The Massingham Affair Part 19

"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 a.s.sist 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 t.i.tter of laughter had accompanied this sighting shot, and Jessop, hunting a.s.siduously 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."

179.

"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 Ma.s.singham, 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 paris.h.i.+oners?"

"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 ill.u.s.tration 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.

181.

THE Ma.s.sINTGHAM AFFAIR.

"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 circ.u.mstances in which Henderson's alleged confession came to be made. As I understand it, it was got with the active a.s.sistance 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?"

"He was there when it was made."

"What was inside the envelope Longford had deposited with you?"

"I didn't examine the envelope. But it must have contained a lady's gold watch-Miss Verney's. Henderson actually had it in his hand when I burst in."

"Isn't it a fact that Longford had taken that watch by stealth from Henderson's house and lodged it with you?"

"How can the witness know that?" Gilmore said. "It is a question that should be put to Longford if at all."

"Then perhaps I may be permitted to ask this" said Mr Jessop, beginning to bounce a little under his frustrations. "Mr Derry, would you agree with me that this affair of Longford and the watch in the envelope bears all the marks of a ruse', as I think the word was when applied to Piggott's chisel?"

"I suppose you could look at it like that."

"It was a conspiracy in fact?"

"No. I knew nothing of what was in the envelope when it was handed me."

"But you were glad enough to take advantage of it?"

"You mean by taking Henderson's confession?"

"I mean by extracting that so-called confession from a man who was in your power."

"It's true he was at a disadvantage."

"Disadvantage!" Counsel raised his eyes towards the ceiling, which he might have perceived was much in need of a coat of paint. "Isn't it a fact that you had just surprised this man in the act of committing a felony?"

"Yes."

"And banged his head into the bargain?" There was a burst of laughter in court and Jessop added: "Also you were two to one?"

"Yes."

"How could any confession made in such circ.u.mstances conceivably be voluntary?"

It was a question Justin had often asked himself and even now the answer was not clear. He felt sure that the confession was true. And it had come freely, without any threats or promises from him. He had asked Henderson if the watch was Miss Verney's and whether he had been at Ma.s.singham, and after slight hesitation the words had come tumbling out. Surely that was enough? But a faint nagging doubt, a sense of something unexplained, had lingered and made him pause now in the tense silence of the court. He saw Gil-more watching him and the stony countenances in the dock. "Not in the strict legal sense," he said.

The astonishment on Jessop's face and the rus.h.i.+ng movement with which the man rose to this undreamed-of opportunity almost made him laugh. "You mean you agree that the confession was not voluntary?"

"I think it was. I asked two simple questions about the Ma.s.singham crime and then I listened. I tried to be fair. I put no pressure on the man and he seemed willing to talk. But it is also true that there were two of us and the circ.u.mstances in which he found him- 183.

self were strange, so that perhaps there was something there that made him act as he might not otherwise have done."

"That is a very fair answer," Jessop said, acknowledging with some difficulty that there could be virtue in a Prosecution witness. "If you had been a juryman trying Henderson on a charge of burglary at Ma.s.singham, would you have accepted that confession as conclusive evidence against him?"

"No-because of the element of doubt, as I have said."

"We shall be hearing Henderson and he will repeat every word of it," put in Gilmore, rising hastily to his feet.

Mr Jessop had begun to bounce uncontrollably and burst out: "That is not even re-examination: it is a speech out of context, out of place, out of time and out of order. My lord, may I be protected from such grossly improper interruptions?"

"Quite improper," agreed the judge. "I hope I shall not have to refer to it again."

Justin had remained motionless through this, looking straight ahead and trying not to see the aggravation he had caused Gilmore and the dawning smirk on Blair's face. Praise of his honesty from Jessop was hard to bear, but he could see that he was about to receive a whole cornucopia of it. "A most honest answer," it began. "As a juryman you would have suspected the confession. But as an interrogator you seem to have acted on it. Why?"

"It confirmed what I had already heard from Sugden."

"But surely to be fair-and you are being fair-that also had been obtained by improper pressure?"

"I don't agree."

"You seem to have a double standard of values for such things. Isn't it a fact that what you say you would not have done as a juryman you actually did in the course of an obsessive hunt for scapegoats?"

"I don't understand that."

"Neither do I," remarked the judge.

"Then may I put it this way? I am suggesting that you had a preconceived idea of what had taken place at Ma.s.singham and were determined to make the facts fit the theory?"

"I didn't have any preconceived ideas."

"Weren't you pursuing a vendetta against the Police?"

"Certainly not."