BELGIAN SHOT IN LONDON

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 November 1929, Page 3

BELGIAN SHOT IN LONDON

THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE. Kingsway is at best a rather dull thoroughfare, excellent as a market for dictaphones, typewriting machines, and such soulless objects, but offering no suggestion of romance or of lurking passions, base or otherwise. Even during the war it retained its somewhat frosty character, and was more redolent of income-tax forms and office furniture than of powder and gas. In spite of this, however, there was enacted in a room in India House, in this street, a sordid little tragedy that kept the lawyers busy for a matter of eight months or more. Herein it differed from any other offence of its sort that one is able to remember. The bare facts of the case, a shooting affair, can be told quite briefly. India House, Kingsway, was the headquarters during the war of the Belgian Military Commission in London. Its chief , was Colonel Leon Cambressy, whose only connection with the matter was of an official character. Lieutenant Charles Aughuet was an officer in the Belgian cavalry, who after much service at the front, was holding, an appointment under,Colonel Cambressy, at India House. Lieutenant Aughuet had a wife at home, whom he had not seen for a long time. In the evidence it also transpired that he had not been faithful to her, and was the father of an unlawful child.

One day—it was on July 31, 1917 —a man was shown into Lieutenant Aughuet’s room in India House. He was a Belgian soldier, a private in the army, Raymond de Dreyver. He accused Aughuet of being unfaithful, and asked if he would consent to a divorce. If Lieutenant Aughuet would not, then the wife and himself would use all the means at their disposal to compel him to do so. Drey ver said he had a great affection for Madame Aughuet, and wished to marry her. Further revelations of a more extreme character were too much for Lieutenant Aughuet, in spite of his own delinquencies, to accept the situation calmly. He opened a drawer in his desk, took out a revolver, and fired a number of shots at Dreyver. The first two of these missed their mark. Others, fired after a scuffle, wounded him severely, but not fatally. Aughuet was arrested, and Dreyver taken to a hospital. Details of the affair coming to light showed that Aughuet and his wife had been married fourteen years, and had no children, and that the lady had been writing him affectionate letters until shortly before Dreyver’s visit. Here, then, is no mystery of crime, merely a rather • sordid domestic drama, the actors in which were strangers to England. But the legal tangle which ensued made it, as has already been suggested a case of quite, extraordinary interest, and it is long since so much time and money were spent upon an affair of the sort. Dreyver from the moment he arrived in hospital behaved in a strange manner with regard 'to the charge against Aughuet. He first expressed the wish that the case should be tried by a Belgian court-martial at Calais, in order, as he urged, to prevent publicity in England. Aughuet was, therefore, sent over to Calais, and it looked as though London had heard the last of the affair and seen the last of Aughuet. Far from it.

The court-martial could do nothing at Calais without Dreyver, and he was ill in a London hospital; so Aughuet was sent back to England until the other was well. Presumably he resumed his work at India House. He was not under arrest. J ■' /

The Charge Renewed. On August 18 Dreyver appears to have been sufficiently recovered to take ail active part in the business. Forgetting his clearly expressed desire that Aughuet should be tried by Belgian court-martial at Calais, he applied on this date to Mr. Graham Campbell at Bow Street for a warrant for the arrest of his assailant. Mr. Campbell, having no knowledge of the circumstances, granted process. Aughuet, hearing of the proceedings at Bow Street, surrendered himself.

Dreyver himself explained his change of front later in a fashion that does not make his action at all clear. When he had asked, for a court-martial at Calais he thought he was going to die. When he found he was going to live he determined to “go for” his rival in London. That is what he had to say about it. The lawyers now began to appear on the scene, Mr. Patrick Hastings, later Sir Patrick Hastings, representing Dreyver, and Sir Archibald Bodkin appearing for Aughuet. ' Colonel Cambressy furnished details of the situation to the magistrate at Bow Street —Mr Garrett in this case—and it was agreed to remand Aughuet bn bail until the Calais result became known.- So the Belgian officer went back to his work again, and two days later there was a report abroad that Dreyver had disappeared. Some time -before the proceedings which ensued in London hardened into a legal battle, Aughuet went over to France and was tried by a Belgian courtmartial at Calais. Dreyver did not appear, the sympathy of the court ;was with Aughuet, and the case against him was dismissed. On September 26, nearly two months after the shooting, Mr. Patrick Hastings, before Mr. Justice Hill in a vacation court of the King’s Bench Division, disputed Mr. Garrett’s action at Bow Street, and Mr. Justice Hill granted a rule nisi for an order to the magistrate at Bow Street to hear the charge against Aughuet. The case to decide whether the rule should be made absolute came before Justices Darling, Avory and Sankey on October 12. Drey ver was again in the offing, and there, was an imposing array of counsel to show cause, while Mr. Patrick Hastings appeared in support of the rule. The hearing was adjourned until October 16, and it was, as a fact, and as was pointed out by Mr. Justice Darling, between these two lastnamed dates that Aughuet was acquitted in Calais. At this second hearing the court held that as Dreyver was still in England the case could pro-, ceed as though nothing had happened in France. The rule, therefore, would be discharged. It was a strange situation and probably without parallel, this of a man known to have fired five shots pointblank at his rival going about London and his ordinary business nearly three months after the affray, his ultimate fate still in the balance.

Matters, however, were now to speed up a little, and Aughuet, as a result of the decision just noted, surrendered to his bail at Bow Street. He made three appearances in that court, pleading “Not guilty,” on the 2nd, 9th, and 16th November. The court-martial proceedings in

Calais were discussed, and he was finally sent for trial at the Old Bailey. On December 16 Mr. Muir, afterwards Sir Richard Muir, asked that legal argument should stand over till the next session, and the judge agreed. So that Aughuet once more went forth to carry on the daily routine of life, probably worried not at all about the final decision, which some time, sooner or later, was bound to come. On January 9,1918, the accused was formally charged before Mr. Justice Darling at the Central Criminal Court. Sir Richard Muir prosecuted, and Mr. Hawke, K.C., and Sir Archibald Bodkin appeared for the defence, and immediately put forward the plea of autrefois acquit; Most people know that in England a man cannot be tried twice for the same offence, but this plea of “already acquitted” is jquite,

uncommon. . \ ■ The result of the Old Bailey trial was quite unsatisfactory. Mr. Justice Darling read from the judgment of the Calais court, ahd remarked that it meant, in effect, that Aughuet fired a pistol at the prosecutor and afterwards could not stop the bullet. He characteristically added that ‘‘before the ■jvar the practice was for the Belgians not to fight outside their own country and for others to fight inside it instead. That has been the practice for three centuries.” Justice Darling expressed his view that the defendant was not entitled to plead autrefois acquit. On. the following day there was further argument on this question, and Mr. Justice Darling held that the plea should stand good for the first three counts in the indictment charging the prisoner with shooting and wounding Dreyver with intent to do him bodily harm. With regard to the charge of unlawfully wounding, he pointed out that the Calais indictment did not include

that charge,- and that therefore the accused could not plead autrefois acquit to it. So Lieutenant Aughuet went out again on bail, but this time had only eleven days to wait ’ before he was again at the Central Criminal Court before the Common.. Sergeant on the charge of maliciously wounding. Muir again prosecuted, and the accused was found guilty of unlawfully and maliciously wounding, but not in self-de-fence, under provocation, or necessity. The Common Sergeant considered the possibilty of the accused acting in an excess of passion. The jury recommended him to mercy; the atmosphere of the court was vibrant with sympathy, and Aughuet was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment in the second division..

One more stage remained to complete the, tale of .this complicatfed business. On February 25, 1918, the case came before Justices Lawrence, Avory and Sankey in the Court of Criminal Appeal. Sir Richard Muir contended that the plea of uncontrollable impulse, though good in Belgium, did not apply in. England. The court, however, ruled that it would be contrary to the true intention of the convention between England and Belgium to subject Aughuet to punishment here for an offence for Which he had already been acquitted in accordance with Belgium law. The court therefore decided that the plea of autrefois acquit was good. The appeal was allowed and the conviction quashed. Aughuet was’free.