Death on the Air Read online

  JUDGE: (to SMITHSON) Thank you, Dr Smithson. You may go if you wish.

  DR SMITHSON: Thank you, my lord. (He leaves the witness box.)

  O’CONNOR: My lord, in view of the development of this trial since Dr Swale gave evidence and particularly in view of subsequent evidence, I ask for leave to reopen my cross-examination of him. I ask for him to be recalled.

  JUDGE: What do you say to this, Mr Golding? Do you object?

  GOLDING: My lord, I can find no conceivable reason for this procedure, but – I do not object.

  JUDGE: (after a moment’s pause) Very well, Mr Defence Counsel. Go back to the witness box, please, Dr Swale.

  (DR SWALE takes the stand.)

  O’CONNOR: Dr Swale, you realize that you are still on oath, do you not?

  DR SWALE: I do.

  O’CONNOR: You heard the evidence given by the previous witness?

  DR SWALE: Yes.

  O’CONNOR: Do you agree with it?

  DR SWALE: I am not a pathologist, but I would expect it to be correct.

  O’CONNOR: With respect to the deterioration within an hour of a capsule containing cyanide?

  DR SWALE: I have had no experience of potassium cyanide, but yes, I would, of course, expect Dr Smithson to be right.

  O’CONNOR: Yes. Dr Swale, I’m going to take you back if you please to April 4th, the evening when you were called in to the Ecclestones’ and saw the dead Alsatian. You will remember that you removed what was left of the liver that had been fed to the dog and subsequently had it analysed and that cyanide of potassium was found in massive quantities.

  DR SWALE: Yes.

  O’CONNOR: There was also, in the same safe, the material for a mixed grill which was intended for the Major’s dinner that night.

  DR SWALE: So I understand.

  O’CONNOR: Did you do anything about this meat?

  DR SWALE: I have already deposed that I said it should be destroyed.

  O’CONNOR: And was it destroyed?

  DR SWALE: It was. I have already said so.

  O’CONNOR: By whom?

  DR SWALE: By Mrs Ecclestone and myself. In their incinerator.

  O’CONNOR: As she subsequently deposed. After you had given your evidence.

  DR SWALE: Quite.

  O’CONNOR: Dr Swale, did it not occur to you that this meat which was destined for the Major’s dinner should also be analysed?

  DR SWALE: No. I was simply concerned to get rid of it.

  O’CONNOR: Upon further consideration would you now say it would have been better to have sent it, or a portion of it, for analysis?

  DR SWALE: Perhaps it might have been better. But the circumstances of the dog’s death – their description of its symptoms and its appearance so strongly suggested a convulsive poison such as cyanide – I really didn’t think.

  O’CONNOR: I’m sorry, doctor, but you told us just now, you’ve had no experience with cyanide.

  DR SWALE: No experience in practice but naturally during the course of training I did my poisons.

  O’CONNOR: Is Mrs Ecclestone a vegetarian?

  DR SWALE: (a slight pause) I believe so.

  O’CONNOR: You believe so, Dr Swale? But as Mrs Ecclestone has told us, you are a member of their intimate circle. You are her doctor, are you not?

  DR SWALE: (less cool) Yes, of course I am:

  O’CONNOR: Surely, then, you know definitely whether or not she’s a vegetarian?

  DR SWALE: Yes. All right. I simply said, ‘I believe so’ as one does in voicing an ordinary agreement. I know so, if you prefer it. She is a vegetarian.

  O’CONNOR: Are you in the habit of visiting her on Friday afternoons?

  DR SWALE: Not ‘in the habit’ of doing so. I sometimes used to drop in on Fridays to swop crosswords with the Major.

  O’CONNOR: But Major Ecclestone was always at his club on Fridays.

  DR SWALE: He used to leave his crossword out for me. I visit The Hermitage private hospital on Fridays and it’s close by. I did sometimes – quite often – drop in at The Elms.

  O’CONNOR: (blandly) For a cup of tea, perhaps?

  DR SWALE: Certainly. For a cup of tea.

  O’CONNOR: You heard the evidence of Thomas Tidwell, didn’t you?

  DR SWALE: (contemptuously) If you can call it that.

  O’CONNOR: What would you call it?

  DR SWALE: An example of small town lying gossip dished out by a small town oaf.

  O’CONNOR: To what part of his evidence do you refer?

  DR SWALE: Clearly, since it concerns me, to the suggestion that I went to the house for any other purpose than the one I have given.

  O’CONNOR: What do you say to Miss Freebody’s views on the subject?

  DR SWALE: I would have thought it was obvious that they are those of a mentally disturbed spinster of uncertain age.

  MISS FREEBODY: (sharply) Libel! Cad! Murderer!

  (The JUDGE turns and stares at her. The WARDRESS admonishes her. She subsides.)

  O’CONNOR: You are not Miss Freebody’s doctor, are you?

  DR SWALE: No, thank God.

  (Laughter)

  USHER: Silence in court.

  O’CONNOR: When you paid your earlier visit to The Elms on the afternoon in question, did you carry your professional bag with you?

  DR SWALE: (after a pause) I expect so.

  O’CONNOR: Why? It was not a professional call.

  DR SWALE: I’m not in the habit of leaving it in the car.

  O’CONNOR: What was in it?

  DR SWALE: You don’t want an inventory, do you? The bag contains the normal impedimenta of a doctor in general practice.

  O’CONNOR: And nothing else?

  DR SWALE: I’m not in the habit of using my case as a shopping bag.

  O’CONNOR: Not for butcher’s meat, for instance?

  GOLDING: My lord, I do most strenuously object.

  DR SWALE: This is intolerable. Have I no protection against this sort of treatment?

  JUDGE: No. Answer.

  DR SWALE: No. I do not and never have carried butcher’s meat in my bag.

  (DEFENCE COUNSEL sits.)

  JUDGE: (to GOLDING) Mr Golding, do you wish to reexamine?

  GOLDING: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: (to SWALE;) Thank you, doctor.

  DR SWALE: My lord, may I speak to you?

  JUDGE: No, Dr Swale.

  DR SWALE: I demand to be heard.

  JUDGE: You may do no such thing, you may—

  DR SWALE: (shouting him down) My lord, it is perfectly obvious that counsel for the defence is trying to protect his client by throwing up a series of infamous suggestions intended to implicate a lady and myself in this miserable business.

  JUDGE: (through this) Be quiet, sir. Leave the witness box.

  DR SWALE: I refuse. I insist. We are not legally represented. I am a professional man who must be very gravely damaged by these baseless innuendoes.

  JUDGE: For the last time I warn you—

  DR SWALE: (shouting him down) I had nothing, I repeat, nothing whatever to do with the death of the Ecclestones’ dog (JUDGE gestures to USHER), nor did I tamper with any of the meat in the safe. I protest, my lord. I protest.

  (The USHER and a police constable close in on him and the scene ends in confusion.)

  (GWENDOLINE MIGGS is sworn in on the stand. She is a large, determined-looking woman of about sixty.)

  O’CONNOR: Your name is Sarah Gwendoline Miggs?

  MIGGS: Yes.

  O’CONNOR: And where do you live, Miss Miggs?

  MIGGS: Flat 3, Flask Walk, Fulchester.

  O’CONNOR: You are a qualified medical nurse, now retired?

  MIGGS: I am.

  O’CONNOR: Will you give us briefly an account of your professional experience?

  MIGGS: Fifteen years in general hospital and twenty years in ten hospitals for the mentally disturbed.

  O’CONNOR: The last one being at Fulchester Grange Hospital where you nursed for some two yea
rs before retiring?

  MIGGS: Correct.

  O’CONNOR: And have you, since the sitting of this court, been looking after the defendant, Miss Mary Emmaline Freebody?

  MIGGS: Right.

  O’CONNOR: Miss Miggs, will you tell his Lordship and the jury how the days are spent since you took this job?

  MIGGS: I relieve the night nurse at 8.00 a.m. and am with the case until I’m relieved in the evening.

  JUDGE: With the ‘case’?

  O’CONNOR: Miss Freebody, my lord.

  JUDGE: (fretfully) Why can’t we say so, for pity’s sake? Very well.

  O’CONNOR: Do you remain with Miss Freebody throughout the day?

  MIGGS: Yes.

  O’CONNOR: Never leave her?

  MIGGS: Those are my instructions and I carry them out.

  (DR SWALE, who has been looking fixedly at the witness, writes a note, signals to the USHER and gives him the note. The USHER takes it to MR GOLDING, who reads it and shows it to his junior and the solicitor for the prosecution.)

  O’CONNOR: Do you find Miss Freebody at all difficult?

  MIGGS: Not a bit.

  O’CONNOR: She doesn’t try to – to shake you off? She doesn’t resent your presence?

  MIGGS: Didn’t like it at first. There was a slight resentment but we soon got over that. We’re very good friends, now.

  O’CONNOR: And you have never left her?

  MIGGS: I said so, didn’t I? Never.

  O’CONNOR: Thank you, Miss Miggs.

  (DEFENCE COUNSEL sits.)

  GOLDING: (rising) Yes. Nurse Miggs, you have told the court, have you not, that since you qualified as a mental nurse, you have taken posts in ten hospitals over a period of twenty years, the last appointment being of two years’ duration at Fulchester Grange?

  MIGGS: Correct.

  GOLDING: Have you, in addition to these engagements, taken private patients?

  MIGGS: (uneasily) A few.

  GOLDING: How many?

  MIGGS: I don’t remember offhand. Not many.

  GOLDING: Nurse Miggs, have you ever been dismissed – summarily dismissed – from a post?

  MIGGS: I didn’t come here to be insulted.

  JUDGE: Answer the question, nurse.

  MIGGS: There’s no satisfying some people. Anything goes wrong – blame the nurse.

  GOLDING: Yes or no, Miss Miggs? (He glances at the paper from DR SWALE.) In July 1969, were you dismissed by. the doctor in charge of a case under suspicion of illegally obtaining and administering a drug and accepting a bribe for doing so?

  MIGGS: (breaking in) It wasn’t true. It was a lie. I know where you got that from. (She points to DR SWALE.) From him! He had it in for me. He couldn’t prove it. He couldn’t prove anything.

  GOLDING: Come, Miss Miggs, don’t you think you would be well advised to admit it at once?

  MIGGS: He couldn’t prove it. (She breaks down.)

  GOLDING: Why did you leave Fulchester Grange?

  MIGGS: I won’t answer. It’s all lies. Once something’s said about you, you’re done for.

  GOLDING: Were you dismissed?

  MIGGS: I won’t answer.

  GOLDING: Were you dismissed for illegally obtaining drugs and accepting a bribe for so doing?

  MIGGS: It wasn’t proved. They couldn’t prove it. It’s lies!

  GOLDING: I have no further questions, my lord.

  JUDGE: Mr Defence Counsel? (O’CONNOR shakes his head.) Thank you, Miss Miggs. (She leaves the witness box.) Have you any further witnesses, Mr Defence Counsel?

  O’CONNOR: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: Members of the jury, just let me tell you something about our function – yours and mine. I am here to direct you as to the law and to remind you of the salient features of the evidence. You are here as judges of fact; you and you alone have to decide, on the evidence you have heard, whether the accused is guilty or not of the charge of attempted murder…

  You may think it’s plain that the liver which the dog ate was poisoned. The prosecution say that whoever poisoned that liver must have known that it might have been eaten by the late Major, and was only given to the dog by accident. The vital question, therefore, you may think, is who poisoned that liver. The prosecution say that Miss Freebody did. They say she had the opportunity to take the meat from the safe, poison it and replace it, having for some reason or other changed the paper in which it was wrapped. They say she had a motive – her antagonism to the Major as evidenced by the threatening letters which she wrote. But, say the defence, and you may think it is a point of some weight, the fact that the Major actually died before your eyes of cyanide poisoning at a time when the accused would have had no opportunity to administer the poison is evidence that someone else wanted to and did kill the Major. So if someone other than the accused did kill the Major in the second attempt on his life, how can you believe that the accused rather than the culprit of the second attempt was guilty of the first attempt?

  Remember that before you can bring a verdict of guilty you must be satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused did make this attempt on the life of the late Major. Will you now retire, elect a foreman to speak for you when you return, and consider your verdict.

  CLERIC: All stand.

  (The jury leave the room. Time passes, and the jury return to their seats.)

  CLERK: Members of the jury, will your foreman stand. The FOREMAN rises.) Just answer this question yes or no. Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?

  FOREMAN: Yes.

  CLERK: Do you find the accused, Mary Emmaline Freebody, guilty or not guilty on the charge of attempted murder?

  FOREMAN: (answers either ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’.):

  CLERK: (if guilty) Is that the verdict of you all?

  JUDGE: (if not guilty) Mary Emmaline Freebody, you are free to go.