David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

Then disaster struck Lady Lucy’s mission of mercy. A cart had overturned in the middle of the road at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Barrels were lying about all over the street. Porters and policemen were trying to restore order.

‘Damn!’ said the cabbie. ‘I think we’ve had it, Lady P. I’m going to have to turn into these side streets. One large vehicle coming the other way and you can get stuck for half an hour.’ He turned round at full speed, the little machine tilting over like a yacht turning in a stiff breeze, and then he shot right into Farringdon Road.

In Court Two the day had an unusual beginning. Mr Justice Black sent word that the jury were to be kept in the jury room. There was, the judge informed them, a question of law which had to be settled. A couple of minutes later Mr Justice Black sent word that he wished to see both legal teams and their supporters in his rooms. The Clerk of the Court told the witnesses and the spectators and the journalists that the court was adjourned until eleven o’clock.

The cabbie had turned into the Old Bailey at last. They were only three minutes late. Lady Lucy pressed an enormous sum of money into the cabbie’s hand.

‘Run for it, Lady P!’ he shouted. ‘Good luck!’

Lady Lucy made her way through the throng of people who appeared to be leaving rather than entering the courtroom. She could just see Charles Augustus Pugh about to exit through a side door.

‘Mr Pugh!’ she shouted. ‘Stop a moment! There’s more evidence.’ She was now almost at his side, waving the letter in her hand. ‘This letter came from France this morning. It’s from the French wife. She wrote to the English wife before that great row they had, telling Mrs Colville, English version, that she, Madame Drouhin, was Madame Colville, French version. Sometime before the wedding it would have been.’

‘Written in French or English?’ They could both hear a cry of ‘Mr Pugh, where are you?’ coming from the behind the door.

‘French,’ said Lady Lucy.

‘Try to get it translated and typed up if you can,’ said Pugh, opening the door, ‘and send it in as soon as possible through the Clerk of the Court.’ With that he ran at full speed towards the judge’s rooms.

Mr Justice Black was settled deep into his chair as the lawyers began to file in, defence solicitors on the side of Charles Augustus Pugh, the last to arrive, Detective Chief Inspector Weir for Sir Jasper. The judge was the proud possessor of a handsome room in the new Old Bailey, a fire burning in his grate, bookshelves lined with legal documents, a forbidding desk for his lordship with a couple of humble chairs on the opposite side. So far Mr Justice Black was still in the genial mood he had at the start of the day.

‘Mr Pugh,’ he said firmly. When he learnt of the circumstances of the judge’s weekend a year later, Powerscourt was to say that the judge’s weekend was the most important single event in that day at the Old Bailey. The judge was a keen, and very successful, bridge player. He had spent Saturday evening at his club playing for rather high stakes. He had won a great deal of money. The memory of that last finesse to secure the final rubber would stay with him for a long time. Claret, that was how he planned to spend his winnings. The judge was very fond of claret. He had brought with him that day the latest catalogue from Berry Bros. amp; Rudd to read on the train.

‘My lord,’ said Pugh, ‘I beg the court’s forgiveness for what I am about to request and I convey my apologies to you for the inconvenience I may be about to cause.’

‘Get on with it, for God’s sake,’ his junior whispered to himself and began a drawing of the foreman of the jury.

‘My lord,’ Pugh went on, ‘the defence would like to ask the court to consider admitting fresh evidence it wishes to put before the court. This evidence only reached London on Sunday evening. It is, I believe, germane to the very substance of this case. I have given a copy of the papers to my learned friend, Sir Jasper, and to yourself.’

Pugh sat down. The judge peered at Pugh.

‘This is irregular, Mr Pugh, most irregular.’ Pugh wondered for a moment if he was simply going to throw the new evidence out without even hearing it.

‘Mr Pugh,’ the judge began, ‘you will forgive us, Sir Jasper and I, while we read these new documents.’

‘The page with the English translation is under the page with the French, my lord. The French wedding certificate is in your bundle, my lord. And before you start reading, forgive me, but I have yet another document relevant to the proceedings. It only came from France this morning, my lord. The Clerk will bring it in once the translation and typing is complete, my lord.’

‘When documents come from France,’ said the judge, searching for his glasses, ‘they come not as single spies, but in battalions.’

Mr Justice Black read the pieces of paper. Then he read them again.

‘Correct me if I am wrong, Mr Pugh. Your new evidence tells us that Randolph Colville was a bigamist, with a second wife living in Burgundy. And, furthermore, that he was flirting with another Frenchwoman whose husband caught them kissing and threatened to kill Randolph Colville. God bless my soul. It does make you wonder about their morals over there, it really does.’

Pugh restrained himself from saying that the same or worse could be said about English morals over here. There was a knock at the door. The Clerk of the Court shuffled in and handed over copies of the letter.

‘Battalions, gentlemen, battalions,’ said the judge grimly and read the final piece of evidence from Beaune.

‘There is a precedent, my lord, for documents arriving late being admitted as evidence. Regina versus Spick, my lord, 1897. Late financial information from America was accepted by Mr Justice Williams in that case.’ Pugh did not bother to point out that his young assistant had discovered five other cases where the late evidence had not been admitted before tumbling on Spick at a quarter to two in the morning.

The judge muttered to himself as if precedents were not going to hold much weight with him. ‘Mr Pugh,’ Mr Justice Black laid his glasses on a pile of papers on his desk, the one concealing the wine catalogue, ‘what can you tell us about the provenance of these documents?’

‘Well,’ said Pugh, ‘the defence has been fortunate to have at its disposal a private investigator who went to Burgundy, discovered the other wife and tried to give their testimony such legitimacy as he could. You will note that the first two are signed in the presence of a French lawyer and the Mayor of Beaune? And there is the marriage certificate, of course.’

‘Did you say private investigator?’ asked the judge. He made it sound like the lowest forms of rat catcher.

‘I did, my lord, he is a most distinguished man in his field, called Powerscourt.’

‘Powerscourt, did you say, Mr Pugh? Lord Francis Powerscourt?’ asked Sir Jasper.

‘The same, Sir Jasper. He is without, if you would like to question him.’

‘Forgive me, Mr Pugh,’ said the judge, ‘I should like to hear from Sir Jasper about the attitude of the prosecution to these documents. I have to say I regard it as most irregular. There are no witnesses. The proper course would be for me to adjourn the trial for forty-eight hours and send a reliable man over to Burgundy who can confirm that these statements are reliable. Or I could throw them out altogether. Sir Jasper?’

‘My lord, my initial reaction is one of suspicion. These documents could all be forgeries after all. I see that the note from Lord Rosebery vouchsafes the veracity of the translations but not the veracity of the documents themselves. Where are the witnesses, my lord? Why are these two ladies not in court to give their evidence? Why is there nobody for me to cross-examine to establish the truth? That, after all, has always been a fundamental right of counsel in English law going back centuries.’