The Case Against Owen Williams by Allan Donaldson

from Area Headquarters. I’d like to talk with Private Williams for a few minutes before the hearing.”
    The man rose and held out his hand across the desk.
    â€œI’m George Carvell,” he said. “The local sheriff.”
    Some wry twist in the voice made it sound like a parody of a line from a western movie.
    â€œYou’ve come to represent Williams?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” Dorkin said. “I’m just here to look on and report back to Fredericton.”
    â€œHe’s not going to have any counsel then?”
    â€œNo, not so far as I know. That’s why I want to talk to him.”
    Carvell raised his eyebrows.
    â€œCaptain Fraser gave me the impression that the army was sending someone up to act as counsel.”
    â€œNo. Captain Fraser must have misunderstood the situation.”
    â€œHe should have counsel.”
    â€œI agree,” Dorkin said. “But the army’s view, at the moment anyway, is that that is not its responsibility.”
    â€œIt’s a nasty affair,” Carvell said.
    â€œIt is,” Dorkin agreed. “In more ways than one.”
    â€œWell,” Carvell said, “I’ll take you out back.”
    He led Dorkin out to the door at the end of the hallway and took out a ring full of keys and inserted one into the lock.
    â€œThe dungeon,” he said.
    Beyond the door there was a line of cells on either side of a corridor. They were empty except for one in which a man who looked like a tramp was lying curled up on his bunk facing the wall.
    â€œThirty days for drinking and fighting in public,” Carvell said.
    From a door at the end of the corridor, a grotesquely fat man emerged.
    â€œHenry Cronk,” Carvell said. “Our county jailer. Lieutenant Dorkin is here to see Private Williams.”
    â€œI can lock you in,” he said to Dorkin, “but there’s an interview room down here where you’ll be more comfortable.”
    â€œI would prefer the room,” Dorkin said.
    â€œOpen up, Henry,” Carvell said.
    Henry rattled his way along a ring of keys until he found the right one and turned it in the lock. He managed to convey a sense of ritual importance to the unlocking of the door, a sense of some imminent moment of high drama, as if the door were going to open on someone fabulous, like Bluebeard or Jack the Ripper. Instead it opened on a prisoner who looked as harmless as any Dorkin had ever seen. But then, he thought, Dr. Crippen would also have looked harmless. And Sweeney Todd. Even Adolf Hitler, whom someone very unlucky had just failed to kill with a bomb a few days before. Williams was the first murderer, putative or otherwise, whom Dorkin had ever seen.
    Williams had been lying on his bunk, but he got up warily when the door was opened. He was not wearing his battle dress but a rumpled work uniform.
    â€œThis is Lieutenant Dorkin,” Carvell said. “From headquarters in Fredericton. He wants to talk to you.”
    Williams hesitated, still wary, watchful. Then he saluted perfunctorily, the kind of salute that in the wrong place to the wrong officer could get a soldier put on a charge.
    The room that Carvell showed them to was like other rooms Dorkin had sat in with other prisoners in other jails. It was furnished with a plain wooden table and four plain wooden chairs. On the table, there was a small tin ashtray that would have been quite useless as a weapon. The window, of course, was barred.
    Dorkin sat down at the table and motioned Williams into a chair opposite him.
    â€œYou can smoke if you want to,” Dorkin told him.
    â€œI don’t smoke, sir.”
    He sat hunched forward with his fingers hooked nervously over the edge of the table. Dorkin noticed that the nails were bitten back almost to the quick. He seemed to remember that Williams was twenty or thereabouts, but there was something of the pimply adolescent about him. In spite of the jet black hair, his skin