Contents

1.   Portrait of a Judge

2.   Table Talk

3.   I Killed Gordon McNaghten

4.   No Expectations

5.   I’m Afraid

6.   The Lesson

7.   The Adjutant Who Knew Too Much

8.   The Application

9.   I Forget the Name

10. The Patient

11. The Good-in-Man

12. Unkind Cut

13. Near Miss

14. The Good Turn

15. The Nightmare

16. Prize Story

17. Proof

18. Striking the Balance

19. The Limit

20. The Wanted Man

21. Mock Trial

22. The Wife in the Train

Portrait of a Judge

The gales of the last few days had abated, and Mr Justice Pantin was sitting, as happily as his gout would allow him, in the garden of his little cottage. He was the oldest Queen’s Bench judge, and those who knew him realised that he would never retire. Since his wife’s death many years before, he had lived by himself in a flat in London, but he spent his weekends and most of the vacations in his country cottage, looked after by his old housekeeper Mary.

He was well known to the public, partly by reason of the apparent severity of some of his sentences but also for the fairness of his decisions and the coldly logical manner in which he approached every case, no matter how great the human interest.

If you came before him on a criminal charge and were innocent you could not wish for a better judge. You were certain to be acquitted. If, however, you were guilty but had emotional or sentimental reasons for the crime you had committed, you could feel quite sure that such reasons would not appeal to the judge. He tried each case with calculated methodical precision and, indeed, as far as one could tell, he conducted his life in the same way. It is difficult to think that, if he had been standing in the dock himself instead of sitting on the Bench, he would have asked for more mercy from his judge than he, as a judge, was prepared to give to the offender. On one occasion a prisoner convicted of a serious crime was suffering from a deadly disease and, on being sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, informed the judge that he would die in prison. ‘You should have thought of that before,’ Mr Justice Pantin had said.

The judge was eighty-four years old. Sixty-four years before, he had won the quarter-mile and put the weight for Cambridge, but he was now crippled with gout in both feet. He sat in a deckchair, with his books on one side and sandwiches and a vacuum flask on the other. It was a lovely day, and he was looking forward to making the most of it, partly in reading and partly in meditation.

He was self-sufficient and enjoyed his own company. Mary had been given a day off to go to see some friends in London, but she had made certain before going that everything was provided to make him comfortable. And, apart from his gout, he was very comfortable, sitting in the warm sunlight and pleased with the thought of a whole day with himself and his books.

He had just finished an article in the Law Quarterly on a technical aspect of the criminal law when a stranger came into the garden.

‘What d’you want?’ said the judge.

‘To talk to you,’ replied the stranger. His voice was cultured, soft and confident. He was small and light-framed and might have been described as puny, but for the air of menace about him.

‘I don’t think I know you,’ said the judge. ‘Who are you?’

‘I doubt whether my name would mean anything to you,’ said the man, ‘because, at the moment, it is “Smith”.’

‘You had better go then,’ said the judge.

‘I shall do nothing of the kind,’ said the man. ‘I shall stay here until I have finished what I have come to do. I’m afraid this is one of those rare occasions – possibly it is the only occasion – when someone is in the position to dictate to you.’

‘Will you kindly go away?’ said the judge.

‘I will reconsider your request,’ said the man, ‘if you will tell me what you will do if I don’t.’

It did not take Mr Justice Pantin many seconds to realise that there was nothing he could do. His housekeeper was out; his telephone was out of order; he was quite unable to walk three-quarters of a mile to his nearest neighbour and, unless someone else happened to visit him, which was unlikely, he would have to endure the presence of the stranger until he chose to take himself off.

‘I order you to leave my garden,’ said the judge. ‘Unfortunately I cannot compel you by force to do so and, if you refuse to go, I can only wait until someone else arrives here.’

‘Precisely,’ said the man, ‘and, if the results of my inquiries are not wrong, that cannot be for some time. Accordingly, I propose to talk to you.’

‘I don’t,’ said the judge, ‘propose to talk to you.’

‘That may be,’ said the man, ‘but I think you will do so none the less. Forgive me a moment. I can talk more easily sitting down. I will go and get a chair.’

He went into the cottage, returning shortly with a chair, which he placed in front of the judge. The latter had in the meantime picked up a book and started to read.

‘You can pretend not to listen as much as you like, but you will find it physically impossible not to do so. So you might as well hear what I have to say with a good grace.’

The judge made no answer.

‘Some years ago,’ said the man, ‘you sentenced a friend of mine to death. If it had not been for your summing-up, my friend would probably have been acquitted. At least, that is what most people thought. As it was, you were so convinced in your own mind of his guilt that you gave him no chance. One of my reasons for coming here is to show you how wrong you were, though I don’t imagine that that will have much effect upon the parchment which serves you for a mind.’

Although the judge could not in fact help hearing what was being said, he gave no indication that he had done so.

‘You are so cocksure of your own infallibility,’ went on the man, ‘that I imagine that nothing can shake you. Let me see whether this makes any difference. I, in fact, committed the murder for which Frank Turner was hanged.’

The judge remembered Turner’s case, but still gave no sign that he was listening. Nevertheless, he could not refrain from casting his mind back to the trial and trying to recollect what was the evidence.

He was not in the least concerned with the man’s statement. Frank Turner had been tried according to law and had been found guilty. He had appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal and his appeal had been dismissed. If he were innocent fifty times over, it could make no difference now, nor was the judge much concerned with his innocence or guilt. Laws made by human beings are fallible and, occasionally, an innocent man may be found guilty. The judge’s only duty was to see that the law was duly applied. If, after a proper trial, with proper evidence and a proper summing-up, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, that was an end of the matter. If the man happened to be innocent, that was either the fault of the jury or due to the inevitable fallibility of any legal system made by man.

‘I suppose you wonder why I am telling this to you, but you cannot hang me as well, can you?’

The judge was unable to resist replying that the stranger could certainly be hanged.

‘What, both of us?’

‘Certainly,’ said the judge.

‘D’you mean to say that, if a crime is committed by one person only, you can hang one man for that crime and subsequently hang another?’

‘Half a dozen, if necessary,’ said the judge.

‘Oh, well,’ said the man. ‘Never mind. You won’t hang me.’

‘I think,’ said the judge, ‘the man who was hanged for your crime, as you call it, was your friend?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then why did you not come forward in time?’

‘Well, since you ask me, in the first place I had a great faith in English law and I didn’t believe it possible that a man could be convicted of a grave crime of which he was innocent. Secondly, I must admit that I was not prepared to sacrifice my life, if the law went wrong.’

During this conversation, the judge had recalled some of the circumstances of the case and he did remember, with a slight shock, that the defence of the prisoner had been an alibi.

‘What is the purpose of your visit?’ asked the judge.

‘I’m glad I have interested you,’ said the man. ‘In the first place, it is to try and lower your own self-esteem. Have I succeeded at all in that?’

‘You have merely succeeded in being insolent,’ said the judge, ‘and you are well aware that, if it were not for my age and physical infirmity, you would not have had the opportunity.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said the stranger, ‘I have the opportunity and propose to take it. Would you like to know how, when and why I murdered Mrs Blazegrove, so that you can satisfy yourself that you were a party to sending an innocent man to his death?’

‘Not in the least,’ said the judge. ‘If you have any statement to make, it should be made to the police. I have nothing further to say to you.’

‘Very well,’ said the stranger. ‘You have behaved much as I expected, and I suppose I must now pass to the second object of my visit. This is simply stated – to kill you.’

The judge made no reply.

‘I think,’ said the man, ‘this will be unique in judicial history. I expect you have received threatening letters in your time, but, so far as I know, no one has yet even assaulted a judge, let alone killed him. I don’t, of course, count the case of the man who threw tomatoes at the Court of Appeal. In any event he missed.’

As the judge still remained silent, he added: ‘There is no good in your pretending to ignore everything that is going on, because very shortly you will have to take a part in the operation. I should like to explain it to you before it begins. Then, perhaps, you can tell me what are my chances of avoiding a conviction. I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going to get the shotgun at present in your cottage, and I am going to kill you with it.’

He paused, to let the words sink in. The judge said nothing.

‘If I just killed you with it and ran away, it is conceivable that someone could identify me as having walked along this road, and it is possible that I should eventually be caught and hanged. It would be obvious that you had been murdered and the only question would be who had done it. I don’t propose to take this risk. I propose to hand you your shotgun and to see that it goes off in a struggle when it happens to be pointed at you. I shall then immediately go for help and, at the earliest possible moment, I shall inform the police who I am and, to some extent, why I came here. I mean by that that I shall tell them that Frank Turner was my friend, that I believed him to be innocent and that I came to give you a piece of my mind. I will then say that you ordered me off the premises and that, when I refused to go, you produced your shotgun to reinforce your order.

‘I shall add that, being frightened that you might be going to fire, I tried to take it from you and that, unfortunately, in the struggle it went off. Now, assuming that I tell that voluntarily to the police as soon as possible, do you consider that there is any chance whatever of my being convicted of murder?’

The judge, realising that the stranger might mean what he was saying, decided that he had better take a more lively interest in the proceedings.

‘If the medical evidence were consistent with your story, I doubt whether you would be convicted of murder,’ he said. ‘There is a possibility that, having regard to my age and infirmity, a verdict of manslaughter might be returned, but that would depend upon the whole of the evidence. Probably you would be acquitted altogether. Indeed, it is very likely that you would never be tried or even charged.’

‘I am extremely grateful to your Lordship for your opinion. It is not often that a murderer can obtain such authoritative advice before committing a crime. Now, if you will excuse me for a moment, I will make the necessary arrangements.’

He left the judge and went inside the cottage. While he was away, the judge made a quick appreciation of the situation.

Either the man intended to carry out his threat or he did not, but it might be quite impossible to know exactly what his intentions were until too late. The judge made his plan accordingly and, as soon as the man returned from the cottage and placed the shotgun in the judge’s hands, with a sudden movement, using all his strength, he turned it on him and shot him dead. The man had thought that he could indulge in a few further taunts at the judge before carrying out his main object and that the judge would be unable to use the shotgun as long as he kept a hand upon the barrel.

Moreover, not only was he unaware of the early weight-putting activities of the judge, but it never occurred to him that, without a word, he would shoot him so unceremoniously.

The judge got up, a little painfully because of his gout, and, having satisfied himself that the stranger would trouble him no more, dragged him, still more painfully, to a place where he was out of view behind some bushes. He put the shotgun beside him and returned to his chair. There was nothing else he could do until his housekeeper returned.

Having sat down, he turned his attention to the sandwiches which Mary had prepared and, between them and the coffee, made a very satisfactory lunch. He then read another article in the Law Quarterly, this time upon a question relating to bills of exchange. Later, he had a nap.

Some hours afterwards, Mary returned.

‘Did you have a good time?’ he asked her.

‘Oh yes, indeed, sir,’ said Mary. ‘It was a lovely time I had. I’ll tell you all about it when I’ve got the supper. But what about you, sir, have you had a good day? Were the sandwiches all right?’

‘They were delightful, Mary,’ said the judge. ‘I ate them all. I never can resist chicken liver. The weather has been gorgeous and your coffee was as good as ever.’

‘Well, I am glad, sir,’ said Mary. ‘Now I’ll go and get the supper.’ And she started to go into the cottage.

‘Oh, before you go,’ said the judge, ‘there is something I ought to tell you …’

Table Talk

It wasn’t the way she said it but what she said. What Eileen said, I mean, not Gladys. I hardly ever listened to what Gladys said. She said so much and she said it all the time, except, of course, when the curtain was up. Oh, her manners were all right. A pretty girl, too. Very pretty. But did she talk? I’m pretty bad myself, but Gladys! Nothing would stop her. On and on she went. She was quite content with an occasional ‘Really?’ or ‘Yes, quite’ or the like from me, but it’s an awful business putting them in the right places.

Well, it was very difficult for me. I like going out with an attractive girl and you couldn’t fault Gladys on looks. She liked me too and was a kind girl. But the strain for most of the evening! I found it quite intolerable.

Then, one day, I hit on the happy idea of taking her to a show. Before that it had been dining out at length or a dance. A show was a brilliant idea. Quick snack before the theatre. Not much chance for her to talk. There wasn’t time. Anyway, I was enjoying myself eating and drinking and didn’t mind. Then the theatre. We only got there just before the curtain went up and I could manage the two intervals quite easily, particularly as probably one or other of us went out during one of them. After the theatre, supper. More eating and drinking, and the rest of the evening took care of itself. The talk went on whenever it had the chance but it was bearable.

Still I must own I do prefer to talk rather than listen. I don’t suppose I’m worse than most men, but I find myself very interesting to talk about to other people. The things I’ve done, the books I’ve read and the pictures I’ve seen, the music I’ve heard, the views I hold – I like to tell other people about them. I should have liked to have told Gladys. But I never really got the chance. If I began ‘There was a book I read the other day …’ in she would come with ‘Books? Don’t talk to me of books. D’you know, the other day I was going through Harridges (or was it Barkleys?) when someone dropped a whole parcel of books on my foot. And d’you know, she never even apologised. You’ll never believe what she did say. If I hadn’t been so bruised, I’d have laughed. D’you know what …’ But by that time I’d given up all hope of telling her about the book I’d read and I’d given up listening. I was just getting ready a ‘Good Lord, no really!’ or ‘Well, well, well,’ or ‘Everything happens to you, doesn’t it?’ or something of the kind.

Well, after this sort of thing had been going on for some time, I was beginning to wonder if I could carry on much longer, even though I enjoyed the theatre. We’d seen nearly all the plays worth seeing. Then, suddenly, I met Eileen. At a cocktail party. She was quite different. About talking, I mean. In looks she was quite up to Gladys. But she was a born listener. I talked to her for most of the cocktail party and took her out to dinner. We had a very good evening and I asked her to come out again. She came.

I had now decided to write off Gladys, or, at any rate, put her to reserve. Eileen was the one for me. Lovely figure, face pretty as a picture, and she hardly said a word. I don’t mean she was dumb. Oh no. Obviously intelligent. But she just punctuated my remarks appropriately.

And then the blow fell. I didn’t notice it at first, not when she said it, I mean. But on the way home. It was the second time I’d taken her out. We’d dined at length and I’d told her quite a lot about myself. She was sweet. And what a listener! I left her at her door and we said good night. She thanked me for a lovely evening and I asked her if she’d like to come out again.

‘Oh, I’d love to,’ she said, ‘but wouldn’t it be fun to go to a show next time?’

I Killed Gordon McNaghten

Yes, sir, I once knew a man who had been charged with murder and who was sorry that they pretty well abolished the death penalty in 1957. Not because he preferred to die, oh, dear me, no.

He was fond of life and of the good things in it. So was I. It’s a good many years ago since we enjoyed some of them together. But we certainly did.

We saw a lot of each other, Jimmy and I. Had the same tastes in business and pleasure. In both, we liked it easy. Not too much work but well paid. Lots of pleasure and not too much to pay for it. They were good days. At any rate I found them so. Jimmy wasn’t quite so lucky. As I said, he found himself charged with murder.

In a way it was a simple case, but it wasn’t all that simple. It had been suggested in certain quarters that some of our deals weren’t quite on the level. It was nonsense, of course. But Jimmy was heard to remark that, if anyone talked to the police, he wouldn’t advise any insurance company to insure that man’s life.

Well, Gordon McNaghten went to the police about us. And, before they had time to act on his word of mouth, Gordon McNaghten died. Suddenly and violently.

It was a bad moment for Jimmy. Apart from his statement, there were pieces of evidence which linked him with the murder, and they charged him with it.

He was tried at the Old Bailey and, at the close of the case for the prosecution, things didn’t look good for him at all. But I gave him a good alibi, and they couldn’t break me down.

I can’t say that I told the whole truth, or even the truth at all. But it’s not on my conscience. Jimmy was my friend. And friends should stick by each other, don’t you think? A little matter of perjury shouldn’t come between them. So Jimmy was acquitted.

Why am I telling you all this? Aren’t I frightened they can charge me with perjury now? No, sir, I’m not. I shall be standing before the Great Judge long before they can start a case against me, let alone bring me to trial. And I’m not sorry. I’ve had a full life and a very long one. And I’ve had enough. The engine’s running down.

And perhaps you’ll be able to corroborate me when I stand my trial up there, and say that I did tell someone before I left this world. Anyway, I’ve told you and you can do what you like about it.

But why did Jimmy wish the death penalty hadn’t been abolished? I’m coming to that. You mustn’t rush me. We like to take it slowly at my age.

Well, we didn’t see quite so much of each other, Jimmy and I, after the trial. Both of us thought it might be better for a time at any rate, if we carried on separately. So we drifted apart.

I hadn’t heard of him for some years when, one day, I got a shock. I picked up my morning paper. And there was an article by him. And what was it called? ‘I Killed Gordon McNaghten.’

I wondered what they paid him for it and I couldn’t resist getting in touch with him to ask him. He told me. Then I asked him if it was quite safe. ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘I’ve been acquitted and I can’t be tried again for the same crime.’ And he was right about that. I asked a lawyer I knew, and he said Yes, that was right, he couldn’t be charged again with the same crime.

But some of the public didn’t like it and some of the Members of Parliament didn’t like it. And a lot of letters were written to the papers and a lot of questions asked in Parliament. And the next I heard of Jimmy was in the paper again. They’d arrested him. Oh, no, the lawyer was quite right. They couldn’t charge him with the murder. They didn’t. They charged him with two alternative charges: perjury and obtaining money by false pretences.

Jimmy’s counsel made a great fuss about the two charges being heard together.

‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘perjury is one thing, false pretences is another. If the prosecution say that my client committed perjury at his trial for murder, let him be tried for that and let the jury give their verdict upon it. If thereafter the prosecution desire to persecute my client by charging him with obtaining money by false pretences, let them do so before a different jury on a different occasion.

‘In my respectful submission, my Lord, to try the accused on these two completely separate charges, which are nothing to do with one another, is an affront to justice.’

‘Well,’ said the judge to counsel for the prosecution, ‘what d’you say?’

‘My Lord,’ replied counsel, ‘in the ordinary way the prosecution would not have sought to have had these two different charges heard by the same jury. But this is a very exceptional case. The accused was tried for murder and gave evidence on his own behalf denying his guilt and alleging that he was somewhere else at the time the crime was proved to have been committed. The accused was acquitted.

‘Some years later he approached a daily newspaper and offered to sell to it for a not inconsiderable sum a story which he claimed to be true. In this story, secure in the knowledge that he could not be tried again for the murder, he said that he killed Gordon McNaghten and described how he did so. He said his alibi was false and described how he had fabricated it.

‘Which story is true, my Lord? The one he swore to in the witness-box, or the one he sold to the newspaper? Suppose, my Lord, the accused is simply tried for perjury, he could go into the witness-box and calmly say that the evidence given by him on his trial for murder was true.

‘If the jury accept that explanation and he is then tried for obtaining money from the newspaper proprietors by falsely pretending that he had committed the murder, he could then say that he had committed it. If the jury believed that or were in doubt as to whether it might be true, they would have to acquit him.

‘It is true that he could then be charged with perjury on his trial for perjury. But he could then revert to his other story and say that it was the other story which was true.’

Counsel for the prosecution paused. The judge looked thoughtful.

‘In other words, as long as the accused is only tried for one of these offences at a time, he can ring the changes until eventually everyone concerned with the case dies of old age. The only solution to this problem, my Lord, is for him to be tried by one and the same jury on both charges as alternatives and that jury can make up its mind on the whole of the evidence as to what the truth of the matter is.

‘My learned friend talks of an affront to justice. In my submission, the affront comes from the accused and not from the prosecution. Having sworn he did not commit the murder, he snaps his fingers in the face of the public and arrogantly proclaims that he did commit it. In my submission justice is not so blind that she can’t see how to deal with that situation and this is the proper way to deal with it.’

After a little further argument the judge upheld the submission of the prosecution, and Jimmy was tried on three counts for perjury, with an alternative of one count for false pretences.

Apparently the jury believed that he was more truthful in print than he was in the witness-box and, in spite of my evidence (for I supported his alibi again, but less successfully this time), he was convicted of perjury. The judge gave him a sentence of five years on each count – to run consecutively – a total of fifteen years.

In imposing this sentence, the judge said: ‘I hope this will be a lesson to you and anyone else who may be minded to laugh at the verdict of a jury in his favour.’

I saw Jimmy before he was taken away. He was wild, I can tell you.

‘You must do something about it,’ he said to me. ‘It’s terrible. I shouldn’t so much have objected to eighteen months for getting money from the newspaper, but fifteen years for telling the truth! I’d have done better if they’d convicted me of murder the first time. If they hadn’t abolished the death penalty, it wouldn’t be so bad. But, as it is, I’m worse off than if I’d pleaded guilty to murder. And I’m innocent, Jimmy. You know I am.’

That was the odd thing about the case, sir. Jimmy was innocent, completely innocent of murder and perjury. How do I know? Quite simply, because I killed Gordon McNaghten.