Breaths of Suspicion

by Roy Lewis

  ‘Though I’d like to come back to that,’ I interrupted.

  ‘… And Dr Taylor and his merry medical men will swear that Cook died from strychnine poisoning.’

  ‘Even though they found no strychnia in the organs, and in the first instance Taylor had announced the death was caused by antimony,’ I reiterated.

  Cockburn grunted dismissively. We remained silent for a little while, each dwelling on our own thoughts. My mind wandered back to the previous evening at The Nunnery, the softness of female thighs and the scent of the woman’s hair; I recalled the lusty heaving of her loins against mine, and the delighted groaning during our romp. You know, that idiot William Acton, who wrote that the majority of women are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind, and in this was believed by so many, had clearly never come across women like Sovrina, nor my dalliance of the previous evening, or the host of other women who had from time to time come to the Cock and Hen Club that Cockburn and I had run in Brighton, or The Nunnery in Rusper. The ladies came not for money, of course, but were driven by boredom and lust. Indeed, they could sometimes be persuaded to offer me loans to overcome my more pressing financial problems.…

  Believe me. I was thinking of such philosophical matters as I stared at the sky and contemplated mentally my recent excited couplings; I had no idea what was running through Cockburn’s mind, of course, until abruptly he brought me back to our reason for being on The Zouave. ‘This Charles Newton: his evidence will be crucial. But you say you have thoughts about it…?’

  I hesitated, brought back to the present from my dreaming. I realized it was time to bring Cockburn back to reality, also. ‘Yes. Newton. The defence might be able to show he is lying; they may prove it wasn’t possible for him to have sold the poison to Palmer.’

  Cockburn frowned, scratched uneasily at his receding thatch of red hair. Somewhat irritably, he said, ‘What are you driving at, James?’

  ‘It’s a problem with the provable facts,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it always? What particular facts are you referring to?’

  ‘Newton. The timing of the sale of strychnia.’

  ‘What about it? Newton’s evidence—’

  ‘Can be controverted.’

  Cockburn stared at me, his brow thunderous. ‘We’ve gone over the whole prosecution case. All right, I concede we’ll have difficulty with Professor Taylor’s testimony and—’

  ‘Newton is prepared to swear that on the night Cook died Palmer came to Dr Salt’s premises and bought three grains of strychnia. He will place the timing of the sale as nine o’clock on the evening that John Parsons Cook died.’

  ‘That is so. Where’s the problem?’

  ‘Ben Gully has done a deal of checking for me. We know that Palmer had gone to London on business that day and returned to Stafford that evening, by train. Ben has checked train times. The London train reaches Stafford at 8.45 p.m. From there Palmer would have had to travel to Rugeley by fly: transport is normally obtained at the Talbot Arms. Even if he managed to get a fly immediately he could not have got to Rugeley before ten minutes after ten.’

  Cockburn was silent, staring moodily into his glass of brandy-and-water. ‘Who can prove this?’

  ‘The man employed at the Talbot Arms to convey passengers is one Allspice. Gully’s talked to him. He avers he did indeed pick up Palmer from the London train. And conveyed him to Rugeley. Arriving after ten at night.’

  Cockburn gritted his teeth. ‘Have the defence spoken to Allspice yet?’

  ‘Probably. But that’s not all. It won’t be down only to Allspice. If the defence call him they will probably also call one Jeremiah Smith to corroborate the time of arrival.’

  ‘Then maybe Newton was mistaken about the time of sale of the strychnia,’ Cockburn muttered irritably. ‘We’ll have to get him to change his story. This man Jeremiah Smith—’

  ‘He claims he met Palmer off the fly at Rugeley when Allspice delivered him and then took him directly to see Palmer’s mother. So there was no sale of strychnia by Newton. And even if there was, Palmer could not have had time to prepare the pills—containing the poison—to administer them to Cook. The timings are all against us.’

  Cockburn glowered, bringing his rufus eyebrows together in a frown. ‘Your man Gully has dug a deep hole for us.’

  I waved my brandy glass airily. ‘Then there’s the argument that Palmer needed the strychnia to poison Cook, to escape his financial obligations. Well, I have a man on the ground in Rugeley—’

  ‘Ben Gully again, I imagine,’ Cockburn remarked with a slight smile.

  I nodded. ‘He’s found a man called Harry Cockayne, who looks after Palmer’s horses. Cockayne will give evidence that he intended shooting some dogs which had been harassing Palmer’s horses. He will say that Palmer suggested that strychnia could be used to poison the hounds in question, rather than using a gun.’

  Cockburn chewed at his upper lip. ‘A use for the poison.…’

  ‘Exactly. And a plausible one. And as for killing Cook for financial gain, there’s Will Saunders, the trainer from Palmer’s stables at Hednesford. At the Grand Jury in Stafford he has already deposed that Cook had sent for him shortly before he died, gave him some money to settle debts and told him he’d given all the rest to Palmer to settle urgent business affairs in London.’

  Cockburn nodded, grimacing. ‘Thus removing the financial motive for Cook’s murder. I see what the defence will raise: Why kill Cook if no money was owing? We’ll want to show there was money owed, that Palmer had stolen the money Cook won at Shrewsbury, but if Will Saunders is telling the truth that story won’t hold up. But putting that to one side, if we can’t prove that Palmer bought the strychnia, and had time to prepare the pills—’

  ‘That’s what Jeremiah Smith will state, that there was no time. He’s an important witness. The defence will call him to prove that Palmer could not have bought strychnia from Newton at nine in the evening, and that the good doctor was with his mother when the poison was supposed to have been made up into pills.’

  Cockburn frowned, squinted up at the winter sky. ‘The mother, Sarah Palmer, will she stand by her son with this statement?’

  ‘She believes her Billy a saintly person.’

  Silence fell between us. Cockburn drained his glass, poured himself another measure, added some water from the decanter on the table between us and performed the same service for me. He sat there thinking for a little while and then cocked a wary eye in my direction. ‘I know you, James. I can’t believe you’ve gone to the trouble of identifying these holes in our prosecution case without coming up with some scheme to overcome the problems.’

  I smiled and raised one shoulder in a modest gesture of acknowledgement. ‘First of all we can attack Jeremiah Smith. It turns out he’s not only a friend of Palmer, negotiating loans with the assurance companies as a front man, but he also performs rather more personal services for the mother. It seems he shares the bed, quite regularly, of the elderly widow. She might be twenty years his senior but apparently she is still enthusiastic and active between the sheets.’

  Cockburn straightened in his seat, one arm leaning on the gunwale. ‘He’s her lover? So his evidence could be shown to be biased in favour of her son!’ He grimaced, considered the matter. ‘Even so, it won’t be enough. If Sarah Palmer herself states that Billy Palmer was at her side when he was supposed to be making the pills to be administered to Cook—’

  ‘I think she can be persuaded not to give that evidence.’

  There was a surprised glint in Cockburn’s foxy eyes. ‘And how are we going to undertake that persuasion, exactly?’

  I was unable to keep the satisfaction out of my tone.

  ‘Ben Gully’s discovered that Mrs Sarah Palmer has had lovers before Jeremiah Smith. Sarah Palmer, in spite of her age, is a lusty woman. Before Jeremiah Smith took up the position in her bed there were predecessors, notably a certain feckless Irishman by the name of Duffy. Like Smith, also twe
nty years her junior. She became infatuated with him; paid his debts; entertained him in the afternoons. They had a passionate affair.’

  A light breeze had risen. Cockburn laid back his head, sniffed the salty air. But I guessed he was also sniffing salty opportunities.

  ‘During the course of their entanglement—Duffy had a wife in Ireland, by the way—Sarah Palmer wrote some fairly explicit letters detailing just what she got up to with him. After a while Duffy went back to Ireland and the letters were found among his effects at the inn he lodged in at Rugeley: he’d skipped without paying his bills, you see, and the landlord intended holding Duffy’s goods as security. That included the letters. But his wife, she read the letters and hit upon a plan for recovering some of the money owed by Duffy. She used them to provide entertainment for her clients: she charged men in the bar the price of a glass of grog to have a look at the racy adventures of the aforesaid Widow Palmer and Duffy. Ben Gully read them. They don’t just raise the hair on the back of your neck, apparently.’

  Cockburn’s eyes were gleaming. ‘I think I see where you’re going with this, James.’

  I explained that Ben Gully, on my instructions, had already passed the information to Captain Hatton, Chief of Staffordshire Constabulary. He was persuaded this could be a matter of maintenance of public order and decency and had confiscated the letters. They remained in his possession. ‘So, if Sarah Palmer takes the stand and declares her son was with her when we say he was making up the pills and poisoning Cook, we will naturally be bound to question her veracity as a witness. Her conduct with Jeremiah Smith will be exposed—thus blackening his testimony as well as hers—and we can also cause the Duffy letters to be read out in court. Her credibility as a witness will collapse. Worse, the letters will destroy whatever reputation she presently retains as an elderly widow. Wealthy she might be, but she won’t want her sexual behaviour held up to the delight of all in the courtroom. No, she won’t take the stand.’

  Cockburn nodded thoughtfully. ‘That takes care of defence witnesses Jeremiah Smith and Mrs Sarah Palmer. But there’s still the evidence of the fly driver, Allspice. From what you say, Allspice agrees he was waiting at the Junction Hotel at 8.45 that evening, met the London train and then drove Palmer to Rugeley on that critical Monday evening. Arriving not till after ten … when our witness, Newton, states he served Palmer with the strychnia at nine that evening, in Rugeley. If so—’

  ‘We would have to abandon the claim that Palmer was given the strychnia at 9 p.m. And he would not have had time to make up the pills before he administered them to Cook.’

  Cockburn was silent for a little while. He finished his second brandy, reached for the bottle, poured himself another. His hand was shaking slightly. ‘Once again, I suspect, James, that from your demeanour you have a solution to these problems.’

  I took a deep pull on my cigar. I knew Cockburn well by then, but what I was going to suggest might offend his sense of professionalism and legal propriety. I blew out the smoke in a determined gust, turned to hold his glance. ‘The horse cooper, Harry Cockayne, the trainer, Will Saunders, and the fly driver, Allspice, they can all damage us with their evidence, so I would recommend we should subpoena them all to give evidence for the Crown.’

  I could see the astonishment in Cockburn’s features. ‘But they can destroy our case!’ Then the doubt in his little eyes gradually cleared. ‘Subpoena them.…’

  ‘To subpoena them doesn’t mean we have to call them,’ I asserted. ‘And the defence can’t call them if they are our witnesses.…’

  ‘That would shut out their evidence,’ Cockburn mused. His eyes lit up. ‘So we lock out Sarah Palmer, shred Smith … and subpoena the others.’ He looked up at a darkening sky and I knew he agreed with my strategy. And that’s how it fell out at the trial.

  Jeremiah Smith gave evidence but was laughed out of court when he struggled to preserve the reputation of the wealthy, 60-year-old widow he was sleeping with, and the jury disregarded his story about meeting Palmer from the London train. After subpoenas were issued to the other possible defence witnesses we played safe: we smuggled Cockayne out of Staffordshire and warned him to lie low if he knew what was good for him; we packed the trainer Saunders well out of reach of the defence lawyers; and as for Allspice, well, we got him removed from his position as driver at the Junction Hotel and provided employment for him with the rural constabulary, well out in the country.

  You look at me in astonishment. Why did leading defence counsel Serjeant Shee—who had replaced my friend Serjeant Wilkins—not accuse us of sharp practice? There’s no doubt he could have done, and would have wanted to. But he had to face realities—and the pressure of his own personal ambition. To attack the Attorney General for doubtful practices would have ruined Shee’s reputation and you need to be aware that at that time he was aiming for and expecting a judgeship himself. So he had to swallow the bitter pill.

  You have a look on your face that suggests you believe our conduct was somewhat … unethical? You don’t seem to understand, my boy. It’s all a matter of tactics and planning. You have to look ahead, guess what the other side will be up to and undertake what is best for your case. It’s like a military campaign, the practice of the law. And believe me, tricks like that have been tried on me from time to time, and I had been forced to back away.

  Anyway, it worked. Charles Newton, and his doubtful evidence, was not overthrown. In the jury’s minds, Palmer bought the strychnia that night, at nine in the evening, made it up into pills, and administered a fatal dose to Cook at the Talbot Arms, at 10.30 that evening. Smith was laughed out of court and Sarah Palmer stayed away to nurse her reputation. The other damaging witnesses never made an appearance.

  As I’ve already intimated to you, it’s all a game. And winner takes all. Even so, it wasn’t an easy progress. Far from it. There was plenty of rough riding to do that week in Westminster Hall.

  You can imagine the intense public interest that was aroused by the case: after all, I had managed to arrange for an Act of Parliament to be hurriedly passed to bring the hearing away from Stafford to London, and it was the first case in which murder by strychnine poisoning was charged. And of course, the law courts had always been regarded almost as places of entertainment, while the murderers themselves were objects of intense curiosity, even years after they had been choked off. I myself recall that when I was a boy of twelve or so, I went to Bartholomew Fair to see the preserved head of the murderer Corder, the man who killed Maria Marten in the Red Barn. The head was on display and attracted numerous fascinated admirers, I can tell you. You’re probably aware that the Red Barn murder has been a popular standby on the stage in the penny gaffs for the last fifty years or more. And that day at Bartholomew Fair there was even to be seen a printed account of the murder, bound in Corder’s own skin: the only case, I believe, of a man being hung, drawn and quarto-ed! Hah!

  It was inevitable that the Palmer trial would be a similar sensation to the populace at large. The streets outside Westminster Hall were packed, there were struggles to get inside to the courtroom and many disappointed men and women were turned away at the door.

  My old friend Charlie Wilkins had already vanished from the scene as counsel for Palmer: shortly before trial he pleaded illness and cried off. In fact it wasn’t a case of illness at all, for like me he was in deep financial trouble, his duns were after him and he’d managed to flee by fishing smack to Dieppe only with considerable difficulty. Poor old Charlie. I never did see him again. Nor did his creditors ever get their hands on him: he died in a foreign country, not long after. Which was why Palmer’s defence was led by Serjeant Shee, QC, MP for Kilkenny. Problem was, he was an Irish Catholic and London juries continued to hold strong prejudices against Romanists. Advantage to us, again.

  Palmer’s defence faced another problem. The trial was to be handled by none other than Lord Chief Justice Campbell. Now I’d always got on well with Jack Campbell, in spite of his fearsome reputation. It thin
k it harked back to my first appearance before him years earlier. He snarled at me in court once, when I was a junior barrister, ordering me to sit down. I remained standing. He glowered at me, admonished me again: ‘I told you to sit down!’ I held my ground, not wishing to be dominated in such a way. He ended by roaring at me ‘Mr James, I tell you for the last time to sit down!’

  I stared at him coolly, and replied, ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t realize you were addressing me. I thought you were speaking to the usher!’

  He glared at me in fury for a few seconds and then his mouth twitched, he leaned back and he said no more. The fact is, Jack Campbell used to like barristers who were prepared to stand up to him from time to time, and he also enjoyed my ready wit. The judge and I, we often bandied jokes at each other in the following years.

  But Jack Campbell was a man of the manse, a Scot like the Attorney General, and I knew he was going to be on our side. Beside him on the bench that week was my old adversary Baron Alderson—he had no love for me nor Cockburn, but his hatred of the Turf biased him against Palmer and his love of nags. I dare say there was only Mr Justice Cresswell as the third judge who was prepared to play fair, but he was always a timid fellow, and easily browbeaten by stronger personalities.

  And indeed, that was how it went.

  Take the medical witnesses. Lord Chief Justice Campbell allowed the seven prosecution witnesses to take seats, and eulogized them to the jury; but he made the defence medical witnesses stand in the aisles for hours until called. Then he constantly sneered at the evidence they gave in the witness box. Baron Alderson also made his own feelings regularly felt, by twisting his face, muttering ‘Humbug!’ at some defence evidence and waving his hands expressively at the jury whenever a witness displeased him. And when I was on my feet, Jack Campbell allowed me a deal of licence in the asking of illegitimate questions: as I’ve said before now, he was always partial to me, the old rogue.