The Massingham Affair Part 2

"It should be a matter for general satisfaction," remarked the judge, with a sharp look at the prisoners in the dock. "This might have been a capital charge."

"As your lords.h.i.+p so truly says, and no one would minimise the gravity of what happened." He turned to the witness. "Mr Verney, you have told us that you lunged out several times with your sword at the man in the dark coat? And you felt the blade penetrate some inches, as you thought, into the flesh?"

"Of his breastbone, it felt like."

"Then you had wounded him?"

"So I believed."

"Later you lunged at the other man, the one in the light coat who had remained in the dining-room. Did you wound him too?"

29.

"I believed it at the time."

"Are you surprised today to learn that no wounds were found on either of the prisoners?"

"The sword was blunt. Some kind of mark was found on Kelly, I believe."

Gilmore was glancing at the jury. They were listening intently. "But not the wounds you had imagined?"

"That is so."

"Let me go back a little. You saw the intruders for the first time from the landing half-way down the stairs. You saw them through the open door of the dining-room?"

"I did."

"And you saw the lower parts of their bodies?"

"Distinctly. I had a candle and so had they."

"Mr Verney, do you remember writing a letter on February 17th to the SmeduAck Mercury?"

He replied at once: "I do. I wanted to put a stop to all the idle and misinformed talk."

"So you wrote this letter to clear things up, to put the truth of the matter on record?"

"That exactly describes it."

"Thank you. Now in this letter did you use the following words: '. . . the lower parts of their bodies being all that I could see, and that not distinctly'?'

There was a stir of excitement in court of the kind usual when a question explodes under a witness, and in the public gallery it may have been believed that counsel had quite blown the old man up. Gilmore knew better. It was a score, but a small one.

"You did write that, Mr Verney?"

"I did. The light wasn't very good."

"So now we arrive at this-correct me if I am wrong. You saw only the lower halves of their bodies 'and that not distinctly'? And the top parts of their bodies not at all?"

"That is so."

"How did you identify the accused?"

"Partly by the clothes they wore. Partly by their bearing, the way they held themselves, like trained men."

"And by their height also, I think you said just now?"

"Certainly."

"Pray tell me, Mr Verney, how you manage to judge the height of a man when you can't see the top half of him?"

Justin saw a dawning smile on the faces of some of the jurymen, until they caught the judge's eye on them.

"I had an impression of size," the Rector managed to get out lamely.

"When did you get it?"

"At the time, naturally."

"Isn't it a fact that on the evening after the crime you hesitated to identify the two accused?"

"I was doubtful, slightly doubtful."

"But you're not doubtful now? Your memory gets better and better as time goes on?"

Again that laugh-and this time Garrowby took note of it and looked very deliberately round the court like an old lion that has been stirred up. Before he had got as far as Gilmore, that wary gladiator had sat down, well pleased with himself, as he had every right to be; but when Justin glanced round behind him he saw only the impa.s.sive faces of the prisoners in the dock and poor Rees looking quite fl.u.s.tered at this success. 'G.o.d knows what he'll think if Miss Verney gets the treatment too,' he said to himself. 'Another highly respected one, I shouldn't wonder.'

Just then he heard her name called and saw her coming past the press into the witness-box, which was on the judge's right and on the same level as the bench. She was about twenty, with dark hair and fine brown eyes which hardly seemed to belong to the tight angles of the mouth and jaw below them. A strange personality, he thought, studying her as she took the Book in her right hand: impulse and determination at war with one another. There could be no doubt which side of her character was winning.

"Miss Charlotte Matilda Verney?" Paget was booming out with the greatest gallantry.

"Yes."

"Miss Vemey, will you tell my lord and the jury in your own words of the events of the morning of February 7th?"

She did so very factually without a flourish of any kind, doing her distasteful duty in a low incisive voice, very well bred. At the dramatic moments Paget would utter small exclamations of astonishment and admiration, as though drawing the jury's attention to her many excellencies, but she ignored him every time and spoke to the

31.

court as she might have spoken to some rather backsliding paris.h.i.+oners who had missed Matins three Sundays running. The substance of what she said was not as damaging to the prisoners as that given by her father in his evidence in chief, for she had only had the briefest glimpse of them before their candle was blown out, and after that had seen only one man by the light of the moon through a window still partly shuttered. Yet she too had the Verney memory which seemed to thrive on the pa.s.sing of time. Her a.s.sailant, she said, resembled the prisoner Milligan whom she now saw. The resemblance was something that had struck her forcibly when he was paraded for her in her bedroom. Paget was nodding his head at this and commending her quick eye to the jury along with her pluck and good breeding. And still nodding, he sat down and left it to the Defence.

"You have spoken of resemblances," Gilmore began. "Was the resemblance you observed between your a.s.sailant and the accused man Milligan one of size?"

"It was a general impression," she corrected him severely.

"But size was part of it, surely?"

"Yes."

"Were there any other elements in your 'general impression'?"

She thought for a while and produced the word 'bulk', then corrected it to 'build'.

"Size again, surely?" Gilmore remarked. "You are saying that your a.s.sailant and Milligan were much of a size?"

"I suppose I am."

"Very good. Will you please look at the man, Miss Verney?"

She did so very calmly with her 'parish visiting eye, and Milligan, finding it fixed on him, glanced nervously away.

"You'd hardly call him a particularly small man, would you?" Gilmore said, watching the two of them.

"No, I wouldn't."

"Yet I think you told us that when you reached straight out ahead of you in the darkness you grasped him by the hair?"

She saw the point at once and answered: "Of course he was stooping-doubled up-and that accounted for it."

"Why 'of course', Miss Verney? Did you see him stooping as he came towards you?"

"That was my impression."

"Pray what is an impression?" Gilmore said.

"An impression is simply an impression."

"But surely it can't exist in a vacuum? To receive an impression of an event one must presumably hear it, or see it, or smell it, or touch it. Would you agree?"

"I suppose so: yes."

"But your a.s.sailant never spoke, and what you saw of him was seen in a room lit only by moonlight s.h.i.+ning through one window? In near pitch darkness?"

"It was nearly dark."

"Smell we may ignore. But you touched your a.s.sailant. You held him by the hair?"

"I did."

"Which a.s.sumes, does it not-forgive the levity-a certain length of hair to hold?"

There was a t.i.tter in court as everyone took in the point and Milligan's bristly crop.

"Perhaps he's had it cut," she said.

"Is that another 'impression', Miss Verney? You must forgive me. More is at stake here than a discourtesy or two. Let me ask you this. You remember that on the evening after the crime the accused man Milligan was brought to your room and he asked you to take hold of his hair and compare it with your a.s.sailant's?"

"Yes."

"What were your comments on that occasion?"

She didn't hedge, as so many would have done, but replied straight out: "I said that I thought the man in the pa.s.sage had the longer hair."

"And didn't you say that you thought him broader in the shoulder too?"

"I did."

"More like Kelly, more Kelly's build?"

"Yes."

"But of course you don't claim to have touched or been near Kelly at any time?"

"No."

"Thank you, Miss Verney."

There followed her into the box the witnesses who formed the link between the Verneys and the Police evidence to come-the 'odd job men and discoverers', as Justin dubbed them. On a techni-

33.

cality the judge refused to have the evidence of Bulwer, the tailor who had examined the rent in MiUigan's trousers and had compared it with the piece of cloth found in the flower-beds. But James Bell deposed to finding the torn sheet of paper in the Rectory hall. Dr Higson, the Police Surgeon, had unearthed the missing sc.r.a.p of that same paper from the lining of Kelly's coat. The cook, Jane Clegg, produced the chisel: the same chisel which old Piggott (in whose house Kelly lodged) had identified in the depositions as his own. But where was Piggott himself? Not at the Moot Hall, apparently: they were tendering a medical certificate, along with the old man's sworn evidence before the magistrates. "You mean my friend is not calling this vital witness before the court?" Gilmore exclaimed in outraged tones.

"The man is dest.i.tute."

"Can't the Crown afford his fare?"

Mr Paget managed a sickly smile. "If my friend will but exercise his patience," he lamented. "The old man is too infirm to make the journey here. I have the doctor to testify to that."

"You're saying he's physically and mentally infirm?"