The Man Within (18 page)

‘Is there something you want to say?’

Andrews lifted a hand to his forehead. He must find words in the mist which shrouded him, words to express the gold which suffused it from the light of candles lit in a far place behind the brain.

‘Say what you want to say or be silent.’

‘My lord, it’s not sordid,’ he muttered very low. It seemed hopeless to find words until he had slept.

‘Mr Braddock, the witness says that it is not sordid.’ The laughter beat upon Andrews’ head, till it felt physically bruised as though by hail.

Mr Braddock felt himself riding to victory upon a gale of laughter.

‘Take your mind back to two mornings ago. We will leave out the night,’ he added with a snigger. ‘Do you remember a woman coming to the cottage?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it true that your friend without a surname, Elizabeth, told the woman that you were her brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Did she say that you’d been staying with her for a week?’

‘I think so. I can’t remember anything. I’m tired.’

‘That is all I want to ask you.’

Can I at last sit down and sleep? Andrews wondered incredulously. His doubt was justified. Sir Henry Merriman rose.

‘Did you stay at the cottage for a week?’

‘No. Two nights. That was all.’

‘Think hard. Can’t you remember why she told those lies. They were to help you?’

‘Of course. She’d never lie for herself. It was because I was afraid that the woman would talk in the town. I was afraid of Carlyon.’

‘Why were you afraid?’

‘He knew that I’d betrayed him. He was after me. He came to the cottage while I was there. But she hid me. She fooled him. She was brave like a saint. She drank out of my cup. How can he say there was anything sordid? It’s all lies they tell about her. If I wasn’t so tired I could tell you all.’

‘Why did she do all this for you? Were you her lover?’

‘No. It was just charity. I’ve never touched her, I swear it.’

‘Thank you. That is all.’ Andrews stood where he was, unbelieving that the end had at last come, that he had done what Elizabeth had urged him to do, that all was over now and he could sleep. He felt a hand pull at his sleeve. He stumbled down the steps to the floor of the court, still under the influence of the guiding hand, which now pulled him gently and insistently towards the door.

As he passed the dock a voice called to him, ‘Andrews.’ He stopped and looked up. It took him a moment to focus his eyes. Then he saw that it was Tims. ‘Let me out, Andrews,’ he implored.

There was a hostile murmur from the gallery and Andrews flushed. Anger, unreasoning and undirected, against himself, against his father, against this boy who held him for one moment from his sleep, tossed back an answer. ‘You fool, I’ve put you there.’ Then he was outside the Court.

‘I want to sleep,’ he said. ‘Can I go?’

He found that he was speaking to an officer. ‘Not outside I shouldn’t,’ the man said. ‘There’s a crowd there. You ain’t too popular. Better wait till the case is over. They’ll look after you then.’

‘Anywhere – a chair.’ He put his hand against the wall to support himself.

‘There’s the witnesses’ room.’

‘I can’t go back there. They won’t give me any peace. Isn’t there anywhere?’

The officer softened a little. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you’d better sit here.’ He pointed at a bench against the wall. ‘It’s against orders,’ he added grudgingly, but already Andrews had sunk down on it and had let sleep come, instantaneous, dreamless sleep, that carried for one instant only a confusion of faces, bearded angry faces, sniggering red faces, one pale face, a gold mist and then nothing at all.

‘That is the case for the Crown.’ Sir Henry Merriman’s voice, filtering through the big double doors of the Court, came too softly to disturb Andrews, where he slept. To him in a state of content, of unknowing, without dreams, weeks might have passed and not hours. The voice was a clear whisper. That was all. And he had not wakened, when, a long time previously, the Court had risen for luncheon. The whispers of the witnesses had then ceased to sound in the corridor. There had been silence, a shuffle of persons rising to their feet and then, as the doors of the Court swung open, loud voices and a roar of conversation which burst like a bomb. Andrews slept on, slept on through the heavy reluctant return of feet, weighed down by a good meal eaten, slept on as the doors closed and the whispers of the witnesses began again.

The officer in the corridor leant his ear against the door and listened, avid for any excitement to conquer boredom. He cast an eye towards Andrews in the hope of conversation, but Andrews slept. The prisoners inside were making their defence; so much the officer could gather from the broken sentences that reached him. Each man’s defence had been written out for him by his solicitor, and it was read in a toneless stumbling voice. Through the glass front of the door the officer could see the prisoners. The trial was reaching its final stages and so was the light. The Court was veiled depressingly in grey, not yet sufficiently dark to justify the lighting of the candles. The prisoners, in spite of
their
confidence in the jury, felt the gloom and were a little touched by fear. Each as he read from the sheet of paper in front of him felt the constraining presence of a dead man rise to refute his arguments. A man had been killed. A hundred alibis could not turn that fact into a falsehood. As though by mutual consent, bent on the sacrifice of an unwanted Jonah, they edged a little away from the half-witted youth, until he sat in a little cleared space, which in that crowded Court took on the dimensions of a desert.

Each man’s defence was a little subtly changed. This man at the supposed time of the affray had been drinking with a friend, this man had been in bed with his wife. All would bring witnesses to prove their stories and only the perorations were similar, ‘So help me God I am innocent.’

Four times the stumbling, mechanical stories were repeated to set the officer yawning, and then there was a change. It was the turn of Hake, the large black-bearded man who had threatened Andrews from the dock. When he rose the candles were being lighted in Court and his shadow swung across the ceiling in the manner of a gigantic bird. His voice boomed into the corridor like struck metal deeply toned.

‘My lord, the gentlemen of the jury have a responsibility on them today the like of which will never come their way again. Whose word are they going to take? Those gaugers, afraid of losing their jobs the whole lot of them, ours – men they’ve drunk with – that sneak’s, that Andrews with his loose woman, or ours? If they hang us and the truth comes out who’ll speak for their souls in the Day of Judgement? Who’ll defend their bodies here?’

‘Prisoner,’ a high petulant voice, ‘are you threatening the jury? The jury have nothing to do with the punishment. They have only to decide whether you are innocent or guilty.’

‘I only warn them…’

‘The jury will be protected in the performance of their duty. Threats do not strengthen your case.’

‘Are you going to hang us?’

‘I am anxious to be fair, but unless you proceed with your defence, you must sit down.’

‘My defence is the same as these others. I wasn’t there. I’ll prove it with witnesses as these will. But a man’s been killed, you’ll say, you can’t get over that. Well, I’ll tell you who killed him. He did,’ and his finger pierced across and emphasized the desert which surrounded Tims. Tims leapt to his feet. ‘You don’t mean it,’ he said, ‘you are lying. Tell them you are lying.’ He sank down again on his chair and covering his face with his hands began to cry with a peculiar moaning sound like a sick animal’s. Mingled with the booming voice it made a peculiar orchestral effect in the corridor.

‘I’ve heard him, I tell you, talking about it. He’s a half-witted loon, you can see that for yourself, more fitted for the asylum than for the gallows. He used to tell me many a time what he intended to do to Rexall. Rexall used to tease him in the street. You’ve heard a gauger say so himself, but there’s more evidence than that to it. I wouldn’t expect you to take a gauger’s word. But listen here – you are honest men and will bring us in innocent.’

‘You are not addressing the jury, you are addressing the Court.’

‘I’m sorry, my lord, what I mean to say,’ he leant forward over the edge of the dock towards the jury, ‘the jury will want to know what’s to happen to that Judas and his woman. Let them leave it to us, I say, let them leave it to us.’

Before Sir Edward Parkin could speak he sat down. The officer stole a glance at Andrews. He slept on.

The Court seemed peculiarly silent when that booming voice was still. They were waiting for the last prisoner to make his defence, but he remained seated, his face covered
by
his hands which shook spasmodically in time with his moans.

‘Richard Tims, this is the time that it becomes your duty to make your defence.’

He made no reply, no sign even that he had heard the judge’s voice.

‘Mr Braddock, you represent the prisoner, do you not?’

‘I, my lord?’ Mr Braddock rose, sweeping his gown round him, as though to escape pollution. ‘This prisoner? No, my lord. I represent the other prisoners.’

‘No one ever seems capable of making out the lists correctly. You are put down for all the prisoners, Mr Braddock.’

‘I was never so instructed, my lord.’

‘Which of you represents this prisoner?’

There was no reply.

‘Has this prisoner had no legal advice?’ Sir Edward Parkin protested with a faint note of annoyance.

‘If he had wished, my lord, he could have had counsel.’

‘This is very trying. The case has gone on long enough as it is. I don’t want any delay. The Assize is a very full one.’

‘My lord,’ an elderly little man with blinking eyes rose to his feet, ‘I will represent the prisoner if you so wish it.’

‘Thank you, Mr Petty. Will you explain to the prisoner that he must make his defence?’

Mr Petty stepped delicately to the edge of the Court and holding a handkerchief to his nose spoke to the boy.

‘It’s no use, my lord, the prisoner is not in a fit state to make his defence.’

‘The jury will take it that he merely asserts his innocence. Mr Braddock, will you call your witnesses?’ Sir Edward Parkin leant back and dabbed his fingers furiously in his snuff-box. He was annoyed. The case had been held up for at least two minutes. His breakfast had been a bad one, his luncheon worse and he was hungry. The trial showed no
sign
of reaching an end, but his hunger, far from leading to an adjournment, only confirmed his obstinacy. He would sit till midnight if necessary, but he would finish the trial.

One after another men, women and children filed into the witness box and committed mechanical perjury. This woman was in bed with that man at the time of the murder, this man was toasting another in whisky, a child had heard its father undressing upstairs. Sir Henry Merriman shrugged his shoulders at Mr Farne. ‘They have us,’ he seemed to say. ‘That man Andrews,’ Mr Farne whispered, ‘was worse than useless.’ Only occasionally did they trouble to cross-examine. The witnesses had been too well-primed in their stories. Mr Petty, having magnanimously undertaken the task of representing a half-wit, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Mrs Butler scrambled up the steps of the witness box and allowed her ample breasts to flow over the edge. Yes, she had seen Andrews at a certain woman’s cottage two days previously. Yes, there had been every indication that he had slept in the place. The woman had told her that Andrews had been there for a week. Yes, the woman was a notoriously loose liver. All the neighbourhood knew it.

‘What the neighbourhood says is not evidence.’

‘No, my lord, but what my eyes have seen is evidence.’

Sir Henry Merriman’s voice stabbed itself into the corridor, sharp and clear as an icicle. ‘Did you hear this woman call the man Andrews her brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that true?’

‘No, of course it weren’t true. They didn’t take me in, I can tell you.’ Her hand unerringly sought the thin strands of gold in her hair and she stroked them lovingly. ‘I know what it is to love,’ she said in her sweet, damp voice. ‘I could tell the love light in ’is eyes.’

‘What does the woman mean?’

‘She means, my lord,’ Mr Braddock explained with
unction
, ‘that the man Andrews appeared to be in love with the woman.’

‘How on earth could she tell that?’

‘A woman’s intuition, m’ lord.’ Mrs Butler’s hand stroked one capacious breast. ‘And I can tell you something else, m’ lord. Only one bed had been slept in.’

‘If the woman lied with regard to her relationship with Andrews, have you any reason for believing her other statement that he had been with her for a week? I suggest that he had arrived only the night before.’

‘Well, I don’t know anything, sir. But ’e must ’ave made quick time with ’er mustn’t ’e?’ Mrs Butler leered ingratiatingly at Sir Edward Parkin. ‘Men are very shy, my lord. I’ve known many in my time, my lord, and I speak with conviction.’

Sir Edward Parkin turned away his face, screwed up a little as though he suffered from nausea. ‘Have you finished with this good woman, Sir Henry?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Mr Braddock rose. ‘That, my lord, is the case of the defence.’

‘Have you any witnesses to call, Mr Petty?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Gentlemen of the jury, it is growing late, but by the law of England I am not allowed to discharge you until the case is finished. I am obliged to keep you together, though, no doubt, proper accommodation will be afforded you. But I am for myself perfectly willing to go on to finish the case before we separate. I have been accustomed to bear fatigue of this kind and am willing to bear it. The foreman will consult with his brethren and collect their wishes.’

There was a brief nodding of heads and the foreman intimated that they wished to finish the case. Sir Edward Parkin leant back in his seat, took a liberal helping of snuff, smoothed his white hands with some complacency and began his summing up. The officer with an impatient sigh
removed
his ear from the door. He had in past Assizes experienced the bitter boredom of Mr Justice Parkin’s meticulous care and accuracy. Only occasionally did he put his ear to the door to gain some indication of the progress of the judge’s charge.