Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

Somehow we were in an enclosure with the professionals, part of the machine. An official sitting beside us gave us piles of typescript, records of the police court hearing, depositions.

The two women came up into the dock, their faces, beyond the lawyers, on a level with ours. Cora stared straight at me, without a sign of recognition. As she turned quarter-face to her left, listening to Kitty, she seemed like a painting I had once seen in the Uffizi, with a visage stormy, troubled, handsome (later I was puzzled to discover that the painting was, of all things, Lorenzo di Credi’s Venus ). Martin, who had not seen either of them before, sat forward, tense. Kitty was saying something, eyes sharp and flickering. At the end she gave a quick, surreptitious, involuntary smile. Her skin appeared to have darkened, not become paler, through imprisonment, and now she looked older than her partner.

Through the door just beside our box, the procession entered. As he finished his bow to the jury, beaming, affable, the judge gave me an appraising glance.

The first part of the morning was routine: so much routine that there was a sense of let-down in the court, but Bosanquet was as undeterred as a batsman playing himself in for his second hundred. Questions from the judge: placid answers from Bosanquet, this was a matter of “filling in some pieces”. So there was evidence leading to the weekend of September 20–22. Identification of Cora in the village. A good deal of car and transport evidence. Proof that the story of a bus back to the town, late on the Sunday night, was a fabrication. Sighting of the car near Markers Copse on the same Sunday night. Sighting of the car, close to the cottage, early the following morning. Examination of the car (this was the first appearance of the forensic scientists). Blood on the floor, close to the back seat. Category of blood.

Martin, like Margaret, had not attended a criminal trial before. He wasn’t prepared for the patches of doldrums, the pauses for the judge to catch up with his longhand, the flatness of facts, or even the sheer numbers of the witnesses who came and went, names, addresses, occupations, units in the lonely crowd, just as we to them were units too. (How many people did one know? Intimately? A hundred, if one was lucky. Slightly? Perhaps ten thousand, if one had lived a busy life.) The witnesses came and went: so had the students before the university court the year before, most of us expecting never to see them again. There, but only by chance, I had been wrong: it hadn’t been my last sight of the Patemans. So that, as I looked back, that ridiculous set-piece appeal not only loomed stiffer and more formal than this present trial, but also took on a significance, a kind of predictive ominousness, that it hadn’t in the slightest degree possessed when I was sitting through it.

Already half past twelve. The court stirred. The prosecution was coming to the discovery of the body. Archibald Rose began to examine Mr Coe, the huntsman. The evidence was, of course, a matter of form, since no one could contest it: but it took some effort to drag it out. Mr Coe didn’t appear at all like the romantic picture of an open-air worker: his face was pallid, his hair jet black, his cheeks sunken. In addition, he was one of those witnesses who, when told to speak up, find it — just as my least favourite student had done — as impossible as a tone-deaf person asked to sing a tune. Archibald Rose had a fine resonant performer’s voice: in a cheerful reproving tone he kept saying — “You’re not to speak to me, you must speak to my lord and the jury.” Mr Coe looked lugubriously across to the jury box, raised his volume for a sentence, and then let his chin descend into his chest. My place was within touching distance of the jury, and though I had sharp ears I was missing one word in two. The judge broke in: he was a hunting man, and, though Coe didn’t become more audible, he nodded his head once or twice less sombrely, as though sensible men were talking about sensible things. It was a famous pack, the judge was saying, one of the best packs in the shires, wasn’t it? The judge had never seen or heard of hounds behaving as those two had done that morning, had Mr Coe? If they hadn’t been so cussed, would Mr Coe have thought of returning to the spot?

Coe gave a happy smile when told that he could leave the box, so happy that others smiled in response.

Exhibit. Policeman holding up a small plastic bag, testifying that within were the clothes found on the body. There was also a polythene wrapper, which, for some reason not explained, had been used to cover the boy’s head. The bag was opened: not many had attention to spare for the sight of bits of clothing; all round, as though there never had been any other and as though it would last for ever, was the charnel smell.

“Please remove that,” said the judge. “And we will wait a moment before the next witness.”

The next witness had to be taken care of, for it was Eric Mawby’s mother. She should have given evidence the previous afternoon, but — so the Deputy Sheriff’s assistant, sitting at his desk in our box, told us as we waited, the smell still in our throats — she had not been well enough to attend. However, when she did step into the box, she was erect, and her voice was firm. She was a tall woman, with a high-nosed, proud, imperious face. As the judge asked after her health and told her she would not be questioned for long, she replied like one who enjoyed having attention paid to her.

Yes, Eric always went to play in the summer and autumn before his father came home for his tea (tea in that home must have meant a substantial meal). He always went to the recreation ground, which was a good safe place. Yes, he was always expected back by a quarter to seven. Yes, he was a good obedient boy, he’d never been more than a few minutes late. But that Friday night when he didn’t return— Enquiries. The police.

Bosanquet was asking her as few questions as he could manage: but he had to say: “On October 9, did the police tell you that a boy’s body had been found?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Did they ask you to identify the body?”

“They did.”

“It was your son’s body, Mrs Mawby?”

“It was Eric.” Her head was thrown back, her tone was not so much piteous, or even angry, as commanding.

“And the clothes — they were his clothes?”

“Yes, they were his things.”

Bosanquet thanked her, and finished. Defence counsel shook their heads. The judge thanked her, congratulated her on her courage, and gave her his sympathy. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, taking pity from no one, proud to act as though she were used to courts.

On the way out down the corridor — the court rose after her evidence — Martin was saying that our mother would have behaved something like that. As soon as we reached the entrance hall, Archibald Rose, the junior prosecution counsel, approached us, looking boyish now that he had taken off his wig. “Hallo, I was watching out for you.” He introduced himself; he was the nephew of my old chief Hector Rose. He said that Clive Bosanquet and he wondered if we would like to lunch with them.

In Rose’s car we drove into the centre of the town, talking about acquaintances. All four of us had been drilled in the compact English professional world, where, if you didn’t know someone, you at least knew someone else who did.

Sitting in the restaurant, the lawyers studied the menu. They had been working hard, they were hungry. Bosanquet allowed himself one drink. Close to, his expression was sadder and more authoritative than it seemed in court.

“What do you think of all this?” he said across the table, meaning the case.

I shook my head.

“If you’d stayed at the bar, you’d have done this sort of job, you know.”