As Berry and I Were Saying (3 page)

“On another occasion, the militant suffragist leaders were defended by —, QC, an Irishman. His eloquence was undoubted. Lack of material never embarrassed him. This was as well, for there were, of course, no answers to the charges of obstruction and assault. He was, I suppose, accustomed to making bricks without straw. So he made a most admirable speech – but his peroration included a comparison which I would give much to forget. No English paper printed it, so that only those who heard it can repeat what he said. It was, to be frank, sheer blasphemy of the most atrocious sort. Had I not heard it, I never would have believed that any Christian would have spoken a sentence so shocking in open court. It was by no means a question of taste: it was a question of instinct. The effect of his words was most painful. Incredulous horror was reflected by every face. The Magistrate, Curtis Bennett, went white to the lips: Muskett turned red as fire: I thought the Magistrate’s Clerk was going to faint: Wells, who was sitting beside me, went purple: and everyone present seemed to have stopped breathing, as though they were expecting the hand of God to strike. Their demeanour shook—. He faltered in his speech, and his voice, so to speak, tailed off. Then he recovered, added a word or two, asking for his clients’ discharge, and resumed his seat. Had the matter been brought to the notice of the Bar Council, I sometimes think that he would have been disbarred. But the blasphemy was so shocking that nobody, I suppose, was minded to repeat it. I know I wouldn’t have repeated it for any money.

“Superintendent Cresswell Wells of ‘A’ Division of the Metropolitan Police was a first-rate officer, a well-known and popular figure and a very nice man. To me, he was always kindness itself. On one of the days on which we were dealing with the militant suffragists at Bow Street, when the Magistrate adjourned for luncheon, Muskett and I hastened to the old Gaiety Restaurant, which did you very well. We had hardly taken our seats, when I noticed that I had forgotten to replace my wrist-watch, which I had laid on the pile of towels before me, before I washed my hands.”

“Even,” said Berry, “even a blue-based baboon—”

“I know,” said I. “It was the act of a fool. I never did it again.”

“Go on, Boy,” said Jill.

“Well, I went straight back to the lavatory, to find the watch gone: and the liveried attendant swore that he had not seen it. I’d no time to pursue the matter, but, as you may remember, it was a very nice watch. We got back to Bow Street a few minutes before two o’clock and I took my usual place between Muskett and Wells. Naturally enough, I told Wells about my loss. He listened to me. Then he beckoned to Jarvis, another friend of mine. He spoke with him for a moment and added ‘Go yourself’. Twenty minutes later he laid my wristwatch beside me with a quiet smile.”

“What had happened?” said Daphne.

“I never asked. When the Court rose, of course I thanked them both. But as neither offered any explanation, I left it there.”

“Oh, I couldn’t have borne it,” said Jill.

“My sweet,” said Berry, “your husband’s not always a fool. Two of the biggest shots in ‘A’ Division had, between them, effected the return of some stolen property. Had Boy inquired how they had done it, his stock would have fallen very low.”

“Look here,” I said, “I’m afraid we’re breaking our rule.”

“No, we’re not,” said Berry. “Let’s have some more about stolen property. Why is it so seldom recovered?”

“You mean, in robberies of consequence?”

“Yes.”

“Because in all such robberies the disposal of the swag is arranged before the robbery is done. The fence is all ready to receive it and pass it on. (At least, this is how it was in 1909.) A big receiver will have his own appraiser, waiting to value the stuff. Then someone else picks it up… Twenty-four hours later it’s lying in Amsterdam. Or, if there’s a hitch, it may go into a Safe Deposit. It is the fence that matters. If there were no receivers, there wouldn’t be any thefts. No big ones, I mean. Now here’s a simple, illuminating case. On a wet autumn evening, three men were standing in a row, regarding a jeweller’s window in the Waterloo Road. The man in the middle was a fence, and the other two were thieves. They’d brought the fence along, to have a look at the stuff which they proposed to steal – and to say what he’d pay them for it. Apparently, they were satisfied; for that night the job was done, and an hour or so later the stuff was handed over in the bar-parlour of a pub in Notting Dale.”

“Did they go down?”

“No action was taken – I think, by our advice. The information was full, but the evidence was too thin.”

“What does that mean?” said my wife.

“Evidence is information which can be given in Court. Most information can’t be, because it’s hearsay or the informer can’t be called. But it’s almost invariably true. If all information were evidence, not one defendant in fifty thousand would get off. I’m speaking of forty years ago, but, so far as indictable offences were concerned, unless the police were dead certain, they never made an arrest.”

“Which means that no innocent man was ever sent down?”

“Yes.”

“What about poor Adolph Beck?”

“That was a case of pardonably mistaken identity. Beck was the very image of the man who committed the crime. There was…one other case. But, by the grace of God, no damage was done.”

“Proceed,” said Berry.

I hesitated. Then – “I shall have to leave out a little.”

“Even now?”

“Even now. However, I’ll do my best, for it is an astonishing tale. I wasn’t in the case, but I knew rather more about it than most people did.

“A man of means dwelt at his country place. This was known as The Grange. He kept no men-servants, though the house was solitary. He was broad and strong and courageous. One night he was sitting at dinner with his wife and his sister-in-law. The dining-room windows gave to a terrace: the windows were shut, but the curtains were not drawn, although it was dark. A shot was fired from the terrace, and the bullet went by his head. Wisely enough, he didn’t go for the windows, but, instead, rushed from the room, through the hall and down a passage. This led to the terrace from which the shot had been fired. He was out to get the man, unarmed though he was. But the man was out to get him. He must have known the house, for he was in the passage before his victim was. And he had a knife in his hand. They grappled in the passage, and staggered and swayed, still grappled, into the hall. There the women were gathered, helpless and horrified – the wife, the sister-in-law and one of the maids. And there, before their eyes, the husband was stabbed to death. His murderer turned and ran the way he had come.

“The house had no telephone, and I don’t think the police had cars. So it was quite a long time before they arrived. Of course they did all they could, but all wheels turned more slowly in 1909. It was two nights later that a constable was walking his beat in a neighbouring town. He was passing a yard which was shut by iron-barred gates. As usual, he threw the beam of his lantern round the yard. And he saw a man. He asked him what he was doing. The man’s answers didn’t satisfy him, so he had him out of the yard and marched him off. The station-sergeant wasn’t any better satisfied than his subordinate, so the man was charged and detained. ‘Loitering on enclosed premises with intent to commit a felony.’ Early the following morning, this particular police-station received the description of the man who had murdered the master of The Grange. And when they looked again at the man they had put in a cell – well, he tallied with the description in every way.

“It was the deadest case I ever knew. He was put up for identification and all three women instantly picked him out. It appeared that he was a cousin of the dead man, that he was a ne’er-do-well, that he knew The Grange and, by the dead man’s orders, had recently been turned from its doors. He bore such traces of the struggle as you would expect to find: his coat was torn, his arms were bruised and his hands were cut. The account he gave of his movements could hardly be checked. When asked about the cuts on his hands, he said he had broken the window of a baker’s shop in order to steal a loaf. He couldn’t give the name of the village, and, though inquiries were made, no baker’s shop was found to confirm his report. When asked about his movements upon the fatal night, he said he was in the bar of a certain public house. This was too far from The Grange for him to have committed the crime. When seen, the landlord denied this. On second thoughts, however, the landlord said he was there. In other words, his evidence was unsatisfactory. And this particular landlord was very well known to the police, as a most unscrupulous man. The revolver and knife, of course, had disappeared.

“Well, the man was committed for trial and was later tried. He went into the witness-box and denied that he was the man. His only witness was the landlord, who came unwillingly to Court and went to pieces in the box. The Judge summed up against him, and the jury retired. Everyone thought they’d be out for a quarter of an hour. They weren’t. They were out for four hours. And then they came back and found the fellow ‘Not guilty’. So he was released.

“Everyone was astounded. As I have said, it was the deadest case. But juries will be juries, and that was that.

“When the tumult had died, something – I don’t know what – came to the knowledge of the police. Two months later another man was arrested and, to everyone’s amazement, charged with the crime. There was quite a lot against him. He was proved to have been in the vicinity of The Grange on the night of the crime. In his possession was a revolver: a bullet fired from this was found to bear exactly the markings which were borne by the bullet which was taken from the dining-room’s wall. Finally, when he was stood side by side with the man who had been acquitted, it was immediately seen that no man could tell them apart. They were facsimiles.

“Now I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but it has always been my honest belief that God Himself intervened and directed that jury to spare that first man’s life. There is no other explanation. It was the deadest case.”

“That
is
history,” said Daphne.

“I don’t go as far as that: but, at least, it’s true.”

“What did you leave out?” said Jill.

“Nothing of consequence, darling, as your inquiry shows.”

“Who was the Judge?” said Berry.

“I can’t remember. God knows it wasn’t his fault. But it must have shaken him up.”

“Let’s have some more about receivers.”

“It’s your turn now.”

“One more – featuring ‘the fence’.”

“Give me some port,” said I. “My throat’s getting sore.”

Berry replenished my glass with tawny port.

“If,” he said, “you knew how to produce your voice…”

“I know,” said I, “I know. Strangely enough, it never got sore at the Bar.”

“You never had a big enough brief.”

“There’s something in that,” said I.

“Rot,” said Jill. “Boy’s got the most powerful voice I’ve ever heard.”

“That is irrelevant, but true. The fog-horn type. When he was calling Nobby, the Vicar’s nose used to bleed. And now for the receiver: he always interested me.”

“Not half as much,” said I, “as he interested the police. But the receiver was always extremely hard to hit.

“When I left Muskett’s office, after one year with him, I was called to the Bar. The following day I entered Treasury Chambers – as a pupil, of course. And there I spent one year.

“One day a case came in – The King against Goldschmidt: and when I opened the brief I found it was ‘Cammy’ Goldschmidt, a most notorious fence. We’d been laying for him for years, for he was behind four-fifths of the really big things. But he wasn’t charged with receiving: he was charged with harbouring, a little known offence. Harbouring is comforting a man whom you know to have committed a felony. For harbouring, you can get two years’ hard labour: but for receiving you can be sent to penal servitude for fourteen years.

“Well, the thing was this. The police were unable to get Cammy on a charge of receiving, because he was too damned shrewd: but they were always ready, in case he should put a foot wrong. And now that was what he had done.

“Cammy Goldschmidt lived in style. He’d a very nice house in Hampstead, he kept his carriage and horses and he dressed in Savile Row. One rainy night an old lag came to his door, with a cart and horse. His arrival was reported to Cammy – by the butler or parlour-maid. And, though he was very much vexed, Cammy thought it best to go to the door himself. Now Cammy’s instinct was to send the fellow away: but the lag knew rather too much, and, if he had turned nasty, it might not have been so good. So Cammy allowed him to stay and to sleep in a stable with his horse. But the horse and cart had been stolen, as Cammy very well knew. God knows how these things get round, but somebody talked – with the happy result that the biggest receiver in London was sent for trial on a charge of harbouring a thief.

“From our point of view, it was a rotten case. In the first place, one’s sympathy is always with the hunted, and one finds it hard to blame a man who has given shelter to such unfortunates. In the second place, the case against Cammy was almost painfully thin, and the witnesses for the Crown were by no means above reproach. Still, it was so very important that such a receiver as Cammy should be out of action – if only for two or three months, that the Director of Public Prosecutions determined to have a stab.

“Cammy was confident. He instructed Charles Gill, QC, a very eminent counsel and a master of the art of defence. Indeed, I must frankly confess that, if I had been offering odds, I’d have given twenty to one against the Crown. What was so galling was that City of London juries are very shrewd. And had the jury, in whose charge Cammy would be, had the faintest idea of the truth, they would have sent him down without leaving the box. But they wouldn’t know the truth, and we couldn’t put them wise.

“Now, about this case, there was one curious thing. Among our witnesses – we only had two or three – was a man to whom Cammy had once given great offence. That was probably why he was bearing witness against him. Now this witness knew perfectly well who Cammy was: and he knew, as did all of us, that it was almost grotesque that so important a receiver of stolen goods should be arraigned only upon such a trifling charge. But that, of course, was neither here nor there. Cammy was charged with harbouring: and any reference to his activities as a receiver could not be allowed.