The Massingham affair

by Grierson, Edward, 1914-1975

  Gilmore paused and added grimly: "But I am calling him. He is an honest man. And he will tell you what he would have told the jury if he had been allowed—that though a leap through a window could have caused the tear, it seemed more likely that some sharper edge had done it, such as a pair of scissors or a knife. It looked deliberate and he told Blair so. Of course no one listened."

  But in court they were listening now. Justin sensed around him an unwavering concentration. The restless stirring and coughing that had gone on during the swearing of the jury had ceased, and in the pause that followed, while Gilmore glanced at his brief, there was not a sound to be heard except for a faint rustling of paper in the press box. Even that had stopped as counsel straightened up again.

  "Members of the jury, these three 'ruses', to adopt the Superintendent's amusing word, are serious enough. But you may think that what I have now to tell you is more outrageous still. It has about it an impudent air that sets it apart—at once daring and deceitful, simple and ingenious, sly and immensely effective. More than anything else it convicted Milligan and Kelly. Even today the Prosecution cannot put the whole truth of it before you, because it happened that for this one last and final coup the conspirators employed no one else, trusted no one but themselves. But little by little

  we will piece the story together. P.C. Pugh, whom I shall call, will tell part of it; so will Henderson, and a young farmer called Merrick. And I think the defendant Blair may tell us what remains—if he is called; if he goes into that box. We shall see. Meanwhile . . ."

  After luncheon the long procession of witnesses began. Justin knew that it was Gilmore's plan to prove first the burglary and the events up to the time of the arrest of Milligan and Kelly, both of whom would be called to deny their guilt. Henderson and Sugden would follow to admit theirs, supported by the evidence of Miss Binns, the roadman Green, and Longford to speak to the recovery of the watch. The foundations of the burglary and its true solution having been laid, the last part of the Prosecution's case would consist of proof of the Police conspiracy through the mouths of Pugh (who had turned Queen's Evidence), Piggott, Merrick, Higson and the tailor.

  First, then, Mr Verney.

  As he slowly mounted the steps and grasped the edge of the box with his scaly old hands the illusion that had haunted Justin all that day became complete. Time had stood quite still for him. The Reverend Thomas James McMichael Verney, aged 76, Rector of Mas-singham since 1859. Remembered the night of the burglary. Awakened by his daughter . . .

  Suddenly Justin saw that she was in court, which must mean that Gilmore would not be calling her. He felt glad that she would not be called and browbeaten into admissions of the terrible mistake she must know she had made, and that it would be left to the old man to deal with the stolen property and the identifications of the burglars who had broken into his home.

  Poor Mr Verney. He was not one actually to eat his words. But he was definite no longer. The intruders, he now said, had seemed to him like Milligan and Kelly. Of course the light had been bad and everyone had been in a state of great excitement. He withdrew in no way the testimony he had given that the men were Milligan and Kelly, but the possibility of error had existed. The light had been so bad. There had been a large man and a smaller man, both standing like drilled men. The big one had shot at him. At any rate a gun had gone off. He had seen an interesting and beautiful meteorlike effect which he had attempted to describe in a letter to the press. As to the watch (shown him), it was undoubtedly his daugh-

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  ter's. The seal (shown him) had been attached to the watch and had stood on a tripod on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

  Cross-examined: He had certainly said at the trial that the burglars were Milligan and Kelly. He still thought that was probable. But the light had been so bad.

  They were smiling in court. The old man's words no longer had significance. What he remembered or failed to remember would hurt no one now: it was light relief to listen to the old buffoon with his nightgown and candle, his meteorite and his identification of burglars by the drill book. Perhaps only Justin, who had suffered under the Verney memory for so long, felt pity for the old gentleman whose beard was wagging at them from the box and who seemed so astonishingly unaware of the harm he had done. To see him baited in the presence of his daughter was not pleasant, though there could be worse things. Suppose Gilmore were to call her after all!

  When Mr Verney at last stepped down Justin was in panic that she would have to follow her father into the box. But it was only the Rectory cook, whose timorous appearance on the stairs above the tumult in mob cap and curlers had convulsed even Mr Justice Gar-rowby's court; followed by Bell, the odd-job man, who had found the newspaper in the hall.

  Then Milligan. People were craning forward everywhere, and even the judge had glanced up from his notes towards the witness-box where the stolid bearded figure was standing with the Bible in his hand.

  "You are Patrick Milligan?"

  "Aye."

  "Wheelwright, of 10 Orchard Close, Smedwick?"

  "Aye."

  "On the 7th of February 1891 were you and a man called Michael Kelly arrested on charges of burglary and attempted murder?"

  "Aye."

  "On the 15th March were you both indicted in this court for those offences, convicted and sentenced to penal servitude for life?"

  "We were."

  "Were you guilty?"

  "Innocent."

  It had taken eight years and three trials, Justin reflected, before the truth had been allowed to be told.

  Next morning the Defence in the person of Mr Jessop advanced buoyantly upon it. Mr Jessop had slept well. His smooth well-nourished figure came bounding up the steps of the Moot Hall with the air of one who has some pleasant duty in store that will astonish the natives very much. "Mr Milligan," he greeted the reappearance of the witness, "Mr Milligan, you come before us as an honest man?"

  "That I hope, sir."

  "Whose word can be trusted," Jessop said. "What is your profession?"

  "Wheelwright."

  "And poacher, may we add?"

  "I've poached, admitted."

  "Do you admit convictions?"

  "Aye."

  "How many?"

  "Six maybe."

  "Milligan" (no Mister this time), "do you still say you are an honest-living man?"

  That had been the keystone. And on it had been built an attack of considerable power and virulence, extending in time to Kelly and the whole field of the Massingham burglary. In form it was a restatement of what Paget for the Crown had said in that place eight years earlier, but made in the course of questions to men whom Paget had not been able to touch because they had been in the dock and protected by the law as it then stood. Now they were protected no longer but were witnesses, "men whose testimony you are asked to trust and to convict others on", in Jessop's words as he fixed the jury with bulbous and glittering eye. He was an excellent advocate, with a way of burrowing into a problem by the back door and of phrasing his questions in such a manner that his victims were made to look reluctant and sly, as though the truth were being dragged out of them. "Milligan," he asked on one occasion, "I think you tell us that you had an alibi for the small hours?"

  The witness replied that he and Kelly had been on Bridewell Moor.

  CUT

  0»

  "Out walking? Taking the "We was poachin'."

  "Were you now? Poaching. So in fact your alibi for one crime was to plead another. Did you have witnesses?" "Some lads as saw us comin' off the fell."

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  "Saw you, did they? Most fortunate. Did you call them at your trial?"

  "They've come today, sir."

  "Did you call them at your trial, that's what I'm asking you?"

  Under this treatment it was no wonder that both men, particularly Kelly, began to wilt a little. They had not expected such rough handling s
o late in the day. But though at times they were made to look foolish and stubborn, and their old fondness for other people's game was brought out in glaring colours, the core of their evidence remained untouched by anything Jessop could do. And the effect of it was very striking. At those moments when Defence counsel were on the attack and getting admissions a groundswell of sound could be heard in court—not the sudden intake of breath with which a damaging answer is greeted, but something restless and protesting, something very unfavourable to Blair and all he stood for. Only the jury seemed fairly immune. They had their property qualifications to think of and Mr Jessop to contend with at a range of a few yards. Yet even on their faces there was an expression which Justin thought he could read and which satisfied him as he saw the younger and more vulnerable of his two proteges released at last. "Call George Sugden," he heard Gilmore say, and voices were crying in the corridor, "George Sugden. Call George Sugden."

  And suddenly he saw that Jessop was on his feet.

  "Yes?" enquired the judge, glancing up from his notes which he had been scratching with a quill pen.

  "My lord, if I might interpolate a point? We have heard from the two men originally convicted of the crime at Massingham, and I understand that the witness Sugden is one of their two 'successors', if I may use the term."

  "He is one of the two men who now admit to the commission of that crime," Gilmore agreed in a suffering voice.

  "Am I right—is my friend about to call them to repeat those confessions on oath?"

  "Of course."

  "Then might we hear how those confessions came to be made? They were first made to a Mr Deny, I believe?"

  "That is so."

  "Will my friend not be calling that gentleman as a preliminary? His name is on the back of the indictment."

  Alarm. Horror. And then a definite exhilaration. In the clinical

  mood that the trial had induced, Justin recognised all these symptoms; also a sense of wonder as to what Gilmore would do.

  "I will call him, certainly," the answer came without a trace of hesitation. "I must not disguise the fact, however, that Mr Derry has been in court throughout."

  "Was that proper?"

  "Well, I had not proposed to call him," Gilmore said. "Since I am producing the men themselves to confess all over again to their crimes, his evidence seemed to me to lack cogency. But if my friend wishes . . . certainly I shall oblige. Mr Derry." He was glancing behind him in his blandest way, as though he would call the Archangel Gabriel if it would assist the court. "Will Mr Derry please come forward?"

  "Most improper: he should have been kept out of court: it is a scandal," he heard Jessop grumbling as he went through the well and up the steps into the witness-box, with the judge on his left and the jury straight ahead of him. The gallery was a sea of faces stretching back into the gloom, and over his shoulder, as he took the oath, he was aware of the rows of gentry in the Grand Jury box.

  "Now then, you are Justin Derry, solicitor of Smedwick?" Gilmore said.

  "I am."

  "I have no questions to ask you. But it appears that my learned friends have. If you will be so good as to hold yourself at their disposal?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He could see Jessop rising on the balls of his feet: a very small man, seen from that angle, whose head hardly came up to the level of the dock behind which the monumental figure of Blair stared into nothingness. A formidable little man; it was not going to be pleasant.

  "Mr Derry, I want to refer to my friend's opening if I may. He described someone—or rather two people—as 'just and selfless'—I think I have it right. Yes, here it is: 'just and selfless'. That did refer to you?" A titter of laughter had accompanied this sighting shot, and Jessop, hunting assiduously through his brief and gazing in enquiry at the witness, raised it to quite a sizeable laugh before he went on: "Those are impressive claims. Do you endorse them? Are you just? And selfless? I mean particularly so?"

  "I don't remember making any claims for myself."

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  "So my learned friend did it for you. For some reason, presumably. Or was it just rodomontade?"

  "What are you suggesting?" Gilmore was beginning angrily from his seat when the judge pounced on the pair of them. "How can the witness say what was in Mr Gilmore's mind when he opened? It was a piece of irrelevance anyway."

  "I would respectfully agree," said Jessop, seizing happily on the last words. "The suggestion that witnesses for the Prosecution enjoy some special and divinely inspired status is not one to which I would subscribe with much enthusiasm. Not in this case certainly. Now then." He gave his gown a hitch like a man getting down to business and swung round on Justin. "Did all this start when a Miss Binns called on you to make a statement?"

  "Yes."

  "As a result, did you come to certain conclusions and embark on certain actions?"

  "No."

  "You mean you didn't believe what you'd been told?"

  "I mean one doesn't act on a single statement out of the blue."

  "Particularly when your informant is a young lady with a criminal record. I quite understand. You naturally desired to obtain other statements, other data, before you acted. Did you get them?"

  "Yes."

  "Were they—to adopt your own picturesque phrase—out of the blue' also?"

  "I didn't think so."

  "If you add nought to nought, sir, what do you get?"

  "My results were substantial."

  "So they were your results, were they, is that how you thought of them? Is that how you thought of this case at Massingham, as your case, your property?"

  "Not in the least."

  "But it was you, wasn't it, who was carrying out this inspired programme of detective work to show that the Police and Mr Justice Garrowby, not to mention the jury that convicted Milligan and Kelly, were one and all mistaken?"

  "There were others who thought as I did."

  "Mr Lumley, Vicar of St Bede's for instance: the second of the 'just and selfless'?"

  "Yes."

  "Was this Mr Lumley's 'case' too?"

  "How should he answer that?" snapped Gilmore contemptuously from his seat.

  "Very well," Jessop said with a resigned gesture towards the jury, drawing their attention to what he had to put up with. "You may tell me this, though. Wasn't the suspect you fixed upon one of Mr Lumley's parishioners?"

  "If you mean Sugden, yes it was."

  "Did you and Mr Lumley together obtain a confession from this man?"

  "Yes."

  "Was Sugden at that time in bed and suffering from a dangerous fever and were two of his children ill also?"

  "One of them, yes: quite seriously."

  "Was the getting of that so-called confession from that desperately sick and troubled man one illustration of the justness and selflessness we've heard so much about?"

  The court had gone very still. Justin felt the burden of eyes watching him, the tension building up like something physical that he could almost touch. He said simply: "I believed that Sugden was guilty. I was sorry for him. But I was more sorry for Milligan and Kelly. It didn't seem wrong or unjust to try to get at the truth."

  "If it was the truth, of course?" queried Jessop, unmoved by this. "And not the result of social and moral pressures upon a sick and ignorant man?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Let us turn to Henderson. He was the second of your suspects?"

  "Yes."

  "You discovered him. Let us examine the circumstances. A man called Longford came to you and left an envelope in your possession?"

  "Yes."

  "You knew Longford was a poacher with a Police record?"

  "Yes."

  "And was engaged to the sister of the convict Michael Kelly?"

  "The released, pardoned and innocent victim of a proved injustice," corrected Gilmore, rising. "Will my friend not find some less prejudiced way of describing people? It is a fault in my submission."


  "That innocence could be in issue, very much in issue," insisted Jessop, standing his ground.

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  "So we are trying Milligan and Kelly again? My lord, it is an interesting legal curiosity. Perhaps we should alter the indictment and the accused: and my learned friend and I could change places. One must admit he makes an admirable prosecutor."

  "My lord!"

  "Really, it is very simple," the judge said. "Mr Jessop's case, as I understand it, is that these confessions by Sugden and Henderson were improperly obtained and false, while the Police process which ended in the conviction of Milhgan and Kelly was accurate and proper. That is his case. I say nothing of its merits. But he is at perfect liberty to advance it and question witnesses about it. To say that we are re-trying Kelly and Milligan may be good advocacy but it is not good sense. May we now proceed?"

  Mr Jessop's face cleared as he turned from the jury to the witness with the air of a good man maligned but free at last to do his duty. "I hope that no one is more aware than I am," he remarked, "of whom we are trying and for what. Police officers of unblemished reputation are charged that they criminally conspired together."

  "Is that a question?" Gilmore enquired.

  "It is the preface to one. Be patient. I am asking the witness about the circumstances in which Henderson's alleged confession came to be made. As I understand it, it was got with the active assistance of a criminal by the name of Longford—will my friend accept that as a proper and polite enough description of the man?"

  "Question the witness, not me; don't bother me with your ir-relevancies," said Gilmore in an aside audible to everyone.

  "Certainly, I am trying to. That is so, Mr Derry? Longford helped obtain the confession, didn't he?"