House of Correction

by French, Nicci

  One of the men on the jury nodded. Another juror wrote something on the pad in front of her. Tabitha chewed at her lip until she tasted blood. She was very hot and then suddenly she was cold and shivery. Her whole body felt wrong. For a few moments, she lost her grip on what Brockbank was saying. His words slid off her, his mouth opened and closed and expressions passed across his florid face: sorrowful, knowing, stern. She sat up straighter.

  He was describing how she had concealed what had happened when she was fifteen from the police. He was making each point clearly and calmly, laying it down slick and flat like a playing card peeled from the deck. How in the last six weeks of his life Stuart Rees had been visibly anxious and how he had abruptly decided to put his house on the market and move from Okeham. ‘Almost the same number of weeks, members of the jury, that Tabitha Hardy had been living there.

  ‘You will hear,’ the barrister continued, ‘various witnesses testifying that the accused publicly threatened Stuart Rees, even on the morning of his murder. You will hear how on that day, she was in a highly agitated state. You will hear how she even went so far as to make a partial confession to one of the residents.’

  He paused and looked down at his notes once more, gave a preparatory cough before going on. The lights in the court were sour and glaring. I could just confess, thought Tabitha. Have done with this. She looked at Michaela and Michaela looked back at her and gave her a nod and a smile, then wrinkled her nose in the direction of Simon Brockbank.

  Now it was about the distressing images the jury would have to see. Simon Brockbank’s voice dropped and he was looking at the twelve men and women compassionately. Tabitha felt rage bubble up in her. She rapped once more on the Perspex, as hard as she could. The performance came to a halt. Everyone stared at her.

  ‘When he does that, I can’t hear properly,’ she said in a loud, harsh voice. ‘How am I meant to defend myself if I can’t hear? I shouldn’t be sitting here. I should be down there.’ A phrase belatedly swam into her mind. ‘My Ladyship,’ she added, but that was wrong. ‘My Lady, I mean.’

  ‘You are the accused and you sit in the dock,’ said Judge Munday. ‘That is the rule of the court.’

  ‘You’re the judge. You’re in charge. You’re like the monarch or the dictator or something and you can do what you want. So you can let me sit down there.’

  ‘I am indeed the judge. And you will remain in the dock.’

  ‘It’s not right. I need to hear what he’s saying.’

  ‘Miss Hardy.’

  Tabitha banged against the reinforced Perspex with her fist, shaking it. ‘Ms.’

  ‘If you continue like this you’ll be removed.’

  There was a high crack of laughter and she realised with a shock that it came from her. ‘Removed? How? What happens then?’

  ‘At the very least, you will be handcuffed.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘As you rightly pointed out, I am in charge of this court. You need to behave in an appropriate manner. Do you understand?’

  There was a pause. Tabitha’s hands were shaking. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. She swallowed. ‘My Lady.’

  ‘Good.’

  The prosecution statement continued. The fallen tree that cut off the village, meaning the police knew exactly who was there during the crucial hours. The CCTV evidence that fixed the time of murder after 10.30 in the morning and before 3.30 that afternoon. Stuart Rees’s car at Tabitha’s house. His body in the shed. The way she had tried to prevent Andy going out there. The blood on her. Her strange behaviour at the police station…

  Tabitha made herself write down each point in turn, because she knew that what she was hearing were the essential bones of the prosecution’s case against her. The motive, the opportunity, the evidence. These were the things she needed to unpick. Her thoughts were jumbled, but her writing was surprisingly clear.

  At last it was over. The smooth, over-enunciated voice stopped. Simon Brockhurt sat down. Elinor Ackroyd whispered something in his ear and he nodded. Judge Munday looked at her watch even though there was a digital clock on the desk.

  ‘We only have forty minutes remaining. Would you like to stop now, Ms Hardy, and resume with your defence statement tomorrow morning?’

  ‘No,’ said Tabitha. The judge looked taken aback. ‘It won’t take long. Nothing like forty minutes. Five maybe. I’d like to get it over with, but I need my papers.’

  She beckoned at Michaela who rose, lifting the folders. She carried them towards the dock.

  ‘She’s my McKenzie friend,’ Tabitha said to the jury. She tried to smile at them but her lips were cracked.

  She took hold of the folders. One dropped onto the floor and Michaela squatted to gather the scattered papers. There was a titter from the public gallery and Judge Munday frowned upwards.

  ‘Right,’ said Tabitha once everything was in front of her. ‘Right.’

  She cleared her throat. She opened the top folder then closed it again, because there was too much in there. She opened her notebook and looked down at it. She turned towards the jury, her eyes moving from face to face. There was a moment of complete silence.

  ‘Well,’ she said. Her voice was even gruffer than usual. She wished she was taller, more solid, less shabby. ‘If the prosecution really thinks this is such a slam dunk for them, how come they’ – she pointed across at Simon Brockbank and Elinor Ackroyd – ‘yesterday offered to reduce the sentence to manslaughter? They can’t have much confidence in—’

  ‘Stop!’ The judge’s voice was a shout and her face was white with anger. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’

  She turned towards the jury.

  ‘I am very sorry that your time has been wasted in this way. You are discharged.’

  ‘What have I done?’ asked Tabitha.

  The judge ignored her, addressing herself instead to the journalists. ‘All members of the press are under strict instructions not to report what the accused said.’

  ‘But I—’

  The judge pointed at her. ‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘You have done quite enough. You are in serious trouble.’

  ‘What, more trouble than being on trial for murder? More than that?’

  ‘I take it you understand that the trial will have to start again with a new jury.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘All rise,’ said the court associate.

  Judge Munday swept out of the court. The police officer took Tabitha by her arm and led her from the dock. As she left, she heard someone laugh.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  It was very strange to be in a different prison. There were no faces she recognised, no one else in her cell, which was hot and whose little window didn’t show the sky but a grey-brown wall. This was a new-build prison but cheaply constructed and already starting to crack and peel. She almost missed Crow Grange.

  She sat on her bed and tried to breathe steadily. Her head banged and her heart banged and her legs felt weak. She was exhausted. The day was like a dream or like a play that she had watched and also starred in: a small, scruffy figure in the dock, and all those grand, robed, wigged figures looking at her, talking about her, angry or smirking at the idiot she had made of herself.

  She forced herself to eat the cellophane-wrapped cheese sandwich, which tasted plasticky and bland; she drank the milky, tepid tea.

  She couldn’t understand how Simon Brockbank had been so in control of all the information – those hundreds of statements and documents and photos and timings, and he had gathered it all smoothly up and offered it to the jury in bullet points. Glancing at the notes had just been a gesture. Whereas she – who had lived through the events he was only describing, and who had had months to assimilate the information and shape it into some kind of narrative – was still in a fog.

  She needed to focus. Michaela had taken the folders, but she opened up her moleskin book that was falling apart and gazed at the
notes, the lists, the drawings, the arrows and the graphs and the various timelines. She looked at the asterisks and exclamation marks and circled and underlined words. It looked mad. It was mad. She closed the book and closed her eyes and let sleep swamp her.

  * * *

  She dreamed that she was back in Okeham. She was in her house in the darkness and someone was rapping at her door and she knew she mustn’t open it but she did. Stuart Rees was standing there but he was the Stuart of fifteen years ago. He beckoned at her, his finger like a hook. The school bus was behind him. She could see her own face at its central window, scribbled over by the crack in the glass, illegible, soundlessly shouting something. The sea was rolling towards her, hissing and swollen and inky black.

  She woke with a jerk and stared around her. Her mouth was dry and her head was full of cobwebs and ghosts.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  When Tabitha was a teenager she had gone to see a comedian who gave a brilliant improvisatory performance, drifting from topic to topic in a kind of random free association, bouncing off comments made by the audience. She had been so dazzled by it that she had gone the next night as well. It turned out that it wasn’t improvisation at all. Every cough, every stumble, every little digression was identical. Even the apparent off-the-cuff responses to heckles were identical. She had felt let down and grudgingly admiring at the same time.

  She felt much the same when she sat and watched Simon Brockbank deliver his opening statement for the second time. The first time it had felt conversational and relaxed, like a man with complete control of the case was thinking aloud, sharing his thoughts with the jury. There had been a moment where he had mentioned Laura Rees, what it was like for her to have to identify the body of the man she had been married to for thirty-five years, when his voice broke, he paused and then took a sip of water, as if the emotion was so great that it had got to him, a hardened professional. The second time, he did it exactly the same way, the same cracking of the voice, the same sip of water. Tabitha almost wanted to laugh and to get up and shout to the jury that this was a fake, a performance. But she didn’t. She didn’t want the trial stopped all over again.

  Instead, her mind started to wander. She looked around the court that was crammed with journalists who must have heard about this lunatic woman who was defending herself, and then she looked up at the public gallery. It too was crowded; she saw faces peering down at her and quickly turned away.

  Next, she looked across at the jury. They were sitting in two rows down to her left. She looked along the back row: balding man, like a middle-manager, early forties maybe; frizzy black-haired woman, late thirties, hippyish, big earrings, Tabitha imagined she’d made them herself, who kept blinking in a way Tabitha found distracting; round-faced woman, headscarf, looking round and smiling at nothing in particular, thirties; woman, forties, bright pink cardigan, stern face; young man, twenties, hoodie and tee shirt, blotchy face, clearly bored and it was still only the first day; man in his fifties, dressed for court, thin, serious, kept shifting around – to concentrate? Stay awake?

  Front row: serious woman, serious hair, serious small round tortoiseshell spectacles, serious dark clothes, probably a doctor; man, trimmed beard, checked shirt, possible geography teacher; older woman, late sixties, comfy, flowery dress; woman in forties, big brown-beaded necklace, ferocious brow, stared up at Tabitha more than any of the others, not in a friendly way; posh woman, mid forties, immaculate fawn sweater and discreet necklace, precisely made up, Tabitha could imagine her on a horse in tight white trousers; man in a man bun, but too old for it, late forties probably.

  There were different sexes, different ages, different races. Tabitha could imagine an alternative universe in which she would be winning them over one by one, crafting a defence that would appeal to each one of them personally. Probably she should at least separate them in her mind into the friendly and the unfriendly. The problem was that they all seemed unfriendly. Scary brow was probably worst, but they all showed varying degrees of suspicion. When they had looked up at her, Tabitha, in her Perspex container, had felt like a creature in a zoo. There might as well have been a label: ‘Tabitha Hardy. Murderer’.

  ‘Ms Hardy?’

  Tabitha looked round. She had almost forgotten where she was.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your defence statement,’ said Judge Munday.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s time for you to make it.’

  Tabitha looked round in dismay. Simon Brockbank had finished his statement and was seated. Both barristers had swivelled in their chairs and were gazing at her, as were the jury, as was the judge, as was everyone in the court, for once not staring down at their laptops.

  Tabitha’s mind was a complete blank.

  ‘Am I meant to speak from here?’ she said.

  ‘This has already been decided,’ said Judge Munday in a firm tone.

  ‘It just feels like I’m talking from inside a box.’

  ‘Please continue.’

  Tabitha took a deep breath. What if she just didn’t say anything? What if she fainted? She looked at the jury, who looked back at her. They were probably starting to feel embarrassed, like at a wedding speech that had gone wrong. Would it make them feel sorry for her? Probably not.

  ‘It might seem a bit strange,’ she began. ‘Me here defending myself, without a lawyer.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Judge Munday. ‘I have to interrupt here. Please be careful what you say, Ms Hardy.’ She turned to the jury. ‘As you will have seen, Ms Hardy has chosen to represent herself. And as you may know, this is unusual in a case of such importance but it is her free choice. She is perfectly entitled to make it. I want to say two things: the first is that certain parts of the trial may appear more informal as a result.’ She looked at Tabitha with a frown. ‘That will not be an excuse for the breaking of the rules of evidence. And secondly, the fact of her defending herself should have no influence on you, either for or against her.’ She looked back at Tabitha. ‘You may proceed.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I mean, thanks, madam. My Lady. I’m not going to say much.’ The interruption had helped her to gather her thoughts. ‘I’m not going to go through the whole case the way the other guy did.’

  ‘Please call him Mr Brockbank,’ said Judge Munday.

  ‘Sorry. Mr Brockbank. Obviously I’m not an expert. One thing I know is that technically I don’t have to prove I’m innocent. I just have to show that you can’t rely on the evidence against me. I know that lawyers do it with tricks and creating confusion.’ She glanced nervously at Judge Munday who was frowning at her and slowly shaking her head. She looked back at the jury. ‘I don’t want to do that. I want to show you that I didn’t do it.’

  She sat down and for a moment there was a silence broken only by a couple of coughs. Tabitha looked around. Was something the matter? Brockbank stood up.

  ‘Excuse me, My Lady, but can we send the jury out?’

  The jury members looked baffled and displeased as they were led out of their seats, round the side of the room and out through the door. As soon as they were gone, Brockbank stood up and said that Tabitha should have given a detailed description of her defence.

  ‘How can I do that until I’ve seen what people are going to say?’ she said.

  ‘You have seen. It’s in the prosecution statement you received.’

  Judge Munday shook her head. ‘We can’t be too rigid about all of that,’ she said. Then she looked more sternly at Tabitha. ‘That does not apply to your treatment of witnesses. There are strict rules about direct cross-examination of witnesses by the accused. About those there will be no latitude whatever.’

  Tabitha had no idea what these rules were, but she just nodded humbly. Judge Munday looked up at the clock.

  ‘I think we’ll have time for the first witness,’ she said.

  * * *

  Dr Leonard Garner was a consultant pathologist with an alarmingly long list of qualifications. He was tall, with
a long, gaunt, serious face and hair that was almost white. He stood erect in the witness box like someone who had been there many times before. He also had a spotted bow tie and some of his hair was combed across his bald head. Tabitha had never understood either of these style choices. When he started to speak, he gave a small sound at the end of each sentence, a kind of hum, and Tabitha quickly found it irritating. It was difficult not to listen to the hum instead of what he was saying.

  Dr Garner had examined Stuart Rees’s body at the scene and he had also conducted the autopsy. With almost maddening detail, Brockbank led Dr Garner through first a description of his own qualifications, then of the body as he had found it at the scene, then the results of the autopsy. Tabitha had already seen the photographs of the stab wounds, but here they had been blown up and stuck on large sheets of cardboard and put on a trestle at the side of the court.

  Dr Garner described the cause of death, shock caused by catastrophic bleeding. One of the multiple knife wounds had virtually severed the carotid artery. Rees would have died within minutes. The wounds were caused by one knife, a single-edged, non-serrated knife, with a maximum width of 3.4 centimetres. A knife from Tabitha’s kitchen was produced. Dr Garner was asked if it was possible that this knife had been used in the murder and he said, yes, it was possible.

  Tabitha looked down at Michaela and hissed at her and rapped on the Perspex. She looked round.

  ‘Are you taking notes?’ Tabitha said.

  ‘Please, Ms Hardy,’ said Judge Munday.

  ‘What am I meant to do?’ said Tabitha. ‘I can’t whisper to her. She wouldn’t be able to hear me.’

  ‘Please let the witness continue without being interrupted.’