The Buttercup Spell

By Henry Cecil

Imagine a situation where a judge hands out a lenient sentence because he is suddenly filled with love for his fellow man. Think of a world where Trades Union leaders fully support their bosses' high salaries and where policemen hug and kiss drivers stopped for speeding. The secret of this strange behaviour is nothing less than buttercup pollen. It appears to contain the formula to make people love their fellow man. However, the attraction of this modern Utopia begins to fade as the country yearns for an end to the boredom of infinite love. Eventually the government is forced to step in and matters gradually return to normal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Stratus
• Release date: Sep 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9780755129331

Henry Cecil

Henry Cecil, known to many as His Honour Judge H.C. Leon, MC, was a High Court judge as well as a famous author. He wrote during the three-week-long family holidays which were usually spent in comfortable hotels in Britain. He would sit in a deck chair in a sunny garden, exercise book on lap and pen in hand, writing from 10 am to 1pm, then again from 2.30 to 4 pm each day. His writing career is attributed to his Second World War experiences. Sailing around the Cape on a 'dry' troop ship on the way to Cairo, the colonel asked his adjutant (Cecil) to tell stories to keep the officers' minds off alcohol. The stories were so popular that they became a regular feature, and formed the basis of his first collection, 'Full Circle', published in 1948. Thereafter, the legal year, his impressions at court, or at other official functions, as well as dinners at the Savoy Grill or at his club, the Garrick, all provided material for his considerable brain power. Many of his stories were made into films or plays - notably 'Brothers-in-Law' and 'Alibi for a Judge'. These and other books have also provided a stimulus for those wishing to take up law as a career. They are a delight for those who look for authenticity in the most aptly described British characters. Cecil died in May 1976, still at the height of his mental powers.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Sentence Extraordinary

Mr Justice Salisbury had been compared to Mr Justice Avory. He was not so small in stature nor did he have a somewhat rasping cockney voice like his predecessor, but he was as stern a judge in the seventies as Mr Justice Avory was in the twenties and thirties. Indeed, as the increase of crime was much greater in the days of Mr Justice Salisbury than it was forty years previously, he felt it his duty to hand out sentences which according to more enlightened people (or if you take the other view, more gullible) were savage in the extreme. But he was just as fair as Mr Justice Avory and if it looked as though you really might be innocent, you could not wish for a better judge. But Leonard Tiptree, who was appearing in the dock before him, did not have either in his looks or in his story the appearance of innocence. And when he had heard that he was to be tried before Mr Justice Salisbury, he had asked his counsel if there were any possible way of avoiding this fate.

‘I could pretend to be ill,’ he suggested.

‘Certainly not,’ said his counsel.

‘But if I really were ill, they couldn’t try me.’

‘That’s another matter. But you’re perfectly well.’

‘I might be taken ill tonight.’

‘I suggest,’ said the counsel, ‘that we should concentrate rather more on your actual defence than on the means of avoiding your being tried before Mr Justice Salisbury.’

‘You don’t think anything of my defence.’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ said counsel, ‘but the jury may think more of it than I do. And you can certainly rely on me to put it to them in as favourable a light as possible.’

‘But you think they’ll convict.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘And what will Salisbury give me?’

‘Well, if you’re guilty, it’s a very bad case and, as you know, Salisbury is not a lenient judge. Unfortunately for you there’s no maximum penalty for your offence. If there were, he would give it to you but he couldn’t give you more. But you’re charged with conspiracy and he can give you anything for that.’

‘What d’you think he will give me?’

Counsel hesitated for a moment.

‘Go on. Tell me. I might as well know now.’

‘I can’t be sure, of course, but I doubt if he will give you less than twenty years and he might give you thirty.’

Humphrey Eland, the prisoner’s counsel, was a man with an admirable temperament for a barrister or a surgeon. He appeared to have no emotions at all and, had there been a death penalty, he would have spoken about it quite as objectively as he spoke about twenty or thirty years in prison. Although this attitude may seem callous to some, it was often a considerable help to his more emotional clients. If you say something kind, the emotional client is liable to burst into tears. And this interrupts his story of how he was just on the way to the police station with the necklace when unfortunately a detective picked him up.

‘Twenty or thirty years,’ repeated Leonard Tiptree. ‘And what would another judge give me?’

‘That would depend who it was. There are some quite as severe as Salisbury but they haven’t had the opportunity of showing it yet. I should say that the least you would get would be ten years. It is just conceivable, though most unlikely, that with a good psychiatrist’s report you might only get seven from one or two of the judges.’

‘But not from Salisbury?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘If I get measles overnight, you won’t tell the police it’s a put-up job?’

‘If you get measles overnight, it won’t be a put-up job,’ said counsel.

‘You know what I mean. You won’t tell anyone of this conversation?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And if I get the prison doctor to say I’m not fit to stand trial, you won’t say that I’ve slipped him a fiver?’

‘I won’t,’ said counsel, ‘but if you try it on, he will.’

‘How much do you suggest?’

‘Don’t let’s waste time,’ said counsel. ‘In the first place, I’m quite certain that no prison doctor would accept a bribe and secondly, you know perfectly well that I wouldn’t suggest how to set about bribing one. Now, let’s talk about the case.’

‘If we’re going to talk about the case,’ intervened Mr Groaner, Eland’s instructing solicitor, a large and gloomy man who, like some judges, paid close attention to an argument with his eyes shut, ‘I still don’t know why Mr Tiptree didn’t telephone the police or go to them when he suddenly discovered that there was £100,000 in his room of which he knew nothing.’

‘I thought you were asleep,’ said Tiptree.

‘Don’t be offensive,’ said counsel. ‘Actually,’ he went on, ‘he has already answered that question, Mr Groaner. He told us earlier that he didn’t think the police would believe him, having regard to his previous convictions.’

‘That’s right,’ said Tiptree. ‘Would you believe a man with previous convictions for stealing from banks if he came and told you that he’d got a lot of used one-pound notes in his room which he knew nothing about?’

‘It all depends,’ said Groaner. ‘Why should a guilty man tell the police about the notes at all?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Tiptree. ‘They’d have said they’d become too hot to handle. Too many of them. My previous convictions were only for £10,000 or so. If I’d gone to the police, they’d just have said I’d lost my nerve, and before I knew where I was, I’d have made a confession.’

‘Well, you have in a way,’ said counsel.

‘I withdrew that.’

‘But it doesn’t make it any easier.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. Who said it was easy? I shouldn’t be here if it was easy. I still say I knew nothing about the money until I came home.’

‘You could have sent it back to the bank anonymously,’ said Groaner.

‘I didn’t know which bank it came from.’

‘It gave the name in the paper,’ said Groaner.

‘I don’t read all the papers.’

‘You could have found out if you’d wanted to,’ said Groaner.

‘Whose side are you on?’ asked Tiptree.

‘These are the questions you will be asked in court,’ said Eland. ‘And it’s much better for you to be asked them now in a friendly manner, than to be asked them for the first time by cross-examining counsel.’

‘It didn’t sound a friendly manner,’ said Tiptree.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Groaner, ‘I am not a very friendly person, but I’m just doing my job with the help of Mr Eland.’

The conference proceeded on its gloomy way. There is no doubt that the fact that Mr Justice Salisbury was to preside at the trial was to some extent responsible.

The next morning the trial began. Owing to the amount of money involved it naturally attracted a great deal of public interest. The case for the Crown was very strong indeed, and counsel for the prosecution did not spend overlong in opening it to the jury. He called his witnesses and examined them shortly. Eland cross-examined them at length, but without much result. Occasionally the judge asked a question which did not seem to favour the defence.

At the end of the day the Crown’s case was closed, and the judge rose. The next morning the accused gave his evidence. He had been found in possession of 100,000 one-pound notes which had recently been stolen from a bank. When the police called on him, he had admittedly had these notes in his possession for a week. His case was that he had not made up his mind what to do about them. He did not go to the police because he thought that they wouldn’t believe him.

It was midday when the judge started to sum-up, and by lunchtime he had finished. So the jury retired to have their lunch and consider their verdict. And the judge retired to have his lunch, and to consider the sentence, if the jury should convict.

For once the judge did not lunch in the Mess. He entertained an old friend of his, Norman Strang, in his private room, and trays were sent in to them. At three o’clock the jury reported that they were ready to return a verdict, and the judge and everyone went back into Court.

As expected, the jury convicted. ‘The officer in charge of the case gave a list of Tiptree’s previous convictions and Eland was asked if he had anything to say in mitigation.

‘I know your Lordship’s views about psychiatrists,’ he said, ‘but nevertheless, if your Lordship will allow me, I should like to call one.’

Mr Justice Salisbury’s views about psychiatrists were very well-known. More than once he had intervened, when a man was described as a ‘psychopathic personality’, to suggest that those were merely two long words for ‘bad’. But he could not refuse leave for such a witness to be called, and Eland thought it just possible that one way or another the evidence of the psychiatrist might help his client. The judge was essentially fair and Eland hoped that if the evidence did not unexpectedly sway the judge in his client’s favour, it would annoy him so much that he would be particularly careful not to pass too heavy a sentence, lest people might think that he had been influenced by his annoyance.

‘Call your witness,’ said the judge, and Professor Broadway went into the witness-box. He took the oath and gave his qualifications. He was then asked by Eland if he had examined the prisoner, and on how many occasions.

‘I have seen him twice,’ said the professor. ‘On the first occasion for three hours, and on the second for rather less.’

‘What can you say to help me?’ asked the judge.

Eland was surprised, but thought that Mr Justice Salisbury was for once indulging in sarcasm.

‘Not a great deal,’ said the professor. ‘The accused does not come from a broken home. He is well-educated and has had every chance in life. Nevertheless, although he is in no legal sense insane, I think myself that he is suffering from an undiagnosable disease of the mind which causes him to act in an anti-social manner.’

‘What do you suggest?’ asked Eland.

‘That he should be treated for this complaint,’ said the professor.

Eland paused for a moment, expecting the judge to say: ‘There will be ample facilities for his treatment in prison,’ but the judge did not say it. So Eland decided to sit down, and counsel for the prosecution rose.

‘Professor, you say this disease is undiagnosable. How then can you diagnose it?’

‘I can’t,’ said the professor. ‘I’m merely telling you what I believe.’

‘What is the source of your belief?’

‘The man’s behaviour, and what he said to me.’

‘The same might be said of many criminals,’ said counsel.

‘It certainly might,’ said the professor. ‘If I may say so, my Lord,’ he added, ‘I don’t think that many of these people, whom we call criminals, are properly understood. A man with a pain in his stomach is understood, and he may have his appendix taken out. But a man whose brain cells are gravely affected by a disease at present unknown to us, is treated as though he were fully responsible for his actions.’

‘Until the disease is known to us,’ said counsel for the prosecution, ‘what else can we do about it?’

‘Mr Barnes’, intervened the judge, addressing counsel for the prosecution, ‘do you think it necessary to ask the witness any further questions?’

‘If your Lordship pleases,’ said counsel, and sat down.

‘Anything further to say, Mr Eland?’ asked the judge.

‘I ask your Lordship to take note of what the professor has said, and to pass the most lenient sentence which your Lordship considers possible.’

The judge paused for at least half a minute before passing sentence. Meantime the prisoner had been told to get to his feet to await the outcome.

‘Leonard Tiptree,’ began the judge, ‘you have been convicted of stealing £100,000 from a bank, and it is undoubtedly a very large sum. But it is to be remembered that you used no unnecessary violence to obtain this sum. Nobody is any the worse off for your behaviour. The bank has got back its £100,000 and you have not committed any unnecessary perjury in your defence. You have told some lies, of course, but you have limited them to the bare minimum. Better still, you have not called any witnesses to commit perjury. The only witness you have called is Professor Broadway. What he says may very well be true. It may well be that just because my brain cells are a little different from yours, I am sitting up here, and you are standing in the dock. But you have broken the law and it is my duty to sentence you. After careful consideration I have decided that the ends of justice will best be served if I impose upon you a suspended sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment.’

The only person in court who did not gasp was Tiptree himself. He was too stunned. Even the usher joined in the noise of general astonishment, which he was accordingly unable to silence. Never before had a chorus of ‘phews’ gone unheeded by authority in Court 1 at the Old Bailey. The judge appeared oblivious of the impact of his sentence and went on: ‘This means,’ he said, ‘that provided you behave yourself, you will hear no more about this. Should you commit any further offence, then this sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment will be served by you in addition to any other sentence that may be imposed for the future crime. However, I hope that you will decide to turn over a new leaf, and it may be that if you will attend a course of treatment with Professor Broadway, he may be able to find some means of treating your brain cells so that you don’t feel impelled to prey upon banks, or indeed upon anybody else, in the way you seem to have done in the past. What are you all waiting for?’

It was a fair question. Everyone in court except the judge, had been so stupefied by what he had said, that they were motionless, and formed a sort of tableau vivant, though not very vivant.

‘Come along,’ said the judge. ‘Call the next case, please.’ And like the figures in a slot-machine in an amusement arcade when the necessary coin has been inserted, the people in the court came to life again.

Counsel for the prosecution, who was also prosecuting in the next case, made