flowers that had been presented at the opening of the Assize. As soon as Gilmore had sat down, he had the Clerk call formally upon the prisoners, and then addressed them:
"Milligan and Kelly, you have been found guilty after a most patient hearing of one of the gravest offences known to the law, and it is only thanks to Providence that you are not charged with murder."
Now as soon as the judge got to Providence Justin knew that it was all up with the prisoners. He glanced at them, but obviously the words meant nothing to them. Kelly's lips were moving, but both stood at attention, indeed like 'drilled men', in Mr Verney's words.
"I have heard with pain, and at the same time with satisfaction," the judge was saying, "the observations made by learned counsel, communicating to me the desire of Mr Verney, and I am sorry to say that I do not think I ought to act upon that recommendation. The offence is one, as I have said, of the highest and gravest character, and I have sought in vain for any redeeming circumstance."
"Twelve years," hazarded one of the Police behind Justin in a whisper. It w
as not Blair, who was sitting nearer the door among the Smedwick contingent.
"The circumstances were overwhelmingly against you. The verdict was, in my opinion, perfectly correct. Your crime is burglary-breaking into the peaceful abode of a venerable old man and his daughter, with no one, as one of you at all events knew, there to protect them."
"Make it fifteen," the policeman murmured, and indeed Justin was ready to agree with him. Peaceful abode . . . venerable old man . . . unprotected daughter—it only needed Providence to rear its head again. He was filled with awe and almost with admiration at the way the judge had even turned Mr Verney's appeal on behalf of his ex-parishioner into an added argument for severity.
"The offence," the judge continued, "consists of burglary, accompanied by violence, and if ever the law ought to take its course to the extreme, this is the case. Unquestionably, if death had ensued,
47
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
as it might, both of your lives would have been forfeited. Miss Ver-ney's life was undoubtedly in great danger, and it is almost a miracle that you are not now being condemned to death. I do not hold out any hope, but if the Crown in the exercise of mercy should think it right to act upon the recommendation of Mr Verney, I think that belongs to the Crown and not to me. In order to deter bad characters who break into peaceful homes, and endanger the lives of persons, and steal their property, I must pass upon you the severest sentence, and that is penal servitude for life." "Well I'm damned!" the policeman said.
THE QUEST 1899
One January morning, nearly eight years later, Justin was in his office when Harris, his managing clerk, came in to tell him that there was a 'person' outside to see him. Though a kindly man, Harris was prone to such distinctions, probably in an attempt to teach his employer his station, to instil in him a proper understanding of what was expected of a solicitor. It would have been too much to have expected him to relish so easy-going a principal after a lifetime spent in serving a firm of the old school. As well expect such a man to doubt the sanctity of contract or the intrinsic beauty of a conveyance. He never ceased to try to improve on nature.
Now that morning Justin was busy. He had come a long way since he had sat at the trial in Belcastle Moot Hall in the last year of his articles. He had his own practice now, with Mr Harris in the lobby in the glory of a frock-coat. He even had an office boy called Pete, or Spinks, or Mr Spinks, depending upon who was present and how they happened to feel about him—which was usually homicidal, for Pete was an idle and somewhat dissolute youth.
The office near the centre of the town, in the cobbled market-place where it narrows towards the Bolbec Gate, was a thing of beauty which solicitor and clerk would contemplate on arrival and departure with the tender care that is only lavished in the early and very last days of tenancy. Is not this Great Babylon that I have builded!' Justin remembered how his younger sister, a girl of lively and astringent mind, would tease him about his feelings for that building and the gold lettering on its windows. It was a second home to him. Inside its doors, in the rather dark ill-shapen room which he had crammed with the oldest deed boxes he could find and cartoons from Vanity Fair of judges fat and judges angular in gorgeous scarlet robes, he would feel borne up with the dizzy sense of making his way in the world. In that room he felt fulfilled and triumphant. And it was there that he met Margaret Binns.
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
She was a small woman, undoubtedly a person' within Mr Harris's meaning of the Act, about twenty-eight years old, with a peaked little face from which two dark eyes gazed out in an expression half sullen and half terrified. Probably she had never been in a solicitor's office before and was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the thing and by the presence of Harris looming beside her rather in the style of a warder presenting a criminal in the dock.
"Miss Binns," he announced in a sepulchral and disapproving voice.
Justin rose and offered her a chair facing him across the desk, which he had mounted with a rare assortment of the bulkier legal textbooks. It was a sight calculated to impress, and indeed, flanking him on either side, were bookcases containing even dustier tomes which he had managed to pick up at a knock-down price. Directly behind his head, over the mantelpiece and the fire which Mr Harris's economical soul hated to see lit, was a framed certificate announcing professional competence, in case anyone had any doubt about it. The setting was as nearly perfect a replica of an old-established firm as Justin's savings and Mr Harris's memory of the real thing could make it.
"You want to see me?" he said encouragingly to the girl as soon as they were alone.
He had had a few clients like her before. Sometimes they came into a small—pathetically small—legacy and wanted to know what to do; sometimes their menfolk were in trouble. One had been beaten by her husband and had shown him the bruises with a freedom that scandalised Harris when he came to hear of it. "Really, one cannot be too careful, sir," he had remarked, after making sure that the office boy was out of earshot. Even the hint of a scandal alarmed him. "I have known of a case, sir—not in this town, I am thankful to say—where a professional gentleman was actually threatened with a writl For an impropriety, sir!" Clearly nothing could possibly be more shocking, and from that time on, whenever Justin had clients of the female sex alone with him, he was aware of the watchdog on guard on the other side of the door.
To have had such thoughts of Miss Binns would have required a real effort of imagination. She was such a sad little thing. And so silent. She was so tiny that Justin could only just see her head and scrawny neck above the piles of books that lay between them. It was hard to establish any kind of contact. She wanted to speak, but ob-
viously she was having second thoughts. 'Perhaps,' he said to himself, 'she has no money to pay me,' and he tried to broach this to her and suggest it was not a matter she need trouble herself about unduly. But she shook her head.
"Is it some trouble you're in, Miss Binns? Some problem you have? Come now, don't be nervous, don't be afraid of me. Do I look the sort of person to be afraid of?"
She looked at him, weighing him up, and assuredly she must have thought that he did not look that sort of man. There was a mildness about him, though it could be deceptive sometimes, and then he was young, with a smile of great charm and kindliness. Suddenly she made up her mind and said out of the blue: "It's about Mr Milligan and Mick Kelly."
She had assumed that he remembered them, and of course he did. The furore of that case had never quite died down in Smedwick, kept alive by an occasional paragraph in the local paper reporting the transfer of the prisoners from one gaol to another; and there was an undercurrent of rumour and resentment that still moved below the sluggish waters of official satisfaction. Besides, Justin had never forgotten his own emotions at the trial. His belief in justice had been put to a test it had not fully overcome, and he was never a man to put an idea aside merely because it was uncomfortable and hard to live with. He was puzzled all the same by this sudden reappearance.
"Are you a relative of theirs?" he asked. It was naturally his first thought. Both prisoners had a quiverful of all sexes and sizes.
"No, sir."
"A friend, perhaps?"
"Not particular. I've met them like."
"Is it some message you have from them?"
"It's something about them, sir."
Justin with difficulty restrained his impulse to ask why she had come to him. He saw that if he once stopped her or put obstacles in her way she would dry up completely. So he smiled at her encouragingly and said: "So what's your message? You can tell me, you know."
"They're innocent."
He gave a sigh at that, for something about the girl and her air of nervous excitement had roused his curiosity, and yet here she was, repeating gossip eight years stale. "I know there are people who
53
THE MASSESTGHAM AFFAIR
think that," he answered as kindly as he could. "The court didn't, and we can't change that, n
ow can we?"
"Why not, sir?"
"My dear child!" he nearly exclaimed, though they were almost of an age. But a certain suggestiveness in her voice intrigued him, and instead of embarking on a set speech about the immovability of established things, he said: "All right. Suppose you tell me how."
"I'm George Sugden's niece."
Immediately he sat up in his chair, every critical faculty alert. He knew that name. Sugden had been one of the first suspects of the burglary at Massingham.
"Your uncle?" he said, anxious not to frighten her with too much knowledge. "I seem to have heard the name."
"Most people in Smedwick have," she answered surlily. "He's been in the papers, sir."
"Oh?"
"In trouble, as you might say. He poaches, sir."
"Is he in trouble again?"