It is now well known that "Sydney Fowler" is the pseudonym of no less a person than Mr. S. Fowler Wright, famed for such novels as "The Island of Captain Sparrow", "Deluge" and "Dawn".
In the present book there is mystery, an enthralling tale, one of the most realistic of murder trials, an unusual plot, and a dénouement which the most experienced novel-reader will be quite unable to foresee. The Hanging of Constance Hillier is at once a first-class murder-mystery story and a serious contribution to English fiction which will be widely read and discussed.
All the incidents and characters in this tale are entirely fictitious.
THE HANGING OF CONSTANCE HILLIER
BOOK ONE of 19 chapters.
BOOK TWO of 12 chapters.
BOOK THREE of 21 chapters.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
IT was not until the third day of the trial of Constance Hillier and Thomas Mogson for the murder of Lady Catherine Middleditch that the public interest reached its height, for it was that morning that it was confidently expected that Mr. Butforth, K.C., who had undertaken the thankless task of defending the female prisoner, would put his client into the box.
The first two days had been mainly occupied with the evidence for the prosecution, which had not been without its dramatic incidents, or its sharp encounters between counsel who were too skilful not to find opportunity for sudden rapier-like exchanges, even in a case which had seemed from the first almost too simple for any honour to be gained in its demonstration, or lost in its defence.
But they had been so occupied with redundant proof of the obvious, the unimportant, or the undisputed, that even the daily press, though serving a public avid for every detail of so sensational a crime, summarized or condensed the larger-part of the evidence for the Crown.
It may be convenient if, in glancing back upon the events of these two previous days, we give first attention to the opening statement of the Attorney-General, in which he outlined the case which the Crown had undertaken to prove. And we may do this the more readily, remembering Sir Ernest Coleman's reputation, not only for concise lucidity, but for a moderation in attitude and statement towards those whom it was his duty to prosecute which was something more than a forensic pose.
"It appears," he said, "from the evidence which will be brought before you, that on the 26th day of December, 19 - , at about 7.30 p.m., Dr. Alex. Bennett received an urgent telephone call from number 35, Castlemaine Gardens, the residence of Lady Catherine Middleditch, asking him to attend there immediately, as Lady Catherine had suddenly developed symptoms of an alarming character. Dr. Bennett will tell you - and it is not disputed - that he recognized the voice as that of Constance Hillier, one of the two prisoners who is now before us. He knew her as one of the two nieces of Lady Catherine, who were in constant attendance upon her. He did not regard her as one who would be likely to telephone him with such urgency without serious cause, and he was somewhat puzzled by the fact that the symptoms, as she described them, were no more than such as might naturally follow the over-indulgence that is not unfamiliar to medical men at that season of the year. He was doubly puzzled owing to the fact that Lady Catherine Middleditch was, alike by her physical condition and by the habits of many years, extremely unlikely to have been engaged in any excesses of conviviality. Ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to be wise after the event. Dr. Bennett had just come in from the work of a tiring day. He appears subsequently to have blamed himself more than others would be likely to do. He thought it sufficient at the time to give certain instructions on the telephone, and to ask that he should be called again at a later hour if there should then appear reason to do so.
About two hours later he received such a call from Miss Margaret Hillier, the prisoner's sister. He then went at once, arriving at Castlemaine Gardens within ten minutes of the call being received. By that time Lady Catherine Middleditch was dead.
"Dr. Bennett considered his position. He saw no cause to suspect foul play. The symptoms which had preceded decease, as they were told to him by those who had been in attendance, were not suggestive of any form of poisoning with which he was familiar. He was in regular professional attendance upon Lady Catherine, who had been an invalid for many ears. He hat actually visited her about three days previously, though he hat not then seen cause to anticipate any immediate danger. He knew that as a physician of repute - and his reputation is deservedly high - he could have given a certificate of death which would pass unquestioned. It might appear that, if there were any blame to be apportioned, that blame was his; but, in spite of that - perhaps for that very reason - he felt unable to do so. He refused his certificate, and reported the death to the Coroner. The Coroner, very properly, ordered an autopsy.
"The posthumous examination was conducted by Sir Lionel Tipshift, Dr. Bennett being present; another doctor - Sir Roger Fairbanks, who as you are probably aware is regarded one of the greatest living authorities upon both vegetable and mineral poisons - was also present, at the request of the Earl of Weyford, Lady Catherine's cousin, and the head of her family, who was anxious that the suspicion which had been created by the refusal of the death-certificate should be dissipated beyond any shadow of doubt, in the interests of the family and, in particular, of that of Lady Catherine's nieces, because, as you will hear, they were the only ladies in attendance upon her.
"It is necessary - it is only fair to the case which the prosecution have set up - to direct your particular attention to the sequence of events, and to the way in which Sir Roger Fairbanks came on to the scene, because it was from his suggestion - from his suspicion - though he could, of course, have had no foresight of the direction in which it would lead, that the inquiries originated of which this trial is the result.
"It is common ground that the autopsy did not lead to the discovery of the presence of any poisonous drug, and while it disclosed certain functional abnormalities - putting the case in non-technical language - which were the immediate occasion of death, it failed to disclose any sufficient cause from which those symptoms could originate.
"Among those symptoms there was a marked congestion of the liver, and there was also a very slight but peculiar and unusual discoloration of that organ. Both Sir Lionel Tipshift and Dr. Bermett will tell you frankly that while they noticed and were puzzled by this discoloration they were unable to regard it as of any certain significance, particularly in view of the negative result of their search for traces of any known poison either in the stomach or other organs, or in those parts of the body in which some deleterious substances are inclined to linger.
"But Sir Roger Fairbanks had observed this discoloration with a troubled mind, because he recollected a similar effect having been produced upon the livers of certain rats with which he had experimented a few months earlier with a new and rare drug which is, it appears, of a very volatile character, so that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect its presence even a few hours after death.
"You will appreciate Sir Roger's position. He was not there to suggest improbable causes of death, but to watch the interests of the surviving relatives. He said nothing at the time. But he was uneasy in mind, and he will tell you that his scientific curiosity was aroused. During the next few days he made further experiments, with the result that not only did he find that the post-mortem organs of rats to which this drug had been administered were in a condition similar to those which had appeared in the human subject, but he was able to observe that there was a close similarity peculiar and distressing symptoms which preceded death, as they had been described by those who had been in attendance upon Lady Catherine.
"Faced by this position, Sir Roger Fairbanks made a private report to the Earl of Weyford. He said that in his opinion Lady Catherine Middleditch had died from the effect of a certain drug - I may say conveniently at this stage that it is not considered in the public interest that it should be named, or its symptoms discussed, and I propose to avoid doing so as far as possible with the approval of the Court, and with the concurrence of my learned friends - though he was unable to suggest how or by whom it could have been administered or obtained. He said that this drug was practically unknown in any separate soluble form, excepting only that he had himself recommended its use in advising on a process for the manufacture of gramophone records of a new flexible kind. He explained that the holders of certain patents for the production of such articles, after laying themselves out for manufacturing them on a large scale, had met with an unexpected obstacle in the fact that the substance on which they were working became less pliable under certain atmospheric conditions, and Sir Roger was able to advise that this difficulty could be overcome if the records were dipped in a solution, of which this drug is the essential element.
"Sir Roger will tell you that it is not his habit to recommend the use of any substance for commercial purposes without exhaustive testing of its qualities or effects, such as its inflammability, or its action in contact or combination with other substances, or whether it can be dangerous to human life either by swallowing, or by its effects upon the skin its fumes, or in other ways; and it was in the course of such routine that he had acquired the knowledge which he was utilizing in this unexpected way.
"So far as he was aware, there was only one place in England and two in Germany where this drug was being distilled, and used for the purpose already mentioned, but, impossible as it might sound, he regarded it as a mathematical certainty that Lady Catherine Middleditch had died from its effects.
"He concluded by saying that while he was reporting privately to Lord Weyford in the first instance, if his lordship did not inform the police he should be obliged to consider whether his own duty as a citizen did not require him to do so.
"On receiving this report, the Earl of Weyford appears to have acted without hesitation. Within two or three hours of it being in his hands it was on its way to Scotland Yard.
"Obviously, such a report could not be ignored, and Chief-Inspector Cleveland, an officer of long experience and proved ability, was instructed to investigate the matter.
"Inspector Cleveland first interviewed the managing director of the Flexite Gramophone and Record Co., this being, as he was informed by Sir Roger Fairbanks, the only place where the drug was prepared which, as he confidently asserted, had been the cause of Lady Catherine's death. The managing director gave him all possible assistance and information. It appears that his firm do not purchase this drug, but distil it in their own laboratories. Their head chemist had been warned by Sir Roger of its particular properties and dangers, and had taken somewhat elaborate precautions in recording and controlling the quantities which were prepared. When ready for use, it is in the form of a finely granulated powder of a rather deep indigo colour. This powder is made up in small packets, each containing about three grains, and these packets are sealed and numbered, and issued separately - it will be understood that it is used in infinitesimal quantities - to the foreman of the department in which it is required to be used. Had he failed to use any appreciable quantity in the right way, it appeared to be impossible that the articles which he was treating could pass the tests to which they were subjected. Both the managing director and the head chemist assured Inspector Cleveland that the undetected leakage of a fatal dose was a practical impossibility.
"Inspector Cleveland appeared to he confronted with a very difficult task. He had to establish some connection between the works of the Flexite Co., which are in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge, though not in the same county, being over the Buckinghamshire border, and the bedroom of Lady Catherine Middleditch, perhaps twenty miles away.
"But the Inspector had learnt the value of patient, fearless, logical deduction. He felt that Sir Roger Fairbanks would not have expressed himself so confidently without good reason. He saw that the apparent difficulty really narrowed and simplified the inquiry on which he was engaged.
"After very careful investigation into the way in which the drug was prepared and guarded, he decided that there were five men who, with various degrees of difficulty, might. succeed in removing a quantity without detection, and of these five, after eliminating the head chemist himself, who undoubtedly had the superior opportunity both to manufacture and remove, he concentrated his inquiries upon Thomas Mogson, his chief assistant, and in the course of the following week he secured evidence that this man was known - was somewhat intimately known - to Miss Constance Hillier, and that for a period of about eleven months they had been in the habit of meeting at the Yellow Cat, which is a night-club in Thornhill Street, the proprietor of which has been convicted of various irregularities on two recent occasions.
"Considering the manner in which he had been directed to this inquiry, the Inspector may well have thought, when he had made this discovery, that he had established the fact that a crime had been committed, and the channel through which the poison had been obtained, to the satisfaction of any reasonable man. But the English law, when the liberty and perhaps the lives of its citizens are in question, is not satisfied with probabilities, however great. It asks, and rightly asks, for a weight of proof which will be of the measure of certainty; and, knowing this, the Inspector proceeded to obtain a search-warrant, and made an exhaustive investigation at 35, Castlemaine Gardens, where the tragedy had occurred.
"This search resulted in a discovery of a most directly incriminating nature. It is not denied by the defence - it is, indeed, not deniable - that one of the actual packets of this powder was found secreted among the personal effects of Constance Hillier, in its original wrapping, as it must have been received by her from Thomas Mogson.
"Confronted with this evidence - she was actually present at its discovery - and asked to explain how it had come into her possession, and for what purpose she had required it, she took refuge in an absolute denial. She said, and subsequently signed a formal statement which will be produced in evidence, that she had never seen it before, and could suggest no means by which it could have come among her possessions. The probability of that defence will be a matter for you to determine.
"Unfortunately for her, the police proceeded to the interrogation of Thomas Mogson before she could inform him of the denial which she had made.
"After being warned of the seriousness of his position, and informed of the finding of the packet in Constance Hillier's possession, he appears to have realized the uselessness of denial, and he also made a statement, at his own request, which will be brought before you. In that statement he admits supplying her with three packets of the fatal powder, this being the number which Inspector Cleveland had already traced as having disappeared from the Uxbridge offices, but denies that he did this with any guilty purpose. The credibility of that defence will also be a matter for your decision. The prosecution contends that he went to the elaborate trouble of purloining this rare and deadly drug, well knowing its properties, and the purpose for which it would be used.
"There remained the question of motive. The strongest motive is not proof of guilt, and its apparent absence is not vindication, but it is usually found, in cases such as this is alleged to be, that there is some powerful motive of hate, or greed, or jealousy, which has been sufficient to outweigh the bonds of kindred, and the natural instincts of mankind.
"In this case there appears to be evidence of abundant motive. It will be shown that the deceased woman had been bed-ridden invalid for about fifteen years, during which she ad required the constant attendance of her two nieces, whom she had ruled with a querulous tyranny. She was a wealthy woman, and they were entirely dependent upon her. She appears to have used this position to the utmost. It was her whim that she would not employ the services of professional nurses. Everything must be done by these two young women, one or other of whom must be in attendance upon her both by night and day. Their reward was to be wealth at her death. Their penalty was that the years of youth were passing in this unhappy servitude.
"Should they fail in any detail of the duties which her comfort required, they were under the constant threat that she would alter her will to their detriment.
"This appears to have taken place on at least three occasions, the last being only about three weeks before her fatal illness, and the procedure was always the same.
"Without saying anything to either of them directly, she would send for her lawyer, and require their presence in the room while she dictated the new provisions. On one occasion, she bequeathed the bulk of her fortune to various charities, and it was nine weeks before their assiduous humilities led to the revoking of these dispositions. On the last occasion, she signalized a more than usual resentment at some real or fancied delinquency of the younger sister by leaving the whole of her fortune to Constance Hillier.
"That was the position on the evening of December 26th. By the will of a capricious invalid, to whom she had already sacrificed fifteen of the best years of her life - a will that might be altered at any moment - Constance Hillier would become a free and wealthy woman, if Lady Catherine died. That evening Constance Hillier - and Constance Hillier only - was in attendance upon her. Constance Hillier had in her possession a subtle poison which had been procured for her, at her desire, at great trouble and risk. Of that poison Lady Catherine died.
"That she died by that means does not appear to be capable of any serious question when we remember that its symptoms were recognized by a doctor who was specially familiar with them, and who had no knowledge of such a poison being accessible to the female prisoner.
"It only remains to explain the method by which the drug was obtained from the Flexite Company's laboratories without suspicion being aroused. Its explanation exonerates that firm from any imputation of carelessness, and is of interest as showing something of Thomas Mogson's criminal ingenuities. It was done by means of a deliberately bad figure, a four being so written that the foreman, who received packet No. 24, read it as 27, and so copied it into his book, though he had himself signed for it as the correct number. He was thus made to be the actual perpetrator of the error, and he alone would have been shown to be in the wrong, had the difference been promptly noticed. But the device succeeded by its simplicity. When a few days had passed, and it had become evident that the error would not be remarked, Thomas Mogson was able to remove the three packets without any great probability of the detection of the trick, or that suspicion would fall upon him in the event of its discovery.
"Simple and successful as it may have been, it is not a device by which any man, quite apart from its moral aspects, would risk such a position as Thomas Mogson held, unless it were for some very powerful reason. It is the contention of the Crown that it was in pursuance of a very cruel and wicked compact between the two prisoners, who may have been already discussing such a conspiracy when the will was made, but who were roused by it to prompt and decisive action, so that they might benefit from its provisions to the full extent of the fortune of their unhappy victim."
Having completed his speech, without attempting a more elaborate peroration, the Attorney-General proceeded to call his evidence, the major part of which need not delay us, for it was no more than an elaboration of that which his own narrative has already supplied in clearer and conciser form.
It was not until the sister of the female prisoner, a slight, pathetic person, entered the box, that there was any atmosphere of emotional intensity, and her evidence amounted to little beyond admissions as to the routines of the household which had consumed her youth, and a confirmation of the fact that she and her sister had been in the room when the instructions were given for the last will, and that they had subsequently seen it signed. She also confirmed the fact that it had been her sister's turn to wait upon Lady Catherine during the earlier part of the day, and for her to have done so during its later hours, but there had been a voluntary exchange between them. Constance had wanted to have an entire day of freedom during the following week, and so it had been arranged that she should do the double duty on that on which the fatal illness occurred.
"On whose suggestion was that?" the Attorney-General asked in a quiet way.
The reply did not come quickly, and there was a breathless silence in the Court as the witness stood, looking straight before her, as though she had not heard the question.
It was noticed by some that the female prisoner, who had sat apathetically up to that moment, as though not being interested in the evidence that her sister was giving, raised her eyes, and looked at her in an anxious - or was it only a puzzled? - way.
Still quietly, but in a somewhat slower, more emphatic tone, the question came again. Did it recall something to the witness's mind, that she had perhaps forgotten? Something, perhaps, that for her sister's sake she was afraid to say? Even if your sister be a murderess, it may not be pleasant to say the word that will tighten the noose about her neck.
But this time the witness did not hesitate. She said firmly and clearly, though in a low voice:
"It was at my suggestion."
"You are quite sure of that?" She looked the Attorney-General full in the face, almost defiantly it seemed to some, as she answered:
"Quite."
"Very well."
The Attorney-General sat down.
"Any questions, Mr. Butforth?" asked the Judge.
Mr. Butforth had nothing to ask. The witness stepped down, having won some sympathy for herself, and perhaps done as much for her sister as was possible to her inexperience of such ordeals.
After that, there had been evidence from various members of the staff of the Yellow Cat. Here Mr. Butforth was able to do more for himself, if not enough to be likely to make any final difference to his client's welfare. The witnesses were not of the highest character. One of them, in particular, was less accustomed to the witness-box than the dock. The learned counsel soon had him rather badly rattled. A reminder that there were penalties for perjury, after he had been skilfully led to contradict one of his own assertions, reduced him to such confusion that he promptly did the same thing again. Mr. Butforth felt that he had earned the fee that endorsed his brief. When the time came he felt that the Judge would be obliged to direct the jury that they must disregard the evidence of that witness. Better still, should he omit to do so, there would be matter for an appeal for misdirection. It would fail, of course. But what would you have? No one can make bricks without straw.
The prosecution had established their main point, beyond serious denial. The two prisoners had been identified as having frequented the club together on numerous occasions, and it appeared that the man had been in the habit of incurring an expenditure which must have been a very heavy charge upon a limited income.
At the close of the second day, the case for the prosecution had been closed, and the morning of the third day saw the female prisoner enter the witness-box.
CHAPTER TWO
CONSTANCE HILLIER entered the witness-box. As she left the dock a wardress followed her, and stood beside it. Not five yards was she to move away from, not for an hour was she to forget that on her shoulder rested the iron hand of the criminal law, in a grip that would only be loosed at the word of the four women and eight men whose eyes were upon her now, with varying glances of sympathy or repulsion, curiosity or speculation.
Those members of the public who had been fortunate enough, whether by chance or favour, to obtain tickets of admission to the crowded court, saw a sour-faced woman of thirty-three, who looked older. The expression of her face was now of a terror hardly controlled, but even that emotion could not remove the permanent lines of ill-temper that marred her mouth. Yet the face might have been well enough in earlier youth, and the yellow hair was abundant still.
The Judge, looking at her with expressionless eyes, considered that her face could be made quite pathetic for the Sunday Press. Probably in a month's time some newspaper would be getting up a popular appeal for her, that she should not hang, and thousands would rush to sign. If they could see as he saw! He had tried three or four murderers a year for the last ten years, and he had not seen one yet who had not shown sufficient depravity in his face to be a warning to all but the foolish to avoid his company. If the public could see as he saw!
Meanwhile, Constance Hillier took the oath, holding the book to her lips in a hand that trembled visibly, and Mr. Butforth rose to examine her. His task was not an enviable one. She had to tell an unlikely tale, and her fellow-prisoner must follow her into the box, and tell one which was equally improbable. That would have been bad enough, even had their accounts agreed. There would have been the difficulty of persuading the jury of its plausibility, against the destructive criticism of the prosecuting counsel, and the toneless analysis of the summing-up. There would have been the earlier danger that one or both of them would break down under the ordeal of cross-examination. That would have been bad enough. But when the two prisoners were about to flatly contradict one another! And there had been no way out. The two statements taken by the police were, the one too definite, the other too detailed, to be explained away. And yet he had felt that if his client had refused to go into the witness-box, there was no hope at all. None. And he had discussed the matter with Basil Clackleton, who represented Mogson, and his learned friend had felt the same.
There was just one point he could make. Not a very savoury point. Not without a possibility that it would be turned against him by the prosecution, but - what alternative was there?
The fatal packet had been found in the lowest of a chest of drawers, which had been in the bedroom, and admitted to be in the exclusive use of Constance Hillier. Inspector Cleveland had given evidence that she had appeared to regard the scrutiny of the two higher drawers with comparative indifference, but that she had been visibly perturbed when she had been required to unlock the third, and that it had required a combination of patience and sternness to persuade her to do so. Naturally, he had made his search all the more thorough, until the packet had been exposed. That, at least, was capable of a different explanation from that which the prosecution had suggested.
With the inward feelings of one who steers over a cataract's edge, but with an outward aspect of assurance that was almost jaunty, Mr. Butforth rose to examine his witness.
Everyone familiar with legal proceedings, whether by personal observation or by the reading of Press reports, must have observed the constant difference of result obtained by counsel when examining their own or their opponents' witnesses. In the one case, the narrative will make steady progress, it will follow a direct course, it will usually be coherent and consistent. In the other, even with a witness of good character, who is endeavouring to assist the court, and who may be absolutely disinterested in the result, the progress made will be slow and tortuous, and liable to be productive of apparent inconsistencies in the evidence given; and this difference is emphasized by the fact that the rules of evidence do not allow counsel to put a leading question to his own witness, while one who is cross-examining is free to do so.
Doubtless, this difference arises in part from the fact that counsel has been previously supplied with a statement of the evidence which his witness is prepared to give, and his questions are therefore put more intelligently than can be those of one who is less fully informed. But there is another reason, which is of an evident deliberation. The interrogations are often inconsequent and obscure, or confused in wording, so that the mind of the witness is perturbed or stupefied by such questions as the classical example, Have you ceased beating your wife? to which either the "plain yes or no" which he is bullied to give would be equally misleading.
Even allowing for the fact that the witness's own counsel has the advantage of previous information as to the evidence which is to be tendered, the difference remains too great to be explained without admitting that English methods of cross-examination are based on the assumption that an opposing witness is lying, and should be trapped into admitting the truth, or that, if he be truthful, he should be confused into some appearance of falsehood.
In the present case, it might be observed that the effect of the slow clear questions, asked in a voice which was modulated to a soothing friendliness, was to produce a narrative which gained in confidence as it proceeded, and, while it was occupied with the circumstances and routines of the lives of the three occupants of 35, Castlemaine Gardens, was of a convincing simplicity.
It was, indeed, difficult for the hearers to withhold some measure of sympathy from the prisoner, murderess though they could scarcely doubt her to be, as she laid bare the lives which she and her sister had lived under the domination of a capricious and exacting woman, who appeared to have taken an evil pleasure in humiliating them with the consciousness of their dependence upon her, and baiting them with the fear that they might ultimately lose the reward for which they had sacrificed their freedom and their self-respect.
But it was Mr. Butforth's difficulty, even in this, that he could not expose the tyranny which Constance Hillier had endured for fifteen years without supplying the motive for the crime which was alleged against her, and he was obliged to glide as lightly as possible over those aspects, as he led the witness to the day of her aunt's death, and to the subsequent discovery of the poison in her own possession. Even here, there was little to be asked or answered. She denied on oath that she had poisoned her aunt. She denied that she had known or suspected that any poison had been administered. She admitted acquaintance with Thomas Mogson, but she had never had any packets of poison from him, had never discussed poison with him at any time or in any way, and knew nothing of how the packet of the fatal drug had come to be in her own drawer. She was emphatic in this denial, repeating it with a weak vehemence, which was unconvincing to those who heard it. Yet, perhaps, it was the best thing she could do.
If there could ever have been a hope that she could have convinced the Court that she had acquired the poison for some innocent purpose, and that it had been introduced to her aunt's diet by some unlikely accident, her statement to the police must have already closed that avenue of defence against her. She admitted that she had been unwilling that the police should search the drawer in which the incriminating packet was hidden, but she said that that had been solely because of other private papers and books which it held, which she was ashamed that they should see. . . .
Mr. Butforth sat down, having done what he could with a hopeless case, and the Judge looked at Sir Ernest Coleman with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows, as though he doubted whether he would think it necessary to cross-examine. But the Attorney-General rose.
"I have a few questions I should like to ask," he said easily. He turned his gaze on to the prisoner.
"How long have you known Thomas Mogson?"
"About - since - about eight months - No. About a year."
"Where did you meet him first?"
"At the Yellow Cat."
"Introduced by - - ?"
"I don't - I expect - I don't remember - - "
"Well, never mind. When did you see him last? Now, be careful. When did you see him last? - before today."
"On the - When did I see him last? - On the - It must have been Wednesday. The Wednesday before - - "
"Before your aunt died?"
"Yes."
"Where? At the Yellow Cat?"
"Yes."
"You were engaged to be married?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When . . . I couldn't say that. There wasn't anything arranged."
"When your aunt died?"
"There wasn't anything arranged."
"I see. Where did you part?"
"Part?"
"Yes. On the Wednesday night. Did you part in the Club, or in the street outside?"
"In the - I can't quite remember where. It used to be in the street."
"Never mind where it used to be. Where was it on Wednesday night?"
"We used to part in Oxford Street."
"Did you part there on that Wednesday night?"
"Yes. I took a taxi from there."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Very well, You say there wasn't any understanding as to when you could get married?"
"No."
"You could have hoped nothing from your aunt had you left her during her life-time?"
"She - I don't know - she would have been very cross."
"And she might have lived for many years?"
The witness made no answer to that, looking as though the question had not penetrated her mind. She may have taken it to be less a question than a statement of obvious fact. The Attorney-General did not press it. He went on to ask:
"You had no means of your own at all?"
"I had - my aunt gave me - it was a pound most weeks. Sometimes more."
"And sometimes less?"
"Yes, if she were cross."
"And you knew what Thomas Mogson's salary was?"
"It was £500
"Is that what he told you?"
"Yes. I suppose so. It was what I knew it was."
"Well, it wasn't. Didn't you hear the evidence given yesterday by the secretary of the Flexite Company?"
"You can't listen all the time."
The Attorney-General looked his surprise at this answer. The Judge's eyes regarded the witness keenly But he believed her without difficulty. A long experience of the criminal courts, first as advocate, and then as judge, had familiarized him to the dull reaction of prisoners who sit through the weary hours while the slow process of evidence builds up a case which is already so familiar - perhaps so fearfully or so hatefully familiar - to them. And they must often have so little hope, so little doubt, of what the issue will be when the endless talk, the endless repetitions, will be over at last. He had once seen a murderer go to sleep in the dock. . . . To his experienced mind it was just a slight additional evidence of her guilt, where no addition was needed. He was merciful, and of a scrupulous fairness, but he recognized this as a case in which the guilt was self-evident. He could have condemned both prisoners without hesitation after reading the depositions, and with a glance at what they were.
"Well," the Attorney-General went on, "you may take it from me that his salary was £8 a week. £416 a year. How often did you meet at the Yellow Cat?"
"About - I can't say exactly - about once a week."
"Not twice?"
"Not except - no."
"How much did it cost?"
"I don't know."
"You didn't pay?"
"No - not except - I paid the taxi home."
"Then you went home alone?"
"Yes."
"Always?"
"Yes, unless - Yes."
"Unless what?"
"Unless Mr. Mogson came part of the way.
"Why not all?"
"We - I didn't want aunt to see anything."
"See? But we have heard that she never left her room?
"She had her bed by the window."
"You mean she used to watch what went on in the road?
"Yes, when she wasn't asleep."
"Well, what do you think it cost?"
"I don't know."
"Two pounds? The Yellow Cat isn't a cheap place. Three?"
"No, not that. Not three."
"But it might be two?"
"Yes . . . I don't know."
"You say you didn't meet more than once a week?"
"No. We didn't."
"Then how many times had you met since November 29th?"
"Since - ? November 29th? I don't know. Why?"
"Never mind why. Three times? Twice?"
"Since . . .? Yes, I daresay."
But the Attorney-General was not satisfied with less than a definite reply.
After many questions and contradictions, it was elucidated with some certainty that it had been three times, neither more nor less, since the 29th November - that being the first day on which it would have been possible for him to supply her with the fatal drug. Beyond that, and probably without realizing the implication of her own admissions, the witness had given evidence that Thomas Mogson had never entered, and had not been in the vicinity of, 35, Castlemaine Gardens, to her knowledge, during the period mentioned. In the end, the Attorney-General had felt sufficient confidence in the strength of his position to risk the further question which is so often the downfall of the inexperienced advocate, and had survived it successfully. He had asked whether the witness could suggest any possibility by which at any time her fellow-prisoner could have obtained access to the drawer in which the poison was found, and had received a confused and reluctant negative.
"Then," he asked in slow impressive words, "if it has been shown that this packet could have come only through the hands of Thomas Mogson, with whom you associated, into the drawer which was in your own room, can you suggest any possibility by which it could have done so except by your own hand?"
There was a breathless silence in the waiting court as the witness gazed, as though fascinated, upon the face of her accuser, but no answer came.
"Very well," he said at length, "we will leave it there. It is a question to which there is no reply."
"If your cross-examination is concluded," the Judge interposed at this point, in the quiet voice of one who did not allow his mind to rise to the temperatures of those around him, "it will be a convenient point at which to adjourn."
Sir Ernest Coleman glanced at his brief. "No, my lord," he said, "I have a few further questions I should like to ask."
"In that case," the Judge answered patiently, "I still think it may be convenient to adjourn at this point." To his mind, the asking of further questions was as futile as the flogging of a dead horse, and as cruel as to prolong the slaughter of a living one. But he could not restrain the prosecution from the course of their selection. Perhaps after Sir Ernest had thought over the admissions he had obtained, he would be disposed to the same view.
CHAPTER THREE
CONSTANCE HILLIER re-entered the witness-box. She had probably had some stimulant with her own refreshment, for her cheeks had a deeper flush than the morning had shown, and her replies soon became more voluble, if not more adroit, than they had been previously.
But the first question that she was required to answer was put in a quiet, almost conversational way, and was one of which the ultimate implication might not have been apparent even to one of greater mental agility than was hers.
"The furniture in your aunt's house was of a very solid quality, was it not?"
"Yes."
"Including that in your own room?"
"Yes."
"The chest was substantially made?"
"Yes."
"No one else had a key?"
"Not that I know of. How can you expect me to answer that?"
"This was the key, wasn't it?"
"Yes. It looks like it."
"It is it, isn't it?"
"I suppose so. Yes."
"You have never known of there being two keys?"
"No."
"It doesn't look like a key that would be easy to duplicate?"
"I don't know. It might.
"You don't really think that?"
Mr. Butforth rose to object. The prosecution should have called a locksmith, had they wished to introduce such a contention. It was a point on which the witness's opinion was of no more value than that of anyone else in the court. The Judge upheld the objection. The Attorney-General suggested that the jury might like to inspect the key. The foreman - who had wanted to speak several times during the last two days, but lacked courage or promptness to do so - saw his chance, and said with some emphasis that they would. (Now he would be in the evening papers for certain. Would they say "The foreman of the jury, Mr. Edward Collins", or would they omit his name in the provoking way that the Press had?)
Mr. Butforth pointed out that the identity of the key had not been formally proved. The Attorney-General said that the witness had herself admitted it. There was a difference as to this. The Judge was not quick to interpose. He knew that the admission of any irregularity of procedure on his part would be a certain ground of appeal. It is by such errors that convictions may be quashed, and the guilty go free. He decided that the evidence should be admitted, but before he spoke, Mr. Butforth had given way. He had seen a look of annoyance on the foreman's face.
The key was handed round. Eight men and four women turned it over with suitable gravity, and an air of wisdom such as few of us possess. It was not a very large key, but of a rather intricate pattern. Not a lock which would be likely to yield to the casual selection of a key from another bunch. Probably not one which would be easy for any but an expert to pick.
"You always kept your drawers locked?"
"No, I didn't. Not always. Not all of them anyway."
"Perhaps the two top drawers would often be left unlocked?"
"I used to lock them more often than not."
"But the bottom one was always locked?"
"I'm not going to say that. We all of us forget sometimes."
"It would be locked unless you forgot?"
"Yes."
"And that was the drawer which you did not want the Inspector to search?"
"No. Of course not. It was a private drawer. I don't suppose you'd want him to search yours."
There was a general smile at this unexpected retort. It was the first sign that the wretched woman had shown of a temper which was not normally far from the surface unless her looks did her some injustice.
Mr. Justice Troutbeck looked at her with some severity. "You mustn't answer in that way. You must remember the respect due to the court."
There was a sullen obstinacy in the witness's face as she replied without lifting her eyes, "Then he shouldn't ask such silly things."
There was a moment's silence, and then the Judge signalled to the Attorney-General to resume his examination. But the witness had gained more than she knew. Her opponent was too wary to pursue a line which might possibly wake some sympathy for her among the more susceptible members of the jury. He turned a page of his brief, and contented himself with one impressive deliberate question, such as that with which he had confounded her at the close of the morning sitting. "Then your evidence amounts to this, does it not, that the packet of the fatal poison was found in the place where you kept those things which you hid most carefully, even from the other members of the household? The place that you guarded most vigilantly from the access of those around you? The one place under your control that was kept hidden from every human eye?"
The wretched woman gave no direct answer. She looked on her tormentor for a time, as she had done before, as though in a fascinated silence. Then she said, with a weak reiteration of her useless defence: "I've told you that I didn't know it was there."
"That," counsel replied, "is for the jury to decide."
He sat down.
The Judge looked interrogatively at Mr. Butforth. But that gentleman shook his head. He had the right of re-examination, but what use could it be? No. Let his witness go back to the dock. Later on, he must try what a passionate speech could do to influence the less logical of the twelve on whom her fate depended. But he could do nothing now. Yet her ordeal was not over. The Judge had a few questions to ask for himself. They were not intended to trap her. Rather, they were meant to exhaust the last possibility of any genuine defence, to eliminate the last faint possibility that she was an innocent woman.
He had noticed, with some surprise, that while there had been evidence that Constance Hillier had been the only person in attendance on Lady Catherine on the fatal day, there had been no attempt from either side to ascertain whether, or to what extent, she might have been absent from the room during periods when the poison might, theoretically, have been administered by others or taken by Lady Catherine herself. But the fact was that both the prosecution and the defence had been in possession of information which, for different reasons, they had felt disinclined to elicit. It was no part of the business of the prosecution to show that she had been out of the room at all. It was of no assistance to the defence to disclose that she had been seen to retire to her own room - which was at the opposite end of a rather long passage - and had admitted that she had remained there for about half an hour while her aunt slept. There was a witness to this in a Mrs. Pearson, a woman who came in daily to do the rougher work of the house, and who had been occupied on the stairs and landing long enough to say that she must have been in her own room for at least twenty minutes. She had thus been in sight, more or less, of both rooms during most of the time that Constance Hillier had been absent from her aunt, and could testify, to that extent, that no one else had entered. Indeed, except Margaret Hillier, the house had had no other occupant.
The Judge elicited something of these facts, enough to see that he ploughed in a barren field. He leaned back, giving direction that the witness should return to the dock.
Mr. Butforth had a moment of debate in his own mind as to whether he had failed his client in not attempting to make some capital from that admitted absence. But he could not see what could result except a dearer demonstration of the impossibility of developing any plausible theory of defence. There was the connection with Thomas Mogson. There was the packet in the locked drawer. There was the poisoned woman. Worst of all, there was Thomas Mogson's evidence to come. It was a damning weight of circumstance against which neither he nor his client's solicitors had been able to construct any theory, even the most fantastic, which they could offer to the court. If only she had not denied so absolutely all knowledge of the hidden packet - ! And even then - - !
No, there was nothing more he could do.
He sat silent, with no more than his normal professional watchfulness, as Thomas Mogson entered the witness-box.
CHAPTER FOUR
IF Thomas Mogson were an innocent man, he had cause to complain of the equipment with which Nature had armed him for the ordeal.
It was not merely that he was without any physical attractions, such as might have softened the hearts of at least one or two of the jury-women, though that disadvantage was sufficiently serious, for he was small and contemptible of body, his features were mean and meagre, his hair was thinning and dull, and his complexion that of a man who punctuates a sedentary life with unhealthy pleasures. But, beyond that, there was the impression of personality which is indefinable, and it was that of one who was at once furtive and insolent in his attitude to those around him. He had the look of one who would do even ordinary things in a base way.
He walked from dock to witness-box beside his attendant warder with quick short steps, and looked round the crowded court with an expression that was half-cringing, half-insolent, and which he probably mistook for an air of courageous innocence.
"Looks quite perky," a schoolmistress jury-woman, who had watched the proceedings with an aspect of alert competence, whispered to a stouter and somewhat older companion.
"He'll look more like himself when he sees the black cap," was the reply, with a grimness of tone that interpreted its otherwise somewhat cryptic meaning.
Meanwhile the witness, under the expert guidance of Mr. Basil Clackleton, was narrating in quick, jerky, confident sentences the various honours with which his industry and ability had been rewarded, and the records of a blameless life.
It was evident that he was a very competent chemist, and that the previous appointments which he had held had resulted in testimonials which had won him his position with the Flexite Co., against (he said) between seventy and eighty competitors.
Coming to the events that more immediately concerned the court, he admitted that for a year or more he had visited the Yellow Cat about once a week. He admitted also, with what he may have supposed to be an air of disarming frankness, that he had done so with the deliberate purpose of meeting such female acquaintances as are likely to be found in the vicious squalor of such resorts.
It was there, he said, that he had met Constance Hillier, and that the acquaintance had ripened at that time.
"And so," said Mr. Clackleton, "you took the packets, and gave them to Constance Hillier, not supposing that they would be used for any unlawful purpose?"
"Yes," he said, with one of his quick defiant glances round the court, as though daring contradiction. "That is just how it was. I hadn't the least idea . . ."
"When and where did you hand them over to her?"
"In the taxi, after we left the Yellow Cat, on December 13th."
As he said this, there was a commotion in the dock. Constance Hillier had fainted.
The Judge adjourned the court for a short period while the fainting woman was carried below, and received the attention of the prison doctor. On its resumption, Thomas Mogson returned to the witness-box to continue his evidence, but Mr. Clackleton announced, to the general surprise of the court, and to the visible disconcerting of the witness himself, that he had no further questions to ask. Thomas Mogson had good cause for surprise, as there were several points in his defence which he knew to be set out in his counsel's brief, and which he had been given no opportunity of asserting. He was about to make an open protest, when he was silenced by the knowledge that the Attorney-General had risen, and that his cross-examination had commenced.
Mr. Clackleton sat with an inscrutable face, and the inward expectation of some amusement to come. In the brief interval of the adjournment, he had reviewed his client's evidence as it then stood, and had realized that the remaining points he had intended to reach must come out almost inevitably in cross-examination, and might be more convincingly elicited in that manner.
But knowing nothing of what was in his opponent's thoughts, the Attorney-General commenced, with an easy mind, the task of demolishing a defence, the main feature of which had sounded unconvincing enough, even as it had been already presented.
"It has been given in evidence," he began, "that your income was £416 a year. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Have you any source of income, apart from that salary?"
"No."
"And you were engaged to be married?"
"There's nothing wrong in that."
"When?"
"There wasn't anything arranged."
"But you had been urgent for a date to be fixed?"
"I haven't said so."
"Do you deny it?"
"We might have talked about it."
"We have heard that your salary was to be increased from January 1st of this year. Was that correct?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"By £52 a year."
"Not a very large amount on which to marry. But perhaps you had been saving carefully since the acquaintance began? . . . How much did you spend each week at the Yellow Cat? Two pounds?"
"Yes. I daresay."
"Three?"
"It might be sometimes."
"More than that?"
"It might be sometimes."
"It was a good deal out of £8 a week, if you were really contemplating an early marriage with no other prospects than the increase of salary of which you have told us?
"It didn't come out of that."
Thomas Mogson brought out this statement with a derisive chuckle. Whatever might be his feelings in the hours that followed, there was no doubt that he was now in actual enjoyment of the momentary confusing of his antagonist.
"Not out of that? But you have told the court that you had no other source of income?"
"That was what I said."
But here Mr. Justice Troutbeck, who had observed the witness's demeanour with no favourable judgement behind an impassive countenance, intervened with a note of sternness in his voice. "Mr. Mogson, you are doing yourself no good by that attitude. If you have an explanation to offer, it should be given promptly and clearly, with proper respect to the court."
Somewhat sobered by this rebuke, the witness replied: "I had it from the Prize-winners Weekly."
"You mean," the examination continued, "you won a prize in a competition? How much was that?"
"I won £250 last February."
"And the expenses of your nights at the Yellow Cat were discharged from that source?"
"Yes, they were. I put it in a separate account to have a good time with it."
"And I suppose most of it was spent by the end of the year?"
"There was about a hundred left . . . Ellerson's have had that now." He added the last words with a note of bitterness in his voice. (Price and Ellerson were his solicitors.)
"Now tell me, Mr. Mogson, did you really propose that Miss Hillier should leave her aunt after all she had gone through for the past fifteen years and by so doing almost certainly abandon the prospect of succeeding to the wealth which she would otherwise expect to inherit, to marry you on an income of £468 a year?"
"No. I didn't know anything about it."
"About what?"
"About her aunt."
"What didn't you know?"
"I didn't know anything about the money - about the will - about her aunt. I scarcely knew she'd got one. I've heard all that here."
As Thomas Mogson made this reply, his attitude justified the vocabulary of the schoolmistress who had called it "perky". His tone, and an almost truculent aspect, might be compared to that of a chess-player who gives sudden disastrous check to an overboastful opponent. And however offensive the manner of his declaration might be, there was, perhaps for the first time in his evidence, a tone of sincerity, of confidence in his own assertion, that impressed his hearers.
Mr. Justice Troutbeck, still patiently open-minded, as he was keenly watchful of every phase of the drama of death over which he presided, had been observing the demeanour of the female prisoner throughout this examination. As it had followed its smooth current under the expert guidance of Mr. Clackleton, she had been in a state of agitation, which had been restrained with difficulty by the wardress at her side, and the urgent persuasions of her solicitor, from breaking out into audible protests, till it had culminated in the fainting-fit which had caused the adjournment of the court. Had she cherished to the last, he wondered, some wild and foolish hope that her lover would be chivalrous enough to take the blame on himself? That he would invent some ingenious explanation such as would free her from the guilt of murder? Or that he would repudiate his own admission, and join her in denial that they had trafficked together with the fatal drug? However that might be, it was with a curious difference of demeanour that she listened to the evidence which was now given. She appeared to accept it without protest, and without surprise.
Was it possible that it could be true? He watched the continuation of the examination with even closer attention. He heard Thomas Mogson assert confidently that Constance Hillier had always been reticent about her own affairs; that she hat not even told him dearly of the size of the household to which she belonged; that her aunt had been only mentioned, if at all, in the most casual way; that she had always refused to let him accompany her as far as her own door. He had, he said, gained an impression that she considered her relatives too "grand" for him to know, and it was owing to this reticence on her side that they hat continued, at her insistence, to meet only at the Yellow Cat.
The Judge was not alone in recognizing the quality of this evidence. Mr. Butforth saw very dearly that it was knocking away the last support from beneath his client's feet. (And yet what hope had there been before?)
The Attorney-General saw that he was doing no good to his own case, and this realization was increased by a side-glance from his learned friend, Mr. Clackleton. It almost seemed that he winked. The Attorney-General changed the course of the cross-examination abruptly, to inquire for what possible innocent purpose the witness could have supposed that Miss Hillier could have required the fatal drug. And as he pressed this point with sarcastic logic the demeanour of the witness changed; his confidence failed; his answers were unconvincing, or died in a halting silence. He asserted that he had yielded blindly owing to his infatuation, and there were few who heard, who did not recognize it for the lie that it surely was. Yet there was a puzzled doubt in the Judge's mind, for the first time since the trial commenced. If it were true that she had concealed the circumstances in which she lived - ? And he observed that this assertion was borne out to some extent by the woman's evidence that she had required Mogson to leave the taxi before it arrived at its destination. There was a lie somewhere - but where?
* * * * *
Mr. Butforth, discussing the case with a discreet circle at dinner that evening, said that it showed the injustice of trying two people together in such cases. No one knew how much or how little one or other of the pair was guilty. That they were equally so was an unlikely thing. But you try them together, and they find that their two necks are in one noose, and they can't loosen it from their own without tightening it on their companion in difficulty. So they just hang each other. And the more they struggle, the worse plight they're in. "It's like a pig," he said, coarsely enough, "when the butcher's roped its snout, and the more it pulls back the tighter it holds."
"And a good thing too," grunted Sir Richard Bulkington, in one of those brief intervals when his fork had failed to keep his mouth fully occupied. But whether he alluded to those who enter the august slaughter-house of the law, or to the victims of the pork-butcher which he so nearly resembled, is for the grammarians to decide.
CHAPTER FIVE
MR. BUTFORTH addressed the court. There was little doubt of his client's guilt in his own mind, but he had his duty to do, and his reputation to maintain If he called it making bricks without straw in conversation with the solicitors who had briefed him, he showed such ability in that method of manufacture that it seemed to many who heard, and to many more who read his speech, that he might have saved his client from her approaching doom.
He asked the jury to consider in the first place whether they were satisfied - fully and absolutely satisfied - that there had been murder at all. They had here the death of an elderly lady who had long been bed-ridden, and who was obviously in failing health. Such a death could not, in itself, be considered an unlikely thing. Her niece had been in attendance upon her when the fatal seizure occurred, as she had been - with a devotion and self-sacrifice, the fact of which was beyond dispute, whatever unworthy motives the prosecution might suggest - unfairly suggest, he urged, in the absence of any supporting evidence - in explanation of that devoted service.
She had been prompt to call for medical aid. It was at her own wish that she had been in attendance that afternoon. This had been brought out by the prosecution as though it were a point against her, but if it were carefully and impartially examined it would be seen that it had an opposite implication. It had been shown in evidence that Lady Catherine had a jug of milk constantly beside her, from which her attendant would fill the glass from which she sipped at frequent intervals. The milk was renewed in the morning, and again at night. Could not Constance Hillier have gone off duty at midday after slipping the fatal powder into the jug, or into the glass, and with a less probability that she would draw suspicion to herself than by remaining by the bedside for the whole period? Besides, she was under no necessity of arranging a special occasion. She had ample opportunity in the natural routine.
But when they considered this point further, they found that she had a natural and innocent motive for wishing to take her sister's duty on that day. She wished to have the additional time to enable her to do some shopping and to spend with her lover on the following Wednesday. But would her mind have been on such an adjustment, would there have been any purpose in taking on that extra duty, had she planned the murder of which she was now accused? Was it not inconsistent with the suggestion that she had resolved that her aunt should die? Was it not evident that she was anticipating that the routines of that quiet household would continue without change, and that her mind was occupied with nothing more than the securing of ample time in which she could meet her lover? If they were to decide this case on circumstantial evidence, was not this a circumstance which was convincingly in favour of the innocence of the accused?
This argument may have been too subtle to make much impression on the jury, but Mr. Justice Troutbeck did not dismiss it without a careful pondering. To his mind, it was the only point of interest in the whole speech. The rest was no more than the usual clap-trap, through which he must sit patient, alert, and inscrutable, always ready to decide the issue should there be a sudden challenging interruption from one of the opposing counsel.
But Mr. Butforth noticed that the attention of more than one of the jury wandered. Two of them had commenced a whispered conversation which he knew instinctively had nothing to do with the case. He changed abruptly to his next contention.
He had asked already had there been murder at all? It was not merely a question of whether they could eliminate the possibilities of suicide or misadventure - itself a quite probable explanation - but were they satisfied - satisfied. as fully as they ought to be - of the cause of death? There had been no discovery in the body of poison of any kind A packet of a certain little-known substance had been found in one of Constance Hillier's drawers, and they were asked to assume that she had administered it to Lady Catherine with a guilty purpose, to assume that she knew it to have fatal properties, to assume that it was from that cause that Lady Catherine died!; and for the fact that it was poison at all they had the unsupported assertion of one man! A man, truly, of scientific attainments. An honest man, doubtless. But how sure scientists always are! How sure they always have been! And how sure are the scientists of today that the scientists of yesterday were most often wrong! How could we tell that the confident scientific pronouncements of today would not be the admitted fallacies of tomorrow? Was it not common knowledge that people had been condemned to death forty or fifty years ago, both in this country and France, for arsenic poisoning, on "scientific" evidence which is now recognized to have been no proof at all? (Here the Judge interposed, though he may have been deliberately slow to do so, to point out that there had been no evidence to justify counsel in such allusions.)
"I beg your pardon, my lord," Mr. Butforth answered, with a respectful cheerfulness, having made his point already. 'I will say no more than to emphasize, as I am entitled to do, that the whole of this prosecution is based on the unsupported assertion of one man, an assertion that there has been poisoning, where it is admitted that no poison can be found, where it is not asserted that any previous case of such poisoning has occurred. No edifice can be stronger than its own foundation. Would anyone hang a dog on such evidence? Would an insurance office issue a policy, would a bank grant an over-draft, guaranteed only by a single assertion of such a nature? Are we to accept a lower standard of proof when the life of a fellow-creature is the awful responsibility, the dreadful stake?"
Mr. Butforth, having made this protest with an appropriate passion, dropped his voice suddenly to a conversational key as he continued. "You will doubtless be asked by my learned friend, Sir Ernest Coleman, to consider the extreme improbability of such a coincidence as that Sir Roger Fair banks should have first diagnosed the poison, and directed the police to trace it, and that it should then have been found in the room, if not in the actual possession of the accused. But human life, whether by the operation of capricious chance, or through an over-ruling destiny, is full of such coincidences. Of course, it is improbable. All coincidences are. That is why we remark them. Which of us cannot point to more than one in our own experience which we should tell with hesitation, even to our most trusted friends, because of its amazing improbability? If an English man or an English woman may be condemned on such evidence, or on such an argument, however skilfully worded, which of us is secure?
"But," he went on, "there is one principle of English law, one of our most ancient and cherished privileges, which still endures, though it may be sometimes forgotten in recent years. It is not required of my client that she shall prove her innocence. It is for the prosecution to prove her guilt." Mr. Butforth proceeded to analyse the evidence in detail, arguing that it amounted, at the most, to no more than a case of suspicion, capable of other explanation, which the defence was under no legal necessity to invent or supply. And this evidence, such as it was, depended for its vital link upon the assertions of Thomas Mogson, the truth of which his client had denied explicitly, and on oath. And - as he was sure that the learned Judge would direct them - such evidence was inadmissible from one of the accused as against the other, unless supported by independent testimony.
"You are called here," he concluded, looking at the jury with an intensity which strove to establish an individual contact with every member, by the requirement of our English law, to say whether the prosecution have proved their case. The law requires proof. It places the life of a fellow-citizen in your hands. It does not require more than that - that you shall condemn, if the case be proved. It does not ask you to guess. If you say among yourselves that my client is probably guilty, and condemn her upon that supposition, you are doing something that the law does not ask you to do, and the guilt, I will not say of murder itself, but of the taking of a human life, must be on your own heads. It is not a responsibility that can be shared among you. It is one that is awful and individual. If you allow yourself to be overborne by argument, or tired out by delay, while there is a doubt in your own mind - and how can you avoid a doubt, when deciding on a case which is built on surmise and theory, and buttressed only by conflicting ant mutually destructive evidence? - the terrible responsibility is yours, both by human law, and at that tribunal before which we must all stand at the last - and, perhaps, the awful remorse, if you should decide this case without mercy, and the truth should ultimately be revealed."
It would be of some psychological interest if it were possible to observe the effect of such a speech upon a jury who should be required to render their verdict immediately on its conclusion, ant to contrast or compare it with the verdicts which follow at an interval of from twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
In the present instance, its effect must have been largely neutralized by the succeeding speeches for Thomas Mogson, the reply for the prosecution, and the final summing-up of the learned Judge.
The procedure being as it is, it is at least possible that some persons who have been hanged - whether innocent or not - would be walking about today, had their counsel discarded forensic eloquence for the more enduring effect of a colder logic.
The speech which Mr. Basil Clackleton delivered in defence of Thomas Mogson was not designed to seal the doom of the female prisoner: rather, he was careful to point out that it was entirely consistent with a double innocence, yet it could not be urged without the implication that Constance Hillier had lied when she said that she had no knowledge of the fatal packet. His defence of his own client was to urge that he had procured the poison innocently. Its actual, if not its logical effect, was to make the question at issue rather one of whether both the prisoners were guilty, or whether Constance Hillier alone deserved the poisoner's doom. Obviously, he could not accept her assertion that she had never asked for or received the fatal packets, and she probably did no good for herself when she broke out in audible interruption, reiterating foolishly that she had never seen them at all.
After that, the Attorney-General replied for the Crown in a speech the tone of which may be described as a deadly moderation. Declaiming nothing, he used the weapon of ironic understatement. He urged the jury to give full weight to the arguments which they had heard, with an implication that to weigh them carefully would be all that was needed to prove their hollowness. To the suggestion that it was a mere coincidence that the police had found this most rare poison, for which they had been directed to look by one who could not have known it to be there, in Constance Hillier's drawer, after it had already been diagnosed as the cause of death, he gave no more than a passing smile. "Well," he said, "if you can believe that . . ." He left the conclusion of the sentence to their imaginations.
The jury felt, perhaps for the first time, that they were being addressed as intelligent equals, which was as it should be. They got on very well with the Attorney-General.
The summing-up brought a note of quiet, almost of serenity. to the proceedings. Mr. Justice Troutbeck had the name of a very shrewd and yet merciful Judge. He was one who would habitually admit the possibility of a prisoner's innocence till the last word was said. In this case, he was so scrupulous that no point which had been made either by prosecution or defence should be disregarded that he left two or three of the jury who had resolved to let him make their minds up for them, rather bewildered as to where they were.
"Blowin' hot and cold, I call it," was the irritated comment of the manager of a travel agency, as they filed into the jury-room. "There was an ever-present air of ambiguity," a shop-walker replied, in the good English which was equally at the service of a peer's widow or a publican's wife.
"I wouldn't quite say that," the foreman interposed in a voice that was firm yet conciliatory. "He depends on us to have enough sense to read between the lines. He doesn't mean them to get off on appeal, because it wasn't all set out from their side."
The foreman was convinced of the guilt of both, and in a great hurry to get away. He had a shrewd idea that they would end in a unanimous verdict of guilty, and that it depended mainly on himself whether they took ten hours or ten minutes to come to that conclusion. He addressed a broad-chested, rather rubicund man, with a large and fleshy nose, and an overbearing manner. "What do you say, Mr. Linkater?" He knew very well what Mr. Linkater thought. Mr. Linkater had cursed the swine every night for keeping him away from the wholesale egg and butter business from which his income came.
"What do I say? I say I hope we'll have ended this damned rot, and got out in an hour, of course. Half a dozen sensible men could have ended it all on the first day. Wanted the old girl's oof, and she wouldn't peg out. That's as clear as day. You could bet all Billingsgate to a rotten egg. You can understand how they felt. But they shouldn't have yanked her off as they did, all the same. You can't do that in this country. I say, let the vermin swing."
The foreman was not sure that this tone was the best to win over the more hesitant or fastidious of their colleagues. He said diplomatically: "It isn't for us to say that. Not exactly. We only say whether they are guilty or not. It's the Judge's part to pass the sentence that he thinks right. And, of course, the Home Secretary makes his own inquiries, and he always gives a reprieve, if there's any doubt. And, of course, there's the Appeal Court to go to, if we make a mistake."
The last sentence contained a truth of a very misleading kind. The Criminal Appeal Court deals with questions of law, rather than fact, and a very casual reading of its proceedings might have shown the frequency with which its judges decide that they "cannot" interfere with a jury's verdict. But there has probably never been a murder trial in recent years, where the jury have had difficulty in reaching a unanimous decision, where the argument has not been used to wear down the resistance of those who are unwilling to assent to a conviction.
On this occasion it visibly impressed more than one of those for whose benefit it had been spoken. When they had entered the room, of the eight men, there had been four whose minds were made up for a double conviction, two who were inclined to give Mogson the benefit of the doubt, and two who were uncertain in mind, and disposed to follow whatever might be the general feeling. Of the four women, two would have been disposed to welcome a verdict of not guilty with relief, one - the schoolmistress - was inclined to a reluctant verdict of guilty against both the prisoners, and one would cheerfully have hanged anyone, either man or woman, who had been shown to enter the Yellow Cat.
There may be no grosser defect in English criminal judicial procedure than the custom which imprisons juries in murder trials until the verdict is rendered. It has outlived the social conditions from which it grew, and can only continue as long as its victims accept it meekly. That juries are found to submit to its insolent implications is a matter which concerns themselves only. Its effect upon the administration of justice is more serious, because it falls upon those who have no power to protest against it. In the majority of cases in which a jury is absent for many hours, it is an almost inevitable deduction that there is a difference of opinion among them. It would require a more than childlike simplicity to believe that these differences are always harmonized by debate. They must end, whether after two hours or twenty, when the more obstinate section - which may not be an actual majority - have overcome the resistance of their opponents. There may be times when a coin spins. There are advantages in the jury system, and strong arguments for its retention, but it ceases to be a bulwark of liberty, or a probable instrument of justice, when it is used to bully those whom it calls together, by such methods, towards a unanimous verdict.
So we may reflect; but in the case with which we are dealing it is improbable that the result would have been different under conditions more favourable for a just decision.
In fact, there was an interval of forty minutes before the Court was able to reassemble, and the jury filed back into the box. It is actually probable that they would have taken longer in arriving at a unanimous verdict had they been under no coercion to do so. But there could have been no difference at last.
There were few who had been present during the four days that the trial lasted who did not confidently anticipate the verdict of guilty against both prisoners that the jury gave. Fewer still who doubted that it was a just decision. But of those few who had anticipated a different ending - though not, perhaps, from any consciousness of innocence - Thomas Mogson was certainly one. He had entered the dock with an air of rather nervous confidence, and looked at the jury almost as a man smiles at his friends, as they stood awaiting the formality of the question, the answer to which might mean liberty or death to those who heard it.
Even the significance of their downcast or averted eyes did not appear to disturb him, his demeanour contrasting with that of the wretched woman who stood beside him, though as far distant as its space allowed. As for her, she stood as one dazed, gazing at the Judge's face with the frightened, fascinated look of a cornered animal that can neither fight nor fly. "She'd scratch his face if she could," was a female comment from the back of the court.
Thomas Mogson listened to the fatal query. "Do you find the prisoner, Constance Hillier, guilty or not guilty?
"Guilty."
"And that is the verdict of you all?"
"Yes. Unanimous."
That didn't disturb him at all. He had rather expected that. That explained why they'd all looked so damned solemn as they had come in.
"You find the prisoner, Thomas Mogson, guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty."
Thomas Mogson did not hear the further query. With an exclamation of "Oh, my God!" he collapsed in the dock.
It was half an hour before he was physically able to take his allotted part in the final tableau.
Homo sapiens is always inclined to take himself over-seriously. When he has decided to take the life of one of his fellows, he expects his victim to continue to treat him with respect and even politeness.
Thomas Mogson, and his physically and mentally bewildered companion in the guilt which the jury had laid upon them, must stand up respectfully while the Judge told them of the fate to which they would be consigned. They must also go through the obsolete formality of being asked whether they knew of any reason why they should be allowed to live.
Constance Hillier had nothing to say. It may be doubted whether the question penetrated her mind. Thomas Mogson had regained something of his former front of assurance. "Only that I'm quite innocent, my lord," he answered firmly. The Judge took no notice of that. It was a question on which Thomas Mogson's assertion had ceased to have any legal value.
He addressed the prisoners together. "You have been found guilty," he told them, after a full and careful trial, of conspiring together in the perpetration of a cruel and cunning murder, designed in such a way, and by such a method, that I can well believe that you shared the anticipation that it was beyond discovery. But it is an old proverb that Murder will out. By what we may regard as an almost miraculous chance, or, if we will, as a direct interposition of Providence, the one man was called in - and that not by the police, but by the relatives of one of yourselves, with no thought of the consequences which would follow - the one man who could point a finger in the direction of the evidence which would prove your guilt. It is not a case where it would be right to hold out to either of you any expectation of mercy," and his voice shook with emotion for the first time as he said these words, "I can only recommend you, in the short period of earthly life that remains, to do what may yet be possible to prepare your souls for God." He then passed sentences of death in the usual form, ending with that quaint derisive formula "and may the Lord have mercy on your soul."
Firmly rejecting the basic principle of Christianity in favour of the Mosaic law, it yet ventures to express the hope that the Creator may be more complaisant or less particular in the standard of His requirements. Or perhaps it is only that He may be considered more competent to deal with a difficult case.
CHAPTER SIX
MRS. PARKER considered her position. She did not pause for this purpose in the cleaning of the gas cooker in her little kitchen at No. 4a Holland Mews, a routine proceeding requiring the service of hand and eye, but leaving her mind at liberty for a more urgent function.
It was a bare hour from the time when Mr. McErrol, the urgent emissary of the Sunday Pail, was due to call upon her to receive her decision, and she was still in doubt as to whether she should accept his offer.
Mrs. Parker was a small, active, hard-featured woman of thirty-five. Fifteen years earlier she had been a fresh-coloured attractive girl, alluring enough to the inexperienced eyes of Hendrik Parker, a blond young giant, parented by a Swedish housemaid and an English butler, and carrying on the blameless trade of a master-carpenter in a side-street in Soho.
Married within six weeks of their first acquaintance, they had lived together in apparent concord for over six years, during which period they had added three vigorous children to the population of London, and then the morning had come when Hendrik had packed up his clothes, and announced, with his habitual economy of words, that he was going back to his mother's.
Ivy Parker (née Smith) did not pause in her occupation of washing her reluctant offspring, as she observed this departure in an angry and incredulous silence. When three days had passed, she visited her mother-in-law, with whom she had a few words, and a week later the enigma was occupying the attention of a stipendiary magistrate.
The magistrate recognized that the case had some unusual features. Mrs. Parker had nothing to say against her husband, except that she wanted him back, as a wife should. Mr. Parker had nothing to say against his wife, except that he wouldn't go. He appeared to be a sober man, of good character, which, considering his occupation, was not surprising. The plumber may go back - at your expense - to fetch the tools, the forgetting of which is one of the routines of his trade, the iron-monger may improve a dull day by charging a hammer to the account of every customer who may be likely to overlook the error, but the carpenter will come with a full bag. His thick pencil will figure his estimate on the wall with a laborious accuracy. He will diffidently suggest a sum which seems absurdly inadequate, and in a tone which invites you to reduce it further. . . .
Finding that persuasion was of no avail, the magistrate inquired as to the extent of the defendant's earnings. It appeared that they amounted to from three to four pounds a week. Sometimes more. He said that he should make an order that thirty-five shillings weekly should be contributed to the support of the deserted wife and children. Hendrik Parker looked his surprise. He was not quick of speech, but he justified the moral status of his occupation by finding words to suggest that two pounds would be a more adequate figure.
Leaving the court, he stopped his abandoned consort to tell her to let him know if she needed more. Mrs. Parker, in spite of the bitter anger in her heart, had a regretful realization that she might have done better for herself had she preferred a more informal method of settlement, but she only said that she wasn't one to take more than the law had given, and if it weren't for the kids . . .
Since then the two pounds had come regularly, and Hendrik had stayed away.
There were two customary methods by which the deserted wife could augment her income. She could advertise that she was prepared to act as "housekeeper" to a "widower", which is the accepted euphonism for intimating that she would be willing to consider uniting her fortunes with that of a man who had been similarly separated. This is the logical, almost inevitable issue of a law which encourages judicial separation without divorce. But she did not like it for several reasons. She had a sure two pounds a week, the receipt of which would sooner or later be placed in jeopardy by such an arrangement. She had to consider that, having three children on her own hands, her advertisement would be unlikely to attract replies from men who had less than two of their own. That meant five - and probably more to come. There is a proverb about those who go further, and fare worse. No, she did not like the idea.
The alternative was to leave her children during the day, so long as any of them would be too young for school, in the care of a neighbour who specialized in such custodies, and go out to work.
She resolved to try this expedient, and was fortunate in securing such a position almost immediately in the service of Lady Catherine Middleditch.
Having once gained this position, she had kept it without difficulty. She was an excellent worker, cleaning a room with the ruthless efficiency with which she had controlled the routines of her own household, and the furniture, being unable to imitate her husband in walking out, submitted without audible protest.
She also gained a reputation for honesty, refusing even to make the shopping profits common to her kind, if either of the Misses Hillier should entrust her with some commission in the emergencies to which every household is liable. If she knew of a back-street butcher who would retail Canterbury lamb to his more numerous customers, of the same quality that was supplied to Lady Catherine at threepence per lb. higher by the obsequious Purveyor of Meat on whom she bestowed her custom, she gave her employers the full benefit of her commercial knowledge. . . . But Ivy Parker had a basket, as daily women very commonly do. There was nothing wrong in that. It was needed at times to bring a clean apron, or remove a soiled one. It supplied a change of shoes in wet weather. It had also opened very willingly from the first to accept any stale provisions or cast-off garments that the generosity of her employers might offer to its capacious interior.
There were three healthy young appetites to be remembered at 4a Holland Mews. If you have been told that you can take a jar of dripping home that would otherwise have been thrown away, you may require to be told the same thing every week for months - if you are a very scrupulous woman - before you will venture to do so without permission, but even so, as the months - and the years - pass, there will come a time when it is a recognized perquisite which will be taken without concealment, or verbal license asked or given. Vested interests grow.
Lady Catherine Middleditch kept a tight grip on the household finances. She had never been too ill for that. But there had been a limit to the possibilities of even her supervision while she had been confined to her own bed.
When Mrs. Parker cleaned her employer's room on Thursday mornings, she was subjected to many questions. If her answers were indiscreet, there might be trouble for Miss Hillier or Miss Margaret to follow. There came a time when things happened which Miss Hillier would have been very sorry for her aunt to know.
It had been quite a natural thing to say to Mrs. Parker, as she helped her to tie down the gooseberry jam which they had been making yesterday, "I shouldn't say anything to the mistress, if I were you, Ivy, about what happened yesterday. It will only upset her for nothing."
And if Mrs. Parker had already intended to ask if she could have what was left of the pork - which wouldn't be wanted again now that the butcher had delivered such a large joint - was she bound to keep silent because Miss Hillier had just asked a favour from her? It would have been most unfair.
And if Miss Hillier hesitated for a moment, even then, before she said, "Very well, Ivy, I don't suppose we should use it again" - there must have been nearly two pounds left of that pork - did it show anything except what a mean woman Constance Hillier really was? Even Miss Margaret would give her aunt's provisions with a freer hand than that.
So the years had worn out the brown bag, and it had been succeeded by one of even more generous receptivity, and the time came when it was left entirely to Mrs. Parker's discretion to fill it with such things as were more needed by her own children than by Lady Catherine's household, and these tacitly permitted levies became an increasingly substantial part of an honest woman's remuneration.
It is necessary to understand these circumstances if we are to do neither more nor less than a scrupulous justice to Mrs. Parker's actions in the tragic events which had so suddenly disturbed the Middleditch family.
Her position, which, a week before, had appeared impregnable, had become extremely precarious, and she realized with dismay that she was threatened with a financial disaster of the first magnitude. All things are comparative. She was not the first to realize that it is more difficult to revert to a lower scale of expenditure when it has been exceeded than it was to endure it previously. The children were at their most expensive age. The eldest was too young to earn. Even the youngest required clothes, and her appetite was a marvel to see. Mrs. Parker considered that she might quite easily obtain another position at the weekly remuneration that she was now getting (or even two shillings more) but she would be very unlikely to get one which would enable her to continue a household budget in which meat was an infrequent debit, and tea and sugar and matches a half-forgotten dream
She observed a good deal, and she overheard what she could. She asked Miss Margaret, and got no more than a doubtful assurance that she hoped it might not be necessary to part with her. Evidently nothing would be decided till the result of the trial was known.
It may be true that rats are prompt and businesslike in their desertion of a sinking vessel, but even a rat will not leave a floating plank for one of inferior quality as long as it does float, and may continue to do so. When the reporters came to Mrs. Parker's - as, of course, they did - she sent them empty away.
That was before the case had come on for trial. Mrs. Parker had not liked Miss Hillier, but she had not thought her to be one who would murder her aunt. (Probably the discovery of a poisoner is always more or less of a surprise to other members of the household.) But when she spread out the evening paper on her kitchen table, and read the verdict, she realized that her opinion had ceased to have any practical value. She had to think what Miss Margaret would do now, and she had a conviction that, whatever it might be, it would mean the closing of No. 35.
It was while this gloomy reflection filled her mind that Mr. McErrol's taxi stopped at the door.
That was two hours ago. She had admitted, in reply to his pressing and ingenious questions, that there were things which could be told of the "goings-on" at 35, Castlemaine Gardens, during the last eight or nine years, and she had received an offer of the substantial sum of one hundred pounds if she would tell them in such a way that they could be published on Sunday as "Mrs. Parker's Narrative". He had swept aside her scruples as being superfluous now that Constance Hillier had been convicted of murder. He understood the reticence which had kept her silent till then. It did her honour. But it would be absurd to continue it longer. The public wanted the truth, and they had a right to have it.
Mrs. Parker was impressed by this eloquence, but it did not vanquish her hesitation, which sprang from a different doubt. Was she sure that the comfortable position which she had held for nearly nine years was really lost? Was she sure that Miss Margaret might not make it more worth while to hold her tongue? She must have time to decide.
Mr. McErrol replied that he could call again in two hours. That was the most he could give. The value of such news is a very transient thing, Also, it depends on being first. Other papers might be foraging in other fields, and reaping more or less of the same crop. How could he tell? Anyway, it was getting late on Thursday now, and they went to press on Saturday afternoon. He made it dear that she must take her chance now or it would be lost for ever.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN Mr. McErrol made his final call, about ten minutes before the appointed time, Mrs. Parker was still in a state of indecision. She did not like the thing that she was asked to do. She felt frightened. She was not reassured by a new proposal that she should tell her tale anonymously, and that its source should not be exposed, if that could be avoided. She was not a fool. Miss Margaret would guess in about thirty seconds. When she guessed - well, if Mr. McErrol knew her as well as she did . . . Yet she saw that if she missed this opportunity, and were told tomorrow that her services were no longer needed, she would be in the proverbial position of those who hesitate between two stools.
Mr. McErrol played his last card. He brought out a packet of one-pound notes. They were new notes, clean and uncreased, in little packets of tens. Ten packets in all.
Mrs. Parker's eyes glistened with cupidity as she gazed upon them. Yet she had the nerve to say, "If that's all as you offer, Mr. Mackerel . . . It's worth twice that if it's worth your print in the Sunday Pail. You don't know what I can tell."
Mr. McErrol saw victory in his grasp. He employed the shock tactics which have the approval of some of the highest exponents of the military art.
"You pick them up, Mrs. Parker, and come along with me now, and give us a good tale, and there'll be another hundred for you to bring back."
He rose with the words, and Mrs. Parker said weakly, "I couldn't do that; not unless Bessie Furguson could come in. There's the three children in bed."
"Where's Mrs. Furguson?"
"It isn't Mrs., it's Miss. She's at No. 3."
"Well, come along, and we'll find out." Miss Furguson was in. She would oblige Mrs. Parker for the usual consideration.
Mrs. Parker had a last moment of indecision. Dare she leave the notes in the house? She decided to put them into her bag, and she clutched it with both hands as Mr. McErrol shepherded her impatiently to the waiting taxi.
"Daily Pail offices. Button Lane, off Fleet Street. Stop at the first entrance you come to."
Mrs. Parker sat clutching her bag, an excited, bewildered. and rather miserable woman.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE law of England, like that of most "civilized" countries preferring the risk of punishing the innocent to that of the guilty escaping, refuses bail before trial to persons who are accused of murder, thereby furnishing one evidence among many that the idea that an Englishman is accounted innocent till he be condemned by a jury of his peers is subject to very important qualifications.
It followed that from the moment when Inspector Cleveland had called at 35, Castlemaine Gardens, and departed in Constance Hillier's company, she had been seen there no more, and even her sister had not been allowed to visit her at the gaol in any real privacy. The only subsequent intercourse had been in two very painful and somewhat hysterical interviews, during which she had vehemently protested her innocence, which was hardly surprising in view of the probability that the conversation was liable to be reported by an overhearing wardress.
Apart from these interviews, and the uncertainty of her sister's fate, Margaret Hillier had had sufficient troubles to face during the seven weeks that intervened between the arrest and trial. Inspector Cleveland's inquiries had been conducted with a discreet secrecy until the moment when he had appeared at the door of No. 35 with two assistants, and a warrant to search the house. When he left, he "invited" Constance Hillier to accompany him to the police-station, and it was a journey from which she did not return. Margaret had found herself left solitary in the house of death. The first night she slept alone, its solitary occupant, with such thoughts as we may imagine, if we care to do so.
The next morning her aunt's solicitor, Mr. Risdon, had called upon her. It was then but sixteen days since Lady Catherine had died.
Mrs. Parker had opened the door, and showed him into the drawing-room, where Margaret entered a few moments later.
Mr. Risdon was a clean-shaven man of middle height and middle-age, and a manner suitable to the time of life that his appearance indicated, His peculiarity was that this condition appeared to be essential to himself, rather than to a transitory period of life, It was difficult to imagine that he had ever been young. He showed no sign of age. Would he become short of breath if he should sprint to the street-corner in his, perhaps, fiftieth year? It would be a foolish question to ask. He was not a man who would sprint. Probably he never had sprinted. His walk was neither brisk nor slow. His appearance neither weak nor robust. You would know him at once as a man who would drink wine - and would drink sparingly. It was difficult to imagine that he would be disconcerted by any circumstance, or stirred to anger, or roused to haste; or that he would be slack or hurried of speech.
He showed no awkwardness in meeting the sister of the woman who had been arrested on the previous day, nor did he fail to say what the circumstances required. He expressed his regret that he had been away on business in Germany during the previous fortnight, so that this had been his first opportunity of calling since he had heard the distressing news of Lady Catherine's death. But he had cabled to his partner to render any assistance that should be needed, and he understood that some money had been advanced to deal with the current payments of the household.
"Yes," Margaret Hillier assented. "We had no money at all." She was very pale, and showed evidence of restrained emotion, but it was under the control of a firm will. Five years younger than Constance, she retained more of the freshness of youth. Normally, she was lighter of step, more alert of movement. Laughter might be strange to her lips, but her face was free from the moral slackness or ill-temper that her sister's showed. She added, "I am needing some more now."
Mr. Risdon did not offer to supply it. He said, "I did not expect that there would have been any immediate stringency I was aware that Lady Catherine kept a sum of fifty pounds in cash in reserve against any unexpected emergency."
Margaret made no direct answer to that. She said, "I have less than two pounds." After a moment's silence, she asked: "What are you going to do about Constance?"
The eyes that met those of the lawyer were cold, the voice was toneless. Mr. Risdon, sensitive to atmosphere, though he would show no reaction, was conscious of a latent hostility, but there was nothing that he could observe or resent. He answered, "I have arranged to see her at - " he was about to say "Pentonville", but changed it to, "three o'clock this afternoon." He added, "There has been a formal remand this morning."
"I suppose you will have no difficulty in defending her from such an accusation?"
"I hope that it may be disposed of without difficulty, but it is too soon to express a final opinion. It seems to have some unusual features. I shall know more when I have seen Miss Hillier."
No one listening could have judged whether either the man or the woman spoke with sincerity, or whether the slow words were merely those which they felt to be most suitable to the circumstances in which they met.
Margaret answered: "Constance wouldn't have done thing like that. I don't suppose there's been any poisoning at all. I should have thought with a family like ours . . ."
"I'm afraid that doesn't make much difference. Not when matters have developed to this point. Sometimes, perhaps, at an earlier stage . . ."
"Can't you get them to trop it?"
"Not, I'm afraid, without a hearing in the magistrate's court. Of course, he may refuse to send it for trial. But that rarely happens in a case that the police bring. No, I'm afraid we shall have to see it through."
"I suppose there'll be no difficulty about the money, now you are back?"
"I have no doubt that adequate arrangements will be made for your sister's defence, I have already asked your uncle to see me, to discuss the position."
"I meant here."
There was a long moment of silence before he answered. "I scarcely think, under all the circumstances, that it will be advisable for this house to be kept on. It is only held on an annual tenancy, which is terminated by Lady Catherine's death. In fact, I am arranging for an inventory to be taken tomorrow, with a view to an early sale."
"I shouldn't allow that."
"I'm afraid, Miss Margaret, it hardly rests with you to decide."
"You mean it's for Constance to say?"
"You will remember that I am the executor under Lady Catherine's last will."
"You always were."
"Yes. Your aunt placed a confidence in our firm which has continued from three generations. A confidence, if I may say so, which has never been abused."
"I suppose as executor you will consider the wishes of those to whom the money is left?"
"I shall consult Miss Hillier's wishes, and act in her interests to the best of my ability, subject, of course, to the unfortunate complication which has arisen."
"And why not mine?"
"You are not, unfortunately, a beneficiary under the last will."
"But I think I am. There is a document that you have not seen."
"Then I should like to see it."
Margaret left the room, and returned with a sheet of letter paper which she handed to Mr. Risdon. He read this:
35, Castlemaine Gardens,
W.6.
April 18th, 19 - .
We agree that whatever will may be made by Aunt Catherine, we will share everything equally when she dies.
CONSTANCE HILLIER.
MARGARET HILLIER.
Witness to this: IVY PARKER
The lawyer considered this remarkable document. "I'm, afraid," he said, "this has no legal validity."
"You needn't say that to Constance. Not that she'd want to go back on it, if you did."
"The question may not arise." He had the thought that he would have matters of greater urgency to discuss with Constance Hillier that afternoon. He added, "But it is obviously not a document of any legal value. It shows no consideration. It's not even stamped."
"You mean it's no good because it's not stamped?"
"Not exactly. There would be a penalty to be paid. There are other reasons."
He folded it up slowly and was putting it into his pocket as one who does not observe his own actions, when Margaret interposed "I should like that back, please."
He hesitated, and then returned it. He had considered that it could do Miss Hillier no harm in her sister's hands, and its production might do her no good. It made it too evident that one or both of them had looked forward to Lady Catherine's death with an anticipatory mind. Perhaps the less he knew of it the better.
"I shan't give way about that," Margaret was saying, in her calm way. "If necessary, I shall dispute the will."
"I don't think that you could do that."
"I thought anyone could dispute a will."
"Yes-s. . . . Not exactly, We'll hope the question may not arise."
Mr. Risdon could see other possibilities that might complicate the financial consequences of Lady Catherine's will. But he must not assume his client's guilt. Still less must he assume her conviction.
He rose, saying that Miss Margaret would hear from him further. She must rely on him as a friend.
She made no answer to that.
CHAPTER NINE
THE next morning the Earl of Weyford called upon Mr. Risdon at his office in Bedford Square. The Earl was small and old. He leaned on a heavy stick. As he removed his hat, he showed a bald head, the colour of a Langshan's egg. It had a fringe of hair that was straight and white and well-trimmed. A white moustache stood out from his upper lip, falling over, smooth as a waterfall on its outer surface and somewhat lengthened on either side of his mouth. He had a manner which was alternately abrupt and hesitant. He had a reputation for petulance and indecision, but the actions of a long life had shown that when his mind was made up it was usually in the right way.
"Terrible business, Risdon, terrible business," he began, before he was seated, as he extended a vein-blue hand. "I suppose if I'd left it alone . . ."
Mr. Risdon, who thought the same, only remarked that you can never tell. "But what's the truth, Risdon, what's the truth? That's what I'm here to know."
"I suppose that's for the court to decide. It's too early to say much. I saw Miss Hillier yesterday afternoon. She denies everything. I can't get beyond that yet. I'm seeing Butforth at his chambers tonight. He'll be the right man for this, if he'll take it on. I suppose I shall be doing right to give him the brief?"
The Earl saw the implication of the question, without waiting for a more explicit approach. "You want your instructions from me, Risdon? Isn't there plenty in the estate?"
"Yes. Lady Catherine didn't spend much. There'll be about £10,000 more than what came to her. But there are one or two points that . . . I thought I'd talk it over with Butforth tonight, before I start proving the will . . . Still I don't see . . ."
But the Earl did. He pulled out a cheque-book with a rather shaking hand. He wrote a cheque for £500.
You mustn't spare anything, Risdon. But make that do, if you can. You know I'm not a rich man. . . . I shall look to you to get it back in the end."
Mr. Risdon blotted the cheque. He touched a bell on his desk. A clerk came in and was told to write a receipt. Mr. Risdon pulled a drawer at his right hand a few inches open, and slipped the cheque in. He said, "I've decided to have a sale at No. 35 as soon as possible. It's no use the expenses going on as they are, I don't want to advance them, anyway; and I can't realize the investments till the will's proved. Of course, we usually arrange for an advance at the bank till we can get probate, but as things are, I scarcely know what they'd say."
"You mean, if you sell the furniture?"
"Yes. It ought to bring in a good deal. There are some old pieces that look valuable. I meant to send Gray & Wisden's clerk up this morning to take an inventory, but as you were coming in . . ." Mr. Risdon did not mention a conversation of the previous morning.
The Earl hesitated. He did not like the responsibility of a sudden decision being thrown on his shoulders in that way. It is so easy to say "Yes" or "No", and think of something half an hour after that makes you wish that you hadn't. But it did seem the most sensible thing to do. Even if this ghastly affair didn't prove as bad as it looked, he didn't suppose that Constance would want to keep that house on.
"Yes," he said, "I expect it's the best way." He got up to go.
He went to lunch at his club, telling his chauffeur to call for him again in an hour, and went on after that to see Margaret Hillier. He didn't like going at all. He had not got on well with Catherine, and the house was strange to him. Consequently, the two nieces who had lived with her were strange also. But he had promised Violet that he would go. You couldn't leave the girl alone in the house like that. So she had said, and, of course, she was right. Violet was a grandchild who lived with him, her parents being in India.
So he drove to Castlemaine Gardens, hoping that Margaret wouldn't be of an hysterical kind. He never could stand scenes. But he need not have worried about that. Margaret said the correct things. Beyond that she was quiet and inscrutable. She received her cousin's messages politely, but, surprisingly, she refused the invitation which they contained. She said she was best where she was till the trouble was over. Mrs. Parker came in during the day. She did not mind sleeping alone. Not in the least. What was there to mind? She couldn't stand talk. No, she would rather be by herself for a time. Only, Mr. Risdon had said something about selling the furniture. Couldn't anything be done to stop him? She had had to tell Mrs. Parker already not to open the door without knowing who was there. Things were bad enough without that.
Faced by a woman who knew her own mind, and obviously meant to have her own way, the Earl capitulated easily on a point on which he had been doubtful before. He said he would tell Risdon to let things remain as they were. And money? Yes, she must have some to carry on with. He would tell Risdon that. He felt that she had trouble enough, and that she should be kept free of avoidable worries.
She felt she had done well, and was unguardedly cheerful as she said good-bye at the door.
As he drove away, he wondered whether she were more troubled that her sister was charged with a capital crime, or relieved that her aunt was dead. Perhaps it was natural enough. Anyway, she had a good nerve. And it was bad luck for her the will being as it was, however it might turn out in the end. He wondered how Violet and she would have got on if he had brought her home . . .
Meanwhile Margaret was looking at the little store of money locked in her own drawer. There were a few pounds that she had saved from what her aunt had given her. There was the fifty pounds that had been found when she died, in the little bag that was always beside her. It had been Constance s idea that they should say nothing about that, to which she had agreed easily enough. Beside that, there was three and nine-pence in a cardboard box. That was all that was left of the money that had come from Risdon & Clarke's. She went down and told Mrs. Parker to tell the grocer that she would have some money from her lawyer before the end of the week, and his account must wait till then.
Mr. Risdon had a note from the Earl of Weyford next morning. He read it, and did not look pleased. He was not greatly surprised that Margaret had decided to remain in the empty house. "Doesn't mean to give up possession, if she can help it," he commented, half-aloud. He rang for a typist, and dictated a letter sending her ten pounds. He felt he had no option, in view of what the Earl had written. He would have liked to make it even less than that.
CHAPTER TEN
IT was on the afternoon of the day following Constance Hillier's conviction that the Earl of Weyford called again at Mr. Risdon's office. The anxiety of the last two months - an anxiety of prestige rather than of any personal sympathy for a woman whom he scarcely knew - appeared to have shaken a constitution already weakened by advancing years and some definite infirmities, and he leaned more heavily on the stick he carried, and his hand was less steady as he extended it to the lawyer, casually introducing, as he did so, his grand-daughter, Miss Violet Scovell, who had entered beside him.
"This dreadful business, Risdon, this dreadful business," he began, "I don't know what can be done, but I felt that I must talk it over . . . I can't sleep or eat . . . Three hundred years, Risdon, three hundred years, and now for it to come to this!"
It is a fact that the Weyford earldom is of that unbroken antiquity, but it may, at a first thought, appear improbable that any family should have held a recorded position of such duration without some even more sinister incidents than that a relative - not in the direct line - should be convicted of a capital crime. But it is not without parallel. The records of historic families which maintain their position over the centuries are of two opposite kinds. They may show emphatic assertions of character, aggressive and turbulent, in which event they will be punctuated with imprisonments, conspiracies, divorces, illegitimacies, and a variety of picturesque criminalities, alternating with demonstrations of intellect, or heroic or patriotic deeds, of more admirable descriptions. Or otherwise they may show a continuing record of the more negative virtues, of cautions, abstinences, and evasions, by which the family fortune has been steered without disaster through the shoals of circumstance for succeeding centuries. Of such families it is only marvellous that so long a succession of heirs have held positions of prestige and wealth without leaving more than the faintest impressions of their existence upon the minds of their contemporaries, or the history of their race.
The family of the Earl of Weyford had been of this latter kind. The barony conferred by James the First upon Sir Robert Scovell, for services of which there is no record remaining, even survived the embarrassments of the Civil War without apparent difficulty, the son of the first baron acting with such politic discretion throughout that it has proved difficult for the historians of his county to decide to which party his allegiance was given, and the advance of the family rank and fortunes which took place after the accession of William and Mary is of a very uncertain significance.
Sprung from this prudent stock, the feelings of the present earl may invite our sympathy, as his family connections were thus exposed, and his grand-niece convicted of sordid crime, and condemned to ignoble death. But it would do him injustice to suppose that his mind had failed to react in other and more generous ways. Having little mental occupation of urgency and being debarred by physical infirmity from taking the relief of bodily exercise, his mind had concentrated itself upon the incidents and background of this crime - if such it were - during the past two months, until prolonged and agitated reflection had done much to supply the deficiency of a somewhat sluggish imagination, and he had entered even into some measure of understanding sympathy with the restricted lives of those two young hag-ridden women, which did much to explain, if little to condone, the final catastrophe. But he had a mind that placed a very high value upon the observance of his country's laws, as well as those which he believed to be divinely given, whether through the pages of the New Testament, or the Mosaic code. Whatever might be the moral aspects of murder, the central impregnable fact was that it was forbidden by English law. It was by reverence for established order, by careful, even timid observance of the rules of the game, that his ancestors had held their extensive Berkshire acreage. If he regarded a socialist as superior to a murderer, it was only because the laws of his country displayed a greater tolerance, but even the laws of a Labour Government deserved respectful obedience when once they had found their way to the Statute Book.
It followed that his anxiety that his niece should be defended to the best advantage had sprung from two sources. He had desired to save the family name from the disgrace of such a conviction, and he had felt the duty of extending his support to one of his own blood while her innocence remained a legal, and perhaps an actual possibility. But had he been, or should he become, convinced of her guilt his course of action might be of a less certain complexion.
Yet even now, the final word of the law might not have been pronounced. There was the right of appeal. He had said no more than the literal truth when he remarked to Mr. Risdon at their previous interview that he was not a rich man. Though the threat of national starvation was but twelve years old, the government of the day had no use for agriculture, except for the draining of impoverished estates by means of Death Duties when their owners died. His own precarious and mortgaged income could only continue to hold his ancestral estate together till his death should bring destructive crisis upon it. But if Mr. Risdon told him that Butforth regarded the evidence as inconclusive, or that there were just ground of appeal, he was still ready to find or guarantee such funds as the legal appetite might require.
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