Breaths of Suspicion (12 page)

Cockburn straightened in his seat, one arm leaning on the gunwale. ‘He’s her lover? So his evidence could be shown to be biased in favour of her son!’ He grimaced, considered the matter. ‘Even so, it won’t be enough. If Sarah Palmer herself states that Billy Palmer was at her side when he was supposed to be making the pills to be administered to Cook—’

‘I think she can be persuaded
not
to give that evidence.’

There was a surprised glint in Cockburn’s foxy eyes. ‘And how are we going to undertake that persuasion, exactly?’

I was unable to keep the satisfaction out of my tone.

‘Ben Gully’s discovered that Mrs Sarah Palmer has had lovers before Jeremiah Smith. Sarah Palmer, in spite of her age, is a lusty woman. Before Jeremiah Smith took up the position in her bed there were predecessors, notably a certain feckless Irishman by the name of Duffy. Like Smith, also twenty years her junior. She
became infatuated with him; paid his debts; entertained him in the afternoons. They had a passionate affair.’

A light breeze had risen. Cockburn laid back his head, sniffed the salty air. But I guessed he was also sniffing salty opportunities.

‘During the course of their entanglement—Duffy had a wife in Ireland, by the way—Sarah Palmer wrote some fairly explicit letters detailing just what she got up to with him. After a while Duffy went back to Ireland and the letters were found among his effects at the inn he lodged in at Rugeley: he’d skipped without paying his bills, you see, and the landlord intended holding Duffy’s goods as security. That included the letters. But his wife, she read the letters and hit upon a plan for recovering some of the money owed by Duffy. She used them to provide entertainment for her clients: she charged men in the bar the price of a glass of grog to have a look at the racy adventures of the aforesaid Widow Palmer and Duffy. Ben Gully read them. They don’t just raise the hair on the back of your neck, apparently.’

Cockburn’s eyes were gleaming. ‘I think I see where you’re going with this, James.’

I explained that Ben Gully, on my instructions, had already passed the information to Captain Hatton, Chief of Staffordshire Constabulary. He was persuaded this could be a matter of maintenance of public order and decency and had confiscated the letters. They remained in his possession. ‘So, if Sarah Palmer takes the stand and declares her son was with her when we say he was making up the pills and poisoning Cook, we will naturally be bound to question her veracity as a witness. Her conduct with Jeremiah Smith will be exposed—thus blackening his testimony as well as hers—and we can also cause the Duffy letters to be read out in court. Her credibility as a witness will collapse. Worse, the letters will destroy whatever reputation she presently retains as an elderly widow. Wealthy she might be, but she won’t want her sexual behaviour held up to the delight of all in the courtroom. No,
she won’t take the stand.’

Cockburn nodded thoughtfully. ‘That takes care of defence witnesses Jeremiah Smith and Mrs Sarah Palmer. But there’s still the evidence of the fly driver, Allspice. From what you say, Allspice agrees he was waiting at the Junction Hotel at 8.45 that evening, met the London train and then drove Palmer to Rugeley on that critical Monday evening. Arriving not till after ten … when our witness, Newton, states he served Palmer with the strychnia at nine that evening, in Rugeley. If so—’

‘We would have to abandon the claim that Palmer was given the strychnia at 9 p.m. And he would not have had time to make up the pills before he administered them to Cook.’

Cockburn was silent for a little while. He finished his second brandy, reached for the bottle, poured himself another. His hand was shaking slightly. ‘Once again, I suspect, James, that from your demeanour you have a solution to these problems.’

I took a deep pull on my cigar. I knew Cockburn well by then, but what I was going to suggest might offend his sense of professionalism and legal propriety. I blew out the smoke in a determined gust, turned to hold his glance. ‘The horse cooper, Harry Cockayne, the trainer, Will Saunders, and the fly driver, Allspice, they can all damage us with their evidence, so I would recommend we should subpoena them all
to give evidence for the Crown
.’

I could see the astonishment in Cockburn’s features. ‘But they can destroy our case!’ Then the doubt in his little eyes gradually cleared. ‘
Subpoena
them.…’

‘To subpoena them doesn’t mean we have to
call
them,’ I asserted. ‘And the defence
can’t
call them if they are
our
witnesses.…’

‘That would shut out their evidence,’ Cockburn mused. His eyes lit up. ‘So we lock out Sarah Palmer, shred Smith … and subpoena the others.’ He looked up at a darkening sky and I knew he agreed
with my strategy. And that’s how it fell out at the trial.

Jeremiah Smith gave evidence but was laughed out of court when he struggled to preserve the reputation of the wealthy, 60-year-old widow he was sleeping with, and the jury disregarded his story about meeting Palmer from the London train. After subpoenas were issued to the other possible defence witnesses we played safe: we smuggled Cockayne out of Staffordshire and warned him to lie low if he knew what was good for him; we packed the trainer Saunders well out of reach of the defence lawyers; and as for Allspice, well, we got him removed from his position as driver at the Junction Hotel and provided employment for him with the rural constabulary, well out in the country.

You look at me in astonishment. Why did leading defence counsel Serjeant Shee—who had replaced my friend Serjeant Wilkins—not accuse us of sharp practice? There’s no doubt he could have done, and would have wanted to. But he had to face realities—and the pressure of his own personal ambition. To attack the Attorney General for doubtful practices would have ruined Shee’s reputation and you need to be aware that at that time he was aiming for and expecting a judgeship himself. So he had to swallow the bitter pill.

You have a look on your face that suggests you believe our conduct was somewhat …
unethical
? You don’t seem to understand, my boy. It’s all a matter of tactics and
planning
. You have to look ahead, guess what the other side will be up to and undertake what is best for your case. It’s like a military campaign, the practice of the law. And believe me, tricks like that have been tried on me from time to time, and I had been forced to back away.

Anyway, it worked. Charles Newton, and his doubtful evidence, was not overthrown. In the jury’s minds, Palmer bought the strychnia that night, at nine in the evening, made it up into pills, and administered a fatal dose to Cook at the Talbot Arms, at 10.30 that evening. Smith was laughed out of court and Sarah
Palmer stayed away to nurse her reputation. The other damaging witnesses never made an appearance.

As I’ve already intimated to you, it’s all a game. And winner takes all. Even so, it wasn’t an easy progress. Far from it. There was plenty of rough riding to do that week in Westminster Hall.

You can imagine the intense public interest that was aroused by the case: after all, I had managed to arrange for an Act of Parliament to be hurriedly passed to bring the hearing away from Stafford to London, and it was the first case in which murder by
strychnine
poisoning was charged. And of course, the law courts had always been regarded almost as places of entertainment, while the murderers themselves were objects of intense curiosity, even years after they had been choked off. I myself recall that when I was a boy of twelve or so, I went to Bartholomew Fair to see the preserved head of the murderer Corder, the man who killed Maria Marten in the Red Barn. The head was on display and attracted numerous fascinated admirers, I can tell you. You’re probably aware that the Red Barn murder has been a popular standby on the stage in the penny gaffs for the last fifty years or more. And that day at Bartholomew Fair there was even to be seen a printed account of the murder, bound in Corder’s own skin: the only case, I believe, of a man being hung, drawn and
quarto-ed
! Hah!

It was inevitable that the Palmer trial would be a similar sensation to the populace at large. The streets outside Westminster Hall were packed, there were struggles to get inside to the courtroom and many disappointed men and women were turned away at the door.

My old friend Charlie Wilkins had already vanished from the scene as counsel for Palmer: shortly before trial he pleaded illness and cried off. In fact it wasn’t a case of illness at all, for like me he was in deep financial trouble, his duns were after him and he’d managed to flee by fishing smack to Dieppe only with considerable
difficulty. Poor old Charlie. I never did see him again. Nor did his creditors ever get their hands on him: he died in a foreign country, not long after. Which was why Palmer’s defence was led by Serjeant Shee, QC, MP for Kilkenny. Problem was, he was an Irish Catholic and London juries continued to hold strong prejudices against Romanists. Advantage to us, again.

Palmer’s defence faced another problem. The trial was to be handled by none other than Lord Chief Justice Campbell. Now I’d always got on well with Jack Campbell, in spite of his fearsome reputation. It think it harked back to my first appearance before him years earlier. He snarled at me in court once, when I was a junior barrister, ordering me to sit down. I remained standing. He glowered at me, admonished me again: ‘I told you to sit down!’ I held my ground, not wishing to be dominated in such a way. He ended by roaring at me ‘Mr James, I tell you for the last time to
sit down
!’

I stared at him coolly, and replied, ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t realize you were addressing me. I thought you were speaking to the usher!’

He glared at me in fury for a few seconds and then his mouth twitched, he leaned back and he said no more. The fact is, Jack Campbell used to like barristers who were prepared to stand up to him from time to time, and he also enjoyed my ready wit. The judge and I, we often bandied jokes at each other in the following years.

But Jack Campbell was a man of the manse, a Scot like the Attorney General, and I knew he was going to be on our side. Beside him on the bench that week was my old adversary Baron Alderson—he had no love for me nor Cockburn, but his hatred of the Turf biased him against Palmer and his love of nags. I dare say there was only Mr Justice Cresswell as the third judge who was prepared to play fair, but he was always a timid fellow, and easily browbeaten by stronger personalities.

And indeed, that was how it went.

Take the medical witnesses. Lord Chief Justice Campbell allowed the seven prosecution witnesses to take seats, and eulogized them to the jury; but he made the defence medical witnesses stand in the aisles for hours until called. Then he constantly sneered at the evidence they gave in the witness box. Baron Alderson also made his own feelings regularly felt, by twisting his face, muttering ‘Humbug!’ at some defence evidence and waving his hands expressively at the jury whenever a witness displeased him. And when I was on my feet, Jack Campbell allowed me a deal of licence in the asking of illegitimate questions: as I’ve said before now, he was always partial to me, the old rogue.

As for us, Cockburn took our witnesses through the case, showing that though a friend of Cook, Palmer had in fact been robbing him, owed him money and finally got rid of him by administering poison in the form of strychnia. The fact that the defence experts swore to natural causes led to such conflicting medical evidence that we were able to tie up the jury in mental knots: the conflict in detail was made the most of, leaving the jury stunned with incomprehension as witnesses contradicted each other, and themselves. We had schooled the maid who had taken some broth to Cook during his illness to insinuate it had been prepared by Palmer. We got her to say she had sipped it, and had been taken ill. We skated successfully over the fact that she had never given such evidence earlier at the inquest.

We managed to persuade another maid to speak of twitching and convulsions during the death throes as evidence of strychnine poisoning, even though, once again, she had omitted to give such evidence at the inquest. And after Charles Newton gave his crucial evidence I took him back to the previous November when he had gone to Palmer’s house in the evening.

‘What did he say to you?’ I asked.

‘He asked me what dose of strychnia would be required to kill
a dog. I told him, a grain. He then asked me whether it would be found in the stomach after death.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told him there would be no inflammation and that I did not think it would be found.’

‘What did he remark upon that?’

‘I think he said: “It’s all right!” as if speaking to himself. Then he did
that
.’

At this point the lying rogue snapped his fingers and the courtroom roared in indignant anger. Neither the spectators, nor the jury, seemed to consider it odd that a qualified medical man like Dr Palmer should be asking such questions of an apothecary’s unqualified assistant.

And Harry Cockayne wasn’t there to assert that Palmer might have wanted the drug for the purpose mentioned: to kill dogs harassing his mares at Hednesford. Saunders didn’t appear to assert that Palmer didn’t need Cook’s money; and the fly driver, Allspice, well, he was comfortably ensconced as an officer in the rural constabulary—and unavailable for the trial.

Cockburn made an eight hour speech on the last of the twelve days. I’d written most of it for him, of course. It was later described as masterly. But it was the Lord Chief Justice who really did for Palmer in the end, and the fraudulent doctor knew it. Jack Campbell summed up strongly for the prosecution and we got a verdict: Dr Palmer was found guilty of murdering his friend John Parsons Cook by administering strychnine pills to him—in spite of the medical fact that there was not a trace of the poison in his body.

Of course, there was a huge outcry in the newspapers over the next few weeks: the weaknesses of the prosecution case were pointed out; demands were made to discover why certain witnesses were missing; the College of Surgeons was in uproar and Professor Taylor excoriated by his colleagues; there were strictures upon Campbell’s handling of the case. I came under fire for asking
questions that should have been overruled by the Lord Chief Justice as illegal and irrelevant, but Jack Campbell had let me carry on, which I did cheerfully, bringing in all the local Staffordshire prejudicial gossip—obtained from Ben Gully—that was available to me.