Minor Corruption

by Don Gutteridge

  “But you were related?”

  “I was his son.” Broom’s voice was now close to a whisper. “Later on, Mr. Whittle found out. By then he liked me and I showed him I could work. But he always took what I said with a grain of salt.”

  “You tended to exaggerate things? Make them sound more colourful?”

  Broom’s jaw reached his chest. “Sometimes.”

  “What I’m wondering, sir, is why the jury should believe you today?”

  Broom looked up, anguished. “Because I saw my Betsy gettin’ raped by Mr. Baldwin and I was too much a coward to save her!”

  This passionate outburst had the effect of instantly galvanizing sympathy for the young man, who had been losing ground in the past ten minutes. There was genuine anguish in the face, and conviction. But Marc was no longer worried: Broom had unwittingly given away something of vital importance.

  “You and Betsy were romantically involved, weren’t you?” he said quietly when the hubbub in the room had subsided.

  His outburst seemed to have taken all the stuffing out of Broom. He slumped forward onto his hands against the railing. After a long pause, while the galleries and counsel waited, transfixed, he said, “Just once.”

  “How can you be in love just once?”

  “It was six months ago. We went for a walk. In the spring. Down by the creek. We . . . kissed.”

  “You both liked stories and flights of fancy, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But she was terrified her father would find out. I was fond of her, but she forbade me to see her alone any more. I never approached her in that way again. Even when she brung Burton’s lunch to the mill, I didn’t tease her the way the other fellas did.”

  “Milord, this testimony is going nowhere.”

  “I agree, Mr. Cambridge. Mr. Edwards, get to some point or move on.”

  “The point is this,” Marc said, standing on his toes and trying his best to teeter the way he had seen Doubtful Dick do it. “Mr. Broom, you have admitted you like to make up stories. You have admitted you were in love with Betsy Thurgood. I suggest you have fabricated the entire story of the rape in the stall. I submit that you yearned for your forbidden love, that you knew Betsy would be alone in the barn, that you accosted her, and when she resisted you, you forced yourself upon her. Terrified and ashamed, the girl went back to Spadina and kept quiet. Meanwhile, Mr. Broom, you went blithely home that evening, and the next morning fled to Port Talbot, where your father is likely alive and thriving. Having learned by letter that Betsy did not tell on you, you returned here two months later. I submit, sir, that you raped Betsy Thurgood.!”

  There was sensation everywhere in the courtroom. The judge banged his gavel and had to threaten to clear the room to regain a semblance of order. Marc sat down amid the clamour, shaking but satisfied. He had done his duty. That was all he could say for himself.

  When Neville Cambridge was finally able to reconfigure his aplomb, he said to the pale and trembling witness, “Let us now, Mr. Broom, return from flights of fancy to reality. I want you to go back and tell the jury the plain and simple truth. I promise not to interrupt you, badger you, or put words into your mouth.”

  Slowly but with increasing confidence, Broom was able to retell his original story. But the doubts that Marc had sown hung heavily over his every word. Cambridge had one trump card left, however.

  “If you had done the deed yourself, sir, tell me: would you have returned to Toronto and, finding no charges had been laid against you, would you have gone to the police and reported an incident that everybody had forgotten?”

  The answer was obvious: to the jury and everyone else in the chamber.

  At this point the judge adjourned the trial until Wednesday morning.

  ***

  When Marc stepped into the wig-room, the small enrobing area for attorneys, he was surprised to see Cobb sitting on one of the stools, his helmet at his feet. His face was rigid with anger, the dark eyes ablaze on either side of the alarmingly scarlet nostrils.

  “Cobb, old friend, you shouldn’t be in here,” Marc said quietly.

  “I got as much right in here as you’ve got in a court of law!” Cobb stood up, fists clenched.

  “I take it from your look that you do not approve of my conduct this afternoon?”

  “That’s right. And you c’n throw in this mornin’ and yesterday, too!”

  “I’m a barrister, Cobb. I have a duty to perform, and it often is not a pleasant one.”

  “Ya mean pullin’ fancy tricks to let a guilty man go free!”

  “My client insists he is innocent, and I am honour bound to believe him unless I know otherwise for certain.”

  “And we ain’t given you enough to be certain, is that it?”

  “That’s going to be for the jury to decide, not you or me.”

  “I give the prosecutor more than enough to convict Seamus Baldwin, and you ripped it apart piece by piece.”

  Marc tried to be patient. He understood Cobb’s anger and disappointment, and it was never easy explaining how a barrister’s obligations worked or what tactics were considered fair play. “I repeat: I was doing my job.”

  “So you really think that old goat is innocent?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “But you don’t believe Jake Broom raped that young girl, do you?” Cobb stared Marc down, daring him to equivocate.

  “It’s not likely, no. But it is possible, and it’s my task to let the jury know of that possibility, however remote.”

  Cobb’s red face grew redder. His eyebrows sprung forward as if to give extra weight to his words. “You ruined that young man’s life out there. He was an honest, innocent boy and you took advantage of him. How is that different from what Baldwin did to Betsy?”

  Marc was fast losing patience. “All right, you’ve made your point. Now please let me get out of this wig and gown.”

  “I ain’t finished yet!” Cobb yelled.

  Marc went over and quietly shut the door. “Okay, go on, if you must.”

  “What I’m thinkin’, and I never figured I’d ever say this, is that you don’t care whether Seamus Baldwin is guilty or innocent. You’re doin’ what you’re doin’ to please the Baldwins, to save their political necks. ‘Cause you and I both know that unless you get the old bugger off – however you do it – the Baldwins are finished as politicians. You’re all in this to save the Reform party!”

  Marc’s patience had worn itself out. “And who are you to talk, eh?”

  “Whaddya mean? I done my job right and proper.”

  “Because you want the law upheld? Or is it rather because you’re hoping to impress the Chief and have him recommend you for the new detective’s position?”

  “How in blazes did you know about that?”

  “Easily. Wilf came to ask my advice and pick my brain.”

  “Well, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. I was asked to carry out a fair and objective investigation – like you taught me – and I did just that.”

  “Well, then, why can’t you accept that I’m doing my duty in the same way?”

  “’Cause I didn’t set out to destroy people’s lives on the witness-stand.”

  Marc paused, lowered his voice, and said, “Your incomplete investigation has resulted in the ruin of a gentleman’s health and will in all probability lead to his premature death.”

  “What are you talkin’ about – incomplete?”

  “I meant what I said. You did an incomplete, flawed investigation.”

  “What didn’t I do?” This conversation was not going the way Cobb had envisioned it.

  “For starters, you failed to realize that Betsy’s two-month pregnancy was merely an estimate. Did it not occur to you that Betsy could have been pregnant before she arrived at Spadina in late July? If so, then a dozen young lads from that neighbourhood could have been her beau or become obsessed with her. And anyone could have reached that barn unnoticed from the path along the creek, a creek
that runs all the way past the workers’ houses. And you forgot your own wife’s testimony about the tone of Betsy’s dying statement. In short, you failed to keep going in your investigation because you accepted Seamus Baldwin as your prime suspect from the beginning, and then looked at all subsequent evidence in that light.”

  “What about the bushy hair?” Cobb spluttered.

  “I demonstrated that a few minutes ago: a trick of light and shadow. We both have stood in that barn doorway and gazed into that stall. So you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Is it not possible that there was no rape, but merely a sexual liaison between Betsy and some local with lots of brown or blond hair? I hate to say it, Cobb, but you simply did not do your job.”

  “I don’t have to stand here and listen to yer lawyer’s double-talk!” Cobb cried.

  “It was you who came steaming in here,” Marc said, steaming himself.

  “Well, I’m steamin’ out now!”

  With that, Cobb marched to the door, opened it, and slammed it shut. Then, aware that he had left his helmet inside, he slipped back in, avoided Marc’s eyes, scooped up the helmet, strode to the door and slammed it even harder. Then he stomped off, Marc’s taunting phrase “didn’t do your job” abuzz in his head. He had not been this angry in his entire life.

  THIRTEEN

  Marc decided to avoid Baldwin House and go straight home, for there seemed little use in meeting Robert for further discussion of the case as they had apparently agreed to disagree. Anyway, the trial would finish tomorrow or Thursday. He was also hoping to get some sympathy from Beth after his bitter clash with Cobb in the wig-room. Beth, however, had other ideas. She shipped Junior and Maggie off to the kitchen with Etta and directed Marc to sit down with her on the chesterfield in the parlour.

  Marc took one look at her face and said, “Not you too, darling?”

  Beth smiled. “I take it yer friends have not been impressed with the way you conducted yerself today?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Marc said, and took the opportunity to unburden himself of the day’s tribulations. Beth listened intently, as she always did, but there were no sympathetic nods except when he repeated Robert’s maxim about the supremacy of the law itself. But she did offer a tiny smile at Cobb’s reappearance to fetch his helmet.

  “I’m real sorry you and Cobb had it out,” she said when he had finished, “but I can see why he was so angry. This was a big investigation fer him. And on his own, too. You made him look bad today. I hope to Heaven you don’t have to put him on the stand.”

  “So do I.”

  “Still, I’m surprised you lost your temper.”

  “When he questioned my motives, I lost all patience with the man. And I just struck back, somewhat blindly, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Well, dear, I saw somethin’ in you today that I hadn’t seen before.”

  “Oh?”

  “And I don’t mean just yer grit and determination and downright stubbornness.”

  “Well, thanks for those anyway.”

  Beth frowned. “I hate to say it, but I thought you were unnecessarily cruel to Jake Broom.”

  “Why ‘unnecessarily’?” Marc said with more sarcasm that he intended. “Wouldn’t ‘cruel’ do nicely?”

  “Now don’t get in a huff, luv. I meant what I said. I know you have to be cruel sometimes in a courtroom where lives are at stake. The greatest cruelty is to hang a man who is not guilty, I know that. I just thought you went further than you had to. You accused the lad of bein’ a rapist when you knew he wasn’t. And Cambridge showed the jury that was so when he went on about the young man not returnin’ to do himself in with a cock-and-bull story.”

  Marc was duly chastened. He had gone further than he had planned to. Showing the jury that Broom was fanciful and could have misinterpreted or wrongly described the scene in the stall was all he needed to do. Broom’s testimony had been impeached long before Marc had got carried away, Dougherty-like. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “I so wished to see this thing over, for the sake of that suffering old man.”

  Beth looked so serious that Marc was sure another accusation was coming, but she said quietly, “What are yer motives, luv?”

  “Cobb accused me of toadying up to the Baldwins and fighting for my own self-interests in regard to the Reform party, and I suppose he was close enough to the truth to have me respond in anger. But what drives me, in addition to friendship and party loyalty, is justice. I believe Seamus Baldwin is incapable of that crime or even of paying for a botched abortion, and I desperately want to get an acquittal.”

  “So you have no doubts about his innocence?”

  Marc was startled by the suddenness of Beth’s query. “Of course not. Don’t tell me that Neville Cambridge is getting to you, too?”

  Beth laughed. “No, he’s not. You’ve fought him blow fer blow. I’d say the jury is still out.”

  “What worries me deeply, win or not, is that I may have jeopardized my friendship with Cobb and with Robert, the two men I admire most in this world. To lose the case and my friends would be too terrible to bear. All my effort would have been for nothing.”

  Beth patted the back of his hand:

  “Nothin’ is never fer nothin’, luv.”

  ***

  Sixteen-year-old Edie Barr, the Crown’s final scheduled witness, was first up on Wednesday morning. She was both nervous and excited. She was aware of her blond good looks and of the fact that they were being appreciated by the packed galleries. Her employer’s son, Robert Baldwin, had taken her aside earlier and told her she was to tell nothing but the absolute truth when standing in the witness-box. There would be no recriminations as a result of her testimony and, under no circumstance was she to feel that she ought to tell less than the truth in order to protect the Baldwin family. She had nodded dutifully, but had already mapped out what she was going to say and why.

  “Miss Barr, do you know the defendant well?” Cambridge began.

  “I do, sir,” Edie said in her most adult voice. “Mr. Seamus came to Spadina on the first of July of this year. I seen him many times a day ever since.”

  “In your capacity as an upstairs maid at Spadina?”

  “That’s right. I’ve worked fer Dr. Baldwin fer two years.”

  “And Betsy Thurgood worked with you?”

  “Betsy was the tweenie – ever since August. She worked a bit up and down. We shared a room.”

  “Please describe your relationship with Seamus Baldwin, beyond servant and master.”

  Edie blinked, then understood what was wanted. “Oh, we both called Mr. Seamus our uncle, Uncle Seamus. He said we had to.”

  “Isn’t it odd for a gentleman of some sixty years to be so chummy with the hired help?”

  Edie winced at “hired help” but said, “Yes, it is. But Uncle Seamus was like a big kid. He loved to tease and play pranks, and he let us tease him back – as long as we didn’t do it in front of visitors. Then it was all ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’” Edie did not once look up at Uncle Seamus in the dock. In fact she kept her wandering gaze everywhere but on that side of the courtroom. For his part, Uncle Seamus seemed for the first time to take a steady interest in the proceedings, leaning forward on the railing of the dock.

  “So he liked to tease, did he?”

  “Not always,” Edie said with a glance at Robert seated behind Marc. “He was our tutor, too. He had us read to him and helped us with our writin’ and sums.”

  “Taking an inordinate interest in two young maids, was he?”

  Marc got up, but it was Justice Powell who barked, “Do not put words into the witness’s mouth, Mr. Cambridge, especially ones she herself would never utilize.”

  Cambridge apologized. “Tell us, Miss Barr, what form the teasing would take.”

  Edie blushed prettily. She loved that “Miss Barr.” “Well, Uncle Seamus liked to bounce up behind us and give our ribs a tickle. And we’d all laugh.”

  “I se
e. Up and down the ribs, eh? What else?”

  “He’d bring us a sweet in our room and then make us answer a riddle to win it.” Edie frowned. “Betsy always won.”

  “Now tell the court about your being a ventriloquist’s dummy.”

  Edie happily recounted sitting on Uncle Seamus’s knee and flapping her jaw in synch with his words. Her pretty eyes widened as she told of the response they got at several soirées at Spadina, and she lingered over potentially salacious details, which seemed to please Neville Cambridge greatly. Marc, however, thought this testimony was redundant as earlier witnesses, including Beth, had already established Uncle Seamus’s eccentric, elfin habits and his attraction to children and young women. But there was more to come.

  “So it would be fair to say that you and Miss Thurgood liked and admired Seamus Baldwin, referring to him affectionately as your ‘uncle’?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cambridge now drew from among his notes a sheet of paper. “I am holding here a letter, Milord, which I would like to introduce as Exhibit B. It was found by the police among the effects of Betsy Thurgood in her room at Spadina, as the attached affidavit will attest to.”

  The clerk took the letter and attestation to the judge, who perused them carefully. Marc had seen the letter and had a pretty good idea what was coming. The letter was now taken over to the witness.

  “Miss Barr, please read this letter aloud to the court.”

  In her best singsong voice, Edie read aloud with the confidence that Seamus Baldwin had given her:

  Dear sweetest one:

  I know how impossible it is to love someone

  so far above one’s station. I know also the pain of watching you

  close up every day of my life. I see your beautiful, manly face

  and your shining hair and your glinting eye as you walk ever so

  elegantly down the stairs each morning. I follow you through the

  day with my heart aflutter and my breathing stinted. I swoon at