A Matter for the Jury

by Peter Murphy

  Suzie made a face at him. She stood, walked to the record player, gently lifted the needle and replaced it carefully in its cradle. Returning to the coffee table, she picked up Barratt’s glass, crossed the room again and handed it to him with a sympathetic kiss on the cheek. He smiled and blew her a kiss in return.

  ‘No, something far worse, I’m afraid,’ Singer was saying. ‘It’s right out of my league. I’m hoping you will take it, Barratt, but in any case it will need a London solicitor and counsel. It’s a dreadful business.’

  There was a silence on the line.

  ‘Barratt, have you ever defended a capital murder?’

  The question hit Barratt like a jug of iced water in the face. For some moments, he stared vacantly ahead of him, as a torrent of memories cascaded unchecked through his mind. Three cases: all convictions; the evidence overwhelming; the defence impossible; the result a certainty from the beginning; the dreadful consequences of conviction seemingly quite inevitable. The former Army lieutenant who caught his wife in bed with a close friend. He had brought his service revolver back home with him after the War. He had probably never fully recovered from the stress of combat, and by the time he managed to bring himself under control, he had shot both of them in the head, twice, at close range. Tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed. The twenty-year-old lad who surprised the owner during a burglary of an electrical store. The store should have been locked and unoccupied at that time of night, but the elderly owner was preparing for his annual audit, and had some late-night paperwork to do in the back office. The lad panicked and hit him once over the head with the solid brass lamp he kept on his desk. It was a blow that would not have killed everyone, but it killed this man. Tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed. The thirty-year-old mother, abandoned by her husband, who smothered her disabled seven-year-old son with a pillow out of sheer desperation, after she had gone for weeks without sleep and did not know where to turn. Tried, convicted, sentenced but, at the very last moment, reprieved by the Home Secretary, sentence commuted to life imprisonment – a victory of a kind. He remembered, indeed he could still feel, and even smell, the atmosphere of those trials: sweaty, tense, nervous, gut-wrenching; the constant and mostly vain efforts to reassure a client who was probably going to be dead at the hands of the public executioner within three months; the sleepless nights; the obsessive going over the facts, time and time again, searching for something – anything – that might offer a way out; the endless analysis of simple points of law, searching for any loophole that might have been overlooked. After conviction, the moment of sentence, the judge’s clerk carefully placing the black cap on top of his wig, the ‘Red Judge’ in his terrifying red robes, the colour of retribution. After sentence, the hopeless trip to the Court of Criminal Appeal, in which any remaining glimmer of hope was summarily snuffed out by three dismissive appellate judges. Finally, the night before the execution, the Home Secretary’s final rejection of the plea for clemency – ‘the law must take its course’; the hours of drinking in a futile bid to release the tension; the sleepless night; the announcement of the execution on the radio the next morning. Then, somehow, back to the office as if it were just another day at work, completely hung over, barely capable of carrying on a normal conversation, trying to summon up the will to deal with a shoplifting prosecution or a routine contractual dispute. Yes, he had defended capital murders, and he never wanted to do it again.

  ‘The client is a man called Billy Cottage,’ Singer was saying. ‘He was charged late this afternoon, he appeared before the magistrates, and he was remanded in custody. He is at Bedford Gaol. It was a brutal attack on a courting couple making love on a houseboat on the river, just outside St Ives. They were both savagely beaten with a winch handle, and the girl was raped. The young man died. The young woman is still on the critical list in Addenbrooke’s. They are not sure whether she will pull through.This was not this weekend but the previous one – 25 and 26 of January – late Saturday night or early Sunday morning’

  It came back to Barratt immediately.

  ‘Yes, I read about it in the papers,’ he said. He hesitated, conscious that he was about to mortgage yet another chapter of his life. ‘Do we know what evidence they have against him?’

  ‘I haven’t seen any forensic reports yet, but the detective superintendent in charge of the case told me that they found a fingerprint inside the boat, on an inside window ledge, with a blood stain of the same group as the girl. Then there’s something I don’t understand about witnesses who heard him humming some tune. I’m not sure whether there is anything in that. It won’t become clear till the committal proceedings.’

  There was a lengthy silence, while Barratt Davis weighed his personal feelings against his sense of responsibility.

  ‘What counsel would you use for this?’ Singer asked eventually.

  ‘Martin Hardcastle QC,’ Barratt replied, without hesitation. ‘I used him in the last two of the three capital cases I’ve been involved in, and in many other cases also, over the years. Martin is brilliant in court, but he will need a hard-working junior to organise the evidence for him and help with the law. I think I would be inclined to go with Ben Schroeder again.’

  ‘He’s a bit young for a murder, isn’t he?’ Singer commented. ‘I must say I was very impressed with him in the conference, and he seems to be taking charge of the Reverend Little’s case very well. But, still, he…’

  ‘Young men have to grow up quickly at the Bar these days, John,’ Barratt replied. ‘Martin did four capital murders on his own in his first two years of practice as a junior. Ben will never have to do that, thank God. In any case, Martin will do all the work in court. Ben will be there at his beck and call, to make sure he has whatever he needs.’

  ‘Whatever you think best,’ Singer said. ‘I’m just glad you’re on board. It’s a weight off my mind, I don’t mind telling you. I’ll make arrangements for an initial conference if you will ask your secretary to phone the office tomorrow. I just want rid of it. I want to get back to being a country solicitor.’

  ‘That suddenly sounds very appealing,’ Barratt said, wishing Singer a good evening. ‘Perhaps I will give it a try myself. You don’t happen to need a partner, do you?’

  Singer laughed out loud. ‘Come off it, Barratt,’ he replied. ‘You would be bored to death. You wouldn’t last a month.’

  * * *

  Martin Hardcastle said very little during the phone call from Barratt Davis. It was better that way, at that time of night. It was, in any case, no more than a courtesy call from a man who was his friend, as well as a professional client. As professional etiquette demanded, Davis would call Vernon, Hardcastle’s clerk, in the morning to retain him formally, and Vernon would make all the necessary arrangements. That was when the real business began. All that was needed tonight was an exchange of greetings and familiar expressions of confidence. These days, in the blur his life had become, cases came and went – even capital murders – and Hardcastle had done enough of those by now to have abandoned any pretence that he could wave a magic wand, swoop down from on high to save a life by his forensic brilliance. He also knew that a solicitor of Barratt Davis’s experience and competence would not believe for a moment that he could. On the other hand, he had won a few – cases where the evidence was not strong; or where the jury, conscious of the looming penalty and having some sympathy for the defendant, found a reason to convict of manslaughter rather than murder; or occasionally even to acquit altogether because of self-defence. And there was still the reassurance of being instructed in a case, the elusive security of being in work, the feeling of being wanted, that never seemed to go away – forever an integral part of the psyche of the barrister. Just before Davis’s call, Hardcastle had, with determination, put the cap back on his bottle of Bell’s whisky. He had to be in court the next morning, to make his closing speech to the jury in a fraud case. But a new case called for a reward.


  Rewards. Martin Hardcastle had come to the Bar with impressive credentials. He had taken a first in Law at Cambridge, followed by the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford. He passed his bar examinations, also with first-class honours, and was invited back to Trinity Hall to give supervisions in criminal law while he did his pupillage. A fellowship was within his grasp if he wanted it. So was a tenancy in excellent Chambers, the Chambers of Miles Overton QC, which offered a range of first-rate work, especially in crime and divorce. Unusually, he had to make the choice between academia and practice, and chose the cut and thrust of practice as more suited to his temperament. Once he gained a place in Chambers his career flourished. His command of the law was obvious, his style in court patient and courteous, yet forceful and precise. Judges liked him; juries ate out of his hand. After fifteen years, he took Silk, and he seemed poised to collect every reward the Bar offered. In addition to those he gave himself.

  The rewards Martin Hardcastle gave himself started harmlessly enough, not long after his call to the Bar. They were not his idea. Occasionally, a member of Chambers would celebrate a really good result in court with a bottle or two of champagne in Chambers, to be shared with everyone, or a pint or two in the Devereux with one or two colleagues. Drinking more than that during the week was discouraged in Chambers. At weekends it was a different story. Dinner parties and weekends in the country were part of Chambers life, and the wine flowed freely. But during the week, the expectation was that the drinking would stop – unless there was a good result to celebrate. So Martin was scrupulous in limiting the rewards he shared with colleagues – there was no point in giving the wrong impression in Chambers. He started smoking cigarettes to take his mind off the rewards while he was working but, on the other hand, he saw no reason to deprive himself of the rewards completely. He had earned them, and he deserved them more than most. He had many good results in court. It was just a question of practicality to reward himself at home, rather than in Chambers or in the Devereux.

  Home was a flat on the top floor of a building in Gray’s Inn, a respectable distance from his Chambers in Brick Court, in the Middle Temple. At home, he could keep an ample supply of wine for dinner – he was a respectable home cook in those days – and an ample supply of Bell’s for after dinner. At home, there was no one to judge him. In any case, if people knew how hard he worked, if they knew how good he was in court, they would understand. Of course, you couldn’t guarantee a really good result in court. Sometimes, the other side held all the aces, and it was a matter of damage control rather than victory. Then, any result was a cause for celebration. They all mattered to the client, and damage control took just as much skill as winning. That deserved a reward, too. Sometimes, there was no result at all, nothing particular happening, just a trial dragging interminably on. So then, he celebrated the fact that the next day was Friday; or Thursday. Sometimes, he celebrated something as simple as getting through the day and, sometimes, he celebrated getting through the day without anyone noticing that he was not his usual self; because there were days when he woke up not feeling his usual self, and the symptoms tended to persist throughout the day. Probably just stress, and not getting enough sleep he told himself. But he managed; he was in control.

  Fair enough, there had been the odd day here and there when he was not up to going to court in the morning. He always phoned Vernon early to explain: it was the Indian food consumed at a dodgy restaurant the night before; it was the stomach bug that was doing the rounds: ‘you must have heard about it, Vernon, everybody’s going down with it, no need to worry, just a 24-hour job, be as right as rain tomorrow’. Vernon would duly phone the court and pass on Mr Hardcastle’s regrets and, after all, he had a junior at court to hold the fort. He would appear at court the next day, apologise profusely to the judge, the jury and his client, he would forego the rewards for a day or two, and he would begin to feel better again.

  On days like that, as he lay in bed at home, it would occur to him that perhaps the rewards should stop; or perhaps he should save them up for the weekend, or make sure they ended by, say, 9 o’clock at night. But eventually, to his relief, he would realise that the day off work was nothing more than the result of too much stress. He was working too hard. There was no need to deprive himself of his rewards. He just needed to be more careful. On one really bad day, it was true, he had panicked and had systematically poured every drop of alcoholic drink he possessed down the kitchen sink. The process had lasted for almost an hour, and the liquid represented a lot of money. For a day, he felt better. But the following evening, he again panicked. He rushed to an off-licence on Gray’s Inn Road just before it closed and replenished his stock. He had been over-reacting when he poured his drink away, he realised. He was taking it all too seriously. Everybody needed a drink. In a profession as stressful as the Bar, that was just the way it was. You just needed to control it, that was all. Perhaps it was time to take some holiday. That was it. He had not had a real break since… well, it must be almost two years. He must speak to Vernon about it. After the next case.

  One morning, about a year earlier, Martin Hardcastle had woken up with a start and realised that he was forty-eight years of age. He had spent eighteen years in practice at the Bar; and had been in Silk for three years; but suddenly he could not account for those years in any detail. It was all a blur. Where had the time gone, for God’s sake? He was still living in his flat in Gray’s Inn. He had no home in the country, as most of his colleagues did. He had never married and had children, as they had. There had been a few women along the way, but they survived in his mind mainly as images. He had no clear recollection of who they were, how long they had stayed, or what they had meant to him. A large part of his life had passed him by without his noticing it. What lay ahead seemed like an abyss. He was still successful in court, but those who knew him noted the loss of the youthful enthusiasm they expected in his advocacy, and the development of a world-weary, cynical, even bored tone.

  By now, it was more a matter of survival. He had developed strategies. There would be no drinking before 8 o’clock in the evening. That had the merit that he could decline drinks in Chambers, and so reassure his colleagues that he was going home to work. He would avoid social engagements as far as possible, unless he could be sure of being home no later than 9 o’clock. That had the merit that he could manage with just one or two drinks away from home. He would drink a pint or two of milk before going out, and copious amounts of water before going to bed, which greatly improved his powers of recovery in the morning. There were still days when he left his junior to run things in court. But he would have done that anyway. He was a Silk. The case was his responsibility. He was preparing a cross-examination or closing speech. He could think better at home. No point wasting a day in court when he wasn’t needed, and he had important work to do. Occasionally, a judge would mutter something about QCs having a duty to be present throughout the case. But a suitable display of contrition always seemed to do the trick. That was one good thing about being in Silk – no judge was going to be too hard on you.

  Now, he had a new capital murder. There was no case more important, and it came from Barratt Davis, his most loyal instructing solicitor. This might be just the tonic he needed.

  15

  13 February

  ‘You mean you’re not going to ask any questions at all? Aren’t we wasting a good opportunity? May I remind you that I would like to bring this to an end as soon as possible, Mr Schroeder?’

  The Rev Ignatius Little was using his best pulpit voice to sound assertive, but his darting eyes and restless manner did not match, and gave the game away. The man was frightened, and searching for reassurance.

  ‘So would I,’ Ben replied. ‘But it’s rarely a good idea to ask questions at the committal stage. There are sometimes cases which are so weak that there is a reasonable chance the magistrates might refuse to commit for trial. But cases like that are very unusual, and I’m afraid your
case isn’t one of them. So if we ask questions at this stage, it serves no useful purpose. All we do is give away our defence and allow the prosecution witnesses the advantage of a dress rehearsal.’

  ‘Best to keep our powder dry,’ Barratt Davis nodded in agreement. ‘Keep them guessing.’

  It was 8.30 on a bright and bitterly cold morning. They were sitting, with Jess Farrar and John Singer, in the lounge of the George Hotel in Huntingdon, a short walk from the station, and an even shorter walk across Market Square to the Town Hall where, in two hours time, the Huntingdonshire magistrates would convene to hear the committal proceedings against Ignatius Little. Ben, Barratt, and Jess had caught an early train from King’s Cross. John Singer had arranged to meet them at the George with Little, and had taken possession of a quiet corner table, where the few breakfasting commercial travellers and local businessmen were less likely to overhear them. A large tea pot and an equally large coffee pot occupied the centre of the table, surrounded by their accompanying milk jugs, a sugar bowl and a hot water jug. Untouched slices of brown and white toast were growing cold and brittle in their silver toast racks.

  ‘I don’t understand why you say the case isn’t weak,’ Little protested. ‘As you say, Mr Schroeder, there is no supporting evidence. It’s just that wretched boy’s word against mine. What sort of case is that to ruin a man’s name with? Why couldn’t we stop it now? We could at least try.’

  Ben took a deep breath. It was not the first time they had been over this question. But Ben knew he must be patient. This was Little’s case, and the consequences of conviction were unimaginable for him. Overall Ben was pleased that Little had abandoned the meek, resigned demeanour he had displayed at the first conference. If he was going to be a good witness eventually, he needed to show some outrage, some sense of injustice, about the charge. But he also needed to remain calm.