“How do you reach your conclusion that they were incurred a considerable period before death?”
There were two reasons, McQuillin said. One was simple and didn’t require technical explanation. Blood, in considerable quantity, had been found on the outside of the boy’s clothes. This had come from the head wounds. Almost none had seeped through to the inside of his shirt and shorts. On the other hand, some of the body wounds, not all, but many of the lacerations as well as the cuts, had resulted in the effusion of blood. There was no trace of this blood on the inside of his clothes. He had been killed when he was fully dressed. Thus he must have received the body wounds some time before: possibly, and in fact probably, over a period of hours: presumably while he was naked.
The second reason was technical — McQuillin described the physiology of flesh wounds, and their rate of healing. If the body had been discovered sooner, he could have been precise about the relative time of the head and body wounds. As it was, all indications pointed in the same direction, that there were hours between them.
“There is no other explanation for those body wounds than the one you have given?”
“I see no other explanation except systematic torture.”
McQuillin had not raised his voice. The judge, leaning forward, spoke even more softly.
“I think it is better for us, Doctor McQuillin, if you restrict yourself to your scientific findings.”
“I am sorry, my lord,” said McQuillin.
“I understand,” said the judge.
The head injuries — these had been the cause of death? He was killed, said McQuillin, by multiple head injuries, multiple fractures of the skull. There had been seven blows, and possibly more. Any one of several blows would have been sufficient to cause death. One group of five had been delivered by something like a heavy poker or an iron bar. The others, by a solid obtuse weighted surface, such as the anterior wooden portion of an axe handle. Yes, the bleeding would have been copious. “Nothing bleeds so copiously as the scalp,” McQuillin added. “There must also, with such wounds, have been a discharge of brain tissue. And fragments of bone thrown out, though these have not been found. The vault of the skull showed a number of gaps.”
The blows had been delivered from in front (here McQuillin beckoned a policeman, like a lecturer carried away by his subject and needing to illustrate it), or at least the first one had been. The head had been held back by the hair — like this — possibly not by the person delivering the blow. The remainder of the blows could have followed when the body had sunk to a kneeling or recumbent position–
Benskin interrupted. “This doctor in my submission is going beyond the evidence of a medical expert.”
The judge said: “Mr Benskin, I think I agree with you. Doctor, you have told us your conclusions about the cause of death? You are quite certain about them?”
“I am quite certain, my lord.”
“Then I hope we might leave it there, Mr Bosanquet.”
Bosanquet stood, thinking, and said: “I am content.”
Both defence counsel cross-examined. They were sharp and edgy about the doctor’s reconstructions. Neither of them was free from the miasma which had during his evidence settled on the court. It was a miasma which both rotted the nerves and at the same time held them stretched. Glances at the dock were furtive. The doctor had been imagining how the blows had been struck. Creeping glances at the two women. They knew whether he was right.
Head wounds, body wounds — the lawyers were doing their job, they had to bring the descriptions back before us. To some there, those would be nothing but names by now. But not to Wilson, the younger of the silks. He sounded angry: he could not, less so than Benskin, insulate himself: he took it out of the doctor, partly because it was tactically right, but also because he genuinely, and for his own sake, wanted to disbelieve. The head wounds — no one doubted they had been inflicted, no one doubted they were the cause of death. But surely the doctor’s reconstruction was entirely fanciful? In any case, it was not relevant: if it had been relevant, anyone’s reconstruction would have been worth about as much, which was next to nothing at all?
“I have had some experience of these matters,” said McQuillin impassively.
“I repeat, your reconstruction is fanciful. But that is not the point. The death happened, we all know that. I suggest to you, your conclusions about the body wounds are also fanciful?”
“I have recorded my findings. I could give further conclusions about those wounds.”
“They might have been incurred very near the time of death—?”
“I regard it as most unlikely.”
“It is not impossible?”
“In giving scientific evidence, it is often wrong to say something is impossible.”
“That is, your picture of long-sustained wounding — I might remind you that you used an impermissible term for which my lord reproved you — your picture goes right beyond the medical evidence?”
“In my judgment, it is the only one that fits the facts.”
Wilson could not leave it alone. Questions about lacerations, cuts, bloodstains, the whole pathological examination over again.
At last the judge said: “Mr Wilson, I shouldn’t put obstacles in your way if I thought we were getting any further. But I do suggest that the jury has as much information as we can give it. And perhaps this is getting burdensome for us all.”
He said it aseptically. Wilson, face flushed, wiped his forehead, continued with more questions about flesh wounds, and then sat down.
Bosanquet’s re-examination was brief. He remarked that the doctor had been a long time in the box, and asked if, as a result, he wished to modify any of his statements of fact or his conclusions. McQuillin was as impassive as when he first answered to his name. He had given considered opinions, he answered. He did not wish to change in the slightest anything he had said.
It was well after half past four, the court had overrun for the first time in the triaclass="underline" the judge had watched the clock, but not interrupted.
28: Another Question
WHEN at last Martin and I got out into the air, we heard a voice behind us calling. It was Edgar Hankins who, nowadays turning his hand to non-literary journalism, was writing special articles on the trial for a Sunday paper. He came running after us, his face cheerful, rubbery, sweating.
“Let’s all go and have tea and then a drink,” he said.
Before I could reply, Martin said: “No, not now. Lewis and I have something to talk about.”
Hankins dropped back, his face still not having forgotten the smile of invitation. I hadn’t often heard Martin impolite before: his tone had been colder than when I offered to help out financially over his son. As a rule with Hankins, because of their past history, he was specially considerate. He didn’t speak until we were sitting in his car. Then, before he started it, he said: “I couldn’t bear his brand of nonsense tonight.”
He went on: “You know, we could write it for him. Great throbbing pieces about how we’re all guilty. So really no one is guilty. So really everything is as well as could be expected in an admittedly imperfect world.”
Neither of us said much more — Martin’s face was hard and angry, he made another aside about “saccharine rhetoric” — until, a little later, he rejoined me in the bar of his hotel.
It was a bar which we both knew: though, since I had left the town for good when he was a schoolboy, we had never before sat there together. It was still a meeting place for men coming out of their offices on the way home to the prosperous suburbs: the income level had always been higher than in the pubs which George and I most often used. Though the bar had stayed geographically in the same place, it had been transmogrified, like the hotel and most of the town itself. It had become plushier and, in the American style, much darker, lights gleaming surreptitiously behind the sandwich bar. But the people looked much the same, hearty middle-aged men, bald or greying, a good many of them carrying their weight on athletes’ muscles: from some of these Martin, as we sat in a corner alcove, kept getting shouts of greeting. For while I might be recognised from photographs, he had more acquaintances here, they had played games together before the war. Amiable impersonal backchat: how are you getting on, I’m an old man now, I can’t get my arm over any more, you never did get it very high, I shall soon be taking to bowls. Some of them had made money, Martin mentioned, when we weren’t observed. There was a lot of quiet money in this town. There were also one or two casualties in that bar, boyhood friends who were scrabbling for a living, or who had taken to drink. Most of them, though, had come through into this jostling, vigorous, bourgeois life. All round us he could see the well-being, the survival, and sometimes the kindness of the flesh.