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An Open But Not Quite Shut Case free porn video
It was always the same. Friday lunchtime in the pub, just prior to putting the final touches to my weekly column and handing in my ‘copy’ to our beleaguered editor, Tom Bowler, I would hold court to my now regular gathering – a group of university students who knocked off early for the weekend on Fridays. They sat all around me at the big old wooden table in the tiny back room of The Hole in the Wall public house which we would generally commandeer.
They’d come to enjoy my weekly ramblings about my experiences as a reporter. I always had a good story for them. They would hang on to my every word, all agog, boys and girls together.
‘What you got for us this week, Pop?’ said Brian. ‘Something juicy, I hope.’
‘Yes,’ broke in Jennifer, her straw-coloured hair framing an imperfect complexion. ‘Let’s have some scandal Pop, or a nice little murder story.’
‘Yeah, come on, Pop… let’s have it!’ said another.
And so I composed myself, took a sip of real ale and cleared my throat. I looked around the table, engaging each one of them in turn with my eyes until I knew I had their undivided attention.
‘Okay folks,’ I said, I’m taking you back to the seventies. At that time I was working for The Camberwell Chronicle as chief reporter.
It was the strangest murder trial I ever attended and I’ve attended quite a few in my time. This was not one of those cases of circumstantial evidence in which you feel the jury’s anxiety and uncertainty in reaching a verdict. No, this was one of those cases where the evidence was irrefutable, or so appeared on the face of it. Of course, back then the police didn’t have the advantage of DNA testing to bring about a conviction.
The accused had all but been found with the body. It was what the boys at Camberwell ‘nick’ referred to as an ‘open-and-shut’ case. Not one person present when the Crown council outlined the case believed that the man in the dock stood a chance. He was all but banged to rights, a formality. The prosecution would only need to go through the motions, have the jury arrive at the obvious conclusion, the judge to pronounce sentence and the warder bang a certain Harry Higgins up and throw away the key. Job done!
Trouble is… things are rarely as clear cut as they first seem. Harry Higgins was a heavy, brooding man in his mid-thirties. His bulging bloodshot eyes made him look as if he was in a permanent state of bad temper. Someone, who if you had the misfortune to cross, you wouldn’t forget in a hurry — and that was a significant point because the Crown proposed to call three witnesses who hadn’t forgotten him in a hurry, and who had seen him running away from a semi-detached house in Chestnut Grove, just off the Camberwell Road, in the early hours of Saturday morning, April 12th 1973.
One of the key witnesses, a night-watchman by the name of Bert Chambers, remembers the clock on the Pentecostal Church striking twice, so that seemed to pretty much fix the time at 2 A.M.
A Mrs Francis Roberts, who lived alone with her son in Chestnut Grove, had been unable to sleep after being woken by a disturbance next door in the early hours, ‘a lot of banging and thumping’ as she had put it. Then there was the tinkle of breaking glass which made her go to the bedroom window and look out. But she could see nothing untoward. She remembers looking at her bedside clock which said nearly twenty to two.
She said things quietened down and decided to get back into bed. But she couldn’t get off to sleep again. A short while later she heard a door opening and shutting and thought it strange at that time of night. She once again went to the window and saw a man nonchalantly striding down the front path of her next-door-neighbour, Mrs Elsie Baker’s house and tossing something metallic and heavy-looking in the laurel bush near the front gate. She said it had caught her eye because moonlight had glinted off it as it dropped through the laurel leaves to the ground.
But before he moved away, he had looked up — at her window. What made him look round, nobody knows. A kind of fatal instinct of being watched perhaps – who knows? His eyes, she said, were suffused with a hunted fear, like an animal’s when it’s cornered with nowhere to run. She remarked, ‘The bulging eyes really gave me a nasty turn… a most undesirable character indeed.”
‘A bit like your eyes then, Pop,’ said Brian, grinning good-naturedly.
‘Shut up!’ said Angela. ‘And don’t interrupt. Carry on, Pop.’
‘Thank you, my dear,’ I said and continued…
‘The man then turned away and hurried out the gate into the street where he was seen soon after by the night watchman further down the street. And finally he was seen by a third person, who had come forward, saying that a running man, apparently in a panic, turned the corner into the Camberwell Road almost tripping on the kerb in surprise. Harry Higgins could not have reckoned on such wretched luck at that hour in the morning. He may as well have committed the crime in broad daylight.
‘I understand,’ counsel said, ‘that the defence proposes to plead mistaken identity. Higgins’ wife will tell you that he was with her at two in the morning of April 12, but after you have heard the witnesses for the Crown and examined carefully the characteristics of the accused, I have no doubt of the decision you, the jury, will arrive at and that you will all agree that there is no possibility of a mistake having been made here.’
Any sane person would have admitted it was all over bar the shouting. After the formal evidence had been given by the policeman who had found the body of Mrs Baker and the surgeon who examined it, Mrs Roberts was called.
She was a perfect witness, appearing honest as the day is long, having impeccable manners and dress sense, and displaying an air of sobriety and charm. The counsel for the Crown drew the story gently out of her. She spoke very confidently, considering her scare on that awful night and the presence of the accused in the courtroom.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was very suspicious that something terrible had occurred next door and was worried for the welfare of my good friend and neighbour, Mrs Baker, so I went straight downstairs and telephoned the police station.’
‘And do you see this man here in court now, Mrs Roberts?’
She looked straight at the brooding, heavy-set fellow in the dock who immediately returned her accusing gaze with interest — bulging, bloodshot eyes that showed little emotion or concern. She felt the eyes boring into her but remained composed, and also determined that her friend’s life would not go unpunished. ‘Yes’, she said, ‘that’s him, there..!’ And she pointed to Harry Higgins.
‘You are quite certain?’
‘I couldn’t be mistaken, sir. I will never forget that face.’
That was that, all done and dusted.
‘Thank you, Mrs Roberts. No further questions, your Honour.’
Counsel for the defence then rose to cross-examine. ‘Now, Mrs Roberts, you must remember that a man’s life is at stake here… His future may depend on your evidence.’
‘I am perfectly aware of that, sir.’
‘How would you describe your eyesight, Mrs Roberts? Good? Fair?’
‘I only use reading glasses, sir. My long sight is A1. ‘ ‘You are a woman of fifty-five?’
‘Fifty-six, actually.’
‘And the man you saw was at the end of a long garden path before he turned around and looked at you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And it was two o’clock in the morning. It was dark, obviously. You have remarkable eyes for a woman your age?’
You could see Francis Roberts visibly bristle at Defence’s deliberate attempt to unsettle her, but she quickly composed herself again…
‘As I said, my long sight is first class. There was also moonlight and the street lamps were still on.’
‘But surely, wouldn’t the street lighting have been behind him, therefore putting his face in shadow? And yet you say you have no
doubt whatsoever that the man you saw is the accused?’
‘I’m certain it is the same man. As I have said, my eyesight is very good and there was a full moon. Without wishing to be personal, sir… his is a face I shall never forget… ever!’
Counsel took a look round the court for a moment. Then he said, ‘Do you mind, Mrs Roberts, having a look around you.’ Defence then looked deliberately towards the back of the courtroom. ‘Stand up if you would please, Mr Higgins.’ And there at the back of the court with stout muscular body and a pair of bulging eyes, was the exact image of the man in the dock. He was even dressed the same… tight–fitting blue suit and paisley cravat.
‘Now think very carefully, Mrs Roberts. Can you still swear that the man you saw drop the hammer in Mrs Baker’s garden was the accused — and not this man, who is his twin brother?’
Well, of course she couldn’t. She looked from one to the other and didn’t say a word. The two men were identical.
The accused sat in the dock with his legs separated by brutish muscular thighs, and yet at the same time, there he was also standing at the back of the court, a look of arrogance colouring his overall demeanour. The twins stared coldly at Mrs Roberts, two sets of bulging, bloodshot eyes boring into her. She had gone from a sudden hot flush to looking deathly pale in seconds. She shook her head in disbelief.
And that was that. The case against Harry Higgins collapsed in an instant. None of the three key witnesses were now prepared to swear on oath that the man they had seen running from the scene of the crime was the man in the dock.
‘But what about the brother?’ said Jennifer.
‘Michael Higgins? Well, according to his wife, he was with her when the murder had occurred. But she would say that, wouldn’t she? And so Harry Higgins was acquitted on insubstantial evidence. One of the brothers must have done the deed. That much was obvious. But which one?’
‘That’s just about the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard, Pop.’ said Paul Scott, a philosophy student.
But this extraordinary tale was not quite over yet. I continued:
‘I followed Mrs Roberts out of court and into the street, hoping to get some comment from her about this staggering turn of events so that I could include it in my red-hot front page story which would make our late edition a best-seller. But we got wedged in with the crowd who were waiting to catch a glimpse of the now forever infamous twins.
The police tried desperately to disperse the crowd, but it was a forlorn task. All they could do was ensure the road was clear for traffic. I learned later that the police had tried to get the brothers to leave by the rear exit for their own safety, but they refused, one of them, Harry or Michael, nobody knew which, said, ‘I’ve been acquitted, haven’t I? I have nothing to fear or be ashamed of,’ and they walked out of the front entrance bold as brass into the blinding sunlight and baying crowd.
Then something incredible happened. I don’t know how, though I was less than six feet away from the incident. The crowd suddenly surged towards the brothers and one of them got pushed into the road right in front of a No.12 bus bound for Waterloo.
There was a blood-chilling squeal, rather like a pig might make… but only for the briefest of seconds. Death took him instantaneously in the form of a smashed-in skull, just as Mrs Baker’s had been. Divine vengeance… poetic justice… hoist with his own petard..? Call it what you will.
The other Higgins was getting shakily to his feet from beside the body of his brother. He looked accusingly over at Mrs Roberts, whose hands were covering her mouth. He was crying like a baby. Whether he was the murderer or not nobody will ever know.’
‘Nice one, Pop, that’s some story,’ said Brian. ‘And what about Mrs Roberts..? I bet she couldn’t sleep for weeks after.’
‘One would imagine not,’ I said, looking at my watch and downing the rest of my pint. ‘I have to go. See you guys next week.’
I left them chatting and drinking and made my way back to the offices of The Bashley Bugler. I just had a couple of final touches to add to my weekly column, ‘The Corner Plot’ — you and your garden with Pop Higgins, hand it in and get myself off home.
Sometimes I think back to the strange events of that case. I know that it should have been me and not Michael who died under the bus, but then the world is full of injustices and you can’t change history can you?
THE END
Libbie
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