Minor Corruption (22 page)

Robert, however, was not as pleased as his
pupil. He and Marc sat alone in Robert’s chamber over their
luncheon, discussing the morning’s proceedings. Neither had done
more than poke his food about his plate.

“So I’m ready for Jake Broom,” Marc was
saying, “and whatever Neville Cambridge can toss at me. I’m feeling
cautiously optimistic. We’re unravelling Cobb’s meticulously
knitted skein of events, stitch by stitch.”

“You were nothing short of brilliant, Marc.
Bob and I have taught you well. Perhaps too well.”

Marc was taken aback. “How so?”

“I don’t quite know how to say it tactfully,
so I’ll just say it straight out. It is no victory for any of us if
it is won in the manner you’ve chosen to do it in. I say that
knowing full well you have no other option.”

“I don’t understand.”

Robert reached for a macaroon, found the bowl
empty, and said solemnly, “Marc, you and I have been through the
wars literally and figuratively. What we have been fighting for is
a government responsible to those who elected them freely and
honestly.”

“So we have.” Marc was used to Robert’s
occasional lapses into melancholy or high seriousness, in which the
weight of the world seemed to press down upon his sturdy frame, but
he was not a little alarmed at the demeanour of his good friend as
they sat here in quiet conversation. That he himself was being
criticized seemed almost beside the point. “And we’re going to win
in the end,” he said.

“Yes, but not at any cost. You must realize
that the people we are fighting for – on whose behalf we are
crusading – are the Joe Mullins and Sol Clifts and Burton Thurgoods
of this world. It is those without a voice for whom we seek a
voice, and for whom we set ourselves up as models of what our
shared future may be about
. How
we go about winning is as
important as
what
we win. And in that courtroom today, we
have represented a cross-section of our current society. They are
watching and judging all.”

“You feel I went too far in suggesting
Mullins and Clift were possible rapists?”

“My God, Marc, you don’t really believe that
either of them did it, do you? Mullins has the freckled face of a
youngster, one that melted the jury’s heart instantly.”

“What I think in that regard is irrelevant,
is it not?” Marc replied. “You have indeed taught me well. My task
is to defend your
innocent
uncle against this ghastly
charge. Surely I am free to use all the instruments allowed me by
the court and our legal tradition? To do less would be to break my
oath as a barrister.”

“That’s true, I know. But step back a moment
and look at the situation. If you get an acquittal by haranguing
and insinuating malfeasance against ordinary citizens just doing
their civic duty, what good will it do us? We’ll be seen in the
same light as the Family Compact, who manipulate and manoeuvre the
law for their own benefit, not society’s. It will be a Phyrrhic
victory.”

“But your uncle’s life is at stake, Robert.
You saw him in the dock today. He couldn’t stand without the aid of
a bailiff. How long would he last in prison? A week? We’re dealing
here with a question of life and death.”

“I know. And it is near to destroying me, old
friend. But I can’t forget what my father taught me. None of us is
above the law, and the law itself must be preserved, whatever the
human cost.”

But how am I to do that
, Marc sighed,
and save Uncle Seamus
?

TWELVE

Marc left chambers without resolving the matter
between him and Robert, and returned to the Court House, determined
to do his duty. In the courtroom, the Crown’s eye-witness was, at
last, ready to testify. With several hundred eyes upon him,
expectant and judging, Jake Broom began to sweat, even as he was
being sworn in. While stocky and heavy-jawed, Broom resembled an
overgrown kid more than he did a twenty-year-old. His large round
eyes gazed at the world with unflinching innocence, matching his
beardless chin and wispy brown hair.

Neville Cambridge began gently. “Just tell us
in your own words what happened on August the third, starting from
the moment you left the office at twelve-fifty or thereabouts.”

Broom had a strong, deep voice, but appeared
to be holding it in check, as if it might overwhelm him or the
courtroom. “Yes, sir. A few minutes after Mr. Whittle and Burton
left to repair the sluice and Joe went out fer a smoke, I finished
my lunch. I looked up at the clock. It said ten minutes to one. I
told Sol I thought I ought to go and take a look at Ginger, our
horse that had the heaves. He said, ‘Take yer time.’ I went back
through the mill, through the flour room where we’d been baggin’
flour after cleanin’ up the mornin’ spill, and out through the back
door. There’s a direct path to the barn from there. I went into the
barn through the door on the southwest corner and walked along the
stalls till I came to Ginger.”

“Your sick horse?”

“Yes. Beside her stall was Blackie, the
little pony that Betsy often come out to see.”

“But you yourself did not see Betsy turn
north towards the barn that day?”

“No. I couldn’t see outside the office
window. I figured she’d gone straight to Spadina.”

“Please continue.”

“Ginger was doin’ fine. I gave her a good
strokin’, then fer some reason I can’t remember I decided to
stretch my legs by walkin’ back to the mill the long way – out the
back door and around the barn. I got to the back doors. Both of ‘em
were open. I stood there fer a second, just enjoyin’ the warm sun,
when I heard a rustlin’ noise. I knew the stall facin’ the doors
some ways away was empty, so I figured it might be a rat. So I
turned and had a look.”

Jake paused and took several gulping
breaths.

“Take your time, young man. We know how hard
this must be for you.”

“I’m all right, sir, I can do this.”

“Good lad.”

“What I saw first was just a tangle of arms
and legs and bare skin.”

At this, the jurors and everyone in the room
except the defendant eased forward.

“I blinked, and then I saw it was a man on
top of a girl, doin’ . . . doin’ – ”

“They were engaged in sexual union?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Embarrassing as it may be, Mr. Broom, I want
you to tell the court exactly what you observed. Leave nothing
out.”

Broom wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I seen
a man’s buttocks goin’ up and down.”

A woman in the galleries cried out
involuntarily. The judge glowered.

“Did you get an impression of this man? His
size? His age? His colouring?”

“I thought he couldn’t be young. The legs
seemed a bit scrawny. The skin, what I could see of it, looked
quite pale.”

“Were the arms tanned?”

“I couldn’t really see them too good,
sir.”

“Tall or short?”

“I’m sure he was short. Certainly not
tall.”

“He was naked, then? Did you see his clothes
anywhere about?”

“He hadn’t a stitch on that I could see. But
his clothes must’ve been lyin’ in the straw, ‘cause I didn’t see
any.”

“In your statement to the police, you
described another prominent feature of the rapist’s anatomy.”

Marc stirred, but did not rise to the
bait.

“I did. As the head bobbed up and down, I
couldn’t see the face, but all around the head was a great bush of
whitish-grey hair, big as a halo.”

All eyes followed Broom’s up to the gentleman
in the dock – elderly and short, with a huge spray of whitish-grey
hair.

“Do you know anyone fitting the description
you’ve just given us?”

“I do. And I thought so at the time. I was
certain it could only be Mr. Seamus Baldwin.”

Following as it did the communal gaze up at
the dock, this bombshell was close to a dud, but it seemed to seal
the old man’s fate nonetheless.

“Do you know anyone else in your
neighbourhood who resembles Seamus Baldwin?”

“No, sir. I’ve never seen hair like that on
such a little fella.”

“And you had seen Mr. Baldwin before August
the third?”

“All through July, sir. He come to angle fer
trout up by the weir or down in the ravine.”

“Let us turn our attention to the girl. Did
you immediately recognize her?”

Broom blushed and sweated some more. “No,
sir, all I could see – ”

“How far away were you, by the way?”

“It’s about twenty-five feet from the doorway
to the facin’ stall.”

“And there was plenty of light?”

“With the doors open on a sunny day, I could
see easily. And the sun comes through the cracks in the barn-board
and a high window.”

“But the stall itself was in shadow?”

“With some sprinkles of sunlight.”

“Very good. Now, please tell us about the
girl you saw.”

“All I could see was her legs, kinda wavin’
in the air. But they looked . . . they looked awful tiny.”

“She was hidden behind the rapist?”

“And the straw.”

“When did you suspect it was Betsy Thurgood?
Did she cry out?”

Broom’s heavy frame drooped. “No, sir. That
was the queerest thing. All I heard was little gaspin’ sounds.”

“But you concluded at some point that it was
Betsy?”

“Yes. I saw her blue gingham dress draped
over the wall of the stall. And in the straw was the wicker basket
she brought the lunch in and a bit of her yellow apron showin’
through – the clothes she had on when she first come into the
office.”

Cambridge paused and appeared to be checking
his notes. Behind and around him, not a limb stirred.

“Tell the court, Mr. Broom, what you did
after recognizing the pair and realizing you had stumbled across an
older man having illicit intercourse with a fifteen-year-old
female.”

“I know what I shoulda done, but I didn’t. I
should’ve run over to the stall shoutin’ my lungs out. It was too
late to save Betsy from what’d already happened, but I could’ve
caught the – the – ”

“Culprit?”

“Yes. But to my shame I didn’t. I decided to
run fer help. I knew he hadn’t seen me, so I reckoned there’d be
time to run to the office and get Mr. Whittle.”

“But he was at the weir with Burton
Thurgood?”

“In my panic I’d forgot that. I got there and
the room was empty. Sol was in the mill where it was too noisy to
call to him. I looked down towards the ravine but didn’t see Joe. I
turned and raced back to the barn. This time I thought I’d save
Betsy myself. But when I got back there they were gone. The stall
was empty. I could see where the straw’d been mussed up, but that
was all.”

“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Broom.
You are a very young man, you had a moment of panic, but you did
return determined to do your duty, to put yourself in danger.”

“Are you summing up, Mr. Cambridge?” the
judge said with an ironic tilt of an eyebrow.

“No, Milord.” Cambridge turned back to the
witness. “Did you now go looking for Mr. Whittle at the weir?”

Broom hung his large head again. “No, sir. I
should have. But I got to thinkin’ that Mr. Whittle might not
believe me. What if it wasn’t Mr. Baldwin, even though I was
certain it was? I’d be accusin’ a prominent gentleman with no
proof, only my say so.”

“And you assumed, I’m sure, that the young
lady herself would make a complaint.”

“And when she did, I could help her prove her
claim, couldn’t I?” Broom said eagerly.

Marc was about to interrupt this cozy,
mutually satisfying dialogue, but he wasn’t quick enough: Cambridge
got in one last jab.

“And you had no way of knowing, as we now do,
that the gentleman in question had been lurking in a ravine nearby
with a hidden route to that stall, did you?”

“Milord!”

“Mr. Cambridge, you’re summing up again. This
is your last warning.”

Cambridge apologized without really doing so,
then looked back at Broom.

“No, sir. I didn’t know he’d been around that
day.”

“Still, you had a duty to report a
crime.”

“I know I did. And on my way home that
afternoon, I made up my mind to tell it all to Mr. Whittle the next
mornin’.”

“And why did you not have an opportunity to
do so?”

“There was a letter waitin’ fer me. It said
my father was dyin’ and the family needed me – in Port Talbot. I
left at five o’clock the next mornin’.”

“And you did not return here until October
the fifteenth?”

“That’s correct. Mr. Whittle, he took me back
on at the mill, and I soon heard all about Betsy losin’ the babe
and dyin’. I was very angry. I knew what had caused that babe and
led to her dyin’. I went straight away to the police.”

“You’ve been a brave witness, young man.
Thank you. Now I believe defense counsel may have one or two
questions for you.” Cambridge smiled disingenuously at Marc as if
to say,
I really haven’t left you much more.

Marc did not begin gently. “Mr. Broom you
assumed what you saw was an illicit sexual encounter. But was it?
You said you heard no scream or cry for help, is that right?”

“No. She didn’t cry out.” Broom looked
thoroughly frightened, like an overweight rabbit staring into the
ferret’s eyes.

“Did you not think that strange? A girl
getting raped and giving out nothing but little gasps? Did the man
have his hand over her mouth?”

“No – no, sir. They were both in the straw,
holdin’ him up.”

“You described her legs as waving in the air.
Did you mean to say she was thrashing about?”

“Yes . . . I mean, no. She wasn’t thrashin’
at all.”

“I see. Strange behaviour, wouldn’t you say,
if this was fifteen-year-old Betsy?”

“It was. I saw her dress and the basket and
the apron.”

“A gingham dress, yes. Tell me, do other
young ladies in your township wear gingham?”