“We appreciate the difficulties, Sergeant,” Savidge said. “You remain confident, do you not, that these two fingerprints belong to the same individual?”
“I do.”
“Turn the card over, please, and read the name to the jury.”
The spectators watched breathlessly as the sergeant reversed the card, gulped, and turned pale.
The judge leaned forward. “Whose print is it on the bottle, Sergeant?”
“It belongs to Inspector Earnest Ashcraft.”
A loud murmur of voices rippled through the court. The prosecutor leaped to his feet, shouting objections. Ashcraft’s face was curiously mottled. The judge pounded his gavel. “Order,” he commanded. “I will have order in this court!”
“And what do you deduce from this evidence, Sergeant Collins?” Savidge asked, above the noise. The judge pounded his gavel again, and the spectators subsided.
“That Inspector Ashcraft handled the bottle at some point before Detective Finney applied the label.”
“My lord, I object!” Sims cried, quite beside himself. “I most strenuously object! We have no assurance that the fingerprints on the card are those of Inspector Ashcraft. The card might have been substituted for or otherwise tampered with. It might-”
“If your lordship pleases,” Savidge interjected smoothly, “Inspector Ashcraft might be asked to supply his right thumbprint, to ensure that there has been no tampering.”
“I please,” the judge said crisply. “I most certainly do please. Inspector Ashcraft, your thumb, if you will.”
“But my lord,” Sims said in a pleading tone, “this is most irregular. It smacks of-”
“Sit down, Mr. Sims,” the judge said with a dark look. “The Court intends to get to the bottom of this matter. Inspector Ashcraft,
Sullenly and with obvious reluctance, Inspector Ashcraft came forward. Sergeant Collins produced a fingerprint kit, opened the inkpad, and rolled the inspector’s right thumb, then printed it onto a card. Having examined it, he said, “It is the same print as that on both the bottle and the card.”
“Recall Inspector Ashcraft,” Savidge said promptly. Sims opened and shut his mouth several times, then sat down.
Sergeant Collins, his eyes averted from the inspector’s angry glance, left the witness box, and Inspector Ashcraft resumed it.
“Now, Inspector,” Savidge said. “You testified earlier that you did not handle any of the evidence in this case. Please explain to the jury how your thumbprint came to be found on the bottle in Mr. Gould’s room. Did you put that bottle there, so that Detective Finney could later find it?”
Charles saw that Ashcraft’s jaw muscles were working. “I must do my work as I see my duty,” he said. “I would deal with the devil himself, when it comes to that.”
The judge fixed cold eyes on the inspector. “Answer the question, Inspector. Did you put that bottle there?”
The inspector cleared his throat. “I claim privilege against self-incrimination,” he said in a surly tone.
The courtroom became suddenly noisy again, and again the judge gaveled it into silence. “Order!” he commanded. “There will be order in this courtroom!”
“Very well.” Savidge leaned forward. “Inspector Ashcraft, if you are not willing to speak, at least you may be able to hold up your right hand.”
Frowning, Ashcraft held it up.
“I see, sir,” Savidge said, “a faded yellow stain on your index finger, around where the skin appears to have peeled away. Mr. Baker told the jury that a nitric acid burn turns the skin yellow and causes it to peel. Did you burn your finger when you poured nitric acid into one of the bottles found by Detective Finney in the defendants’ rooms?”
The inspector put his hand behind his back. “Privilege against self-incrimination,” he growled.
With a heavy irony, Savidge said, “Thank you, Inspector Ashcraft. You have been most helpful.”
The prosecutor, his youth and inexperience all too evident now, seemed to have lost confidence in his case-understandably, Charles thought. His summation was brief, faltering, and unconvincing. Savidge, however, spoke with a fierce resoluteness, pointing out that the case against all three of the defendants consisted of nothing more than guilt by association; that the informant who believed Mr. Kopinski was a “dangerous man” could not be questioned nor his veracity tested; that Mrs. Battle’s testimony to an overheard conversation had been entirely discredited; and that the evidence of the ginger-beer bottles-the only direct evidence in the entire case-was seriously compromised. Inspector Ashcraft had testified that he had never touched any of the evidence, yet his thumbprint could clearly be seen on the bottle found in Adam Gould’s flat, in such a way as to suggest that he had put the evidence where the police found it. He sought refuge in the claim of privilege against self- incrimination when asked to explain to the jury how this had occurred, and how his right index finger had come to exhibit the stain and peeling consistent with a nitric-acid burn.
By the time Savidge was finished with his passionate appeal, Charles thought, he had most of the spectators in his corner. It was then the judge’s turn. His lordship spoke briefly (and fairly, Charles thought), laying before the jury the prosecution’s arguments and those of the defense, and charging them to consider the case on the evidence only. Then he withdrew and the jury retired to its deliberations. It was four o’clock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.
Sir William Blackstone,
Commentaries on the Laws of England
It is better to execute a hundred innocent persons than to permit one guilty person to go free.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin
We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses.
Nikolai Kyrlenko,
When the jury had retired, Kate and Nellie went out for a cup of tea. By the time they returned to the courtroom, the gas jets had been lighted, the spectators’ section was half-empty, and the journalists were glancing uncertainly at their watches, as if wondering whether they might safely go out to a restaurant. The jury might agree at any moment; on the other hand, it might deliberate for hours if just one of their number differed in his opinion from the others.
At half-six, the usher came into the court and announced that the jury had reached a verdict. The spectators scrambled to return to their seats, and the prosecuting and defense counsels took their places. The defendants, still shackled, were returned to the dock, each one escorted by a warder, with a plain clothes officer standing guard. A dead silence fell upon the courtroom as the judge took his seat, and then the jury. The clerk called out their names, one by one, and then said: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdicts?”
“We have,” the foreman answered in a stern voice. The verdicts were read out swiftly, a sibilant sigh, like the sound of ocean surf, washing through the room at each reading. Pierre Mouffetard, guilty. Ivan Kopinski, guilty. Adam Gould, not guilty. The three men stood, not moving, as still as stone.
“Not guilty!” Nellie exclaimed jubilantly. “They found Adam not guilty! Oh, I wish Lottie were here to see him go free. And surely the police cannot want her, now that the trial is over.” Around Kate and Nellie, the crowd was exchanging excited whispers. “Guilty! Guilty! Not guilty!”
The judge pounded his gavel for order, and pronounced sentence: ten years of penal servitude for each of the two convicted men. “Ten years!” went the whispers around the courtroom, louder now, and awed. “Ten years!”
As Kate watched, the warder standing beside Adam bent down and removed his shackles. The warders beside Pierre and Ivan applied handcuffs. Then they were escorted out of the dock, leaving Adam standing alone and bewildered, looking after the departing prisoners, raising his hands and stepping toward them, as if to go with them. Perhaps he wanted to say goodbye, Kate thought, or to protest at the fate that released him and imprisoned them-or perhaps he had not yet realized that the jury had acquitted him, that he was unshackled and free to go.
Then Adam seemed to come to himself. He glanced once more over his shoulder at the others, then a great smile spread across his face, and with a leaping, jubilant step, he went down the steps and made for the defense table, where he seized the hands of both Charles and Edward Savidge, pumping them up and down.
“Ten years,” Nellie said, suddenly sobered. “That’s a very long time for… for what, Kate? For working at the Clarion? For being acquainted with the man who blew himself up?”
“I don’t understand,” Kate said angrily, “how the jury could find one innocent and the other two guilty. That awful old lady perjured herself, the inspector doctored the evidence, and the whole case was so flimsy that it took no more than a good puff of air to blow it all to pieces.”
“It’s because Mouffetard is French and Kopinski has a Russian name,” Nellie said in a practical tone. “They let Adam Gould go free because he’s English.” She smiled crookedly. “Juries can do anything they like, I guess.”
“I suppose,” Kate sighed, gathering up her things. “It’s late, Nellie, and we’re both tired. Let’s find a cab.”
Feeling as if a terrible burden had been lifted from his shoulders, Adam Gould stood on the stone steps of the Old Bailey, a free man. He had thanked Lord Sheridan and Edward Savidge, and each member of the jury. In his excitement, he had even thanked the bailiff and the judge. It was all over now but the shouting, and there was plenty of that. Around him rose a stormy cacophony of voices, some people hailing him with jubilant congratulations, others hurling angry abuse. But Adam heard almost none of it, for he was too full of a turbulent storm of feelings. He was torn by anger and grief at the conviction of Pierre and Ivan, who were no more guilty than he of the crime with which they’d been charged. But he was also filled with a glad relief at the thought of his freedom. Now if only he could find Lottie…
The twilight had been hastened into evening by a bank of lowering clouds, and a fine mist filled the darkening air. Eagerly, Adam searched the milling crowd on the sidewalks, under the gas lamps. Lottie. Where was the devil
But she had not been in the courtroom and now, he saw, surveying the crowd with mounting despair, she was not outside, waiting for him in the street. Did that mean that something terrible had happened to her? That the police had caught her and were holding her somewhere? That she had been forced to leave the country, or-
