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Mr. Pollard: ‘Did you recognise the footsteps?’
His lordship frowned and shrugged his shoulders.
Witness: ‘I thought it was Miss Owen.’
Mr. Pollard: ‘Well, now tell us what you did.’
The girl proceeded to describe how she had got up and gone down to the front-door.
‘How was it fastened?’ was the next question.
‘It was on the latch. The bolts were drawn back, and it wasn’t locked nor yet chained.’
‘Did you see whether the latch was up or down?’
‘I object!’
Mr. Tressamer had risen in a fresh burst of indignation.
‘My lord, my friend has distinctly suggested the answer to the witness. I object to her being allowed to say anything about the latch after such a question as that.’
‘I didn’t intend to lead her, my lord,’ said Pollard.
The judge hesitated for awhile between his natural desire to hear the answer and his fear that the witness was not wholly impartial. Perhaps a slight prejudice against Tressamer’s hectoring manner had something to do with his decision.
‘You should have asked her whether she noticed anything about the latch,’ he said at length. ‘Did you?’ he added, turning to the witness.
‘It was down, sir,’ she returned, answering Pollard’s question rather than the judge’s.
The importance of the answer was chiefly in its disposing of Tressamer’s suggestion that the butler might have forced the latch up. He turned round to the jury, and assumed the air of one who is being unfairly treated. But of course he could not help their seeing that the prosecution had scored a point.
Rebecca’s evidence was continued till she came to where she heard footsteps ascending the stairs.
‘How long was this afterwards?’ asked Pollard.
‘About ten minutes,’
‘Did you recognise those footsteps?’
‘No, I didn’t notice them; but I think they must have been Miss Owen’s, or else I should have noticed the difference.’
Tressamer ground his teeth. He was afraid to interrupt again, for fear of the effect on the minds of the jury. They are apt to think a man is losing when he interrupts too often.
‘What happened next?’
‘She went into the bedroom below.’
‘What bedroom?’
‘Her own, I suppose, or Miss Lewis’s.’
‘You couldn’t tell which?’
‘No.’
‘Well, and how long was the person, whoever it was, inside?’
‘About a quarter of an hour, I should think. I thought she had come in for good, and gone to bed.’
The Judge (suddenly looking up from his notes): ‘Look here, don’t let me have to stop you again, or I shall do something you won’t like. It’s not for you to tell us what you thought. Confine yourself to answering the questions.’
Mr. Pollard (thinking the judge has finished): ‘And then what did you – ’
The Judge (superbly indifferent to Mr. Pollard): ‘Do you realize that you are giving evidence in a court of justice? You must be extremely careful – extremely careful.’ (A long pause; Mr. Pollard afraid to begin again.) ‘Well, do you ask her anything more?’
Mr. Pollard: ‘I beg your lordship’s pardon. If your lordship pleases.’ (To witness) ‘After the quarter of an hour, did you hear anything more?’
Witness (now thoroughly frightened): ‘Yes.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘I heard her come out.’
At this point the judge threw down his pen, and threw himself back in his chair. Mr. Pollard hastened to take off the edge of his lordship’s wrath by reprimanding the witness himself.
‘You mustn’t tell us that. You don’t know it was the prisoner. What was it you actually heard?’
The girl now felt and looked ready to resort to tears. She really did not know what answer was safe, and prudently adopted a strictly non-committal form.
‘I heard a noise below.’
‘What was the noise like?’
‘Like someone going downstairs.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say that? You heard footsteps going down?’
‘Yes.’
The judge took up his pen again and took down the answer.
‘And did you notice the footsteps this time?’
‘Yes; they were – ’
‘Stop! Not so fast. Answer my questions.’
Mr. Pollard was by this time little less nervous than the witness. He was really utterly at a loss how to frame his next question without incurring Tressamer’s wrath or the rebuke of the Bench. At last he blurted out:
‘Was there anything different about the footsteps this time?’
Tressamer opened his mouth, but the judge was before him this time:
‘Don’t answer. Really, Mr. Pollard, you are as bad as the witness. You know you ought not to put a question like that.’ Then, seeing that the poor young man was quite unequal to extracting the desired evidence, his lordship quietly took over the examination himself:
‘Did you notice the footsteps this time when they were going downstairs?’
‘Yes, sir – my lord.’
‘Did anything strike you about them?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘What?’
‘They were heavier, sir, and thumpy.’
‘Had you ever heard anything like it before? I mean, did they or did they not sound familiar in spite of this heaviness?’
‘No, my lord; I don’t remember.’
‘Did you go downstairs again?’
‘No, sir.’
The judge turned round to the jury with complacency, and smiled as if to say, ‘You see, gentlemen, how it can be done by one who knows how.’ Then he asked the counsel:
‘Now, Mr. Pollard, do you want anything more from this witness?’
‘No, my lord, thank you.’
He sat down, feeling considerably the worse for his experience, and Tressamer got up.
He looked severely at the young woman for some seconds, and then suddenly asked her:
‘Why do you dislike Miss Owen?’
At once the court was all ears. It was one of those strokes of brilliant advocacy which few men care to venture on. It was dangerous, but in the present case it was completely successful. The witness lost countenance, stammered, and with difficulty got out a lame denial.
‘I don’t dislike her particular.’
‘Do you like her?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever have any complaint against her when you were her servant?’ (He intentionally chose a phrase calculated to irritate.)
‘I wasn’t her servant,’ was the angry reply. ‘I should be very sorry to be.’
‘I thought so. Tell me, you said to my learned friend that the first sound you heard on this night was like somebody being hurt, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When did you discover that?’
‘When did I discover that?’
‘Yes, woman; don’t echo me like that. You know what I mean.’
‘I thought so at the time.’
‘What!’ The barrister assumed an expression of amaze.
‘I thought so all along.’
‘Then why didn’t you say so all along? When you were before the magistrates, did you say anything about somebody being hurt?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You think so! Remember you are on your oath, please, and that I have a copy before me of what you actually did say before the magistrates. When you were before them, did you say a syllable about a sound as if somebody were being hurt?’
‘I don’t know whether I did or not.’
‘I thought so. Did you tell the magistrate that you thought it was the sound of someone in troubled sleep?’ Here the barrister read from his brief.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And that you thought’ – here he turned over the page at which he was looking and glanced at the top of the next, so as to give the impression that he was still reading her exact words – ‘that the sound came from Miss Owen’s room?’
The witness fell into the trap.
‘I dare say I did,’ she answered.
The judge was equally taken in. He had read the depositions, but had not remembered their contents clearly enough to check the barrister. Tressamer went to another point.
Taking out his watch, he said:
‘I want to test your notion of ten minutes. Will you turn round, with your back to the clock, and tell me when one minute has passed, after I have said the word “Now.”’
All the jurymen and most of the other persons in court took out their watches to check this experiment. The girl turned round, and Tressamer gave the word, ‘Now!’
‘Tick – tick – tick – tick – tick – ’
‘Now!’ said the witness, turning quickly round.
A general smile passed over the court.
‘Seventeen seconds exactly, my lord,’ observed Tressamer. ‘The witness’s ten minutes may therefore be put down as three. You have told his lordship that the last set of footsteps you heard sounded heavy when they went downstairs. Will you swear that they did not sound equally heavy coming up?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘I didn’t ask you if you had noticed. Don’t try and shirk my question, please. Will you pledge your oath that they weren’t equally heavy coming upstairs?’
‘No, I won’t swear it.’
‘Have you any reason, except your dislike of the prisoner, for suggesting that those footsteps were hers?’
The judge interposed.
‘Really, Mr. Tressamer, you mustn’t put it like that. She says that she didn’t dislike the prisoner, and you must take her answer. I allow great latitude to counsel in your situation, but you must treat the witness fairly.’
‘As your lordship pleases.’
Tressamer sat down, rather glad to leave his question unanswered, as the effect thereby produced on the jury’s mind would be better than if the witness had had a chance of offering her grounds for suspicion.
‘Lucy Griffiths.’
This was the housemaid, and her evidence contained nothing of importance. In cross-examination she admitted that she had detected no likeness between the descending footsteps heard by her and Miss Owen’s. In fact, she had at first thought they sounded like a man’s.
The next witness was the fisherman, who stated to Mr. Pollard that he had met a female about midnight on the eventful first of June, whom he at the time believed to be the prisoner. He thought so still.
His cross-examination elicited two facts: First, that he had once met Miss Owen at the same late hour before; secondly, that he had met other persons going in the same direction the same night at or about the same time.
Tressamer chose to emphasize this point.
‘Could you tell those gentlemen,’ he said, indicating the jury, who instantly tried to look as if they had been attending, and had not long ago given up the task in despair, ‘what the other people were like whom you saw?’
‘Well, one of them was a man.’
‘Come, that’s something; but it’s not much. Can’t you tell us what sort of a man? Was he tall?’
The jury instantly looked at Lewis.
‘No; I didn’t notice as how he was particular tall. Middlin’ short, I should say.’
‘About my height?’
‘Yes; about that. Summat about your size.’
Tressamer laughed, and a smile went round the court at the serious way in which the witness gave his answer.
‘Well, who else did you see?’
‘I see another man afore then.’
‘Ah! Was he tall?’
‘Why, yes; I think he was.’
The jury again looked at Lewis. But that gentleman’s face revealed no emotion, except a sort of sullen wrath which had overhung it ever since his appearance in the witness-box.
At last, when all the other witnesses had been disposed of, the policeman was called and gave the usual routine evidence.
Mr. Pollard was rash enough to ask him:
‘Who came to the station to inform the police?’
But his opponent at once objected, and the judge ruled the question out. Mr. Lewis’s indignant declaration, therefore, which Prescott had struck out of his brief with such prompt disdain, fared equally ill in court, and was not allowed to get to the ear of the judge or jury.
At last the evidence was gone through, and then the prosecuting counsel stood up and made the final announcement:
‘That is the case for the Crown, my lord.’
‘I will adjourn for half an hour,’ observed the judge, getting on his feet.
The whole court rose with him, and in a few minutes the entire place was empty.
CHAPTER VII.
HALF AN HOUR
Scrambling, rushing, hurrying, squeezing, talking, laughing, and sighing, the great throng poured out of the building and dispersed down the streets of Abertaff. One topic was on every tongue. The fate of the prisoner was the sole thing discussed. They weighed the evidence, they repeated it, they distorted it. Some were violently in favour of the prisoner, and considered half the witnesses to be committing perjury. Others were violently against her, and could not see, so they professed, a shadow of doubt in the case from first to last. Others, again, in complete doubt as to how the case would end, wisely declined to commit themselves till they had heard more of the defence.
Then, again, these parties were subdivided into groups. There was the ignorant group, who knew nothing about the case, and went about asking questions of their wiser neighbours. There was the mysterious group, who suspected many things, but said nothing, contenting themselves with shaking their heads in corners, and suggesting that not half the real motives of the parties to the affair had come out at all. And there was the well-informed group of those who had watched the whole thing from first to last, and knew more, far more, about it than the counsel on either side, or the criminal either, for that matter.
And they were not churlish in bestowing their information, either. There were the Lewisite partisans, who knew exactly the value of the jewels to a halfpenny, and how they were kept in a box under the bed, and how the prisoner had carried them off by stealth, and buried them somewhere in the sands of Newton Bay. Some of these, the more charitably disposed, could go even further than this. They explained how it was that the prisoner had never meant to commit the murder at all, but simply to steal the jewels, but had been interrupted in the act by the unexpected waking of the deceased woman. They grew impressive as they pictured the elder woman suddenly roused from sleep by the midnight robber, and the emotions of that robber detected in the act of guilt. They could tell you how she started back in terror, and then, realizing that ruin was upon her, succumbed to temporary frenzy, and with the weapon which she had brought to open the jewel-chest dealt the fatal blow to her unhappy victim.
Others, less lenient in their views, had obtained quite different details. They could relate numerous previous attempts of the prisoner on the life of her benefactress. They knew how she had sought to introduce poison into her food, from which she was only saved by a miraculous chance, which caused her to be summoned from the table just as she was about to taste the fatal dish. Also how she had on one occasion led her victim along the cliff with the well-formed purpose of pushing her over the edge; only the curate happened to come along and meet them, and accompanied them till the opportunity was gone.
The Owenite section, on the other hand, had their account, equally authentic, and, if possible, more minute and graphic than the other. They would tell you more about their villain, Lewis, than he himself could possibly have remembered. They took you back to his childhood. They started you with the well-known story of his beating his little sister, the sister in the North whom he had refused to go and see. They explained the causes which led to his expulsion from school after school. They tracked him to Australia, and unearthed dark secrets in his life out there which would have made the bushranger Kelly reject him from his historic gang. Finally, they brought him back to England a ruined desperado, intent on getting at his relative’s wealth by fair means or foul. The robbery of her jewels was only part of his scheme. By killing her he obtained the whole of her wealth at once. Then a victim became necessary – a stalking-horse to mislead the minions of justice, and whose punishment would ensure his own safety. He was thus a double murderer.
So the tongues wagged. Meanwhile the object of these rumours had made his way round in a towering passion to the seat from which his solicitor was trying to get away.
‘What does this mean?’ he cried, as soon as he got near enough to speak without being heard by others. ‘Are you playing me false? Where is Mr. Prescott?’
‘He was called away into the other court,’ said Mr. James Pollard, the barrister’s brother, who was a partner with his father in the Porthstone firm.
‘He ought not to have gone. Your brother managed the case wretchedly. I wasn’t allowed to say the most important thing of all.’
‘My brother did the best he could. No one could dream that Prescott would desert us like this. I shall never give him another brief, I promise you.’
By this time they had got outside the door of the court-house. They turned towards a hotel close by, where a general luncheon was put on the table for the convenience of people having business in the assize-courts. The civil court had risen a few minutes before the other, and the place was crowded with solicitors, witnesses, jurymen, and the general public.
‘Look here, Mr. Pollard,’ Lewis said, as they fought their way into the room, ‘I could have proved that about the jewels up to the hilt if I had been allowed. Why, my aunt was speaking to me about them that very night, and she said Miss Owen knew of them.’
‘And why on earth didn’t you tell me all this before?’ retorted the solicitor.
‘I thought I had.’
‘Thought you had! Goodness me! that’s just like you laymen. You keep back the chief points in a case, and then you’re angry with us because we don’t guess them by instinct. Why didn’t you tell the judge this when he was examining you?’
‘Because it wasn’t said in the prisoner’s presence.’
‘Pooh! Why, it was evidence of motive. But there, it’s no good trying to explain the law of evidence to you. If any thing’s gone wrong, you have yourself to thank for it – a good deal, that’s all. What shall you take?’
And they fell to on the refreshments before them.
Meanwhile the barristers, whose self-imposed code forbade them to enter a public hotel room in a town where the assizes were being held, had straggled off, some to the County Club, and others to the common-room reserved for their especial use in the chief hotel of the place.
Among the latter was Tressamer, who found Prescott awaiting him anxiously, and trying, with poor success, to get through the wing of a fowl. He (Prescott) looked pale and dejected; but Tressamer rushed into the place in a state of exaggerated buoyancy, and loudly called for a bottle of champagne.
‘George, how goes it?’ cried his friend.
‘All went merry as a marriage-bell,’ returned the other. ‘Have no fear; keep up your heart, old man. Leave it to me; I’ll get her off. Much obliged to you for going away, though. Young Pollard did come some croppers, I can tell you. Buller’s against us, of course, on the evidence; but what do I care? I’ll get the jury, see if I don’t. I’ll make a speech this afternoon the like of which hasn’t often been heard in this dead-and-alive hole. Lewis, beware! Here’s confusion to the guilty, and safety to the innocent!’
He had rattled on in a jerky, excited, nervous manner, and he wound up by drinking off nearly a tumblerful of champagne. Prescott could hardly make him out. He feared the strain of the last few weeks was unhinging his friend’s mind.
‘Gently,’ he said, remonstrating; ‘you must keep cool, or you will spoil everything. Beware of old Buller. When he is giving you the most rope, he is getting ready to come down on you most heavily at the end. I think you’ll find it a weak jury. They will do pretty well as the judge tells them.’
‘Don’t you be afraid, Charlie,’ retorted the other in the same unnaturally careless strain; ‘it’s my case, and I know how to manage it. I’ve sworn to save her, and, by God! I’ll do it, if I have to declare I did the thing myself! By Jove, didn’t I touch up that scoundrel in the witness-box, though! You saw me, Beltrope?’
He called to another barrister, who had been present in court the whole morning.
‘Yes, I know,’ answered Beltrope; ‘but you’d better be awfully careful, Tressamer. So far as I could see, your line of defence is that Lewis must have done it. Now, unless you’re prepared with some very strong evidence against him, you’d far better change that tack before it’s too late. You’ll have old Buller dead against you, as Prescott says, and, I dare say, the jury too. Whatever you do, don’t leave it in such a way that they must convict one or the other.’
‘Rubbish! You don’t understand,’ replied Tressamer. ‘Wait till you’ve heard my speech, that’s all. Well, I must be off.’ He drank some more champagne. ‘I want to have a wash just to cool my head.’
And he darted out of the room to go upstairs. The other barristers looked at each other and exchanged meaning glances. They did not like to say much out loud before Prescott, who was known to be Tressamer’s friend; but they whispered together, and the tenor of their whispers was precisely that of Prescott’s own reflections. Tressamer, they agreed, had lost his head through over-excitement, and would probably create a scene in court that afternoon.
So anxious did Prescott feel, that he at last resolved to bare his own feelings to his friend in the hope of thereby sobering him. He accordingly went up to his bedroom, where he found him with his head in a basin of water, and addressed him in very grave accents:
‘George, you must listen to me. You have told me that you love Eleanor Owen, and I suppose, as she has you to defend her, that she returns your love. Now, I have a confession to make to you. I love her, too.’
‘What! You, Charles!’ He was certainly sobered for the moment.
‘Yes. You know I saw something of her as a child. I was fond of her then, I recollect. But to-day, when I saw her, so beautiful, so innocent, in that dreadful place, I found another feeling overmastering me. Oh, do not be afraid! She shall never know it. I shall not try to take her from you. I am not the sort of man to rob his friend. But, George, let me say this to you: that if anything – oh, the thought is horrible! – if any miscarriage of justice should occur, I shall blame you. I shall never forgive you if she comes to harm through your means. Be careful. Oh, great Heaven, man, do your best, your very best! It is the crisis of our lives – of all our lives. Beware how you fail to prove yourself worthy of your trust.’ And without waiting for an answer he turned away, and hastened back to his own work in the Nisi Prius Court.
In spite of the confident opinions expressed by the barristers, the judge’s mind was less firmly settled than they supposed. Sir Daniel Buller was in the judges’ private room at the court-house, sharing a dish of cutlets with Sir John Wiseman. And, of course, they were discussing the case.
‘I tell you what it is, Wiseman,’ the first judge was saying, ‘there is something in this case that hasn’t come out yet. So far, there has been absolutely no real defence. Waiter!’
The waiter darted into the room.
‘Look at this cutlet! It’s burnt to a cinder. Take it away. And tell your cook, with my compliments, that it’s always better to have a thing underdone than overdone, because if it’s not cooked enough you can always do it more, but if it’s cooked too much you can’t do it less. D’you hear?’
The waiter bowed low and retired, deeply impressed with the profound wisdom displayed in these observations.
‘You know, if that man who’s defending her – what’s his name: Tressamer? – thinks he’s going to get her off by attacking Lewis, he makes a mistake. I shall go for him if he tries it on.’
‘Most improper – most improper,’ assented Sir John. ‘I don’t know what the Bar’s coming to, I don’t indeed! These young men are throwing over all the old traditions. The judges will really have to do something.’
‘You see, Lewis has acted a perfectly natural and straightforward part. He was bound to do what he did.’
‘What sort of a girl is she? because that will make a good deal of difference with the jury.’
‘I don’t quite agree with you,’ answered Sir Daniel. ‘My experience is that in a case of this kind the jury are sobered by their sense of responsibility too much to be influenced by a thing like that. It’s the outside public afterwards who get up petitions and kick up a row in the press about a pretty woman.’
‘Then she is pretty?’ said the other.
‘You old sinner!’ retorted Sir Daniel playfully. ‘It’s well for the interests of justice that you’re not on the jury. Yes, begad! Wiseman, she’s one of the loveliest creatures I’ve ever tried. Waiter! Where are those tomatoes?’