The Reverse of the Medal (26 page)

'I believe not, thank you,' said Stephen, looking intently at the contents of the pie. 'I dined not long ago with a friend.'

'But tell me, Stephen,' said Jack in a much graver tone, 'how did you leave poor Martin?'

'I left him comfortable and in good hands - his bride to be is a most devoted nurse and he is attended by an intelligent apothecary - but I long for news of him: they have promised to send an express daily.'

They talked of Martin and their voyages together while Sophie went on with her apple tart. She was not a distinguished cook, but apple tart was one of the dishes she had succeeded with a little more often than not, and now, since Stephen was to sup with them, she decorated it with pastry shamrock leaves.

'If you please, sir,' said Killick, interrupting them, 'the young gentleman from the lawyers.'

Jack went into the next room, and returning some minutes later he said 'That was to tell me they have retained a Mr Lawrence. It was announced as a great piece of good news, and the young fellow seemed quite dashed when I did not cry out with delight. It appears that Mr Lawrence is a very clever lawyer indeed, and I suppose I should be glad; but upon my word I cannot see that I want a lawyer at all. We get along very well without counsel at courts-martial. And there are certainly no counsel present when defaulters are called to the quarterdeck and the grating is rigged; yet I believe justice is done. This affair is nothing like those miserable cases to do with the Ashgrove lead-mines, with innumerable obscure points of disputed contract and liability and interpretation that have to be dealt with by specialists; no, no, this is much more like a naval matter, and what I should like is simply to have my say, like a man called before his captain, and tell the judge and jury just what happened. Everyone agrees that there is nothing fairer than English justice, and if I tell them the plain truth I am sure I shall be believed. I shall say that I never conspired with anyone, and that if I followed Palmer's tip I did so with a perfectly innocent mind, as one might have followed a tip for the Derby. If that was wrong, I am perfectly willing to cancel all my time-bargains; but I have always understood that guilty intent was the essence of any crime. And if they confront me with any man who says that what I say is not true, why then, the court must decide which of us is to be believed - which is the more trustworthy - and I have not much fear of that. I have every confidence in the justice of my country,' said Jack, smiling at the pompous sound of his words.

'Have you ever been present at a trial?' asked Stephen.

'Courts-martial by the score, but never a civilian trial. All mine have taken place when I was away at sea.'

'I have listened to some, alas,' said Stephen, 'and I do assure you, brother, that the rules of the game, what constitutes evidence, the exits and entrances, and who is allowed to speak when, and what he may say, are infinitely more complex than they are in naval law. It is a game that has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, growing more tortuous with every generation, the rules multiplying, the precedents accumulating, equity interfering, statutes galore, and now it is such a black bitter tangle that a layman is perfectly helpless. I do beg you will attend to this eminent counsellor, and follow his advice.'

Pray do, sweetheart,' said Sophie.

Very well,' said Jack 'I dare say the case needs one, just as sometimes a ship needs a pilot for what seems the simplest harbour'.

This was most decidedly Mr Lawrence's opinion He was a tall, dark man who not only looked and sounded very well in court but who also had a reputation for defending his clients with the most dogged tenacity, rather as some medical men fight tooth and nail for their patients' lives, making a great personal point of it He was not one to stand on his dignity nor on legal etiquette and after the first meeting in his chambers with Jack's solicitors he often saw Stephen informally, all the more so since they took to one another at once They had both been to Trinity College in Dublin, and although they had scarcely met there they had many acquaintances in common, they were both ardent champions of Catholic emancipation, and they both detested Lord Liverpool and most of his Cabinet colleagues 'I do not think the ministry set this matter on foot,' said Lawrence 'That would be too gross even for Sidmouth's myrmidons; but I am quite sure that they mean to take every possible advantage of the situation now that it has arisen, and I must tell you that if this Palmer is not produced - physically produced and identified as the man in the chaise, I mean, whether he denies the whole affair or not - then I fear for your friend.'

'For some time now we have had Pratt searching for him, as I told you,' said Stephen. 'And now there are several others. On Monday morning a man who had lost money to me at cards long ago sent me a draft on his banker, which pleased me, and on Monday afternoon I had an express from the country, telling me that a friend upon whom I had operated was quite recovered, was quite out of danger - a valued friend. So by way of a thank-offering I have put up this unexpected sum as a reward for the discovery of the man in the chaise.'

'A considerable sum, I collect, from your reference to several men?'

'I should be ashamed to tell you how much. We played piquet day after day in Malta, and throughout the whole period the law of averages was suspended in my favour; if he had a septieme I had a huiti�, and so it went for the dear knows how many tedious sessions. He could not win at all, the creature. I did not scruple to accept his draft, however; and I find it concentrates my searchers' minds to a wonderful degree. I am to see Pratt this afternoon.'

'How I hope he has good news for you. The eagerness of this prosecution - the steady refusal of bail, the hurrying forward of the case so that it shall be heard by a furious Tory, a member of the Cabinet - is something rare in my experience; and unless we have something solid to go upon it is hard to see any line of defence that can withstand their attack.'

Stephen was drinking his after-dinner coffee at Fladong's 'when he saw Pratt come in: the man looked pale, drawn, tired and discouraged. 'Here is a chair, Mr Pratt,' said Stephen. 'What will you take?'

'Thank you, sir,' said Pratt, letting himself down heavily. 'If I might have a glass of gin and water, cold, that would he prime. I believe we have found our man.'

But there was no exultation in his tone nor on his face -his was not a triumphant look - and Stephen called for the gin before saying 'Will you go on, now, Mr Pratt?'

'It was Bill Hemmings' friend Josiah. He was going over the river corpses with the Southwark coroner's man and he came across one that fitted my description - right for age, height, hair and build, dressed genteel, and had not been in the water above a dozen tides. But what fixed Josiah in his mind was that the coroner's man, name of Body, William Body, whose wife works at Guy's, had got hold of a paper, a little hand-bill passed about the hospitals and police-offices and so on asking for information for just such a gentleman - a Mr Paul Ogle, it said, that was likely to have been taken ill - and anyone who brought news of his whereabouts to N. Bartlet of 3, Back Court, Lyon's Inn, should be rewarded for his trouble. Lyon's Inn, sir.'

'Just so, Mr Pratt.'

I hurried round to 3, Back Court, in course, and in course I drew a blank again. Bartlet was gone and nobody knew where she was gone to. She was a whore, sir, and she was in the flogging line a quiet, plain woman, no longer young; had not been in the court long, and kept herself to herself, but was well liked, and it seems that Mr Ogle was her sweetheart. She was in a sad way about him.'

'What are the chances of finding her?'

Pratt shook his head Even if she could be found she would deny everything - refuse to speak. Otherwise she knows very well they would serve her out the same way they served Ogle.'

'True enough,' said Stephen. 'She would never stand up and swear to him in court. But this does not apply to the post-boys or the people of the inn at Sittingbourne. The young woman there took a good look at the man's face. She could identify him, which would at least be something. You said he had not been long in the water, I believe?'

'No more he had, sir, not above a dozen tides,' said Pratt. 'But -' he hesitated, '- there ain't no face.'

'I see,' said Stephen. 'You are sure of your identification, however?'

'Yes, sir, I am. I went over at once and picked him out among two score without being told,' said Pratt. 'You get the knack of these things with practice: but that would not answer for the young woman at the inn, nor it would not stand up in a court of law.'

'Well,' said Stephen, 'I will come and look at your cadaver. Perhaps it has some physical peculiarities that might be useful: I am, after all, a medical man.'

'Although I am a medical man,' said Stephen to Lawrence, 'I have not often seen a more saddening, shocking spectacle than the cellar where the river-dead are kept. In hard times they get as many as twenty a week, and now, with the coroner away... I examined the body - the keeper was most civil and obliging - but until we turned it over I found no particular marks by which a man could be recognized. On the back, however, there were the traces of habitual flagellation, and this I found perfectly convincing.'

'Certainly,' said Lawrence. 'It certainly reinforces our conviction, but I am afraid it would be useless or even damaging as evidence, even if it were admissible. Had we been able to find the living man and had we been able to look into his antecedents then he would have been an invaluable witness, however hostile; but a faceless corpse, identified by no more than hearsay, no, it will not do. No: I shall have to fall back on other lines of defence. You have great influence with him, Maturin: could not you and Mrs Aubrey persuade him to incriminate the General? Even just a very little?'

'I could not.'

'I was afraid you would say that. When I approached the subject at the Marshalsea he did not take it at all well. I am not an exceptionally timid man, I believe, but I felt extremely uneasy when he stood up, about seven foot tall and swelling with anger. And yet, you know, it was quite certainly that grasping old man and his stock-jobbing friends who bought and bought and then industriously spread the rumour of peace; it was they who sold out at the top of the market, not Captain Aubrey; and his dealings were trifling, compared with theirs. Most of their transactions would have been made through outside dealers, who are not under the control of the Stock Exchange committee, and they cannot be traced, but intelligent men in the City tell me they probably moved more than a million of money in the Funds alone. Captain Aubrey's business, on the other hand, was mostly conducted by regular brokers, and the committee have all the details.'

'In these matters he is not to be led,' said Stephen. 'Then again, he has a very high notion of English justice, and is persuaded that he has but to tell a plain, unvarnished, wholly truthful tale for the jury to acquit him. He has a reverence for judges, as part of the established order almost on a par with the Royal Navy or the Brigade of Guards or even perhaps the Anglican church.'

'But surely he has had same experience of the law, has he not?'

'Only of the interminable Chancery cases that you know about, and for him they do not represent the real law at all, but only the technical warfare of pettifogging attorneys. For him the law is something much simpler and more direct - the wise, impartial judge, the jury of decent, fair-minded men, with perhaps a few barristers to speak for the inarticulate and ask questions designed to bring out the truth, probing questions that he will be happy to answer.'

'Yes, so I had gathered. But he must know that he will not be allowed to speak - his solicitors must have told him the nature of a Guildhall trial?'

'He says it is all one. As an officer speaks up for a tongue-tied foremast hand, so counsel will speak for him: but he will be there - the judge and jury can look at him, and if counsel strays off course he can pull him up. He says he has every confidence in the justice of his country.'

'It would be a friendly act to bring him to a more earthly, mundane view of things. For I must tell you, Maturin, that with no Palmer I really fear for Captain Aubrey.'

'I have not had much more experience of these matters than Jack Aubrey. Tell me, now, how should I best blackguard the law?'

'You could not truthfully blackguard the law, which is the best law that any nation was ever blessed with,' said Lawrence, 'but you might point out that it is administered by human beings. Some of them, indeed, can scarcely claim so high a rank. You might remind him of the number of Lord Chancellors who have been dismissed for bribery and corruption; you might speak of notoriously political, cruel, and oppressive judges, like Jeffries or Page or I am sorry to say Lord Quinborough; and you might tell him that although the English bar shines in comparison with all others, it has some members who are perfectly unscrupulous, able and unscrupulous: they go for the verdict, and be damned to the means. Pearce, who leads for the prosecution, is just such a man. He gained a great reputation as a Treasury devil and now he has a most enviable practice. A very clever fellow indeed, quick to take advantage of every turn in a case, and when I contemplate my bout with him, Quinborough keeping the ring, why, I feel less sanguine than I could wish. And if the rumours of one of General Aubrey's stock-jobbing friends turning King's evidence are true, I do not feel sanguine at all.'

'I am concerned to hear it. May I ask what you consider the best line of defence?'

'If Captain Aubrey cannot be induced to incriminate the General, then I shall be reduced to abusing Pearce, discrediting his witnesses as much as possible, and playing on the feelings of the jury. I shall of course speak at length about Aubrey's distinguished record: no doubt he has been wounded?'

'Myself I have treated - let me see - oh, the dear knows how many sword-thrusts, bullet-wounds, great gashes made by flying splinters, and blows from falling blocks. Once I was within an ace of taking oft his arm.'