As Berry and I Were Saying (31 page)

“The prisoner thanked him and was released.

“The Judge returned to the jury, now looking very uneasy at what they had done.

“‘Really, gentlemen, I don’t know what Hampshire juries are coming to. They don’t seem to have any sense at all.’ He addressed the Clerk of Assize. ‘Empanel another jury, and keep these jurymen here until the end of the Assize.’

“This was done.

“I think we were all anxious about the next verdict, but fortunately it was a reasonable one.

“In another case, three men were charged together with an attempt, if I remember, to steal a cutter. Whilst the jury was considering its verdict, the Judge turned to me.

“‘I think they’ll find them guilty,’ he said. ‘If you were me, what would you give these men?’

“I was taken by surprise.

“‘I don’t think,’ I said, ‘I’d give them very much. I mean, after all, they failed. Twelve months, perhaps.’

“‘What I think would be best,’ said Channell, ‘would be so to sentence them that they all come out at different times. If they come out at the same time, they’ll very likely conspire together again to commit another folly. But, if they don’t, they may never meet again. It’ll mean giving two of them rather less than they deserve, but that can’t be helped.’

“The jury finding them guilty, he sentenced them as he had said. I have little doubt that his wisdom was justified.

“One evening Coleridge was troubled about a point of law on which he had to give a ruling the following day. He laid it before Channell, after dinner, and asked his help. The latter listened carefully, and then very quietly unloosed the Gordian knot. Coleridge put his hand on his shoulder and looked at his Marshal and me. ‘There’s a good, kind brother,’ he said. Channell was greatly embarrassed, and didn’t know where to look.

“Coleridge finished his list on Thursday and left for his Devonshire home. Channell did not finish till Friday, and on Saturday we left for Bristol, where I was to surrender my post.

“We travelled in a special saloon, which was attached to and detached from various trains in our journey across country. It was a glorious day, and I sighed for the old days when Judges rode on horseback from town to town. Day was the last Judge to do this, some seventy years ago.

“In the course of this journey to Bristol, we alighted at some junction or other, to stretch our legs. We walked up and down the platform, passing a book-stall each time, for about a quarter of an hour. The Judge was very silent and seemed preoccupied. At last, as we were passing, he turned and went up to the bookstall and bought a copy of
John Bull
. He obviously didn’t like doing it, for he thrust it into his pocket and out of sight. As we resumed our stroll – ‘You should,’ I said, ‘have told me, Judge. And I would have got it for you.’ ‘Well, I did think of that,’ he said gently. ‘And then I thought perhaps you wouldn’t like to be seen buying it, either.’

“Herbert, now quite recovered, was at Bristol to meet us, but, though I had meant to return to Town the next day, the Judge was good enough to insist on my staying the week-end, as his guest. I was very sorry to leave him. Though I fear I had many shortcomings, no one could have been kinder than he was to me. He told me to come and see him whenever I liked, and several times I went to his room at the Law Courts, and sat at his feet. I always count it an honour to have been his Marshal. He was a great man.”

“A charming job,” said Berry. “The fat of the land, and wisdom while you wait.”

“That’s very true.”

“Coleridge wasn’t so good?”

“No. He was sound, you know. But he was undistinguished. And he was a delicate man. And highly sensitive – not a good thing in a Judge.”

“A Judge should be tough?”

“A Queen’s Bench Judge should be tough. When he is passing sentence, a Judge has to choose between considering the convict and considering the community. I’ve seen a great deal of crime, and I am more than satisfied that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is the community that should be considered. Men convicted on indictment seldom, if ever, respond to leniency. But if the Judge weighs it out, they won’t do it again. That is the value of a sentence – to convince the convict – and other potential convicts – that crime is not worth while. If you don’t convince him, he’ll do it again. All this wash about sending a man to the devil is so much trash. At least, it was in my time. Things may, of course, have changed; though I very much doubt if they have. The scandal of my day was shop-lifting at Selfridge’s. I think I’m right in saying that shop-lifting cost Selfridge’s six or seven thousand a year. And we couldn’t stamp it out, because of one man. I’ve mentioned him before – Wallace, Chairman of Newington Sessions. The Magistrates at Marylebone Police Court nearly went out of their minds. If they gave a shoplifter more than, I think, two months, the shop-lifter could appeal. The appeal was heard by Wallace – who always let them off. And a sentence of only two months made shoplifting well worth while. I’ve seen a woman in the dock at Marylebone, with three previous convictions for shop-lifting, caught this time with more than forty pounds of stuff on her person – including a bottle of whiskey in her stocking. If that woman had been given two years hard labour, she’d never have shop-lifted again.”

“You wrote about it once.”

“I brought it into a tale – the first tale in
Period Stuff
. In that case, a mistake was made – a most easy thing to do. But a very serious thing. Selfridge’s had more than one action brought against them, as a result of mistakes. You may remember that I emphasized the uneasiness of the manager, the moment he realized that there might have been a mistake.

“Shop-lifting, of course, is mean. It’s a very mean crime. Wilful murder is usually brutal – the crime committed by a brute. Forgery is dangerous; but the forger takes such a risk that I wouldn’t call it mean. But I once had to do with a case which shook your faith in human nature more rudely than did any other I came across.

“A timber-yard, owned by two brothers, was a steadily paying concern. I can’t remember their name, but I’ll call them Brown. The brothers were young and efficient and worked very hard: but the big noise was George, the foreman – a splendid man. He had served their father before them, and even their grandfather, and what he didn’t know about timber and timber-yards was not worth talking about. Wise in their generation, before they took any action, they always sought his advice. After all, he had been the foreman before they were born. Though he was over seventy, he might very well have passed for fifty-five. He was a deeply religious man and could be seen on Sunday evenings, preaching at street-corners, with the tears running down his cheeks.

“As I have said, the yard was a paying concern. Masters and men worked hard and harmoniously. The place was of good report. There was only one fly in the ointment – a fly of which no one was aware, except the two brothers and George. For years there had been a leakage, and, do what they would, they could not stop the hole. They could not stop it, because they could not find it. By some means or other, timber which had not been paid for, went out of that yard. It was taken away somehow – stolen and never traced. And no mean quantity, either. The loss to Brown and Brown was between two hundred and fifty and three hundred pounds a year.

“Over and over again, unknown to anyone else, the brothers and George had been closeted with an Inspector of Scotland Yard. Trap after trap had been set. But every measure taken was a failure. The leakage went on.

“The brothers lived together in a house of their own. One evening the elder took his stand in front of the fire.

“‘This cursed leakage,’ he said. ‘Last year it amounted to more than three hundred pounds.’

“His brother shrugged his shoulders.

“‘Looks like we’ve got to bear it. Don’t say you’re going to call in the police again.’

“‘Yes,’ said his brother, ‘I am. But I’ll tell you something, Joe. I’m going to have the police here – and say nothing to George.’

“Joe Brown started to his feet.

“‘How can you?’ he cried. ‘How can you talk like that? George is the most faithful servant two fellows ever had. If he ever found out that we’d been behind his back, I think it’d break his heart.’

“‘He won’t find out,’ said the other. ‘He’ll never know. I’ll give you this – that I feel damned badly about it. I’m perfectly sure he’s honest. But – well, business is business, and we can’t go on like this. Damn it, Joe, the leakage is rising.’

“Reluctantly, Joe gave way…

“Unknown to George, the Yard was called in again, and a conference was held at the brothers’ house. Certain measures were decided upon.

“One week later, George was caught red-handed.

“He collapsed on arrest and admitted everything. He was wholly responsible for the leakage and had been robbing the brothers ever since their father had died.

“I assisted the case for the Crown.

“The man pleaded guilty, so it did not take very long. While one could have nothing but contempt for and horror of such treachery, I found it in my heart to pity the prisoner at the bar. He never raised his eyes to the bench or the witness box, and for most of the time he held his head turned to one side and his two hands in front of his face, as a man might do, whom someone was seeking to photograph against his will. When evidence of his religious fervour and activities was given, I thought he was going to crouch down out of sight: and when the police revealed that the money had been spent – not upon his wife and large family, but upon women of ill fame, he trembled so violently, that I thought he was going to collapse.

“I forget what his sentence was, but his exposure had hit him far harder than any imprisonment could do.

“But it’s no good blinking the fact that George shook my faith in human nature, as he shook that of everyone concerned in the case and of every hand employed in that timber-yard. And shook it right up. And what about his disciples? And all his neighbours and friends? ‘The evil that men do lives after them.’ You can’t get away from that.”

“Treachery,” said Berry. “To my way of thinking, treachery’s worse than murder. I have an idea that Dante agrees with me.”

“Tell me, Boy,” said Daphne. “Would you advise a young man to go to the Bar?”

“I’m not qualified, my sweet, to answer that question today. Remember – I left the Bar nearly forty years ago. The Bar was then a great profession. The Bar has produced some of our greatest men. To my membership and to all that I learned as a practising barrister, I owe no end. But, as I have said before, the ladder which the Bar was presenting before the first war was a very steep ladder to climb.”

“How did the war affect it – the first war, I mean?”

“Well, I had no practice to lose – at least, not one worth talking about – at the time of the outbreak of the first great war. But a great number of barristers, who were doing extremely well, threw everything up and joined His Majesty’s forces as soon as they could. Many never came back. Many came back, to find their practices gone. A few were able slowly to recapture the practices they had lost. Others, great-hearted men, had to start once more from scratch. Now it is, of course, a matter of arithmetic that, if you suddenly remove two-thirds of the Junior Bar, the third that is left will find itself confronted with an opportunity of doing not only its own work, but the work which the other two-thirds used to do. The foundations of some fine practices were, accordingly, well and truly laid between the outbreak of war and the weeks immediately preceding the coming into force of the first Military Service Act in 1916.”

“God give me strength,” said Berry.

“That is a fact. And I am not biased, for I had no practice to lose. I state what I know.”

“Though you had no practice,” said Berry, “in those five years you had a hell of a show.”

“I did. A hell of a show. Six years of the Law, in all, and what wonderful things I saw! I’ve told you some of them. There are many that I’ve forgotten and more that I have not told. I’ve seen Carson cross-examine – and, by sheer personality, force a hostile witness to play his game. I’ve heard Danckwerts QC correct the Lord Chief Justice in open court. I’ve seen Marshall Hall reduced by Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he was briefed to smash. I’ve seen Darling convulse the court with his exquisite wit. And I’ve heard and seen the ‘whips and scorns’ of irony, wielded by that great master, F E Smith. As I have said before, there were giants in those days. And I was lucky enough to see them at work.”

“A very great privilege,” said Daphne.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Looking back, I fear that I have been very outspoken. I’ve praised and blamed right and left. Who am I to set one man up, and another down?”

“There,” said Berry, “I take you up. And that, with vehemence. You have many lamentable faults. But I’ll give you this. Mercifully, you had few briefs. So you were a looker-on. Lookers-on, they say, see the best of the game. And you have the keenest sight of any looker-on that I ever met.” I rose and bowed, and Berry inclined his head. “That’s not saying much, really. If a hanger-on can’t be bothered to use his eyes…”

“The occasions were great,” said Daphne. “And Boy took care to improve them.” She stopped there and looked at me. “You might have gone back to the Bar, but you took to writing, instead. D’you ever regret your decision?”

“No. For an unambitious man, writing is – or was – the pleasantest profession in the world. Mark you, I was terribly lucky. I never had to fight – my stuff was taken right away. I haven’t got very far; but I’ve never had to look back. I’ve been very lucky in my publishers and very lucky indeed in my public. Of that, I am deeply sensible. People still read my old books, and write and tell me so. To so faithful a public as that, I owe a very definite duty. So long as I live, I must never let them down.”

“By which you mean?”

“Let anything go that isn’t up to my standard. I confess that’s not very high: but fall below that, I must not. That fear has haunted me for the last three years.”

“It has been done,” said Berry. “But you must never do it.”

“And I’m the judge,” said I. “I know if my tankard’s a good one. And if it isn’t, by God, it’ll stay in my safe.”