Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (20 page)

Francis Marbury, counsel for the British Crown, calmly countered that ex-judge Beebe had spent an evening with the prisoner in order to discuss his defence, that the depositions were neither long nor intricate, that they had been painstakingly read out in court and that Müller’s defence had, in sum, had enough time to prepare. He considered the defence’s request for postponement to be unreasonable.
All the judge has to do
, he argued,
is act like an ordinary magistrate
. He was not asking for a determination of guilt, simply for a committal to trial.
I dislike
, he continued,
to do anything which looks like bearing harshly upon this unfortunate man, but the case seems so plain and the man, if sent back, will be placed where will be found all the witnesses who can testify as to the facts and who will state any circumstances of exculpation, if any such exist.
The London detectives and witnesses were in New York at great expense, he argued. A postponement would cause great inconvenience.

And so the argument rocked backwards and forwards between the two lawyers while the witnesses and prisoner sat mute. Was the British Crown really so penny-pinching, wondered Blankman, and what of the interests of justice? Were the rights of the prisoner not to be protected? Were German and American citizens to be left wondering at the partiality of the law?

Commissioner Newton denied the request for postponement. The evidence was short, he said, and he could not believe that the interests of the prisoner would suffer by his refusal.

There were no witnesses for the defence and the defendant Franz Müller had no right in law to speak, except through his counsel. So, Chauncey Shaffer, known for his blistering oratory, went into battle.
There is
something of sublimity
in the energy with which the British Government has disregarded seas and oceans in their pursuit of this man
, he began.
I am not here to raise any ill feeling against that grand old nation but to judge that Treaty by the acts of the English nation itself
.

Shaffer intended to move for a discharge of the entire hearing on insuperable legal grounds. First, he argued that the extradition treaty of 1842 between Britain and America was an infringement of the American constitution and its amendments,
that no person shall be held to answer for a capital or infamous crime, save on the indictment … of a Grand Jury.
How was it possible, he asked, that the Commissioner was being asked to surrender a man to be tried for his life when he had not been indicted? Further, in his view, the prisoner had already been convicted in the mind of the British public. There was no chance that he would receive a fair trial in London and to allow his extradition would be to
place him where his life and liberty will be imperilled.

I have, however, another proposition
, continued Shaffer, warming to his theme.
It is an elementary principle, recognised by the laws of nations, that a state of war suspends the operations of all treaties. You will say there is not war between the United States and England. Not in their sovereign capacity; but
there is war, what
Grotius
terms a ‘mixed unsolemn state of war’ between the subjects of the nation on the one side … and the subjects of the nation on the other side, without any formal declaration of war
. Harnessing legal theory and the antagonism between the Northern States and Britain to his cause, Müller’s attorney declared that the extradition treaty of 1842 was nullified. Calling on such elevated authorities as Grotius, the seventeenth-century father of international law, his arguments left the majority of the courtroom impressed by his authority if baffled by his erudition.

Reminding the court of the events of the past three years, Shaffer cited the routine sinking or pillaging of American vessels and the suspension of trade and commerce between Britain and America. He declared that the southern rebels were furnished with arms and ammunition by the
neutral ports of Great Britain
and that American subjects
whose hands are stained with blood
were not returned. Shaffer believed that England claimed neutrality but acted like an aggressor.
No state of national neutrality in effect actually exists
,
and the state of war suspends operation of all treaties. They that would have justice
, he declaimed, his voice soaring and his arms widening,
must do justice. England must come here with clean hands
. In his opinion, the 1842 agreement was
a dead letter.

The packed court burst into enthusiastic applause at Shaffer’s denouncement of the British government. Shaffer turned to the question of the provisions of the treaty.
Though undoubtedly death by violence has been proved, there is not sufficient evidence that it amounts to murder
, he claimed. Further,
the Commissioner must be satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that not only was the crime that of murder but that Franz Müller was the murderer.

Reading out Thomas Lee’s deposition, the lawyer endeavoured to show that Müller – short, thin and barefaced – was clearly neither of the two men said by Lee to have shared a compartment with Thomas Briggs on 9 July. Lee’s evidence, Shaffer argued,
was crucial, yet he was not present to be cross-examined. In addition, there was no evidence submitted to prove that Müller was not at home on the evening of 9 July. (Here Marbury objected, citing witness statements that Müller had indeed been absent and that he was not seen until Sunday morning. His objection was sustained.)

Finally, Shaffer alleged that the sum of evidence so far brought forward against his client was circumstantial and allowed for other interpretations.
How are we to say he did not buy those goods not knowing them to belong to a murdered man?
he asked. Drawing his argument to a close, he asserted that it would be better that his nation should perish than that the constitution be violated by the treaty-making power of any other country. Müller must be released.

Shaffer then recalled Detective Inspector Richard Tanner.

Sitting within a yard of the inspector, Müller cast his eyes about the court. Was he still watching for the appearance of his resolutely absent sister?

Shaffer asked Tanner to describe the man before him.
I should judge him to be about five feet six and a half inches in height. He has no beard, nor any signs of ever having one. I should not call him a tall thin man, nor a thickset man.

Did Müller bear any resemblance whatsoever to either of the men described by Thomas Lee?

I don’t think he will ever have any whiskers.

Can you see him clearly?
asked Shaffer.

He is standing quite near to me, and there is no obstruction between us to my view of him
.

Shaffer had finished his galvanising defence. As he resumed his seat, spectators in the court shifted their attention to Francis Marbury. For a moment he was silent. Then he characterised his opponent as a blusterer, wasting their time with a bafflingly long and exaggerated speech, an address full of irrelevances and diversions. He suggested that Shaffer’s loquacious ramblings stemmed
from the fact that there was nothing in the facts of the case
out of which he could legitimately offer to the audience the entertainment which is always expected of him whenever he makes his appearance
. He had, said Marbury, resorted to verbal pyrotechnics only because he had no persuasively competing evidence to offer.

Point by point Marbury reprised the physical evidence against Müller and turned the defence’s arguments. The question of the treaty’s legitimacy was for the executive government. Despite the fact that the Hackney inquest had not yet drawn to its conclusion, Marbury considered that the
corpus delicti
, or body of evidence, had been fully established against Müller. The prisoner’s absence from Park Terrace on the evening of 9 July was proved beyond doubt and he had suggested no other alibi that might prove his presence elsewhere at the time of the fatal attack. Useful though Mr Lee’s evidence was, Francis Marbury reminded Commissioner Newton that Lee was unable to say whether one or both of Briggs’ fellow passengers had left the carriage before the train pulled off.

As I look upon Müller it appears almost inconceivable that he could have perpetrated the dreadful crime
, Marbury continued.
If I could escape from the evidences of his guilt which seem to gather from so many quarters, all converging and pointing to him, I should experience a sensation of relief.
He reminded the court that Thomas Briggs was a worthy, venerable man and that this crime was one of the most revolting in British criminal experience. Despite the clouds lowering about the head of the prisoner, who would not rejoice if he could prove himself to be innocent of the crime? Müller could not explain his whereabouts on the night of 9 July, he could give no convincing explanation for his ownership of the watch or the supernumerary hat
.
Had the crime taken place in New York then the magistrate would be compelled to commit him for trial. It was beyond doubt, he countered, that the certificate for the prisoner’s extradition should be granted.

The courtroom was hushed. Commissioner Newton cleared his throat and prepared to speak.
Gentlemen
, he began,
I think my duty is plain
.
I do not desire to sit in judgement upon this man … but I am bound to say that the combined circumstances, to my mind, appear so clear, and so distinct, that I can have no doubt. I shall be constrained to grant the certificate
.

Rising from his chair, Newton withdrew from the court. The journalists watched as, just perceptibly, Müller’s jaw tightened. Tanner and his colleagues relaxed backwards, then leant forwards to shake hands with Francis Marbury and slap each other’s shoulders. Shaffer and Blankman, who had waived their fees, shuffled papers, snapped their notebooks closed, wished their client luck and departed.
Müller did not seem affected in the least by the decision
, scribbled the reporter for the
New York Times
,
acting more like an indifferent spectator than a criminal on trial.

*

Behind those small grey eyes, that detached exterior, it seemed that Müller must either be a simpleton or an innocent. New Yorkers argued over whether his composure evinced bafflement, arrogance or guilt and wondered at an absence in him of the kind of coiled fury that might mark him out as a murderer. Might it be that his stupor was evidence of bewilderment at his own act? If he was innocent, how could he remain so apathetic? Blank-faced and tight-lipped, he was pulled from the court into a police cab and driven to the Halls of Justice – the city prison known popularly as
the Tombs
.

Five blocks north of Chambers Street, built in the late 1830s on mouldering, boggy land and surrounded by distempered side-streets, the prison was a daunting granite structure in the style of an ancient Egyptian mausoleum. Great steps rose to a main entrance flanked by vast columns. Inside, its dank cells were reserved for prisoners awaiting trial on the gravest charges or
those already convicted and waiting to be executed within the confines of a narrow inner court, witnessed by a group limited to twenty-five. There was no public executioner here to shuffle about on a raised scaffold, every move watched by unruly droves of hundreds or thousands.

Within the cavernous Tombs, the warders’ steps rang on the walkways of the four iron galleries set one above the other, linked by zig-zagging staircases. On each side were rows of heavy black doors and behind each of these a small bare cell lit only by a high chink in the wall. Each one contained a bedstead, a table and a crude washing bowl. Wall hooks once provided for clothing had been removed to prevent suicide. Apart from the clatter of the warders’ keys against the iron lattice of the walkways, the place was uncommonly quiet, run on the ‘silent’ system: all conversation between inmates was proscribed. Fearing that Müller would fall into a depression here,
Tanner managed
to side-step the rules by arranging for another prisoner to share his cell at night.

United States Commissioner Chas Newton retired to his office in Wall Street on the afternoon of his judgement to write to President Abraham Lincoln at the White House in Washington. His clerks were busy drafting a Certificate of Criminality and making handwritten copies of the Bow Street depositions along with a duplicate record of all the evidence and arguments presented during the two-day hearing. Once these were completed, Tanner would deliver them to Washington himself. When the warrant for extradition was in his hands, he would return to New York to claim his prisoner.

At the Everett House Hotel, congratulations over, Richard Tanner prepared another report for Sir Richard Mayne. He enclosed the newspaper articles from the weekend, telling the Commissioner of the strong language used by Shaffer in Müller’s defence and the enthusiastic response it had received from the public. He planned to return from Washington in time to leave New York on the
Etna
, bound for Liverpool in a week’s time.

Tanner was worn out
from waiting through three weeks of sleepless nights and two things were troubling him.
Extraordinary as it may seem
, he wrote to Sir Richard,
strong sympathy is felt now for the prisoner and it is rumoured that an attempt to rescue him from my custody will be made.
He assured Mayne that all steps possible were being taken to prevent this but what also concerned him was entirely out of his control. Müller’s defence had made much of Thomas Lee’s statement, he wrote, and his instinct was that it could prove favourable to the prisoner during a London trial. Despite their success in America, the detective was worried by the possibility that an English jury might yet acquit Müller of the murder of Thomas Briggs.