Elyse Mady (28 page)

“Amply. We attended the place twice and in that time, I observed such behaviour as is not fit to be repeated. Deviant behaviour.” The witness stopped for a moment, steeling himself. “The miscreants gather in a back parlour and engage in the most salacious and unnatural behaviour possible. Kissing each other. Hugging. Affectionate and lewd exchanges.”

His revelation provoked outrage amongst the jury and the spectators. His voice rose with anger as he strove to speak above the clamour. “Sodomites, all of them and they should be put to death.”

“Objection,” Sir John called sharply from the desk where he was sitting. “Witness is offering an opinion on sentencing which is the court’s remit.”

The judge reluctantly conceded the point. “The witness will not offer judgements as to punishment,” he admonished. “You must relay only what you know of the events as you witnessed them or facts which would illustrate the character of the men involved. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your honour.”

“Continue, Mr. Pooley.”

“You and Mr. Linnet attended the White Swan on July the first and again, a week later.” Pooley’s voice was monotone but his air of confidence was unmistakable. “After your initial observations, what actions did you take?”

“I gave a full report to Mr. Read. It were him, along with Mr. Taunton, who organized the patrols the following week. They waited until all of the men were engrossed and then sprang into action.”

“A finely executed enterprise, to be sure,” Pooley congratulated him. “Now, tell me, Mr. Nichols, were the seven men now standing in the dock present on the evening of July eighth?”

“Yes.”

“And did you, in the course of your visits to the White Swan have occasion to observe these same men acting the criminal fashions you have already described to the court?”

“Yes.”

The prosecuting lawyer looked elated. The testimony of the Bow Street officer was damning. The judge looked towards the defence. “Thank you, Mr. Nichols. I have no further questions. Mr. Gurney?”

The pro bono lawyer stood. “I have no questions for this witness,” he said quickly. Amongst the gallery, this lack of cross-examination aroused comment and Hester was doubly glad now for Sir John’s presence.

“Sir John?”

Robert’s lawyer stood. He straightened the notes that lay before him, nodded at the judge in greeting and then asked the witness casually, “How many men were present inside the White Swan on the night of the raid, Mr. Nichols?”

“We arrested twenty-three men.”

“I didn’t ask you how many men you arrested. I asked you how many men were within when the raids commenced.”

“I didn’t have occasion to count.”

“You didn’t have occasion to count?” Sir John sounded vaguely surprised. “This seems something of an oversight to me. Had not you attended the same establishment several times before?”

“Yes.”

“In order, you testified earlier, to ascertain the veracity of the anonymous complainant’s claims.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You were there to observe, you say, yet you failed to observe the number of men in the interior? That seems an odd oversight. You told the court that you gained access to the premises by dissembling. Could you describe the lies you told the occupants of the White Swan on the evenings in question that allowed you to be accepted amongst them?

“Sir?” Nichols seemed confused. He kept casting beseeching glances towards the prosecutor but Pooley could not intercede. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, sir.”

Sir John smiled graciously and shrugged as though it were no matter at all. “I’ll rephrase the question,” he said. “You lied in order to gain admittance and conduct your covert survey. I wish to know what falsehoods you and Mr. Linnet told my client. For instance, did you bestow false compliments of a personal nature on the men you encountered?”

“Well, yes, we had to make ’em think we were mollies like them,” Nichols argued.

“Did you touch them? Invite them to touch you?”

Nichols reared back in outrage. “No!”

“No? But you have testified that the men you saw in the White Swan were touching in an intimate fashion. Why would they have done so, in front of yourself and Mr. Linnet, unless you too were participating in such caresses?”

“I didn’t—”

“You were ordered by your superior, Mr. Read, to secure the visual evidence of practices which he suspected, through the information provided by an unreliable and secretive informant, to be unnatural. What’s to say that it wasn’t your presence, mimicking and inviting these men you claim to have observed, which incited them to behave in such a fashion? That it was you, acting the part, which led my client into jeopardy?”

“Your client was there,” the police officer argued. “I saw him with my own eyes, the first night I visited, coming down the stairs as I arrived. The beds upstairs. The makeup and the dresses. That’s proof enough for any thinking man.”

“No, sir, it is not proof. It is merely circumstantial evidence.”

“Circumstantial?” Nichols scoffed, but Sir John was implacable. Hester’s nerves were raw. Her fingers felt bloodless inside her gloves as she clenched Thomas’s hand.

“You say you saw Mr. Aspinall descending the stairs. But you never saw him above stairs on either of your visits, did you? Therefore, you cannot testify before this court about his activities within the club.”

“Reasonable enough to assume—” the officer began.

“In this country, before our courts, assumption is not enough to convict,” the barrister replied in an icy tone. “You did not see my client above stairs, yes or no?”

“No.”

“You observed him, below stairs, sitting in the back parlour, drinking with Mr. Amos, Mr. Done and Mr. Cook. Mr. Aspinall was not then above stairs at the time of the raid?”

“No, he was not,” Nichols replied, clearly reluctant to make the admission. “But he told a joke of a most unsavoury nature. I won’t offend the court’s dignity by repeating it, but it was off-colour. Off-coloured in the extreme.”

Sir John paused at Nichols’s recollection then said with quick humour, “If the telling of off-colour jokes whilst drinking in a public house were enough to warrant arrest, I doubt there would be one man in a hundred still at liberty on this island.” This raised a laugh from the spectators. Hester was heartened by the sight of one or two of the jury chuckling quietly.

Mr. Pooley interjected bitterly. “Your honour, my opposing counsel’s levity is a gross imposition on the dignity of this court.”

Before the judge could rule, Sir John raised his hands. “I withdraw my comment. But setting aside the humour, I will repeat that although Robert Aspinall was observed within the premises, you cannot testify to any deviant activities, since neither you nor the informant nor the arresting constables saw him participating in such.”

“No.” Officer Nichols stood in the witness stand, glowering.

“Then, if it pleases the court, I have no further questions for this witness.”

The clerk gestured and Nichols stepped down, his heavy boots thudding heavily as he clambered down the steep steps.

“It went well, I think,” Hester whispered to Thomas and he nodded, although his eyes were still wary, peering intently at the seven prisoners standing in manacles at the bar. Robert stood motionless, as though he had been petrified.

“Sir John will leave no stone unturned.”

And he didn’t.

Over the next three hours, he cross-examined every witness with the same effective incisiveness.

Taunton, his phlegmatic face unreadable, nonetheless came off the worse in his encounter. Sir John got the Bow Street superior to admit that he had not entered the house until the night of the raid, following the constables.

Mr. Read was forced to concede that the informant was known to authorities and had admitted to the officer that he was a former intimate of William Amos, who’d spurned him shortly before the raids.

“Jealousy can motivate a man to give false evidence as surely as avarice,” Sir John said.

Read scowled. “I concede nothing.”

“You do not have to concede, sir. The jury is well able to make up their own minds about the reliability of this invisible source.”

Finally, the closing arguments were made. Pooley rose confidently.

“Gentlemen of the jury, it has not been a pleasant task that has been laid before you today. You have heard of the grossest and vilest depredations, committed by these seven men before you. The evidence collected from the premises cannot be denied. Men met to avail themselves of each other’s bodies, in the most perverted and unnatural fashions imaginable. In the interests of decency, which the men arrayed at the bar have so patently set aside, I will not repeat their revolting deviancies. I will leave you therefore to the task to which you were appointed in adjudging them guilty and urge the court to apply the harshest of penalties, the better to dissuade others from following in their unnatural path.”

Hester watched as the seven shackled men at the bar listened to the barrister’s impassioned argument. Some of them—Hett and Done—looked down during his recitation. Cook kept his eyes fixed on the seal above the judge’s bench. Amos seemed little interested in the whole business. Robert stood tall, his face a little pale but otherwise composed, as he looked over the jury about to decide his fate.

The judge turned to the defense. “Mr. Gurney?”

The lawyer rose nervously, picking and brushing at the black sleeves of his robes. He looked across the desk, towards the accused, then towards the jury. “I am afraid I have been place in a very awkward situation,” he began weakly. “As counsel for the defendants, I undertook the task because I felt myself bound to do so by my duty as an advocate. But the testimony given today has been so clear and uncontradicted as to leave no ground of palliation upon which to make any appeal to the jury. I must therefore decline trespassing on the time of the jury, and leave them to form their own conclusions.”

The silence that met this rather remarkable statement was quickly broken as whispers and speculation overtook the gallery and the courtroom below. Only the judge’s pounding gavel restored order, and it was a mutinous one, that Hester suspected could be broken at any time.

Sir John rose at last. He looked first at his client and then at the jury. After a long interlude, he began, his voice deep and sober. “My colleagues in the law are right in many respects. The behaviour that my client and the men he stands beside are accused of is of a type which does disgust any right-thinking man. But so too does a murder. Or an assault. Or even a robbery effected upon a hapless traveller. These crimes strike fear in our hearts and make us eager to punish those who have been found to perpetrate them.” He paused, his gaze raking over the twelve listening men. “But a feeling of revulsion, no matter how strongly felt, must not be enough to overset the bedrock upon which our enviable system of justice has been so carefully composed. The evidence which Mr. Pooley and even Mr. Gurney claims as clear and uncontradicted,” he said with a scornful glance at his shirking companion, “is not so clear as they would have you believe.

“That some men met in the White Swan to indulge in practices unlawful, I will concede. But the evidence that it was
these
men is insufficient. The possibility remains that others, more guilty and more profitably situated, have escaped condemnation. The evidence against Robert Aspinall is circumstantial in its entirety and while it may be enough to raise your ire and stoke your fear, neither sentiment ought to be sufficient in a court of law to bring about conviction. I leave it to you therefore to consider the facts without prejudice, as rationally and as soberly as your oath demands it.”

He sat down, his ringing exhortation leaving the jurors and the courtroom momentarily silent.

From the bench, the judge spoke. “Having heard the testimony of the witnesses, I now charge the jury to consider the facts before them held without food, drink or fire until such time as a lawful verdict is rendered. Bailiff, if you will.” The bailiff rose and in single file, led the twelve members of the jury from their box to begin their deliberations.

Down in the courtroom, the prisoners remained at the bar. No one made to remove them. Instead, they scratched and shifted. Robert turned around and peered into the gallery. When his eyes met hers, he smiled. There was no mirth in it, but the calm acceptance on his face heartened her and revived her flagging courage.

In her hands, Hester held Thomas’s pocket watch. The narrow hand moved with agonizing slowness round the ceramic face. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. It was the longest duration yet of any of the deliberations she had witnessed today. That they were deliberating at all gave her optimism. The longer they stayed away, the higher her hopes might flutter.

They returned after twenty-three minutes. If anyone was surprised by their reappearance, they did not announce it aloud. The foreman spoke in a low voice to the sergeant and handed him a small slip of paper. He carried it swiftly to the judge, who read it, his face stern beneath his voluminous white wig.

The recorder’s pen was poised. The barristers had ceased their quiet discussions. All focus was on the judge, who cleared his throat while the sheriff prodded the prisoners at the bar into a semblance of order. The foreman stood, his hands tucked with self-importance behind his back.

“Has the jury reached a verdict, foreman?”

“We have, your honour.”

“And in the case before you, how does the jury find?’

Hester closed her eyes, praying with all her might that her brother might be released. He was a good man. Pray God the jury had found him so.

The foreman’s voice was deep and booming. It carried without difficulty throughout the courtroom as all waited for the verdict. He rocked back on his heels, refusing to look at the bar where the accused men waited to hear their fates.

“We find the defendants guilty of all charges.”

Guilty
.
Guilty of all charges.

It was the last thought Hester had before she fainted.

* * *

A full hour later, she awakened in a small anteroom, Thomas beside her.