Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles 5)

“Once the jury has been sworn in, the judge, the Honorable Mrs. Justice Lane, will address them on their responsibilities, and when she has finished she will invite me to make an opening statement on your behalf. When I’ve done so, I will call my witnesses. I shall start with you. First impressions are very important. Juries often make up their minds in the first two days of a trial, so like an opening batsman, if you score a century, it will be the only thing they’ll remember.”

When Trelford held open the door of court fourteen, the first person Emma saw as she entered the courtroom was Lady Virginia with her leading counsel, Sir Edward Makepeace, huddled in a corner, deep in conversation.

Trelford guided Emma to the other side of the court, where they took their places on the front bench, with Giles and Seb in the second row, directly behind them.

“Why isn’t her husband with her?” asked Virginia.

“I have no idea,” said Sir Edward, “but I can assure you, it will have no bearing on the case.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Virginia as the clock behind them quietly struck ten.

A door to the left of the royal crest opened and a tall, elegant woman appeared wearing a long red robe and full-bottomed wig, ready to rule over her domain. Everyone in the well of the court immediately rose and bowed. The judge returned their bow before taking her place in the high-backed chair in front of a desk covered in copious legal documents and leather-bound volumes on the laws of defamation. Once everyone had settled, Dame Elizabeth Lane turned her attention to the jury.

“Allow me to begin,” she said, giving them a warm smile, “by making it clear from the outset that you are the most important people in this courtroom. You are the proof of our democracy and the sole arbiters of justice, because it is you, and you alone, who will decide the outcome of this case. But let me offer you a word of advice. You cannot have failed to notice that there is considerable press interest in this case, so please avoid the media’s accounts of it. Only your opinion matters. They may have millions of readers, viewers, and listeners, but they don’t have a single vote in this courtroom. The same applies to your family and friends, who may not only have opinions on the case but be all too happy to express them. But unlike you,” the judge continued, her eyes never leaving the jury, “they will not have heard the evidence and therefore cannot offer an informed and unbiased opinion.

“Now, before I explain what is about to happen, I will remind you of the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word libel: A false, undeserved, discredit on a person or country. In this case, you will have to decide whether or not Lady Virginia Fenwick has suffered such a defamation. Mr. Trelford will begin proceedings by making an opening statement on behalf of his client, Mrs. Clifton, and as the trial progresses I will keep you fully briefed. Should a matter of the law arise, I will stop proceedings and explain its relevance to you.”

Dame Elizabeth turned her attention to counsel’s bench. “Mr. Trelford, you may proceed with your opening statement.”

“I am obliged, my lady.” Trelford rose from his place, once again giving her a slight bow. Like the judge, he turned to face the jury before he began his submission. He opened a large black file in front of him, leaned back, held the lapels of his gown, and gave the seven men and five women of the jury if anything an even warmer smile than the judge had managed a few minutes before.

“Members of the jury,” he began. “My name is Donald Trelford, and I represent the defendant, Mrs. Emma Clifton, while my learned friend Sir Edward Makepeace represents the plaintiff, Lady Virginia Fenwick.” He gave a cursory nod in their direction. “This,” he continued, “is a case of both slander and libel. The slander arises because the words in contention were delivered during a heated exchange, when the defendant was taking questions at the annual general meeting of the Barrington Shipping Company, of which she is chairman, and the libel arises because those words were later recorded in the minutes of that meeting.

“Lady Virginia, a shareholder of the company, was sitting in the audience that morning and when questions arose she asked Mrs. Clifton: ‘Is it true that one of your directors sold his vast shareholding over the weekend, in an attempt to bring the company down?’ Shortly afterward, she followed this with another question: ‘If one of your directors was involved in such an action, shouldn’t he resign from the board?’ Mrs. Clifton replied, ‘If you’re referring to Major Fisher, I asked him to resign last Friday when he came to visit me in my office, as I’m sure you already know, Lady Virginia.’ Lady Virginia then asked, ‘What are you insinuating?’ And Mrs. Clifton responded, ‘That on two separate occasions when Major Fisher represented you on the board, you allowed him to sell all your shares over a weekend, and then, after you’d made a handsome profit, you bought them back during the three-week trading period. When the share price recovered and reached a new high, you carried out the same exercise a second time, mak

ing an even larger profit. If it was your intention to bring the company down, Lady Virginia, then … you have failed, and failed lamentably, because you were defeated by decent ordinary people who want this company to be a success.’

“Now, members of the jury, it is Mrs. Clifton’s response that is the subject of this action, and it is up to you to decide if Lady Virginia was libeled or if my client’s words were, as I contend, no more than fair comment. For example,” continued Trelford, still looking directly at the jury, “if one of you were to say to Jack the Ripper, ‘You’re a murderer,’ that unquestionably would be fair comment, but if Jack the Ripper were to say to any one of you sitting on the jury, ‘You’re a murderer,’ and if the allegation was then printed in a newspaper, that would undoubtedly be both libel and slander. This case, however, requires a finer judgement.

“So let us look at the relevant words again. ‘If it was your intention to bring the company down, Lady Virginia, then … you have failed, and failed lamentably, because you were defeated by decent ordinary people who want this company to be a success.’ Now, what did Mrs. Clifton mean when she said those words? And is it possible that Lady Virginia overreacted to them? I suspect that, having only heard those words delivered by me, you will not feel able to reach a conclusion until you have heard all the evidence in this case, and seen both the plaintiff and the defendant in the witness box. With that in mind, my lady, I will call my first witness, Mrs. Emma Clifton.”

* * *

Harry had become used to the continual presence of the two guards in their bottle-green uniforms stationed outside the door of his cell. He did not know how much time had passed since that door had last been opened, but he had reached about halfway through chapter three, and a story that still made him laugh.

Yakov Bulgukov, the Mayor of Romanovskaya, faced a potentially dangerous problem when he decided to build a massive statue in honor of Stalin …

It was so cold Harry couldn’t stop himself from shivering. He tried to snatch a few moments of glorious sleep, but just as he was slipping into unconsciousness the cell door was suddenly flung open. For a moment he wasn’t sure if it was real or just part of his dream. But then the two guards removed the shackles from his arms and legs, pulled him off the mattress, and dragged him out of the cell.

When they reached the bottom of a long flight of stone steps, Harry made a determined effort to climb them, but his legs were so weak they gave way long before the three of them reached the top step. Still the guards kept propelling him forward along a dark corridor until he wanted to scream out in pain, but he refused to give them that satisfaction.

Every few steps he passed armed soldiers. Hadn’t they got anything better to do with their time, thought Harry, than guard a fifty-year-old man who was literally on his last legs? On and on until at last they reached an open door. He was pushed inside, landing unceremoniously on his knees.

Once he’d caught his breath, Harry tried to haul himself to his feet. Like a cornered animal, he looked around a room that must, in better times, have been a classroom: wooden benches, small chairs, and a raised platform at one end with a large table and three high-backed chairs behind it. The blackboard on the back wall gave away its original purpose.

He summoned up all his strength and managed to pull himself up onto one of the benches. He didn’t want them to think he was broken. He began to study the layout of the room more carefully. On the right of the stage were twelve chairs, in two straight lines of six. A man who wasn’t in uniform but wore a gray, ill-fitting suit that any self-respecting tramp would have rejected was placing a single sheet of paper on each of the chairs. Once he’d performed this task, he sat down on a wooden chair opposite what Harry assumed was the jury box. Harry took a closer look at the man and wondered if he was the clerk of the court, but he just sat there, clearly waiting for someone to appear.

Harry turned around to see more green uniforms wearing heavy greatcoats standing at the back of the room, as if waiting for the prisoner to try to escape. If only one of them had heard of Saint Martin, he might have taken pity and cut his coat in half to share it with the freezing man from another country.

As he sat there waiting, waiting for he knew not what, Harry’s thoughts turned to Emma, as they had done so often between stolen moments of sleep. Would she understand why he couldn’t sign the confession and allow them to hammer another nail into Babakov’s coffin? He wondered how her own trial was progressing, and felt guilty for not being by her side.

His thoughts were interrupted when a door on the far side of the room swung open and seven women and five men entered and sat in their allocated places, giving the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time they had performed the task.

Not one of them as much as glanced in his direction, which didn’t stop Harry staring at them. Their blank faces suggested they had only one thing in common: their minds had been confiscated by the State, and they were no longer expected to have opinions of their own. Even in that moment of darkness, Harry reflected on what a privileged life he’d led. Was it possible that among these blank-faced clones there was a singer, an artist, an actor, a musician, even an author, who had never been given the opportunity to express their talent? Such is the lottery of birth.

Moments later, two other men entered the room, made their way to the front bench and sat down, facing the stage, with their backs to him. One of them was in his fifties, far better dressed than anyone else in the room. His suit fitted, and he had an air of confidence that suggested he was the sort of professional even a dictatorship requires if a regime is to run smoothly.

The other man was much younger, and kept looking around the courtroom as if he was trying to find his bearings. If these two were the counsel for the state and for the defense, it wasn’t difficult for Harry to work out which of them would be representing him.