John Carr: The Judas Window

It was a schoolroom with a rope at the end of it when you left the headmaster's study. Evelyn, who was troubled, spoke behind her hand. She had been looking down over the blank rows of black-silk backs in front of us.

'Ken, I can't understand it. Why ever does H.M. want to go into court? I mean, I know he's always at loggerheads with people in the government; and he and the Home Secretary practically come to blows every time they meet; but he's hand in glove with the police. That chief inspector - what's his name -?'

'Masters?'

'Masters, yes. He'd take H.M.'s advice before he'd take his own superiors'. Well, if H.M. can prove this chap Answell is innocent, why didn't he just prove it to the police, and then they'd have dropped the case?'

I did not know. It was the one point on which H.M. had preserved a belligerent silence. Though the barristers in front had their backs to us now, it was easy to pick out H.M. He was sitting alone on the left of the front bench: his elbows out-thrust on the desk, so that his ancient gown made him look still broader, and his wig sitting strangely on him. Towards his right on the same bench, counsel for the Crown - Sir Walter Storm, Mr Huntley Lawton, and Mr John Spragg - conferred together. Their whispers were inaudible. Though the desk in front of H.M. was comparatively clear, the space before counsel for the prosecution was piled with books, with the neatly printed briefs, with the yellow booklets in which official photographs are bound, and with fresh pink blotting-paper. Every back was grave. Yet under the mask of studied courtesy which marks the Old Bailey, I felt (or thought I could feel) a certain ironical amusement under those wigs whenever an eye happened to stray towards H.M.

Evelyn felt it too, and was furious.

'But-he shouldn't have come into court ,' she insisted: 'He took silk before the war, but Lollypop told me herself he hasn't accepted a brief in fifteen years, and they'll eat him. Look at him down there, sitting like a boiled owl! And if they begin to get under his skin he won't behave himself; you know he won't'

I had to admit he was not the most polished counsel who might have been selected. 'It would appear that there was some commotion the last time he did appear in court. Also, I think myself it was indiscreet to begin an address to the jury with: "Well, my fat-heads." But for some curious reason he won the case.'

A creaking and a muttering drone filled the court as the jury continued to be sworn. Evelyn glanced down past counsel at the long solicitors' table in the well of the court. Every seat was filled, and the table was piled with exhibits bound into neat envelopes or packages. Two other and more curious exhibits were propped beyond, near the little cubicle where the court shorthand-reporter sat. Then Evelyn looked up at Mr Justice Rankin, sitting as detached as a Yogi.

'The judge looks - tough.'

'He is tough. He is also one of the most intelligent men in England.'

'Then if this fellow is guilty,' said Evelyn. She mentioned the unmentionable subject. 'Do you think he did it?'

Her tone took on the furtive note with which this is mentioned by spectators. Privately, I thought Answell was either guilty or crazy or both. I was fairly sure that they would hang him. He had certainly done as much as possible to hang himself. But there was no time to reflect on this. The last of the jurors, including two women, had now been sworn without a challenge. The indictment was again read over to the prisoner. There was a throat-clearing. And Sir Walter Storm, the Attorney-General, rose to open the case for the Crown.

'May it please your Lordship, members of the jury.'

There was a silence, through which Sir Walter Storm's rich voice rose with a curious effect of seeming to come from a gulf. The woolly top of his wig confronted us as he tilted his chin. I do not think that throughout the entire trial we saw his face more than once, when he twisted round: it was long, long-nosed, and ruddy, with an arresting eye. He was completely impersonal, and completely deadly. Often he had the air of a considerate schoolmaster questioning slightly feeble-minded charges. In his course of remaining impartial, his voice took on a heavy and modulated e-nun-ci-ation like an actor's.

'May it please your Lordship, members of the jury,', began the Attorney-General. 'The charge against the prisoner, as you have heard, is murder. It is my duty to indicate to you here the course that will be followed by the evidence for the Crown. You may well believe that it is often with reluctance that a prosecutor takes up his duties. The victim of this crime was a man universally respected, for many years an official of the Capital Counties bank; and later, I think, a member of the board of directors of that bank. The man who stands accused of having committed it is one of good family, good upbringing, and of considerable material fortune, having a great many of this world's advantages denied to others. But the facts will be presented to you; and these facts, I shall suggest to you, can lead to no other conclusion but that Mr Avory Hume was brutally murdered by the prisoner at the bar.

'The victim was a widower, and at the time of his death was living at Number is Grosvenor Street with his daughter, Miss Mary Hume; his brother, Dr Spencer Hume; and his confidential secretary, Miss Amelia Jordan. During the fortnight of December 23rd to January 5th, last, Miss Mary Hume was absent from this house, visiting friends in Sussex. You will hear that on the morning of December 31st, last, the deceased received a letter from Miss Hume. This letter announced that Miss Hume had become engaged to be married to James Answell, the prisoner at the bar, whom she had met at the home of her friends.

'You will hear that, on receiving the news, the deceased was at first well pleased. He expressed himself in terms of the warmest approval. He wrote a letter of congratulation to Miss Hume; and conducted at least one telephone conversation with her on the subject. You might think that he had reason to be satisfied, considering the prisoner's prospects. But I must draw your attention to the sequel. At some time between December 31st and January 4th, the deceased's attitude towards this marriage (and towards the prisoner) underwent a sudden and complete change.

'Members of the jury - when this change occurred, or why, the Crown do not attempt to say. But the Crown will ask you to consider whether or not such a change had any effect on the prisoner at the bar. You will hear that on the morning of Saturday, January 4th, the deceased received another letter from Miss Hume. This letter stated that the prisoner would be in London on that day. Mr Hume lost little time in communicating with the prisoner. At 1.30 on Saturday afternoon he telephoned to the prisoner at the latter's flat in Duke Street. The deceased's words were overheard on this occasion by two witnesses. You will hear in what terms, and with what acerbity, he spoke to the prisoner. You will hear that, as the deceased replaced the receiver of the telephone, he said aloud: 'My dear Answell, I'll settle your hash, damn you."

Sir Walter Storm paused.

He spoke the words unemotionally, consulting his papers as though to make sure of having them right. A number of people glanced automatically at the prisoner, who was now sitting down in the dock with a warder sitting on either side of him. The prisoner, I thought, seemed to have been prepared for this.

'In the course of this telephone conversation, the deceased asked the prisoner to come to his house in Grosvenor Street at six o'clock that evening. Later, as you will hear, he told the butler that he was expecting at six a visitor who (in his own words) "might give some trouble, for he is not to be trusted".

'At about 5.15 the deceased retired to his study, or office, at the rear of the house. I must explain to you that - during this long term of service with the bank - he had constructed for himself a private office at home suited to his needs. You will see that there are only three entrances to this room: a door and two windows. The door was a heavy and tight-fitting one, fastened on the inside with a bolt. There was not even a keyhole: the door being fastened on the outside with a Yale lock. Each of the windows could be covered with folding steel shutters, which, as you will hear, were of a burglar-proof variety. Here the deceased had been accustomed to keep such valuable documents or letters as he had once been obliged to bring home with him. But for several years this study had not been used as a "strong-room"; and the deceased had not considered it necessary to lock up the room either with door or with shutters.