Free Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny

face reflecting the mixture of nervous smile and incipient tears that would become as familiar to the spectators as her mother’s shake of her head and gentle movement of her hand which propelled the child back to face the court.
    Norma, too, was a pretty girl, her hair also dark brown and as shiny as Mary’s. Every day’ both of them wore immaculately clean and ironed cotton dresses, white socks and polished shoes. Taller and physically more developed, Norma had a round face that looked perpetually puzzled and large soft brown eyes. One felt worried about Norma almost all the time, sorry for her often visible distress and concerned for her obviously caring parents and numerous relatives who, sitting behind her, attended every session, stroking and petting the desperate child on the many times she burst into tears. Her ten brothers and sisters, ranging in age from her handicapped sixteen-year-old brother down to a baby in arms, waited outside the court every day of the trial, waving to her enthusiastically whenever the door opened. And at every recess they rushed in and down the steps to what Mary, years later, would describe to me as ‘the dungeon’, the arched vault in the basement of the court building where, until the fifth day, when the judge ordered the girls to be kept in separate rooms, the two groups huddled at opposite corners of the huge chamber during breaks in the proceedings. There was love and determined gaiety around Norma from the beginning to the end of the trial. And nobody in court could have thought for a single moment that anyone in her family believed that little girl capable of murder.
    Mary, much smaller, with her heart-shaped face and those remarkable bright-blue eyes, was not alone either, though the members of her extended family who attended appeared unable to hide their anxiety and distress. Her grandmother Mrs. McC. ” Betty’s thin, fine boned mother, was there every day, with a white, tired face, straight backed and silent. And her aunts, Betty’s sisters Cath and Isa, and Billy’s sister, Audrey, came, and so did Audrey’s husband, Peter, and Cath’s husband, Jack; all of them respectable and quiet, avoiding contact with anyone around and, during the breaks, directing (what one Newcastle policewoman described to me as) ‘forced-like cheer’ and ‘desperate affection’ towards Mary.
    The person who was most conspicuous, however, and impossible to ignore, was Betty. Anything but silent, she exclaimed volubly, sobbed wildly, and time and again, the straggly blonde wig that incompletely covered her jet-black hair askew, demonstrated her indignation at what was being said about her child by stalking furiously out of the court on her high clicking heels, only to return, just as ostentatiously, shortly afterwards.
    Billy Bell, tall and handsome, with black hair and red-blond sideburns, sat hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his hands supporting his head, for much of the time hiding his face. I never saw him speak to anybody, though the policewomen who guarded Mary would tell me that he was gentle with her during breaks, and while so taciturn in the courtroom, worked quite hard downstairs to make Mary laugh. Except for an almost obligatory kiss on leaving, her mother never comforted her unless she noticed someone watching. But Billy hugged and kissed her every time he came and went, and she, who several of her relatives said had never allowed herself to be kissed by any of them and ‘always turned her head away’ when they tried, clung to him.
    (Mary told me later she was very frightened of her mother during the trial.
    “She became more and more…” More what? I asked. ‘. Angry with me,” she said, using the same words and tone of voice she had used before.)
    It was a long time after the trial that three social workers told me about their first experience with Betty Bell. Before the case finally arrived at the Assizes, the two children had been remanded four