By ten o’clock Monday morning the courtroom was jammed. Citizens of every class and gender were packed into the side-galleries, and the VIP benches facing the august, judicial podium were fully occupied by a who’s who of the Family Compact, the proprietors of a dozen newspapers from Toronto and the adjoining counties, and of course the family and friends of the accused. Robert Baldwin and his father sat directly behind Marc’s bench, and in back of them were Diana Ramsay, Brodie Langford (once the ward of Doubtful Dick Dougherty) and Robert’s eldest son, William. Beth was in the witness-room. And high above them all: the pitiable figure of Uncle Seamus in the dock.
Despite the size of the crowd, the place was subdued. People chatted in desultory whispers, in part because the morning sun slanting in through the tall, elegant windows upon varnished wood and polished brass gave this regal space the ambience of a cathedral and in part because the trial itself was almost too sensational for words. The jury had been selected on Saturday. Everything was set for the proceedings to begin.
Marc sat at his bench and studied the jury. They looked as ordinary as he knew them to be. There was no-one here more prominent than a tobacconist. Tradesmen and labourers, the rest. How would they judge a privileged gentleman alleged to have seduced and raped his brother’s maidservant, and then callously slipped her five pounds for a botched abortion? It was going to be uphill all the way. Across the aisle from him sat Neville Cambridge, his blond hair just showing under his wig, elegant in his silks, unflappable. He did not look once in Marc’s direction, probably because he was serenely confident of a conviction. Cobb had assembled an airtight case for him.
Mr. Justice Gavin Powell struck his gavel on the bench before him and ordered the trial to begin with the reading of the charges
***
In his opening address, as expected, Cambridge spun the seamless story of a gentleman, pampered and privileged, who disported himself in unseemly ways with the young women in his household and with occasional female guests, and who subsequently and ruthlessly raped one Betsy Thurgood on the third day of August in the barn of Whittle’s mill. Thereafter he dallied with the girl at will for the next two months until he discovered she was pregnant. Cambridge went on to detail the horrors of the botched abortion and the gentleman’s role in it, a role that, without a doubt, bespoke manslaughter. Numerous references were made to unimpeachable eye-witness testimony. For his part, with no elaborate defense to outline, Marc was compelled to offer the jury the distinct possibility that said witnesses were mistaken and that one or more other villains could just as easily have committed the crime. Further, a plausible and exculpating explanation would be offered for the circumstances of the abortion. He planned to save his arguments about Uncle Seamus’s true character until his summation.
The first witness called by the Crown was Burton Thurgood.
Neville Cambridge greeted him with the briefest of smiles, then effected a sombre, almost tragic, expression, as if alerting the jury to the dire nature of what was to follow. “Mr. Thurgood, we realize that you have recently suffered an unspeakable loss, and hence I propose that we move slowly, one step at a time. Just answer the questions as best you can under these trying circumstances.”
Cambridge’s voice was in the middle range between tenor and baritone, and would not have been forceful or colourful enough to have earned him a place on the stage. However, he used it to startlingly good effect. Marc could see the members of the jury lean forward as if they wished to be included in a conversation too compelling to be missed.
“Thank you, sir. I will do my best.” Thurgood’s attempt a humility was not completely successful. He hung his head and spoke in a hoarse whisper, but in the eyes – peering up under the humble, black brows – there lurked defiance, aggrievement and scorn.
“If you will, sir, cast your mind back to that terrible night when your daughter, Betsy, informed you that she might be with child. Tell us in your own words and in your own honest way precisely what happened from that point on.”
The prosecutor was suave enough to be appointed British ambassador to France, Marc thought. Butter wouldn’t melt . . . And slipping that “honest way” into the question! For the moment, though, there was little Marc could do but watch and listen.
With occasional, always gentle, prompts from Neville Cambridge, Thurgood narrated the events surrounding the botched abortion. He started by explaining that Betsy had been home for three days to look after her sick mother, her first trip home since she had started to work full-time at Spadina. Her mother recovered and all seemed well until Betsy told them, on the third evening, of her suspected pregnancy. Then he spoke of sending for Elsie Trigger, with great reluctance because she was known to drink on occasion. But she was the midwife in their area and, he stressed several times, she was only summoned to examine the girl to determine whether or not she was with child. “I’d’ve never let that harridan anywheres near my precious Betsy otherwise!” he cried in his only uncontrolled outburst. Marc saw several jurors nod in sympathy. Childbirth and the goings-on associated with it were both mysterious and frightening matters for most men.
Thurgood further mesmerized the jury with his piteous account of how he and his wife discovered the girl in distress and bleeding. What to do? Dora Cobb was sent for, while they sat on either side of their stricken daughter watching the fever take hold. There was nothing faked or overblown about the misery in Thurgood’s face. However, from Marc’s point of view, they were a long way from the rape, and Cambridge was taking a chance on going for the jury’s emotional jugular too soon. He had little choice, though, for he had opted to begin at the end of the story and work backwards. What really puzzled Marc, though, was the fact that no mention was made of Mrs. Trigger’s dramatic exit. Cambridge moved quickly past it to Dora Cobb. Her arrival and ministrations were related in a calm and direct manner until Thurgood reached the girl’s final moments.
“You must have realized your daughter was near death?” Cambridge prompted.
Thurgood nodded. “She was shakin’ with fever and Mrs. Cobb couldn’t get the blood to stop comin’. It was horrible.”
“Indeed it was, and all of us who are parents sympathize – ”
“Mr. Cambridge,” said Justice Powell. “You know better.”
Ah, nice, Marc thought. He went too far and got interrupted at a critical moment.
“Tell us, sir, if you can bear to, about the last minute of Betsy’s life.”
Thurgood’s lower lip trembled and the ligaments in his neck stiffened with the strain of his reply: “My wife and me had asked the girl many times who the father was, but she wouldn’t tell us. Then Auleen, that’s my wife, she thought to try one more time before – before . . .”
“Betsy passed away?”
“Yeah.”
“Your wife asked her outright?”
Marc considered an objection, but held back. It was going to be a long trial and he would have many opportunities to interrupt.
“She did. She said ‘Who is the father, Betsy. Tell us,’ or somethin’ like that.”
“Did Betsy, despite her fever and deteriorating condition, hear those words?”
Marc got halfway to his feet, then sat back down.
“Well, she answered ‘em.”
At this remark the jurors leaned forward, expectant.
“Who did she name as the father of her aborted child?” Most barristers would have delivered this climactic question with a melodramatic verve and a head-swing to draw the jury into the moment. Cambridge, however, asked it in a near-toneless whisper – which had the same effect.
“Her exact words were, ‘ Seamus’ – she said the name twice out loud. We all heard it, crystal clear.”
The gasps in the jury were drowned out by those in the galleries. All eyes swung up to the huddled figure in the dock.
“Were you shocked to hear this?”
“I was. And yet I wasn’t.”
“Why was that?”
“My Betsy was a maid up at Spadina where a Mr. Seamus Baldwin lives.” Some of the latent scorn leaked out of Thurgood as he added, “Everybody knows that bigwigs are always interferin’ with the hired help.”
“Milord!” Marc was on his feet.
The judge scowled at the witness. “Sir, you are to refrain from making remarks not called for by the questions put to you. The jury will ignore that remark.”
And good luck to them, Marc sighed.
“So, with her dying breath your daughter named the defendant, Mr. Seamus Baldwin, as the father of her child?”
“She did.”
“Now, sir, I wish to take you back to an incident that happened earlier in the evening, one we skipped over but one that is critical to the Crown’s case against Seamus Baldwin.”
“I was wonderin’ why you didn’t ask about that.”
“Earlier you told how Mrs. Trigger was alone with Betsy in her room for a long time. About twenty minutes, you said.”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Tell us now what, if anything, Mrs. Trigger said to you and your wife in the kitchen just before she ran off.”
Ah, Marc thought, Cambridge had kept the business about the five-pound note until after the dramatic naming of the babe’s father. Very clever, that.
“She said that Betsy’d just had a miscarriage. And she had the gall to wave a five-pound note in our faces.”
“Did she say that Betsy had given it to her in payment for assisting in this ‘miscarriage’?”
“Not exactly, but we assumed she had.”
“Milord,” Marc said quietly.
“Your answer to the question, sir, should have been a simple ‘no’,” the judge said sternly.
“At a later time, Milord, the Crown intends to show a direct connection between the five-pound note and the accused.”
“Proceed, then, Mr. Cambridge.”
“I have no more questions for the witness at this time, but I would like to recall him when we are further into the events at the centre of this trial.”
Marc stood up, adjusted his wig and as Dick Dougherty had done in the past, pretended to consult the notes in front of him. He realized that he must tread carefully with this witness, who had gained the jury’s sympathy immediately. He needed to probe without seeming to inflict further pain on a grieving father.
“Mr. Thurgood, we have a witness-statement that claims that while your daughter did speak the words ‘Seamus, Seamus,’ there was a third word in her response to your wife’s question. Do you recall that word?”
Thurgood set his lower jaw, determined to resist any onslaught from the defense counsel. “She might’ve mumbled somethin’ between the two ‘Seamuses.’”
“But you don’t recall the word?”
“No.”
“In what tone of voice did Betsy deliver these final, fateful words?”
“I don’t know what ya mean!”
“No need to get upset, sir. I just meant was there a hint of accusation in her naming of the father? Or a tenderness, perhaps?”
Neville Cambridge moved smoothly to his feet. “Milord, counsel is leading the witness.”
“Let the witness find his own words,” the judge said to Marc.
“Mr. Thurgood, was your daughter not suffering from loss of blood and a severe fever?”
Thurgood looked away, struggling to keep his natural belligerence in check. “’Course she was. Mrs. Cobb was set to wrap her with cold cloths.”
“And is it not usual for people experiencing a high fever to become delirious and disoriented – not quite sure where they are or who they’re talking to?”
“I ain’t no doctor.”
“Isn’t it possible that Betsy, in her fever delirium, did not hear or did not register the meaning of Mrs. Thurgood’s question?”
“Why would she answer it, then? Right off?”
Marc backed off, having pushed far enough and planted some doubt in the jury’s mind. Dora Cobb would be up later to expand upon this doubt.
“Sir, let’s move to your testimony about Mrs. Trigger’s hasty exit. You said she waved a five-pound note at you and referred to your daughter’s ‘miscarried’ babe?”
“That’s right. Bold as brass, she was.”
“Do you know for a fact that the banknote was given to Mrs. Trigger by your daughter in payment for what proved to be a botched and fatal abortion? Yes or no, please.”
Thurgood scowled. “No,” he mumbled.
“For all you know, Mrs. Trigger could have pulled it out of her apron, couldn’t she?”
“That ain’t likely.”
“Perhaps she was feeling guilty about what happened and wanted to make it look like a normal transaction for her visit and assistance in a genuine miscarriage?”
“The coroner said she was butchered with a knittin’ needle. And I saw the needle before she hid it away!”
“Mr. Thurgood,” the judge said, more in exasperation than anger, “please restrain yourself.”
Marc rushed on. “Perhaps she wanted to make it look as if the abortion was your daughter’s idea right from the start and that money had changed hands when it actually hadn’t?”
“Milord,” said Cambridge evenly, with just a hint of sarcasm, “Mr. Edwards is beginning to fantasize.”
“I agree,” said the judge. “Move on, Mr. Edwards.”
“When Betsy, earlier in the evening, told you she might be pregnant but, being an innocent, did not know for sure, whose idea was it to call in Mrs. Trigger?”
Thurgood hesitated, head down. “It was mine . . . and I deeply regret doin’ it.”
“So Betsy herself did not request a midwife? She did not herself specifically request Mrs. Trigger, a woman with a questionable reputation at best?”
“I don’t have money fer doctors! I sent fer the midwife in our area. I did what I thought best. I ain’t rich like the Baldwins!”
Marc felt the wave of sympathy from the gentlemen of the jury.
“What I’m suggesting, sir, is that if Betsy had a five-pound banknote hidden in her room and was angling for an abortion, would she herself not have initiated the request for Mrs. Trigger, whose reputation went before her as a potential abortionist?”
Thurgood leaned against the railing and glared across the room at Marc. “I don’t know. All I know is that so-called gentleman up there done in my little girl!”
Marc sat down, and Thurgood was helped from the witness-stand. His final cri de coeur had struck the jury hard, and Uncle Seamus had flinched and rocked back on his heels, the first visible signs that he was following the proceedings. The bailiff’s deputy was steadying him and, without the fellow’s assistance, Uncle Seamus could not have continued standing upright in the dock. Marc was annoyed at Thurgood’s manipulation of the jury – with and without the connivance of the prosecutor – but when the dust settled, he trusted that he had made some dents in the Crown’s armour. He had definitely weakened the link between Betsy and the five-pound note and the Crown’s contention that Betsy plotted to have the abortion with the aid of her seducer. He could have embarrassed Thurgood regarding his choice of Mrs. Trigger, whose drunkenness was well known, and even hinted that father and mother knew full well what she would get up to and perhaps themselves had supplied that “five pounds” (or a dollar or two) in order to secure an abortion for their daughter. Also, Robert had mentioned Thurgood’s clumsy attempt at blackmail, but to use it simply to discredit a grieving father would, like an accusation of securing an abortion, more likely than not have backfired. Moreover, he could use these angles later, if he chose, when Thurgood was recalled. All in all, Marc was satisfied with his first cross-examination: he felt the ghost of Dick Dougherty smiling over his shoulder.
The Crown had put Auleen Thurgood on their witness-list but only as insurance against some failure in her husband’s testimony. Thurgood, however, had done well and Auleen might not fare as well as he under the defense’s cross, and so she was, for the time being, passed over in favour of Dora Cobb, the Crown’s “objective” witness to the naming of the father.
Cambridge was well aware from the record of Cobb’s interview with his wife that Dora had some differing and less useful interpretation of Betsy’s last words, but he needed someone besides Mom and Dad to nail down the naming of the defendant. So he treaded carefully. He led Dora through her night-ride to the Thurgoods and her professional efforts to save the girl’s life. He wanted the jury to respect and admire her. And they appeared to, not a few of them having benefited themselves from her expertise in past years.
“Now, madam, we come to Betsy’s last moments on God’s earth. Did you hear Mrs. Thurgood ask her daughter who fathered her child?”
“I did, sir, even though I was busy swabbin’ the girl’s loins to try and stanch the blood.”
“And did you hear, almost immediately, an answer to the question?”
“Well, sir, her words come right after the question, if that’s what you mean?”
“It is, and thank you. Now try to recall those exact words, if you will.”
“I don’t need to recollect them. I’ll never ferget them. She said, ‘Seamus . . please . . . Seamus’.”
“She pronounced ‘Seamus” twice?”
“She did. But real pleadin’ like, not – ”
“Please, just answer my questions, Mrs. Cobb.”
“But the girl – ”
“Mrs. Cobb, wait for the question. You are not to do anything more than respond to queries put to you by counsel,” said the judge.
“My apologies, Yer Lordship.”
“Did you know to whom she was referring?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought it might be one of the neighbourhood lads.”
“So you didn’t know that Betsy worked up at Spadina and was in daily contact with a Mr. Seamus Baldwin?”
“I ain’t ever been to Spadina, sir.”
Marc winced. Cambridge was indeed slick and subtle. There was no way that Marc could object, but the prosecutor had managed to refocus the jury’s attention on the defendant and the “logical” inference about which particular Seamus was being alluded to. Dora was now turned over to Marc.
“I’d like to go back to young Betsy’s last words. We heard earlier testimony that she did speak three words, and you have kindly given us the third one. It was ‘please’ set between the two ‘Seamuses,’ is that right?”
“It is.”
“Would you try and repeat the whole phrase as close as you can to the pace and rhythm of Betsy’s own voice?”
“Milord!” Cambridge was up quickly, but without ruffling his silk gown. “What is the purpose of this bit of cheap theatrics?”
“Mrs. Cobb was there, sir. It might be easier for her to demonstrate than to describe, don’t you think?” the judge said. “Go ahead, Mrs. Cobb.”
“I’ll try. She was somewhat delirious, so her voice was slow and syrupy. She said ‘Seamus . . . please . . . Seamus’.”
“Did that sound like an accusation to you? Or a confession?”
Cambridge seethed – elegantly – but did not intervene.
“No, sir. I thought it sounded more like she was pleadin’ with us. Perhaps to go and fetch Mr. Seamus.”
Marc knew how dangerous this remark might prove to be, but he had to get the notion of a plea into the jury’s thinking. After all, he hoped, through Dr. Baldwin much later, to show that Uncle Seamus was Betsy’s tutor and confidant, not her seducer.
“One final question, ma’am. How many Seamuses do you know?”
“Milord – ”
The judge held up his right hand.
Dora paused to think. “Oh, at least six or seven. And most them is in Irishtown.”
Several jurors tittered.
“No more questions,” Marc said, and sat down, satisfied.
The Crown then called two gentlemen from the better part of town to testify about an August soirée at Spadina: Mr. Samuel Leigh, a banker and onetime Tory member of the Legislature, followed by Mr. Ralph Broadhead, a jeweller and close friend of Bishop Strachan and other prominent persons of the Tory persuasion. The Baldwins, father and son, though passionately political, were not consumed by politics or personal power, nor did they limit their friends and acquaintances to members of a single party. They were likewise generous with invitations to their grand house, Spadina.
So it happened that these gentlemen had attended a dinner and evening’s entertainment on that great estate in late August. And part of the entertainment had been a ventriloquist performance by Seamus Baldwin, in which he was costumed like a leprechaun and the live dummy on his lap was intended to be an Irish peasant girl, complete with ruffled skirt and low-cut peasant blouse. The only positive thing from Marc’s point of view during this otherwise devastating testimony, was that the dummy had been Edie Barr, not Betsy Thurgood. But much damage was done nevertheless. Both gentlemen were shocked at the spectacle. Seamus Baldwin had placed his right hand in the bun that formed the back of the girl’s hair as if it were a string on a dummy’s mouth, and while he tried unsuccessfully to keep his lips from moving, Edie’s lower jaw dropped and rose – dummy-like – and appeared to engage in a putatively comic dialogue with the leprechaun. The “dummy,” without corsets or stockings, was perched as plump as you please on the old fool’s lap.
Marc chose to cross-examine only the first of these two witnesses.
“Mr. Leigh, did you not laugh at the entertainment? Remember, sir, you are under oath.”
The question caught Leigh by surprise, but he said grudgingly, “Once or twice. It would’ve been comical if it hadn’t been improper.”
“Have you ever been to the theatre, sir?”
“Well, yes. Once or twice.”
“Ever see a comedy or a French farce?”
“One or two.”
“Ever see actors, male and female, doing things on stage that you might in your own home consider a bit naughty or ‘improper’ even?”
“Yes, but that was on a stage!”
“Were Mr. Baldwin and Miss Barr in costume?”
“Well, yes.”
“Were they on a platform in Dr. William Baldwin’s drawing-room?”
“Well, yes, they were. Just a little one.”
“Was each of them playing a role other than their own selves?”
“Well, yes – ”
“So what was improper, sir? You were being entertained, were you not? By a pair of costumed actors? Mr. Seamus Baldwin was not fondling the girl, was he? The girl did not look distressed, did she? Or as if she were being coerced?”
Leigh had rocked back under this barrage, and Cambridge had just reached his feet when the witness mumbled, “No, sir. None of those things.”
Sitting on the rear bench near the back doors next to the bailiff, Cobb felt the heat rise up through his collar. What on earth was Marc up to? Was he out to cut up every witness, every honest citizen who stepped up to the stand to do his duty? How far would his friend go to dismantle this airtight case?
Marc’s rapid-fire examination of Samuel Leigh did much to blunt the subsequent testimony of Ralph Broadhead. So Marc declined to cross-examine.
The last witness of the morning was Beth Edwards. She had watched several dramatic trials in the past two years, but she had never been on the witness-stand herself. She was nervous but did her best to appear calm. She had not been interviewed by Neville Cambridge, but she was anticipating the worst. Few people in the room did not know she was the wife of the defense attorney. If she had compelling testimony to offer the Crown, it would weigh mightily with the jury. Marc caught her eye, and she smiled grimly. Marc had studiously avoided discussing the possible questions she might be asked, as she was an official prosecution witness. Even so, she was better left to her own devices, which were considerable.
“Mrs. Edwards, I believe you attended a birthday party at the beginning of September for Miss Eliza Baldwin out at Spadina?”
“I did,” Beth said, certain now where this was going. She braced herself.
“Did the defendant, Mr. Seamus Baldwin, make an appearance at that party?”
“Yes.”
“Describe the nature and course of that appearance for the members of the jury.”
Beth hesitated.
“Begin with his arrival, please, and go from there.”
“Mr. Baldwin arrived doin’ a jig and playin’ an Irish fife. He was dressed like an elf or a leprechaun.”
“This child-like behaviour was intended to entertain the children?”
“Yes. And it did. They laughed and pranced around him.”
“What else did he do to entertain them?”
Marc suddenly realized that the reason Cambridge had not bothered to interview Beth was that someone else at that party had already filled in the details. But who? There were no outsiders that day. Surely not Fabian Cobb. But it could have been Edie. From Cobb’s report of his interview with her, Marc got the impression that she had a love-hate relationship with the old man. If he had, in his recent depression, not paid her sufficient attention, then she might have tattled to spite him. She came into St. James cathedral every Sunday with the family. There would be ample time for her to slip away and make a statement. He turned his attention back to the witness-stand, where Beth had started to answer Cambridge’s question.
“He played Blind Man’s Buff with the children at the party.”
“And he was the blind man?”
“Yes.”
“Who else joined in the game?”
“The two housemaids, Betsy Thurgood and Edie Barr.”
Cambridge paused, glanced meaningfully at the jurors, and said, “And who invited them to join?”
Beth sighed, but she had little choice: she would tell the truth, if she was compelled to. “They asked if they could join, and when Miss Partridge objected, Mr. Baldwin gave them permission. And they joined in.”
“Mr Seamus Baldwin?” Cambridge said as if he were introducing that name for the first time.
“Yes. He wanted them to enjoy themselves, too.” It was the best she could do.
“In the course of this children’s game, the Blind Man tries to capture one of the participants, who taunt and tease him. Am I correct?”
“You are. But whenever Mr. Baldwin came close to catching a child, he’d pretend to stumble and lose his hold. The children roared with laughter. They were having a wonderful time.”
“I’m sure they were. There’s a little child in all of us. But at some point did Mr. Baldwin actually catch a participant?”
“Yes. He caught Edie Barr, one of the housemaids.”
“I see. No stumbling there, I take it?”
Marc grimaced but kept quiet. Beth took the question as rhetorical and waited, apprehensively.
“One variation of this game, as I understand it, is that when someone is captured, the children cry out, ‘Who is it? You’ve got to tell us who you’ve caught!’ Did that happen on this occasion?”
“Yes. The children ordered him to name the person he’d captured.”
“Describe, as precisely as you can recall, how he went about it.”
“Well, first of all, I’m sure he knew who he’d caught. I was told he could actually see through the scarf he used for a mask. That was so he could pretend to stumble and stagger and play ignorant so he could entertain the children with his pratfalls. So as she stood stock still, he moved his hands up and down her figure, keeping them deliberately away from touching her. Again, the children howled at his exaggeratin’.”
“Then what happened?”
“I think Edie lost her balance and then – fell against . . . Mr. Baldwin.”
“Fell into his hands so that he was grasping her? Where?”
Beth waited as long as she could before saying, “Around the hips.”
“And how can you be sure it was Miss Barr who fell into those hands and not the hands that moved most improperly against her?”
“I can’t. But it looked to me like she lost her balance. Like it was an accident.”
“Did he remove his hands right away? Sort of jump back startled? After all, you say he could see everything that was happening through the scarf.”
“No. He seemed surprised, but we couldn’t see his eyes. He just kind of held her for a moment, perhaps to stop her from tippin’ over. Then he went back to his pretend business.”
“So whatever did happen, the result was improper, wouldn’t you say? A mature gentleman is running his hands up and down a sixteen-year-old’s female figure in a sort of obscene pantomime and the next thing you know, he’s got both hands on her haunches – ”
“Milord!” Marc had sprung to his feet, eyes blazing.
“Mr. Cambridge, that’s quite enough of that. The jury will ignore those latter remarks.”
Not only had the jury heard the remarks, Cambridge had left the dramatic raising of his voice until the very last minute of the morning’s testimony. And it was doubly effective. Now, rebuked, he spoke in a very soft, almost seductive tone as he said to Beth, “Tell us, Mrs. Edwards, how you felt as you observed this incident. Not what you thought later, but what feeling ran through you as you witnessed these sexual intimacies.”
Beth dropped her head, looking down and well away from Marc as she spoke the truth: “I felt a kind of revulsion, like I was about to be sick to my stomach.”