Breaths of Suspicion (11 page)

I did not mention the prejudice was largely against the Crown prosecution. John Smith stared at me for several long seconds. ‘There is no provision in English law—’

‘But perhaps there
should
be such provision.’

‘That would require an Act of Parliament.’ Smith snapped, but there was a light dawning in his eyes.

‘Just so.’

‘There would hardly be time, even if the Government could be persuaded—’

‘Justice should be blind,’ I murmured, ‘not prejudiced.’ I paused. ‘And I am assured the Attorney General—and the Government—would not be averse to such a petition.’

Smith took the bait. He was persuaded the prejudice would be against his client: next day, to our delight, he presented the petition, and we achieved our objective in getting a London, rather than a Stafford jury, for shortly after the interview Sir Alexander brought in a bill, which was hastily promulgated as law as Act of Parliament,
19 Vict.cap 16
, to regularize the proceedings.

I had dinner with Lecky Cockburn at the Reform Club, while the draft Act lay before Parliament and informed him of my other anxieties. Over a glass of Madeira he observed me with a cynical glint in his eye. ‘So now we know all the rumours about this man Palmer.’

‘And I’ve confronted the man in court. He’s a smooth customer.’

‘I’ve gone over the brief thoroughly. It’s not one of our firmest and clearest cases. Too many holes. I think, James, we don’t have time tonight, for I have a political meeting to attend. But you and I need a conference of war. This Friday I intend going down to my yacht. Perhaps we could meet there?’

‘Or after a convivial evening at The Nunnery?’

Cockburn laughed. ‘It’s a while since I’ve attended a Cock and Hen occasion. Rusper it is then, and afterwards, on to
The Zouave
.’

I was relieved. I needed to give Cockburn my views regarding what the defence was likely to throw at us.

A
fter the ladies had left The Nunnery that afternoon, a sated Cockburn and I settled down to a cigar, and I left a bottle of good brandy at his elbow. He helped himself, sniffed at his glass, gave a slight sigh of appreciation and sipped, holding his head back to allow the taste and aromas to linger on his tongue. Then he looked at me quizzically, and said, ‘The trap will be here in a half hour, to take us down to the yacht. Well, James? What do you think?’

We had already had discussions in his chambers on the case for the prosecution of Dr Palmer and we were of a mind. He would be the leader, of course, and as Attorney General, would undertake most of the advocacy. My task was to prepare the medical evidence, drill the seven eminent surgeons in their presentations, and try to outguess the defence in their strategies. We had worked hard at the brief and I had collated the evidence, interviewed the witnesses we expected to call. Now, I stretched out in my chair, brandy glass in one hand, a glowing cigar in the other. ‘The medical evidence will be critical, in the minds of the jury.’

‘Ah, yes. Led by Professor Taylor.’ Cockburn wrinkled his nose in dissatisfaction. ‘He worries me.’

‘Because of his view regarding the cause of death,’ I murmured.

‘Exactly that. First of all, after his post mortem examination, Professor Taylor was of the opinion, and has so deposed, that he
was convinced Cook had been poisoned by a dose of antimony.’

I sniffed contemptuously. ‘The problem with
that
theory is that during the autopsy on John Parsons Cook only one small grain of antimony was found in the internal organs. Not enough to kill. Indeed, it seems most of us at some time or another carry a similar amount inside our gut without any ill effects.’

‘At which point,’ Cockburn grunted sourly, ‘our good professor gives us the opinion that Palmer
could
have poisoned Cook with strychnia, not antimony after all.’

‘And the problem with
that
,’ I murmured, ‘is that no
post-mortem
evidence of the ingestion of strychnia can be shown.’

Cockburn twisted uneasily in his chair. ‘Confound all damned medical men! Why can’t they be more precise? It’s all very well saying the symptoms attending the death of Cook are
consistent
with strychnine poisoning, but if they can’t find a trace of the stuff in the organs, where does that leave us?’

‘Dangling in mid-air,’ I remarked thoughtfully.

‘Where I’d like to see that damned rogue Palmer,’ Cockburn snapped viciously.

And I need to make a point here. I had no decided
animus
against Dr Palmer. But Cockburn, he was determined to get a conviction, I knew that. The fact was, Alexander Cockburn was always a vain man, and he liked to win. Moreover, as Attorney General he wanted to maintain his reputation; perhaps more importantly, he was due any day now to expect elevation to the bench, as Lord Chief Justice. The Palmer case was likely to be the last great
cause célèbre
that would fall to him before he became elevated to the bench and he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. And oddly enough, for all his personal interest in and ability at card-sharping and whoring and impregnating other men’s wives, there was a strangely Puritan streak in him. He disliked Palmer in a way I did not: he saw the Rugeley doctor as a rogue, a scamp, a fraudster, a horse-nobbler and a seducer. And he had convinced
himself that Palmer was a murderer. I held a somewhat different view: I had met many Palmers in the bankruptcy courts and in fraud and bill-discounting cases. I had personal experience of the wriggling often necessary to fob off one creditor against another. So I had some brotherly feeling for Palmer. And I did not believe he was a killer. On the other hand, I had my professional duty.

‘Do you think Professor Taylor’s testimony will stand up in court?’ he asked abruptly.

I shrugged, sipped my brandy. ‘We’ve got three other eminent professors and three doctors to support him.’

‘And the defence have five professors and six doctors directly opposed and willing to affirm Cook died of natural causes. They claim it could have been syphilis or tetanus.’

‘It don’t come down to numbers,’ I said coolly, drawing on my cigar and sending a curl of smoke up the ceiling. I squinted at its coiling perfection before I added, ‘And we’ve got the evidence of Charles Newton.’

‘Which we’ll go over when we get down to Southampton Water,’ Cockburn grunted, stubbing out his cigar. ‘The trap is at the door.’

We remained silent as we rattled our way to the coast, each to our own thoughts. I suspect his mind was not distant from mine: we had enjoyed the favours of three ladies that afternoon, bored, complaisant and seeking illicit thrills. Cockburn and I were adept at providing the right kind of table—and bed—for such appetites. As for a couple of days on
The Zouave
, that was not really to my taste. Unlike you, my boy, master mariner that you are, I do not have any trace of the sea in my blood. I knew that Cockburn would not be putting out from his moorings at that time of the year, but he liked to sit on the deck well muffled up against the breeze with a wide brimmed hat on his head to deflect the damp airs. He claimed the sea winds helped clear his head: they caused mine to seize up with migraine. But he was my leader, Attorney General, and in charge of proceedings.

My task was to predict what the defence might raise to foil us in our objective—to see Palmer hang—and find ways in preventing those defence arguments prevailing.

After a fitful night in my rocking cabin and a bracing breakfast on shore at a local inn, the Attorney General and I settled down on the deck of
The Zouave
, brandy and water in hand, and went over what we needed to look out for in the coming trial.

Cockburn sighed. ‘Ah, yes, you were saying, the chemist Charles Newton, the man who claims he sold grains of strychnia to Palmer on the night Cook died. Which Palmer then made up into pill form and gave to his unfortunate friend.’

‘In other words, the means to an end. Unfortunately, defence counsel will point out that there’s no record of the sale in Newton’s books,’ I murmured.

Cockburn nodded thoughtfully and squinted skywards where a winter sun was part obscured by drifting clouds. ‘Newton will swear that he did not record the sale because his employer, Dr Salt, had a long standing feud with Palmer, and had ordered that Newton should not serve Palmer with drugs. Newton didn’t want his master to know he had disobeyed him. No, I think we’ll be all right there. Newton’s evidence will stand up in court.’

‘There’s some evidence of bad feeling between Newton and Palmer,’ I countered.

‘I doubt we can contest that. But Newton is likely to be a solid witness: he won’t be moved. So, I think we can assume the means for murder were supplied to Palmer. Newton will swear he provided Palmer with the means to kill Cook—’

‘Though I’d like to come back to that,’ I interrupted.

‘… And Dr Taylor and his merry medical men will swear that Cook died from strychnine poisoning.’

‘Even though they found no strychnia in the organs, and in the first instance Taylor had announced the death was caused by antimony,’ I reiterated.

Cockburn grunted dismissively. We remained silent for a little while, each dwelling on our own thoughts. My mind wandered back to the previous evening at The Nunnery, the softness of female thighs and the scent of the woman’s hair; I recalled the lusty heaving of her loins against mine, and the delighted groaning during our romp. You know, that idiot William Acton, who wrote that the majority of women are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind, and in this was believed by so many, had clearly never come across women like Sovrina, nor my dalliance of the previous evening, or the host of other women who had from time to time come to the Cock and Hen Club that Cockburn and I had run in Brighton, or The Nunnery in Rusper. The ladies came not for money, of course, but were driven by boredom and lust. Indeed, they could sometimes be persuaded to offer me loans to overcome my more pressing financial problems.…

Believe me. I was thinking of such philosophical matters as I stared at the sky and contemplated mentally my recent excited couplings; I had no idea what was running through Cockburn’s mind, of course, until abruptly he brought me back to our reason for being on
The Zouave
. ‘This Charles Newton: his evidence will be crucial. But you say you have thoughts about it…?’

I hesitated, brought back to the present from my dreaming. I realized it was time to bring Cockburn back to reality, also. ‘Yes. Newton. The defence might be able to show he is lying; they may prove it wasn’t
possible
for him to have sold the poison to Palmer.’

Cockburn frowned, scratched uneasily at his receding thatch of red hair. Somewhat irritably, he said, ‘What are you driving at, James?’

‘It’s a problem with the provable
facts
,’ I said.

‘Isn’t it always? What particular facts are you referring to?’

‘Newton. The
timing
of the sale of strychnia.’

‘What about it? Newton’s evidence—’

‘Can be controverted.’

Cockburn stared at me, his brow thunderous. ‘We’ve gone over the whole prosecution case. All right, I concede we’ll have difficulty with Professor Taylor’s testimony and—’

‘Newton is prepared to swear that on the night Cook died Palmer came to Dr Salt’s premises and bought three grains of strychnia. He will place the timing of the sale as nine o’clock on the evening that John Parsons Cook died.’

‘That is so. Where’s the problem?’

‘Ben Gully has done a deal of checking for me. We know that Palmer had gone to London on business that day and returned to Stafford that evening, by train. Ben has checked train times. The London train reaches Stafford at 8.45 p.m. From there Palmer would have had to travel to Rugeley by fly: transport is normally obtained at the Talbot Arms. Even if he managed to get a fly immediately he could not have got to Rugeley
before ten minutes after ten
.’

Cockburn was silent, staring moodily into his glass of
brandy-and
-water. ‘Who can prove this?’

‘The man employed at the Talbot Arms to convey passengers is one Allspice. Gully’s talked to him. He avers he did indeed pick up Palmer from the London train. And conveyed him to Rugeley. Arriving after ten at night.’

Cockburn gritted his teeth. ‘Have the defence spoken to Allspice yet?’

‘Probably. But that’s not all. It won’t be down only to Allspice. If the defence call him they will probably also call one Jeremiah Smith to corroborate the time of arrival.’

‘Then maybe Newton was mistaken about the time of sale of the strychnia,’ Cockburn muttered irritably. ‘We’ll have to get him to change his story. This man Jeremiah Smith—’

‘He claims he met Palmer off the fly at Rugeley when Allspice delivered him and then took him directly to see Palmer’s mother. So there was no sale of strychnia by Newton. And even if there was, Palmer could not have had time to prepare the pills—containing
the poison—to administer them to Cook. The timings are all against us.’

Cockburn glowered, bringing his rufus eyebrows together in a frown. ‘Your man Gully has dug a deep hole for us.’

I waved my brandy glass airily. ‘Then there’s the argument that Palmer needed the strychnia to poison Cook, to escape his financial obligations. Well, I have a man on the ground in Rugeley—’

‘Ben Gully again, I imagine,’ Cockburn remarked with a slight smile.

I nodded. ‘He’s found a man called Harry Cockayne, who looks after Palmer’s horses. Cockayne will give evidence that he intended shooting some dogs which had been harassing Palmer’s horses. He will say that Palmer suggested that strychnia could be used to poison the hounds in question, rather than using a gun.’

Cockburn chewed at his upper lip. ‘A use for the poison.…’

‘Exactly. And a plausible one. And as for killing Cook for financial gain, there’s Will Saunders, the trainer from Palmer’s stables at Hednesford. At the Grand Jury in Stafford he has already deposed that Cook had sent for him shortly before he died, gave him some money to settle debts and told him he’d given all the rest to Palmer to settle urgent business affairs in London.’

Cockburn nodded, grimacing. ‘Thus removing the financial motive for Cook’s murder. I see what the defence will raise: Why kill Cook if no money was owing? We’ll want to show there was money owed, that Palmer had stolen the money Cook won at Shrewsbury, but if Will Saunders is telling the truth that story won’t hold up. But putting that to one side, if we can’t prove that Palmer bought the strychnia, and had time to prepare the pills—’

‘That’s what Jeremiah Smith will state, that there
was
no time. He’s an important witness. The defence will call him to prove that Palmer could
not
have bought strychnia from Newton at nine in the evening, and that the good doctor was with his mother when the poison was supposed to have been made up into pills.’

Cockburn frowned, squinted up at the winter sky. ‘The mother, Sarah Palmer, will she stand by her son with this statement?’

‘She believes her Billy a saintly person.’

Silence fell between us. Cockburn drained his glass, poured himself another measure, added some water from the decanter on the table between us and performed the same service for me. He sat there thinking for a little while and then cocked a wary eye in my direction. ‘I know you, James. I can’t believe you’ve gone to the trouble of identifying these holes in our prosecution case without coming up with some scheme to overcome the problems.’

I smiled and raised one shoulder in a modest gesture of acknowledgement. ‘First of all we can attack Jeremiah Smith. It turns out he’s not only a friend of Palmer, negotiating loans with the assurance companies as a front man, but he also performs rather more personal services for the mother. It seems he shares the bed, quite regularly, of the elderly widow. She might be twenty years his senior but apparently she is still enthusiastic and active between the sheets.’