SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (26 page)

The brother officer, who had paid the cost of sending the major to his last home, now reluctantly cast aside his anonymity and gave evidence as a benefactor. He proved to be a young ex-subaltern of the
19th
Dragoon Guards. His languid replies to the questions showed clearly that if the board of inquiry had had the least evidence of any value, they would not have wasted their time in calling such a witness as this. Why, asked Mr Smiles, had the young man undertaken the reburial of his comrade?

"Major Habbakuk had rendered me a very great service in India," drawled the blond dandy. "I should not care to specify the matter here."

Why had the young man not come forward at the time of the major's death?

"I have been abroad the greater part of the year. I was in Ireland lately and came back a few days since."

On which day had he come back?

"As to the date, I must refresh my mind. But it was the day of the Victoria Cross parade before the Queen in the Park."

And with that, the testimony of Verney Maughan Dacre, late of the
19th
Dragoon Guards, and now of Albemarle Street, was concluded.

As the inquiry adjourned for mid-day dinner, Verity found Sergeant Samson in the street outside.

"The news in the Division," said Samson as they trudged towards the Strand, "is that you won't be took in while the railway inquiry lasts. That way you may give evidence there without being in custody."

"A
nd then?" asked Verity indignantl
y. "And then Mr Croaker may have you took in and continue his own investigation with you a prisoner." "Who says so?" "Most of the detail."

"I been put up," said Verity with a savage grimace. "I been put up by a bugger who's twice the man Ned Roper is. If I bloody well ever get near that fucking . . .

"'Ere, Verity!" said Samson, outraged, "I thought you was a Wesleyan!"

"So I am," said Verity in anger.

"Wesleyans don't use profanity."

"Wesleyans are 'uman beings." said Verity sharply, "and when tried beyond endurance will speak as strongly as any other man."

They walked for a moment in silence.

"I think," said Samson presently, "as you'd better spare some of your strong speaking for the next subject."

"What's that, then?"

"The guard, Cazamian. His body came up on last night's tide on the river flats near Woolwich. O' course he might have drowned himself. Only when a man drowns himself 'e don't usually tear at his own hair to force his head under, and 'e don't usually kneel on his own back so 'ard that you can see the shape of the knee-bone in the bruises."

"It don't make sense," said Verity, "not yet, at least."

"It makes sense to them that say he met his death after you knew Croaker was on to him."

"You ain't going to say I murdered him!" said Verity with feigned amusement.

"No," said Samson,
"I
ain't. But others may."

"Who?"

"Well," said Samson reluctantly, "there's Constable Meiklejohn, in a way. If there's a brief out for you as accessory to robbery, it'll be accessory to murder as well."

"Meiklejohn says that?"

"No, 'e don't exacdy
say
it. He's running a book on it, and the odds are two to one on."

18

Ned Roper's was not a long trial. Indeed, throughout the morning on which it took place, there were courteous exchanges between judge and counsel as to the likelihood of being able to start upon another case that afternoon, a much grander felony, to which Roper's downfall was a poor curtain-raiser.

It was the second time in his life that he had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey, and he admitted ruefully to himself that there had proved to be a sort of fairness in the law's procedures. On the last occasion, when he was guilty to his fingertips, the jurors were persuaded that he might not have known the rings and coins to be stolen property when he bought them. He had duly been set free. This time, the jurors were likely to put him away for a forgery of which he was not only innocent but ignorant. By his own standards, the two errors represented a balance of justice.

In appearance, the courtroom consisted of a deep floor from which rose a number of tall, railed pens, and two boxes of theatrical design on either side. Baron Martin and two brother judges, their faces reduced to flushed and aquiline anonymity by their shabby wigs, sat on their raised bench. Above them on the wall was the lion and the unicorn of England, while an iron rail divided the bench from the rest of the court. In the centre of the room was a large oval pen, from which the attorneys of both sides faced judges or jurors across the heads of the milling, shifting crowds of spectators. Beyond that, at the far end of the court from the judges, was a smaller dais, also railed, where the witnesses appeared in their turn. From the higher boxes on either side, well-dressed young gentlemen looked down upon the creature in the dock, holding handkerchiefs to their noses to dull the scent of the criminal poor with more agreeable perfumes. The humbler spectators pressed around the raised enclosures like brokers at the Exchange.

Roper was not permitted to give evidence, and he knew that no accused person could be a witness. At least, he thought, it protected a man from cross-examination. The witnesses were all called by the prosecution: Charles Scott-Hervey, who proved to be a horse auctioneer, and not a guardsman; Ernest Bullen, his companion; William Stubbs, the groom who had run the errand to Coutts Bank; Thomas Bland, who had driven the chaise, and, to Roper's dismay, the girl, Elaine.

Scott-Hervey and Bullen swore as to the details of the cheque for twenty pounds. Both these men, as well as the girl, described Roper taking the cheque into his little parlour. They described him writing something, which the girl swore was "written on the draft itself." Stubbs and Bland had then taken charge of the cheque in its envelope. Neither of them was even literate, let alone capable of altering the cheque by forgery. When opened at the bank, the envelope revealed a cheque in the sum of seven hundred and twenty pounds.

Shifting from one foot to the other in the dock, Ned Roper cursed them, damned the girl for a treacherous little whore, and damned himself too for not recognising her as a cross-bred young shickster
. His attorney, an elderly, bottl
e-nosed barrister with the appearance and manner of a failed schoolmaster, cross-examined the witnesses in vain. Every question brought an answer which made Ned Roper's case more hopeless still.

Might the cheque not have been tampered with after it had left Roper's possession? But by whom? Surely not by an illiterate coachman or groom? Well, then, might it not have been tampered with, out of malice, by some other person? But for what reason? Roper and the two customers were perfect strangers. What conceivable reason might they have for wishing to injure him? What advantage was there to them in doing so?

The defence went from bad to worse. Ned Roper knew the answers to some of the material questions, but not all the private-clothes peelers at Scotland Yard, he told himself, could have proved the truth in a court of law. The one thing he did not know was which of his many acquaintances had done him this injury.

During the course of his career, Roper had made so many enemies that it was profitless to speculate as to which of them had paid the witnesses who now appeared against him. There had been rival touts, in his early days, soundly thrashed after race meetings at Epsom or Newmarket as a warning to confine themselves to their own patch. There had been welshers, unable to pay Roper's rates of interest, whose arms or legs had been carefully splintered on his orders and who had been left in the agony of men broken on the wheel. There had been girls, too, abducted, "broken in," and then smuggled abroad in a drugged trance as "invalids," or strapped down inside a sham coffin, for sale to European "houses of joy." A few had even gone to the clandestine "maisons des supplices" in Bavaria or Austro-Hungary, where their torments were ended only by death. Such victims, presumably, had fathers, brothers, or lovers, who might sooner or later discover Roper's part in these transactions.

The arm of justice, when it struck at the command of "the swell mob," was infinitely longer than the arm of the law. Those witnesses who now gave evidence would have no idea of the identity of their employer, let alone of the injured men or women for whom that employer was acting. So many scores were outstanding against him that Ned Roper knew the futility of any attempt to identify this one.

As he listened to the evidence, he admitted to himself grudgingly that this "put up" was impeccable. The two clients, the groom, the coachman, the girl Elaine, were virtually the only witnesses of the transactions and they were all the property of his unknown enemy. On his own side, he might have called Coggin, but it was his counsel's view that, under cross-examination, Coggin would do more damage to the defence than to the prosecution.

When the evidence was finished, his lawyer ma
de an arid and unimpressive littl
e speech on Roper's behalf, a plea which was no more than a justification of the fee to be paid him. After the counsel for die crown had replied, the jurors seemed inclined at first to put their heads together and reach their decision without leaving the jury box. However, for the sake of apparent decorum, they shuffled out, smoked a pipe in the jury room, and then came back with their verdict. The tone of the proceedings had been so unambiguous that Roper felt no more apprehension than if sentence had already been passed upon him. Yet he was suddenly aware of Baron Martin, looking for all the world like a cantankerous old lady in white wig and red gown, staring directly at him.

"Edward Roper, if you have anything to say to the court before sentence is passed, you will make your statement now."

Roper was not in the least prepared for this. He held the edge of the dock firmly.

"I never altered that draft, your Lordship, and I can't say otherwise. I wish I may be damned if I know why those who have sworn against me have perjured themselves. I 'aven't a good character, I dare say, and there's many other things I wouldn't deny if I was charged with them. But I never was convicted of a crime, and I shouldn't stand here convicted of this one if the truth had been told."

Even as he heard his own words, Ned Roper knew that they sounded like the last desperate plea of a failed trickster. Baron Martin conferred in a whisper with his two brother judges and then turned to face Roper again.

"Edward Roper, you have been convicted of a forgery for which, as the law stood only a few years ago, you might have been hanged. Men are no longer put to death for this felony, but you are not therefore to be deceived into thinking that it is a crime of little consequence. It affronts the royal authority and destroys the very basis of all commercial trust and dealing. It remains in the eyes of the law one of the most heinous items in the calendar of crime. I am now to tell you that you will be taken from this place to a prison ship, and thence transported to a convict settlement beyond the seas, where you will be kept in penal servitude for the rest of your natural life."

It was a tribute to Roper's natural optimism that, in all those words, he clung to the fact that he had escaped death. He was to live, if only in a prison settlement in Australia. While they led him down the steps from the dock to the cells, he thought that even in such places there would be men who ruled and men who obeyed. Somewhere in that little world, Ned Roper would still be king.

For Ellen and the little fellow he must now be a dead man. But the loss was easier when he knew that they were better provided for than many a well-born lady and many a gentleman's son. So long as the secret of the bullion robbery was kept they, at least, would never be in want. Ellen had written to him twice since his imprisonment, indicating that she had taken the child with her into the country, for fear that she too might be arrested as Roper's associate and that the child might then be abandoned to the mercies of a Poor Law institution. She spoke of Lieutenant Dacre as though he were a benefactor rather than merely the administrator of Roper's wealth on her behalf.

At first. Roper had fretted over the tone of the letters, wondering if Verney Dacre were not at the girl's tail already. But now it made little difference to him. Indeed, it seemed all for the best if Nell should make a match with the handsome young dragoon whose sole contact with the criminal world had been through Ned Roper.

It was as well for Roper's peace of mind that the prison officers opened letters before they were handed to the prisoners. Thus he had not seen the envelopes which, though posted "somewhere in the country," in fact bore the postmark "London." It was as well, too, that he had not seen the girl in her attic room, writing at Dacre's dictation with the bruises of Coggin's powerful slaps still fresh on her face. Above all, it was as well for Roper that he went into captivity with faith, however misplaced, in Verney Dacre. The alternative was to face hopeless oblivion with a despair that killed most men by its slow but unremitting anguish.