The Massingham affair

by Grierson, Edward, 1914-1975

  "I ought to, seeing that I have been handling it myself for weeks."

  "And most vigorously," Mr Wilcox commended him. "Your initiative in this matter has been most marked and I shall acknowledge it in my report. Of course, I don't pretend to understand exactly how it came about that you happened on all this and first became interested in Sugden. . . ."

  "But surely you've seen the man and heard his story. And Henderson's."

  The Commissioner had cleared his throat ominously at the name. "I have seen Henderson," he said. "I owe it to you to say that I have seen Henderson and that he has made a statement which in material particulars seems to me significant. Perhaps, sir, seeing that the subject has been raised, you will now elucidate certain matters arising out of it. Firstly"—here Mr Wilcox began to unfasten his portfolio— "firstly will you explain how it came about that a certain watch, highly important to these enquiries, was taken from the man's house and lodged with you? Secondly, will you be so good as to inform me when and in what place the man's confession came to be made. Take your time, sir. These are matters vital to this enquiry—and perhaps to you."

  XX

  On the 3rd of March Gilmore put down a Question in the House in terms which he had communicated in advance to his allies in Smed-wick:

  To ask the Home Secretary whether an enquiry has been made on behalf of the Solicitor to the Treasury in regard to the confessions of two men who allege that they committed a burglary at Massingham Rectory for which two other men were convicted in 1891 and sentenced to Penal Servitude for Life, and whether any report has been made by the Solicitor to the Treasury with respect to these said confessions, and if so whether such report does not show the truth of the said confessions and the innocence of the said prisoners, in which event . . .

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  THE MASSIXGHAM AFFAIR

  "Does it have to go on like that—interminably?" cried the Reverend Mr Lumley as he reached this point. "Surely it is possible to put things more simply?"

  "On the order paper of the House of Commons!"

  "Well, my dear fellow, perhaps I am being naive about it and Gil-more should certainly know his business, though it sounds more like a conundrum to me. Do you understand it?"

  "In parts."

  "Then let us hope the Home Secretary shares your enviable discernment when it comes up today. At what time exactly?"

  "I imagine about three."

  It was then two on a murky afternoon with a thin drizzle falling on the square, in which half the booths were already down and the cheapjacks resignedly loading their carts, leaving behind them a scurf of refuse no dirtier than the slush among which the cats and dogs of the vicinity were scavenging. He stood at the window looking down, trying to imagine the scene in Westminster, but somehow there seemed no connection between it and the little grey disconsolate town under the rain. He tried to think of Milligan and Kelly far off in their prison cells, but their images were fainter still—no more than the memory of faces glimpsed in a crowd. Since the coming of the Commissioner to Smedwick the whole case, which had once been so close and personal, had receded from him in the strangest way, leaving him like some watcher in the shadows who sees the passing of distant and mysterious events. Only the sense of excitement remained: greater than ever now that he had no controlling part to play. It was almost unbearable to have to sit and wait for the news Gilmore had promised him that day.

  Soon after four he gave up all pretence of working and went out into the town through which the last of the market folk were straggling, some on foot, some on horseback, some in carts that jolted and slithered over the snow. Its first whiteness when every roof had glistened like crystal had long since gone and the whole place had a grubby look, like a stage set by daylight. In the Dene, the open grassy space behind Queen's Row, the ground was a piebald of white and grimy yellow, pitted with the tracks of dogs and humans and toboggans which has worn a shiny run down the slope of the hill on the Pelegate side. Shrill voices reached him from across it as the children came out of school and he could see their small grey figures flitting over the landscape under the trees where a few cro-

  cuses showed their heads with the forlorn look of castaways on some unwelcoming shore. What a laggard of a spring it was. Out there in the mist and drizzle with the wind off the sea it was hard to believe that there would ever be warmth again, or birdsong, where now a flock of starlings settled with a whirring of wings and rooks prospected in the branches.

  By six he was back in his office, hopeful that a telegram might have come. He poked the fire, which was nearly out, lit the gas behind the desk, and settled down with the best will he could muster to a dispute about the ownership of a tea-service which had convulsed two households and threatened to spread to the collaterals. Rain beat against the panes. He heard Spinks decamp and the portentous steps of Harris as he made the premises secure against any recurrence of unspeakable events. A kind of murmuring was rising around him. For a moment he thought he must have late clients in the waiting-room and his mind flew back to that other evening when he had heard Longford's voice on the far side of the baize door, but it grew louder, and he understood that it was from the street and that a number of people must be out there in the darkness. Yet all the market stalls were down.

  He went to the window and drew back the curtains. There were lights down there, torches made of straw and sacking from the debris of the market, in whose flickering gleam he saw the crowd of dark figures on the cobbles and faces raised towards the window at which he stood. Mr Harris was behind him, and as he threw up the sash and leaned out he heard a great cry go up, saw the torches waving like fireflies in the darkness, and in front of them, directly below him, a small figure capering with a piece of paper in its hand. The cold sleet-laden air was beating against his face, tinged with the smell of fire; he caught the voices calling up to him, laughter, words tossed here and there, a confused melee of sound dying into silence around the figure of Mr Hicks below. Only then, at third hand via the Mercury office and the wildly excited crowd, did Justin learn that Milligan and Kelly would be free.

  The first train into Smedwick from the south next morning was the milk' from King's Cross which arrived at 6.50 on a good day. It was not a train that commanded a large or enthusiastic following, and the surprise of its crew on coming to rest at Number Two platform to discover a reception committee of about two score excited

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  people was extreme. "What's awa'? Have ye all ganned daft?" shouted the driver, a Lowlander from Dunbar, as folk came running alongside through the steam. Cries of "Worr are the lads? Worr's Mick?" exploded around him while the milk churns were noisily unloaded from the guard's van. "Who's Mick?" "Mick Kelly. Man, have ye nee hoard of the Smedwick mortars?"

  By two, when the northbound express from London went wailing through the station like a banshee, the crowd had grown to over a hundred strong, watched by a detachment of Police under an Inspector. "Worr's Blair?" voices called out to them. "Fetch the Suporr." The burly figure had been glimpsed that morning on the steps of his headquarters looking, as one observer had it, "like a muckle black de'il", and the Pelegate folk were not in a forgiving mood. "Has he catched Wee Geordie yet?" people wanted to know. "And Muckle Joe? Man but he's aafu' slow. He didna want to have catched 'em forbye."

  In fact both Henderson and Sugden were already on their way to Belcastle gaol, having been hustled aboard the southbound 12.15 under the noses of the crowd that watched the horizon for every puff of smoke coming north across the snow-covered plain. A tall rushing pillar soon after four presaged the arrival of the Flying Scotsman, its whistle shrilling, whirling a debris of paper contemptuously in its wake as it rushed through on its way to Edinburgh. Mothers clutched their children; cries went up, "It's the Fleein' Scot. Worr's our Willie? Can ye no bide near to mither, ye gomeril!" A few eyes had already seen another column of smoke far off down the line, and as it approached and was identified as The Bomb', a notorio
us 'slow' that haunted every forlorn platform between York and Berwick, the crowd surged forward to the edge of the track, returning the astonished stares of driver and fireman with wild shouts for 'Mick' and the 'Smedwick mortars'. "They're not aboard," an authoritative voice called out from the rear, armed with the superior intelligence of the Mercury reporting staff. Lamentations broke out against the Government and the Great Northern, and as 'The Bomb' clanked and puffed its way on to the loop line to make way for the next express derisive boos and catcalls followed it.

  Just before six the arrival of the editor of the Mercury and a reinforcement of police indicated to the observant that the great hour was approaching. Justin was there, at the back of the crowd that may have numbered a thousand, and near him the rotund figure of

  the Vicar of St Bede's in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket gave the scene an individual flavour. A plume of smoke like a red serpent uncoiling could be made out through the gathering darkness, and now for the first time the crowd fell silent, so that the approaching rumble mingling with the voice of a child crying to its mother to go home could be distinctly heard.

  As the train pulled in and the people saw the line of carriages and faces pressed to the panes their energies were released. A babel of shouting broke out down the length of the platform. Doors were wrenched open and the startled eyes of passengers stared out into the gleam of lamps and home-made torches waving as though in the course of some fantastic dance. Suddenly a great cheer went up. From his position near the ticket office Justin saw the crowd in front of him sway like some living thing with tentacles and a central core that swelled and heaved. "Open the barriers," someone shouted close to him, and he heard the rattle of iron being swung back before the struggling mass that rolled towards him. As he was engulfed he heard a whistle shrilling, the hiss of steam, stentorian bellows from police officers, the sobbing of children, voices that called to one another wonderingly across an expanse of time—"Is it ye, hinney? My but ye've growed so. Worr's wor Jennie, me wee lass?"

  The pace of the retreat was slowing as the Police, with linked arms, shepherded the mob past the gates into the forecourt; and close at hand, not more than a few feet away, he saw the bearded figure and the much younger one that had haunted his waking hours for so long. He looked around for his friend to share the triumph with him, for suddenly his detachment had gone and he was able to feel the joy and pity of all those who wept and laughed and embraced one another after a long parting. But Mr Lumley was nowhere to be seen. On the far edge of the crowd he was busily at work collecting signatures for an appeal for mercy on behalf of Henderson and Sugden.

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  THE TRIAL 1899

  "Members of the jury," Gilmore said, "in this case I appear for the Crown with my learned friend Mr McGlew, while my learned friend Mr Jessop represents the accused man Blair and my learned friend Mr Neil the accused men Mathieson and Moffat. The charge, as you have heard, is Criminal Conspiracy."

  Here Gilmore settled himself comfortably against the wall of the dock and said in a matter-of-fact voice: "You may think, when all is over, that it is one of the most extraordinary stories you have ever heard. Gentlemen, the Prosecution say that because of what happened one winter's night in a remote rectory on the fells, and because of what these accused police officers thought of that event and continued to pretend when they very well knew better, two innocent men were tried and sent to penal servitude for life and served eight years before the truth came out. The Prosecution say that the evidence on which they were condemned was false and had been manufactured by these accused in the dock today. To make the punishment fit the crime' was the benevolent aim of the Mikado in the opera. It has been left to these police officers to show that in a less humane democracy the evidence can be made to fit the crime as well. This we shall show.

  "Gentlemen, my case is in a sense an epilogue. There was a first act which was played out in this same court when two humble people whom I shall call before you were tried and condemned on the false evidence I have spoken of. The second was brought to its climax by the efforts of two just and selfless men—for it is by twos we go throughout—who uncovered the truth and the real perpetrators of that old crime and saw them brought to justice. You will hear for yourselves from those criminals who on that winter night broke into the home of an old man to steal and fired a gun at him. You may wonder whether it has ever happened before that convicted men, the innocent and the guilty, have united to testify to the immeas-

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  urably more shocking guilt of the police officers who arrested them. Strange are the workings of providence—and, you may think, of human justice. Milligan and Kelly, who were innocent, were charged with burglary and attempted murder and might have lived out their lives in prison. Henderson and Sugden, guilty, were charged with burglary alone and sentenced to five years. Let us admit that some restitution has been made. Milligan and Kelly have been released. But they should never have been imprisoned. They have been pardoned. For something they never did. They have each been given eight hundred pounds as an act of grace—and one applauds that, though perhaps not the Treasury rates for an injustice that has lasted for eight years.

  "Members of the jury, it is necessary that you should learn about these things in greater detail, since my case today is only to be understood in the light of what went before. So we will start in Mas-singham Rectory about two o'clock on a cold starlit night. . . ."

  In the well of the court, a few places away from where he had sat with Rees, Justin listened to this opening. The wooden paling of the dock alone divided him from Blair and the two other accused; Gil-more was slightly to his left in the front row; and on the bench a thin, pale man in crimson robes seemed only to half fill the chair under the royal arms where Garrowby had brooded. Through the windows above the public gallery a shaft of light fell on the canopy above the judge's head and on the fashionable folk in the Grand Jury box along one wall. The trial jurors sat herded together in three rows of seats on the judge's left, facing towards Gilmore like well-conducted children in school, and opposite them was the witness-box. Apart from the judge, it was all so like the setting of eight years earlier that he half expected to hear some whispered comment from old Rees and to see the bearded Milligan and Kelly with his unformed peasant's face lean forward in the dock with the trapped expression that he could see now in the young constable, Moffat, at the far end of the line. It was of course Gilmore who gave the greatest force to the illusion: the elegant figure, the voice of reason itself—

  "Members of the jury, the Prosecution's case can be summarised easily. We say that the accused, acting in concert, arrested on suspicion of burglary two innocent men who happened to have been from home that night and charged them on that evidence alone. Then, finding that they had against their suspects nothing but two

  most indifferent identifications made by an old man and his daughter in almost total darkness, what did they do? Release them? Not at all. They were the best suspects they had. Did they unearth other evidence against them? How could they. There was no other evidence. So they had to create it. These police officers—officers of justice, members of the jury—set about making up a case to fit what they felt ought to have happened. There was no evidence that Milligan and Kelly had ever owned a housebreaking implement. One might think that a disadvantage from the Police point of view. But no—not to men of initiative. A chisel had been found at the scene of the crime, so the accused Blair sent his confederate Mathieson and P.C. Pugh down to the house of an old half-blind man called Piggott, where Kelly had lodged, and by working upon the fears and credulity of that old man they got him to say that this chisel (which he had never seen before and which they had planted on him) was his and that Kelly had had access to it.

  "You may think that was a remarkable proceeding—a 'ruse', Blair called it, though perhaps you will find a better word. But we are only at the beginning. There are far more imaginative things to come."

>   Gilmore had given the jury a searching glance as he said this, to make sure that they were not adrift on his flights of irony, and satisfied with what he saw, went on:

  "We come now to what we might term the Taper Chase'. A piece of newspaper had been found in the rectory after the crime and this had been handed to the Police. A coat which Kelly was alleged to have been wearing that night was also handed to the Police by a person now dead. A fortnight after the crime—a full fortnight, gentlemen—the Police Surgeon Dr Higson (whose integrity I in no way impugn) was asked by Superintendent Blair to search that coat, and in it he found a fragment of paper that fitted exactly into the larger piece found in the rectory hall. What a fortunate chance! What incontestable proof of Kelly's guilt! Admittedly it was a little strange that only after a fortnight and several Police searches did the evidence come to light. And it savours almost of a miracle when we learn that according to the testimony of the witness Piggott the coat handed to the Police ivas never Kelly's; it was his.

  "So much for the younger victim: they would have his skin. But the case against Milligan still required a little window dressing, a little decorous rearrangement here and there. So the accused man

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  Moffat was sent to Massingham to hunt around under the window through which the burglars had come and gone. A month—a whole month this time—had passed since the crime. But knowing the resourcefulness of these officers and the beneficent providence that guided them, can you doubt for a moment that that constable managed to unearth something of shattering importance to justify his journey? Of course he did. The diligent man had not been there an hour before he had dug up a button with a bit of cloth attached. And remembering the scrap of paper in the coat, can you doubt that that bit of cloth was found to fit as neatly as a sausage into its skin into a rent in Milligan's trousers, also in the possession of the Police? You may think, perhaps, that this third of the Superintendent's gambits shows a repetitious quality unworthy of him, indicating that he was running out of ideas, but at least it shows his nose for a conviction was as keen as ever. Alas for him, that piece of evidence was rejected by the judge for reasons I need not trouble you about, and so the tailor, who was called in to perform what I might term the autopsy on the cloth and button, was not called."