The Accused (Modern Plays) (2 page)

Barrington
After thirty years in this game Andrew, I can tell you that murderers are a far nicer class of person - it’s the barristers you have to watch out for.

Jarvis
(
laughs
) Are you referring to Mr Kersley, by any chance?

Barrington
I never refer to Kersley if I can avoid it. However, don’t lower your guard even for a moment, because when it comes to punching, no one has explained to Kersley where the belt is.

As
Barrington
enters the courtroom, the two QCs come face to face for the first time. They give each other a cursory nod. A few moments later there is a triple knock on the outside of the door
.

Usher
Be upstanding in the court. All persons having anything to do before my Lords, the Queen’s Justices, oyer and terminer, and general gaol delivery for the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, draw near and give your attendance. God save the Queen.

Mr Justice Cartwright
enters and takes his place in the centre of the bench. All bow. The
Judge
returns their bow
.

Usher
Bring up the prisoner.

Sherwood
steps into the dock, and the Jury Bailiff walks across to stand in front of him
.

Jury Bailiff
Is your name Patrick Hugh Sherwood?

Sherwood
Yes.

Jury Bailiff
Patrick Sherwood, you stand charged with murder. The particulars of the offence are that, on the twenty-first of March 1999 in the county of London, you administered a fatal dose of poison to your wife, Elizabeth Sherwood. How say you - Guilty or Not Guilty?

Sherwood
Not guilty.

Jury Bailiff
(
walks to the front of the stage
,
faces the audience and bows
) Members of the Jury, the defendant stands before you charged with one count - that of murder. To this count he has pleaded Not Guilty. By his plea he has cast himself upon his country, which country ye are. Your charge, therefore, is to hearken unto the evidence and say whether he be guilty or no. (
He turns his attention away from the audience and returns to his place
.)

Judge
Members of the Jury, you have sworn to try this case on the evidence. You must therefore give heed only to what takes place in this court and ignore anything you have read in the press. Mr Kersley, you may proceed with the prosecution.

Kersley
May it please Your Lordship, Members of the Jury. The murder of Elizabeth Sherwood was a crime planned by a man with a brilliant and subtle mind, who set out to dupe his colleagues, so that when his wife died, no one would suspect him of being involved in such an evil enterprise.

But unfortunately for him, even the cleverest of murderers make mistakes which, like pieces in a jigsaw, end up revealing the true picture.

The Crown will produce five pieces of that jigsaw, which will show the lengths to which Mr Sherwood was willing to go in order to cover his tracks. Once those five pieces are in. place, I believe you will come to one conclusion: that Mr Patrick Sherwood is guilty of murder.

My Lord, we call our first witness, Chief Inspector Payne.

Usher
Call Chief Inspector Payne.

Guard
Chief Inspector Payne.

The
Usher
stands and announces
Chief Inspector Payne,
as he will do for all ather witnesses from the lobby outside the double doors. He then shuts the door and returns to his seat. The
Chief
Inspector
enters and takes his place in the witness box. Whenever witnesses speak, they should face the jury - the audience
.

Usher
Take the testament in your right hand and read from the card.

Payne
I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Kersley
Is your name Alan Payne and are you a Detective Chief Inspector with the Central Area major incident team?

Payne
Yes, I am, sir.

Kersley
Chief Inspector, can you tell the court how you became involved in this case.

Payne
(
Checks his notebook and faces the
Judge.)
May I refer to my notebook, My Lord?

Judge
(
nods
) You may, Chief Inspector.

Payne
On the evening of March the twenty-first 1999 we received an emergency call at Wimbledon police station, from a Mr Albert Webster, the porter of a block of flats in the division. He informed us that he thought a burglary had taken place and, as there had been several in the area recently, we immediately went round to Arcadia Mansions to investigate.

Kersley
And what did you find when you arrived at the Sherwoods’ flat?

Payne
I found Mrs Sherwood lying on the floor, covered in a blanket. She was sobbing and holding up her right arm, which appeared to be badly bruised. I assumed that she must have taken an intruder by surprise, but when I asked her what had happened she was incoherent. She kept pointing to a glass of wine on a side table. A few moments later an ambulance crew arrived and after they had examined her, told me that she must be taken into hospital immediately.

Kersley
Did you follow the ambulance to St George’s?

Payne
No, my first priority was to take a statement from the porter before checking over the flat.

Kersley
And once you had done that, were you still of the opinion that a burglary had taken place?

Payne
No, I was puzzled. There was clearly evidence of a struggle, but I could find no sign of a forced entry. All the locks and windows were intact, with the exception of a kitchen window, which led on to the fire escape and was slightly open. No drawers appeared to have been left open, which is what one would expect if a burglary had taken place.

Kersley
Did anything else arouse your suspicions?

Payne
A rubber glove that had been dropped on the kitchen floor, and I was also curious about the glass of wine Mrs Sherwood had been pointing to, so I instructed forensics to have the glove and the wineglass sent to the lab for testing.

Kersley
Did you then go to the hospital?

Payne
Yes, as I hoped Mrs Sherwood might have recovered sufficiently to answer some questions.

Kersley
And was she able to do so?

Payne
No, she died a few minutes after I arrived at St George’s.

Kersley
And the cause of death, Chief Inspector? How was it entered on the death certificate?

Payne
Congestive cardiac failure, but as Mrs Sherwood had suffered in the past from (
Checks his notebook
.) atherosclerosis, her heart attack was not considered to be suspicious.

Barrington
My Lord, I apologise for interrupting, I simply wish to seek your guidance.

Judge
(
suspiciously
) Yes, I’m listening, Sir James.

Barrington
Is the Chief Inspector a qualified medical practitioner? Because if he isn’t, perhaps we could dispense with his medical opinions and stick to the facts in this case.

Judge
You were not seeking my guidance, Sir James, but simply wishing to make a point. No doubt you feel you have. Carry on, Mr Kersley.

Kersley
Thank you, My Lord. Chief Inspector, you were telling the court, before we were interrupted by my learned friend, that you went to the hospital in the hope of asking Mrs Sherwood some questions. When you arrived, did you find Mrs Sherwood in her husband’s arms?

Judge (Barrington
rises
) Mr Kersley, that was an outrageous leading question whose only purpose was to prejudice the jury.

Kersley
I do apologise, My Lord. I must have been distracted by Sir James’s unnecessary interruption. Chief Inspector, when you arrived at the hospital, was Mr Sherwood at his wife’s bedside?

Payne
No, sir, a member of the hospital staff was trying to locate him.

Kersley
I see. So who signed the death certificate?

Payne
Her local GP, a Dr Haslam.

Kersley
And was he satisfied that Mrs Sherwood had suffered a heart attack?

Payne
He had no reason to believe otherwise. He’d been treating her for a heart condition for some time.

Barrington
My Lord, he is at it again.

Judge
And so are you, Sir James. Carry on, Mr Kersley.

Kersley
Did you also accept this judgement?

Payne
I saw no reason to question their professional opinion.

Kersley
So what caused you to change your mind and open a murder inquiry?

Payne
Some weeks later I received a call from the dangerous drugs division of the Home Office. Following that call, I visited a chemist in Wellingborough to check their Controlled Drugs Register. It showed that a Mr Sherwood had been regularly having prescriptions of Potassium Chloride made up, that fell into the category of poisons under the 1994 Drug Trafficking Act.

Kersley
Why should that make you consider a crime had been committed? After all, Mr Sherwood has the authority to write out such prescriptions.

Payne
Yes, but why have them made up outside London when St George’s Hospital has a large pharmacy of its own?

Kersley
Why indeed, and did Mr Sherwood collect these prescriptions himself?

Payne
No, over a period of three months he used a Ms Jennifer Mitchell, a junior staff nurse at St George’s, to collect them on a Saturday in Wellingborough and then return the ampoules of Potassium to Mr Sherwood’s office on the Monday morning.

Kersley
Chief Inspector, would I be correct in saying that if Ms Mitchell had not volunteered a statement, you would never have considered charging the defendant?

Payne
That is correct. Her evidence was to prove vital. She stated that over a period of twelve weeks, between January and March of 1999, Mr Sherwood had instructed her on six occasions to pick up ten-millilitre ampoules of Potassium Chloride. But he only handed her the prescriptions on a Friday evening, when he knew she would be visiting her parents in Wellingborough.

Judge
Wellingborough keeps cropping up, Chief Inspector. Does it have some particular significance in this case?

Kersley
Wellingborough has no relevance in itself, My Lord. All Mr Sherwood needed was for the prescriptions to be dispensed at a chemist outside London, so that none of his colleagues at St George’s would be aware of what he was really up to.

Judge
Ah, so it could well have been Milton Keynes or Henley?

Kersley
Yes, My Lord, but only if Ms Mitchell had lived in Milton Keynes or Henley.

Judge
Ah, yes, I see. Carry on, Mr Kersley.

Kersley
Chief Inspector, were any of these prescriptions for Potassium Chloride made out for Mrs Sherwood?

Payne
No, they were all prescribed for his private patients.

Kersley
So what made you think that they might not have reached those patients?

Payne
When the results of the lab test came back, they showed that there were traces of Potassium Chloride on the rubber glove found on the Sherwoods’ kitchen floor.

Kersley
On the glove, I see … and did the lab tests reveal anything else of significance?

Payne
Yes, the glass of wine found on the table by Mrs Sherwood’s side contained thirty millilitres of Temazepam, which is three times the recommended dosage.

Kersley
And did you identify any fingerprints on that glass?

Payne
Yes, Mrs Sherwood’s.

Kersley
But did you also check the fingerprints on the wine bottle?

Payne
Yes, I did, and we could only find Mr Sherwood’s.

Kersley
Only Mr Sherwood’s. But what about the rest of the flat?

Payne
The only other fingerprints identifiable were those of the porter, Albert Webster.

Kersley
So there was no reason to believe there had ever been an intruder?

Payne
None that we could discover, sir.

Kersley
Once you had gathered all your evidence, what did you do next?

Payne
I obtained a warrant for the arrest of Patrick Sherwood, which I executed on June the ninth at St George’s Hospital. I cautioned him, and then charged him with the murder of his wife, Elizabeth Sherwood.

Kersley
Thank you, Chief Inspector. No more questions, My Lord.

Judge
Sir James, do you wish to cross-examine the Chief Inspector?

Barrington
I most certainly do, My Lord. Chief Inspector, I must begin by asking you if it is usual to open a full murder inquiry on information supplied by one young woman.

Payne
No, but…

Barrington
No buts, Chief Inspector, it was a simple enough question and the answer was no. My next question is equally simple. The bruises on Mrs Sherwood’s arm. Surely the most likely explanation is that they resulted from a struggle with an intruder? You told us there had been several burglaries in the area recently.