The Case Against Owen Williams (31 page)

“That is correct.”

“Corporal Drost,” Dorkin said, “I'm sure that everyone joins the Crown in its admiration for the thoroughness with which you and your constables conducted this part of the investigation. However, there are a number of questions which trouble me. As you yourself have made clear, there were people outside the dance hall that night who never went in. You have identified some of these, but would you not agree that there could have been others out there in the darkness who remained unidentified?”

“Yes,” Drost said, “in theory, I suppose, that is possible.”

“Is it not also possible that some such person could have way-laid and murdered Sarah Coile after she and Private Williams separated?”

“In theory, perhaps.”

“Is it not also possible that Sarah Coile met someone on her way home, someone perhaps with a car or a truck, that she was murdered wherever that person took her, and that her body was taken to the gravel pit, perhaps that night, perhaps even a night or two later?”

“In theory.”

“Corporal Drost, the case you have created against Private Williams is also only theory. You don't have one scrap of concrete evidence connecting Private Williams with Sarah Coile's death.”

Drost hesitated, considered, then let the comment pass.

“Corporal Drost,” Dorkin went on, “an article of Sarah Coile's underclothing was not with the body and was never found in spite of a thorough search of the entire area. Nor was it found among Private Williams's possessions at the armoury. How do you explain that?”

“Private Williams could have disposed of it on his way home. It could have been thrown into the creek, for example, as he crossed the bridge.”

“But why should Private Williams carry off this item of under-clothing and then simply throw it away somewhere?”

“It's possible that he was not in a rational state of mind.”

“Is it not more possible that it was taken off somewhere other than in the gravel pit in the company of someone other than Private Williams and that it was used to suffocate her and then disposed of?”

“Many things are possible.”

“Corporal Drost, there is someone who had a very good reason for killing Sarah Coile. Could I ask you if you ever made any attempt to find the person responsible for getting Sarah Coile pregnant?”

“We questioned all of her close friends,” Drost said. “None of them were aware of her condition. And none of them knew any-thing which would be of help in identifying the person in question.”

“Does it not strike you as odd that this person has never come forward?”

“There could be many reasons for that.”

“So your conclusion is that it was mere coincidence that Sarah Coile should be pregnant and that she should be viciously assaulted and murdered?”

“We felt that her pregnancy had nothing to do with her death,”

Drost said.

“The jury might be interested to know,” Dorkin said, “that at the preliminary hearing the Crown floated the suggestion that the reason Private Williams murdered Sarah Coile was that she was pregnant by him. It was only when they came to find out that Private Williams could not possibly have been the father of Sarah's child that they decided that Sarah's death and her pregnancy were unrelated. I suggest that the Crown was right the first time. Sarah Coile's pregnancy and her death were related, and the author of both is still at large somewhere. For all we know, perhaps among the public in this very courtroom.”

This produced a stir and a tap of Dunsdale's gavel, and Dorkin went back to his place well pleased with himself.

Whidden's next witness was the Reverend Zacharias Clemens. While Drost removed his chart of names, Clemens extricated him-self from the middle of a row of seats at the back and plodded heavily to the witness stand. Dorkin saw that he had undergone something of a transfiguration since the preliminary hearing. He had a new, dark-grey suit and a dark-green tie. He had even had a haircut. The overall effect was to make him look more like a benign United Church minister than a shaggy evangelist prophet.

“Now, Reverend Clemens,” Whidden said, “perhaps we can turn to the night of July 1, and you can tell the court in your own words what you saw that is of relevance to these proceedings. I have had the map of the area placed before the court again, and you can perhaps refer to that to make your account clearer.”

The Reverend Clemens cleared his throat and turned slightly in his chair so that he was addressing the jury. Once again he went painstakingly through his account of working at his church, of visiting the Salchers, of departing to return to his church somewhere around eleven o'clock, and of seeing at the corner of the Hannigan Road and Broad Street the couple whom he identified as Sarah Coile and a soldier whose appearance was consistent with that of Private Williams.

All through this, Dorkin watched Clemens closely—watched the eyebrows, the muscles at the side of the face, the hands resting on his knees—looking for telltale signs of a lie that he had still not become entirely comfortable with. But there was nothing. The impression created was that of an honest citizen who had become a part of these painful proceedings out of a sense of duty. Dorkin could see that the jury found him totally convincing.

Dorkin looked at Williams. He was staring at Clemens in a sightless sort of way, his face a blank, and Dorkin wondered how much of all this he was really taking in.

In the middle of the courtroom, his arms negligently sweeping the air, Whidden was engaged in a peroration on Clemens's conscientious accuracy as a witness. When he had finished, Dorkin rose. If Clemens was apprehensive about being cross-examined, he didn't show it, and Dorkin knew that he was going to have to deal with him very cautiously if he was not going to antagonize the jury.

“Reverend Clemens,” he said, “I too must compliment you on the scrupulous care you have taken in giving your testimony, and I am not for a moment questioning your conscientiousness in de-scribing what you believe you saw that night, but I am wondering if perhaps you may have been mistaken about what you saw. You said that when you came around the corner, the couple you saw were talking to each other, and when they saw you, they turned their faces away towards the graveyard.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“So you had only a brief glance at their faces. Are you sure that that glance was enough to allow you to be sure that the girl was Sarah Coile?”

“It wasn't just that. She was someone whom I had seen many times.”

“You're absolutely certain that the girl whom you saw was Sarah Coile? Are you sure you didn't leap to the conclusion that it was Sarah Coile on the basis of a few superficial similarities and then later fill in the rest of the detail from your own imagination? That happens, you know, and there are numerous cases where wit-nesses have done that in court. These were not people who were attempting to deceive. They genuinely believed what they said, but other evidence proved incontrovertibly that they could not possibly have seen what they testified to. Are you sure that you have not deceived yourself in this way about Sarah Coile?”

“I believe that the girl whom I saw that night was Sarah Coile. I wish that it had not been.”

“Beyond doubt?”

“Yes. Beyond doubt.”

“Reverend Clemens,” Dorkin said, “if you look at the map which has been prepared of the area, you will notice that the way the inter-section of Broad Street and Hannigan Road has been drawn is not quite accurate.”

Clemens looked at the map.

“I don't understand,” he said.

“The map shows the intersection as a right-angled turn, but in fact that is not a right-angled turn. Broad Street joins Hannigan Road at a slight angle, so that if you are coming down the Hannigan Road and making a left turn onto Broad Street, you are making a slight hairpin turn. Is that not correct?”

“I believe it is,” Clemens said. “I hadn't thought about it before.”

“This means,” Dorkin said, “that since you are coming down a hill, that is a slightly difficult turn which does not leave you a lot of time to look around, especially in the dark. It also means that when you are around the turn, anyone standing on the corner will already be slightly behind you, over your left shoulder. I know because I went out there and drove that corner several times in the dark, and I could not see very much of the tree under which the two people you saw were standing.”

“The girl was wearing a white dress, which stood out,” Clemens said. “I suppose that was what caught my eye. I am also a very slow, cautious driver. I expect I don't take corners as quickly as you might do.”

“Please understand,” Dorkin said, “that I am not for a moment questioning your attempt to describe accurately what you believe you saw, but I must point out that even allowing for your driving slowly, in that very brief period of time, only two or three seconds, the two people had time to see you and turn their faces away, and you had time not only to recognize Sarah Coile but to note the details of what she was wearing and to see the height and build of the man, the fact that he had dark hair and was not wearing a cap, and the fact that he was dressed in army uniform even though that also would be dark.”

“I can't say how long it took,” Clemens said. “It may have been longer than you say, but anyway that was what I saw.”

“I believe it was on the Friday, two days after the body was found, that you went to the police,” Dorkin said.

“That is so.”

“By that time, there had been a good deal of talk about what had happened. You would have heard this too.”

“Yes, that is why I recognized that it was my duty to tell the police what I had seen.”

“I take it that by then you would have heard all about the body and how it was clothed. And you would have heard all about Private Williams.”

“I'm not sure now of everything I heard.”

“Did you hear descriptions of Private Williams?”

“I don't recall.”

“If you did, you might later have projected those characteristics back onto the man whom you saw at the corner.”

“I have described the man as I saw him,” Clemens said, for the first time with a trace of annoyance.

“Was there anything about the appearance of Sarah Coile that night as you described her to the police that you could not have heard from common gossip?” Dorkin asked.

Clemens coloured faintly.

“I don't know,” he said. “I described what I saw.”

“You haven't said anything about the possible age of the man whom you saw. Did you form any impression about that?”

“I don't know. As I said, I never really got a look at his face.”

“So he might, for all you know, be a man in his forties or fifties?”

“Except for the uniform.”

“Except,” Dorkin said, “that you thought he was in uniform. I must say that I'm very uneasy about that. What was it made you think it was a uniform? What sort of jacket was he wearing? One like the one Private Williams has on now?”

“No. Like the kind you see on the street. One that fastens at the waist.”

“But could that not simply have been an ordinary waist-length jacket such as anyone might wear?”

“Well, I don't know. Perhaps.”

“Are you sure that after learning that Private Williams had been arrested, you did not fill in in your own mind what you felt you ought to have seen—but which, in fact, you did not really see at all?”

“My impression was that it was a uniform.”

“But you might have been mistaken?”

“I suppose.”

“To come back to the question of the age of the man. Apart from the question of the uniform, you saw nothing that would be inconsistent with its being a much older man than Private Williams?”

“No, I suppose he might have been older.”

“Older and not in uniform. In fact, quite possibly not a soldier at all.”

Clemens lifted his shoulders slightly in a gesture of impatience and looked down at his hands.

“I should make it clear to the jury,” Dorkin said, “that I am not suggesting that Reverend Clemens has engaged in any deliberate untruth. But I think that the members of the jury should ask them-selves whether he has imagined that he saw a good deal more than he possibly could have seen in the brief time he had while turning the corner onto Broad Street. One final question. In your testimony, Reverend Clemens, you estimated that you could have gone past the intersection as early as ten to eleven.”

“I think it would have been closer to eleven.”

“Nevertheless you did accept that estimate on the part of the prosecutor. You didn't happen to check a clock at the Salchers' house as you left?”

“They do have a clock, but it doesn't keep time.”

If he recognized the question for the trap it was, he gave no sign of it.

“I see. So you are only guessing at the time you left their house and went past the intersection a few minutes later. It is very easy to misjudge time, as everyone knows, and is it not possible that you could have gone past the intersection where you saw the couple as early as twenty to eleven—by which time, even in terms of the evidence given so far, Private Williams and Sarah Coile could not possibly have arrived there yet? Could that not be so?”