The Sleep of Reason (36 page)

He did ask me – in an aside – whether Bosanquet (whom he never referred to by name, but always by the Anglo-Saxon curse, as though it were a kind of title) was going to “drag in” any of the crowd. George hadn’t missed the single oblique reference. I said that it seemed unlikely. Perhaps the people who lent the car might be mentioned – were they connections of George’s?

George shook his head, his expression for an instant lost and suffering, and said that he didn’t know. “I don’t want anyone else to get into a mess,” he muttered, repeating the words that had chilled me the day before Christmas Eve.

He turned his attention to Margaret again, trying to think of another treat for her, before we returned to the Assize Hall. Again the crowded entrance, the barristers in the courtroom seen from above, the ascent of those two into the dock. A little delay, only three minutes this time. The ritual bowing. Bosanquet on his feet, beginning: “My lord, and members of the jury, we now turn for a moment to certain statements of Miss Pateman–”

MISS Pateman made a number of statements to police officers during the period when Miss Ross was being examined by Detective-Superintendent Maxwell,” said Bosanquet in a level tone, without a flick of sarcasm. “On the following day Detective-Superintendent Maxwell decided to take her out once more to Rose Cottage and question her himself. By this time, of course, the search in and round the cottage had been intensified. Traces of blood, small traces, had been found in the bedroom. This blood, as you will hear from experts of the Forensic Laboratory, did not belong to the blood groups of either Miss Ross or Miss Pateman. It did, however, belong to the blood group of Eric Mawby. In the garden were found the remains of a nylon blouse not completely burnt, a blouse which witnesses recognised as having been worn by Miss Ross. On this were detectable some stains of the same blood group.

“In due course, as Detective-Superintendent Maxwell interrogated her–” (How long had they been alone together? When was she told that Cora had broken down?) – “Miss Pateman withdrew her denials that the child had never been inside the cottage. She now told what appeared to be a coherent and self-consistent account of those events. She and Miss Ross had for some time past wanted to have a child alone, by themselves, to be in control of. She gave a reason for this desire. They wanted to teach it to behave.”

For the first time in the long and even speech, Bosanquet laid a stress, it sounded like an involuntary stress, upon the words. In an instant he had controlled himself. “They had accordingly, so it appears, picked out a boy at random. For some time they had driven round the city, in places where they were not familiar, looking for a suitable subject. It was the misfortune of Eric Mawby and his parents that they settled on him. They decided on the weekend of September 20. They bought the Meccano set two days before in order to give him something to do. They picked him up on the Friday evening without difficulty. According to Miss Pateman’s account, Eric was pleased to go with them.” Bosanquet paused. “That we cannot, of course, deny or establish. We also cannot establish at what stage exactly they began to ill-treat him. Possibly early on the Saturday. You will hear expert evidence about the many wounds on his body. He suffered them, according to expert judgment, many hours before death. These body wounds were healing when he was finally beaten to death by at least seven blows on the head, probably with something like a poker or a metal bar and also with a wooden implement.

“About the wounds on the body, Miss Pateman said that they had – what she called ‘punished’ him. They wanted to teach him to behave.

“I should say that neither she nor Miss Ross have ever admitted that they actually killed him. They have each given accounts of what happened to Eric on the Sunday night. The accounts are different. One is, that he was put on a bus to take him back to the town. The other, which is Miss Ross’, is that they drove him back themselves in the borrowed car, and dropped him at the corner of the road leading to his parents’ house. Needless to say, neither of these stories deserves a moment’s thought. That same night, and early the following morning, that same car was seen, as will be sworn by two witnesses, very close to Markers Copse. Further, when the car was ultimately examined – I must tell you that its real owners had no conceivable connection with this crime – there was evidence of blood, blood of Eric’s group, on the floor of the back seat.”

He turned to the judge, and remarked: “I think I need go no further at present, my lord. It would be my duty, if there were any conceivable doubt about the facts of this case, to make the position clear to members of the jury. But there is no doubt. We know most of what happened to Eric Mawby from the Friday evening until the time that he was buried. I haven’t any wish to add to the intolerable facts you are obliged to listen to. You can imagine for yourselves the suffering of this child. There is no doubt about the way he was killed, nor about who killed him. All I need say is that this has been proved to be a deliberate, calculated, premeditated crime. That is enough.”

During the last few minutes of Bosanquet’s speech, I had flinched – and this was true of Margaret and everyone round me – from looking at the two women in the dock, although, keeping my gaze on Bosanquet, I could not help noticing with peripheral vision the fingers of Kitty obsessively scribbling her notes.

A witness was being sworn, a man in his twenties, soft-faced, soft-voiced. It turned out that, with the indifferent businesslike bathos of the legal process, he was being examined about the loan of his car.

The box was on the judge’s right hand, a couple of yards away from where Bosanquet had been standing: so that prosecutor, dock, witness, were all exposed to the same light. The young man’s fair hair shone against the panelling.

“Your name is Laurence Tompkin? You are a schoolteacher employed by the local education authority? You know both the defendants?”

Yes, said the young man in a gentle, ingratiating manner, as of one who was trying to win affection, but he knew Miss Ross better than Miss Pateman. Do you remember either of them saying they might want to borrow your car? Yes, he remembered that, it was Miss Ross. When was that? In the early summer, last year. In the summer, not September? No, much earlier, more like June. What did she say? She just said they might want to borrow it some time, she wanted to be sure that it was available. Then, some time later she did borrow it? Yes. For a weekend in September? Yes. Can you tell us the date? The weekend beginning September 20. Was the car returned? Yes. When? The following Monday. Did you notice anything odd about it? There seemed to be a lot of mud on the number plate, although it had been a sunny weekend. You didn’t examine the floor of the car, down below the back seat? No, he didn’t think of doing so.

Benskin, Cora’s counsel, got up to speak for the first time that day. He was a small man, with a long nose and a labile merry mouth: his voice was unexpectedly sonorous. He was asking a few questions for appearance’s sake. He had, of course, understood Bosanquet’s tactics, that is, to demonstrate the long-laid planning before the boy’s death. As for the defence’s own tactics, a good many of us were puzzled. They seemed to be in a state of indecision or suspense.

It would be perfectly reasonable to ask a friend, said Benskin, whether he could lend a car? Perfectly reasonable to ask, as a kind of insurance, if one was having any trouble with one’s own? Even if the trouble didn’t become serious for weeks? As for the return of the car, if Miss Ross and Miss Pateman drove it back to the town late on the Sunday night, they couldn’t conveniently have returned it, could they? It was perfectly reasonable to park it outside their own house, and return it next day?

Having registered his appearance, Benskin sat down, with a grim half-smile to his junior. Kitty Pateman’s counsel did not get up at all.

The young man left the box. He was one of George’s group: he had not been asked how he could afford a car, or whether he shared it with anyone, or whether he also shared a cottage, or at what kind of parties he and Cora Ross had met. No one had a reason, so it appeared, to disturb that underground. This had been the guess that I made to George. I glanced at him, heavy-faced, mouth a little open: perhaps, even after the prosecutor’s ending, not so many minutes before, he felt – as we all do in extreme calamities, when a minor selfish worry is taken away – some sort of relief.

Another witness, this time the manager of the garage where the women’s own car had been left for repairs. When had it been deposited? September 19. What was supposed to be wrong?

At this the judge, shifting himself from one haunch to the other as he spoke, became restive.

“Surely we are going into very great detail, aren’t we, Mr Recorder?”

“With your permission, my lord, I wish to establish the whole build up before the child was abducted.”

“I suggest we are all ready to take a certain amount for granted.”

“This is a complicated structure, my lord.” Bosanquet spoke mildly, but he didn’t budge. “I require my pieces of bricks-and-mortar.”

“Spare us anything you don’t require,” said the judge, with a nod which was resigned but courteous.

The garage manager’s mystification: she (Cora Ross) could have put it right in ten minutes. She was a first-class mechanic herself.

Next witness, Detective-Constable Hallam. He was raw-boned, quite young, and as he stood in the box his head was bent down towards his hands. His pertinacity about the car. “I was not satisfied,” he said, for once raising his head. His manner was stern but guilty-seeming, he hesitated over answering matter-of-fact questions. Gradually Bosanquet’s junior, young Archibald Rose, dug the story out of him. How he hadn’t been satisfied. How at the garage he thought something was strange. How he made enquiries all along the half-mile between Eric’s home and the recreation ground, asking if a green Morris had ever been seen. When had the car first patrolled that route? (That couldn’t be answered, but it might have been as much as a month before September 20.)

The young constable, who had been a halting, unhappy witness, was given a special word of approval. Without him, it might have taken much longer to look in the direction of Rose Cottage.

Statements from persons who had noticed a green Morris, read in a strong voice by the Clerk of Assize. “I saw this car when I was getting home from work, but did not take its number…”

A detective-sergeant in the box, the first search of the cottage. The piece of Meccano. Exhibit. A plain-clothes policeman, standing by the clerk, with a stiff robot-like movement held up his hand. From where I sat, just a glint of metal. Then he exposed it on his palm. The gesture was as mechanical as the plaything. An ordinary object, prosaic and innocent: yet it did not seem quite real, or else had its own aura. An object like Davidson’s capsule.

“Was this the piece of Meccano you discovered in Rose Cottage…?”

“It was.”

Another detective-sergeant (the cottage and garden had been crowded with them). The Meccano box. Exhibited. The plain-clothes policeman went through his drill.

“Was this the box you discovered in the garden of Rose Cottage…?”

“It was.”

The shop assistant at the Midland Educational Company. The bill for a Number One Meccano Set.

“Is this bill dated September 18?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you remember selling this set?”

“Yes, I do.”

“To whom did you sell it?”

“To the one sitting there–” She glanced at Cora and away again.

“That was on Wednesday, September 18?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bosanquet asked her to make sure of the date. “I’m sorry to press this, my lord, but you will see what I am establishing–” The judge turned to the jury. “Bricks-and-mortar,” he said. He sounded affable and half-sardonic: but he was being fair to Bosanquet, underlining that this was evidence of intent. Following him, Benskin tried to shake the identification, but the girl was both gentle and strong-willed, and he got nowhere.

Witnesses, names, occupations, addresses, came, went, were forgotten, a random slice of the town. One stood out, a Mrs Ramsden, who testified about seeing a boy being driven in the car. She was plump, with a sharp nose poking out of the flesh: as a girl she must have had a cheerful, impertinent prettiness. As soon as she gave evidence, she gave the impression (much more so than any of the policemen) of being a natural witness. She was one of those people, and there were very few, who seemed to be abnormally observant and at the same time scrupulous. Yes, she had seen a brown Austin driving out of the city on the evening of September 20. What time? She could be fairly exact: she was hurrying home for a television programme: about 5.45. Where was this? Not far from the recreation ground? A few hundred yards away. What did she notice? A small boy sitting between two people in the front seat. She didn’t know Eric: from the photographs, it could have been him, it looked very like him, she couldn’t be more positive than that. A woman was driving the car. The other person in the front seat? Might have been a man or woman. Fair-haired, wearing dark glasses. What was the boy doing? He seemed to be waving. He might have been struggling? He might have been, but she didn’t think of it at the time. She thought that he was laughing. The person with dark glasses had an arm round him? Yes, round his neck. Like this? Bosanquet beckoned one of the plain-clothes policemen, who, sheepish and red-faced, had his neck encircled by counsel’s arm. There was a titter, tight and guilty, the first that afternoon. Both defence counsel cross-examined. Kitty’s, a young silk called Wilson, his actor’s face hard, masculine, frowning, was trying to demonstrate that the boy had gone willingly. Benskin, that the kidnapping might have taken place much later. To most people in the court, none of this could matter, it only dragged out the strain. All those who were used to courts of law would have known by now, though, that they were struggling with their instructions, though I for one couldn’t be certain what any of them were hoping for.