Breaths of Suspicion (14 page)

And that would mean I needed briefs in the election committees which would inevitably follow the appointing of a new House of Commons. I concluded that to seek a seat myself at that time was something beyond my financial capabilities.

So after the Southampton debacle I set aside political ambitions for a while and worked myself into a professional frenzy. I took everything I could: I found myself representing dog fanciers and jockeys, a mayor who failed to pay his wine bill in a brothel and a mourning relative who complained that the funeral coach had overturned on the way to the cemetery, leaving the dear departed lying in the road. We achieved substantial damages for the affront: natural in a Christian community! I attacked reputations and humbug, exposed scandals and hypocrisy, railed against aristocrats, brewery owners and politicians and attained columns of notices in the national press. Not that it was all court work: I needed to enlarge my social contacts. Christmas came and I took out a game licence and did some shooting at the Duke of Norfolk’s estates, at the Duke’s personal invitation; I was seen at Friday to
Mondays in Hampshire, Kent and Nottingham and I fished in the Thames, the Ouse and the Wear. Then it was back to work. I sat as Recorder in Brighton, dealt with hearings for breach of promise and nuisance and I rode the circuit with success. Consequently, by the spring of the following year, when election fever was at its height, I was £4,000 richer … in theory, at least.

And after I attended Sir Richard Bethell’s big dinner at the Albion Tavern in Aldersgate Street, when the results of the general election were in the frenzied avalanche of work began again; retainers for the election committee hearings flooded into my chambers and I found myself scurrying between committee rooms, with the consequence that my name was being heard and noted in every county in England and not a few in Ireland, also.

I found my personal popularity with the political party of my choice rose also, not least because of the spat I had with Gladstone. I spoke in court, during
Lyle v Herbert
, a crim.con. case, of a former minister of the Crown who had once acted like a common detective, tracking the wife of a noble Duke through Italy, before becoming a witness to her frailty in the subsequent hearing for her adultery with Lord Lincoln.

Ha, yes, you remind me, I’ve already mentioned that particular episode to you. But did I tell you about the device used by the private enquiry agent? You see, when the grocer I was representing began to suspect his wife of infidelity he employed a detective who obtained proof of guilt with his patent crimconometer. The detective bored a hole in the bedroom wall and ran a string to it, tied to the bedsprings. The other end of the cord was attached to his device in the other room, which looked like a kind of thermometer, with a pointer which oscillated, recording the activity – and number of persons – in the bed beyond the wall. The grocer and his private enquiry agent waited, with cigars and porter, watching the crimconometer do its work and when the determined activity in the bedroom was at its height they rushed in and surprised
the guilty couple, causing the adulterer to fall out of bed. They removed his boots so he couldn’t escape and went back into the other room to discuss the whole affair.

When the case came on the other side sneered about the ‘dirty activities’ of the enquiry agent: I responded by comparing it to Gladstone’s hunting down of the Duke of Newcastle’s wife when she ran off to Italy with Lord Lincoln. Gladstone’s furious reaction next day to what he considered as a slur – comparing him to a low-born private investigator – delighted Old Pam and the Liberal Party, as did the flurry of letters between Gladstone and myself: I had tweaked Gladstone’s nose, I was their darling, the social lion who had shown his legal teeth.

They talked to me, they flattered me, these political luminaries. They insisted I was needed in the House with my wit, my capacity for cutting satire, and my eloquence and political conviction. We all waited for the first by-election to come about, where I could follow my star.

But while I waited, an immensely important brief fell into my legal lap. It was just what my reputation needed; a sensational hearing with political overtones, a case which would elevate me to the position of perhaps the most well known advocate in England.

It all began with an explosion in the crowded Rue de Pelletier in Paris, at the corner of the grand boulevards crowded with people to welcome the appearance of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. They were on their way to the opera, to attend the benefit performance of the renowned baritone Massini. They were about to descend from the imperial Berlin coach when there was a thunderous roar and all hell seemed to fall in upon them.

T
he procession had formed up in the Tuileries, the imperial coach escorted by a troop of Lancers, resplendent in their blue and white uniforms, along with the Imperial Guard under the
leadership
of the Commandant of Paris.

Dressed immaculately in black the Emperor sat beside Eugénie, in evening dress under a white cashmere cloak. With them was General Roquet, a hero of Waterloo. They were a little late arriving at the theatre but as the Lancers wheeled into review order the coachman reined in the horses to enter the carriageway where awaited the Master of Ceremonies and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Yes, that’s right, the same family as our own coxcomb Prince Albert. As the party was about to descend from the carriage, in the crowd Felice Orsini gave the signal and Antonio Gomez threw the first bomb.

The grenade landed among the Lancers and burst like a cannon, causing widespread destruction. The heavy glass candelabra above the entrance to the Opera crashed down in a thousand deadly fragments and almost immediately the second bomb was thrown, launched by the second assassin, Carlo Rudio. It killed the Emperor’s coachman and one of the horses; all the gas lamps in the street went out as shrieks of pain and cries of terror mingled with the clattering of wild hoofs and the shrill, terrified whinnying of
frightened and injured horses.

As the Lancers clattered forward to shield the coach, the third bomb was thrown, this time by Orsini himself. It killed the other carriage horse and started a scurrying stampede of fugitives down the panicked boulevards.

All was confusion: Lancers, pedestrians, gendarmes, footmen and wild-eyed stallions dashed about in noisy confusion. A fourth grenade might have ended everything, but it never came.

The attempt on the life of the Emperor had failed. Napoleon III and his Empress emerged shakily from the ruined carriage and picked their way through the carnage into the Opera House. The first act of
William Tell
was over when they entered. News of the bombs swept through the theatre and the audience rose, cheered Emperor and Empress and the orchestra struck up triumphantly with the Bonapartist anthem
Partant pour la Syrie.

Himself wounded, after throwing his bomb, Orsini had stumbled into Rue Lafitte, leaving a trail of blood; Gomez had taken refuge in the Ristorante Broggi; Rudio had concealed himself in a local tavern. But why had the fourth bomb not been thrown? The reason was that the fourth terrorist Guiseppe Pieri had been arrested before the first grenade had been launched and foolishly, in custody when he heard the first explosion, had cried out ‘Do what you want with me! The first blow is struck!’

Gomez was quickly arrested as was Rudio; before daybreak the
Surété
found Orsini asleep on his blood-soaked pillow.

Next morning, at the Café Suisse in London a little Belgian doctor called Simon Bernard was told of the events in Paris.

As you might imagine, my boy, the attempt upon the life of the Emperor enraged the French Government and sent a shudder throughout Europe, for it was the first time a bomb had been used in an attempted assassination, and the slaughter of innocent victims—eight dead and one hundred and fifty injured—was horrific. Very quickly, England’s reputation as a sanctuary for
political exiles came under attack: the French Press, and
Le Moniteur
in particular described London as the ‘haunt of assassins’ and England as the ‘laboratory of murder’.

Palmerston bowed to French pressure and brought in a bill, the Conspiracy to Murder Act, which would give the Government power to treat plots hatched in England against foreign princes as felonies, triable in English courts. He failed to gauge the mood of the House; he was defeated, and immediately resigned. For, aided by French detectives the London police had discovered that the plan to assassinate Napoleon III had been hatched in London.

And the prime mover had been Dr Simon Bernard.

Orsini, Gomez, Rudio and Pieri had been the bomb throwers but Bernard had been the conspirator who preached revolution in France, Belgium and England; it was he who had persuaded Orsini that the assassination of the Emperor was a political necessity; it was Bernard who had helped manufacture the bombs in Birmingham, helped recruit the assassins, paid the conspirators, procured passports for them and acted as the go-between in London, Birmingham and Paris. He was arrested and charged before the magistrates at Bow Street. Meanwhile, Sir Fitzroy Kelly—old Applepip himself—had succeeded Cockburn as Attorney General and consulted several leading counsel as to whether a charge of murder would stick against Dr Bernard in an English court. I was one of those consulted.

I told Fitzroy Kelly I thought it
could
be done but by the time he approached me again I had done some hard thinking, and reached other conclusions.

I was always a gambling man—in the courts as well as the night houses. I could see significant possibilities in the Bernard case. And in those few days since the Attorney General first raised the matter with me I had evidence of the standing in which I was now held at the English Bar. As in the Palmer criminal trial, I was approached by both prosecution and defence. In addition, I had become aware
of the political implications of the case. There was a platform of defiance that I could stand on—and
rage
.

Accordingly, when John Greenwood, Solicitor to the Treasury wrote to me offering me the brief for the prosecution I told him I had made my choice: defence attorneys had approached me and I had accepted their instructions. I would be acting for Dr Simon Bernard. For I realized that the brief, and the timing of the case, was of the utmost importance to me in my career.

You see, my boy, I’ve already told you that cross-examination is a peculiar skill but very alike to duel with the epée. One must attack aggressively, and defend stoutly, but it is also about badgering, deflecting, sniping, confusing, misleading, pricking, wounding, discountenancing and, finally, defeating. I was an acknowledged master of this skill. But there was another attribute for which I had become famous: the address to the jury.

I was known to be a
capital
man to a jury. My early training as a youth had been in the theatre, as I have mentioned. One needs a sense of theatre when one faces a jury. And aware as I was of the feeling which was sweeping the country, the heat engendered in comments made before the magistrates, the uproar in the Commons when Palmerston tried to bring in a bill which the public believed was a mere pandering to the French, I knew that I was being presented with an outstanding opportunity.

As soon as I received instructions from the defence attorneys I visited Bernard at his ghastly accommodation in Newgate.

It was a gloomy location for a gloomy discussion. The facts were before me, incontrovertible, and as I talked with Bernard I did not prevaricate: I informed him that his position, legally, was a hopeless one. The only cheerful thing about the whole thing was Dr Bernard himself: he was a dark-haired man, aquiline-nosed, but his cheery demeanour was almost amusing. I’ve met some cool characters in my time—Billy Palmer was one of the leaders in that respect—but Simon Bernard was the most cold-blooded
individual I had ever came across. There was no doubt that he had conspired with Orsini: the grenades had been bought by Orsini but it was Bernard who had manufactured them in Birmingham, who had arranged for their transport to France and who had given the conspirators constant support. His involvement in the assassination plot had been deep and his guilt obvious. Indeed, he freely admitted his involvement. For he believed he was fighting for a Great Cause.

And he was not one of those dark, bearded, mysterious beings you read about in the penny dreadfuls hawked around the streets. He gave the lie to the stage impersonator of a conspirator. When I talked with him in that damp-walled gloomy cell his countenance was clear and cheerful, his conversation as free as though we were merely discussing the chances of the favourite winning the Derby. He seemed totally unconcerned with the danger of his situation, the peril of his position—more, it was as though he regarded himself as a hero of the first order.

It was this that gave me the first inkling of an idea for the manner in which I would conduct his defence.

I tried to impress upon him that a sentence of death from Lord Chief Justice Campbell was a racing certainty, if the jury found him guilty. Bernard seemed unmoved: he merely shrugged, raised his eyebrows and said, ‘If I’m to be hanged, I must be hanged.’

But I knew we had a chance. The Crown prosecution had indicted him for murder but the Act under which he was charged spoke of deeds ‘
committed within the Queen’s Peace
’. The point was, Bernard’s actions had caused deaths not in England, but in
Paris
, where the Queen’s writ did not run. He was also charged with being an accessory to murder—but if the killing itself was not murder in England, how could he be regarded as an accessory to murder?

And in their rush to indict Bernard the Crown prosecutors had overlooked another problem. Neither Bernard nor Orsini were
subjects
of the Queen … so could proceedings properly lie against Simon Bernard, a foreigner, in English court of law?

These were nice points and I was determined to raise them, but more important in my view was the background to the hearing, the fragile relationship between the French and British Government and, not least of all, the general view held by the public. It was one of Francophobia. It was the view held by the rabble. And I knew I was perhaps the most effective rabble-rouser in the business, when it came to tapping into the public sentiment.

So my actions were planned carefully and deliberate in their aim.

When the trial opened at the Old Bailey it was among scenes reminiscent of the Palmer hearing, not least because I had taken the trouble to quietly leak to certain members of the press that this trial was not a simple one of murder, but a case involving the basic right of every Englishman to be free from the political pressure of foreign princes.

You liked that phrase, didn’t you? I saw your eyes light up! They liked it in America too: President Lincoln himself mentioned it to me with approval when he welcomed me at a soirée at the White House in 1861.

So, when Dr Bernard stood in the dock in front of the Lord Chief Justice Campbell, flanked by the Lord Baron, Justice Erle and Justice Crowder, and my client pleaded not guilty I immediately rose, roaring my indignation, and attacked the court for want of jurisdiction. It was a forlorn hope, of course, and merely an opening salvo but I wanted to make the point and raise the heat at once. Campbell overruled me on the point, but conceded that Bernard would have the right to an English jury or one composed of his own countrymen.

I had schooled Bernard well.

In a clear, ringing tone he raised his chin and announced, ‘I trust with confidence to a jury of Englishmen!’

This caused a stir of righteous pride in the packed courtroom, and brought the jury onto his side, as I had calculated. And I made a further point, with great deliberation.

‘During the course of this hearing, my Lord, I shall be adverting to the unconscionable use by the prosecution of foreign spies. I must demand immediately that all such persons present in the courtroom shall be asked at once to withdraw!’

There was a moment’s stunned silence, then, as twelve dark-clothed, black-bearded gentlemen stood up and made their way out of the courtroom a ripple of laughter went swirling among the crowded benches. The journalists loved it and scribbled mightily. I looked at Jack Campbell on the Bench and he caught my eye: there was the hint of a smile on his cruel lips, and I knew that he was well aware of what I was doing: the so-called spies were, of course, individuals I had arranged to be present, paid in advance, to undertake this manoeuvre.

But the jury, and the public did not know that.

I went on to hammer home the point about spies when I constantly referred to the use the Crown had made of the English police in liaising with their counterparts in France. I argued every single point in favour of my client, and threatened, when overruled, that I would take the matter to appeal. I needled the Attorney General, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, endlessly, both to irritate him and to raise the temperature of the proceedings. I drew sinister motives out of the collaboration between French and English authorities and intimated that there were truths behind this case that would never be disclosed (not that I really knew of any, of course). It was all flummery, you will appreciate, but the jury loved it; they were with me at every step, and brows were furrowed, eyes gleamed and pulses raced with indignation as their shoulders hunched in frustrated patriotism.

As each prosecution witness was paraded I not only emphasized their unreliability but also their foreign connections—some, I
freely admit, imaginary—and stressed the political shenanigans which had been indulged in during the preparations for trial.

But it was when the Crown case was closed that I produced my trump card.

‘My Lords, I will call no witnesses for the defence.’

There was a stunned silence in court; it extended to the judges on the bench, and then there was a slow gathering in the well of the packed courtroom of murmurs, puzzled chatter and amazed conversation. Their Lordships leaned towards each other, whispering. The society ladies seated beside them fluttered their fans in overheated excitement. Stays were strained, bosoms clutched.

Lord Chief Justice Campbell hammered on the table before him and fixed me with his eagle, withering, calculating eye.

‘Do you mean to say, Mr James, that you will be content merely with addressing the jury?’

I bowed my bewigged head in confident assent. ‘That is so, my Lord.’

Pandemonium broke out again but I continued to hold Jack Campbell’s glance and detected the gleam in his eye: he knew what my game was to be.

And you know, in a way, when I rose to address the jury that day I was almost overwhelmed myself: I felt that it was almost as though I had been in training for this moment all my life. My whole career, not merely my professional training and experience, my knowledge of the common man, but also my early years treading the boards were to come together, strengthening my sinews for the contest I was about to make, the challenge I was about to throw down—the
performance
I was about to make.