The lawyer broke into a broad smile.
Tom received one more visitor that morning, a florid-faced West Countryman by the name of John Burton, proprietor of a noted Falmouth attraction, the Old Curiosity Shop. Its contents were not dissimilar to those described by Dickens in the book of the same name:
…one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town… suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour, here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted Figures in china, and wood, and iron, and ivory; tapestry, and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.
A West Country P. T. Barnum, Burton had even made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Eddystone lighthouse and have it re-erected in Falmouth as an attraction.
After a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who ‘spent upwards of an hour at Mr Burton’s Old Curiosity Shop’ in March 1882, the proprietor, an economical man, had his original Gothic script notepaper overprinted in strident block capitals. From then on, it was always
ROYAL
“Burton’s / Curiousity Shop, Falmouth.”
The notepaper also proudly proclaimed visits from the home secretary, Sir William Harcourt, in April 1882, and Sir Garnet Wolseley in May of that year, and boasted of Burton’s ‘Direct Communications with Buyers in Constantinople, Nagasaki, Zanzibar, Shanghai, Trincomalee, Rangoon, Akyab, Moulmain, Poonah, Singapore’, and a host of other exotic ports.
After some thought, Tom accepted Burton’s offer to stand bail and help to raise money for the costs of the three men’s defence in return for access to those papers and artefacts from the Mignonette that had not been impounded by Sergeant Laverty.
Tilly was hovering outside the door when Burton had left. Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘What a curious coincidence, Mr Tilly, that I should be visited in the space of two hours first by a gentleman urging me to avail myself of every offer of legal assistance and then by a man promising me the means to pay for it.’ He smiled. ‘I thank you for it.’
Chapter 15
On the Thursday morning, 12 September 1884, Superintendent Bourne had marshalled every available policeman around the borough lock-up and the Guildhall, but another huge crowd had gathered and the three men were mobbed as they were led across town. They were taken into court through the magistrates’ entrance at the back and sat on a bench at the side of the courtroom, waiting for the proceedings to begin.
The eight magistrates took their seats before the doors were opened to admit the public just after eleven o’clock. The crowd had jammed the street outside and the court was at once overrun with men and women fighting for seats and even pushing out those who had already occupied them. Within minutes every seat was filled and large numbers of people crowded the aisles at the sides and back of the room.
It took the efforts of several police and court officials to secure Richard’s brother a seat in the front row. He was dressed in a yachtsman’s jersey with the name Marguerite sewn in red on the breast. Tom’s eyes strayed to him frequently during the proceedings.
Despite the press of people in the room there was an unnerving silence as Mr Genn rose to read out the charge. ‘The defendants are charged before Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace that on or about the twenty-fifth day of July in this year of our Lord eighteen eighty-four, being subjects of Our Lady the Queen on the High Seas, feloniously, wilfully and of their malice aforethought, did kill and murder one Richard Parker against the Peace of Our Lady the Queen, her Crown and Dignity.’
He turned to face Tom. ‘How do you plead?’
On Tilly’s instructions, each man in turn made the same response: ‘I reserve my defence.’
Genn then turned back to the bench. ‘An application for a further remand has been received from the Treasury. I wrote to them asking for clarification and more definite instructions.’ He paused. ‘I have today received a reply that the solicitors of the Treasury will take charge of the case henceforth and they have requested me to ask for a week’s remand from today.’
Tilly was on his feet almost before Genn had stopped speaking. ‘May it please Your Worships, in consenting to the application made by the Treasury for a further remand, I feel it my duty again to apply to Your Worships that these unfortunate men may be admitted to bail.
‘The small room in which they are at present confined is ill adapted to their health. They have not recovered, and probably never will, from the privations and sufferings undergone. They are in a wretched state of health, and in addition to all that, the difficulties of properly preparing and conducting their defence under the circumstances of their confinement are very great indeed. Therefore, I still hope, after some further consideration of the point, that Your Worships will reconsider the question and grant my request.’
Liddicoat gave a grave nod. ‘We understand your application and will retire to consider it.’
Tilly remained on his feet. ‘There is only one point upon which I should like to address an observation or two,’ he said. ‘That would be the amount of bail, because it must occur to you that these men are by no means wealthy and have to get their living by the sweat of their brow. If you are led to fix an impossible bail, that would really not be granting my application at all. You would only be trifling with their feelings.’
Tilly paused and a smile tugged the corners of his mouth as he heard a rumble of agreement from the public seats. ‘That, I am sure, would be very far from any of Your Worships’ minds. Probably it will occur to you that this is a very serious case. So it is, but I must tell you as a lawyer who has practised before you a great number of years, that these men are only technically charged with the highest offence a man can commit against the law of England.’
Again he paused for emphasis. ‘It is merely a technical charge of murder which is alleged against them. I therefore think it is my duty at this early stage of the case just to record in your minds what the text books bearing on the criminal law of England have to say relating to offences of this kind. There is no abler commentator on the criminal law of this country than Mr Justice Stephen and he says there is one species of justifiable homicide where the party who is to blame is equally innocent as he whose death he occasions. This homicide is also justifiable from the great universal principle of self-preservation which, where one of them must inevitably perish, prompts every man to save his own life rather than that of another.
‘In pondering this question of bail, I wish you to consider the great universal principle of self-preservation. Admitting everything said about this case, it is not one in which there is the slightest possibility that the charge alleged against these men can hold. Therefore you should not consider it as if it were an ordinary allegation of murder but as one in which the charges are of a purely technical nature.’
He sat down to a round of applause from the public sections, quickly silenced by the bench. The magistrates retired for a considerable time, and Tom gnawed at his knuckles and dug his fingernails into his palms as he tried to hold back the tears he once more felt welling up. He searched the faces of the magistrates as they returned but their impassive expressions revealed nothing.
‘On the application of the Treasury,’ Liddicoat said, ‘this case will be remanded until Thursday next. The bench have carefully considered the application of Mr Tilly and grant it. The Captain to find sureties for two hundred pounds and—’ His words were drowned in a burst of cheering. He banged his gavel until the applause subsided. ‘Sureties for two hundred pounds and the other two for a hundred pounds each.’