The Case Against Owen Williams (9 page)

“Examination also revealed the presence of semen in the vaginal tract, indicating that an act of sexual intercourse had taken place sometime within a few hours before death although it could conceivably have been afterwards. There were no signs of violence in the genital area, but minor abrasions there, or elsewhere, might have been obscured by the deterioration of tissues after death.

“In summary, the probable sequence of events was that the victim had sexual intercourse at some point not long before her death. She was then suffocated, at some time not later than twenty-four hours after she was last seen. After death had occurred, she was subjected to a violent battering with some kind of blunt object.

“Naturally the post-mortem examination revealed other things about the subject of a purely medical kind, and I have confined myself to those which seemed relevant to this hearing.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bourget,” McKiel said. “A few supplementary questions, if you would be so kind. Did you find any evidence that the victim had struggled against her suffocation? Or do you think that she was perhaps already unconscious?”

“There was no sign of a struggle—no broken fingernails, for example, no evidence of hair or skin under the fingernails, nothing of that kind at all. No evidence of blows other than those inflicted after death. However, it is possible that the victim had been struck a blow which had been sufficient to stun her before she was killed. In combination with the alcohol she had ingested, this might have left her incapable of defending herself before she lost consciousness completely.”

“Did you see any evidence that the body had been moved from some other location?”

“There were no abrasions that would have been consistent with the body's having been dragged. Nor any tearing of her clothing. If she had been carried, of course, none of these signs would have been left.”

“In other words, all of the evidence which you found was consistent with the victim's having been murdered where the body was found?”

“Yes, but it would not rule out the body's having been moved provided it hadn't been dragged. By car, for example.”

“In your opinion,” McKiel asked, “would the victim have bled much as a result of the injuries that were inflicted?”

“No,” Bourget said. “I think that there would have been virtually no bleeding.”

“In other words, the murderer would not likely have had blood-stains on his clothing as a result of his attack.”

“Probably not.”

“You testified that the victim was pregnant,” McKiel said. “Was that far enough advanced that the victim would inevitably have been aware of it?”

“Nothing, I suppose, is inevitable,” Bourget said. “But if she did not know it, she must have been singularly ill-informed on the subject.”

There was a titter of laughter in the court, which was silenced by Thurcott, who so far had listened without comment to the testimony.

“The injuries to the ankle,” he now asked. “What do you think caused them?”

“Some small animal, I should think, such as a dog or a fox,” Bourget replied, and then allowed himself a small, macabre joke. “Not, I feel sure, by the murderer himself. And a bear would have done more damage and would probably have dragged the body, which there was no sign of, as I have said.”

“I see,” Thurcott said. “Horrible.”

“Quite so,” Bourget said. “The surprising thing is that not more damage was done given the time the body lay exposed.”

“And that it was not found by some person in that time,” Thurcott said.

“Perhaps,” Bourget said. “I am not familiar with the locality.”

“Members of your laboratory also conducted an examination of articles of clothing seized from Private Williams,” McKiel said. “Could you give us the results of that examination?”

“On July 6, Staff Sergeant Grant turned over to the laboratory a Canadian Army battle dress uniform, three shirts, two neckties, two undershirts, three pairs of shorts, five pairs of socks, four handkerchiefs, and a pair of boots, which I was told were the property of Private Owen Williams. All of these articles were tested for blood stains, and none were found. We also examined the boots for blood stains or other human matter and found nothing. We also examined the traces of earth on the boots, but found nothing that could be of any use in determining whether the wearer had been in the gravel pit where the body was found.”

“The boots, of course, could have been cleaned,” McKiel said. “And even if these were the clothes worn by the murderer, the absence of bloodstains would not be surprising.”

“That is so.”

“The only material found on the clothing that might be of some relevance were faint traces of semen on the inner seam of the fly of the trousers,” Bourget continued. “But how long exactly these had been there, there was no way of knowing since the trousers had been recently pressed.”

“Nor,” Bourget added, “could one know by what means the stains came to be there.”

“They could be consistent,” McKiel said, “with someone's engaging in an act of sexual intercourse without taking off his clothes, as might happen if the act were taking place in a semi-public place.”

“Of course,” Bourget said. “But there could be other explanations.”

“I understand that,” McKiel said. “I was merely suggesting this as a possible explanation. Not everyone goes around, after all, with dried semen on their trousers.”

Bourget glanced at Williams with his sad, sardonic eyes and made no comment.

“Thank you, Dr. Bourget,” McKiel said. “Your evidence has been most useful. And, as always, presented with exemplary brevity and lucidity.”

Bourget inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment.

“I have no further questions,” McKiel said.

Thurcott turned to Dorkin.

“Lieutenant Dorkin, you are at liberty to ask any questions you may have.”

“Thank you,” Dorkin said. “I have no questions.”

Thurcott studied his pocket watch and considered.

“It is nearly twelve o'clock,” he said. “If it is agreeable to every-one, I think we should adjourn for lunch and recommence promptly at two o'clock.”

Even as Thurcott was speaking, there was a clatter of chairs as the newspapermen began edging their way out to get copy filed. Thurcott glanced at them with distaste, rose and departed, and the courtroom became an uproar of voices.

At their table, Whidden's entourage were packing their brief-cases, and as Dorkin rose to leave, he became aware that he had be-come the object of Whidden's attention. Ignoring Dorkin's aware-ness of him, he continued his study, then came across and held out his hand.

“Dorkin,” he said, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Dorkin. We've met somewhere before.”

“Yes, sir,” Dorkin said. “You spoke at the law school three or four years ago. I was introduced to you afterwards.”

“That's right,” Whidden said. “Saint John boy, weren't you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Father was a butcher, was he not?”

The tone of voice was bland, innocent of malice, the put-down adroit. Dorkin was ashamed to feel the flush that overspread his face.

“No,” he said. “He's a tailor.”

“Yes, yes,” Whidden said. “Had a little shop in one of those streets down near Market Square.”

“Yes,” Dorkin said. “He still does.”

“Good,” Whidden said. “Good. Ken Meade sent you up to keep an eye on things here, did he?”

“Yes,” Dorkin said.

Whidden chuckled.

“Good old Ken,” he said. “How is he?”

“Fine, I believe.”

“Good,” Whidden said. “That's good. Yes. Well, give him my regards when you next see him.”

He chuckled again to himself and strolled back to join McKiel. He murmured something to McKiel, and McKiel paused in the packing of his briefcase and glanced up at Dorkin, who was still standing where Whidden had left him, feeling a fool and filled with an impotent and ancient rage.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Back at the armoury, Dorkin went along the landing to the bath-room, stripped to the waist, and ran water, still cold, into the basin. Then, looking at his face in the mirror, he experienced an unsettling moment of dissociation. The face that looked back at him seemed suddenly unfamiliar—not the face that he had accustomed himself to see and that he assumed that others saw, but a different face, somehow lesser, somehow ridiculous, like the shameful faces foisted upon the ego by adolescence.

Although he did not look it, Bernard Dorkin was Jewish. He had dark-blond hair, blue eyes, broad features, so that if he looked anything definitive, he looked Slavic, as in part no doubt he was. Moreover, his father was a socialist and a militant atheist, and Dorkin had been in a synagogue only once in his life. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the world he remained intransmutably Jewish, and, if only because of that, he was Jewish in his own eyes as well. He would have preferred not to have been Jewish in anyone's eyes, not because of any sense of shame or inferiority, but simply because it involved him in difficulties (such as his brush with Whidden) that got in the way of what he wanted to do with himself.

His father had been born in the Ukraine, the son of a village tailor, and at the age of thirteen he had already been working with his father for three years and might well have lived out his life as a village tailor if it had not been for a bizarre accident. One morning, just before dawn, his father, Dorkin's grandfather, a pious man, had gone out alone to a remote millpond, perhaps for some private act of purification, and when he had not returned three hours later, a search was begun from the village. Somehow, in some way no one was ever to know, he had been caught in the millwheel. When they found him, his body had been beaten to a pulp, and Dorkin's father had decided that whoever it was who ruled the world, it was not the God of Israel, nor any other god an honest man would want anything to do with.

For another three years, Dorkin's father had tailored on in his village, and then in the chaos in Russia before the First World War, he had uprooted himself, and following in the wake of someone else from his village, had arrived one bitter winter morning in Saint John, speaking not a word of English. But he was a good tailor, and he did well and married and after a while set up his own shop and continued to do well.

He had two daughters, and one son, Bernard. He was still peasant enough to value sons above all else. He made Bernard a reader like himself and like himself a person who thought about things, and Bernard did him proud. He led classes. He won prizes. He got a scholarship to university and went on to law school. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he did not see the law as a stepping stone to grand political office. Nor did he see himself as a trial lawyer. His intention was to do the kind of office law that would offer him security and leisure for the things he enjoyed, such as books and music. After he graduated, he had practised with a Saint John firm for six months to establish his credentials, and then he had enlisted. He would soon have been conscripted anyway, but he knew more than most people what was going on in Nazi Europe, and he had enlisted out of conviction. But instead of finding himself in Europe as part of the crusade against fascism, he had found himself part of the legal apparatus in Camp Utopia, dealing not with the kinds of things for which he had primarily prepared himself but with the petty criminalities of the stupider levels of the Canadian Army.

And now, just when his prospects for escape had begun to look good, the business of Williams had come up, and it made him very nervous. But with luck, in a day or two at most, he would be out of it. And H. P. Whidden, K. C., could go fuck himself.

At five to two, Dorkin was back in his place in the courtroom. Whidden, McKiel, and company were already there when he ar-rived, Whidden and McKiel conferring in low voices while the underlings unpacked the briefcases. They did not look up when Dorkin arrived, nor even when Williams, abject and untidy, shuffled in with his escort.

As Williams was seated in his chair, Dorkin studied his face. But Williams's face told him nothing. The mere fact of his being accused was producing symptoms indistinguishable from those of guilt, as accusation always did, even in the pettiest of charges. Jaywalkers, shoplifters, murderers, the most purely innocent—hailed before the law, they all presented one face or another from the same limited repertoire: fear, shame, confusion, unconvincing indignation.

At two o'clock, punctual again almost to the second, Thurcott took his place, and McKiel rose and outlined his agenda for the afternoon. He intended to call witnesses to testify to the movements of Sarah Coile on the evening of July 1. He intended also to call witnesses to testify to the movements of Private Williams insofar as these could be known. The police had interviewed a very large number of people whose knowledge had some bearing on these questions, but since he was sensible of the painful nature of the case and also of the need not to waste the time of the court, he intended to call only those witnesses whose testimony he considered essential rather than merely supplementary. The prosecution, he said, was hoping to complete its case before the end of the afternoon.