The Skeleton Key/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
THE EXPLOSION
The Magistrates assembled to hear the case were four in number, two of them being local magnates and personal friends of Sir Calvin, who was accorded a seat on the Bench. They took their places at eleven o'clock, the Court being then crowded to its utmost capacity. The case stood first on the list, and no delay was experienced in opening it. As before, Mr Fyler appeared for the police, and Mr Redstall for Sir Calvin. The prisoner was undefended.
At the outset of the proceedings a surprise awaited the public. The prisoner having been brought up from the cells beneath the Court, and placed in the dock, Sergeant Ridgway asked permission to speak. Addressing the Bench, he said that since the inquiry before the Coroner, which had ended, as their Worships were aware, in a verdict by the jury of wilful murder against the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis, facts had come to his knowledge which entirely disposed of the theory of the prosecution, proving, as they did, an unquestionable alibi in the prisoner's favour. Under these circumstances he proposed to offer no evidence against the accused, who, with their Worships' permission, would be discharged.
Smart in aspect, concise in phrase, the detective stood up and made his avowal, and again, though in an auguster atmosphere, with a marked impression upon his hearers. Some of them had already encountered him, no doubt, and were prepared to concede to his every statement the force and value of an official fiat.
'Very well, Sergeant,' was the reply, while the public wondered if they were going to be defrauded of their feast of sensation, or if some spicier substitute were about to be placed before them. They were not kept long in suspense.
Following the Sergeant's declaration, brief evidence was given by Andrew Marie, shepherd, and Nicholas Penny, thatcher. The former deposed that on the afternoon in question he was setting hurdles on the uplands above Leighway, at a point about three miles north-east of Wildshott Park as the crow flies, when he saw prisoner. That was as near three o'clock as might be. Prisoner had stood watching him for a few minutes while exchanging a remark or two, and had then gone on in a northerly direction.
Penny gave evidence that, on the same afternoon, at three-thirty, he was working in the garden of his cottage at Milldown, two miles beyond the point mentioned by the last witness, when prisoner came by and asked him the time. He gave it him, and the prisoner thanked him and continued his way, still bearing north by east until he was out of sight. He was going leisurely, both witnesses affirmed, and there appeared nothing peculiar about him except his foreign looks and speech. Neither had the slightest hesitation in identifying the prisoner with the man they had seen. There was no possibility of mistaking him.
This evidence, said the detective, addressing the justices again at the end of it, precluded any idea of the prisoner's being the guilty party, the case for the prosecution holding that the murder was committed at some time between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. At three o'clock the accused was proved to have been at a spot good three miles away from the scene of the crime, and again at 3.30 at a spot five miles away, representing a distance which, even on an extravagant estimate, he could hardly have 'covered within the period remaining to him if the theory of the prosecution was to be substantiated. There was no case, in fact, and the prosecution therefore withdrew the charge.
A Magistrate put the question somewhat extra-judicially, why had he not pleaded this alibi in the first instance. The accused, who appeared overwhelmed by the change in his situation, was understood to say, with much emotion and gesticulation, that he had not been advised, nor had he supposed that the deposition of a prisoner himself would count for anything, and, moreover, that he had been so bewildered by the labyrinth of suspicion in which he had got himself involved, that it had seemed hopeless to him to think of ever extricating himself from it. He seemed a simple soul, and the justices smiled, with some insular superiority, over his naïve declaration. He was then given to understand that he was discharged and might go, and with a joyous expression he stepped from the dock and vanished like a jocund goblin down the official trap.
Counsel for the prosecution then rose, and stated that, the charge against Cabanis being withdrawn, it was proposed to put in his place Samuel Cleghorn, against whom, although no definite charge had as yet been preferred by the police, a prima facie case existed. His examination, and the examination of the witnesses concerned, would probably prove a lengthy affair, and he asked therefore that the case might be taken next on the list. The justices concurring, Samuel Cleghorn was brought up from the cells, and stood to undergo his examination.
Confinement and anxiety, it was evident, had told upon the prisoner, whose aspect since the Inquest had undergone a noticeable change. He looked limp and deteriorated, like a worn banknote, and his lips were tremulous. Respectability in a sidesman caught pilfering from the plate could, not have appeared more self-conscious of its fall. He bowed deferentially to the Bench, with a slight start on seeing his master seated there, and, making some ineffectual effort to appear at ease, clasped his plump white hands before him and fixed a glassy eye on the wall. The public, reassured, settled down, like a music-hall audience to a new exciting 'turn' the Bench assumed its most judicial expression, and Counsel, adjusting its wig for the fray, proceeded to open the case.
It is not proposed to recapitulate in extenso the evidence already given. In bulk and essentials the two hardly differed, the only marked changes being in the order of the witnesses examined, and in the absence from their list of the Baron Le Sage, who, however, inasmuch as his sole use had been to testify to the character of his servant, was no longer needed. There was the same reference to the insuperable difficulty—experienced and still unsurmounted—in tracing out the deceased's connexions, the same statement by Sergeant Ridgway as to the fruitlessness of the measures taken, and the same request that, in default of further information, such evidence of identification as was at present available should be provisionally accepted. The Bench agreed, the detective sat down, and Counsel rose once more, this time with a formidable eye to business.
Mr Fyler began by reconstructing, so far as was possible, the history of the crime from the evidence already adduced, into the particulars of which it is unnecessary to follow him. In summarising the known facts, he made no especial point, it was observed, of bringing them to bear on the presumptive guilt of the prisoner, but used him rather as a convenient model or framework about which to shape his story. Indeed, when he sat down again, it might have been given as even odds whether the conviction or acquittal of the accused man was the thing foreshadowed. And what then? After two attempts, was the whole business to end in a fiasco? Incredible! Some one must have killed the girl. The very atmosphere of the Court, moreover, fateful, ominous—derided such a conclusion. 'Attend and wait!' it seemed to whisper.
Counsel was no sooner down than he was up again, and calling now upon his witnesses to appear. They came one by one, as summoned—Mrs Bingley, Jane Ketchlove, Jessie Ellis, Kate Vokes, Mabel Wheelband; and there the order was broken. The examination of these five was in all essentials a replica of that conducted at the Inquest, but, to the observant, with one significant note added. For the first time Counsel showed, as it were, a corner of the card up his sleeve by suggesting tentatively, insinuatively, à propos the question of a guilty intrigue, that one or other of them might possibly have her suspicions as to the identity of the second party implicated in it. The hint was disowned as soon as rejected; but it had left a curious impression here and there of more to come, of its having only been proffered to open and prepare the way to evidence, the stronger, perhaps, for some such moral corroboration. Not one of the women, however, would own to the subtle impeachment, and the question for the moment was dropped.
But it was dropped only tactically, in accordance with a pre-arranged plan, as became increasingly apparent with the choice of the next witness. This was Dr Harding, who had made the post-mortem examination, and whose evidence repeated exactly what he had formerly stated. It added, moreover, a detail which, touching upon a question of time, showed yet a little more plainly which way the wind was setting; and it included an admission, or correction, no less suggestive in its import. The question was asked witness: 'At the Inquest you stated, I believe, that death must have occurred at 3.30 o'clock, or thereabouts. Is that so?'
A. I said 'approximately,' judging by the indications.
Q. Just so. I am aware that, in these cases, a certain latitude must be granted. It might then, in fact, have occurred somewhat earlier or somewhat later?
A. Yes. By preference, somewhat earlier.
Q. How much earlier?
Witness, refusing to submit to any brow-beating on the question, finally, at the end of a highly technical disputation, conceded a half hour as the extreme limit of his approximation; and with that the matter ended. As he stepped from the box the name of a new witness—a witness not formerly included in the inquiry—was called, and public interest, already deeply stimulated, grew intensified.
Margaret Hopkins, widow, deposed on oath. She was landlady of the Brewer's Dray inn at Longbridge. The inn was situated to the east of the town and a little outside it on the Winton Road. One afternoon, about five weeks ago, a lady and gentleman had called at her inn, wanting tea, and a private room to drink it in. They were shown up to a chamber on the first floor, where the gentleman ordered a fire to be lighted. Tea was brought them by witness herself, and they had remained there shut in a long time together—a couple of hours perhaps. They were very affectionate with one another, and had gone away, when they did go, very lovingly arm in arm. The gentleman was Mr Hugo Kennett, whom she now saw in Court, and whom she had recognised for the male stranger at once. The name of the lady accompanying him she had had no means of ascertaining, but her companion had addressed her as Annie.
Mr Redstall, rising to cross-examine witness, put the following questions:—
Q. Will you swear to Mr Kennett having been the gentleman in question?
A. Yes, on my oath, sir.
Q. You already knew Mr Kennett by sight, eh?
A. No, I did not, sir. I had never seen him before, and have never seen him since till to-day. I hadn't been settled in Longbridge not a two-month at the time he come.
Q. You say the two appeared to be on affectionate terms. On companionable terms would perhaps be the truer expression, eh?
A. As you choose, sir, if that means behaving like lovers together. (Laughter.)
Q. What do you mean by like lovers? They would hardly have made a display of their sentiments before you.
A. Not intentional perhaps, sir; but I come upon them unexpected when I brought in the tea; and there they was a'sitting. on' the sofy together, as close and as fond as two turtle-doves. (Laughter.)
Mrs Bingley, recalled, reluctantly admitted having given deceased an afternoon off about the date in question. The girl had returned to the house before six o'clock.
Reuben Henstridge called, repeated his evidence given on the day of the Inquest, omitting only, or abridging, such parts of it as bore on the movements of the Frenchman, and excluding altogether—by tacit consent, it seemed—those references to the butler's approach which had brought such a confusion of cross-questioning about his ears. The following bodeful catechism then ensued:—
Q. You say it was ten minutes past two when you saw Cabanis break from the copse and go down towards the road?
A. Aye.
Q. And that, having hung about after seeing him, you eventually returned to the Red Deer inn, reaching it at about 3.30?
A. That's it.
Q. At what time did you start to return to the inn?
A. Three o'clock, or a bit after.
Q. What had you been doing in the interval?
A. (Sulkily) That's my business.
Q. I ask you again. You had better answer.
A. (After a scowling pause.) Setting snares, then. (Defiantly) Weren't it the open downs?
Q. I'm not entering into that question. We'll assume, if you like, that the downs and your behaviour were equally open. You were setting snares, that's enough. Did anything suddenly occur to interrupt you at your task?
A. Yes, it did.
Q. What was that?
A. The sound of a gun going off.
Q. From what direction?
A. From down among the trees near the road.
Q. Quite so. Now will you tell the Bench exactly what time it was when you heard that sound?
A. The time when I started to go home.
Q. About three o'clock or a little after?
A. That's it.
Q. You state that on your oath?
A. Yes, I do.
It was as if a conscious tremor, like the excitement of many hearts leaping in unison, passed through the Court, dimly foretelling some approaching crisis. The examination was resumed:—
Q. What makes you so certain of the time?
A. The stable clock had just gone three.
Q. And, following on the sound of the gun, you left your snare-setting and made for home?
A. Aye.
Q. For what reason?
A. Because I thought they might be working round my way.
Q. Whom do you mean by 'they?'
A. The party as was out shooting. I made sure at first it come from them.
Q. What made you alter your opinion?
A. I see them, as I went up the hill, afar off nigh Asholt wood.
Q. Now, tell me: why didn't you mention all this at the Inquest?
A. Because I weren't asked.
Q. Or was it because you feared having to confess to what made you bolt, and from what occupation, when the shot startled you? (No answer.) Very well. Now attend to this. You have heard it propounded, or assumed, that the murder took place some time between 3.15 and 4 o'clock. Do you still adhere to your statement that it was just after three when you heard the sound of the gun?
A. Aye.
Q. You are on your oath, remember.
A. All right, master.
Q. And you adhere to it?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. That is enough. You can stand down.
A sibilation, a momentary rustling and shuffling, as on the close of an engrossing sermon when tension is relaxed and the hymn being prepared for, followed the dismissal of the witness. A few glanced furtively, hardly realizing yet why they were moved to do so, at a rigid soldierly figure, seated upright and motionless beside the justices on the Bench. But the sense of curious perplexity was hardly theirs when the next witness was claiming their attention. This was Daniel Groome, the gardener, whose evidence, generally a repetition of what he had formerly stated, was marked by a single amendment, the significance of which he himself hardly seemed to realize. It appeared as follows:—
Q. You stated before the Coroner that this louder shot heard by you occurred at a time which you roughly estimated to be anything between three and half-past three o'clock. Is that so?
A. No, sir.
Q. What do you mean by 'no'?
A. I've thought it over since, sir, and I've come to the conclusion that my first impression was nearer the correct one.
Q. Your impression, that is to say, that the shot was fired somewhere about three o'clock?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What is your reason for this change of opinion?
A. Because I remembered afterwards, sir, having heard the clock in the master's study strike the quarter past. I had gone round by then to the back of the house.
Q. And you had heard the shot fired while at the front?
A. Yes, sir.
This witness was stiffly cross-examined by Mr Redstall, who sought to shake his evidence on the grounds that he was, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to adapt it to what was expected of him. But the poor fellow's honesty was so transparent, and his incomprehension of the gravity of his statement so ingenuous, that the only result of his harrying was to increase the impression of his disinterested probity. He said what he believed to be the truth, and he adhered to it.
He went, and the usher, tapping with his wand on the floor, called in a loud voice on Vivian Bickerdike to appear and give evidence.
A famous writer has asserted that there are two kinds of witness to whom lawyers take particular exception, the reluctant witness and the too-willing witness. To these may be added a third, the anxious witness, who, being oppressed with a sense of responsibility of his position, fears at once to say too much or too little, and ends by saying both. Bickerdike entered the box an acutely anxious witness. The trend of some recent evidence had left him in no doubt as to the lines on which his own examination was destined to run, and he foresaw at once the use to which a certain conversation of his with the detective was going to be put. Now it was all very well to hold the Sergeant guilty in this of a gross breach of confidence, but his conscience would not thereby allow him to maintain himself blameless in the matter. He should have known quite well, being no fool, that a detective did not ask questions or invite communications from a purely altruistic point of view, and that the apparent transparency of such a man's sentiments was the least indication of their depth. By permitting pique a little to obscure that fact to him he had done his friend—for whom he had a real, very warm regard—a disservice, to which he had now, in that friend's hearing, to confess. So far, then, it only remained to him to endeavour to repair, through his sworn evidence, the mischief to which he had made himself a party.
But could any reparation stultify now a certain issue, to which—he had seen it suddenly, aghast that too-open candour of his had been seduced into contributing? What horrible thing was it which was being approached, threatened, in the shadow of his friend's secret? The thing was monstrous, damnable; yet he could not forget how it had appeared momentarily adumbrated to himself on his first hearing of the murder. But he had rejected the thought with incredulous scorn then, as he would reject it now. Of whatever sinful weakness Hugh might be capable, a crime so detestable, so cruel, was utterly impossible to him. He swore it in his heart; but his faith could not relieve him of the weight of responsibility which went with him into the witness box. It was like a physical oppression, and he seemed to bend under it. Counsel took the witness's measure with a rolling relish of the lips, as he prepared, giving a satisfied shift to his gown, to open his inquisitions:—
Q. You are on very intimate terms, I believe, Mr Bickerdike, with Sir Calvin and his family?
A. With Sir Calvin's permission, I think I may say yes.
Q. You have seen the prisoner before?
A. Many times.
Q. Could you, as a guest, speak to his general character?
A. It has always appeared to me quite unexceptionable.
Q. Not a violent man?
A. O! dear, no.
Q. At dinner, on the night before the murder, did you notice anything peculiar about him?
A. He appeared to me to be upset about something.
Q. And you wondered, perhaps—having only arrived that afternoon, as I understand—what domestic tribulation could have discomposed so stately a character? (Laughter.)
A. I may have. I had always considered Cleghorn as immovable an institution as the Monument.
The laughter which greeted this sally appeared to reassure witness somewhat, as did the unexpected lines on which his rather irregular examination seemed to be developing. But his confidence was of short duration. The very next question brought him aware of the true purpose of this preliminary catechism, which was merely to constitute a pretext for getting him. into the witness-box at all.
Q. Was your arrival that afternoon, may I ask, in response to a long invitation or a sudden call?
A. (With a sudden stiffening of his shoulders, as if rallying his energies to meet an ordeal foreseen.), A sudden call. I came down in response to a letter from my friend Mr Hugo Kennett, inviting me to a few days' shooting.
Q. Mr Hugo Kennett is a particular friend of yours, is he not?
A. We have known one another a long time.
Q. Intimate to that degree, I mean, that you have few secrets from one another?
A. That may be.
Q. And can depend upon one another in any emergency?
A. I hope so.
Q. There was a question of emergency, perhaps, in this case?
A. I am bound to say there often is with Mr Kennett.
Q. Will you explain what you mean by that?
A. I mean—I hope he will forgive my saying it—that his imagination is a little wont to create emergencies which nothing but his friends' immediate advice and assistance can overcome. He is apt to be in the depths one moment and on the heights the next. He is built that way, that's all.
Q. Was this a case of an emergency due to his imagination?
A. I won't go quite so far as to say that.
Q. Then there was really a reason this time for his having you down at short notice?
A. I may have thought so.
Q. We will come to that. Had he mentioned the reason in his letter to you?
A. No. The letter only said that he badly wanted 'bucking,' and asked me to come down at once.
Q. He gave no explanation?
A. None whatever.
Q. In the letter, or afterwards when you met?
A. No.
Q. You found him in an uncommunicative mood?
A. Somewhat.
Q. Kindly say what you mean by 'somewhat.'
A. I mean that, while he told me nothing definite about his reason for having me down, he did seem to hint that there was trouble somewhere.
Q. What were his exact words?
A. I can't remember.
Q. Were they to the effect that he was in a devil of a fix with a girl, and could only see one way out of it? (Sensation.)
A. (Aghast.) Nothing of the sort. Now I recall, he described himself as sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the explosion that was to come.
Q. Thank you. Another effort or two, Mr Bickerdike, and your memory may need no refreshing. Did you find your friend's manner, now, as strange as his talk?
A. It might often have seemed strange on such occasions to those who did not know him.
Q. Answer my question, please.
A. (Reluctantly.) Well, it was strange.
Q. Stranger than you had ever known it to be before?
A. Perhaps so.
Q. I suggest that it was wild and reckless to a degree—the manner of a man who had got himself into a hopeless scrape, and saw no way out of it but social and material ruin?
A. It was very strange: I can say no more.
Q. Would you have considered his state compatible with that of a young man of good position and prospects, who had entangled himself with a girl greatly his social inferior, and was threatened by her with exposure unless he, in the common phrase, made an honest woman of her?
Mr Redstall rising to object, the Bench ruled that the question was inadmissible. It had created, however, a profound impression in Court, which from that moment never abated. Counsel, accepting their worships' decision, resumed:—
Q. Had you any reason to suspect a woman in the case?
A. It was pure conjecture on my part.
Q. Then you did entertain such a suspicion?
A. Not at that time. Later perhaps.
Q. After the murder?
A. Yes, after the murder.
Q. When?
A. The moment I heard it had been committed. I was told by a groom.
Q. About the woman or the murder?
A. About the murder.
Q. When was that?
A. When I returned from shooting that day.
Q. You returned alone, I believe?
A. Yes.
Q. Mr Kennett having left you shortly before three o'clock?
A. I fancy about that time.
Q. And at the moment you heard there had been this murder committed, that conjecture, that association between your friend and the murdered girl came into your mind?
A. It was wholly preposterous, of course. I dismissed the idea the moment it occurred to me.
Q. You dismissed the idea of Mr Kennett's having been involved with the girl?
A. No, of his having committed the murder. (Sensation.)
Q. But you still thought the entanglement possible?
A. I thought it might account for his state.
Q. Why did the first idea, associating Mr Kennett with the crime, occur to you? (Witness hesitating, the question was repeated.)
A. (In a low voice.) O! just because of something—nothing important—that had happened at the shoot—that, and the extraordinary state I had found him in.
Q. Will you tell the Bench what was this unimportant something that happened at the shoot?
A. (With emotion.) It was nothing—probably my fancy—and he denied it utterly.
Q. Now, Mr Bickerdike, if you please?
A. I thought that in—in pulling his gun through a particular hedge that morning, he might have done it with less risk to himself, that was all.
Q. You suspected him, in short, of wanting to kill himself under the guise of an accident?
A. I swear he never admitted it. I swear he denied it.
Q. And you accepted his denial so implicitly that you asked him to go home, leaving his gun with the keeper. Is that not so?
A. Yes.
Q. He refused?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. Did not much the same thing occur again, later in the afternoon?
A. Nothing of the sort at all. Shortly before three he came to me, and said he was no good and was going home.
Q. What did he mean by 'no good'? No good in life?
A. No good at shooting.
Q. And again you asked him to leave his gun with you?
A. No, I did not—not directly, at least.
Q. Please explain what you mean by 'not directly'?
A. He may have understood what was in my mind. I can't say. He just laughed, and called out that he wasn't going to shoot himself, and wasn't going to let me make an ass of him; and with that he marched off.
Q. And that is all?
A. All.
Q. He didn't, by chance, in saying 'I'm not going to shoot myself,' lay any particular emphasis on the last word?
A. Certainly not that I distinguished. The whole suggestion is too impossible to any one who knows my friend.
Q. Thank you, Mr Bickerdike. That will do.
If witness had entered the box like an oppressed man, he left it like a beaten. His cheeks were flushed, his head bowed; it was observed that he purposely avoided looking his friend in the face as he passed him by on his way to the rear of the Court.
The excitement was now extreme. All attention, in the midst of a profound stillness, was concentrated on a figure come more and more, with each adjustment of the legal spy-glass, into a definite focus. It was felt that the supreme moment was approaching; and, when the expected name was called, a sigh like that of a sleeper turning seemed to sound through the hall. The prisoner in the dock had already long been overlooked—forgotten. He had been put up, it seemed, as a mere medium for this deadlier manifestation, and his purpose served, had ceased to be of interest. He stood pallid with his hands on the rail before him, rolling his one mobile eye, the only apparently mystified man in Court.
As Hugo entered the box, he was seen to be deadly pale, but he held his head high, and stood like a soldier, morally and physically upright, facing his court-martial. He folded his arms, and looked his inquisitor steadily in the eyes. Mr Fyler retorted with an expression of well-assured suavity. He was in no hurry. Having netted his fowl, he could afford to let him flutter awhile. He began by leading his witness, only more briefly, the way he had already conducted him at the Inquest, but with what new menace of pitfalls by the road! The discovery of the body; the incident of the gun (prejudiced now in the light of the possible moral to be drawn from witness's hurry to get rid of it, and his loathing of the weapon) the marked agitation of his aspect when seen by the gardener; the interval in the house, with its suggestion of nervous collapse and desperate rallying to face the inevitable ordeal; that significant outburst of his at the Inquest, when he had exclaimed against an implication of guilt which had never been made; his admission of having bantered the deceased about an assignation—an admission fraught with suspicion of the scene of passion and recrimination which had perhaps more truthfully described their encounter—all these points were retraversed, but in a spirit ominously differing from that in which they had formerly been reviewed. And then at last, in a series of swift stabbing questions and hypotheses, issued the mortal moral of all this sinister exordium:—
Q. You chaffed the deceased, you say, sir, with being where she was for an assignation?
A. Something of the sort.
Q. Something of the sort may be nothing of the sort. I suggest that this so-called chaff is better described as a quarrel between you. Will you swear that that was not the case?
A. No, I will not.
Q. Then your statement was a fabrication?
A. I accused her of being there to meet some one.
Q. You accused her. I am your debtor for the word. Will you swear that she was not there to keep an assignation, and that assignation with yourself?
A. I swear it most positively. Our meeting was quite accidental.
Q. On your part?
A. On my part.
Q. But not on hers?
A. I am not here to answer for that.
Q. Pardon me; I think you are. I suggest that, expecting you to return by the Bishop's Walk, she was waiting there to waylay you?
A. She might have been, on the chance.
Q. I suggest you knew that she was?
A. I say I did not know.
Q. Well, you took that way at least, and you met and quarrelled. I suggest that the person you accused her of being there to meet was yourself, and that the dispute between you turned upon the question of her thus importuning you? Is that so?
A. (After a pause.) Yes.
Q. And I suggest further that the reason for her so importuning you lay in her condition, for which you were responsible?
A. Yes. It is true. (Sensation.)
Q. She entreated you, perhaps, to repair the wrong you had done her in the only way possible to an honourable man?
A. (Witness seeming to stiffen, as if resolved to face the whole music at last.) She had already urged that; she pressed to know, that was all, if I had made up my mind to marry her. I refused to give a definite answer just then, since my whole career was at stake; but I promised her one within twenty-four hours. I was very much bothered over the business, and I dare say a bit impatient with her. She may have upbraided me a little in return, but there was no actual quarrel between us. I went on after a few minutes, leaving her there by herself. And that is the whole truth.
Q. We will judge of that. You say the meeting was none of your seeking?
A. I do say it.
Q. Now, please attend to me. You were on your way back, when you met deceased, from the shooting party which you had abandoned?
A. Yes.
Q. You have heard what the last witness stated as to a certain incident connected with that morning. Was his statement substantially true?
A. I can't deny it. It was a momentary mad impulse.
Q. And, being forestalled, was replaced possibly by an alternative suggestion, pointing to another way out of your difficulties?
A. I don't know what you mean. It was just the culmination, as it were, of a desperate mood, and was regretted by me the next instant.
Q. Was it because of your desperate mood that you refused to be parted from your gun when you finally left the shoot and returned home?
A. No; but because I declined to be made to look a fool.
Q. I put it to you once more that you knew, when you went home, carrying against all persuasion, your gun with you, that the deceased would be waiting for you in the copse?
A. It is utterly false. I knew nothing about it.
Q. Very well. Now, as to the time of your meeting with the deceased. I have it stated on your sworn evidence that that was at three o'clock or thereabouts, and that after spending some ten minutes in conversation with her, you resumed your way to the house, which you reached at about 3.15, appearing then, according to the evidence of a witness, in a very agitated state.
A. I was upset, I own—naturally, under the circumstances.
Q. What circumstances?
A. Having just promised to do or not do what would affect my whole life.
Q. No other reason?
A. No.
Q. Did you hear the sworn statement of the witness Henstridge and another that the report of the shot, which could have been none other than the fatal shot, was heard and fixed by them at a time estimated at a few minutes after three o'clock, that is to say, at a time when, according to your own admission, you were in the deceased's company?
A. It is an absolute lie.
The crisis had come, the long-expected blow fallen; but, even in the shock and echo of it, there were some who found nerve to glance from son to father, and wonder what super-dramatic incident yet remained to them to cap the day's excitement. They were disappointed. Not by one sign or movement did the stiff grey figure on the Bench betray the torture racking it, or concede to their expectations the evidence of an emotion—not even when, as if in response to some outspoken direction, a couple of policemen were seen to move silently forward, and take their stand on either side the witness box. And then, suddenly, Counsel was speaking again.
He addressed the Bench with an apology for the course imposed upon him, since it must have become apparent, as the case proceeded, that the tendency of the prosecution had been to turn more and more from its nominal objective in the dock. There had been a reason for that, however, and he must state it. The inquiries of the police, and more especially of the distinguished detective officer, Sergeant Ridgway, had latterly, gradually but certainly, led them to the conclusion that the motive for the crime, and the name of its perpetrator, must be looked for in another direction than that originally, and seemingly inevitably, indicated. This change of direction had necessarily exculpated the two men concerned in to-day's proceedings; but it had been thought best to submit one of them to examination for the purpose of exposing through the evidence affecting him the guilt of the presumptive criminal. That having been done, the police raised no objection to Cleghorn, like the other accused, being discharged.
He then went on to summarize the evidence, as it had come, by gradual degrees, to involve the witness Kennett in its meshes—the scrape into which the young man had got himself, his dread of exposure, the wildness of his talk and behaviour, the incriminating business of the gun, and, finally, the sworn testimony as to the time of the shot—and he ended by drawing a fanciful picture of what had occurred in the copse.
'I ask your worships,' he said, 'to picture to yourselves the probable scene. Here has this young Lothario returned, his heart full of death and desperation since the frustration of his first mad impulse to end his difficulties with his life, knowing, or not knowing—we must form our own conclusions as to that—that his destined victim awaits him at the tryst—if tryst it is—her heart burning with bitterness against the seducer who has betrayed her; each resolved on its own way out of the trouble. She upbraids him with her ruin, and threatens in her turn to ruin him, unless he consents to right the wrong he has done her. He refuses, or temporizes; and she turns to leave him. Thinking she is about to put her threat into immediate execution, goaded to desperation, the gun in his hand—only tentatively adhered to at first, perhaps—decides him. He fires at and kills her. The deed perpetrated, he has to consider, after the first shock of horror, how best to conceal the evidences of his guilt. He decides to rest the lethal weapon against a tree (with the intention of asserting—or, at least, not denying, if subsequently questioned—that he had left it with one of its barrels loaded), concocts in his mind a plausible story of a cigarette and an oversight, and hurries on to the house, where, in his private room, he spends such a three-quarters of an hour of horror and remorse as none of us need envy him. His nerve by then somewhat restored, he decides to take the initiative in the necessary discovery, and, affecting a sudden recollection of his oversight, returns to the copse to fetch his gun, with the result we know. All that it is open to us to surmise; what we may not surmise is the depth of depravity in a nature which could so plan to cast the burden of its own guilt upon the shoulders of an innocent man.'
One dumb, white look here did the son turn on the father; who met it steadfastly, as white and unflinching.
'We have heard some loose talk, your worships,' went on Counsel, 'as to the appearance of a mysterious fourth figure in this tragedy. We may dismiss, I think, that individual as purely chimerical—a maggot, if I may so describe it, of the witness Henstridge's brain. There is no need, I think you will agree with me, for looking beyond this Court for a solution of the problem which has been occupying its attention. Painful as the task is to me, I must now do my duty—without fear or favour in the face of any considerations, social or sentimental, whatsoever—by asking you to commit for trial, on the capital charge of murdering Annie Evans, the witness Hugo Staveley Kennett, a warrant for whose arrest the police already hold in their hands.'
Not a sound broke the stillness as Counsel ended—only a muffled rumble, like that of a death-drum, from the wheels of a passing wagon in the street outside. And then the blue-clad janissaries closed in; the Magistrates, without leaving the Bench, put their heads together, and the vote was cast.
'Hugo Staveley Kennett, we have no alternative but to commit you to take your trial on the capital charge.'
A sudden crash and thump broke in upon the verdict Cleghorn had fainted in the dock.