The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,40
of lawyer’s clerk in the London firm of Bidewell and Biggs.”
“What was the case you was speakin’ of, where force of habit played such a part?”
The question came from a ragged man sitting across from Reedy, on the other side of the fire.
“The defendant had struck his wife a blow that knocked her off her feet. In falling she struck her head on a curb stone, fractured her skull and died on the spot. It emerged that it was this man’s common practice to strike his wife in moments of irritation. He had been doing so for many years. His counsel mounted an extremely effective defense on the grounds that the blow had been occasioned by pure force of habit and that the defendant could not therefore be said to have intended harm, in the sense that the law understands intention, as there had been no interval of time for intention to be formed. I will not disguise from you that I was the barrister who mounted that brilliant defense.”
“What happened to him then?”
“He was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.”
“The son of a whore, he got off light, they should of stretched his neck,” the woman said, speaking for the first time and with unexpected violence. “I would give ’im force of habit, I would put a bellyache in his broth every night till he croaked.”
“No, no,” the lawyer’s clerk said. “The fact that you administered poison to him on a number of successive nights could not be said to constitute habit. On the contrary, it would argue premeditation, it would be viewed as male in se. Capital punishment should be inflicted in such a case, by the command of God to all mankind. You will remember his words to Noah, our common ancestor. ‘Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ ”
“You could train it up to be force of habit,” the woman’s companion said. “If you kept at it night after night with very small doses, just a grain or two, in the end you would do it without thinkin’ twice.”
“You misapprehend,” Reedy said. “This is the law of the land we are talking of. There is need to make distinctions. The ability to make distinctions is the mark of a civilized society. It is necessary for the welfare of the people, salus popoli suprema lex est. Pass the jar this way, will you?” His speech had thickened now and his mouth had developed an occasional tendency to slip sideways a little, but there was no faltering in the flow of his words. “You see, it is very different from the theft of your purse,” he said to Sullivan. “In that case there was clear intention of harm.”
“Well, it was meditated on beforehand, so much is true. But I contributed to me own downfall. The thought that he might be given to thievin’ niver strayed into me mind. He was a Galway man, like meself.” Sullivan paused for a moment, then added, “Leastways, that was what he gave himself out to be. I have thought since that it might not have been the truth. Losin’ the purse was a blow to me, I am not the man to deny that, even though the gravity of it was reduced by the spendin’ that had gone before.” He remembered as he spoke the brightness of the weather, the world full of promise as he stepped out into Bedford High Street, well fed and well rested, spring in the air. “There was a blessin’ on me,” he said. “An’ it is on me still.”
“You have no cause to reproach yourself,” Reedy said. “It may have been unwise to trust a man on such short acquaintance, but it was neither rash nor heedless as the law understands these terms.”
In his seagoing days Sullivan had seen much strong drink consumed, and it impressed him now that the lawyer’s clerk was able to maintain such command over his speech while slowly losing it over his features and the bearing of his head. It argued a great deal of practice. “I am not sure in me mind how them words differ,” he said. He had always liked to pick up new words and use them in conversation; it added tone to a man. A great deal of his vocabulary had come from songs he knew by heart and sometimes sang to the accompaniment of his fiddle.
“They differ profoundly,” Reedy said. “Rashness consists in failure to perceive, or give full consideration to,