Minor Corruption (18 page)

Broom told a persuasive story, one Marc would
have to break – somehow.

For the sake of completeness he walked to the
weir at the millpond. He stood on the little dam and gazed back
towards the barn. Except for its roof, it was invisible. Where, if
at all, was the weak link in this credible chain of events? He
wished he could interview the witnesses, but that was not
permitted. He thanked Seth Whittle and left, wiser but no closer to
where he hoped to be before Monday.

He rode on up to Spadina. Robert was expected
home soon, but it was Dr. Baldwin who led him up to Uncle Seamus’s
room. The interview did not go well. Uncle Seamus insisted on his
innocence, and Marc believed him. But when he tried to get the old
fellow to elaborate on the explanations he had given Cobb and
recall anyone else who might be able to corroborate them, Uncle
Seamus was of no help. He was deeply depressed and sleep-deprived.
His answers wandered and did more to confuse Marc than enlighten
him. For the old man’s sake, Marc soon gave up.

“Maybe he’ll be better able to help
tomorrow,” Dr. Baldwin said without much conviction. “But it may
well be all down to you, lad.”

That’s what I’m afraid of, Marc thought.

***

When Marc got back to the chambers at Baldwin House,
Clement Peachey handed him the witness-list, which had just arrived
– days late.

“Any surprises?” Peachey asked.

“Yes. Cobb is not on here.”

“Then you may have to call him yourself.”

Marc sighed. Then whistled. “But my wife
is
.”

***

Marc always shared his investigations and court
cases with Beth, insofar as confidentiality or his barrister’s oath
was not broken. Since the details of the indictment were both
numerous and public, Marc did not have to hold much back. And he
did not have to refer to the interdicted witness-list because Beth
herself had received her subpoena a few hours before he arrived
home for supper. They went immediately into their new parlour, and
Beth asked Etta Hogg to watch the children and hold supper for half
an hour.

“Why would the Crown call me as a witness?”
Beth said. She was well aware of the Crown’s case and Marc’s sense
of how it would unfold.

“To make mischief, I’m afraid,” Marc said.
“This whole business reeks of politics. The Tory prosecutors want
to drag the Edwards clan into this – you and me both, so we will
all be tarred with one brutal brush.”

“But I’d just deflect them from their case,
wouldn’t I?”

“Well, you and I
have
been out to
Spadina.”

Beth winced. “The birthday party and those
shenanigans!”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. And it
shows how low our opponent’s have sunk. But your name is well down
the list, so perhaps I’ll have so shaken them by then that they’ll
have less petty matters to attend to.”

“You figure you can unsettle the Crown’s
witnesses all along?”

“I have no other choice. I must attack
relentlessly and toss out alternative versions of the crime as I
go.”

Beth frowned. “You mean the way Doubtful Dick
operated?”

“Yes. All I need to do is unsettle the jury
about the Crown’s patched-together fairy tale, and Uncle Seamus’s
character and name will do the rest. It’s a reasonable doubt, as
Dick always reminded me.”

Beth reached over and stroked her husband’s
cheek. “But my darling, you are not ruthless. And you’re not Dick
Dougherty.”

TEN

By ten o’clock Monday morning the courtroom was
jammed. Citizens of every class and gender were packed into the
side-galleries, and the VIP benches facing the august, judicial
podium were fully occupied by a who’s who of the Family Compact,
the proprietors of a dozen newspapers from Toronto and the
adjoining counties, and of course the family and friends of the
accused. Robert Baldwin and his father sat directly behind Marc’s
bench, and in back of them were Diana Ramsay, Brodie Langford (once
the ward of Doubtful Dick Dougherty) and Robert’s eldest son,
William. Beth was in the witness-room. And high above them all: the
pitiable figure of Uncle Seamus in the dock.

Despite the size of the crowd, the place was
subdued. People chatted in desultory whispers, in part because the
morning sun slanting in through the tall, elegant windows upon
varnished wood and polished brass gave this regal space the
ambience of a cathedral and in part because the trial itself was
almost too sensational for words. The jury had been selected on
Saturday. Everything was set for the proceedings to begin.

Marc sat at his bench and studied the jury.
They looked as ordinary as he knew them to be. There was no-one
here more prominent than a tobacconist. Tradesmen and labourers,
the rest. How would they judge a privileged gentleman alleged to
have seduced and raped his brother’s maidservant, and then
callously slipped her five pounds for a botched abortion? It was
going to be uphill all the way. Across the aisle from him sat
Neville Cambridge, his blond hair just showing under his wig,
elegant in his silks, unflappable. He did not look once in Marc’s
direction, probably because he was serenely confident of a
conviction. Cobb had assembled an airtight case for him.

Mr. Justice Gavin Powell struck his gavel on
the bench before him and ordered the trial to begin with the
reading of the charges

***

In his opening address, as expected, Cambridge spun
the seamless story of a gentleman, pampered and privileged, who
disported himself in unseemly ways with the young women in his
household and with occasional female guests, and who subsequently
and ruthlessly raped one Betsy Thurgood on the third day of August
in the barn of Whittle’s mill. Thereafter he dallied with the girl
at will for the next two months until he discovered she was
pregnant. Cambridge went on to detail the horrors of the botched
abortion and the gentleman’s role in it, a role that, without a
doubt, bespoke manslaughter. Numerous references were made to
unimpeachable eye-witness testimony. For his part, with no
elaborate defense to outline, Marc was compelled to offer the jury
the distinct possibility that said witnesses were mistaken and that
one or more other villains could just as easily have committed the
crime. Further, a plausible and exculpating explanation would be
offered for the circumstances of the abortion. He planned to save
his arguments about Uncle Seamus’s true character until his
summation.

The first witness called by the Crown was
Burton Thurgood.

Neville Cambridge greeted him with the
briefest of smiles, then effected a sombre, almost tragic,
expression, as if alerting the jury to the dire nature of what was
to follow. “Mr. Thurgood, we realize that you have recently
suffered an unspeakable loss, and hence I propose that we move
slowly, one step at a time. Just answer the questions as best you
can under these trying circumstances.”

Cambridge’s voice was in the middle range
between tenor and baritone, and would not have been forceful or
colourful enough to have earned him a place on the stage. However,
he used it to startlingly good effect. Marc could see the members
of the jury lean forward as if they wished to be included in a
conversation too compelling to be missed.

“Thank you, sir. I
will
do my best.”
Thurgood’s attempt a humility was not completely successful. He
hung his head and spoke in a hoarse whisper, but in the eyes –
peering up under the humble, black brows – there lurked defiance,
aggrievement and scorn.

“If you will, sir, cast your mind back to
that terrible night when your daughter, Betsy, informed you that
she might be with child. Tell us in your own words and in your own
honest way precisely what happened from that point on.”

The prosecutor was suave enough to be
appointed British ambassador to France, Marc thought. Butter
wouldn’t melt . . . And slipping that “honest way” into the
question! For the moment, though, there was little Marc could do
but watch and listen.

With occasional, always gentle, prompts from
Neville Cambridge, Thurgood narrated the events surrounding the
botched abortion. He started by explaining that Betsy had been home
for three days to look after her sick mother, her first trip home
since she had started to work full-time at Spadina. Her mother
recovered and all seemed well until Betsy told them, on the third
evening, of her suspected pregnancy. Then he spoke of sending for
Elsie Trigger, with great reluctance because she was known to drink
on occasion. But she was the midwife in their area and, he stressed
several times, she was only summoned to examine the girl to
determine whether or not she was with child. “I’d’ve never let that
harridan anywheres near my precious Betsy otherwise!” he cried in
his only uncontrolled outburst. Marc saw several jurors nod in
sympathy. Childbirth and the goings-on associated with it were both
mysterious and frightening matters for most men.

Thurgood further mesmerized the jury with his
piteous account of how he and his wife discovered the girl in
distress and bleeding. What to do? Dora Cobb was sent for, while
they sat on either side of their stricken daughter watching the
fever take hold. There was nothing faked or overblown about the
misery in Thurgood’s face. However, from Marc’s point of view, they
were a long way from the rape, and Cambridge was taking a chance on
going for the jury’s emotional jugular too soon. He had little
choice, though, for he had opted to begin at the end of the story
and work backwards. What really puzzled Marc, though, was the fact
that no mention was made of Mrs. Trigger’s dramatic exit. Cambridge
moved quickly past it to Dora Cobb. Her arrival and ministrations
were related in a calm and direct manner until Thurgood reached the
girl’s final moments.

“You must have realized your daughter was
near death?” Cambridge prompted.

Thurgood nodded. “She was shakin’ with fever
and Mrs. Cobb couldn’t get the blood to stop comin’. It was
horrible.”

“Indeed it was, and all of us who are parents
sympathize – ”

“Mr. Cambridge,” said Justice Powell. “You
know better.”

Ah, nice, Marc thought. He went too far and
got interrupted at a critical moment.

“Tell us, sir, if you can bear to, about the
last minute of Betsy’s life.”

Thurgood’s lower lip trembled and the
ligaments in his neck stiffened with the strain of his reply: “My
wife and me had asked the girl many times who the father was, but
she wouldn’t tell us. Then Auleen, that’s my wife, she thought to
try one more time before – before . . .”

“Betsy passed away?”

“Yeah.”

“Your wife asked her outright?”

Marc considered an objection, but held back.
It was going to be a long trial and he would have many
opportunities to interrupt.

“She did. She said ‘Who is the father, Betsy.
Tell us,’ or somethin’ like that.”

“Did Betsy, despite her fever and
deteriorating condition, hear those words?”

Marc got halfway to his feet, then sat back
down.

“Well, she answered ‘em.”

At this remark the jurors leaned forward,
expectant.

“Who did she name as the father of her
aborted child?” Most barristers would have delivered this climactic
question with a melodramatic verve and a head-swing to draw the
jury into the moment. Cambridge, however, asked it in a
near-toneless whisper – which had the same effect.

“Her exact words were, ‘ Seamus’ – she said
the name twice out loud. We all heard it, crystal clear.”

The gasps in the jury were drowned out by
those in the galleries. All eyes swung up to the huddled figure in
the dock.

“Were you shocked to hear this?”

“I was. And yet I wasn’t.”

“Why was that?”

“My Betsy was a maid up at Spadina where a
Mr.
Seamus
Baldwin lives.” Some of the latent scorn leaked
out of Thurgood as he added, “Everybody knows that bigwigs are
always interferin’ with the hired help.”

“Milord!” Marc was on his feet.

The judge scowled at the witness. “Sir, you
are to refrain from making remarks not called for by the questions
put to you. The jury will ignore that remark.”

And good luck to them
, Marc
sighed.

“So, with her dying breath your daughter
named the defendant,
Mr. Seamus Baldwin
, as the father of
her child?”

“She did.”

“Now, sir, I wish to take you back to an
incident that happened earlier in the evening, one we skipped over
but one that is critical to the Crown’s case against Seamus
Baldwin.”

“I was wonderin’ why you didn’t ask about
that.”

“Earlier you told how Mrs. Trigger was alone
with Betsy in her room for a long time. About twenty minutes, you
said.”

“Yes, sir, that’s right.”

“Tell us now what, if anything, Mrs. Trigger
said to you and your wife in the kitchen just before she ran
off.”

Ah, Marc thought, Cambridge had kept the
business about the five-pound note until after the dramatic naming
of the babe’s father. Very clever, that.

“She said that Betsy’d just had a
miscarriage. And she had the gall to wave a five-pound note in our
faces.”

“Did she say that Betsy had given it to her
in payment for assisting in this ‘miscarriage’?”

“Not exactly, but we assumed she had.”

“Milord,” Marc said quietly.

“Your answer to the question, sir, should
have been a simple ‘no’,” the judge said sternly.

“At a later time, Milord, the Crown intends
to show a direct connection between the five-pound note and the
accused.”

“Proceed, then, Mr. Cambridge.”

“I have no more questions for the witness at
this time, but I would like to recall him when we are further into
the events at the centre of this trial.”