A Matter for the Jury Read online

  ‘Do that later,’ he shouted. ‘The girl’s alive. Barely, but she’s breathing. Bert, get the river ambulance here. Now, for God’s sake!’

  6

  28 January

  Ben Schroeder was one of the two newest members of the Chambers of Bernard Wesley QC. The set occupied two floors of 2 Wessex Buildings, under the shadow of the magnificent arch at the bottom of Middle Temple Lane which leads the visitor out of the extraordinary quiet of the Temple into the incessant growl of the traffic on Victoria Embankment. The barrister’s rooms in Chambers looked out over Middle Temple Gardens and provided a peaceful haven in which to work, one which the noise of the traffic failed to disturb. The names of the members of Chambers, in order of seniority, were hand-painted in black by the Temple signwriter on the white panels at the side of the doorway at street level and on the main door of Chambers itself, two floors above. One last name appeared at the end of the list in italics and it was in some ways the most important of all. It was the name of the clerk, Merlin Walters. The barristers’ clerk was the Bar’s version of the theatrical agent, and his work was absolutely vital to the success of each member of Chambers, however able that member might be. By a long-standing rule of the profession, barristers did not form firms or partnerships. Each barrister was a sole practitioner. In return for a fee of one tenth of each barrister’s earnings, the clerk managed that barrister’s career; assessing his strengths and weaknesses, recommending the kind of legal work most suited to his talents; negotiating fees with the solicitors who instructed the barrister; and receiving the fees on his behalf; all the while doing all he could to attract new solicitors. And now, also, on her behalf; the second new member of Chambers was Harriet Fisk, whose very presence was the harbinger of a coming revolution in the most traditional of professions.

  As the two newest members, Ben and Harriet shared a room. When one had a conference with a solicitor, the other would retire to another room or walk the few yards up Middle Temple Lane to the library. The room was tastefully decorated. Without in any way insisting, Harriet had gradually taken responsibility for the decoration. They had already shared a room together for a year as pupils, and he had long been aware of her flair for bringing a room to life. Now that they were going to share on a longer-term basis, Ben had gladly stood back and allowed her good taste to transform the drab interior they had inherited from Peter Elliot and Roger Horan. The result was not the usual barrister’s room, full of hunting scenes, Punch or Dornier prints, and antique but seriously battered desks. Instead, the walls, painted in a light shade of green, boasted three original landscapes and an elegant gold-framed mirror. The chairs and the single sofa were upholstered in a soft fabric, a soft green one or two shades darker than the walls. The several small tables were mahogany and contemporary, and the room was richly carpeted in a light brown. The desks, which stood in the two corners of the room, diagonally opposite each other, were a rich deep walnut with brass fittings and dark green leather inlaid tops. Today it was Ben who had the conference and Harriet who had taken her papers to the library. Conferences were still a new experience for him. The Bar was the senior branch of the profession, and etiquette demanded that the solicitor, however senior, bring his client to the Chambers of the barrister, however junior, for conferences. As a very junior member of the Bar, Ben had not yet ceased to be self-conscious about this presumption.

  Bernard Wesley’s set was a small one, and thought of itself as an élite group of skilled advocates. Wesley himself, the only QC in Chambers and an intense and introverted man out of court, specialised in complicated commercial work, but also appeared frequently in high-profile divorce cases. Gareth Morgan-Davies, with whom Ben had served his pupillage, a Welshman with a passion for rugby and opera, had a variety of heavy work, both civil and criminal, and was generally believed to be on the verge of taking Silk. Harriet’s pupil-master, Aubrey Smith-Gurney, whose amiable demeanour masked an exceptionally keen legal mind, preferred life out of London at his home in Sussex whenever a busy civil practice permitted, which was increasingly infrequently. Kenneth Gaskell and Anthony Norris were somewhat less senior but were building considerable reputations in divorce and criminal law respectively; though Norris’s abrasive brilliance in court was matched by a marked tendency to alienate people, including members of his own Chambers, because of an almost contemptuous brusqueness, and often downright rudeness. Peter Elliot and Roger Horan had joined Chambers within the last three years and were still beginning to build their practices. Ben had no reservations about his own ability, and no fears about competing within this talented set. No inner demon questioned his skill as an advocate. He had every confidence in his future success.

  But a different demon whispered to him about his background. He was the son of a family of Jewish traders. The family had emigrated from Austria, settling in Whitechapel three generations previously, and had built a successful business selling furs and expensive clothing in the Commercial Road. Ben was the product of a grammar school and then London University, which in almost any walk of life was an enviable start. But the Bar was the last refuge of a vanished professional age. No one had ever said to his face that his background was an obstacle to success at the Bar. Indeed, there were many, especially his pupil-master, Gareth Morgan-Davies, who had assured him that in a rapidly changing profession it was irrelevant. Indeed, both his and Harriet’s presence in Chambers seemed to confirm that the legal landscape was rapidly changing. But Ben’s mind was not yet at ease. All the men senior to him in Chambers had come to the Bar by way of public school and Oxford or Cambridge. Outside Chambers they were all members of the same select London Gentleman’s club, which would never accept Harriet as a member and would not accept Ben without a demeaning campaign of lobbying on his behalf by Bernard Wesley – something Ben had not sought and would never seek. There was no overt obstacle to his advancement in his profession; but he felt that there was an unseen barrier, that in its innermost essence, the Bar remained a close professional caste immune to change, a caste which would allow him to advance so far, but no farther; a caste which jealously guarded an inner sanctum to which he would never be admitted, however great his ability and however distinguished his achievements. The demon came to whisper to him, not only at night, but also in Chambers and in court, even after a victory, and was not easily deflected.

  He was a handsome young man, now twenty-six years of age, and he did not wear his concerns on his sleeve. He had a ready smile, a cheerful disposition, and an assured, decisive manner when delivering his legal advice. A solicitor coming to Chambers would never have guessed that he harboured any self-doubt at all. He was just short of six feet in height with a thin build, not exactly athletic, but quick and graceful in movement. His hair was solidly black. His eyes were a deep brown, seemingly set rather deep in his face because of strikingly prominent cheek bones, and when he fixed a witness with those eyes during cross-examination it added another layer of disconcerting intensity. His jaw was narrow, and made his chin look almost pointed when viewed from certain angles. If his face had a weakness at all, it was that it cried out for a very thin, neatly groomed moustache and beard, but it would be many years before he had the confidence to add that adornment – it would have been a step too far in the conservative legal world he had so recently entered. His clothes reflected his need to conform. With his family connections, he had his choice of the finest Jewish tailors in the East End, an asset of which he had taken full advantage. His three-piece suits were immaculately made to measure in dark grey with the lightest of white pinstripes. He wore a thin gold pocket watch, attached to a thin gold chain threaded through the middle buttonhole of his waistcoat. His shirts, also made to measure, were of the highest quality cotton. His ties were silk, restrained darker reds and blues in colour, but at the same time they engaged the eye. He had learned from Gareth Morgan-Davies always to wear a fluted white handkerchief in the top pocket of his jacket.

  Ben stood by a window, look
ing out over the Middle Temple gardens. He glanced at his pocket watch. Almost time.

  7

  Merlin knocked on the door, and stepped quietly into the room.

  ‘Your conference is here, Mr Schroeder, if you’re ready, sir.’

  ‘Quite ready, Merlin,’ Ben Schroeder replied. ‘Please show them in.’

  Merlin had kept him busy with small criminal cases in the magistrates’ courts and small civil disputes in the county courts. Ben’s personal preference was for criminal cases, and Merlin believed that was where his strength lay, but as the most junior tenant he gratefully accepted whatever work came his way and did his best to cultivate the solicitors who entrusted him with it, almost all regular clients of Chambers whom Merlin had courted painstakingly over many years.

  Barratt Davis was one of the regulars. He was one of two partners in the firm of Bourne & Davis, whose offices were in Essex Street, just outside the Middle Temple. It was a short walk for him to Chambers through the little gate into the Inn of Court, past the famous fountain and the Inn’s historic dining hall, and down Middle Temple Lane. Davis was a tall, vigorous man in his late forties, with a large shock of thick brown hair, which his comb could never quite control, running fiercely from his neck to his brow, where it rose abruptly in a wave. As a solicitor with offices just outside the Temple he made himself wear dark grey suits in deference to the conventional professional taste, but as a gesture of defiance he also wore brightly coloured shirts and ties, today yellow, with a matching handkerchief in the top pocket of his jacket. Following close on his heels into Ben’s room was a young woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in a black jacket and knee-length skirt, a white blouse and low-heeled black shoes. Her dark brown hair was swept back and held in place by a silver pin, and she wore a thin silver chain around her neck.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Schroeder,’ Barratt Davis said, seizing Ben’s hand in a vice-like grip. ‘I’m not sure you’ve met my new assistant, Jess Farrar? She’s only just come on board. She will be working with you on this case.’

  Ben smiled at Jess.

  ‘No, we haven’t met before.’

  He gratefully extricated his hand from Davis’s grip and offered it to Jess. She took it warmly but, to his relief, far more gently.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you,’ she said.

  Two other men had entered Ben’s room and were standing uncertainly by the door. Barratt Davis walked back to the door and ushered the older of the two forward. He was wearing a brown tweed suit over a light blue shirt, and a brown bow tie with white dots, and looked rather out of place in the formal atmosphere of counsel’s Chambers.

  ‘Mr Schroeder, may I introduce a professional colleague, Mr John Singer, a solicitor from St Ives in Huntingdonshire? We have collaborated on a number of matters in the past, and I think I am right in saying that members of his family have been solicitors in the town for almost a hundred years.’

  ‘Indeed so,’ John Singer smiled. Ben shook his hand.

  ‘And this is Mr Singer’s client,’ Davis continued, beckoning to the second man to leave the safety of the door and venture into the room. He was dressed in a dark grey jacket, with a black shirt and a white clerical collar. ‘The Reverend Ignatius Little, Vicar of St Martin’s Church in St Ives.’

  ‘My firm represents the Diocese of Ely in various church matters, Mr Schroeder,’ Singer added. ‘The diocesan office consulted us about Mr Little. We advise the Diocese in a wide range of legal matters. But we have no experience of… ,’ he hesitated, ‘of… representing a defendant in this kind of case. So we sought the advice of Mr Davis, as we have in the past.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ Ben said. He ushered them all into the chairs that formed a semi-circle in front of his desk. ‘Did the clerks offer you some tea?’

  ‘Yes, but we are all right, thank you,’ Davis said. He turned to the Reverend Ignatius Little. ‘Mr Little, you can have every confidence in Mr Schroeder. Bourne & Davis instructs him regularly.’ He smiled at Ben. ‘In fact, we instructed him in his very first case, which was something of a triumph.’

  Ben returned the smile across the desk, but hesitantly, remembering that his first case had been a relatively recent experience.

  ‘Mr Schroeder represented a client of ours, a police sergeant from Essex. He was charged with an offence which could have ended his career.’

  Going through a red light on his motor cycle, Ben recalled silently. Not a particularly grave matter in itself, but Sergeant James Mulcahy was the officer responsible for training police motor cyclists in Essex, and in his case a conviction would have been catastrophic.

  ‘Mr Schroeder had the charge thrown out after cross-examining the officer who stopped our client.’

  In Hackney, at the junction of Dalston Lane and Kingsland Road, Ben reminded himself. And it was the magistrate, Horatio Templeton, who had the charge thrown out. All I did was exploit the officer’s ill-advised insistence that he had seen no less than four vehicles cross a red light at exactly the same time, even though there were only two lanes of traffic at the junction. Sergeant Mulcahy did not believe that was possible. Neither did I. Neither, mercifully, did Horatio Templeton. Result: reasonable doubt. One career saved, one getting off to a decent start.

  If the Reverend Ignatius Little was impressed by Davis’s complimentary introduction of his defence barrister, he did not show it. Davis had opened a brown file folder which he had removed from his briefcase. He stared at the papers inside the file for some time before continuing.

  ‘Mr Schroeder, the Reverend Little was arrested last Thursday morning in St Ives and charged with indecent assault on a male under the age of sixteen, to wit, ten years of age. He was granted bail by the magistrates yesterday. He will elect to go before a judge and jury at quarter sessions, of course. No question of letting the magistrates loose on this. Far too much at stake, goes without saying. We have a date for committal proceedings on the 13th February. It seems a long time to wait for a committal out in the country, but the police told the magistrates that they want to make further inquiries.’

  Ben raised his eyebrows.

  ‘They want to find out whether there have been other complaints against Mr Little,’ John Singer explained. ‘Mr Little has been suspended from his living pending the outcome of the case. That’s standard practice in any such circumstances. That’s how I became involved. The Diocese always consults us before taking a step such as suspending a priest. But of course, that came to the notice of the police. They have been asking questions of the Diocese. Where has he served in the Diocese before? Why did he move? Has he served in any other diocese? Have there been any complaints against him? Has he ever been suspended before? The Diocese tells me there is nothing known against Mr Little at all. He has been a popular vicar. His parishioners like him, and there has been no hint of scandal or trouble of any kind.’

  Davis nodded. ‘We will make sure witnesses are available from the Diocese to give evidence about all that,’ he said. ‘But that won’t stop the police digging as deep as they can. I have advised Mr Little that he must be as frank as possible with us. If there is anything, anything at all, which reflects badly on him in any way, he must tell us about it.’

  Ben looked across at the Reverend Ignatius Little. He was sitting dejectedly, his head bowed, his hands in his lap. He had not said a word. Ben had read a short written proof of the evidence Little would give about the allegation, prepared, he imagined, by Jess Farrar. He understood the allegation and Little’s response to it. But it was important to get Little to talk about it himself, out loud. He had not yet recovered from the trauma of being arrested. He was still in shock. He had the air of a man who preferred to believe that this was not happening, that he would soon wake up to find that it was all a terrible dream, that it was time for him to stroll from the vicarage to his church for matins, as usual. But usual was a thing of the past now. The sooner that illusion went awa
y, the better. It was time to wake up and deal with reality.

  ‘Tell me something about yourself, Mr Little. I see you are thirty-four years of age. How long have you been Vicar of St Martin’s?’ he asked quietly.

  Little raised his head to look at Ben for the first time. ‘For just over a year,’ he replied. ‘It’s my first living.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I was curate at St Anthony’s, Great Shelford, for almost three years. I was ordained priest in 1959. Before that, I was at Cambridge. I read Classics at Selwyn, and then went on to Ridley Hall to train for the ministry.’

  ‘You will have to forgive me,’ Ben smiled. ‘I’m from a rather different religious tradition.’ For the first time, Little ventured a weak smile in return. ‘So I’m not familiar with what goes on in the Church of England. But I am quite sure that at some point, when you are selected as a candidate for the ministry, they make some kind of inquiry into your character.’

  ‘I can answer that,’ John Singer said. ‘The Diocese makes a thorough inquiry in all cases. Not just police records, though they do look at those, of course. But inquiries are made of family, friends, neighbours, school, college. We consult with the Diocese in that process if anything comes up that may need to be investigated further. Nothing came up in Mr Little’s case to raise any concern at all.’