Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

Again, the judge remarked that his pen wasn’t keeping up. Maxwell, constraining himself so tightly, was speaking unnaturally fast. When the judge was satisfied, Maxwell went on: “I think — I should like to have permission to refer to my notes—” studiously, horn-rimmed glasses on his prow-like nose, he read in a small pocket book — “that on that occasion Miss Pateman stated that they hadn’t any knowledge themselves of what did happen to him.”

There was a sudden flurry of confusion. Comparison of statements, Kitty’s fourth and fifth: the judge had mislaid Cora’s second. Bosanquet steered his way through: had Miss Pateman given any account of the actual killing? No, said Maxwell. In one statement she had told him that early on the Sunday evening they had put him on a bus. That contradicted statements, not only by Miss Ross, but by Miss Pateman herself. On another occasion she said that she didn’t know, or seemed to have forgotten, what had happened on the Sunday night.

“Will you clarify that?” said Bosanquet. “She actually said she seemed to have forgotten —?”

“You will find that in her statement number five.” For an instant Maxwell’s eyes flashed.

“What did you say, when you heard that?”

“I said,” Maxwell replied, once more in his most domestic tone, “Now listen, Kitty. I can’t make any promises, but it will save us a lot of worry, you included, if we get this story straight.”

“How did Miss Pateman respond?”

“She said, I will only tell you, I’ve given you the story as far as I remember it. I don’t remember much about anything that Sunday night.”

Bosanquet was passing to Maxwell’s interviews with Cora. The first breakdown: the first admission (it was she who had made it, not Kitty) that they had taken the child out to the cottage that Friday. All quiet and matter-of-fact. Then Benskin was on his feet, jester’s face smiling at Bosanquet. “If my learned friend will permit me. My lord, Mr Wilson and I have agreed that we shall not challenge this evidence for the Crown. Perhaps it would be advisable for us to indicate—”

The judge gave a sapient nod. “Will you please come up, Mr Benskin, Mr Wilson? Mr Recorder?” The barristers moved to the space immediately below the judge’s seat, and there they and the judge and the Clerk of Assize were all whispering in what, to most people in court, seemed a colloguing mystery. In our box, the Deputy Sheriff’s assistant gave us a knowledgeable glance. “About time, too,” he murmured. It was, we assumed, what those on the inside had expected all along: they were changing their plea: it would have been tidier, so he was saying, if they had started clean on the first morning. Meanwhile wigs were nodding below the judge, the old man was half-smiling.

At that moment we heard a loud unmodulated shout. It was Cora, standing in the dock, palms beating on the rail. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with us? What right have you got?” She was jeering at them with fury and contempt; she began to swear, sweeping round at all of us, the oaths coming out unworn, naked, as in one of George’s outbursts. The air was ripped open. Most people in the court hadn’t heard until that moment what anger could sound like. “We’ll answer for ourselves. We don’t want you, you—” again the curse crackled. “Do you think we need to explain ourselves to a set of—?”

Kitty was pulling at her arm, urgently, eyes snapping. The judge spoke to Benskin, and raised his voice, which showed, for the first time, the unevenness of age. “Miss Ross, you are doing yourself no good, you must be quiet.”

“Do you mean to say anything will do us good among you crowd—”

Very quietly, Benskin had moved to the dock. For an instant she stood there, towering over him: then we heard a rasp of command, and there was a nervous relief as she sat down. Whispers from Benskin, low and intense, which none of us could pick up. (“He’s a very tough man,” the official was commenting to Martin.) Shortly he was back in his place, facing the judge. “My lord, I wish to express regret, on behalf of my client,” he said, with professional smoothness, like a man apologising for knocking over a glass of sherry.

“Very well,” said the judge. Then he spoke to the jury: “I have to tell you that you must dismiss this incident from your minds. And I have to tell everyone in court that it must not be mentioned outside, under penalties of which I am sure you are well aware.” He spoke to the jury again, telling them that he now proposed to adjourn the court until the following morning. This was because the defence would then open their case, admitting the facts about the killing, but claiming that the defendants acted with diminished responsibility. “That means, you understand, that they still plead not guilty to murder, but, because of their mental condition, under our present law, are seeking to prove to you that their crime should be regarded as manslaughter.” The judge lingered over this piece of exposition, courteous, paternal, with the savour of an old professor, famous for his lectures, who may soon be delivering the last one. The jury were to realise that the trial would from now on take a different course. The defence would not attempt to disprove the Crown evidence as to the nature of the killing. So that the jury need not worry themselves about certain questions of detail which had already taken up some time, such as precisely when the child was killed. The legal position would, of course, be explained to them carefully by counsel and by himself in his summing up. He realised that this trial was an ordeal for them, and perhaps they would benefit by an afternoon free. “And perhaps,” he turned to the two in the dock, without altering his tone or his kindness, “you also will be able to get a little rest.”

During the morning I had noticed Mrs Pateman in the courtroom, without her husband. I followed her out, and said that if she cared, I could visit her that afternoon. As I spoke to her (she was looking frightened, her eyes darting round like her daughter’s) I noticed that two journalists were watching us. As we knew already, young Charles’ forecasts hadn’t been entirely wrong.

Going back to Martin, I found him among a knot of lawyers in the hall, all simmering with gossip and rumours. Yes, naturally the defence had wanted to make this plea from the beginning. The only resistance had come from the two women. Or really, said someone, with the satisfaction of a born insider, from one of them. It had been the woman Ross who hadn’t co-operated with the psychiatrists. Co-operated about as much as she did in court this morning. The gossip sparked round.

She said that she despised them.

The other one had been willing to play.

But they’d stuck together up to now. If Ross wasn’t agreeable, then Pateman wouldn’t insist.

Tagging on behind the master, as usual.

The previous two nights, their solicitors had been working on them. So had Ted Benskin. Last night they thought that Ross had given way. If they wanted to switch the case, she’d go along.

Did she go along this morning? You saw her hit the ceiling.

Among the buzz, a quiet voice said that he was wondering whether that wasn’t a put-up job. The quiet voice came from a young man, possibly a law student, about the age I had been when I first attended this assize.

He meant, if they were going to prove she wasn’t responsible, she had given them something to go on, hadn’t she?

An older man said, he didn’t believe anyone could act as well as that. She just cracked.

She was horrifying, said another.

If you’d been to many criminal trials, said one of the clerks, you’d be ready to believe anything. She might have been acting, she might not. Everything seemed about as likely or unlikely as anything else.