Brief Tales From The Bench (12 page)

‘I have lost it all,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘But not through a burglar,’ I said.

‘As good as,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Not really, madam,’ I said. ‘You handed this money, so you say, quite willingly to Mr Buckland. A burglar would have taken it against your will.’

‘I’ve lost it just the same,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘No doubt,’ I said, ‘but at the moment I don’t quite understand why you were careful with your £50 and put it in the Post Office, but took the risk of losing a sum very much larger.’

‘I can’t give any other explanation,’ said Mrs Laverton. ‘I wanted to have the money by me.’

‘Mr Buckland,’ went on counsel, ‘says that you never had £300 to hand to him.’

‘How can he know what I had?’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Well, he says you never handed him £300 or any sum.’

‘He’s a liar.’

‘So you say. He also says that you became lovers.’

‘That’s another lie,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Are you sure of that?’ asked counsel.

‘Certainly.’

‘You’re a woman of exemplary character?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Mrs Laverton. ‘Who is? But I’ve never been in any sort of trouble.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said counsel. ‘And no doubt in due course my learned friend is going to say to his honour: “Why should a respectable woman make a false claim for £300?” May I suggest to you the reason?’

‘You may suggest what you like,’ said Mrs Laverton, ‘but he’s had my £300.’

‘I suggest to you,’ said counsel, ‘that you’ve done this to punish Mr Buckland for breaking off his relationship with you.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Mrs Laverton. ‘There never was any relationship.’

‘Would you agree,’ went on counsel, ‘that in history, in plays and novels, in the ordinary course of life, a woman scorned will do things which she’d never normally dream of doing?’

‘I am not a woman scorned,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘But you’ve heard of such women?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Sometimes they’ve committed murder.’

‘I may have read something of the sort,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Murder,’ went on counsel, ‘because their lovers left them.’

‘What’s that to do with me?’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Sometimes,’ said counsel, ‘they write scurrilous letters.’

‘Perhaps they do,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Or assault the man in the street.’

‘What
has
this to do with me?’ said Mrs Laverton,

‘This,’ said Mr Buckland’s counsel, ‘this, Mrs Laverton. I suggest that on this occasion you have sued for £300 which you know perfectly well is not due to you.’

‘That is absolutely untrue,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘Can you suggest any reason,’ went on counsel, ‘why a perfectly respectable man like my client should take £300 off you and pretend he hasn’t?’

‘He wouldn’t be the first person to do a thing like that,’ said Mrs Laverton. ‘I told him I’d got £300, and he decided to get it out of me, and he has.’

‘Tell me another thing,’ said counsel. ‘You said that he made out a receipt, put it on the table, and covered it with a book. If your landlord hadn’t asked you to come out of the room, he wouldn’t have had a chance of taking it from you, would he?’

‘He’d have found some other way, I expect,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘But how?’ persisted counsel,

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Mrs Laverton; ‘sleight of hand, anything. A man who’s behaved as he has would know a thing or two.’

‘You don’t seem to like him,’ said counsel.

‘Would you like a man who’d lifted £300 off you?’

‘When you came back from your landlord, was the receipt still on the table?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But surely you’d have noticed.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’

‘You’d just parted with your life savings, surely you’d want to make certain that you had the receipt.’

‘I didn’t think of it till too late. It was only after Mr Buckland had left that I wanted to put the receipt away in a safe place, and then I couldn’t find it.’

‘You wanted to put the receipt in a safe place?’ queried counsel.

‘Of course.’

‘Because,’ went on counsel, ‘it was the only record you had of your £300?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you thought it very important to preserve it. It was really worth £300?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And you’d hate to lose £300?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well,’ said counsel, ‘if you were so keen on keeping the receipt safely, why didn’t you keep the £300 safely – in the Post Office?’

‘I kept the £300 safely enough until Mr Buckland came along,’ said Mrs Laverton.

‘That was the last time you saw him till you saw him again in court?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it’s only after he’s shown that he doesn’t want any more of your company that you claim he’s had £300 off you?’

I then intervened and said that counsel had made his points clearly enough.

‘You say,’ I said, ‘that this action is brought out of spite, and it’s odd that a woman with a Post Office Savings account should keep £300 loose in the house?’

‘It wasn’t loose, your honour,’ said Mrs Laverton, ‘I kept it all together.’

‘Quite so,’ I said.

I was now beginning to see a little daylight. Although it was unusual for a woman of good character to bring a case like this if it had no foundation, if there
had
been an affair between these two people, it could account for anything. But, of course, I must first see what sort of a witness Mr Buckland was. His story followed the line taken by his counsel in cross-examination of Mrs Laverton. And he told it well enough. He was then cross-examined by Mrs Laverton’s counsel.

‘Mr Buckland,’ was the first question, ‘you’ve taken an oath to tell the truth in this case.’

‘I have.’

‘How much importance do you attach to the oath?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘How much importance d’you attach to the oath?’ repeated counsel.

‘As much as you do, I suppose.’

‘Counsel doesn’t take an oath or give evidence, we just ask questions. Would you break your oath?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Have you never broken an oath?’

‘I’ve never given evidence before.’

‘I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you’d never broken an oath?’

‘What d’you mean by an oath?’ asked Mr Buckland.

‘I mean whatever you mean. Have you never broken what you consider to be an oath?’

‘You’re thinking about my affair with Mrs Laverton, I suppose,’ said Mr Buckland, ‘and my marriage vows.’

‘Have you ever broken what you consider to be an oath?’ repeated counsel.

‘In that respect, yes. And I won’t be the first or the last man to do it. Or woman either.’

‘You’re not suggesting,’ said counsel, ‘that my client was a married woman?’

‘She said,’ said Mr Buckland, ‘that she was a widow, but for all I know she may have a husband somewhere.’

‘Would it satisfy you if I produced Mr Laverton’s death certificate?’

‘I don’t care what you produce,’ said Mr Buckland. ‘All I say is that I broke my marriage vows. But I didn’t steal her £300.’

‘Your case is,’ said counsel, ‘that you broke off the affair because she started to get money out of you.’

‘Yes, like she’s trying to do now. She did it very delicately, I grant you. One night when I went round to have a bit of fun she said she wasn’t in the mood. I asked what was up, and she said that her brother owed £20 and couldn’t pay. So of course I gave it to her, and lo and behold! she was in the mood. Well, I didn’t mind that. She’s a good-looking woman. £20 was a fair price.’

‘How dare you!’ screamed Mrs Laverton from the middle of the court.

‘If you’re in the right, Mrs Laverton,’ I said, ‘I can quite understand your anger. But you must please control yourself and not interrupt the proceedings.’

‘Then a week later,’ went on Mr Buckland, ‘she wasn’t in the mood again. This time it was her sister, and £30. Well, I could see what was coming, so I just beat it. And that’s all there is to the whole case.’

‘Have you ever discussed buying houses with her?’ asked counsel.

‘The only mention of houses,’ said Mr Buckland, ‘was when she told me when I first met her that she’d like to get a house but hadn’t any money. And I said, if you haven’t any money, you can’t buy a house.’

‘You never went to see a house with her?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘You never worked out any figures with her?’

‘No.’

‘You never met Mr Winchcombe with her?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Never went to a house near Golders Green which was in very bad repair?’

‘No.’

‘It’s all invention, is it, by Mrs Laverton to try and get £300 out of you?’

‘Exactly,’ said Mr Buckland.

At that stage my mind was working like this. The plaintiff had to prove her case. It was for her to prove that the probability was that she’d been cheated out of her money; it was not for Mr Buckland to prove that he hadn’t taken it. So that, if there was nothing to choose between the parties, the plaintiff would fail. But it seemed to me at this stage that, unless Mr Buckland suddenly crumpled up in cross-examination, not only was the balance not falling in Mrs Laverton’s favour, but, if anything, it was being tipped against her. It is true that, if Mr Buckland’s story was true, he’d broken his marriage vows, but Mrs Laverton wasn’t a young girl, and she’d been a willing party to it. So there was nothing to choose between them on that score. But, whereas I could think of no obvious reason for a respectable man – and as far as the evidence went Mr Buckland was quite as respectable as Mrs Laverton – for a respectable man suddenly stealing £300 from a woman, this story of a broken-off affair could certainly account for Mrs Laverton’s claim being a false one. And moreover she had no very satisfactory explanation for keeping £300 in cash in her room. People do do that sort of thing, but not often if they have Post Office Savings accounts. So at that stage I said to myself that, if counsel for Mrs Laverton couldn’t make any better headway with Mr Buckland, Mrs Laverton was going to lose her case. But then Mrs Laverton’s counsel handed a document through the usher to Mr Buckland, and asked him if it was in his handwriting. Mr Buckland admitted that it was.

‘Does this document not show a figure of £5,500 on the left-hand side, and figures adding up to £35 on the right?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Buckland.

‘It looks,’ said counsel, ‘like the price of a house on the one side, and the rents that could be obtained on the other, doesn’t it?’

‘She might have taken it out of my pocket one night,’ said Mr Buckland.

‘So you agree that it was written for the purpose of working out the profits to be made from a rooming house?’

‘I suppose it was,’ said Mr Buckland.

‘Now look at this other document, please.’ And counsel handed another document to the usher to be taken to Mr Buckland. ‘Is that also in your handwriting?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Does this show the name of a Mrs Price, and her telephone number and–’

At that stage, counsel for Mr Buckland got up and said: ‘Your honour, I must protest most vigorously.’

‘Yes, what do you want to say?’ I asked.

‘These must be the documents,’ said counsel, ‘that my learned friend was looking at this morning and which he refused to show me. If we’d known about them, we might have called other witnesses, Mr Winchcombe, Mrs Price, and I dare say others.’

‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘Do you apply for an adjournment to call these witnesses?’

‘I most certainly do, your honour,’ said counsel.

‘Well of course,’ I said, ‘you’re entitled to an adjournment. And, if your opponent has any objection, I shall overrule it. You say these documents have taken you by surprise, and that you must have an opportunity to deal with them.’

‘Exactly, your honour,’ said counsel.

I then addressed counsel for Mrs Laverton.

‘What d’you say about an adjournment?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no objection at all,’ said counsel.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I shall grant an adjournment to enable the defendant’s counsel to call these additional witnesses to corroborate his case. But,’ I added to counsel, ‘if when the time comes you
don’t
call them, I may draw my own conclusions. Just before we adjourn, I’d like to ask Mr Buckland one question. Mr Buckland,’ I asked, ‘are you suggesting that Mrs Laverton took the second document out of your pocket, too?’

Mr Buckland did not answer.

‘Well, Mr Buckland?’ I repeated.

Mr Buckland still did not answer.

‘I shall assume, then,’ I said, ‘that you’re not. No doubt when the case comes on again you will explain how it is that Mrs Laverton had in her possession documents in your handwriting which seem to show that she is plainly right when she says the purchase of a rooming house was gone into between you and that you are plainly wrong when you deny this.’

So the case was adjourned and I was not surprised when I was told by the clerk that I would not hear any more of it. The parties had settled the matter. And the settlement consisted in Mr Buckland agreeing to pay £250 to Mrs Laverton and an agreed sum for her costs. There is always a risk in litigation and the costs are heavy. And no doubt the plaintiff’s advisers were wise to let the plaintiff sacrifice £50 to make sure of victory.

So by the production of those two documents, the course of the case was completely changed. At the time when they were produced I’d entirely forgotten about the original application at the beginning of the case, and I was as much surprised by the documents as was Mr Buckland. But, had Mr Buckland been shown those documents before he gave his evidence, he could easily, had he been so minded, have changed his story slightly to account for them. He could have said, for example, that
he
was interested in buying the house for himself and that he’d talked about it to Mrs Laverton – his girlfriend. No doubt, if he’d remembered that he’d given her the documents, he’d have done so. But he’d forgotten. Now do you remember what counsel for Mrs Laverton said when he refused to produce the documents?

‘I don’t think it will be in the interests of justice to do so,’ he said.