Don Gutteridge - Desperate Acts

“And?”

“And it’s Wilkie that gets to collect the tendollars!”

Marc tried not to laugh. “Well, old friend, Iguess virtue still has its rewards.”

The trial of Brodie Langford continued on Fridaymorning. To come were the critical witnesses in the Crown’s effortto construct a story of blackmail, intemperate youth, sudden rage,cunning improvisation and calculated deception. Cyrus Crenshaw wasfirst up.

As it turned out, there were no surprises inhis testimony, for which Marc was grateful, but it was damningenough anyway. Crenshaw testified, in a straight-ahead andunequivocal manner (much appreciated by Thornton, who let him talkaway as much as he pleased), that he had left the meeting via thecloakroom about three or four minutes after Fullarton, and observedtwo men in the alley. One was comatose on the ground and the othercrouched over him. In the jurors’ minds, this account followednicely upon the one Fullarton had provided yesterday, in which twomen had been seen grappling in anger. Now one of them had evidentlyknocked out the other, and the victor was checking out the damage.Like Fullarton, Crenshaw had not seen their faces or recognizedeither combatant, and he too had exercised a gentleman’sprerogative and scuttled off home. Again, Thornton pressed thebusiness of the attacker’s hatless head and familiar blond hair,but Crenshaw stuck to his original claim.

Marc began his cross-examination by once moregoing through the motions of demonstrating that the precisetime-line being presented by Thornton was not really precise atall.

“Could you not have left seven or eightminutes after Mr. Fullarton instead of three or four?”

“Anything’s possible,” Crenshaw shotback.

Marc now moved to a point mentioned in Cobb’snotes of his interview with Crenshaw that had been convenientlyoverlooked by Thornton.

“You told Constable Cobb when he spoke to youthat you thought the man crouched over Albert Duggan was feelingabout the injured man as if he were concerned that he had hurt himbadly, did you not?”

“Milord, I must object. The question involvespure speculation on the part of the witness.”

“I am almost quoting from the constable’snotes, Milord.”

“You may answer yes or no,” the judge said toCrenshaw.

“I did say somethin’ like that.”

“Thank you. One final question. You cannotsay with any certainty that the man crouched over the victim wasthe defendant, Mr. Langford?”

“I could not, sir.”

Marc concluded by requesting permission torecall Crenshaw. Thornton looked puzzled, but not worried. He didnot even bother to rebut. No member of the jury would believe thatit had not been Brodie, in view of the lad’s own statement. And hewould tidy up the time-line and sequence of events in hissummation. But for Marc the departure times were significant. IfCrenshaw had been only three minutes behind Fullarton, he could notonly have witnessed the punch to the cheek but also heard enough torealize who Duggan was – and take the decision to finish him offafter Brodie ran.

Tobias Budge drew on his vast experience asfriendly tapster when he took the stand, smiling most cooperativelyand nodding knowingly at the prosecutor’s questions, as if theywere part of the natural order and begged answers that were obviousand incontrovertible. Thornton led him smoothly through the tale hehad spun for Cobb: he had gone down to the wine-cellar about aquarter to ten to look for a case of French wine, happened to peerout the tiny window looking onto the alley, and noticed two pair oflegs involved in a scuffle.

“And there were bodies attached to theselegs?” Thornton said with a nice smile for the jury.

“I assumed there had to be,” Budge said,“though the window wasn’t high enough fer me to see ‘em.”

Budge happily went on to say that he hadheard loud voices coming from one or both combatants, assumed hewas witnessing yet another drunken punch-up out there, and so wentback to his task.

“And then?”

“Maybe four or five minutes later, no more,I’m back in that part of the cellar again, and I peek out to see ifthe fight’s over.”

“But it wasn’t merely a punch-up?”

The plaster grin on Budge’s face dissolved.“No, sir. I seen a big stick or cane bein’ swung real hard, an’slammin’ down inta the head of the fella lyin’ face-down on theground. It was awful.”

A shudder ran through the galleries and thejury-box.

“Was the victim trying to escape thesedastardly, murderous blows?”

Budge actually hesitated for the first time,as if he had temporarily lost his place in the script. “I don’tknow . . . I can’t remember. I guess I was just lookin’ at thatcane slammin’ down.”

“And you say that no more than four or fiveminutes passed between the two events – that is, your seeing twomen grappling and then, later, one of them striking the other witha stick?”

“That’s right, sir.” The grin was back.

Thornton was now pleased to turn Budge overto the defense. In his opinion, Budge with his first sighting hadconfirmed for the jury Fullarton’s description of the grappling andshouting, conveniently provided four or five minutes in whichCrenshaw’s account of a fallen man and a crouching one seemedplausible, and then returned to become horrified witness to adeliberate homicide. Sir Peregrine would be brought on last to tellabout someone dashing wildly away up the alley.

Budge looked warily over at Marc. His wifewould have told him about her being cross-examined over theincident with Duggan in the taproom, and he no doubt feared adirect attack.

Thornton, of course, had skipped over a gooddeal of what Budge had told Cobb during his interview. The veteranbarrister, however, was not surprised that his neophyte adversarywent straight to it.

“You have described for us, Mr. Budge, whatappeared to be a cold-blooded and vicious assault. Did you goimmediately to the alley to try and prevent further blows beingstruck or to determine whether the victim was in fact dead?”

Budge was quick to respond. “’Course I did.Whaddya take me for? I didn’t say nothin’ about it because Mr.Thornton never asked me.”

“Just answer the counsel’s questions, Mr.Budge.”

“Tell us, then, what you did in that regard,”Marc said.

“I run to the cellar doors that open up intothe alley, but I couldn’t push ‘em open. They often jam from theinside, and I usually haveta go outside to open ‘em.”

“And did you?”

“Not right away. I looked around fer acrowbar. My heart was beatin’ a mile a minute. I couldn’t find it.I run back to the window. There’s only the fella lyin’ there on theground. Where the moonlight hit his head, I could see blood an’brains leakin’ out.”

This seemed like a self-serving embellishmentof what he had told Cobb, but it was, possibly, the truth. Cobb hadadmitted being somewhat hostile in his interrogation of the burlybarkeep, and may have cut him off before he got his whole storyout. It was also possible that Budge did get himself out throughthose horizontal double-doors and administered the beating himself.But Marc was not ready to go there yet, nor give the prosecutionany sign that he intended to.

“So you assumed he was dead?”

“Alas, sir, I did. And I was plannin’ to goupstairs and out to the alley, but I hadn’t got to the wine, and Ifound myself tryin’ to calm down a crew of rowdy sailors in thetaproom, an’ by the time I did, I seen the constable comin’ in thedoor an’ callin’ fer somebody to come back into the alley withhim.”

“So you knew then that the police haddiscovered the body?”

“Yes. An’ the wife an’ Nestor Peck went withhim, leavin’ me to tend the bar an’ deal with that ungrateful mobof sailors. I did try to do the right thing.”