Bruce Alexander - Blind Justice

It was all soon done. And as we walked together to the coach outside the graveyard, a light rain began.

“How fitting,” said Sir John, “heaven’s tears.” Yet he said it, let me be clear, in a tone laden with irony.

Time passed. The end of the month came. Lady Goodhope lost her London residence to Black Jack Bilbo. He was more than generous in extending her time for her departure. One month stretched into the second as packing proceeded. Dray wagons came and went, bound for Lancashire. At last what hurried her along was the impending trial of Lord Goodhope. The House of Lords had finally found a place for it, the last on its list before adjournment. As all London primed for the excitement such a trial would provide, she wanted only to be quit of the city.

Her situation at that time, as presented to her by Mr. Martinez, was not nearly so grave as it might have been. Though her husband’s debts, all together, totaled nearly £100,000, inclusive of the debt to Mr. Bilbo, she nevertheless had the holdings of The Island Company to fall back upon. Since Mr. Clairmont had died intestate and without heirs, in the likelihood of her husband’s death the entire enterprise would pass on to her son. She, as guardian, would be free to sell it off in its entirety or piecemeal. Her creditors were kept at bay by this probability. Leniency or a pardon would throw all this into confusion once again. And so she awaited the outcome of the trial with peculiar interest, though she waited at a remove of over a hundred miles.

Her final departure took place toward the middle of June. My interest in it rested in the fact that she took Mistress Meg with her to the Lancashire estate, though, as Mr. Donnelly told us, “She was not at all sure how the girl would get on with her French-speaking female staff.” Sir John seemed satisfied by the news. “At least,” said he, “she will be out of London.”

Now, with the trial impending. Lord Goodhope no longer simply languished in Newgate but made ready his defense. I wondered what defense he could prepare, since he was to be tried not only for the murder of Charles Clairmont, but for that of Dick Dillon, as well. While the statement of Dick Dillon, alone, read aloud in court, had been sufficient to convict Lucy Kilbourne, Dillon’s murder had taken place before a half dozen or more witnesses, any one of which was available to testify as to what he had seen. Nevertheless, Lord Goodhope met with his barrister daily, according to Sir John, and planned his defense.

There were not many gallery seats available to these proceedings, yet Sir John was assured of one daily. He was no mere spectator but an interested party. The first day of the trial was by far the most interesting, he informed me. It began with all the pomp and circumstance one might expect from such a procedure. There was a reading of a Proclamation of Silence by the Sergeant-at-Arms. “And then,” said Sir John, “followed a good deal of hocus-pocus before the throne of the Lord Chancellor, much God save the King from the Sergeant-at-Arms, a reading of the certiorari, and a calling of the roll of all the justices present. All this, mark you, before any attention to my indictment. At last they settled down to the work of it, and the trial began. That part, of course, was all too familiar to me.”

The proceedings lasted but three days. On the evening of the second day, Sir John, having spent the morning at the House of Lords and the afternoon conducting his own court, invited me out with him to dinner at the Cheshire Cheese. I went willingly enough with him, though not without some foreboding of ill, for this was quite like the earlier excursion which ended in Sir John’s summons to the Goodhope residence. While there was no reason to expect such a conclusion to this evening, I well recalled that the earlier excursion had been undertaken to find a place for me in the printing trade. It seemed likely, though I put no question of it to Sir John in the course of our walk there, that some similar purpose had brought us out together again.

And so it proved to be. An appointment had been made, unbeknownst to me. While I felt grateful to sit at the same table with so eminent a personage as Dictionary Johnson, and quite honored to shake his hand when introduced, I was nonetheless quite apprehensive as the two men talked, for I feared where such talk would lead. Why could I not simply stay with Sir John and Mrs. Gredge? Had I not made myself useful? What did I lack beyond years and stature?

It was a blessing, at least, that James Boswell was absent. Sir John politely inquired after him, mentioning the long conversation he had had with him some weeks before.

“Ah yes,” said Dr. Johnson, “he is returned to Edinburgh. He came down to London only to puff his book on Corsica.”

“Is it a good book?” asked Sir John.

Dr. Johnson considered that a trifle longer than the question warranted. At last he said: “It is not a bad book, though not half so good as he thinks it to be.”

“Should I have it read to me?”

“Do you intend ever to go to Corsica?”

“Never,” said Sir John quite frankly.

“Then there is no need.”

Though both, I’m sure, would have disagreed, they were in some ways aUke. Dr. Johnson was the elder of the two men and the more set in his manner, yet both spoke with certainty and neither would brook argument in his field. (I have heard that Boswell gave it in his Life of Johnson that the “Great Cham” intended a career in the law but was prevented from it by poverty.) Sir John was blind, but Samuel Johnson seemed near to be, so scarred and misshapen were his eyes by scrofula. Both men were corpulent, though Dr. Johnson was huge, and each had arrived at his physical state by consuming great quantities of meat. So it was that night at the Cheshire Cheese.

Each worked upon a slab of beef that would have generously fed two, Sir John washing it down with beer and Dr. Johnson with claret. I, with my smaller chop, could not keep up with them and made no effort to try. When they had finished, I was still eating. They ended their labors, belched mightily in appreciation, and resumed their conversation.

“I recall, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “that our last meeting was aborted when you were called away suddenly. That was the beginning of the Goodhope affair, was it not?”

“It was, yes indeed. I was called away from here by my chief constable to inquire into the suicide of Lord Goodhope.”

“And that suicide proved to be the murder of his half-brother.”

“Just so.”

“You have visited the trial. Has he a chance?”

“None that I can see,” said Sir John. “His entire defense seems to be based upon his own weakness. He has laid the blame for it entirely on Lucy Kilbourne, who as you must know has already been convicted. It would seem that he has taken literary inspiration from Macbeth. Hers was the plot, he claims, and he but her tool in its execution. He has made much of the fact that Mr. Clairmont was first poisoned by her, but the surgeon who performed the autopsy was finally uncertain as to whether the poison given by Kilbourne or the shot fired by Goodhope was the certain cause of death. Both share in it equally.”

“To cower, so to speak, behind a woman’s skirts would not seem to be a pose befitting a nobleman,” said Dr. Johnson.

“Certainly not, and that is how it shall be viewed. But do not neglect, as some have, that Lord Goodhope is on trial for two murders. The second, of his former footman, was committed before many witnesses. The boy here, Jeremy, saw it plain. He grabbed onto Goodhope to pull him away, though it was after the fatal thrust was made.”

“Did he? A brave lad.”

I colored somewhat under Dr. Johnson’s scrutiny. In truth, I had not known that Sir John was aware of the part Meg and I had played in the struggle. Mr. Bailey must have told him.