The Case Against Owen Williams

by Allan Donaldson

  For another three years, Dorkin’s father had tailored on in his village, and then in the chaos in Russia before the First World War, he had uprooted himself, and following in the wake of someone else from his village, had arrived one bitter winter morning in Saint John, speaking not a word of English. But he was a good tailor, and he did well and married and after a while set up his own shop and continued to do well.

  He had two daughters, and one son, Bernard. He was still peasant enough to value sons above all else. He made Bernard a reader like himself and like himself a person who thought about things, and Bernard did him proud. He led classes. He won prizes. He got a scholarship to university and went on to law school. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he did not see the law as a stepping stone to grand political office. Nor did he see himself as a trial lawyer. His intention was to do the kind of office law that would offer him security and leisure for the things he enjoyed, such as books and music. After he graduated, he had practised with a Saint John firm for six months to establish his credentials, and then he had enlisted. He would soon have been conscripted anyway, but he knew more than most people what was going on in Nazi Europe, and he had enlisted out of conviction. But instead of finding himself in Europe as part of the crusade against fascism, he had found himself part of the legal apparatus in Camp Utopia, dealing not with the kinds of things for which he had primarily prepared himself but with the petty criminalities of the stupider levels of the Canadian Army.

  And now, just when his prospects for escape had begun to look good, the business of Williams had come up, and it made him very nervous. But with luck, in a day or two at most, he would be out of it. And H. P. Whidden, K. C., could go fuck himself.

  At five to two, Dorkin was back in his place in the courtroom. Whidden, McKiel, and company were already there when he ar-rived, Whidden and McKiel conferring in low voices while the underlings unpacked the briefcases. They did not look up when Dorkin arrived, nor even when Williams, abject and untidy, shuffled in with his escort.

  As Williams was seated in his chair, Dorkin studied his face. But Williams’s face told him nothing. The mere fact of his being accused was producing symptoms indistinguishable from those of guilt, as accusation always did, even in the pettiest of charges. Jaywalkers, shoplifters, murderers, the most purely innocent—hailed before the law, they all presented one face or another from the same limited repertoire: fear, shame, confusion, unconvincing indignation.

  At two o’clock, punctual again almost to the second, Thurcott took his place, and McKiel rose and outlined his agenda for the afternoon. He intended to call witnesses to testify to the movements of Sarah Coile on the evening of July 1. He intended also to call witnesses to testify to the movements of Private Williams insofar as these could be known. The police had interviewed a very large number of people whose knowledge had some bearing on these questions, but since he was sensible of the painful nature of the case and also of the need not to waste the time of the court, he intended to call only those witnesses whose testimony he considered essential rather than merely supplementary. The prosecution, he said, was hoping to complete its case before the end of the afternoon.

  Dorkin had expected the hearing to last at least two days. This unexpected brevity could only mean that the prosecution’s case was so strong that it had far more evidence than it needed. No doubt, there would also be a concern on Whidden’s part to orchestrate his presentation in such a way that his own appearance at the trial itself was not an anticlimax. Dramatic surprises of some kind would have to be held back. It would all be very skilfully structured.

  McKiel’s first witness was Lavinia Page. Appearing tiny even in her high-heeled shoes, she walked with small, mincing steps to the witness stand. She was wearing a long-sleeved navy blue dress and a little white and navy tam perched jauntily on one side of her head. She sat down and smoothed her dress over her knees.

  McKiel suavely put her at her ease. Her name was Lavinia Page, but she was known to her friends as Vinny. She lived on the Bangor Road a quarter of a mile from the Hannigan Road. She had known Sarah Coile for many years, but they had just become close friends over the last three years. Sarah was a nice person. She laughed a lot, and she was liked by everyone who knew her.

  McKiel then led her through the events of the evening. Vinny described how Sarah had dropped in on her in the afternoon on her way home from town, how they had arranged to go to the dance along with Vinny’s boyfriend, Brick, how Sarah had danced with Owen Williams, how Sarah and Williams had gone out at intermission and not come back. This had happened at ten-thirty, the usual time for the intermission.

  “Tell me,” McKiel asked in a gentle, understanding tone of voice, “did you and your friend and Sarah have anything to drink?”

  “Yes,” she said after what struck Dorkin as a perhaps carefully calculated hesitation. “We all had a drink of rye.”

  “And did Williams have rye with him too?”

  “I think so. The soldiers always did.”

  “So she may have drunk more while she was with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say that Sarah was someone who was accustomed to handling a fairly large amount of alcohol in an evening? Did she generally drink very much?”

  “No, she didn’t usually. Just a drink or so at a dance. Nothing to get drunk on.”

  “But on this particular night, things may have turned out so that she had more than usual and might not have been able to defend herself if anything untoward happened?”

  “Yes, I think that could be.”

  “Now,” McKiel said, “I’m going to have to turn to a more delicate question. Did Sarah ever confide to you that she was going to have a child?”

  “No, never.”

  “Were you surprised when you learned about her condition?”

  “Yes, I was very surprised. I don’t know how it could have happened. She was a good girl. She was a very religious girl.”

  “You have no idea who the father of her child might have been?”

  “No.”

  “Someone she met at one of the dances perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Thank you, Miss Page,” McKiel said. “You have been very helpful.”

  Vinny Page was followed by a terrified little lance-corporal who was on the stand to testify to only one thing. He had been in charge of the orderly office when Private Williams returned on the Saturday night of July 1 at 12:33 am.

  “We turn now,” McKiel said, glancing at his watch, “to witnesses who will testify to some of Private Williams’s movements between the time he left the dance hall with Sarah Coile and his arrival back at the armoury.”

  Mrs. Linda Clark was a big-boned, ample woman of forty, with a bold, broad face and flaming red hair. She spoke in a deep voice roughened, Dorkin guessed, by a quarter of a century of Buckingham cigarettes with some help perhaps from Messrs. Seagram & Co. She was the proprietress of The Maple Leaf canteen on the Bangor Road.

  “Mrs. Clark,” McKiel said, “we have heard that Private Williams came to your canteen the night of the dance. What time was that?”

  “It was about ten to twelve. I remember because I close at midnight, and when he came in, it was getting late, and I looked at the clock.”

  “At the time I understand that there was only one other person in the canteen, a Mr. John Maclean. So please tell us what happened.”

  “The soldier bought a glass of ginger ale from the fountain and went into one of the booths at the back to drink it. I told him he couldn’t stay long because I was going to close in a few minutes.”

  “Did he seem to be drinking?”

  “I figured he probably was, but he wasn’t staggering or nothing like that.”

  “How did he behave? Did he seem nervous or upset?”

  “Not exactly nervous. But quiet. He seemed to be thinking pretty hard about something. But I didn’t pay much attention to him. I was cleaning up so I could go home. Just about the time I was ge
tting ready to tell him and John that I was closing, he left.”

  “You are certain that Private Williams arrived just before midnight?”

  “He arrived at ten to twelve, just like I said. I looked.”

  “And how long do you think it would it take someone to walk from The Silver Dollar to your canteen?”

  “Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “So that if someone set out at ten-thirty to walk from the dance hall to your canteen, you would expect him to arrive about ten to eleven rather than ten to twelve.”

  “Yes, unless they walked awful slow.”

  She was followed on the stand by John Maclean. He was wearing an old suit that looked like the kind of thing people picked up at the Salvation Army and that left half an inch of sock showing above his boots, making him look even more like a scarecrow than he might have looked anyway. Dorkin guessed that he was somewhere in his fifties, but his face looked as if it had been knocked around a good deal—by cheap booze or rough weather or whatever—so he wasn’t easy to place. But when he began his evidence, Dorkin was surprised by how well he spoke, as if the scarecrow image were some kind of joke he had decided to play on the court.

  “Mr. Maclean,” McKiel said, taking it slowly as if he were talking to someone who wasn’t quite all there, “we understand that just before midnight on Saturday, July 1, you were at The Maple Leaf canteen when a soldier whom we know to have been Private Owen Williams came in. I wonder if you could you tell us everything you can remember about what he looked like, how he acted, what he did while he was there? Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try to do my best,” Maclean said, in a tone with just the faintest edge of sarcasm.

  If there were witnesses who were intimidated by the setting, he didn’t seem to be one of them.

  “He came in,” Maclean continued, “and I was sitting on one of the stools at the counter talking with Linda. He ordered some pop, and Linda gave it to him in a glass, and he went back into the corner to drink it.”

  “Excuse me,” McKiel said. “But did you notice anything particular about his appearance?”

  “When he went off to sit down, I turned around to have a look at him, and I noticed that he had dirt on his uniform. Not a lot, not mud or anything like that, but bits of leaf and grass.”

  “Did he seem to you to be drunk? Was he staggering?”

  “No, he wasn’t staggering that I could see, but I think he must have been drinking some because he had a bottle with him. There’s a little mirror on the wall behind the counter, and I could see him back there. He drank a little out of the glass, then got a pony of rye out of his pocket and dropped some of it into the pop. Then he sat there and drank it. He wasn’t there very long, just five or ten minutes. But all the time he was there, he never looked up at all. He just sat there scowling at the other side of the booth. Then he got up and left.

  “After he’d gone, I went back to the booth to get the glass so Linda wouldn’t have to do it, and I found that he’d left the empty rye bottle lying there in the corner of the seat. I took the glass and the bottle back to the counter for Linda and left. When I got out, I could see the soldier maybe a furlong down the road walking towards town. And that was the last time I saw him until I saw him here today.”

  He glanced at Williams, who looked back at him wide-eyed then turned away.

  “The court will note,” McKiel said as Maclean rose, “that Private Williams left The Silver Dollar at approximately ten-thirty. He arrived at The Maple Leaf canteen less than a mile away over an hour and a quarter later at ten to twelve. There is nearly an hour unaccounted for. I wish now to try to shed some light on that missing time.”

  The Reverend Zacharias Clemens of The Church of the Witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ sat hunched forward a little in the witness box, heavy and shapeless, his large hands in his lap. His face might have been that of a farmer—plain, rather featureless, with a broad straight mouth and a nose that was a little too large. His hair, greying at the temples, was black and long. His eyes under heavy, black brows were pale blue, and as McKiel established for the court who he was they kept drifting vaguely away over the spectators to far corners of the room. He was dressed in a dreadful brown suit, white shirt, and a broad, funereally black tie.

  “I appreciate how painful this must be for you,” McKiel said, “and I shall try to be as expeditious as I can. In your deposition of July 7, two days after the body of Sarah Coile was found, you stated that you had occasion to pass the intersection of Broad Street and the Hannigan Road, sometime around eleven o’clock on the night of July 1, that is to say, not long after Sarah Coile and Private Williams left The Silver Dollar. First of all, I wonder if we could try to pin the time down a little more exactly if that is possible. I am sure you understand the importance of this.”

  Clemens considered, then began to speak in a rather nasal baritone with touches of what seemed to Dorkin a southern accent.

  “I’m not sure how exact I can be,” he said. “But I’ll do my best. It was a Saturday, and on Saturday after supper, it is my practice to go to my church to think about my sermon for the next morning.”

  “Perhaps you could tell us where your church is, Reverend Clemens,” McKiel interrupted.

  “Yes, of course. I’m getting ahead of myself. My church is on the corner of Lloyd Street and Broad Street. You may know that Sarah Coile was a member of my church and that she was buried from there.”

  “And the gravel pit where Sarah Coile was found,” McKiel said, “is between Lloyd Street where your church is and the Hannigan Road.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you went to your church that evening. What time was that?”

  “I think around half-past seven. I had supper and did a few chores and then drove to the church. I remember that it was very hot. I worked in the church for a couple of hours. I don’t pay much attention to the time when I’m there like that. Sometimes I stay for just an hour, sometimes much longer. That night it was dark when I left, but it hadn’t been dark very long.”

  “Perhaps ten o’clock?” McKiel suggested.

  “I would think so. Yes. Sometime about then.”

  “And then?”

  “I got into my car and drove along Broad Street and up the Hannigan Road a little way to the home of Ada and Thomas Salcher. Some people here may know them. They are an elderly couple who paid me the honour of attending my church but who are now not very well, and so sometimes, every week or so, I visit them. We talk and pray together, and I try to make their lives a little brighter by reminding them they are not alone.”

  The pale eyes drifted away from McKiel to the mass of spectators, rested momentarily on Dorkin, then Williams, then drifted back.

  “I stayed there about an hour and then drove back to the church. It must have been about eleven when I left. When I had been back at the church for a while doing a few final chores, I did look at my watch, and it was around eleven-thirty.”

  “So, allowing for your uncertainties, you would have left the Salcher house, let us say, somewhere between ten to eleven and ten after. Would that be fair to say?”

  “Yes, I think that would probably be right.”

  “Now would you tell us what you saw on the way back to the church that has a bearing on this enquiry?”

  “Yes. As I was turning off the Hannigan Road onto Broad Street, I saw a soldier and a woman in a light-coloured dress standing by the side of the road just on the corner by the old churchyard. They were under one of the trees, and I think that they must have been standing there talking.”

  “You are sure of the location?” McKiel asked. “This is a matter of great importance. Private Williams said that he left Sarah Coile at the point where Birch Road joins Hannigan Road fifty yards further down. You are sure that the couple you saw were not at that point on the road?”

  “Yes, positive. I didn’t drive that far. I turned left onto Broad Street, and they were there on the corner.”


  “As if they might have been going to walk along Broad Street?”

  “Maybe. But I couldn’t say that. They could have gone other ways too. They weren’t walking. They were just standing there. When I came along, they turned away, as if they didn’t want anyone to see who they were.”

  “And did you recognize them?”

  “I recognized Sarah Coile.”

  “And the man?”

  “I didn’t recognize him, but I could see that he was a soldier in uniform.”

  “Is he someone whom you see in this court?”

  “I couldn’t say that. I really didn’t see his face at all. He turned away before I could get a look at him.”

  “Could you tell us what he looked like? Was he tall, short, medium?”

  “Not tall. A little taller than Sarah. He wasn’t very big. I mean he wasn’t a heavy man, just average. And he had dark hair. I could see because he didn’t have his cap on.”

  “Was his appearance consistent with that of Private Williams?” McKiel asked. “You understand that I am not asking whether or not you can say definitely that it was Private Williams, merely whether there was anything about his appearance that would make it evident to you that the person whom you saw could not possibly have been Private Williams.”

  “Perhaps Private Williams might stand up,” Thurcott said.

  Carvell got Williams awkwardly to his feet, and Clemens studied him.

  “If he turned around,” Clemens said.

  Carvell put a hand on Williams’s shoulder, and Williams turned.

  “I do not want to be guilty of bearing false witness,” Clemens said. “The man I saw could have been Private Williams, but he would no doubt resemble other people in this room too. I didn’t notice anything special.”