The Case Against Owen Williams by Allan Donaldson Page B

unquestionably be hanged. Everyone—the law, the army, public opinion—would certainly see to that. And in the unlikely event that Williams was acquitted, his lawyer would be seen by the public as a clever scoundrel who had contrived to subvert the course of justice.
    The lawyer whom Williams would end up with, Dorkin knew, would be some court-appointed incompetent who would simply go through the motions of a defence because in his heart he wouldn’t even want to win. Dorkin studied Williams and realized that he was almost certainly talking to a dead man. In the interest of his own peace of mind and his perhaps already fading belief in human justice, he could only hope that Williams was indeed guilty as charged.

    The central court of George County was a majestic room some sixty feet square and two storeys high with a spectators’ gallery at the back which made it seem a little like a theatre. The judge’s bench was on a raised platform about four feet above the main floor. To the right and lower was the witness box. Down one side wall was the jury box, down the other a long table. Facing the judge and completing the rectangle, were two long tables, the left for the defence, the right for the prosecution. Behind these, separated by a low rail, there was seating for a couple of hundred spectators. The room was panelled in oak and filled with light from four tall windows along each side.
    When he had left Williams, Dorkin had presented his letter of introduction from Meade to the presiding magistrate, Thurcott, a prim little man with rimless glasses, an old friend of Meade’s with the same unmistakable air of good family. But this morning, behind his polished manners and his surface assurance, he was clearly nervous. Like Dorkin’s, his normal clientele had been guilty only of petty crimes, where a little blood might have been shed, but no life had been taken and none was at stake. He was very unhappy that there was no defence counsel, and in its absence he arranged that Dorkin be seated at the table where the defence would have sat if there had been one.
    There Dorkin now waited, surprised and a little intimidated by the unexpected magnificence of the setting in which he found himself. Behind him, every seat on the main floor and in the balcony was filled with a small fraction of the crowd that had assembled over the last hour. The rest were outside, filling the sidewalk and street near the jail, hoping at least for a glimpse of Williams as he was led in, creating an atmosphere suggestive to Dorkin of what it must have been like at a public hanging.
    At five to ten, there was a commotion behind him, and Dorkin turned to watch the arrival of the prosecution: two attorneys followed by half a dozen assistants with briefcases and papers. Most of these people Dorkin did not know, but there was one whom almost everyone would have known if only from newspaper photographs.
    H. P. Whidden was one of the wonders of the provincial bar.
    Nearing sixty now, massive, with a great mane of white hair combed straight back, he was an extravagant courtroom performer. Florid of phrase, grandiose of gesture, his specialty was the emotional appeal to high principle and noble sentiment in the service of whoever could afford his considerable fees. That the government had appointed him special prosecutor for this trial was a mark of the importance that someone in authority attached to securing a conviction. That Whidden had accepted it was a mark of the publicity the trial could be expected to attract—and of the fact that he felt sure of winning.
    Twice when he was a student, Dorkin had attended trials where Whidden had appeared. Once he had heard him speak at the law school, and afterwards, as one of their most promising students, he had been introduced and had shaken the great man’s hand and been given the famous pointed scrutiny that had made him feel a little like a witness who had just given himself away on