The Case Against Owen Williams (8 page)

There Dorkin now waited, surprised and a little intimidated by the unexpected magnificence of the setting in which he found himself. Behind him, every seat on the main floor and in the balcony was filled with a small fraction of the crowd that had assembled over the last hour. The rest were outside, filling the sidewalk and street near the jail, hoping at least for a glimpse of Williams as he was led in, creating an atmosphere suggestive to Dorkin of what it must have been like at a public hanging.

At five to ten, there was a commotion behind him, and Dorkin turned to watch the arrival of the prosecution: two attorneys followed by half a dozen assistants with briefcases and papers. Most of these people Dorkin did not know, but there was one whom almost everyone would have known if only from newspaper photographs.

H. P. Whidden was one of the wonders of the provincial bar.

Nearing sixty now, massive, with a great mane of white hair combed straight back, he was an extravagant courtroom performer. Florid of phrase, grandiose of gesture, his specialty was the emotional appeal to high principle and noble sentiment in the service of whoever could afford his considerable fees. That the government had appointed him special prosecutor for this trial was a mark of the importance that someone in authority attached to securing a conviction. That Whidden had accepted it was a mark of the publicity the trial could be expected to attract—and of the fact that he felt sure of winning.

Twice when he was a student, Dorkin had attended trials where Whidden had appeared. Once he had heard him speak at the law school, and afterwards, as one of their most promising students, he had been introduced and had shaken the great man's hand and been given the famous pointed scrutiny that had made him feel a little like a witness who had just given himself away on the stand. Dorkin had never heard what the H. P. stood for, but he recalled a much-told story in which some witty judge had once said to Whidden, “Don't give me no sauce, H. P.”

Leading his entourage today was his junior partner, Donald McKiel. Thirty years old, tall, lean, bespectacled, he was as great a contrast to Whidden as calculation could have devised. Dorkin had been in residence with McKiel, a freshman when McKiel had been in his final year. McKiel had been one of those frightening rarities, a student who had decided exactly what he wanted to become before he ever arrived at university and pursued his goal with unswerving singleness of purpose. No booze, no late nights, no dames. Some squash, at which he was very good, to keep fit, a movie or a game of bridge now and then to clear the head.

It was possible to imagine Whidden, even at sixty, destroying himself through some spectacular act of folly. Not so McKiel.

As they settled themselves, the clock on top of the post office down the street began to strike ten, the sound at first just registering above the buzz of conversation, then silencing it. In that silence, Thurcott emerged from the door behind the bench and took his place. Then from another door to the side, Carvell and a deputy sheriff escorted Williams to his place at the table along the side to Dorkin's left.

He was dressed as Dorkin had seen him earlier in his rumpled work uniform, which made him appear as if he were already a convict. As he sat down, obviously stunned by his surroundings, he seemed the very image of abject guilt brought before the bar of justice.

Thurcott tapped his gavel, cleared his throat, and began. They were here to conduct the preliminary hearing of Owen Thomas Williams, private in the Seaforth Highlanders of Nova Scotia, lately of the County of York, in connection with the death of Sarah Elizabeth Coile of the County of George, who met her death by foul play at some time between July l and July 5 this year of our lord 1944.

“The Crown is to be represented in these proceedings by special prosecutor H. P. Whidden and assistant prosecutor Donald McKiel. I regret to say that Private Williams is not represented by counsel. Is that correct?”

He turned to Williams, and Williams mumbled something in-audible. “You understand that you yourself have the right to question witnesses if you wish,” Thurcott said, “but I must warn you that anything you say will constitute evidence in this case and may be used against you. Do you understand?”

“I have been advised by Lieutenant Dorkin that I should not say anything until I have a lawyer,” Williams said in a low voice, as if reciting a lesson.

Thurcott turned to Dorkin.

“I realize that you are not here to represent Williams,” Thurcott told him, “but you are naturally free to seek clarification of any of the testimony that is presented, if you wish.”

Dorkin nodded, disguising the nervousness he felt under the scrutiny of so many eyes.

“We may proceed then,” Thurcott said. “Mr. Whidden, if you will call your first witness.”

Whidden rose slowly, leaning forward with one hand on the table.

“I beg to inform you, sir,” he said, the rich voice booming effortlessly, “that I have turned this part of the proceedings over to my assistant, Mr. McKiel.”

A murmur of disappointment ran through the spectators, and McKiel rose and called Corporal Drost of the
RCMP
.

Corporal Drost, in full dress uniform, sat with a small notebook discreetly in his right hand and began the story of the discovery of Sarah Coile: the phone call from her mother, the interviews with Vinny Page and Williams, their futile enquiries, his expedition in the company of Sheriff Carvell to The Silver Dollar and their walk through the woods to the Hannigan Road, their investigation of the churchyard and their arrival at the gravel pit.

“As we descended the road,” Drost said, “we became aware of a very pronounced smell, and on the west side of the pit, we came across the body of a young woman whom Sheriff Carvell thought he recognized as that of Sarah Coile. This was later confirmed. It was lying in some tall grass and weeds in a small hollow between two mounds of earth, and there had been no apparent attempt to conceal it. The body was lying on its back, fully clothed except for the lower undergarment, and it was obvious from the condition of the body that it had been the object of an act of violence and that it had been there for some time.”

Drost stopped and looked at McKiel.

“Mr. Magistrate,” McKiel said, “we have photographs which were taken at the scene by the
RCMP
photographer.”

From behind, one of Whidden's assistants passed McKiel a heavy brown envelope. He extracted a pile of photographs and murmured something inaudible to the assistant, who made his way to the bench and placed one pile in front of Thurcott and another in front of Dorkin.

Nothing in Dorkin's experience had prepared him for what he saw. The first photograph had been taken near the feet of the body. The white dress was pushed up almost to the waist and except for a garter belt, stockings, and one shoe, the body below that was naked. One leg was lying straight out, the other slightly bent. The arms were spread a little to the sides. The chest seemed thrust upwards, the head thrown back. The mouth was open, forming an almost circular black hole, around which the lips seemed somehow to be rolling outwards from inside. The eyelids were partly open, but between them there was only an obscure darkness. The face was covered with patches of discolouration so that it would have been impossible for the uninitiated to know whether it was the face of a woman of eighteen or eighty or the face of a woman at all.

The next photograph was a close-up of the face, making its hideousness more hideous still. The next one was of the extended leg, and Dorkin saw that what he had taken in the first photograph to be dirt of some kind on the stocking below the knee was in fact a place where the stocking had been torn away and the flesh beneath hideously lacerated.

Dorkin went quickly through the rest of the photographs.There were three taken from further away designed to show the location of the body in the pit. There were photographs from each side showing the peculiar arch in the back, in one of which Dorkin noticed the second shoe lying beside the outstretched leg. There was one taken from the head looking down the body in which the face was thrown backward, pointing straight at the camera, as if blowing towards it its foul breath of decay.

Dorkin turned the pictures face down on the table and pushed them to one side. He became aware that Drost was concluding his testimony, explaining in his flat policeman's voice how he had summoned expert assistance from Fredericton.

Drost descended, and his place was taken by Detective Staff Sergeant Grant, who had sat on many witness stands and did not carry a little notebook. Unlike Drost, he was not in dress uniform but in everyday brown. Even McKiel shifted his tone of voice a little in the direction of deference when talking to him.

Grant crossed his legs casually, leaned one elbow on the arm of the chair, and continued the account of the investigation: the photographing of the body, the collecting of the nighttime debris around the pit, the failure to locate the missing undergarment, the futile attempt to pick up a trail with the dog, the futile attempts to find footprints or car tracks clear enough to take casts of for later identification.

“Is it your opinion,” McKiel asked, “that Miss Coile met her death at the place where her body was found?”

“We found no evidence to suggest otherwise. My own opinion is that she did. If someone had been carrying the body away from some other site, I presume that he—or they—would also have taken more pains to conceal it.”

“Thank you,” McKiel said.

Grant recrossed his legs, surveyed the courtroom, and resumed.

“Once the investigation at the scene was well in hand and the staff was available, it seemed obvious that the first line of inquiry should be concerned with Private Williams, who was the last person known to have seen Miss Coile alive. I was naturally concerned that he might have heard of the discovery of her body and that this might have consequences which I wished to avert. Consequently, while the search was still continuing at Broad Street, I dispatched an officer to check the story which Private Williams had given to Corporal Drost the previous day.

“As a result of this inquiry, we found a number of serious discrepancies in Private Williams's account of his movements on the night of July 1. Witnesses will be called later to testify to this. As a result of what we had learned, in company with other officers, I went to interview Private Williams again about nine-thirty on the evening of July 5, when darkness had made further operations at Broad Street impossible.

“I asked Private Williams if he were willing to describe again his movements on the night of July 1. He agreed, but he seemed very nervous. He then gave substantially the same account which he had given Corporal Drost, and he agreed to sign a statement which we had drawn up summarizing his testimony. When I pointed out that his account did not agree in the matter of times with what others had said of his movements that night, he seemed to become even more confused and said that he had been drinking and that he must have been mistaken in the account he had given of these times. He also asserted for the first time that he and Miss Coile had stopped to talk for a while outside the dance hall. I should make clear that Private Williams had been issued the customary warnings.

“We then told him about the discovery of the body of Miss Coile and informed him that he was to be charged with her murder. I secured a warrant for his arrest, and he was remanded in custody to the county jail.

“At the same time, I seized the uniform which Private Williams had been wearing the night of July 1 together with his other clothing and boots. These were sent to the forensic laboratory for testing for blood stains and so forth. I also seized Private Williams's personal possessions, and I have submitted an itemized list of these. We did not find among them anything which we know to have belonged to the deceased. On the day following the arrival of the body at the mortuary, an autopsy was performed by Dr. Pierre Bourget.”

Grant departed and Dr. Bourget ascended the witness stand. He was a man in his middle fifties, lightly built with a long Gallic face and immaculately dressed in a grey suit. His expression, his manner in general, created an impression of detached, sardonic melancholy. Like Grant, he sat his chair with negligent ease. He summarized for McKiel his qualifications as an expert witness and began.

“On Thursday, July 6, I conducted an autopsy on the body of a young woman which I was told was that of Miss Sarah Coile of Hannigan Road, George County. I was told that she was sixteen years old. She was five feet six in height, and she weighed one hundred and fifty pounds at that time. She may have weighed more earlier. At the time of her death, she appeared to have been in good health. However, she was well into the second month of pregnancy.”

There was a rustle of whispering in the court, and Bourget waited imperturbably for it to subside.

“At the time of my examination, I would say that the subject had been dead four or five days. I understand that she was seen alive around eleven o'clock on Saturday evening, July 1, and I would say that death must have occurred within twenty-four hours of that time. Because of the lapse of time and the hot temperatures to which the body was exposed before it was discovered, it is impossible to be more accurate than that. An examination of the contents of the stomach suggests that the subject had not eaten anything substantial within four hours of her death. Blood tests revealed the presence of alcohol in the blood in a concentration of .09, but the accuracy of that measurement might be open to question in the circumstances. If this were accurate, it would be enough to cause some impairment of physical function and no doubt of judgement, but would not result in what could be called real drunkenness.

“The subject had been the victim of a succession of acts of violence. The cause of death was unquestionably suffocation, apparently by having a cloth, perhaps an article of clothing, stuffed into the mouth and held over the nose. Small fibres were found in the subject's teeth, which under microscopic examination proved to be rayon. In addition, the face and upper body of the subject had been battered by a blunt object of some kind—a club, a piece of metal, a stone perhaps. There were fractures of the left cheekbone and the front of the skull, and there were thirteen contusions on the upper body and arms. In view of the absence of bleeding, it would seem that these injuries were inflicted after death. In addition, the right ankle of the subject had been gnawed through almost to the bone by some scavenging animal. This had also clearly happened after death.