Portrait Of A Judge

Portrait of a Judge

The gales of the last few days had abated, and Mr Justice Pantin was sitting, as happily as his gout would allow him, in the garden of his little cottage. He was the oldest Queen’s Bench judge, and those who knew him realised that he would never retire. Since his wife’s death many years before, he had lived by himself in a flat in London, but he spent his weekends and most of the vacations in his country cottage, looked after by his old housekeeper Mary.

He was well known to the public, partly by reason of the apparent severity of some of his sentences but also for the fairness of his decisions and the coldly logical manner in which he approached every case, no matter how great the human interest.

If you came before him on a criminal charge and were innocent you could not wish for a better judge. You were certain to be acquitted. If, however, you were guilty but had emotional or sentimental reasons for the crime you had committed, you could feel quite sure that such reasons would not appeal to the judge. He tried each case with calculated methodical precision and, indeed, as far as one could tell, he conducted his life in the same way. It is difficult to think that, if he had been standing in the dock himself instead of sitting on the Bench, he would have asked for more mercy from his judge than he, as a judge, was prepared to give to the offender. On one occasion a prisoner convicted of a serious crime was suffering from a deadly disease and, on being sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, informed the judge that he would die in prison. ‘You should have thought of that before,’ Mr Justice Pantin had said.

The judge was eighty-four years old. Sixty-four years before, he had won the quarter-mile and put the weight for Cambridge, but he was now crippled with gout in both feet. He sat in a deckchair, with his books on one side and sandwiches and a vacuum flask on the other. It was a lovely day, and he was looking forward to making the most of it, partly in reading and partly in meditation.

He was self-sufficient and enjoyed his own company. Mary had been given a day off to go to see some friends in London, but she had made certain before going that everything was provided to make him comfortable. And, apart from his gout, he was very comfortable, sitting in the warm sunlight and pleased with the thought of a whole day with himself and his books.

He had just finished an article in the Law Quarterly on a technical aspect of the criminal law when a stranger came into the garden.

‘What d’you want?’ said the judge.

‘To talk to you,’ replied the stranger. His voice was cultured, soft and confident. He was small and light-framed and might have been described as puny, but for the air of menace about him.

‘I don’t think I know you,’ said the judge. ‘Who are you?’

‘I doubt whether my name would mean anything to you,’ said the man, ‘because, at the moment, it is Smith.’

‘You had better go then,’ said the judge.

‘I shall do nothing of the kind,’ said the man. ‘I shall stay here until I have finished what I have come to do. I’m afraid this is one of those rare occasions – possibly it is the only occasion – when someone is in the position to dictate to you.’

‘Will you kindly go away?’ said the judge.

‘I will reconsider your request,’ said the man, ‘if you will tell me what you will do if I don’t.’

It did not take Mr Justice Pantin many seconds to realise that there was nothing he could do. His housekeeper was out; his telephone was out of order; he was quite unable to walk three-quarters of a mile to his nearest neighbour and, unless someone else happened to visit him, which was unlikely, he would have to endure the presence of the stranger until he chose to take himself off.

‘I order you to leave my garden,’ said the judge. ‘Unfortunately I cannot compel you by force to do so and, if you refuse to go, I can only wait until someone else arrives here.’

‘Precisely,’ said the man, ‘and, if the results of my inquiries are not wrong, that cannot be for some time. Accordingly, I propose to talk to you.’

‘I don’t,’ said the judge, ‘propose to talk to you.’

‘That may be,’ said the man, ‘but I think you will do so none the less. Forgive me a moment. I can talk more easily sitting down. I will go and get a chair.’

He went into the cottage, returning shortly with a chair, which he placed in front of the judge. The latter had in the meantime picked up a book and started to read.

‘You can pretend not to listen as much as you like, but you will find it physically impossible not to do so. So you might as well hear what I have to say with a good grace.’

The judge made no answer.

‘Some years ago,’ said the man, ‘you sentenced a friend of mine to death. If it had not been for your summing-up, my friend would probably have been acquitted. At least, that is what most people thought. As it was, you were so convinced in your own mind of his guilt that you gave him no chance. One of my reasons for coming here is to show you how wrong you were, though I don’t imagine that that will have much effect upon the parchment which serves you for a mind.’

Although the judge could not in fact help hearing what was being said, he gave no indication that he had done so.

‘You are so cocksure of your own infallibility,’ went on the man, ‘that I imagine that nothing can shake you. Let me see whether this makes any difference. I, in fact, committed the murder for which Frank Turner was hanged.’

The judge remembered Turner’s case, but still gave no sign that he was listening. Nevertheless, he could not refrain from casting his mind back to the trial and trying to recollect what was the evidence.

He was not in the least concerned with the man’s statement. Frank Turner had been tried according to law and had been found guilty. He had appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal and his appeal had been dismissed. If he were innocent fifty times over, it could make no difference now, nor was the judge much concerned with his innocence or guilt. Laws made by human beings are fallible and, occasionally, an innocent man may be found guilty. The judge’s only duty was to see that the law was duly applied. If, after a proper trial, with proper evidence and a proper summing-up, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, that was an end of the matter. If the man happened to be innocent, that was either the fault of the jury or due to the inevitable fallibility of any legal system made by man.

‘I suppose you wonder why I am telling this to you, but you cannot hang me as well, can you?’

The judge was unable to resist replying that the stranger could certainly be hanged.

‘What, both of us?’

‘Certainly,’ said the judge.

‘D’you mean to say that, if a crime is committed by one person only, you can hang one man for that crime and subsequently hang another?’

‘Half a dozen, if necessary,’ said the judge.

‘Oh, well,’ said the man. ‘Never mind. You won’t hang me.’

‘I think,’ said the judge, ‘the man who was hanged for your crime, as you call it, was your friend?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then why did you not come forward in time?’

‘Well, since you ask me, in the first place I had a great faith in English law and I didn’t believe it possible that a man could be convicted of a grave crime of which he was innocent. Secondly, I must admit that I was not prepared to sacrifice my life, if the law went wrong.’

During this conversation, the judge had recalled some of the circumstances of the case and he did remember, with a slight shock, that the defence of the prisoner had been an alibi.

‘What is the purpose of your visit?’ asked the judge.

‘I’m glad I have interested you,’ said the man. ‘In the first place, it is to try and lower your own self-esteem. Have I succeeded at all in that?’

‘You have merely succeeded in being insolent,’ said the judge, ‘and you are well aware that, if it were not for my age and physical infirmity, you would not have had the opportunity.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said the stranger, ‘I have the opportunity and propose to take it. Would you like to know how, when and why I murdered Mrs Blazegrove, so that you can satisfy yourself that you were a party to sending an innocent man to his death?’

‘Not in the least,’ said the judge. ‘If you have any statement to make, it should be made to the police. I have nothing further to say to you.’

‘Very well,’ said the stranger. ‘You have behaved much as I expected, and I suppose I must now pass to the second object of my visit. This is simply stated – to kill you.’

The judge made no reply.

‘I think,’ said the man, ‘this will be unique in judicial history. I expect you have received threatening letters in your time, but, so far as I know, no one has yet even assaulted a judge, let alone killed him. I don’t, of course, count the case of the man who threw tomatoes at the Court of Appeal. In any event he missed.’

As the judge still remained silent, he added: ‘There is no good in your pretending to ignore everything that is going on, because very shortly you will have to take a part in the operation. I should like to explain it to you before it begins. Then, perhaps, you can tell me what are my chances of avoiding a conviction. I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going to get the shotgun at present in your cottage, and I am going to kill you with it.’

He paused, to let the words sink in. The judge said nothing.

‘If I just killed you with it and ran away, it is conceivable that someone could identify me as having walked along this road, and it is possible that I should eventually be caught and hanged. It would be obvious that you had been murdered and the only question would be who had done it. I don’t propose to take this risk. I propose to hand you your shotgun and to see that it goes off in a struggle when it happens to be pointed at you. I shall then immediately go for help and, at the earliest possible moment, I shall inform the police who I am and, to some extent, why I came here. I mean by that that I shall tell them that Frank Turner was my friend, that I believed him to be innocent and that I came to give you a piece of my mind. I will then say that you ordered me off the premises and that, when I refused to go, you produced your shotgun to reinforce your order.

‘I shall add that, being frightened that you might be going to fire, I tried to take it from you and that, unfortunately, in the struggle it went off. Now, assuming that I tell that voluntarily to the police as soon as possible, do you consider that there is any chance whatever of my being convicted of murder?’

The judge, realising that the stranger might mean what he was saying, decided that he had better take a more lively interest in the proceedings.

‘If the medical evidence were consistent with your story, I doubt whether you would be convicted of murder,’ he said. ‘There is a possibility that, having regard to my age and infirmity, a verdict of manslaughter might be returned, but that would depend upon the whole of the evidence. Probably you would be acquitted altogether. Indeed, it is very likely that you would never be tried or even charged.’

‘I am extremely grateful to your Lordship for your opinion. It is not often that a murderer can obtain such authoritative advice before committing a crime. Now, if you will excuse me for a moment, I will make the necessary arrangements.’

He left the judge and went inside the cottage. While he was away, the judge made a quick appreciation of the situation.

Either the man intended to carry out his threat or he did not, but it might be quite impossible to know exactly what his intentions were until too late. The judge made his plan accordingly and, as soon as the man returned from the cottage and placed the shotgun in the judge’s hands, with a sudden movement, using all his strength, he turned it on him and shot him dead. The man had thought that he could indulge in a few further taunts at the judge before carrying out his main object and that the judge would be unable to use the shotgun as long as he kept a hand upon the barrel.

Moreover, not only was he unaware of the early weight-putting activities of the judge, but it never occurred to him that, without a word, he would shoot him so unceremoniously.

The judge got up, a little painfully because of his gout, and, having satisfied himself that the stranger would trouble him no more, dragged him, still more painfully, to a place where he was out of view behind some bushes. He put the shotgun beside him and returned to his chair. There was nothing else he could do until his housekeeper returned.

Having sat down, he turned his attention to the sandwiches which Mary had prepared and, between them and the coffee, made a very satisfactory lunch. He then read another article in the Law Quarterly, this time upon a question relating to bills of exchange. Later, he had a nap.

Some hours afterwards, Mary returned.

‘Did you have a good time?’ he asked her.

‘Oh yes, indeed, sir,’ said Mary. ‘It was a lovely time I had. I’ll tell you all about it when I’ve got the supper. But what about you, sir, have you had a good day? Were the sandwiches all right?’

‘They were delightful, Mary,’ said the judge. ‘I ate them all. I never can resist chicken liver. The weather has been gorgeous and your coffee was as good as ever.’

‘Well, I am glad, sir,’ said Mary. ‘Now I’ll go and get the supper.’ And she started to go into the cottage.

‘Oh, before you go,’ said the judge, ‘there is something I ought to tell you …’

Table Talk

It wasn’t the way she said it but what she said. What Eileen said, I mean, not Gladys. I hardly ever listened to what Gladys said. She said so much and she said it all the time, except, of course, when the curtain was up. Oh, her manners were all right. A pretty girl, too. Very pretty. But did she talk? I’m pretty bad myself, but Gladys! Nothing would stop her. On and on she went. She was quite content with an occasional ‘Really?’ or ‘Yes, quite’ or the like from me, but it’s an awful business putting them in the right places.

Well, it was very difficult for me. I like going out with an attractive girl and you couldn’t fault Gladys on looks. She liked me too and was a kind girl. But the strain for most of the evening! I found it quite intolerable.

Then, one day, I hit on the happy idea of taking her to a show. Before that it had been dining out at length or a dance. A show was a brilliant idea. Quick snack before the theatre. Not much chance for her to talk. There wasn’t time. Anyway, I was enjoying myself eating and drinking and didn’t mind. Then the theatre. We only got there just before the curtain went up and I could manage the two intervals quite easily, particularly as probably one or other of us went out during one of them. After the theatre, supper. More eating and drinking, and the rest of the evening took care of itself. The talk went on whenever it had the chance but it was bearable.

Still I must own I do prefer to talk rather than listen. I don’t suppose I’m worse than most men, but I find myself very interesting to talk about to other people. The things I’ve done, the books I’ve read and the pictures I’ve seen, the music I’ve heard, the views I hold – I like to tell other people about them. I should have liked to have told Gladys. But I never really got the chance. If I began ‘There was a book I read the other day …’ in she would come with ‘Books? Don’t talk to me of books. D’you know, the other day I was going through Harridges (or was it Barkleys?) when someone dropped a whole parcel of books on my foot. And d’you know, she never even apologised. You’ll never believe what she did say. If I hadn’t been so bruised, I’d have laughed. D’you know what …’ But by that time I’d given up all hope of telling her about the book I’d read and I’d given up listening. I was just getting ready a ‘Good Lord, no really!’ or ‘Well, well, well,’ or ‘Everything happens to you, doesn’t it?’ or something of the kind.

Well, after this sort of thing had been going on for some time, I was beginning to wonder if I could carry on much longer, even though I enjoyed the theatre. We’d seen nearly all the plays worth seeing. Then, suddenly, I met Eileen. At a cocktail party. She was quite different. About talking, I mean. In looks she was quite up to Gladys. But she was a born listener. I talked to her for most of the