Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

That morning, the air was not so dense. There was one specific sensation less. In fact, as the jury were being sworn, I thought that there had been an attempt, despite the excitement in the press, to damp down other sensations. As I had learned some time before, the Attorney-General was not taking charge of the prosecution himself. It had fallen to the leader of the Midland Circuit, and when, just after eleven, he began his opening speech, he was as quiet and factual as if he were proposing an amendment to the Rent Act. The judge had spoken just as quietly a moment before, in telling the jury what the timetable would be: 10.30–1.0, then 2.30–4.30. “We shall not sit longer, because of medical advice in relation to Miss Pateman, you understand.”

We had heard no mention of that, and later discovered that she had nothing worse than an attack of rheumatism. The judge was being elaborately considerate: just as, when he called her Miss, he seemed to be rebuking the old custom of the courts, which the Clerk had had to follow, of charging prisoners by their bare surnames.

Bosanquet began: “My Lord and Members of the Jury, on September 20, last year, 1963, a child disappeared. His name was Eric Mawby. He was eight years of age. He was an only child, and he lived with his parents at 37 Willowbrook Road, which is part of the housing estate in — (he mentioned one of the outer suburbs). You will hear that he told his mother that he was going to play in the recreation ground about half-a-mile away from their house. You will also hear that, on most summer and autumn evenings, at about half past five o’clock, he went to the same recreation ground for an hour or so’s play. He was always expected back before seven o’clock, and had never failed to do so until the evening of September 20, which was a Friday.”

To a foreigner, this lead in could have sounded like English understatement. But a foreigner might not have known the transformation in English rhetoric, both in parliament and in the law courts, since about the middle of the thirties, when Bosanquet was starting to practise. He was using the tone of speech which was becoming common form. He had actually joined this circuit not long after I gave it up and went to an academic job. He had already been referred to in court as “Mr Recorder”, which had made Margaret give me a puzzled glance: he worked, besides having his solid practice, as Recorder, which meant in effect judge of a lower court, in a city close by. As he stood a couple of yards away from the dock on his right hand, he was looking at the jury with an expression unmoved and unassuming. Distorted by the wig, as some faces are, his appeared preternaturally foreshortened, round and Pickwickian.

The quiet unaccented voice went on: “He did not return by seven o’clock that evening. His parents became anxious, as any of us with children would be. They made inquiries of their neighbours and their neighbours’ children. At nine o’clock they got in touch with the police. At once there was set in motion the most thorough of searches, of which you will hear more. I think you will agree that the police forces at all levels deserve many congratulations for their devotion and efficiency in this case. There was no news of Eric for over a fortnight, although many thousands of reports had been investigated and already certain lines of investigation were in train. But Eric had not been found, and there was no direct news of him. When the news did come, it was the worst possible. His body had been discovered through a very remarkable piece of fortune, if I may use the word in happenings such as these. It was the only piece of fortune that the police had throughout their massive investigations. There is, I think, no reason to doubt that, without this accident, they would shortly have discovered the burying place. However, something else happened. Very early in the morning of October 9, a pack of hounds belonging to the—” — he gave the name of a local hunt — “were out cubbing in a wood or covert to which the nearest village is Snaseby, though that is some distance away. The wood is known locally as Markers Copse.”

Like most people, perhaps everyone, in the court, I had heard of the bizarre incident which he was — without a trace of acceleration — coming to. During the police court proceedings, it had been carried, more than any single feature of the case, all over the press. He was telling us nothing new. But up till now I hadn’t read or heard the name of the exact spot. Now I did hear it, and it meant something to me. The place was a few miles out of Market Harborough, where, as a boy, I used to stay with my Uncle Will. On these holiday visits I went walking over the countryside and sometimes followed the hunt on foot (which my uncle approved of, considering it in some obscure fashion good for his estate agency). I knew Markers Copse well enough. There had been, and presumably still was, an abandoned church down in the next fold of the gentle, rolling country: a church with an overgrown graveyard, relic of a village long deserted. Below the church ran a stream, in which a friend and I often went to fish. It had been pretty country, lonely, oddly rural: sometimes I, who was used to townscapes, had liked to imagine that I was back in the eighteenth century.

“In Markers Copse, then, in the very early morning of October 9, Mr Coe, the huntsman, took his hounds. In a short time he found that two of them had got loose from the pack. They were well-trained hounds and he was naturally irritated. He had to go some distance through the copse to find them. They were smelling, apparently without any reason, at a patch of earth between two of the trees. Mr Coe couldn’t understand their behaviour. It took him considerable effort, and a good deal of discipline, to draw them away. Later that same day, when his work was done, Mr Coe was still puzzled by their behaviour. He is an extremely experienced huntsman and knows his hounds. He will tell you that he felt silly, but he had to make sure whether there was any explanation or not. So he went back that evening to Markers Copse with a neighbour and a couple of spades. He could remember the precise location where the hounds had been smelling. He and his neighbour started to dig. It didn’t take them long to find the body of Eric Mawby — although the grave was fairly deep and had been carefully prepared.”

Bosanquet’s expression hadn’t changed, nor had his stress. Conversationally he informed the jury: “You will hear medical evidence that the child had been dead since approximately the time that he disappeared. You will also hear, however, that he did not die on that first night and probably not for forty-eight hours afterwards. The pathological experts will tell you that he had received mortal injuries, through his skull having been battered in, though with what precise implement or implements it is impossible to say. The pathological experts will also tell you that there were signs of lacerations and other wounds on his body, not connected with the mortal blows, which may have been inflicted many hours before death.

“That is something of what happened to Eric, though I am afraid that I shall have to tell you more later. I now come to the connection between him and the defendants in the dock.”

He made the slightest of gestures to his right, but continued to gaze steadily at the jury.

“So far as is known, Eric had not spoken to either of them before the evening of September 20. He may never have seen them before. There is evidence, however, that they had seen him. These two young women share a room in the house of Miss Pateman’s parents. They have also, for two years past, rented a cottage in the country, where they have been accustomed to go at weekends. You will hear more, I am afraid, of Rose Cottage. It is near Melton Mowbray, and some considerable distance from Markers Copse. It has, however, become not uncommon, as you will hear, for their acquaintances, or members of a circle to which they belong, to rent cottages similar to theirs at convenient distances from the town, and they are known to have visited one in the Market Harborough direction, in fact in Snaseby.”