Our ethel, p.14
Our Ethel, page 14
‘It’s my job to get witnesses to say things that help my client. The bruise isn’t my biggest problem, though. This signature is.’
He returned to his desk to find Ethel’s confession and paused to glance at his family photograph: a framed portrait taken of himself, his arm resting on the shoulder of his young wife, and three children, their youngest daughter Emily dressed in her christening gown and sat on her mother’s knee. He wished he could show them off to Dr Samuels but daren’t.
He took the page back to the conference table and pointed to the two words ‘Ethel Slater’ typed at the bottom.
‘She’s admitted she’s thrown her baby at a wall, twice.’
‘I know, and she’s signed it,’ said Dr Samuels, ‘but did she say it, and has she read it?’
‘How do you think this baby died, Doctor?’
‘By accident. Ethel Slater is an innocent. A victim. Of careless men who think lives like hers don’t count for anything.’
‘Are you convinced Ethel Slater didn’t kill her baby with a blunt instrument, Dr Samuels?’
‘I am. But she’s been hit with one. Dr Lawson. What do you think?’
‘I don’t. I’m just paid to ask questions to which I know the answers,’ said Mr Joyce. ‘But I will ask you again when you’re standing in the witness box.’
*
Mr Joyce slept fitfully that night, his dreams disturbed by the spectre of a beaming foreman of a jury rising to his feet.
Nineteen
Ethel was the last person to make her appearance in the courtroom on the first morning of her trial for murder. For weeks she had languished in Armley Jail in dread of this day. She climbed the stairwell from the cells in the basement and surfaced into the dock, an open square box where countless other shattered people had been judged before her. She stood on the last step, gasped at the sea of faces out of focus beyond the rail, and turned to retreat. The warder in her wake took the backs of her shoulders and pushed her forward to the front.
The dock was raised on a plinth in the centre of an ornate oak-panelled room. Polished wood jutted out from every angle. Ethel stood at eye level with the judge seated some yards in front of her. She watched as the jury on their two long benches in another box down to her left gaped at the barristers and their legal teams adjusting their robes and wigs down to her right. Bundles of papers had been stacked on a table between them, together with her shoebox and teddy bear, and a skull. Ethel’s neighbours from back at the terrace could enjoy this drama unfold over the next couple of days from the public gallery in the balcony behind her.
All voices were hushed as Ethel arrived in the dock, but all eyes were drawn to the skull. Mr Cox for the prosecution rose from his bench, flicked the tails of his robe out from behind him, took his spectacles in his hand, and launched into his opening speech.
‘The case for the Crown, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, ‘is this.
‘The defendant you see before you in the dock is Miss Ethel Slater, an eighteen-year-old woman. Spitefulness and rejection drove her to snuff out her defenceless newborn baby before his life had even really begun. She made two attempts to kill him. She failed at the first when she was interrupted by a neighbour, but succeeded when he was just four days old.
‘Miss Slater lives with her parents in a terraced house in York that is rented from the Railway Company. Her father is a butcher and her mother struggles with illness. The family is penniless and Ethel Slater is unmarried. She befriended the boy next door, a young man with prospects, by the name of Edward Sathersthwaite, with the aim of seducing him, and she fell pregnant. This ploy to trap a husband failed. Edward deserted her and she was left to carry an unwanted baby. You will see that Ethel Slater is a loose, feckless woman who lacks ambition or foresight. She was unable to hold down a job serving in a corner shop and was then incapable of supporting herself, let alone a child. She made no plans to care for a newborn baby, she turned down all offers of help, and she made no preparations for the birth.
‘The defendant chose to deliver her baby alone in a bedroom in her parents’ house, even though she knew that her mother in the room below, a vicar’s kindly wife nearby, and a helpful caring neighbour were on hand to help. She attempted to destroy him by throwing him at the wall as soon as he was born. The impact attracted the attention of Edward’s mother in the adjacent bedroom in the house next door, and Miss Slater’s first attempt at taking his life was thwarted. Mrs Sathersthwaite revived the baby. Four days later Miss Slater received the gift of a teddy bear from the father of their child. Bitterness and revenge drove the defendant to suffocate her baby with a pillow and hurl him at the wall again. On this occasion her efforts were successful, as she has confessed to the police.’
The judge and the jury had lifted their eyes up onto the figure frozen in the dock. Ethel stared down at her hands gripping the rail.
‘My lord,’ Mr Cox continued, ‘I should like to call my first witness to the stand, Dr Lawson.’
The man seated on his left rose to his feet and made his way between the table and the jury box then climbed the three low steps to the witness box. Dr Lawson, an upright and confident man dressed for the occasion with bow tie and buttonhole, took the Bible in his right hand and swore to God that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
‘Dr Lawson,’ said Mr Cox, ‘are you experienced in the examination of victims of violent crime?’
‘Sadly yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have carried out thousands of post-mortem examinations on the bodies of fatally injured people in my career.’
‘Indeed, and over the course of many decades, as I understand it. Did you carry out such a post-mortem on the body of a four-day-old baby by the name of William Slater on the 12th of February of this year, and then make microscope slides of an area of bruising and write a detailed report?’
‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘And how had this baby died?’
‘Sir, he had died of violent injuries.’
‘Please describe for the jury the most significant injury you found.’
Dr Lawson turned slightly to look at the judge.
‘The most serious injury, Your Honour, which would have required extreme force and resulted in death within a minute or so, was a fracture of the skull.’
Mr Cox raised his hand to pause his witness.
‘Please hold your reply there for a moment, Doctor,’ he said.
He bent forward over the table to pass a photograph to the clerk of the court and took up the weight of the skull in his hands.
‘Members of the jury,’ he said, ‘I ask you to brace yourselves and look carefully at the photograph. Be prepared. It may well shock you, but I make no apology for that. You have been asked to turn your minds to a truly shocking matter.’
The clerk held the photograph up to Justice Weaver sat at his bench at the head of the court. He glimpsed at it over the top of his spectacles, nodded his approval, and waved it back, and the clerk handed it to the nearest juror. There the jury looked down upon the unmistakable top of a baby’s head: the scalp pulled back and away, a glistening big bruise lying under the skin, the bones cleaved open and apart, the thick dark blood pooled over the surface of the brain, and a gloved finger and thumb holding the tip of a probe to a crack in the skull.
‘Before I ask you to take a closer look at the detail, ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘I ask you to focus on the fracture, please, just here.’
He held the skull in the palm of his left hand and turned its top to face the jury, then with a flourish of a pen held between finger and thumb of his right hand, brought its nib to land on a line he had drawn on the bone.
Mr Cox could not have hoped for a better opening salvo. The photograph had served its purpose. Few of the jury could bear to look at the image for more than a second, but they could all now see in their mind’s eye this devastating attack unfolding on a helpless baby. Jurors looked to the dock for any reaction in the face at the rail but saw not a flicker. Two wandering eyes fixed on nothing.
‘Dr Lawson,’ Mr Cox resumed, ‘we can all see the fractured bone, the bruised skin, and the bleeding over the brain in that disturbing image. Are all of these injuries the result of one fatal blow?’
Dr Lawson always enjoyed his privileged position in a witness box, where he could parade his opinions and expertise to a captive audience, whether they wanted to listen to him or not. And courts paid well. He had appeared before this judge and barrister on numerous occasions. He counted them among his friends. He remained standing erect and raised his shoulders to their full height. He spoke slowly and clearly to the judge and jury.
‘No, sir, they are not. The skull fracture and the brain haemorrhage were both caused by a single heavy blow, but there were two separate blows to the scalp several days apart.’
‘Please tell the jury how you are able to reach that conclusion?’
‘I made microscope slides of the two distinct areas of the bruising in the skin, Your Honour. I can see with the aid of a microscope a fresh red bruise inflicted at the time of death and a separate older brown bruise inflicted, I would suggest, around the time of birth.’
He tilted his head back slightly to give the members of the jury a view of his best profile.
Mr Cox brought a second photograph to the top of the pile on the table, and asked the clerk to show it round to the jurors and then hand it to his witness.
‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘you see here Miss Slater’s bedroom wall the day after William died. You have told the jury that the most serious injury was the result of extreme force. Would you care to describe the photograph to the jury, please, and explain to them what you mean by that?’
‘Correct, sir, extreme violence,’ said the doctor. ‘There is a crack in the plaster on the wall overlaid at one point at shoulder height by light blood staining. In my opinion the fresh scalp bruising, the fracture, the brain haemorrhage, and death were caused by a heavy impact with the wall.’
‘Are you suggesting, Dr Lawson, this baby has been thrown against that wall?’
‘I am.’
‘A fatal impact?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And the earlier bruise to the scalp?’
‘By the same means, sir, doubtless around the time of birth.’
‘Doctor, I don’t want to detain you for any longer than is necessary,’ Mr Cox continued. ‘I know you have other important duties to attend to. But tell me if you would, please, did you find any other injury in this baby?’
‘Yes, sir, I did. Bleeding into the lungs, a sign of suffocation.’
‘And finally if I may ask your opinion on two further photographs of the room in which this baby died? One shows a pillow on Miss Slater’s bed, and the other the floorboards at the foot of the bed.’
‘The pillow, Your Honour,’ replied the doctor, ‘shows staining with blood coughed up from the lungs as it was pressed into his face. And a large pool of dried blood on the floor marks the position in which this baby landed after his impact with the wall and was left to die from his injuries.’
The clerk took the photographs from the witness and passed them to the jury, but most of them had seen and heard more than enough. They would never be able to forget the image of injuries to a baby’s head. Or get out of their minds the violence that had erupted in this angry life in a sordid room and the sufferings of this innocent baby at Ethel’s hands. It was hard to see how on earth she could be innocent.
‘That completes my examination, m’lord,’ Mr Cox said, and sat down.
The judge seemed to wake with a start, bent his arm down along his leg, eased the left shoe off his foot, and nodded his approval to Mr Cox.
‘Thank you, Dr Lawson,’ he said, ‘you have been most helpful. Please remain standing where you are. My learned friend Mr Joyce may have some further questions for you.’
*
Mr Joyce rose to his feet. He always enjoyed Mr Cox’s performances and Dr Lawson’s bluster. This arrogant doctor has made plenty of assumptions I can expose, he thought. He’s stumbled into so many blind alleys where I can trap him.
The trick now, Mr Joyce knew, was to unravel all this evidence for a simple jury; to puncture this pompous man and expose him for what he was. He’d taken a risk allowing Mr Cox to show them the bloody photograph of the baby’s head. He could have jumped to his feet and objected. He knew it could so easily turn them against his client, but he was hopeful his gamble had paid off. He’d seen the revulsion on the faces of most of the jurors, and one or two of them hadn’t got the courage to give the picture a second glance. But one woman had held his attention. She’d kept hold of it, pored over it as Dr Lawson described the injuries, pointed out the crack in the skull to the man on her right. This elderly smart woman, Mr Joyce felt, is an ally, my crowbar into this jury.
‘Dr Lawson,’ Mr Joyce said, pushing the photographs back onto the table, ‘may I ask you, have you had occasion to deliver many babies during the course of your long career?’
‘Indeed I have, sir, yes,’ he replied. ‘I trained in the art of obstetrics under Sir William Gilliatt, the Royal Obstetrician, at King’s College Hospital in London.’
‘Marvellous.’
Mr Joyce retrieved the image of the splayed head from the top of the pile and asked the clerk to pass it to the witness.
‘And has your expertise been called upon to examine many cases of death during childbirth or newborn babies?’
‘Sadly, yes, sir. Obstetric disasters are not uncommon in my experience.’
‘Every day, Dr Lawson? Once a week? Once a month?’
‘My last case was just before Christmas,’ replied the doctor.
‘Really? Then I would suggest not common at all in your practice. But I take it you are very knowledgeable about fractures of the skull in older people?’
‘Yes, I see them all too frequently. Assaults, mainly, and accidents on the railways.’
‘Then please describe for us, in as much detail as you can, the fracture in baby William’s skull, the injury that you say was caused by a heavy impact and extreme violence.’
Dr Lawson took the photograph from the ledge in front of him and angled it towards Mr Joyce.
‘There it is, you see it here, at the end of the pointer. Straight as a die and runs to the middle of the bones of the forehead.’
‘And please tell us, in your opinion, why this fracture hasn’t splintered into the soft tissue underneath it, and more to the point, why it didn’t bleed? Why is there no bleeding on the bone around this fracture, Dr Lawson?’
‘There’s extensive bleeding over the brain, sir.’
‘We can all see that, can’t we? That’s separate, though, deeper down. But why not on the bone itself? It’s as clean as a whistle, isn’t it?’
The doctor ran his finger down the line and stared at the image as if that might bring it back to life.
Justice Weaver’s pen came to a standstill over his notebook, and he looked over to the witness box. This hesitation was completely out of character.
‘Dr Lawson?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that question, Your Honour.’
Rarely had the judge heard such a feeble response from his good friend Dr Lawson.
‘Have I heard you correctly?’ said the judge. ‘You don’t know why a fractured bone didn’t splinter and bleed?’
‘No.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Joyce, ‘I’m sure that if a man of your distinction doesn’t know the answer to this very important and simple question, then I put it to you that there probably isn’t an answer. Perhaps you can help the jury with another point. Take this skull in your hands if you would, and apply the pressure it would have felt during its slow travel down Miss Slater’s birth canal into the outside world.’
The hollow skull rang to Mr Joyce’s idle knock with his knuckle, and he handed it over to the witness box. The doctor took it in both hands and made to squeeze it from side to side.
‘Tell us, please, why doesn’t a thin skull fracture when it’s forced through the narrow space of a mother’s pelvis?’
‘The bones of a baby’s skull aren’t fused like this. It’s not a solid box,’ explained the doctor. ‘They ride over and under each other when they’re squeezed. It’s like a concertina.’
‘Thank you, Dr Lawson, nicely put. They slip and slide, as I understand it. They can bend. Would you agree that a baby’s skull bones rarely fracture during a normal birth, but when they do, they bleed?’
‘I would.’
‘I suggest to you, sir, that you haven’t stopped in your busy, headlong life to consider any other explanation for this crack. You wear blinkers. Is it possible that the reason this fracture didn’t bleed is that it isn’t a fracture at all? Could it just be a fissure where two bones meet?’
‘This is a fracture, sir. It’s just beneath the bruise in the scalp.’
‘Dr Lawson,’ interrupted the judge from his bench. He leant forward and down again to massage his big toe. ‘Do I understand you correctly? It’s a fracture because you say it is? Is that the long and the short of it?’
‘The fracture, Your Honour, sits just beneath an injury—’
‘…And there, members of the jury,’ interrupted Mr Joyce, ‘we have a coincidence, the bruise in the skin over the crack in the skull, but a coincidence the doctor cannot accept.’
‘And at that point,’ said the judge, ‘we shall adjourn for lunch. It’s nearly half past twelve. Reconvene at two o’clock, please.’
The judge eased his shoe back over his foot, raised himself out of the chair, and tried not to limp to his door. He needed this gout gone by the close of play tomorrow. A glass or two of sherry with lunch should take the edge off it. The jurors waited for him to exit then filed out of their box in a line; the two barristers fell into an easy conversation; and Ethel’s warder followed his prisoner down the stairwell back to her cell below. She’d caught a glimpse of her baby as the doctor had tipped the picture to Mr Joyce but felt numb and it had meant nothing.
