26. THE MURDER TRIAL

Every tale must have it's twist...

Wallace and Innocent had managed to get seats in the public gallery of the courtroom. It was the day of Freddie Barnard’s trial, for the murder of Penny Ashton, and although neither boys was there to give evidence they both had a personal reason for wanting to be there.

Time had passed since the crime had been committed and it was the spring of the year following Wallace’s sixteenth birthday, he’d been employed by the Brumpton Borough Council for several months and he’d requested the day off in order to be there.

When it came to the part when Freddie was questioned Wallace perked up. Although they had gone to the same school, Wallace didn’t know the boy too well: they were in different classes and anyway Barnard had the sort of reputation he didn’t like being associated with. It wasn’t that he was particularly bad, but he did always have a great deal to say about his conquests with girls, and his language could be quite graphic.

So Wallace eyed Freddie curiously. The boy was dressed in his old school uniform which gave him the appearance of still being a schoolboy even though he had left school at the same time as most of the rest of their year, and he looked particularly smart with a young innocence suggested by the way his hair was unusually neatly combed and his face scrubbed. Any wispy suggestion of facial hair was gone too, and Wallace knew that he needed to shave.

The defence lawyer looked at him, smiled and nodded.

“Tell the court why you went to see the girl Penny Ashton that fateful afternoon,” he asked.

“She promised … I knew her because if I gave her a shilling she would… she would … let me … I don’t like to say.”

“You will have to say, Freddie, this is a court of law and you are on trial for murder. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Freddie, white faced, ashen even, nodded feebly and even to Wallace he looked like a very young boy desperately out of his depth.

“If I gave her a shilling she would let me … feel her,” he muttered, barely audibly.

“And what did you take with you when you went to see her, besides the shilling, of course?” asked his barrister.

“I had some stuff from the shop.” The words came out shyly, as though he were in a confessional and about to be judged by a higher power than that of the court he was in.

“Some stuff from the shop, you say?” asked the questioner.

Freddie nodded.

“What shop might that be?” persisted the lawyer, “you must make it plain, Freddie, you must make the jury understand. What shop was that?”

“The ladies shop. La Femme it is called, like in French,” mumbled the young prisoner.

“Is it the sort of shop that sells items like this?” asked the barrister, and the underwear taken from the deceased Penny was held up for the court to see. In the serious and heavy atmosphere of a courtroom it looked out of place, like a joyous light in a condemned cell.

“Yes sir,” whimpered Freddie.

“Tell me, Freddie, why did you take these rather suggestive garments to a girl who only wanted a shilling for a touch of her … charms?” asked the lawyer. “Did you believe she would like them? Maybe take them in lieu of your shilling? Is that why you stole them from the shop where you had a part time job?”

“I only meant to borrow them, sir,” said Freddie.

“Borrow them? You thought that, having given them to Penny Ashton she would let you have them back so that you could return them to the stockroom at La Femme?”

“Yes sir.”

“Does that make sense to you? That clothes, soiled by contact with a girl’s body, would be accepted by the mature staff at La Femme as unsoiled, as new? And that Miss Ashton would willingly have let you return them if she chanced to like wearing them?”

“I don’t know … I didn’t think … I just wanted her to like me!” There were tears forming in the boy’s eyes and his voice was moistened by them. One or two members of the jury shuffled awkwardly. The raunchy French underwear didn’t seem to sit comfortably with a young boy smartly dressed as if for school.

The lawyer changed the subject. He believed he’d made his first point.

“What else did you take with you that dread afternoon besides the shilling?” he asked, gently.

“Penny wanted to hang a light near where she’d put her bed,” mumbled Freddie, “so I took something to hang it on. Something to jam in the bricks of the cellar and hang a bicycle light from.”

“Oh. And what was that thing you took with you to help illuminate the dark cellar?” asked the lawyer.

“An old chisel. It was an old chisel from my dad’s shed. He didn’t want it, and I thought it would be just the job.”

“So you took a chisel, a blunt chisel but none the less a chisel, with you to see the girl in her strange cellar. Was that the chisel that ended up taking her life from her? The murder weapon, as the prosecutor will call it, the tool that, far from supporting a bicycle lamp, ended up stilling a young girl’s heart?”

There was agitation from near where Wallace was sitting as Mrs Ashton, Penny’s mother, started sobbing and her father leapt to his feet and in a loud vociferous voice demanded the gallows for the boy in the dock.

“Silence In Court!” thundered the judge from his high seat. “I will have no further outbursts like that, or you will be escorted from this building!”

The hubbub settled back down to a weary silence.

“I didn’t mean it to harm her!” wept the boy, the tears finally flooding down his face, “it was an accident! I swear it was an accident! I don’t know, I didn’t and I don’t… She had put the … clothes I took her on, and was smiling at me and saying how pleased she was with them, and I was about to jam the chisel between two bricks where it would be a hook to hang a light on, when there was a sudden noise from the ruined cottage above the cellar, and someone started coming down the stairs...”

There was a further commotion as Penny’s father leapt to his feet, but thought better of causing another row.

“You say, a third person was present?” asked the lawyer, his eyes penetrating Freddie to his very soul. “Did you know that man? Had you seen him before?”

“No, sir, I hadn’t, I never knew him back then, but I can see him now,” wept Freddie, “it’s that man there, the one with the loud voice, I’d know that voice anywhere...”

And Freddie pointed one long accusing finger in the direction of Penny Ashton’s father, who had sunk back in his seat and had his head in both hands as though he was himself being judged, and found wanting.

“Crikey,” breathed Wallace to Innocent, “that’s a turn up for the books, that is!”

© Peter Rogerson 02.07.19