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Authors: Colin Dexter

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Joseph Jarnell, the co-prisoner pending whose evidence the re-trial had been agreed, related to the Court the damning confessions Oldfield had betrayed whilst the two men shared a prison-cell. In essence such 'confessions' amounted to a rather crude attempt on Oldfield's part to settle the majority of blame for almost everything which had happened on Musson and Towns. But in spite of the man's earnest manner and consistency of his account, Jarnell's story made little no impression. Yet his testimony carried interest, if not conviction. Amongst the strongest of the fabrications which Oldfield had sought to put about was that Joanna Franks had in excess of fifty golden sovereigns in one of her two boxes; that Towns had discovered this fact, and that Joanna had found him rummaging through her trunks. She had threatened (so the allegation ran) to report him to the next Pickford Office if he did not mend his ways and make immediate apology and restoration. (Such nonsense was wholly discredited at the time, and may be safely discounted now.)
Together with many other items, the knife which Joanna had been observed sharpening was later found in one of her trunks, the cord of which had been cut, and which still remained untied. The assumption was that at some point the men had opened Joanna's belongings after the murder, and had replaced the knife in one of the trunks. It must certainly be considered a strong possibility that the men intended to steal some of her possessions, for as we have seen a charge of theft was included, in the most strongly worded terms, in the original indictment of the crew at the first trial in August 1859. It seems, however, that Prosecuting Counsel at the second trial were sufficiently confident to forgo such a charge and to concentrate their accusations on murder, since the lesser charge (difficult, in any case, as it would have been to substantiate) was subsequently excluded. We have seen a similar procedure operating, in first trial, concerning the charges of rape; and perhaps it is of some strange and macabre interest to note that in the original trial the charges of both rape and theft (as well as murder) were made against each individual member of the crew – including the youth Wootton.
Out of all the evidence given at that memorable second trial at Oxford in April 1860, fairly certainly that of Charles Franks himself evoked the greatest feeling and the widest sympathy. The poor man was weeping aloud as he entered the witness-box, and it seemed as if it were almost beyond his physical powers to raise his eyes in order to bear the sight of the prisoners and to look upon their faces. He had obviously been deeply in love with Joanna, and, turning his back on the vile men arraigned before the Court he explained how in consequence of some information he had come into Oxfordshire and seen his wife's dead body at the time of the inquest. For although it was dreadfully disfigured (here the poor fellow could not at all restrain his feelings) yet he knew it by a small mark behind his wife's left ear, a mark of which only a parent or an intimate lover could have known. Corroboration of identification (if, in fact, corroboration was needed) was afforded by the shoes, later found in the fore-cabin of the
Barbara Bray,
which matched in the minutest degrees the contours of the dead woman's feet.
At the conclusion of the hearing, and after a lengthy summing-up by Mr Augustus Benham, the Jury, under their duly appointed chairman, begged permission of his Lordship to retire to consider their verdict.
Chapter Sixteen
At a hotel facing the sea at Brighton, he ate a good breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade; then took a stroll round the town before returning to the station and boarding a train for Worthing
(Court Record of evidence given in the trial of Neville George Clevely Heath, on the morning after
the murder of Margery Gardner)

 

Perhaps it was the dream.
Whatever it was, Morse knew that something had at prodded him into a slightly more intelligent appraisal the Colonel's story, because he was now beginning to take account of two or three major considerations which had been staring at him all the while.
The first of these was the character of Joanna Franks herself. How had it come about – whatever the fortuitous, voluntary, or deliberate circumstances in which Joanna met her death – that the crew of the
Barbara Bray
had insisted time and time again that the wretched woman
,
had been nothing but one long, sorry trial to them all ever since she'd first jumped on board at Preston Brook? How
was
it that they were still damning and blasting the poor woman's soul to eternity way, way
after
they had pushed her into the Canal and, for all Morse or anyone else knew, held her head under the black waters until she writhed in agony against their murderous hands no longer? Had a satisfactory explanation been forthcoming for such events? All right, there was still Part Four of the story to come. But so far, the answer was 'no'.
There was, though (as it now occurred to Morse), one possible dimension to the case that the good Colonel had never even hinted at – either through an excessive sense of propriety, or from a lack of imagination – namely that
Joanna Franks had been a seductive tease:
a woman who over those long hours of that long journey had begun drive the crew towards varied degrees of insanity with her provocative overtures, and to foster the inevitable jealousies arising therefrom.
Come off it, Morse!
Yes, come off it! There was no evidence to support such a view. None! Yet the thought stayed with him, reluctant to leave. An attractive woman… boredom… drink. a tunnel… continued boredom… more drink another tunnel… darkness… desire… opportunity… still more drink… and more Priapic promptings in the loins… Yes, all that, perhaps, the Colonel himself: may have understood. But what if she, Joanna herself, had been the active catalyst in the matter? What if she had craved for the men just as much as they had craved for her? What (put it simply, Morse!)
what if she'd wanted sex just as badly as they did?
What if she were the precursor of Sue Bridehead in
Jude the Obscure,
driving poor old Phillotson potty, as well as poor old Jude?
'Men's questions!' he heard a voice say. 'Just the sort of thoughts that would occur to an ageing MCP like you!'
There was a second general consideration which, from the point of view of criminal justice, struck Morse as considerably more cogent and a good deal less contentious. In the court-room itself, the odds did seem, surely, to have been stacked pretty heavily against the crew of the
Barbara Bray –
with 'presumption of innocence' playing decidedly second fiddle to 'assumption of guilt'. Even the fair-minded Colonel had let his prejudgements run away with him a little: already he'd decided that any ostensible concern on the part of the boatmen for the missing passenger (believed drowned?) was only shown great presence of mind' in order to establish a semi-convincing alibi for themselves; already he'd decided that these same boatmen, 'still obviously very drunk' (and by implication still knocking it back at top-tipplers' rates) had manoeuvred their 'infamous' craft down the Thames to Reading without having the common decency to mention to anyone the little matter of the murder they'd committed on the way. Did (Morse asked himself) wicked men tend to get more
drunk –
or more
sober –
after committing such callous crimes? Interesting thought…
Yes, and there was a third general point – one that seemed to Morse most curious: the charges both of theft and of Rape had, for some reason, been dropped against the boatmen. Was this because the Prosecution had been wholly confident, and decided to go for the graver charge of Murder – with the expectation (fully justified) that they had sufficient evidence to convict 'Rory' Oldfield and Co. on the capital indictment? Or was it, perhaps, because they had too
little
confidence in their ability to secure conviction on the
lesser
charges? Obviously, as Morse seemed vaguely to remember from his schooldays, neither rape nor theft would have been considered too venial an offence in the middle of the last century, but… Or was it just possible that these charges were dropped because there was no convincing evidence to support them? And if so, was the indictment for murder entered upon by the Prosecution for one simple reason – that it presented the
only
hope of bringing those miserable men to justice? Certainly, as far as multiple rape was concerned, the evidence must have been decidedly dodgy – as the Judge in the first trial had pronounced. But what about theft? The prerequisite of theft was that the aggrieved party possessed something worth the stealing. So what was it that poor Joanna had about her person, or had in either of her two travelling-boxes, that was worth the crime? The evidence, after all, pointed to the fact that she hadn't got a couple of pennies to rub together. Her fare for the canal-trip had been sent up from her husband in London; and even facing the terrible risks of travelling with a drunken, lecherous crew – certainly after Banbury had been reached – she had
not
taken, or not been
able
to take, any alternative means of transport to get to the husband who was awaiting her in the Edgware Road. So? So what had she got, if anything, that was worth stealing?
There were those shoes again, too! Did Joanna deliberately leave off her shoes? Did she enjoy the feel of the mud between her toes along the tow-path – like some bare-foot hippie on a watery walk round Stonehenge in the dawn?
What a strange case it had been! The more he thought about it, the greater the number of questions that kept occurring to Morse's mind. He had a good deal of experience in cases where the forensic and pathological evidence had been vital to the outcome of a court case. But he wasn't particularly impressed with the conclusions that (presumably) must have been drawn from Mr Samuels' comparatively scientific findings. For Morse (wholly, it must be admitted, without medical or scientific qualifications) the state of the dress, and the bruising described, would have been much more consistent with Joanna being held firmly from behind, with the assailant's (?) left hand gripping her left wrist; and his (her?) right hand being held forcibly across her mouth, where thumb and forefinger would almost invariably produce the sort of bruising mentioned in the recorded description.
What of this Jarnell fellow? The Prosecution must have been considerably impressed, at the first hearing, with his potential testimony. Why, otherwise, would anone be willing to postpone a trial for six months – on the word of a gaolbird? Even the Colonel had given the fellow a good write-up! So why was it that when he duly turned up to tell his tale, at the second trial, no one wished to listen to him? Had there been something, some knowledge, somewhere, that had caused the court to discount, or at least discredit, the disclosures his cell-mate, Oldfield, had allegedly made to him? Because whatever accusations could be levelled against Oldfield, the charge of inconsistency was
not
amongst them. On three occasions, after Joanna's death, he had insisted that she was "out of her mind", "sadly deranged", off her head"… And there had, it appeared, been no conflict of evidence between the crewmen that on one occasion at least (did that mean two?) they had been called upon to save Joanna from drowning herself. The one vital point Jarnell disclosed was that Oldfield had not only protested his own innocence of the murder, but had also sought to shift all responsibility on to his fellow crewmen. Not, to be sure, a very praiseworthy piece of behaviour! Yet,
if Oldfield himself were innocent,
where else could he have laid the blame? At the time, in any case, no one had been willing to listen seriously either to what Jarnell or to what Oldfield might have say. But if they were right? Or if
one
of them were right?
A curious little thought struck Morse at this point, and dredged itself in a corner of his brain – for future reference. And a rather bigger thought struck him simultaneously: that he needed to remember he was only playing a game with himself; only trying to get through a few days' illness with a happy little problem to amuse himself with – like a tricky cryptic crossword from
The Listener.
It was just a little worrying, that was all… the way the dice had been loaded all the time against those drunkards who had murdered Joanna Franks.
And the niggling doubt persisted.
If they had…
Chapter Seventeen
The detective novelist, as a class, hankers after complication and ingenuity, and is disposed to reject the obvious and acquit the accused if possible. He is uneasy until he has gone further and found some new and satisfying explanation of the problem
(Dorothy L. Sayers,
The Murder of Julia Wallace)

 

The thought that the crewmen may not have been guilty 'Joanna Franks's murder proved to be one of those heady notions that evaporate in the sunrise of reason. For if the crewmen had not been responsible, who on earth had? Nevertheless, it seemed to Morse pretty much odds-on that if the case had been heard a century later, there would been no certain conviction. Doubtless, at the time, the jury's verdict had looked safe and satisfactory, especially to hostile crowds lining the streets and baying for blood, but
should
the verdict have been reached? True, there was enough circumstantial suspicion to sentence a saint; yet no really
direct
evidence, was there? No witnesses to murder; no indication of
how
the murder had been committed; no adequately convincing motive for
why.
Just a time, and a place, and Joanna lying face-downwards in Duke's Cut all that while ago.
Unless, of course, there were some passages of evidence not reported – either from the first or the second trial? The Colonel had clearly been rather more interested in the lax morals of the boatmen than in any substantiation of the evidence, and he could just have omitted the testimony of any corroborative witnesses who might have been called. Perhaps it would be of some interest – in this harmless! game he was playing – to have a quick look through those Court Registers, if they still existed; or through the relevant copies
of Jackson's Oxford Journal,
which certainly
did
exist: as Morse knew, filed on microfiche in the Oxford Central Library. (Doubtless in the Bodley, too!) And, in any case he hadn't finished the Colonel's book yet. Why, there might be much still to be revealed in that last exciting episode! Which he now began to read.
BOOK: The Wench Is Dead
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