Dunster (33 page)

‘He's simply asking him to repeat what he told you. Yes. Carry on, Mr Skeffington.'

‘But was there a word of truth' – Robbie glared at the jury, inviting them to share his outrage – ‘in this fictional story?'

‘Oh no, sir. Not a word of truth, sir.' Natty looked round as though amazed that anyone should have taken him seriously, it was just he thought he could make a better film out of it. If he put it that way round, you see. I'm sure he really knew that it was the Germans, all the time.'

‘My Lord. Might this witness be released?' Robbie was no doubt anxious to get Natty as far away from the court as possible, in case he gave us any more surprises. He went, but not back to Maltraverso. Apparently the Ministry of Defence had lost all interest in his past desertion. His wife Constanzia was waiting for him outside the court and he was free to keep his promise and take her, after so many years' delay, to visit Dorking for the first time in her life.

‘Mr Dunster. You wrote a letter containing this libel to every member of the Board of Megapolis?'

‘I wrote a letter containing the truth about the chairman's past.'

‘What you thought was the truth?'

‘What I know was the truth.'

‘This letter was calculated to cause Sir Crispin the maximum possible embarrassment.'

‘I imagine all criminals are extremely embarrassed, when they get found out.'

No one except Dunster smiled. Robbie let that one go for the moment and went on with his cross-examination. ‘When you wrote that letter, your allegations were already known to Sir Crispin?'

‘I expect Progmire told him.'

‘Mr Progmire did. So you thought it likely he'd cancel the series?'

‘I knew that he would. He'd hope for a cover-up.'

‘And when the series was cancelled you'd be out of a job.'

‘What do you mean?' Dunster looked genuinely puzzled.

‘I mean, you wouldn't get any further payments from Megapolis.'

‘Oh, I see what you're getting at. That hadn't occurred to me.'

‘So it was because you were angry with the chairman that you wrote to the Board, and then sent this wicked pamphlet round to everyone working at Megapolis?'

‘I wanted them to know the truth.'

Throughout this cross-examination I could only marvel at how little Robbie Skeffington, QC understood the witness he was attacking. The immense harm done by Dunster didn't come from the fact that he was a liar, or a cheat, or a crook – like the other shady litigants Robbie was used to showing up in their true and unattractive colours. He had to deal with a witness who believed all he said. Our leader should have opened fire with, Mr Dunster, are you not a man who is passionately and selflessly devoted to the truth? That was the most damaging indictment that the ingenious old QC could have possibly thought of.

‘You are a journalist, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘With ambitions to be a
successful
journalist.'

‘No. I distrust success in any profession. It usually goes with compromise and dishonesty.'

The QC and the High Court judge looked at him with displeasure. Only Ken Prinsep gave a brisk nod of agreement.

‘Come along now, Mr Dunster. Be honest with us.'

‘I have every intention of being honest. With or without you.'

‘You know perfectly well that every journalist is after a sensational story.' Robbie ploughed on like a tank, ignoring all insults.

‘Sometimes, I suppose, the truth is sensational.'

‘So that is what you were after, a sensation?'

‘That is not what I was after.'

‘And in the unlikely event of your winning this case you hope, don't you, Mr Dunster, to become famous as the journalist who exposed a British war crime? Just tell us, have you already signed a contract with your publishers? Or is that a question you'd prefer not to answer?'

‘You're right,' Dunster said calmly, and the judge, who had closed his eyes during the last few questions, opened them with newly awakened interest. ‘I prefer not to answer.'

‘Because you
have
signed a contract?' Robbie asked with considerable satisfaction.

‘No. Because I find your question utterly contemptible.'

I don't know how the jury reacted and it may be a fatal flaw in my character that, in spite of a lifetime which should have taught me to know better, I felt an uncomfortable stab of admiration for Dunster. Robbie was like the executioner, as he lit the fire, asking St Joan if it wasn't true that she was only doing it all for the money, a possible new scene in the play we had done at the Mummery with considerable lack of success.

The cross-examination then droned on, all one long afternoon and up to lunchtime the next day. It became a prolonged exercise in mutual misunderstanding, which left Dunster unaffected and Robbie worse tempered than usual. No one seemed to understand the witness any better at the end of it, but then they hadn't had a lifetime's study of Dunster forced upon them.

‘Are you Sir Ninian Dobbs?'

‘I am.'

‘One-time Professor of Military History and Master of St Joseph's College, Oxford?'

‘That is right.'

‘Author of
From Sicily to Surrender: The Italian Campaign 1943-1945?
'

The former Head of our college, long since retired, was a wasted, stooping figure, his hands trembling but his white hair, yellowing like old paintwork, was still luxuriant and carefully brushed. It seemed that all our fives, mine and Dunster's, were a journey towards this trial, including the night we had arrived, uninvited, on this old man's bedroom floor. Ken Prinsep, examining him, asked him, ‘Have you ever heard of the massacre at Pomeriggio?'

‘Oh, yes. There were, unfortunately, a number of such outrages, when reprisals were taken against a civilian population.'

‘Do you know who the German commanding officer in that area was at the time?'

‘Oh, yes. It was a Captain Kreutzer.'

‘After the war there were a number of trials of war criminals?'

‘Yes, there were.'

‘Have you been able to discover whether Captain Kreutzer was ever prosecuted for a war crime?'

‘I have made sure, my Lord, that he never was.'

Robbie's cross-examination was short. ‘And have you ever heard it suggested before, in any document not prepared by Mr Dunster, that this crime was the work of anyone connected with the British Army?'

‘No, my Lord. I have not.'

‘Thank you, Sir Ninian Dobbs,' Robbie said in a voice which meant ‘That's seen you off, I think'. As the witness shuffled cautiously from the box, with a tentative foot searching for the step, a trembling hand feeling for the rail, the usher brought me a note scribbled by Dunster. ‘How do you imagine I got the old fart to come here? Do you think I threatened to tell the world about the hair-net?'

At two o'clock in the afternoon on the tenth day of the trial Ken Prinsep called his last witness. When he entered the box, Mr Midgeley declined to take the oath, to Robbie's obvious delight.

‘Is that because you have no religious beliefs?' The judge was disapproving.

‘No, indeed. My religious beliefs are too profound to be used for such a purpose as this.'

Mr Justice Sopwith, although not best pleased at the suggestion that God would not care to take part in the proceedings in Queen's Bench Court Five, said, ‘Very well, then you may affirm,' and ex-Trooper Midgeley told his story. He did so in flat, nasal tones which betrayed no shadow of doubt on any subject. When he had finished, Robbie Skeffington rose to cross-examine.

‘Mr Midgeley. You are a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?'

‘Indeed I am.'

‘And have been for many years?'

‘Yes.'

‘And also of the Peace Pledge Union?'

‘Yes.'

‘Does that mean you're against all forms of war?' Robbie was a great one for spelling things out; he didn't have much respect for the intelligence of juries.

‘I am completely and utterly opposed to war in any shape or form.'

‘When did you become a pacifist?'

‘I think I became sure of my beliefs when we were fighting in Italy. After I was demobilized I decided to do all I could to stop anything like that ever happening again. I have devoted my life to the cause.'

‘By “anything like that”, you mean war?'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘Any sort of war?'

‘Any sort. Whatsoever.'

‘Even ordinary, legitimate fighting ...?'

‘I don't believe there is any such thing as legitimate fighting. The conception of a just war is denied in the Ten Commandments.'

‘Mr Midgeley. I don't think we need you to come here and give us Bible lessons.' Robbie had, in fact, been the first to introduce the Scriptures into the case.

‘I thought you needed exactly that, Mr Skeffington: “Thou shalt not kill.” Had that one slipped your memory?'

The jury smiled and the judge told the witness he mustn't ask learned counsel questions, whereupon Derek Midgeley looked disapproving, as though he was now convinced that the proceedings were profoundly irreligious.

‘So even the heroic actions of soldiers in defence of their country would be called a war crime by you?' Robbie deftly steered clear of the Ten Commandments.

‘“All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” Matthew 26, verse 52.'

‘So, in your view, all warlike acts are criminal acts?'

‘It is not my view. It is the view of the Holy Bible, as I am trying my best to remind you, Mr Skeffington.'

‘So, ever since you joined this Peace Pledge Party ...' Robbie, delighted at having persuaded the witness to be at least moderately rude to him, carried on cheerfully.

‘Union.'

‘What?'

‘It's called the Peace Pledge Union. That's its correct title.'

‘Mr Midgeley. Let's not trouble the jury with unnecessary detail.' Robbie gave us his patient and long-suffering look. ‘Let's get down to the vital issues in this case. Ever since you joined this pacifist pressure group, you have done your best to persuade us all that war is a horrible and brutal business.'

‘I should have thought that was obvious.'

‘That it turns ordinary people into criminals.'

‘It leads them to do terrible things. Yes, indeed.'

‘Then this case must have come to you as a heavensent opportunity.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Oh, come, come, Mr Midgeley. You're an intelligent man.' As Robbie said it, intelligence sounded like a serious character defect. ‘Here was your great chance to tell the world that even such a decent, honourable character as Sir Crispin Bellhanger might commit a terrible atrocity in time of war. Now, wouldn't that be a wonderful bit of pacifist propaganda?'

‘That thought never occurred to me.'

‘Oh, come on, Mr Midgeley. Don't you write a regular column for
World Peace?
Robbie picked up a magazine with well-acted distaste. ‘I won't bore the jury with this, my Lord, but Mr Midgeley is the author of a monthly diatribe against war. If Sir Crispin is guilty, that will really give you something to write about, won't it?'

‘I only came here' – Mr Midgeley was not going to fight back, no doubt on principle – ‘to tell the truth as I remember it.'

‘As you remember it! And can you swear that you remember Sir Crispin's exact words, spoken in the middle of the night, nearly half a century ago?'

‘He and Lieutenant Blair were talking about something that had happened in the town. Bombs had been planted in the church. Captain Bellhanger said, “We must say the Germans did it.” '

‘So you believed he was responsible for a terrible crime.'

‘I'm afraid I did.'

‘So did you accuse him to his face – or just denounce him to his superior officers?'

The answer, when it came in the flat, gloomy tone, was strangely chilling. ‘I was prepared to leave Sir Crispin Bellhanger to his conscience and to the final judgement. I didn't think any man-made punishment could be more severe than that.'

‘Isn't the truth of the matter' – Robbie clearly had no interest in any law courts other than in the solid and earth-bound building we were occupying – ‘that you did nothing because you weren't sure of what you heard?'

‘Not sure?' The witness seemed puzzled by the suggestion.

‘Oh, I've no doubt you've persuaded yourself now. You're sure you heard something which comes in very useful for your peacenik propaganda. But might his words on that night have been “The Germans
must
have done it”?'

“‘The Germans must have done it”,' Mr Midgeley repeated the suggestion; his thoughts were, no doubt, a long way away, in a cave on the cold mountainside. And then he said, as though he were quoting Holy Writ, ‘No. Indeed not. “We must
say
the Germans did it.” I feel sure of that.'

‘But you weren't prepared to swear to it on that Holy Bible you set such store by, were you, Mr Midgeley?' Robbie grinned triumphantly at the jury and sat down.

When I think back to those days, the sight of Mr Midgeley in the witness-box is the last thing I can clearly remember. The closing speeches, Ken's attack on the establishment, frequently interrupted from the Bench, and Robbie's diatribe against Dunster, listened to in respectful silence, were predictable. More unexpected was the judge's summing up, which was perfectly fair, perhaps, as Robbie suggested, because the old friend whom he now called ‘Soppy' Sopwith, revealing another layer of intimacy, kept a wary eye on the Court of Appeal. The jury must give what emphasis they thought right to the evidence of Mr Midgeley, his Lordship told them. He had seemed very certain but it was all a long time ago. They must also remember that the German captain had never been prosecuted and that Lance Corporal Sweeting had clearly told two contradictory stories. If the plea of justification failed, the amount of damages was a matter entirely for them. They shouldn't go wild with someone else's money, but could they imagine a more serious libel on a man of the highest possible reputation? They should go to their room now and take all the time they needed. No one was going to hurry them in any way.