The trial of Robert McGladdery for the murder of Pearl Gamble opened on 9th October at the autumn assize in Downpatrick. There was a sizeable media presence with reporters from all the main national papers as well as the local papers. When Robert was asked his name he spoke out in ‘a loud, clear voice’. He was wearing a ‘dark suit, light-coloured shirt and tie’.
McCrink sat in the public gallery. He could see Agnes McGladdery in the upper tier of the gallery and Margaret a few rows along and Ronnie below her.
The first morning’s evidence was taken up with testimony regarding the discovery of Pearl’s body. Sixteen-year-old Charles Ashe gave evidence of finding a green button, a brown shoe and a blood-saturated handkerchief at Damolly Cross while out walking greyhounds. He brought them to the Gamble house where Mrs Gamble identified them as belonging to Pearl. The police were called and a search for Pearl commenced.
The youth told how he had stood awaiting the squad car at the roadside. He said he had five greyhounds leashed and muzzled at his side. The prosecution council dwelt on the greyhounds, creatures bred for hunt, their muzzles hidden by leather bands, giving them a look of medieval gorehounds. The prosecution counsel drawing out the image, letting the taint hang in the air.
Johnston was called to give evidence of the discovery of Pearl’s body. He was wearing full dress uniform. Hide belt and buckler, brass buttons, the boots brought to a high gleam with a red-hot poker, a heavy Smith & Wesson revolver holstered on the belt. Johnston filled the witness box and spoke with harsh command, seeming vested with authority that was exercisable in jurisdictions beyond the human.
He related how other items of Pearl’s clothing were found at the entrance to the stubble field. A black silk scarf, another brown shoe, a pair of black shoes. Her handbag, brush and comb. Later in proceedings Ronnie would explain that Pearl had brought a pair of brown shoes with her for walking home. Her ‘skirt, blouse and intimate garments’ were strewn across the stubble field. Johnston described how he had discovered a patch of bloodstained earth and had fetched a bucket and shovel and filled the pail with bloodsoaked soil. Pearl’s body was discovered at Weir’s Rock at 10.20 a.m. The photographs of the scene and Pearl’s body were handed to the jury. McCrink knew what they were looking at, the quality of light unique to such scenes. You could see how the jurors’ minds worked back from the photographs to the assault, the ghastly night scenes. How the scattered clothing led to the body, the intimate garments, the rustling underthings. You could see then how their eyes turned to Robert in the dock, sitting there with an abstracted air as though he was only marginally involved in the proceedings.
Johnston gave evidence of interviewing Robert. He described ‘abrasions’ under his right eye, and cuts on the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
Details of the cause of death were given by the pathologist. Death was caused not by the puncture wounds, one of which had pierced her heart, but by the ligature applied to her neck.
Beaten, strangled, stabbed.
Johnston gave evidence regarding the blanket surveillance of Robert during the two weeks following the murder. Brown questioned him regarding the river incident where the soaking wet Robert was brought back to the station. Johnston insisted that the only purpose of bringing Robert back was to dry his clothes. He denied putting a gun to his head and telling Robert that he’d ‘blow his fucking brains out’ if he didn’t get into the car.
During the day’s evidence Robert listened intently to the legal argument and consulted textbooks. He leaned back in his chair with a serious expression when witnesses were called to the stand. McCrink watching from the body of the court thought that he was seeking postures of innocence,that he wanted the jury to see him as pained, caught in the brow-furrowed perplexity of a man wrongly accused, but that another part of him responded to the theatrics of the court, the gavotte of gesture and rhetoric. The dancer, the bodybuilder. Robert feeling the regard of the public on him but not aware of the price of that regard, the blood tithe.
Robert had never seen his QC, Brown, in his court garb before. He thought he looked like a medieval figure, a bewigged and frock-coated attendant. Everyone in the court appeared to him like figures of legend. It was a feeling that would grow during the seven days of the trial. Those in the public gallery were small and far away whereas those called before the court loomed in his mind. He looked up at Judge Curran and remembered how he had discussed the killing of the judge’s daughter with Mervyn and how Mervyn had said he would swing for a man that would do such murder. He noticed that Judge Curran did not look in his direction. That night when he was returned to Crumlin Road he told Hughes that he thought the Judge would try the case fairly.
‘He’s the same sort of man as myself,’ he said. ‘The rest of the QCs and all’s a bit scruffy-looking. Judge Curran’s robes and all is perfect. Knows how to wear his clothes. There’s not a crease. Dead sharp he is and talks polite to the whole crew, no matter if they’re Queen’s Counsel or the cleaner. And fair as they come. A bit on the dry side, but fair.’
McCrink watching from the body of the court had observed that the judge was polite and scrupulously fair. Like Brown he came to the conclusion that Curran was concerned less with probity than with ensuring that all avenues of appeal be cut off.
The afternoon’s proceedings concerned the events of the night of 28th January. It was agreed that Pearl arrived with Ronnie Whitcroft at 10.30 p.m. and that Robert McGladdery arrived with Will Copeland at 11.30 p.m. There was no dispute that Pearl danced two or three times with McGladdery or that she left in a car about 2.15 a.m. with two other men and three girls after a ‘short talk’ with Joseph Clydesdale.
The court adjourned at 4.30 p.m. with Judge Curran saying they would deal with the events of the night in more detail the following day. Margaret was waiting for McCrink outside the court. McCrink got into her Renault.
‘You don’t care who sees you?’ he said.
‘They all know.’
‘I’m still married.’
‘They all know that too. ‘
They drove back to Newry. It was the first cold day of the year, squalls of hail blowing through the gap in the mountains that marked the frontier to the south. They drove down into Newry and across the quays, dockers bent with coal sacks over their heads against the sleet and soaked tinker children gathering the spilled coals by hand, smoke from their rain-damped fires wreathing in the dark and making of it a scene of labour from some benighted olden city.
‘You could be back in the dark ages,’ Margaret said.
‘You get that feeling in the courtroom. Something’s not right about the whole thing.’
‘Let the town deal with it in its own way,’ she said.
‘Even if McGladdery’s innocent?’
‘You’re a brave boy to come talking about innocence in this town.’
‘If McGladdery is innocent,’ he said, ‘and the judge is guilty?’
When they got back to her flat she asked him whether he had ever seen a man hanged. She pressed him for the details, the condemned man’s demeanour. She pictured him pale and unearthly.
‘They say that women get excited at executions. Is that true? That they experience arousal?’ Her detailed clinical talk. ‘Experience arousal’ – as though it was a procedure to be undergone. She brought him into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. She thrashed and moaned and pushed at his body as if she was trying to divest herself of some old pain.
Tuesday 10th October. The Downpatrick Assize resumed at 10 a.m. Judge Curran took the bench. The prosecution admitted into evidence the soiled shortie fawn coat found in the septic tank, along with the other items of clothing. The jacket lay on a table in front of Judge Curran during the day’s proceedings,stiff with ingrained ordure from the tank in which it had been suspended. The jurors’ eyes were drawn to it. They had the sense that something beyond evil had slipped its bounds in the January night, had walked abroad attired in the putrid garment. The prosecution also produced the dark drape suit that Robert said he had been wearing. They were to put thirteen witnesses in the witness box to testify as to what Robert had been wearing that night.
Maud Wilson, the wife of the caretaker of the Henry Thompson Memorial Hall, said that Robert had been wearing a ‘greeny’ suit. A machinist, Edith Henry, said that Robert had been wearing a ‘dark’ suit. Shop assistant Maureen Matier said that the suit McGladdery had been wearing was ‘darker’ than the one in court.
Teddy Cowan said that Robert was wearing a ‘fawn shortie overcoat’, and that ‘his suit was light blue’. Heather Sybil-Kenny, described as a linen designer, said that Robert was wearing a ‘chocolate-brown shortie overcoat with leather buttons’ and a ‘watery-blue suit much lighter than the one in court’. Patrick Morrow also said that the suit McGladdery was wearing was ‘much lighter’ than the one in court.
The prosecution strategy was to prove that Robert was telling lies when he said that he had been wearing a black suit. The jury would be asked to conclude that he had been wearing a light-blue suit and had concealed that fact because the suit was probably bloodstained and had been concealed or destroyed.
Esther Henning said that Robert was wearing a light-coloured suit. Samuel Moffit said that he had seen a man skulking in the bushes outside the front door where bicycles were left. A bicycle had been stolen that night and it was suggested that the killer had used it to get to Damolly Cross where he lay in wait for Pearl. Moffit said that he thought the skulking man was wearing a ‘gaberdine coat’.
Brown cross-examined each of the thirteen witnesses. He suggested that they might be mistaken. He was soft-spoken, apologetic. He tried to prise them away from hard-won certainties. He knew how difficult this thing was, this bearing of witness, learning to address the picked-over artefacts of Pearl’s last hours, the allusive nature of this midwinter dance in what now seemed a far-off province of the night, the death-haunted hours in the Orange hall.
‘That doesn’t feel right either,’ McCrink said outside. He stood on the pavement with Margaret. It was evening, rain blowing down the pavement, coal smoke in the air, cheap imported aggregate that tainted the rain.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘They all remember too clearly. Eye-witnesses aren’t usually that reliable.’
‘You think they’ve been put up to it?’
‘I don’t think so. But sometimes people remember what they think they should remember.’
They stood in the rain, pedestrians passing swiftly, their heads down beneath umbrellas and hats, their faces strained.
After dark Hughes and Robert would lie awake talking. They spoke softly so that the guards would not hear them. They talked about things they remembered from their childhood, the retold stories that were like objects handled and worn smooth. Enduring lights-out intimacies. This Robert was different, Hughes said afterwards. He would listen to Hughes, be attentive to the material, the dense contoured narratives of childhood. Robert told him about Will Copeland. The way they were friends. Blood brothers. It was the way men did things, Robert said. They saw the lifelong in things, the lasting companionships.
‘He’ll see me right,’ Robert said, ‘all the stuff we done together. We were blood brothers.’
‘I hear tell he’s being called by the prosecution,’ Hughes said. ‘I wouldn’t put the house on him backing you.’
‘The truth will come out, you’ll see,’ Robert said. He was that sure of himself, you’d of believed him, Hughes said afterwards. He kept saying that all he had to do was get up on the stand.
In later years Hughes would come back to these nights. He said they were like men from the past telling stories by firelight,the murmured yarns, passing tales one to the other as keepsakes, the handed-down wisdom of their race.
On the third day of the trial the prosecution focused further on the events of the night. Gladys Jones, an officer in the Rangers, took the stand first. She described how she had seen Robert dancing with Pearl.
‘I remember the second time, McGladdery was trying to hold Pearl tightly towards him and had his head bent down towards her face. She kept turning her head away from him.’
Brown asked her how many times Robert had danced with Pearl. She replied two or three times.
‘Pretty, dark-haired’ Joan Donergan was called to the stand. She was asked what Robert had been wearing. She said he had been wearing a ‘shortie fawn overcoat’. Brown cross-examined her. He asked her when she had first seen Robert. She said that she had first seen him in the entrance hall where he had ‘picked her up and swung her off her feet’. Brown asked her how many times she had danced with Robert. She replied that she had danced with him six times.
McCrink started to see another narrative emerging. Robert going to the dance. The way he picked Joan Donergan up and swung her around. It is a good-humoured, flamboyant gesture, the night’s bounty in front of you, a pretty girl laughing. He could see Robert smiling and nodding.
But the jury’s attention kept returning to the soiled coat on the table in front of the judge’s dais. They were still convinced that this was part of the real story. It belonged with the skulked-through bushes outside the hall, the idea that the hall itself represented some kind of waypost on the dire path to the stubble field and Weir’s Rock.
Ronnie took the stand. Her eyes were dark with fatigue. She placed her hand on the Bible and spoke the oath. For a moment she seemed lost in recollection. She had been taken to country tent missions when she was a child and it had had no effect on her. She wasn’t the religious kind but something of that past was felt in the courtroom when she put her hand on the book, the taking of covenants and saying of psalms, the laying of hands on holy writ and the speaking in tongues. When she spoke her voice had the conviction of scripture. Robert told Hughes that she looked like a different person. The ride of the town, he said, speaking as if from the pulpit,the storyteller transformed by the story.
The jury listened to her. They had seen how Ronnie was dressed when she came into the courtroom. The lipstick that was a shade too bright and the peroxide beehive, the black mascara and the falsies. They disapproved of her to start with until she began to talk, taking them through the night, the last person to speak to Pearl before she met her killer, the dense textured moments. They went along with Ronnie,granted her permission to be garish and overdressed.
She told how she had walked to the hall with Pearl and how Pearl had seemed changed that night, elevated in some way, the swaying walk, eyes downcast, people stepping out of her way as though some court voluptuary came their way.
‘They were afraid for to ask her to dance. They couldn’t take their eyes off her but they were afeard,’ Ronnie said, ‘till McGladdery took her up, that is.’
‘How many times?’
‘Three, I think. The last time I seen him go up to the singer of the band for to request a song.’
‘What song did the band play when he came down to ask Miss Gamble to dance for the last time?’
‘They played “It’s Now or Never”.’
The jury looked at each other. The song title implying that Robert had put final terms of some kind to Pearl. The title of the song infused with sexual threat, the libidinous vibrato of Elvis Presley setting down the carnal ultimatum. McCrink could see that Robert was shaking his head.
Ronnie went on to describe how they left the dance at 2.15 a.m. She remembered how cold it was, water frozen in the guttering. The lights were turned off in the Orange hall and they milled around in the lee of the ill-lit venue. This was the hardest part of the night to remember, the Orange hall behind them and the scriptural hall done in red-brick Gothic looming over them. People going off in couples. Not much is being said. All the work has been done in the hall, the lingering glances, the feints. The commerce is in the open now. There is an air of rut about the scene outside. They’ve got down to the point of the night, the sensuous marrow of it, standing in rows against the back wall of the hall. The tit. The bush. The box. Ronnie is pulled in by McKnight who stands with his back to the railings at the war memorial. She looks up at the bronze putteed infantryman on the plinth, bayonet fixed as though he might lead out an army of the night.
‘Where was Pearl at this point?’
‘Pearl went up Church Avenue with Joseph Clydesdale.’
‘Was he a boyfriend?’
‘Pearl didn’t have a regular item but you’d miss something if you didn’t have a charver of a Saturday night.’ A charver. Ronnie dropping into the port town argot, the cant, the garrison slang.
Speers and Johnston had interviewed Clydesdale at length about this episode. Clydesdale did not know what had possessed him to ask Pearl up the Avenue and had assumed she would refuse. But she had gone with him, walking silently alongside. Clydesdale had noticed her make-up and dress, the way it made her look oriental, a figure from the olden times bonded to concubinage or other service.
‘I never dared put a hand on her when we got up there,’ he said. ‘I gave her a kiss on the lips but you wouldn’t have dared try nothing.’
There was a pulling back. A drawing together in the matter of self. Clydesdale said that she hardly seemed to be there any more. ‘She went quiet on me,’ he said, as though a silence had descended like awful night, a hush falling through the memorial oaks and unlit approaches of the Avenue.
After fifteen minutes Pearl and Clydesdale came down Church Avenue. Clydesdale went back to his friends. Ronnie had got a lift for Pearl with two local men, Billy Morton and Derek Chambers. They were joined in Morton’s Ford by Pearl’s cousin, Evelyn Gamble, and Rae Boyd. Chambers and Morton in the front seat and the four girls squeezed into the back. The car full of Saturday-night banter. Ronnie getting stick for the beard rash on her chin. Pearl crushed up against the pressed-steel bulkhead of the car, staring out of the window. Chambers drove carefully, watching out for black ice on the unsalted road, the laden-down Ford going through the gears as it climbed towards Damolly Cross, the other dancers dispersed.
‘What happened then?’
‘Pearl’s house was nearest. We dropped her off at Damolly Cross. That was the last we seen of her.’ Ronnie stopped. There was no point in adding any more. She had told the story of Pearl’s last moments enough times to know that the ornamentation had fallen away. Her account had a bare, stripped-to-the-bone feel about it.
Ronnie was cross-examined by Brown. The QC had only one question.
‘Did you meet another car on Damolly Lane?’
‘We did. We met a car coming down the hill just at the bend.’
The prosecution put the other inhabitants of the car on the stand. None of them remembered meeting another car on Damolly Hill.
Robert and Will Copeland are missing from the scene outside the hall. In evidence Robert would say that he had waited for Joan Donergan, the pretty dark-haired one, the girl he had danced with six times, but that when she had not appeared he had gone home. The caretaker Wilson said that he had seen McGladdery leave the hall at 2 a.m. Robert maintained that he was there at 2.15 a.m. which would not have given him time to get to Damolly Cross to attack Pearl. Will Copeland’s whereabouts were not established.