Blind Justice (10 page)

Through that same door to the rear of the courtroom a man was brought forth in chains by two constables. It was, unmistakably, Mr. Bailey’s attacker, Dick Dillon. He was, as had been described, a big man. Whether he was clumsy on his feet, it was impossible to tell, for he was in leg irons which would make even a dancing master heavy-footed. He flashed an angry look around the court, thus making an ill impression upon the gallery. Ushered by his guards to a place before the bench, he stared defiantly at the magistrate: a gesture lost on blind Sir John.

Francis Hawkins was called forth and gave his account of the robbery by force of arms which was perpetrated upon him by Dillon. At the point in the narrative when Benjamin Bailey appeared upon the scene. Sir John took over. He announced that he had taken the deposition from Mr. Bailey that morning and proceeded to repeat it from memory word for word, except for a few corrections in grammar and diction. At the end, he declared, “Let the court record read that this was the testimony of the arresting officer.”

There was a long, impressive silence then. At last, Sir John called out, making his voice both louder and deeper than seemed normal: “Dick Dillon, what have you to say?”

“What have I to say?” echoed Dillon, as if mocking Sir John’s solemn inquiry. “What I have to say is I wants transportation.”

“In other words,” said Sir John, “you prefer not to hang.”

“Dick Dillon’ll not hang,” yelled Dillon. “He’s something to trade.”

“And what might that be?” asked Sir John.

“Can you promise me transportation to the colonies?”

“As one indentured for life? A slave?”

“I’ll take my chances with that.”

“I can promise you nothing, Dick Dillon. But if you have information to give on criminal matters that lead to impeachment or conviction, it will be taken into consideration at your trial and in sentencing.”

“I wants transportation!” reiterated Dillon.

“And I cannot promise it.”

“Then I’m talkin’ to the wrong one, ain’t it?”

“No doubt you are,” said Sir John. Then, waiting a bit so that the words he was about to speak would be heard by the entire court in all their gravity. Sir John began again: “To all here, I call attention to this man before me. There is clear and sufficient evidence to hold him for trial on the charge of theft. The testimony of the victim and the deposed testimony of the arresting officer make that clear. As we all know, however, there is theft and theft. On the one hand, we may have a ten-year-old boy attempting to filch a dirty kerchief: reprehensible, of course, but such sneak-thievery pales to nothing when compared to the crime of Dick Dillon. His was theft with a deadly weapon, a cutlass. The victim, Mr. Hawkins, was lucky to escape with his life. In that, I do not exaggerate, for according to Chief Constable Bailey’s deposition, when confronted, Dillon made clear his intention to murder Mr. Bailey, and in the affray did succeed in wounding him before he was subdued. This I consider far more serious, for in striking an officer of the law, Dillon struck at the law itself. This cannot, should not, be tolerated. And so he is bound for trial, not only for theft but also for the attempted murder of an officer of the law while in the rightful performance of his duties. I do not believe that any judge or jury at Bailey Court will treat these charges lightly, nor with clemency.

“Take the prisoner, Dillon, away to Newgate, where he will await trial at the convenience of the Crown.”

Whether it was for the sense of his statement or the power of his extemporaneous rhetoric, the gallery (no more than twenty souls present) applauded Sir John Fielding roundly. He, thinking such display unseemly, banged with the fiat of his hand on the bench and called for order.

Yet Dick Dillon would have the last word. As he left the courtroom, he shouted back, loud as he could, “I’ll not hang. You’ll see!” And then he was pushed through the door.

“This court is dismissed,” said Sir John. He stood then and, without faltering, without a misstep, made his way quickly out of the courtroom, leaving by the same exit through which Dillon had been propelled only moments before.

As I myself was leaving, I was detained by Mr. Marsden, who informed me that Sir John had requested that should I make an appearance, I was to visit him after court in his chambers. Thus invited, I made my way through that same door, caught one last glimpse of the notorious Dillon and, after announcing myself with a knock, was admitted into his presence.

He sat as informally as before, feet elevated, shoes off, his periwig tossed aside. Bidding me sit down, he asked my opinion of Dick Dillon.

“He seemed a true villain,” said I.

“And to me, as well,” said he, then more to himself than to me: “I wonder what he knows that makes him so confident.”

Since I had no notion, I made no answer.

“Did you,” he asked, “catch the distinction I made in my oration, sending him off to Newgate?”

“Between his theft and his attack upon Mr. Bailey?”

“No, Jeremy, I meant that between sneak-thievery and armed robbery. You see, the law looks upon both as the same. You heard the case that preceded it?”

“I did, Sir John.”

“Well, in all probability Peg Button did pick the fellow’s pocket and was caught by him passing it to the boy. It was simply her word against his. Had he seized the boy and brought him in as well, then in theory, at least, Mistress Button and the boy could both have been tried, condemned, and hanged.”

“All for a silk kerchief?”

“Yes, worth a guinea, or so the owner claimed: that amount being sufficient in the eyes of the law to warrant capital punishment.” He shook his head solemnly, as though in bewilderment. “I call that fellow, Turley, the owner; more like, he was merely the possessor. He probably bought it from another like Peg or her young confederate for a few pence when he felt his cold coming on.”

I was quite overcome by what I had heard. I saw mirrored in their theoretical fate my own predicament of two days past. At last I asked him, “Would they truly be hanged for so little?”

“In all likelihood, no. Children under fourteen are not to be executed, though a number have been sentenced to death. I understand that in certain rare cases in the counties the sentence has been carried out. Would Mistress Button, or one like her, have been hanged? Also unlikely. While our laws are the most severe in the Christian world, our trial procedures favor the defendant. Turley, or one like him, would have to do far better at Bailey Court: produce witnesses to the act, establish ownership of the item stolen, prove its worth, and so on. But had she been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, she would also likely have had her sentence reduced to flogging, a term in prison, or the transportation to one of the colonies that Dillon seeks: not, by the by, a happy fate. In actual practice, only about half of the condemned—”

A knock at the door of his chambers interrupted him.

He turned in annoyance. “Jeremy,” said he, “would you see who that is? Unless it is Mr. Marsden, or one of the constables, send him away.”

I bounded out of my chair and to the door. Opening it a bit, I saw the eager, excited face of Mr. Gabriel Donnelly. It would be difficult to shut the door on him. And in the event, it proved impossible.

“I must talk to Sir John,” said he, pushing against the door, forcing it back.

“Who is that?” bellowed the magistrate.

Having thus made his entry in spite of me, Mr. Donnelly rushed forward to him, leaned across the table in an urgent posture, and declared, “It is I, Gabriel Donnelly, and I’ve come—”

“Why could you not wait to be properly announced?” demanded Sir John. His feet were down from the table now, and he was groping about for his periwig.

“Because, don’t you see, my news is too important to wait, even for that. Let me tell you of what I am sure. I have conducted the obduktion; have examined most, though not all the organs of the corpus. I found the texture of the kidneys quite destroyed; I found the liver in a bad state with lesions of a most remarkable sort. The lining of the stomach was badly inflamed and had also lesions and ulcer-like sores. The alimentary canal—”

“Enouffh. enough! What are you saying, Mr. Donnelly?

“1 am saving, Sir John, that Lord Goodhope was poisoned by a strong caustic, a sample of which I have taken from h stomach. That, and not the gunshot wound, was the cause of his death. I am sure of it.”

This indeed put another complexion on matters. Even I immediately saw the awful discrepancy that followed from Mr. Donnelly’s startling revelation. If Lord Goodhope had been poisoned, then why had he been shot? Why should it have been necessary to kill a man twice? Or could it be that he himself took poison, and then in his death throes had a pistol exploded in his face? This last seemed to make no sense at all. But then, what in this contradictory set of circumstances did make sense?

If such thoughts as these passed through my childish mind, what more grave considerations occupied Sir John at that moment after the surgeon announced his news? He sat silent as a stone for a great space of time, withdrawing into himself as only a blind man can. The expression on his face did not alter. It showed not so much surprise as some slight vexation at this added complication.

Growing impatient at the prolonged silence, Mr. Donnelly spoke out rather impetuously: “Did you hear. Sir John? I said it was poison that killed him.”

“I am not also deaf,” said he, grasping his periwig firmly at last and placing it casually upon his head, “In point of fact, I hear better than most.” (Indeed, I knew that to be an understatement.)

“Forgive me. That was both unnecessary and unkind.”

“It’s of no matter. What does matter, of course, is that this tells me I had been asking the wrong questions entirely. For instance, I had placed some weight on the time the shot was fired. That would hardly matter so much now since you inform me he was then already dead.” He paused then put it to the surgeon quite directly: “You would swear to that in court.”

“I would,” said he without hesitation.

“Could you venture to say how long he had been dead before the shot was fired?”

“No, there was virtually no food in his stomach. By your description of the body at the time your Mr. Bailey viewed it, the rigor of death had not yet begun.” For the first time since he had pushed past me at the door, Mr. Donnelly turned to me and said, “Jeremy, at the time you looked at the corpus the limbs were still pliable, were they not?”

“The neck, too?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

I described how Lord Good hope’s head had flopped most hideously when Mr. Bailey had pulled off his wig to examine the wound behind the ear. Then I recalled something more: “The footmen had carried the body down to the cellar. He was there, laid out flat, when next we viewed him. So …”

“Just so,” said Mr. Donnelly. “No rigor. He could not have been dead more than four hours, six at the most.”

“A long period of time,” said Sir John, then sat silently musing for a moment. “Damn me for a fool,” he exclaimed of a sudden. “So taken was I with the matter of the pistol shot I haven’t even established when he went into the library, his condition at the time, none of it. I’ve made a hopeless botch of this inquiry so far.”

“Och,” said the surgeon, “don’t scold yourself so. It was cleverly done, with the pistol and all. Who would have guessed it?”

“/ should have guessed it,” said the magistrate with conviction. Then, with a sigh, he began in a more constructive manner: “What little do we know? If there was not food in his stomach, then it is not likely the poison was administered in that way?”

“Quite right you are.”

“Perhaps disguised in liquid: Jeremy, was there a decanter or a bottle on the desk? In the room? Do you recall any such thing?”

I tried to call up a picture of the place, or rather some several pictures since Mr. Bailey and I had roamed the room so thoroughly. “No,” said I at last, “I can’t recall any. But I can only be certain about the desk. The desk was empty, quite bare of bottles.”

“Hmm. That in itself is unusual.” Then to Mr. Donnelly: “Do we know what kind of poison it was that killed him?”

“No,” said the surgeon hesitantly. “As I gave earlier, I took a sample of liquid from the stomach. I shall deliver it to a chemist, but in all truth, it was so mixed with blood and bile that it may be impossible to identify. It did such damage, though, so that it must have been a caustic, some sort of acid: a very painful death.”

“What will you now do with the corpus?”

“Why, return it, sir. My promise to Lady Goodhope was that I should bring her husband’s corpus back in a few hours’ time, so that it might finally be prepared for funeral. Putrefaction has already begun: not yet far advanced, of course.”

“Well, I must ask you,” said Sir John, “to write a report addressed to me on this. Include all those details I was too impatient to hear. Give all the details of any kind you can, for this document, I pray, will go beyond me to the Crown prosecutor.”

“I’ll do that, certainly.”

“What do you intend to tell Lady Goodhope?”

“The truth. Any sort of fabrication would be not just wrong but difficult to support. She’ll know eventually, anyway.”

Sir John sighed. “You’re right, of course. But ask her to keep it to herself. And when you do tell her, make sure there are no servants listening in. The butler is particularly bad in that regard. There’s no need for this to get out just now.”

“I understand, but won’t you tell her that yourself? Aren’t you coming along, sir?”

“No, I had planned to spend time with my wife.”

“With your wife. Sir John?” It was, I fear, quite obvious from his tone and expression that Mr. Donnelly had supposed that the information he had brought would be of such moment that Sir John would be drawn immediately back into the inquiry.

Yet it was just as obvious from Sir John’s set expression that he had no intention of altering his domestic plans for the evening.

Then he addressed the surgeon with brutal directness: “Mr. Donnelly, no blame falls upon you in this, for you are ignorant of my private matters. But I intend to spend time with my wife, for it is certain there is not much more time to be spent with her. Simply put, sir, she is dying.”

Mr. Donnelly was instantly overcome with remorse. The French say desole, in their bombastic way, as a simple expression of sorrow or regret. But he did then truly appear desolated. His face crumpled so that I thought for a moment he might weep, but he did not.

He nodded and took a step back from the desk. “Sir, I cannot tell you how—”

Sir John waved his hand as if chasing away a fly. “No need to, Mr. Donnelly, no need to discuss it further. You had no way of knowing.”

“Could I help? Perhaps if I visited her…”

“And bring along your diploma from Vienna?” He sighed. “Forgive me. That was uncalled for. No, sir, a whole troop of medicos have looked at her. Medicines have been tried: all without help.”

“What is her sickness. Sir John?”

“A tumor, the doctors agree on that, but all seem to disagree as to its location. All believe the end is near, however, and I feel it myself. I was away from her last night and this morning. I must be with her tonight.”

“Of course. I understand. But do let me pay a visit in the morning.”

“She’s beyond diagnosis, beyond help. My poor, dear Kitty must weigh no more than five stone. She who was once a corpulent woman.”

“But I’m sure she’s not beyond pain. I may be able to give her something to ease that a bit.”

Sir John remained silent for a moment. “Then by all means do come,” said he.

“You do well to carry on in the courtroom,” said Mr. Donnelly. “And this inquiry …”

“Which could not have come at a more inopportune time, believe me. No wonder I make such a botch of it. But hold, sir, although I have no intention of coming along tonight, let me send Jeremy with you. He might be of more help to us than you might suppose.”

My young heart leapt at this new opportunity. “How, Sir John?” I asked. “How may I help?”

“Why, by talking to those below the stairs. Don’t mimic me by questioning them formally. Converse with them. They will have questions of their own, be sure of it. Answer them all, except any to do with this latest matter of the poison. There is no need for them to know that. But give information so that you may get it in return. Be my spy.”

“I’ll try. Sir John.”

“Does that satisfy you, Mr. Donnelly?”

“I shall be happy to have Jeremy with me.”

Thus came I to be seated astride a discreetly draped coffin in the back of a dray wagon driven by the incomprehensible Ebenezer Tepper. Mr. Donnelly rode beside him and seemed to have no better understanding of him than I. He had made a few attempts at conversation with the Lancashire man: a question about the route and a comment on the crowded thoroughfare. These were put to him in his usual speech, which was good King’s English softened and sung a bit in the Irish manner. Ebenezer had no trouble understanding him, but his responses, fairly long and windy they were, clearly bewildered the surgeon. With the second of these Mr. Donnelly cast me back an inquisitive look. All I could give him in answer was a shrug. Nothing passed between them after that.

And so, for the most part in silence, we made our way slowly through the streets of the city, until at last, quite near St. James Street, we turned down a narrow, dirt way which seemed quite familiar to me. It took me but a moment to realize that we were making passage to the rear of the house on St. James along the bleak, tight way I had viewed briefly with Potter. Ebenezer had proved what I had a little doubted. I had judged it perhaps too narrow for a wagon as wide as this. I told myself that I must amend the description I had given to Sir John.

Ebenezer reined the horses in before the privet hedge and just beyond the gate. Mr. Donnelly called to me to get down from the wagon and hold the team. This I did somewhat reluctantly as the two men hauled down the coffin and struggled with it through the gate. Although by the standard of London I was a country boy, I had little experience of animals and next to none of horses. On the few occasions my father had found it necessary to rent a team and a wagon, he had handled matters without my questionable aid. We were pedestrians, the two of us, as are most of the folk in England’s towns and villages.

And so I could but hold on to the traces of these two huge beasts and hope for Ebenezer’s early return. One was gentle and one was not. The gray grew restive, shuffling his feet in an impatient manner, making the wheels of the wagon behind them creak. I tried talking to him in a gentle and reasonable manner, but he would have none of it. He turned his head sharply and made to bite me on the arm.

Quite by instinct, I left my feet and leapt back, dropping the traces and landing against the hedge: the way was just so narrow. There was a dull thud where my feet landed. It was one of those details not at first noted. Indeed I had no mind just then but to grab hold of the traces once again and master that fractious gray. Fright made me bold. I cursed him in my childish way, calling him a devil and making threats I could not hope to carry out. Harsh words worked better than sweet. I took a grip lower down and pushed against his head. When the wheels of the wagon ceased to creak I knew I had triumphed.

It was not until then that the sound my flying feet had made when they hit ground echoed in my mind’s ear. I had no certainty about it: simply the feeling that it was not quite as it should have been. Twisting about, managing to keep my hold on the horses, I searched out the place where my heels had dug in the dirt. It looked no different from the place I now stood. It had been firm under my feet: yes, perhaps a bit too firm. Testing, I made a jump in place, found the ground softer, and got no answering thud. This peculiar exercise disturbed both horses, however, and so I determined to do no more until Ebenezer arrived, which was soon after. In the end, however, all I did was estimate the distance from that spot to the hedge gate and thus mark it for further investigation.

Relieved of my onerous task, I made through the gate and the garden, and entered the Goodhope residence through the rear door. Then to the cellar and the kitchen. There I found the staff not engaged, as I had expected, in the preparation of dinner; but rather, dawdling about their own evening meal, all seated at the long table whereon Lord Goodhope’s body had laid the night before. In addition to the two young females I had met upon then, there was Ebenezer’s companion footman, whose name I would learn was Henry, and a woman unknown to me and senior to them all, whom I judged rightly to be the cook. Where Potter was I could not guess. I was, however, glad to note his absence.

As I entered, all conversation ceased. I should not have been surprised at that, for when last I visited them, I had performed in an official capacity quite officiously. But I wisely approached them on this occasion all meek and humble.

“I was wondering,” said I to the assemblage, “if I might beg a little something to eat; a crust of bread would do me well.”

“And who might you be?” asked the older woman. “In off the street, are y’?”

“By no means, mum,” said I to her. “I arrived with Mr. Donnelly, the surgeon.”

One of the kitchen girls, the one who had giggled the night before at Potter’s discomfiture, whispered earnestly in the cook’s ear, and the expression on the latter’s face softened considerably.

“Well,” said the cook, “you talks like a gent’man. P’rhaps I ought feed you as one. You may eat as we’re eatin’, if you like: dining as ladies and gents ourselves, we are. Must eat it up. Meat don’t keep forever.” She paused, assessing me. “What about a chop?”

“A chop of what?” I asked rather boldly.

“A chop of good English mutton,” said she.

“Done!” said I, as if engaged in commerce.

This brought a lightening of mood at the table, a place set for me, and in no time at all, a thick chop, a bit of dripping, and a chunk of bread to sop it up with. This was indeed sumptuous dining.

In no time at all, those at the table with me were laughing and talking as before, but this time, as predicted by Sir John, most of the talk was directed at me in the form of questions to do with the swift and unexpected demise of Lord Goodhope.

“Was it not by his own hand then?” asked Henry, the footman. He had recognized what his master’s two clean hands might mean and communicated it to the others.