A Certain Justice (47 page)

“Do you see her now? I expect she’d be grateful to know you’re still interested in her career. She’d probably arrange for you to have a seat in the court.”
“No, I don’t see her. I’m careful not to place myself where I might catch her eye — not that there’s much danger of that. But it might seem like pushing myself forward. It was a long time ago, she may have forgotten me. But I try not to miss any of her cases. It’s my hobby now, watching her career, but of course it isn’t always easy finding out where she’s appearing.”
I said on impulse: “I could probably help. I have a friend who works in her Chambers. Of course, she wouldn’t ask directly, she’s in quite a humble capacity, but there must be court lists. I could probably find out for you when Miss Aldridge is next due to appear and at what court.”
Mr. Froggett was genuinely, almost pathetically, grateful. He said, “You’ll need my address,” and, taking out his notebook, wrote it down, keeping his small hands close together like paws. Then he carefully tore out the page and handed it to me. If he thought it odd that I didn’t, in a reciprocal gesture of confidence, give him my address, he made no sign. I saw that he lived — I expect he still lives — in a flat in Goodmayes, Essex, I imagine in one of those modern blocks of small identical characterless apartments. After that I would send him a postcard from time to time, just with a date and a place on it — Winchester Crown Court, 3 October — and sign it with my initials, J.H. I didn’t always see him in court, of course. If the defendant was a woman, or was obviously unsuitable for my purpose, I didn’t bother to turn up.
But those shared half-hours or so of undemanding companionship became some of the happiest interludes of my obsessed life. Perhaps “happiest” is too positive a word. Happiness is not an emotion I feel now, nor ever expect to feel. But there was a kind of contentment, a restfulness and a sense of belonging again to the real world, which I found comforting. We must have looked a strange couple to anyone interested, but, of course, no one was interested. This was London, the city workers chatting together before they began their journeys home, the tourists with their cameras, their maps, their foreign jabber, the occasional solitary drinker of tea, they came in without a glance in our direction. It is all so recent, and yet it already seems a distant memory: the rhythmic groan of the city breaking against the windows like the roar of a distant sea, the hiss of the coffee machine, the smell of toasted sandwiches and the clatter of cups and beakers. Against this background we would talk over the details of the day, comparing our views of the witnesses, assessing their veracity, discussing the conduct of counsel, the possible verdict, whether the judge was hostile.
Only once did I get close, perhaps dangerously close, to my own obsession. The day had been given up to the prosecution evidence. I said: “But she must know that he’s guilty.”
“It isn’t important. It’s her job to defend him whether she thinks he’s guilty or not.”
“I know that. But surely it helps if you believe your client is innocent.”
“It may help, but it can’t be a necessary qualification to take on the job.” Then he said: “Look at me. Suppose I were accused — wrongly accused — of some criminal offence, perhaps an act of indecency against a young girl. I live alone, I’m solitary, I’m not very prepossessing. Suppose my solicitor had to go begging from one set of Chambers to another, desperately seeking a barrister who believed me innocent before I could mount a defence. Our law rests on the presumption of innocence. There are countries where an arrest by the police is taken as a sign of guilt and the subsequent court procedures are little more than a recital of the case for the prosecution. We should be grateful not to live in such a country.”
He spoke with extraordinary force. For the first time I sensed in him a personal belief, emotional and deeply felt. Up till then I had seen his obsession with the law as no more than an overwhelming intellectual interest. Now, for the first time, I saw signs of a passionate moral commitment to an ideal.
Although Mr. Froggett travelled to any Crown court where Venetia Aldridge was due to appear, he liked it best when she prosecuted or defended at the Old Bailey. No other place, for him, had the romance of Court Number One at the Bailey. “Romance” seems an odd word to use of a place whose origins go back to Newgate, to the horrors of those early prisons, the public executions, the pressing yard where prisoners endured the torture of being pressed to death by weights to safeguard the inheritance of their families. Mr. Froggett knew about these things, the history of criminal law fascinated but never seemed to oppress him. His obsession may have had its element of morbidity — it was, after all, the criminal law which enthralled him — but I never detected ghouiishness and would have found his company disagreeable if I had. His was essentially an intellectual obsession. Mine was very different and yet, as the months passed, I began to understand his passion, began even to share it.
Occasionally, when there was a case of particular interest in Number One Court, I would join him there even if Venetia Aldridge wasn’t the defending counsel. It was important that I did; he must never suspect that I was interested only in the defence. So, time after time, I joined the queue at the public entrance, went through the security screen, climbed the seemingly never-ending bare stairs to the hall outside the public gallery, took my seat and waited for the appearance of Mr. Froggett. Often he was there before me. He liked to sit in the second row and thought it odd of me not to share this preference until I realized that there was little chance of Miss Aldridge looking up, let alone of her recognizing me. I always wore a hat with a brim and my smartest coat; she had seen me only in my working overalls. There was no real risk, yet it was several weeks before I first felt happy sitting so close to the front.
My view of the court was almost as good as that of the judge. Below, to the left, was the large dock with its glass screen at the back and the sides, opposite us the jury, to the right the judge, and below us the barristers. Mr. Froggett told me that the front row in the public gallery was the place from which the only photograph of a defendant being sentenced to death had been taken. The people in the dock had been Crippen and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve. The photograph had been printed in a daily paper and it was this that had led to the new law that there could be no photography in court.
He was full of these snippets of history and information. When I commented on the smallness of the witness box, the neat wood stand with a canopy above it like a minuscule pulpit, he explained that the canopy was a relic of the days when courts were held in the open air and a witness needed protection. When I wondered aloud why the judge, splendid in his scarlet, never sat in the centre seat, he told me that this was reserved for the Lord Mayor of London, the Chief Magistrate of the City. Although he no longer presides at trials, he arrives in state four times a year and processes through the Grand Hall to Number One Court, the procession headed by the City Marshal, the Sheriffs, the Swordbearer and the Common Cryer carrying the sword and mace. Mr. Froggett spoke with regret; it was a procession he would have liked to have seen.
He told me too that this was the court in which some of the greatest criminal trials of the century had been held. Seddon, found guilty of murdering his lodger, Miss Barrow, with arsenic; Rouse of the Blazing Car Murder; Haigh, who had dissolved his victims in acid — all had been sentenced to death in that dock. The stairs beneath it had been trodden by men and women in the throes of a desperate hope or filled with the terror of death; some had been dragged down screaming or moaning. Somehow I had expected the very air of the courtroom to be polluted by the faint, half-imagined taint of terror; but I breathed it feeling nothing. Perhaps it was the very ordered dignity of the court — smaller, more graceful, more intimate than I had imagined, the richness of the splendid carving of the royal coat of arms behind the dais, the sixteenth-century Sword of Justice of the City, the robes and wigs, the courteous formality, the unraised voices; all imposed a sense of order and reason, and of the possibility of justice. And yet it was an arena; it was as much an arena as if the floor had been strewn with blood-soaked straw and the antagonists had entered to the sound of trumpets, half naked, with their breastplates and swords, to make their obeisance to Caesar.
And it was in Court Number One at the Old Bailey that my search ended. It was here that I first saw Ashe. By the third day of the trial I knew that I had found my man. If I could still have prayed, I would have been praying for an acquittal. But I felt no real anxiety. This, too, was pre-ordained. I watched him day after day as he sat there, motionless and upright, his eyes on the judge. I sensed the power, the intelligence, the ruthlessness, the greed. My concentration on him was so intense that, when, for the only time, he looked up at the public gallery and scanned us with a glance of contempt, I felt a momentary fear that he had guessed my purpose there and was seeking out my face.
I left the court as soon as the verdict was announced. Mr. Froggett was, I know, hoping that we might have tea together and talk about the finer points of the defence. As I pushed my way out, he was on my heels saying: “You know the point when she won the case, don’t you? You recognized that fatal question?”
I told him that I had to hurry, that I had someone arriving for the evening and must get home to cook. But we walked together to the Central Line at St Paul’s Station, he to go east, I west. I had it all planned. First the train to Notting Hill Gate, then by the District or Circle Line to Earls Court, a few minutes in my flat to write the two notes to Ashe, and then off at once to his address. The notes — one for the front door, one for the back — took only minutes. I had decided weeks ago what I would say: the subtle flattery, the appeal to curiosity, the bribe which might not make him co-operate but would certainly make him open the door. I wrote it carefully but didn’t print it: it had to be personal. Rereading it, I didn’t think I could do better.
“Dear Mr. Ashe. Forgive me for intruding on you in this way but I have a proposal to put to you. I’m not a journalist and I have no connection with officialdom, the police, social services, or any other busybodies. I have a job I need doing and you are the only one who can do it successfully. If you succeed, the payment is twenty-five thousand pounds in cash. The job isn’t illegal or dangerous but it does require skill and intelligence. It is, of course, confidential. Please see me. If your answer is no I won’t bother you again. I am waiting outside.”
I had planned that, if there were lights in the house, I would put the letter through the front-door letter-box, ring or knock and then quickly conceal myself. He had to read the note before he saw me. If he wasn’t at home I would put a note through both the front and back doors and await his return, preferably in the garden if I could gain access.
I had his address, but until the trial was over I didn’t visit the house; it would have been too like tempting fate; but I knew that it was on Westway stretching out from Shepherd’s Bush. It wasn’t a road I normally used. If there were buses that went there, I had never needed to take them. So, to save time and energy, I decided on a taxi, giving the driver a house number twenty away from the one I needed. I would walk the last hundred yards or so, arriving without attracting the notice of neighbours. And by now it was getting dark. I needed the darkness.
But when the cab turned off the main road, onto a slip road, and then drew up, I thought for a moment that something was wrong with the engine and that he had been forced to stop. Surely no one could still be living in this wasteland? Right and left, floodlit in the glare of the overhead lamps as if it were a film set, stretched an urban desolation of boarded-up windows and front doors, peeling paint and crumbling stucco. The house before which I stood had part of its roof missing, where demolition had already begun, whilst to the left of it the destruction had been completed and no roofs were visible behind the high boarding. On the boarding, beside the official notice announcing the road-widening scheme, were painted the forceful expressions of contemporary protest and the obscene scribbles of incoherent rage, all of them saying, Look at me! Listen to me! Take note of me! I am here! I walked under that hard glare between the dead condemned houses and the ceaseless roar of the uncaring traffic and felt that I was walking through an urban hell.
But when I reached Number 397 I saw that it was one of the few still showing signs of occupation. It was on a corner, the last of a long line of identical semi-detached houses. The three panes of the bay window to the right of the porch were boarded with what looked like reddish-brown metal, as was the smaller window to the left, but the door looked as if it were still in use and there were curtains at the upstairs window. What had once been a small front garden was now a patch of weeds and tufted grasses. The front gate, the wood splintered, swung on its rusted hinges. I could see no lights. Standing in the shelter of the porch, I pushed open the letter-box and put my ear to the aperture. I could hear nothing. Then I put one of my notes through the slot and thought that I heard it drop.
Next I tried the gate at the side of the house. It was bolted from the other side and too high to climb. There was no access this way. But I preferred to wait at the back of the house rather than loiter in the street. I went back to the road, walked to the corner and turned left down the side street. Here I was luckier. The garden was fenced and, moving slowly down it and putting out an exploring hand, I found a place where a plank had been broken. I kicked it vigorously, choosing a moment when the noise from the road was particularly loud. The wood splintered inward with a crack which I feared would alert the whole street, but all was silent. I leaned against the adjoining planks with all the strength I could muster and heard the nails giving way. The fence was old and the supports swayed as I leaned against them. Now I had a gap just wide enough to squeeze through. I was where I wanted to be: in the back garden.
I didn’t need to conceal myself — no eyes could be watching at those dead, boarded-up windows. On each side the homes had been dark since the first crash of the demolition crane’s swinging ball. The small garden was a wasteland, grass almost waist-high. Still, I felt happier out of sight, and I squatted between the black wall of the shed and the boarded-up kitchen window.