Trial and Error Read online

  “It is,” nodded Mr Fuller. “It’s that bracelet.”

  “Oh I don’t think Alfie’s as bad as that, sir. At least—well, I hope not, for Edie’s sake. But I know he was in a very bad state for money just about then. Borrowed all Edie’s savings, he did. Borrowed! She might just as well have thrown them into the river, and that’s what I told her. Still I hope Alfie hasn’t been and done anything so silly as that. Though it’ll be a lesson to Edie, that it will. And better soon than too late, as the saying goes.”

  “So far as you know, then, Mrs Greenhill,” resumed Mr Fuller in a slightly more official tone, “this man was never in the house?”

  “No, so far as I know . . . but Edie might have brought him in when I was out. I wouldn’t put it past her. Artful, that’s what Edie’s been getting since she took up with Alfie Brewer.”

  “Yes, that’s just what I had in mind.” He turned to Sir Ernest. “We know the bracelet hasn’t been pawned yet, and I doubt whether one of the fences has it: it’s a bit too hot for any of the regulars. If this man did take it, it’ll probably be still on his premises. We could go round there and . . .” His voice tailed off in doubt.

  “No!” Mr Todhunter gave a sudden cackle. “Ring Up Scotland Yard and tell them to get a search warrant and go and look for it. They’ve never believed I had it. It would serve them right to find it.”

  This suggestion being approved, Mr Fuller went off to telephone.

  Sir Ernest bent formidable brows on Mrs Greenhill, sitting very much upright on the extreme edge of her chair.

  “Not a word of this to the girl, mind.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Mrs Greenhill shivered. “I hope I know what’s right.”

  “I hope so too,” pronounced Sir Ernest,

  6

  It was exactly four hours later that Scotland Yard rang up to announce, in the blandest tones, that they had discovered the missing bracelet concealed in the chimney in Alfred Brewer’s room, and they wished to thank Mr Todhunter kindly for the information.

  “Thank Chitterwick,” grunted Sir Ernest, making the honourable amend; and Mr Chitterwick looked so pleased that his face became almost incandescent.

  “Now we have got a case,” gloated young Mr Fuller.

  “Humph! I’d like to know a bit more about that empty punt,” Sir Ernest muttered ungratefully.

  7

  Only one other incident occurred before Mr Todhunter’s trial was due to begin which deserves to be recorded.

  Two days before this was to happen Felicity Farroway visited him in the afternoon and made a very painful scene.

  Getting into his bedroom without difficulty, she accused Mr Todhunter, at first temperately and then with growing hysteria, of immolating himself upon the altar of friendship. Her contention was that Mr Todhunter never had shot Miss Norwood and very well knew he hadn’t and that he was thus blackening himself in the eyes of the world out of sheer nobility and that she, Miss Felicity Farroway, could not bear it and did not propose to bear it.

  Mr Todhunter, finding this all very painful and difficult, answered her at first mildly and then with an exasperation that matched her rising hysteria.

  When Miss Farroway reached the point of saying that if Mr Todhunter was going to confess in order to save her family she would confess, too, and she would make young Mr Palmer confess anything he could confess, and apparently there was going to be an all-round orgy of altruistic confession—why then the voices from Mr Todhunter’s bedroom became so loud that Mrs Greenhill in fright called up young Mr Fuller, who promptly bundled Miss Farroway out of the house.

  Mr Todhunter wiped his brow in relief.

  “Women,” said Mr Todhunter, “are the devil.” And he said it with conviction, for he was genuinely anxious that Miss Farroway might put her wild threats into action.

  However Mr Chitterwick settled all that. Having heard the story, he paid a visit to Miss Farroway’s dressing room that same evening (feeling the wildest kind of dog imaginable) and persuaded her into reason.

  No further obstacle cropped up to mar the smoothness of Mr Todhunter’s chosen path.

  PART IV

  Journalistic

  SCENE IN COURT

  CHAPTER XV

  The civil trial of Mr Lawrence Todhunter for the murder of Jean Norwood opened at the Old Bailey on a sunny March morning. Mr Todhunter himself was an interested spectator.

  Outside Court No. 4, in which the case was to be tried, Mr Todhunter shook hands for the first time with his own counsel, Mr Jamieson, a tall, stringy man with a wig that gave the impression of being one size too small for him, and a melancholy look. He swept the look over Mr Todhunter and observed merely in a despondent voice and with a marked Scotch accent:

  “This is a very strange business.”

  It was Sir Ernest who, now as earlier, acted as Mr Todhunter’s cicerone, let him into the court, indicated the dock and introduced Mr Todhunter to such eminent legal persons as craved the honour. There was no doubt that Mr Todhunter was the lion of the occasion. An impressive hush greeted his appearance; the press, gossiping by their tables below the dais, bent their scrutiny on him as one man; the officials forgot their dignity and stared. There was the usual attempt to get a pretrial statement out of him, but Sir Ernest kept the reporters at a distance with jovial competence.

  It all seemed very informal to Mr Todhunter as he stood with counsel and solicitors and discussed the weather.

  Then Sir Ernest struck himself on the brow as he remembered his duty and made Mr Todhunter sit down on the witness benches with a solicitude worthy of a trained nurse.

  “But I feel perfectly well,” protested Mr Todhunter, who did in fact feel better than for weeks, perhaps in relief at having been able to rise from his bed and get into action at last.

  “My boy,” replied Sir Ernest impressively, “it’s my job to keep you alive till this trial’s over, and I’m going to do it. Jamieson, ask for a seat for him in the dock at once, will you? You’ve heard of his condition of course?”

  Mr Jamieson agreed to ask that his client must be seated, but in a voice that suggested grave doubt whether the request would be granted.

  The hum of low chatter filled the court. Mr. Todhunter, glancing up once, caught sight of a row of heads craning over the balcony rail at him, with eyes on hatpins and mouths open like goldfishes’. He hastily looked away.

  By degrees the court filled up. An eminent French lawyer was pointed out to Mr Todhunter and an equally eminent American judge. Evidently his case had roused not merely national but international interest. Mr Todhunter was also surprised to see a number of exquisitely dressed ladies present who were staring at him and whispering among themselves with a lack of manners which shocked his old-fashioned ideas about women and their behaviour in public. Somewhat petulantly he asked Sir Ernest who they were.

  “Bitches,” replied the gentleman robustly.

  “But what are they here for?”

  “To gorm at you, my boy, and get a cheap kick out of it.”

  “But how did they get in?”

  “Ah,” said Sir Ernest, “you’d better ask the lord mayor and the sheriffs that. They—”

  “Hush!” interrupted young Mr Fuller. “Here they come.”

  There had been three loud knocks which seemed to come from behind the judge’s dais, and everyone hurriedly stood up, Mr Todhunter among them. Then, through the door on which the knocks had been made, a small procession entered the court. First the lord mayor, very stout and stately in his robes and chain, then three aldermen, the sheriffs and undersheriffs, and last, tiny and dwarfed, the weazened old figure of the judge himself, Mr Justice Bailey, who never made jokes and ruled his cases without an unnecessary word.

  The procession seated itself on the bench, the lord mayor glowing in the exact middle. In a thin voice the judge invited the distinguished French lawyer and the eminent American judge to occupy two thrones there too. The bench was filled from end to end.

  “Go on,�
� whispered Sir Ernest to Mr Todhunter.

  “Where?” asked Mr Todhunter stupidly.

  “Into the dock.”

  With a rather shamefaced air which he tried to make casual Mr Todhunter sidled into the dock. A policeman politely held the door open for him. There were no warders inside, for Mr Todhunter was not under arrest. Feeling lost in the empty spaciousness, Mr Todhunter drifted to the front and clutched the ledge in a spasm of nervousness, blinking at the judge. He felt exceedingly foolish and a little annoyed in consequence.

  Then he became aware that someone was intoning something in a rapid monotone.

  “If anyone can inform my lords, the King’s justices, or the King’s attorney general, ere this inquest be taken between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, of any treasons, murders, felonies or misdemeanours done or committed by the prisoner at the bar, let them come forth and they shall be heard; for the prisoner now stands at the bar on his deliverance. And all persons who are bound by recognizance to prosecute or give evidence against the prisoner at the bar, let them come forth, prosecute and give evidence, or they shall forfeit their recognizances. God save the King.”

  Immediately on this somebody else popped up, in wig and gown, from just under the dais and addressed Mr Todhunter directly.

  “Lawrence Butterfield Todhunter, you are charged with the murder of Ethel May Binns, on twenty-eighth September last. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

  “Eh?” said Mr Todhunter, startled. Fog a moment he wondered wildly whether his case had been mixed up with someone else’s, for he could not remember ever having murdered an Ethel May Binns. Then he remembered, vaguely, having been told that Jean Norwood’s real name was . . . well, it must have been Ethel May Binns.

  “Oh, guilty,” said Mr Todhunter in some confusion. He caught sight of an expression of consternation on the large face of Sir Ernest, where there was plenty of room for it. The sight shook him. “I mean,” said Mr Todhunter, trying to pull himself together, “not guilty.”

  “You plead not guilty?” said the clerk of the court firmly.

  “Not guilty of murder,” replied Mr Todhunter, trying to imitate the firmness.

  He clutched at the rail, conscious of all those eyes on him and still more conscious that he had made a very foolish start. Would they find him not guilty but insane? he wondered wildly.

  Mr Jamieson was making a request in a not very hopeful tone.

  “My lord, I appear for the accused. He is in a somewhat delicate state of health. May he be permitted to sit before the jury is sworn.”

  His lordship inclined his ancient head. “Certainly.”

  Mr Jamieson looked a little surprised.

  A friendly-looking policeman put a chair behind Mr Todhunter, who sat back in it gratefully. Everything still seemed a little unreal to him, like a scene on the stage.

  He watched the process of swearing in the jury with a sensation of unreality.

  There were no challenges, and Mr Todhunter found himself with a jury of ten men and two women to decide his fate. He gazed at them and then realised that they were all busily avoiding his eye. Mr Todhunter coloured faintly and turned away to the little clerk of the court. He was not used to having his eye avoided.

  The clerk of the court addressed the jury.

  “Members of the jury, the prisoner at the bar, Lawrence Butterfield Todhunter is charged with the murder of Ethel May Binns, on twenty-eighth of September last. To this indictment he has pleaded not guilty, and it is your charge to say, having heard the evidence, where he be guilty or not.”

  The jury looked extremely solemn.

  “Not so much of the ‘Butterfield,’ ” thought Mr Todhunter testily. He disliked his second name and had for the last twenty years successfully concealed it.

  With an informality which mildly astonished Mr Todhunter, Sir Ernest Prettiboy then rose in a leisurely way and, wrapping his gown round him rather like a bath towel, began to speak in pleasant, easy tones.

  “May it please your lordship and members of the jury, this is a most unusual case. As we all know, another man has already been convicted of the crime with which the accused is charged and is now in prison awaiting execution; that execution having been postponed until the result of this trial is known. That in itself is sufficiently unusual. To make it more so, this is a private prosecution for murder. My instructions come, not from the Crown, but from a private citizen: a Mr Furze.

  “Mr Furze is actuated by the highest motives of public policy in this almost unprecedented course, for, as you will hear from his own lips, he is in a very special position; a position which was able to convince him that the death of Miss Binns was in fact due to the agency of Mr Todhunter here and not to that of Vincent Palmer, who now lies under sentence of death for this crime. You will learn the reasons which did so convince Mr Furze, not the least of which is that several weeks prior to the crime Mr Todhunter announced to Mr Furze, in a private conversation, his intention to commit a murder of some person then undecided, and he actually consulted Mr Furze as to who might be a suitable person for a victim.

  “Convinced therefore that it was an innocent man who had been condemned for this crime, Mr Furze has instigated these proceedings in order to rectify what he considered an appalling error of justice; and he instigated them, I may say at once, with the full connivance and approval of Mr Todhunter himself, who is even more anxious to get this error of justice put right and who has, I submit, behaved with the greatest rectitude and propriety ever since the unfortunate deed which he himself so fully admits. For it will be my duty,” said Sir Ernest very solemnly, “a rather painful duty but one which I cannot avoid, to emphasise that the proper authorities—I needn’t mince matters: I refer to the police and the law officers under the Crown—these authorities, to whom Mr Todhunter unfolded his story immediately he heard of the arrest of Vincent Palmer, attached no importance to this story.

  “I do not impugn their motives,” went on Sir Ernest, preparing to impugn as hard as he could. “I do not for one moment suggest that the reason why they refused to listen to Mr Todhunter’s startling confession was that they had already arrested one man, whom they fully expected to convict, and they would not wish to admit themselves publicly in the wrong. Not for one moment did anything like that occur, I am convinced. Such wickedness—for there would be no other word for it—savours more of other police forces perhaps than ours. No, I am certain that they believe quite genuinely that they had the right man and equally genuinely that Mr Todhunter was an interfering crank. But Mr Todhunter could not accept that nor allow himself to be muzzled when another man’s life was at stake. Nor could those who were fully aware of the true facts. That is why this case has been brought in this almost unique way, with the accused in the dock a free man, not under arrest; free, if he liked, to walk straight out of this court and disappear in an instant; for though this grave charge of murder has been sworn against him, the proper authorities are still unimpressed. They have refused to grant a warrant against him. It is my duty, members of the jury, to prove to you that the authorities are wrong and Mr Furze right.

  “My lord,” said Sir Ernest impressively, “I must ask your indulgence. It is not the practice for members of our profession to make personal explanations concerning the cases in which they are engaged. Nevertheless I feel that in a case so remarkable as this a personal explanation would not be out of place; and with your lordship’s permission I should like to say a word or two about my own position. My lord, members of the jury, I will only say this. It would ill become me, as a member of the Bar and having acted many times under the instructions of the Crown, to appear in a case of this gravity, in which the action of the proper authorities must incur severe criticism both from myself and from my learned friend, unless I fully realised my responsibilities.

  “I do so realise them. I was brought into the case by chance many weeks ago as a casual witness to certain discoveries tending to establish the guilt of the accused; as in
deed you will hear in due course, when you will see the unprecedented spectacle of counsel entering the witness box to testify himself against the accused. Such an action is indeed unprecedented, but I can find nothing to make it impossible; and in a case in which so many features are unique perhaps this conduct, unprofessional as it might appear in any ordinary case, will not merely be condoned but will meet with sympathy and approval. For I feel that I should tell you that it was owing to those discoveries and those incidents which I was called upon to witness that I became a firm believer in the innocence of the man already condemned for this distressing crime; a belief in which subsequent events has still more securely confirmed me. And in consequence I appear before you in this case today, voluntarily and even eagerly, not to serve the ends of man—any man—but those of pure justice. My lord, members of the jury, you will, I hope, pardon this personal diversion, which I felt was owed as much to you as to myself.

  “Let me now tell you, in their proper sequence, of the events which led up, in my submission, to the death of Ethel May Binns.

  “On the fourteenth of June last Mr Todhunter paid a visit to his doctor . . .”

  Sir Ernest then went on to give a brief outline of Mr Todhunter’s activities from the moment when he learned that his days, if not numbered, were already in the hands of the Higher Accountant, through the dinner party at which he had received such fatal if unwitting advice, to the actual moment when Mr Todhunter voluntarily entered the dock that morning.

  Mr Todhunter considered it an admirable summary.

  He wondered sardonically whether he ought to be taking notes of his sensations for an article in the London Review. There would be plenty of time to get it written before the date of execution arrived—provided indeed that he were ever found guilty.