Death In Hyde Park

by Robin Paige

“If the print was under the label, that must mean—” Savidge broke off. “You’re the expert, Sergeant Collins. Suppose you tell us what it means.”

  Collins’s reluctance was clear. “That the print was on the bottle before Detective Finney applied the label.”

  “And Detective Finney testified that he applied the labels to the bottles as he found them in the defendants’ rooms. This print, therefore, must have been made at some point before Detective Finney discovered the bottle.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is mostly likely the print of the person who placed the bottle under the bed, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” the sergeant said. “Yes, sir.”

  “And whose print is it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I did not remove the label to see the entire print.”

  “You didn’t?” Savidge arched his eyebrows. “And why didn’t you remove the label?”

  The sergeant dropped his glance. “I was instructed not to do so,” he said in a low voice.

  Savidge leaned forward. “You were instructed not to do so. By whom, Sergeant?”

  “By . . . by Inspector Ashcraft, sir.”

  “By Inspector Ashcraft?” Savidge frowned. “I must say, I find that puzzling, since one might imagine that the inspector would be anxious to learn whatever can be learned from the fingerprints on the bottles. However, we will leave that for the moment.” He turned to the bench. “With your lordship’s permission, I should like to ask Sergeant Collins to remove the label, study the fingerprint, and tell us, if he can, the identity of its maker.”

  Sims jumped angrily to his feet. “Objection! This is pure theatrical show, my lord. And most irregular.”

  The judge sighed. “Theatrical, yes. Irregular, perhaps. However, I see no reason why the fingerprint evidence should not be obtained, since it seems to be germane to the question of who handled the bottle. The defense may proceed.”

  Sulkily, Sims dropped back into his chair. Sergeant Collins left the witness box and went to the table where the exhibits were displayed. With a thin-bladed knife, he lifted the edge of the label and peeled it off. Taking a fingerprint kit out of his pocket, he dusted the print with a black powder, revealing it to be continuous under the label. Savidge handed him a magnifying glass.

  “Now, Sergeant Collins,” he said, “please study the print, and tell us anything you can about it.”

  Collins bent to the task. After a few moments, he straightened. “I would say that it is a right thumbprint. It is of a class we call a right loop. The ridges all tend to the right and close at the top, you see.”

  “I see. Well, then. Would you compare that print to Exhibits E1, E2, and E3—the fingerprints of the defendants, which were entered in evidence a few moments ago—and tell the jury whether it belongs to one of the men in the dock.”

  The spectators stirred restlessly while Sergeant Collins compared the card in his hand to the print on the bottle. At last, he looked up. “It does not belong to any of the defendants. I can say that definitely.”

  “I see.” Savidge went back to the table and picked up another card. “Do you recognize this, Sergeant?” he asked, handing it to the witness. “If so, please identify it.”

  “It is a card used by Scotland Yard to register the fingerprints of all of the Yard’s officers, for the purposes of excluding them.”

  “Very good. Please note,” Savidge said to the jury, “that one side of the card contains ten fingerprints. The individual’s name is on the other side of the card.” To the clerk, he said. “Enter the card, please, as Exhibit F.” He returned to the witness. “Now, then, Sergeant, I should like you to examine the right thumb print on this card and compare it to the one you just obtained from the bottle. Please do not turn the card over. You are not to see the name.”

  The process took several minutes. Intent on his work and oblivious to the stirrings and whisperings that filled the courtroom, Collins examined the Scotland Yard fingerprint card with a magnifying glass, then returned to the card to which he had transferred the print from the bottle. He repeated the process, then looked up, his brow deeply furrowed.

  “Are you ready to tell us what you have learned, Sergeant?” Savidge asked.

  “There are sufficient points of comparison to lead me to believe that these prints were made by the same person,” the sergeant said slowly. He explained briefly that points of comparison occurred when certain ridges intersected or touched other ridges, and described six of these points on each of the two prints. “I am working under difficult conditions,” he added. “Once the print is photographed and enlarged, and working with leisure and a microscope, I would likely discover additional points of comparison.”

  “We appreciate the difficulties, Sergeant,” Savidge said. “You remain confident, do you not, that these two fingerprints belong to the same individual?”

  “I do.”

  “Turn the card over, please, and read the name to the jury.”

  The spectators watched breathlessly as the sergeant reversed the card, gulped, and turned pale.

  The judge leaned forward. “Whose print is it on the bottle, Sergeant?”

  “It belongs to Inspector Earnest Ashcraft.”

  A loud murmur of voices rippled through the court. The prosecutor leaped to his feet, shouting objections. Ashcraft’s face was curiously mottled. The judge pounded his gavel. “Order,” he commanded. “I will have order in this court!”

  “And what do you deduce from this evidence, Sergeant Collins?” Savidge asked, above the noise. The judge pounded his gavel again, and the spectators subsided.

  “That Inspector Ashcraft handled the bottle at some point before Detective Finney applied the label.”

  “My lord, I object!” Sims cried, quite beside himself. “I most strenuously object! We have no assurance that the fingerprints on the card are those of Inspector Ashcraft. The card might have been substituted for or otherwise tampered with. It might—”

  “If your lordship pleases,” Savidge interjected smoothly, “Inspector Ashcraft might be asked to supply his right thumbprint, to ensure that there has been no tampering.”

  “I please,” the judge said crisply. “I most certainly do please. Inspector Ashcraft, your thumb, if you will.”

  “But my lord,” Sims said in a pleading tone, “this is most irregular. It smacks of—”

  “Sit down, Mr. Sims,” the judge said with a dark look. “The Court intends to get to the bottom of this matter. Inspector Ashcraft, if you please.”

  Sullenly and with obvious reluctance, Inspector Ashcraft came forward. Sergeant Collins produced a fingerprint kit, opened the inkpad, and rolled the inspector’s right thumb, then printed it onto a card. Having examined it, he said, “It is the same print as that on both the bottle and the card.”

  “Recall Inspector Ashcraft,” Savidge said promptly. Sims opened and shut his mouth several times, then sat down.

  Sergeant Collins, his eyes averted from the inspector’s angry glance, left the witness box, and Inspector Ashcraft resumed it.

  “Now, Inspector,” Savidge said. “You testified earlier that you did not handle any of the evidence in this case. Please explain to the jury how your thumbprint came to be found on the bottle in Mr. Gould’s room. Did you put that bottle there, so that Detective Finney could later find it?”

  Charles saw that Ashcraft’s jaw muscles were working. “I must do my work as I see my duty,” he said. “I would deal with the devil himself, when it comes to that.”

  The judge fixed cold eyes on the inspector. “Answer the question, Inspector. Did you put that bottle there?”

  The inspector cleared his throat. “I claim privilege against self-incrimination,” he said in a surly tone.

  The courtroom became suddenly noisy again, and again the judge gaveled it into silence. “Order!” he commanded. “There will be order in this courtroom!”

  “Very well.” Savidge leaned forward. “Inspector Ashcraft, if you are not willing to
speak, at least you may be able to hold up your right hand.”

  Frowning, Ashcraft held it up.

  “I see, sir,” Savidge said, “a faded yellow stain on your index finger, around where the skin appears to have peeled away. Mr. Baker told the jury that a nitric acid burn turns the skin yellow and causes it to peel. Did you burn your finger when you poured nitric acid into one of the bottles found by Detective Finney in the defendants’ rooms?”

  The inspector put his hand behind his back. “Privilege against self-incrimination,” he growled.

  With a heavy irony, Savidge said, “Thank you, Inspector Ashcraft. You have been most helpful.”

  The prosecutor, his youth and inexperience all too evident now, seemed to have lost confidence in his case—understandably, Charles thought. His summation was brief, faltering, and unconvincing. Savidge, however, spoke with a fierce resoluteness, pointing out that the case against all three of the defendants consisted of nothing more than guilt by association; that the informant who believed Mr. Kopinski was a “dangerous man” could not be questioned nor his veracity tested; that Mrs. Battle’s testimony to an overheard conversation had been entirely discredited; and that the evidence of the ginger-beer bottles—the only direct evidence in the entire case—was seriously compromised. Inspector Ashcraft had testified that he had never touched any of the evidence, yet his thumbprint could clearly be seen on the bottle found in Adam Gould’s flat, in such a way as to suggest that he had put the evidence where the police found it. He sought refuge in the claim of privilege against self-incrimination when asked to explain to the jury how this had occurred, and how his right index finger had come to exhibit the stain and peeling consistent with a nitric-acid burn.

  By the time Savidge was finished with his passionate appeal, Charles thought, he had most of the spectators in his corner. It was then the judge’s turn. His lordship spoke briefly (and fairly, Charles thought), laying before the jury the prosecution’s arguments and those of the defense, and charging them to consider the case on the evidence only. Then he withdrew and the jury retired to its deliberations. It was four o’clock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

  Sir William Blackstone,

  Commentaries on the Laws of England

  It is better to execute a hundred innocent persons than to permit one guilty person to go free.

  Vladimir Ilich Lenin

  We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses.

  Nikolai Kyrlenko,

  Commissioner of Justice under Lenin

  When the jury had retired, Kate and Nellie went out for a cup of tea. By the time they returned to the courtroom, the gas jets had been lighted, the spectators’ section was half-empty, and the journalists were glancing uncertainly at their watches, as if wondering whether they might safely go out to a restaurant. The jury might agree at any moment; on the other hand, it might deliberate for hours if just one of their number differed in his opinion from the others.

  At half-six, the usher came into the court and announced that the jury had reached a verdict. The spectators scrambled to return to their seats, and the prosecuting and defense counsels took their places. The defendants, still shackled, were returned to the dock, each one escorted by a warder, with a plain clothes officer standing guard. A dead silence fell upon the courtroom as the judge took his seat, and then the jury. The clerk called out their names, one by one, and then said: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdicts?”

  “We have,” the foreman answered in a stern voice. The verdicts were read out swiftly, a sibilant sigh, like the sound of ocean surf, washing through the room at each reading. Pierre Mouffetard, guilty. Ivan Kopinski, guilty. Adam Gould, not guilty. The three men stood, not moving, as still as stone.

  “Not guilty!” Nellie exclaimed jubilantly. “They found Adam not guilty! Oh, I wish Lottie were here to see him go free. And surely the police cannot want her, now that the trial is over.” Around Kate and Nellie, the crowd was exchanging excited whispers. “Guilty! Guilty! Not guilty!”

  The judge pounded his gavel for order, and pronounced sentence: ten years of penal servitude for each of the two convicted men. “Ten years!” went the whispers around the courtroom, louder now, and awed. “Ten years!”

  As Kate watched, the warder standing beside Adam bent down and removed his shackles. The warders beside Pierre and Ivan applied handcuffs. Then they were escorted out of the dock, leaving Adam standing alone and bewildered, looking after the departing prisoners, raising his hands and stepping toward them, as if to go with them. Perhaps he wanted to say goodbye, Kate thought, or to protest at the fate that released him and imprisoned them—or perhaps he had not yet realized that the jury had acquitted him, that he was unshackled and free to go.

  Then Adam seemed to come to himself. He glanced once more over his shoulder at the others, then a great smile spread across his face, and with a leaping, jubilant step, he went down the steps and made for the defense table, where he seized the hands of both Charles and Edward Savidge, pumping them up and down.

  “Ten years,” Nellie said, suddenly sobered. “That’s a very long time for . . . for what, Kate? For working at the Clarion? For being acquainted with the man who blew himself up?”

  “I don’t understand,” Kate said angrily, “how the jury could find one innocent and the other two guilty. That awful old lady perjured herself, the inspector doctored the evidence, and the whole case was so flimsy that it took no more than a good puff of air to blow it all to pieces.”

  “It’s because Mouffetard is French and Kopinski has a Russian name,” Nellie said in a practical tone. “They let Adam Gould go free because he’s English.” She smiled crookedly. “Juries can do anything they like, I guess.”

  “I suppose,” Kate sighed, gathering up her things. “It’s late, Nellie, and we’re both tired. Let’s find a cab.”

  Feeling as if a terrible burden had been lifted from his shoulders, Adam Gould stood on the stone steps of the Old Bailey, a free man. He had thanked Lord Sheridan and Edward Savidge, and each member of the jury. In his excitement, he had even thanked the bailiff and the judge. It was all over now but the shouting, and there was plenty of that. Around him rose a stormy cacophony of voices, some people hailing him with jubilant congratulations, others hurling angry abuse. But Adam heard almost none of it, for he was too full of a turbulent storm of feelings. He was torn by anger and grief at the conviction of Pierre and Ivan, who were no more guilty than he of the crime with which they’d been charged. But he was also filled with a glad relief at the thought of his freedom. Now if only he could find Lottie. . . .

  The twilight had been hastened into evening by a bank of lowering clouds, and a fine mist filled the darkening air. Eagerly, Adam searched the milling crowd on the sidewalks, under the gas lamps. Lottie. Where was the devil was she? He hadn’t expected her to come to the prison to see him, but he had been both confident and afraid that she would come to his trial: confident, because he knew that she cared for him, afraid because he knew that if she showed her face in the courtroom, the police would grab her. He’d spent the whole day in the dock searching each face in the spectators’ section, both hoping and fearing to see her and alternately jubilant and despairing that she was not there. And then, when the verdict was read out and he was acquitted, he hoped to see her come flying toward him, to fling his arms around her and hold her tight, hold her and hold her and never let her go. That would have been the real victory, he a free man and Lottie in his arms.

  But she had not been in the courtroom and now, he saw, surveying the crowd with mounting despair, she was not outside, waiting for him in the street. Did that mean that something terrible had happened to her? That the police had caught her and were holding her somewhere? That she had been forced to leave the country, or—

  And then he saw her. She was dressed in the garb of a Russian gi
rl, in a white, full-sleeved blouse and dark skirt with an embroidered apron, a red babushka tied under her chin. But no matter what costume she had been wearing, Indian or Russian or Egyptian, Adam would have recognized that dear, familiar form and graceful motion anywhere in the world. He thrust up his arm and shouted against the clamor of shouting voices, the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the confusion of noisy lorries in the street. “Lottie! Lottie!”

  For a split second, she turned to look up at him, her face pale, her eyes wide and anxious and full, it seemed to him, of guilt. Guilt? Not his Lottie! Never Lottie! He thought her glance had met his and felt in his heart that she had seen him. But no, perhaps she had not, for she had already turned in the other direction. She was pushing swiftly against the current of moving people, away from him, toward the covered courtyard at the other end of the block, where the Black Maria waited to take the convicted Anarchists to the prison where they would begin their sentence. And she was not alone, or that was Adam’s blurred impression. She seemed to be in the company of a strongly-built, dark-haired man in a dark jacket and green cloth cap. They moved side by side through the surging crowd with an easy, companionable familiarity and what seemed to be a common purpose. Who was the man? Was he one of her comrades? What was their object? What did they intend to do?

  And then suddenly Adam’s heart jumped into his throat and he knew (although he had no way of knowing) that Lottie and the dark-haired man, together, meant to free Ivan and Pierre. The two of them were bent on doing, outside the law, what Lord Sheridan and Edward Savidge had not been able to do within it. They intended to free the men who now faced ten years of penal servitude for a crime they had not committed, the innocent men who should have gone free, as he was free.

  But how? Were Lottie and her companion armed? Were there other comrades with them, or others aiming to meet them in the yard? How did they mean to overpower the guards? Suddenly, he was struck by the almost paralyzing fear that their desperate plan would place Lottie in grave danger. Having lost one of their three Anarchists to the jury’s acquittal, the warders and the police, who were armed with guns, would be in no mood to deal gently with anyone who attempted to interfere with them. At the worst, they might shoot her. At the least, they would capture her and take her immediately to jail. And if Lottie were innocent of everything else she might have been accused of, she would certainly be found guilty of attempting to free the prisoners.