Minor Corruption (23 page)

“It was blue gingham.”

“My questions still stands.”

Broom dabbed hopelessly at his sweating brow
with his right sleeve. “Yeah. Lots of girls wear gingham.”

“And you saw only a scrap of yellow cloth in
the straw and
assumed
it was part of an apron?”

“Well, it looked like – ”

“And it was an ordinary wicker basket that
you observed from a distance of twenty-five feet, lying half-buried
in the straw?”

“She brung her pa’s lunch in it!”

“I submit, sir, that you made a quick, hasty
and panic-stricken
guess
that you were looking at Betsy
Thurgood in that stall.”

“Who else could it’ve been?”

“You said in your statement that those rear
barn doors are always open?”

“To let in the breeze.”

“And below the barn is a screen of trees
along the shore of the creek?”

“Y – yes.”

“Could not anyone, local or stranger, have
been walking along the creek with his lady love and a picnic
basket, sneaked up to the barn unobserved, and made ordinary, if
unorthodox, love in the straw of an empty stall? A lovemaking
without cries for help or any sort of thrashing resistance?”

Broom hung his head. Reluctantly, because an
answer was expected, he mumbled, “I guess so.” Then he brightened
and said, “But nobody in the area has big grey hair!”

“Ah, let’s have a look at that, shall we? You
claim the so-called attacker was older, short, and had a shock of
whitish-grey hair. Are old people the only ones with scrawny
legs?”

“Usually, yes.”

“But Mr. Clift, for example, is a tall and
very slim man in his twenties. I’ll bet his legs might look scrawny
from a distance of twenty-five feet?”

One of the jurors tittered. They were all
riveted to this critical dialogue.

“But he’s near bald!”

“Which brings us to this business of the
hair, doesn’t it? You said the stall itself was in shadow except
for what you called ‘sprinkles’ of sunlight. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“In a barn, the sun comes slanting through
cracks in the barn-board, doesn’t it? And all sorts of strange
beams and pools of light result, don’t they?”

“I guess so.” Broom was looking more and more
bewildered. What had seemed so straightforward to his mind was
being twisted and made to look otherwise. More and more his replies
seemed to be coming from an automaton.

“Are you certain, then, that you were not
actually seeing a halo effect around the man’s head? The light
dazzling off his hair and making it look large and whitish,
whatever colour and however bushy it might have been?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I swear.”

“Or consider this, sir. You men all work in
the mill. You grind grist into flour and you put the flour into
bags and barrels. Do you not in the course of your work become
covered in wheat chaff and flour?”

“Of course we do. I don’t see – ”

“Would not anyone, whatever colour their
hair, who worked in that mill look as if he had a spray of whitish
hair, especially in a dark stall sprinkled with confusing halos of
light?”

Cambridge was on his tiptoes. “Milord. Mr.
Edwards is putting words into the witness’s mouth and then dashing
off on flights of fancy.”

“Try to restrain yourself, Mr. Edwards.”

“Yes, Milord,” he said humbly, but he had
already milked his flight of fancy. “Now I wish to turn to a more
serious aspect of your testimony, Mr. Broom.”

The witness flinched, and Marc held his gaze
with as fierce as stare as he could muster. He could feel the ghost
of his mentor, Doubtful Dick Dougherty, hovering near. “If this was
a rape, as you claim, why did you turn and run away?”

Jake Broom fought back tears as he said, “I
told Mr. Cambridge. I figured it best to get help. I reckoned
they’d still be in the office a while yet.”

“I suggest, sir, that you were either a
despicable coward or that what you saw was not rape but two
strangers having intercourse in a manner that shocked and disgusted
you!”

“It wasn’t like that! It wasn’t!”

“You staggered back to the office, which you
knew perfectly well was empty, and sat there trying to hold your
lunch down. You did not tell Mr. Whittle because there was nothing
to tell!” Marc glared at Broom. “
You never went back to that
stall, did you
?”

“Milord, counsel is harrowing the
witness.”

“Mr. Edwards, Mr. Broom is
not
a
hostile witness. Let him answer one question at a time, and please
refrain from embroidering.”

“I did go back there,” Broom mumbled. “And I
was ashamed I didn’t try to help poor Betsy.” Tears welled up and
filled both large, innocent eyes. “When I heard she died like she
did, I almost died myself. It
was
her, I
know
it!”

Marc stood back. Something was amiss here. A
truant thought suddenly entered his head. He peered down as if
consulting his notes. Broom was trying desperately not to sob.

“Mr. Broom do you have a reputation for
making up stories?”

Broom was stunned. Even his quiet weeping was
stinted. “I don’t know what you mean?”

“Remember, sir, you are under oath.”

“Milord, this is highly irregular. Counsel is
fishing.”

“It speaks to the witness’s credibility,” the
judge said. “Mr. Edwards, I’m giving you some latitude with this
critical witness, but I do have boundaries. Answer the question as
best you can, Mr. Broom.”

Broom said almost inaudibly, “I’ve always
liked to make up stories. I even write them down.”

“Very much like Betsy Thurgood?”

A moment of pure terror flashed through
Broom’s eyes, then vanished. “When I first come to the township, I
got a job at Whittle’s mill. Mr. Whittle asked me if I was related
to Jimmy Broom, a notorious drunk and reprobate. I told him
no.”

“But you
were
related?”

“I was his son.” Broom’s voice was now close
to a whisper. “Later on, Mr. Whittle found out. By then he liked me
and I showed him I could work. But he always took what I said with
a grain of salt.”

“You tended to exaggerate things? Make them
sound more colourful?”

Broom’s jaw reached his chest.
“Sometimes.”

“What I’m wondering, sir, is why the jury
should believe you today?”

Broom looked up, anguished. “Because I saw my
Betsy gettin’ raped by Mr. Baldwin and I was too much a coward to
save her!”

This passionate outburst had the effect of
instantly galvanizing sympathy for the young man, who had been
losing ground in the past ten minutes. There was genuine anguish in
the face, and conviction. But Marc was no longer worried: Broom had
unwittingly given away something of vital importance.

“You and Betsy were romantically involved,
weren’t you?” he said quietly when the hubbub in the room had
subsided.

His outburst seemed to have taken all the
stuffing out of Broom. He slumped forward onto his hands against
the railing. After a long pause, while the galleries and counsel
waited, transfixed, he said, “Just once.”

“How can you be in love just once?”

“It was six months ago. We went for a walk.
In the spring. Down by the creek. We . . . kissed.”

“You both liked stories and flights of fancy,
didn’t you?”

“Yes. But she was terrified her father would
find out. I was fond of her, but she forbade me to see her alone
any more. I never approached her in that way again. Even when she
brung Burton’s lunch to the mill, I didn’t tease her the way the
other fellas did.”

“Milord, this testimony is going
nowhere.”

“I agree, Mr. Cambridge. Mr. Edwards, get to
some point or move on.”

“The point is this,” Marc said, standing on
his toes and trying his best to teeter the way he had seen Doubtful
Dick do it. “Mr. Broom, you have admitted you like to make up
stories. You have admitted you were in love with Betsy Thurgood. I
suggest you have fabricated the entire story of the rape in the
stall. I submit that you yearned for your forbidden love, that you
knew Betsy would be alone in the barn, that you accosted her, and
when she resisted you, you forced yourself upon her. Terrified and
ashamed, the girl went back to Spadina and kept quiet. Meanwhile,
Mr. Broom, you went blithely home that evening, and the next
morning fled to Port Talbot, where your father is likely alive and
thriving. Having learned by letter that Betsy did not tell on you,
you returned here two months later. I submit, sir, that
you
raped Betsy Thurgood.!”

There was sensation everywhere in the
courtroom. The judge banged his gavel and had to threaten to clear
the room to regain a semblance of order. Marc sat down amid the
clamour, shaking but satisfied. He had done his duty. That was all
he could say for himself.

When Neville Cambridge was finally able to
reconfigure his aplomb, he said to the pale and trembling witness,
“Let us now, Mr. Broom, return from flights of fancy to reality. I
want you to go back and tell the jury the plain and simple truth. I
promise not to interrupt you, badger you, or put words into your
mouth.”

Slowly but with increasing confidence, Broom
was able to retell his original story. But the doubts that Marc had
sown hung heavily over his every word. Cambridge had one trump card
left, however.

“If you had done the deed yourself, sir, tell
me: would you have returned to Toronto and, finding no charges had
been laid against you, would you have gone to the police and
reported an incident that everybody had forgotten?”

The answer was obvious: to the jury and
everyone else in the chamber.

At this point the judge adjourned the trial
until Wednesday morning.

***

When Marc stepped into the wig-room, the small
enrobing area for attorneys, he was surprised to see Cobb sitting
on one of the stools, his helmet at his feet. His face was rigid
with anger, the dark eyes ablaze on either side of the alarmingly
scarlet nostrils.

“Cobb, old friend, you shouldn’t be in here,”
Marc said quietly.

“I got as much right in here as you’ve got in
a court of law!” Cobb stood up, fists clenched.

“I take it from your look that you do not
approve of my conduct this afternoon?”

“That’s right. And you c’n throw in this
mornin’ and yesterday, too!”

“I’m a barrister, Cobb. I have a duty to
perform, and it often is not a pleasant one.”

“Ya mean pullin’ fancy tricks to let a guilty
man go free!”

“My client insists he is innocent, and I am
honour bound to believe him unless I know otherwise for
certain.”

“And we ain’t given you enough to be certain,
is that it?”

“That’s going to be for the jury to decide,
not you or me.”

“I give the prosecutor more than enough to
convict Seamus Baldwin, and you ripped it apart piece by
piece.”

Marc tried to be patient. He understood
Cobb’s anger and disappointment, and it was never easy explaining
how a barrister’s obligations worked or what tactics were
considered fair play. “I repeat: I was doing my job.”

“So you really think that old goat is
innocent?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“But you don’t believe Jake Broom raped that
young girl, do you?” Cobb stared Marc down, daring him to
equivocate.

“It’s not likely, no. But it is possible, and
it’s my task to let the jury know of that possibility, however
remote.”

Cobb’s red face grew redder. His eyebrows
sprung forward as if to give extra weight to his words. “You ruined
that young man’s life out there. He was an honest, innocent boy and
you took advantage of him. How is that different from what Baldwin
did to Betsy?”

Marc was fast losing patience. “All right,
you’ve made your point. Now please let me get out of this wig and
gown.”

“I ain’t finished yet!” Cobb yelled.

Marc went over and quietly shut the door.
“Okay, go on, if you must.”

“What I’m thinkin’, and I never figured I’d
ever say this, is that you don’t care whether Seamus Baldwin is
guilty or innocent. You’re doin’ what you’re doin’ to please the
Baldwins, to save their political necks. ‘Cause you and I both know
that unless you get the old bugger off – however you do it – the
Baldwins are finished as politicians. You’re all in this to save
the Reform party!”

Marc’s patience had worn itself out. “And who
are you to talk, eh?”

“Whaddya mean? I done my job right and
proper.”

“Because you want the law upheld? Or is it
rather because you’re hoping to impress the Chief and have him
recommend you for the new detective’s position?”

“How in blazes did you know about that?”

“Easily. Wilf came to ask my advice and pick
my brain.”

“Well, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. I
was asked to carry out a fair and objective investigation – like
you taught me – and I did just that.”

“Well, then, why can’t you accept that I’m
doing my duty in the same way?”

“’Cause I didn’t set out to destroy people’s
lives on the witness-stand.”

Marc paused, lowered his voice, and said,
“Your incomplete investigation has resulted in the ruin of a
gentleman’s health and will in all probability lead to his
premature death.”

“What are you talkin’ about –
incomplete
?”

“I meant what I said. You did an incomplete,
flawed investigation.”

“What didn’t I do?” This conversation was not
going the way Cobb had envisioned it.

“For starters, you failed to realize that
Betsy’s two-month pregnancy was merely an estimate. Did it not
occur to you that Betsy could have been pregnant
before
she
arrived at Spadina in late July? If so, then a dozen young lads
from that neighbourhood could have been her beau or become obsessed
with her. And anyone could have reached that barn unnoticed from
the path along the creek, a creek that runs all the way past the
workers’ houses. And you forgot your own wife’s testimony about the
tone
of Betsy’s dying statement. In short, you failed to
keep going in your investigation because you accepted Seamus
Baldwin as your prime suspect from the beginning, and then looked
at all subsequent evidence in that light.”