Desperate Acts (29 page)

Marc was on his feet.

“I agree, Mr. Edwards,” the judge said, then
turned to Thornton to admonish him. “You know better, Mr. Thornton.
You’ll have ample room to establish how the document was obtained
and what Mr. Cobb’s role was in the business. So, please move
quickly in that direction.”

But as Justice Powell and Marc knew, the
damage had been done. The jury would be invited to see Brodie’s
statement as unprecedented and, therefore, a self-serving attempt
to throw the blame for the crime elsewhere.

Thornton thanked the judge for his
suggestion, and proceeded to lead Cobb painfully through the
sequence of events on the evening in question. Cobb was compelled
to admit, under a relentless but always polite prodding, that he
had met an excited Brodie Langford on Wellington Street, not a
block and a half from the site of the crime, and heard him
“confess” to a violent encounter with a blackmailer, going so far
as to show the policeman his battered knuckles.

“Can you honestly say, Constable Cobb, that
Mr. Langford was seeking you out?”

Cobb hesitated. “He said he was glad to see
me.”

“But that is not the same, is it, as seeking
you out? Do you know for a fact that he was heading for the police
quarters to admit striking the victim on the cheek with his
fist?”

Again Cobb hesitated, glanced over at Marc,
then up at the prisoner in the dock. “Well, sir, he was headin’
east in the general direction of the City Hall.”

“Was he not in fact wandering about in a
dazed or confused state, as a guilty man might do after committing
some heinous and irrevocable act?”

“Mr. Thornton!”

“I apologize, Milord. But I am merely
attempting to get this somewhat reluctant witness to describe the
defendant as he first encountered him that night. As the accused’s
intentions at this point are critical to the jury’s determining the
validity and probative value of his ‘confession,’ they will need to
hear what an experienced policeman saw and inferred.”

Once again Kingsley Thornton had planted
seeds of doubt about Brodie’s purpose in dictating and signing an
affidavit in which he had admitted only to throwing a punch.

“Well, Mr. Cobb,” the judge said, “was the
defendant dazed and confused?”

Cobb grimaced and said stubbornly, “He was a
bit excited and a mite upset. That’s all I know.”

But it was enough – alas.

The remainder of Cobb’s testimony was
straightforward and uncontentious. The jury heard about Cobb’s
discovery of the body and the bloody walking-stick, about his entry
into the tavern to find someone who might know the victim’s
identity, about his instructing others to fetch the coroner and
more constables to the scene. Cobb went on to describe the surprise
of Nestor Peck at seeing his cousin dead in the alley, and
mentioned that Gillian Budge had recognized Duggan as an occasional
customer, but did not know his name. Thornton was at pains to have
Cobb describe the alley as he found it, in great detail – including
references to the moonlight, the broad window in the tavern wall
above, the sunken cellar-window, and the shadowy escape route north
to the east-west service lane. He was carefully laying the
groundwork for the eye-witness accounts to come.

In fact, so detailed was this part of Cobb’s
testimony that the jury was in danger of sagging under its weight.
Sensing this, Thornton concluded his examination with a
whippet-quick turn of the head from the jury to the witness, and
this abrupt query:

“When you returned to the police quarters
bearing in your grip the brain-spattered, silver-tipped
walking-stick, you entered the main room and encountered the
accused there?”

“I did,” Cobb said, fearing what was coming
but helpless to stop it.

“When he spotted the walking-stick in your
hand, what did he say – exactly?”

Cobb swallowed hard. “He said somethin’ like,
‘That’s mine, I must’ve – ’”

“Thank you, constable,” Thornton snapped, and
whipped his head around to grin with mock remorse at the jury – so
fast his periwig jumped. “No more questions, Milord.”

This time Marc did rise, to face his loyal
friend and associate. Standing before his lectern in this august
chamber and realizing fully that a young man’s life might well
depend upon the skill with which his advocate cross-examined those
arrayed against him, Marc felt his legs tremble and his mouth go
dry. It was one thing to plot legal ploys and stratagems in one’s
study, but quite another to execute them in the cut-and-thrust of a
courtroom.

“You
do
have a question for Mr. Cobb,
I take it?” the judge said, glancing at Marc and thus missing the
smirk on Thornton’s face.

“Yes, Milord.”

“Then, please put it.”

“Constable Cobb,” Marc heard himself say,
“when you showed the walking-stick to Mr. Langford at the police
quarters, did he say anything else besides, ‘That’s mine’?”

“He did. He said, ‘I must’ve left it back
there in the alley.’”

Marc risked a glance at Thornton, who nodded
his appreciation. “Now, sir, let’s return to that all-important
encounter between you and Mr. Langford on Wellington Street. In
addition to what state he was in or who saw whom first, we need to
know what words he spoke to you. Try to remember them as precisely
as you can.”

Cobb looked weary but relieved. Remembering
events and conversations came easily to him, if he wasn’t being
constantly interrupted and badgered. He smiled at Marc and said,
“As soon as he seen it was me, he said, ‘Cobb, you gotta help
me.’”

“And then?”

“I asked him why – I knew the young fella and
I could see he was anxious about somethin’. He said he’d just
punched a man in the alley behind The Sailor’s Arms.”

“And what was your immediate reaction?”

“I thought it couldn’t be, ‘cause Brodie’s a
very peaceful fella an’ – ”

Thornton was on his feet, teetering with
umbrage.

“The constable’s personal opinions are not
relevant, Milord.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Thornton, that it was you
who introduced the murky business of state of mind and intentions
‘at this critical point,’” the judge said. “Proceed, Mr. Edwards –
cautiously.”

“Did he give you any details of this
assault?”

“I told him I thought he must’ve been fendin’
off a robber or somethin’, but he just said he’d punched a fella on
the cheek an’ knocked him down. Then he showed me the knuckles on
his right hand. They were scraped an’ bruised.”

“Bleeding?”

“A little.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. He said, real quick, that the fella
was tryin’ to wangle money outta him, but he had no reason to hit
him ‘cause he was actually plannin’ to haul the fella down to the
police quarters.”

“Continue, please.”

“He asked me to go back to the alley with
him, but stupidly I said there wasn’t no need fer him to do that –
I’d see to the fella an’ he could go off to the City Hall like he’d
planned an’ tell my chief his version of what happened.”

“You assumed, then, that this was a case of
justifiable assault?”

“Milord!”

“Don’t put words into the witness’s mouth,
Mr. Edwards.”

“My apologies, Milord.”

“What usually happens,” Cobb said, “is that
the two fellas involved in a punch-up accuse each other of startin’
it an’ so on, so I figured Mr. Langford should wait at the police
quarters fer me to come back there with the one he hit – an’ we
could sort it all out.”

“And he did so?”

“He headed off in that direction, and I seen
him there almost an hour later.”

“But when you got to the alley, you found a
man who had been struck
first
on the cheek, as earlier
testimony has indicated, and
subsequently
bludgeoned to
death with a walking-stick?” Marc resisted the temptation to glance
at the prosecutor as he italicized the key words of his
question.

“I was shocked to find what I did.”

Marc paused and, as he had seen Dick
Dougherty do, pretended to consult the notes in front of him. “Do
you think, Constable Cobb, as a
veteran
policeman, that
someone who had just committed a bloody and lethal assault would
ask you to accompany him back to the scene of the – ”

“
Milord
!”

Justice Powell gave Marc a stern look. “That,
sir, is not an appropriate question for the constable and you know
it. We are here to determine the facts of the case, and that is
all. I ask the jury to ignore that question, and it shall be struck
from the record.”

But the jury was agog, and the gallery
abuzz.

Marc apologized and sat down, showing no
emotion whatsoever.

Very slowly Kingsley Thornton got to his feet
to begin his rebuttal. “Mr. Cobb, I have just one or two points to
clarify with you,” he said, as if nothing dramatic had just taken
place. “The defendant told you that he struck Mr. Duggan and
knocked him down, did he not?”

Looking wary, Cobb said, “That’s what he
said.”

“And he admitted he had lost his temper and
struck the fellow because the latter was blackmailing him?”

“Yup.”

“And he specifically asked you to accompany
him back to the alley?”

“Yup.”

“Is it not possible, sir, that whether he
went back with you or continued on to the police quarters, he had
confessed only to an assault with his fist, was at great pains to
show his knuckles, and would thus be in a position to feign
astonishment, in that alley or in the chief’s office, that since
his
hasty
and
guilt-ridden
departure, some blackguard
had picked up his inadvertently dropped walking-stick and done
Duggan in?”

“Mr. Thornton!”

Thornton smiled benignly. “Milord, my next
witness will present me with the opportunity to introduce into
evidence the sworn statement of Broderick Langford, the probative
value of which needs to be thoroughly explored, including the
possibility that all or part of it was meant as an ingenious
deception.”

The judge looked uncertain. Marc was on his
feet, silently pleading.

“There’s no need for Mr. Cobb to answer the
question,” Justice Powell said. “But it shall remain part of the
record.”

Marc slumped back onto his bench. While
Thornton had not succeeded in rooting out the notion that a guilty
man was not likely to lead a policeman by the hand to his victim,
he had blunted its effect and prepared the jury for
his
interpretation of the “confession.” At least the butterflies had
disappeared from Marc’s stomach, as they had when he had finally
entered the field of battle in Quebec two years before.

***

Kingsley Thornton now called Wilfrid Sturges to the
stand in order to focus the jury’s attention upon Brodie’s
statement. He compelled the chief constable to say that Brodie
insisted – against all advice – on making a statement before the
other party to the dispute arrived with Cobb, that such a
confession was unusual in the circumstances – Brodie having been
the one threatened, as it were – and that the chief had listened to
the dictated account, watched Brodie read and sign it, and had
added his own name as witness.

At this point everyone expected Thornton
would bring in the document itself, but instead the prosecutor
said, “How long would it have taken the accused to walk from the
corner of Wellington and Peter Streets all the way to the City Hall
east of Yonge?”

“Depends how fast he was walkin’.”

“Short of running, then, how quickly could
those seven long city blocks be navigated?”

“Ten, possibly fifteen minutes,” Sturges said
grudgingly.

“Lots of time for the accused to work out
exactly the kind of story he hoped to spin when he got to your
quarters?”

“Milord!”

“Mr. Thornton, it’s the jury’s responsibility
to draw conclusions from factual evidence, not yours. You’ll have
plenty of opportunity to expatiate on this matter during your
summation.”

Again, much damage had already been done.
Having prejudiced the jurors against Brodie’s statement, he now had
it read into evidence. And, for the first time, they were hearing
the lad’s own words and his detailed explanation of his actions.
They heard that he had received a blackmail note, in the presence
of his sister, threatening to expose a secret about his friend,
Miss Diana Ramsay, and ruin her life unless five pounds were
delivered to an ashcan behind The Sailor’s Arms on the following
Wednesday at nine-thirty; that Brodie had planned to entrap the
blackmailer by hiding in the shadows after placing a packet of
blank paper in the ashcan, confronting the blackmailer when he came
to collect his booty, and taking him off to the police. He admitted
freely that when he did come face to face with the fellow, he was
enraged by a comment that insulted Miss Ramsay, lost his temper and
felled the villain with one punch to the left cheek. When the man
dropped onto his back unconscious, Brodie stooped over to make sure
he was breathing, found he was, and then, feeling the aftershock at
what he had done, had run in a panicked state farther up the alley
and then eastward out onto Peter Street. Up at Wellington he had
met Cobb, and then come straight to the police quarters.

Thornton paused to let those candid details
sink in. Then he turned back to Sturges.

“And you say, sir, that you advised the
accused against making such a statement? Isn’t that odd – for a
policeman?” Thornton grinned at the jury, vastly amused.

“Not really. I told Mr. Langford that the
dust-up sounded to me like a reasonable response to a nasty fellow
in the midst of a criminal act, an’ that we should at least wait
fer Cobb.”

“And yet the accused was
desperate
to
confess to a
minor
crime, was he not?”