Indictment for Murder

by Peter Rawlinson

  ‘Eve’s just told me you’re a judge. You’d make a very good judge, Jonathan. Except you’d hate sending anyone to prison.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, but I have to. Lots of people.’

  ‘You’re so much a part of my early life, Jonathan,’ she said.

  ‘And you of mine.’

  You’re a part of all my life, he thought. And you always will be.

  The van Holtz’s had left early. ‘Come and stay, Jonathan,’ she had said when she kissed him goodbye. ‘Come and stay in Santa Barbara. You’d love it. Do come.’

  But he never had.

  * * *

  Jonathan looked up. The evidence-in-chief of the doctor was concluding. The cross-examination would follow. But the judge was rising for the lunch adjournment and Jonathan was taken below.

  In their conference room Shelbourne said to his clerk, ‘Fetch me a glass of claret from the canteen. I need it.’ Isles disappeared.

  ‘Not an early night?’ said Benjamin drily.

  ‘No,’ Shelbourne replied. The American woman, thought Benjamin.

  But last night with Virginia had been different. Now she was insatiable only for information. At their table in the corner of the hotel dining-room she had said, ‘You will give me plenty of the background, won’t you, Hugo? Some story which the others won’t have. I don’t publish until the end of the month,’ she added, ‘and by then the trial will be over. So you can tell me anything.’ She stretched out her hand with its long, blood-red fingernails to cover his. From their tables scattered round the dining-room the other journalists watched. He’s my property, her gesture had signalled. Keep off.

  ‘What was that slanging match all about?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a row with Playfair’s solicitor. I can’t get them to do what I want about the evidence. It’s as though Playfair wants to self-destruct. When I put up some kind of a show and attack the prosecution witnesses, he objects. There can only be one end to it. He’ll go down and—’

  ‘Go down?’

  ‘He’ll be convicted, and it’ll be his own damn fault.’

  Later, when Virginia had gone up to their room, Hugo Shelbourne had spent half an hour over a whisky-and-soda with the man from the Western Gazette who covered the Bristol area. As he climbed the stairs and went along the corridor to their room he was in a happier frame of mind. At least he had something now.

  * * *

  Isles came back into the conference room with the glass of wine. Shelbourne was sitting at the table, studying the note Benjamin had taken of the doctor’s evidence.

  ‘Make or break time?’ asked Benjamin.

  ‘Maybe,’ Shelbourne replied and drank the wine in one gulp.

  * * *

  In his room Graham had removed his wig but was still in his robes. He said to the High Sheriff, ‘I’m not going back to the Lodgings for lunch today. I have some telephoning to do.’

  Colonel Basildon looked at him. ‘Forgive me saying so, judge, but you don’t look very well. Can I get you anything?’

  ‘I slept very badly and I’ve a bit of a headache. Priestly’s gone to get me something.’

  ‘You’re sure I can do nothing?’

  ‘No, it’s very kind of you.’

  Colonel Basildon, in his uniform, walked down the hill to the County Club to meet his wife. She had been in court in the morning. Over lunch she said, ‘He doesn’t look well.’

  ‘No,’ her husband replied, ‘and this afternoon that fellow Shelbourne’s bound to get up to something, so he’ll need all his wits about him.’

  ‘Her ladyship turning up last night can’t have helped.’

  ‘My old grandfather used to say there’s no step a man may not take under the pressure of domestic disquietude.’

  ‘Actually,’ Susan said, ‘it was William Lamb who said that, when he was married to Caroline whom Byron called “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.’

  ‘Oh, was it?’ Colonel Basildon replied. ‘Well, he ought to have known.’

  When the High Sheriff had left him Graham picked up the telephone and rang the school. As he thought, half-term began on Thursday and lasted until Monday night. There was no conceivable chance he could get away before the court rose on Friday evening, and all weekend he’d have to spend preparing his summing-up to the jury. There couldn’t be a verdict until late on Monday or Tuesday morning, but he couldn’t leave the children at school. Someone had to fetch and return them. He put through a call to Anne’s mother.

  Yes, she said coolly, I was expecting you to call. Yes, she would collect the children on Friday morning and return them to school on Monday, although it would mean driving to and fro across the whole south of England and neither she nor the children’s grandfather were getting any younger. It was a great pity, she added, that, as the children’s father, he seemed to find it so impossible to pay any attention to his children who were now at the most formative time of their lives. She would explain to them that he would not be seeing them this weekend, and she rang off.

  He sat with his head in his hands until he heard Priestly’s knock.

  ‘This should help,’ his clerk said, putting the glass of water and the tablets on the table. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

  It was more than a slight headache; his head was splitting, and it would be a difficult afternoon. Shelbourne would be going after the doctor, and Shelbourne, as ever would need watching.

  12

  SHELBOURNE rose slowly to his feet and stood very still, looking down at the sheet of paper he held in his hand, his usual technique at the start of a cross-examanition. After some seconds Graham, irritated, said, ‘Yes, Mr Shelbourne?’

  Shelbourne looked at him, then nodded briefly. He wasn’t going to be hustled by this young puppy of a judge. He turned to the witness and stared at him. At last he began.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done it, should you?’

  The witness looked surprised. Shelbourne repeated, ‘You shouldn’t have done it, should you?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have done what?’ the doctor said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I think you do, Dr Mitchell, I think you understand very well.’

  ‘I do not,’ the doctor replied indignantly. ‘What shouldn’t I have done?’

  ‘Then let us go through what you did on the morning of June 20th. On that morning you visited your patient, as you had visited him on the day before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the day before that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the day before that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three visits on three consectutive days, and on each visit you filled that apparatus with enough diamorphine to last some thirty hours, 60 milligrams maximum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were topping up what remained of the drug in his apparatus to a maximum of 60 milligrams?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘If that amount of diamorphine, the full complement of 60 milligrams, had, by some mischance, entered your patient’s body in a single dose, would that have killed him?’

  The witness paused. He began to suspect what was coming. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It would not. It would have induced drowsiness, sleep. That’s all.’

  ‘But double that amount, almost triple it, say a single shot of about 168 milligrams, if that was pumped in to him in one dose, that would have killed Colonel Trelawny, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. As I explained, the effect of large doses of diamorphine varies, but in Colonel Trelawney’s then state of health, in his condition, yes, a sudden injection of 168 milligrams would have killed him.’

  ‘And it did, didn’t it?’

  ‘I explained to the court this morning that as I—’

  Shelbourne snapped at him: ‘I didn’t ask you what you, explained to the court this morning. I repeat, did not that 168 milligrams pumped in one dose into your patient’s body kill him?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Now I repeat the first question I asked y
ou. You shouldn’t have done it, should you?’

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘Dr Mitchell, you know perfectly well what I am asking you. On Friday June 20th you should never have filled that apparatus with 220 milligrams of diamorphine. Isn’t that correct?’

  ‘No, it is not correct.’

  ‘In what way is it not?’

  ‘As I explained—’

  ‘Answer my question.’

  ‘My lord’ – Bracton was on his feet. Shelbourne flung down his brief on the desk in front of him, pleased to have provoked Bracton so early in the cross-examination. As he said to Benjamin, all he could do was make a show, and Bracton’s reaction would help the show along.

  ‘My lord,’ said Bracton, ‘the witness is trying to explain his answer. He must be allowed to give his explanation. That was a trick question.’

  ‘That is a singularly offensive comment,’ said Shelbourne, even more pleased.

  ‘Let the doctor answer the question first,’ Graham replied. ‘Then he may explain.’

  Bracton sat down heavily. Graham said to the witness, ‘Counsel has asked you, Dr Mitchell, whether you agree that if the syringe had never been charged with 220 milligrams on the Friday, a fatal dose could never have been administered on the Saturday. That seems a perfectly easy question to answer. Do you agree or disagree?’

  ‘Put like that,’ Dr Mitchell replied, ‘of course I agree, my lord. It couldn’t.’

  ‘Now you may add what you wish.’

  ‘As I have explained, my lord, the only reason why I charged the apparatus with 220 milligrams of morphine on June 20th was because I had to be away over the weekend, but it was wholly incapable of administering more than 2 milligrams in any one hour. So there was no danger when I filled it with 220 milligrams.’

  ‘Did you say no danger?’ Shelbourne leaned forward over the desk towards the witness. ‘No danger in loading the apparatus with 220 milligrams?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘By that I suppose you mean there was no danger if, and only if, the apparatus was working normally.’

  ‘Which it was.’

  ‘So you say. No danger, provided’ – he stressed the word – ‘provided the apparatus was working normally?’

  ‘Yes, which I know it was.’

  ‘How do you know? You weren’t there on the morning or afternoon of Saturday June 21st. Where were you?’

  ‘I was in Bristol.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Shelbourne slowly, ‘you were in Bristol.’ He paused. ‘Attending a medical conference, I believe you said. Is that right?’

  The witness nodded.

  ‘As I’ve had occasion to point out to another prosecution witness,’ Shelbourne went on smoothly, ‘the shorthand writer has to make a record of these proceedings and he finds it difficult to show a nod. Please answer. Yes or no, Dr Mitchell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another pause, before Shelbourne asked, ‘Was it an important conference?’

  ‘I thought so, at the time.’

  ‘Sufficiently important for you to leave your patient?’

  ‘Yes. He was perfectly properly provided for.’

  ‘I’ll come to your visit to Bristol a little later, but so that there can be no doubt about it, we have established, have we not, that if during that weekend the syringe had contained only 60 milligrams no fatal dose could have been administered by any means whatsoever?’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So do you also agree that you should never have charged that apparatus with the amount of diamorphine which you did on June 20th?’

  ‘I do not, if by that you mean that what I did was wrong.’

  ‘You don’t deny, do you, that if you hadn’t done that Colonel Trelawney would now be alive?’

  ‘I don’t know if he would have been alive or not. Your client—’

  ‘I am not asking you about my client,’ Shelbourne interrupted. ‘If there hadn’t been that amount of diamorphine on hand Colonel Trelawney would not have been killed. Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘I am not prepared to answer a hypothetical question.’ The doctor looked down at the closed file on the ledge in front of him. He took a deep breath and said slowly, ‘But I will agree that it was to suit my obligations, to fit in with my commitments, that the syringe on June 20th was filled with 220 milligrams of diamorphine. I was, however, satisfied that there was no danger, as the apparatus still could not discharge, was incapable of discharging, more than 2 milligrams an hour into Colonel Trelawney’s body.’

  ‘Do you think it was a responsible thing for a doctor to do? To go away and leave a patient for the whole weekend with that amount of the drug in a syringe attached to an apparatus which was pumping the drug into his body.’

  ‘Of course it was. The apparatus controlled the supply. There was a perfectly competent safety mechanism—’

  ‘So you were quite prepared to leave your patient to the mercy of a safety mechanism? Have you never heard of even the most sophisticated and apparently foolproof apparatus failing to do what it is meant to do?’

  ‘That is nonsense,’ the doctor replied angrily, thumping the ledge of the witness-box so angrily that he knocked his file to the floor, scattering sheets of paper below the box. The usher collected them up and handed them to the doctor, who snatched them out of his hand and began to re-arrange them. ‘It is a perfectly normal practice to do what I did,’ he went on. ‘I have done it before with other patients, and, to my knowledge, it is done by many of my colleagues. Before I left the house that morning I checked that machine. After I returned the next night when Colonel Trelawney was dead, I again checked the machine. Mr William Fraser, the technician from the manufacturers who was specially called next morning, checked the machine. There was no fault in it. The safety mechanism was in perfect working order. The mechanism is not capable of pumping more than 2 milligrams an hour through the syringe; 168 milligrams of morphia could never have entered the deceased’s body through the operation of that machine.’

  As he spoke the doctor’s face had flushed an even deeper red than his normal high colour and he had gradually raised his voice until at the end he was almost bellowing. With a satisfied smile Shelbourne lolled back against the bench. He is enjoying himself, Virginia thought.

  ‘Those 168 milligrams which were emptied through that syringe into Colonel Trelawney were administered manually,’ the doctor continued. ‘That is the only way they could have been. It was done by hand, by the hand of a person pressing the plunger – and there was only one person who could have done that. You have no reason to smile at me, because you know exactly who that person was.’

  Shelbourne jerked forward and stood very straight, staring hard at the witness. The doctor pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket, put it to his mouth and dabbed his lips.

  ‘Gently, doctor, gently, please,’ Shelbourne said, smiling again.

  ‘That’s outrageous,’ said Bracton. Graham was about to intervene when Shelbourne went on rapidly, ‘Two hundred and twenty milligrams of diamorphine left in that syringe while you drove off to attend to what you have called your obligations, your commitment to attend a medical conference.’

  Graham lookd quickly through his papers. Dr Mitchell had spoken of William Fraser, and there was a statement by Fraser in the depositions. Fraser was the technician who was coming to give evidence, indeed he was to be the next witness. Graham found the statement. As he had thought, Fraser would swear he had examined the apparatus on the Sunday morning, June 22nd, the morning after Trelawney had died, and had found it in perfect working order. He decided to intervene.

  ‘Is it part of the case for the defence, Mr Shelbourne, that the diamorphine entered the deceased’s body because of some fault in the operation of the machine. Is that your case?’

  ‘Good,’ whispered Bracton to Graves. Shelbourne turned slightly to look at the judge, but said nothing.

  ‘I’m not clear,’ Graham went on, ‘what exactly you are alleging
? What is the defence on—’

  Shelbourne interrupted him. ‘Unlike commercial cases, in which your lordship has had so much distinguished experience, there are no pleadings in a criminal case and the defence does not have to state in advance what is or what is not the nature of the defence. But I can tell you, for your information, that the defence in this case is what it has been from the moment the prisoner was arraigned – Not Guilty. I am not, at this moment, prepared to say more.’

  Graham flushed. In his chair beside the judge, Colonel Basildon crossed his legs uneasily. That was pretty offensive, he thought. There was silence for a moment, the judge staring at counsel. The tablets he had taken at the lunch adjournment had worn off. Graham’s head was throbbing, worse than it had in the morning. I must keep my temper, he said to himself. I must.

  ‘Then I think that you had better move on, Mr Shelbourne,’ he said and dropped his eyes to the notebook in front of him and picked up his pencil.

  ‘If,’ said Shelbourne, emphasising the word, ‘if your lordship pleases.’ He paused and then said, ‘I shall now turn to the nature of Dr Mitchell’s so-called obligations or commitments which took him away from daily supervision of his patient’s welfare.’

  Bracton lumbered to his feet. ‘Before my learned friend does so, in my submission he must make clear whether he is suggesting that the diamorphine found in Colonel Trelawney after his death was or was not caused by the operation of the apparatus.’

  Shelbourne wagged his head, and sighed. ‘All in good time. Perhaps my learned friend will allow me to conduct my cross-examination in my own way and’ – he turned to Bracton and almost spat out the words – ‘and without interruption.’

  Graham held up his hand. ‘Both of you, please be quiet. Mr Bracton, according to my papers your next witness is William Fraser, who examined the apparatus on the morning of Sunday June 22nd. Is that correct?’

  ‘It is, my lord.’

  ‘Then when he is cross-examined we shall hear what is suggested or what is not suggested to him by Mr Shelbourne. And when the jury have heard that doubtless they will remember what is presently being put, or – which is equally important – what is not being put, to Dr Mitchell.’