Murder in Dublin by Christina Koning

Author:Christina Koning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The trial of Edward George Swift, Lord Castleford, began on the following Monday, 2nd October, in Court 1 of the Four Courts. Rowlands and the defendant’s wife were in the public gallery to hear a plea of not guilty entered. It was Rowlands who persuaded him to go through with the farce, as Swift called it. ‘Really, it hardly seems worth the waste of time and energy that will be expended in order to achieve the result of my being hanged,’ he said, with the ghastly levity he had adopted in recent days. ‘Isn’t it better to call it quits, plead guilty, and take one’s medicine like a man?’

‘Better for you, perhaps,’ said Rowlands. ‘But surely worse for your wife and son, to have you branded a murderer.’

‘Ah yes. My son,’ said Swift sadly. ‘Poor little devil. He hasn’t deserved this.’

‘No more have you, and you know it,’ said Rowlands stoutly. ‘You owe it to George – to both of them – not to give in to faintheartedness, but to stand up and fight.’

The other man laughed. It had a hollow sound. ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it, we old soldiers?’ said Swift. He sounded infinitely weary. ‘All right. I’ll go through with this charade, for George’s sake.’ He didn’t mention his wife. ‘But I’m telling you, old man, it won’t end well.’

As Rowlands took his seat next to Lady Celia, a buzz of voices from the courtroom below told him that the defendant had just been brought up from the cells – a commotion quelled, a few moments after by a loud injunction to silence by the clerk of the court, heralding the arrival of the judge, Mr Justice Walsh. ‘Ned looks quite calm,’ whispered his companion to Rowlands as the hubbub subsided. Rowlands nodded, but did not reply, as the opening statement for the prosecution was beginning, and he didn’t want to miss a word. Once before, years ago, he had sat in the public gallery at the Old Bailey to hear the evidence given in a murder trial by the woman who now sat at his side. Perhaps she recalled the same occasion, for she shivered slightly, although the courtroom was if anything too warm, and laid a gloved hand on his as if seeking reassurance.

‘That on the night of 19th August 1939, he did wilfully murder Jolyon Reginald Swift …’

So the sonorous phrases rolled on. Prosecuting counsel was a Mr Patrick Riordan, of whom Lady Celia had said, on first glimpsing him in the corridor leading to Court 1, ‘He looks like a fox. Sharp-featured. Clever. I hope our man’s a match for him.’

It was Sir Anthony she’d meant. He was now rising to his feet to raise some point of law, his orotund delivery lending even his most trivial remarks an importance they might otherwise not have had. ‘My lord … I am sure Your Lordship will find …’ He was establishing in the minds of the jury that he and the presiding judge were on equal, if not intimate, terms.

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