The Colour of Murder

by Julian Symons

  “The prosecution has questioned the veracity of these blackouts. In his final speech Mr Hayley suggested that they might have been convenient excuses for Wilkins to absent himself from home. You will give what weight you think proper to that idea, but it is contradicted by the evidence of several defence witnesses, relating to periods when Wilkins could have had no obvious reason for lying about his actions.

  “The prosecution case is based upon three main points – Wilkins’ visit to the Langland Hotel on Monday which, it is suggested, provided the immediate motive for murder, the evidence of Mr Fanum and the hall porter at the Prince Regent, Shaddock, relating to the late evening, and the bloodstains on his clothes. I will consider these factors in turn.

  “You have heard the evidence of the receptionist at the Langland Hotel, of Miss Morton’s father and of her fiancé, regarding Wilkins’ behaviour when he learned of Miss Morton’s engagement. He looked, Mr Jackson said in an expressive phrase, ‘like a sheep hit by a pole-axe’. Obviously it came as a great shock to him. Later on he had a conversation with Mr Lonergan, after he had left the hotel, and you may think this conversation was of particular significance. In it Wilkins said that Sheila Morton had been ‘pretty keen’ on him, that he had had a job to keep her away from him. He implied that she had been his mistress. Lonergan, very properly, told him to shut up. What Wilkins said on this occasion was quite the reverse of the truth, but, members of the jury, what kind of state must the man have been in to say it? Was this merely, as defence counsel suggested, the kind of thing any man might say at such a time, no more than distasteful boasting? Or does it show the passionate frustration, leading to violent action, suggested by the prosecution? You must make up your minds about that.”

  Little Mr Justice Morland sipped water as delicately as a bird. Hayley listened to him impassively, arms folded, face becomingly serious. Magnus Newton nodded, blinked and puffed his cheeks. Their juniors looked suitably alert. John Wilkins stared across court at the judge with a face empty of expression. In the day’s somnolent heat it was hard to believe, as the old man’s voice droned on and on, seeming to get slower and slower, that anything serious was at stake.

  “…the question of times,” he was saying. “This is a point of the greatest importance, in which the evidence given by various witnesses is irreconcilable. Mr Fanum, you will remember, said that he saw a man come up from the beach to the promenade at twenty minutes to twelve, and identified that man as Wilkins. In his cross-examination Mr Newton made great play with a phrase the witness had used about a cry he heard on the beach, a cry which had in it, he said, ‘the colour of murder’. It is a fanciful phrase, and you may think that Mr Fanum is prone to such flights of fancy. He said the man’s face was pale, and Mr Newton pointed out that all faces look pale under sodium lighting of the kind installed at this point on the beach. He suggested that Mr Fanum might have seen a photograph of the prisoner and was influenced by that in making his identification. You will have to decide how much significance to attach to Mr Fanum’s evidence. Is he merely fanciful, or was it really the prisoner he saw coming up from the beach?

  “Linked with Mr Fanum’s evidence is that of the hall porter Shaddock, who testified that the prisoner came in at ten minutes to twelve. On the other hand Mrs Wilkins, who looked at her bedside clock when the prisoner came into the bedroom, says it was then twenty-five minutes to twelve. Clearly they cannot both be correct. It is suggested by the defence that Shaddock was misled because he was reading the time only by a reflection of the clock in the hall. It is suggested by the prosecution that Mrs Wilkins was deceived by a clock outside, which struck the three-quarters when she thought it struck the half-hour. You will make up your minds which of these witnesses was mistaken. I must point out, however, that if you believe Mrs Wilkins, you will necessarily discount Mr Fanum’s evidence, since if Wilkins entered his bedroom at twenty-five minutes to twelve he cannot possibly have been seen on the promenade five minutes later. I must point out, too, that the usual distrust felt of evidence given by a wife in her husband’s defence has little application here. Much of what Mrs Wilkins had to say, under cross-examination, was so damaging to her husband, and it was evidence given with such remarkable composure, that she may be acquitted of any desire to shield him.

  “And there is a further point related to this time question. If you find that Mrs Wilkins’ evidence was correct, and that both Mr Fanum and Shaddock were mistaken, that does not by any means indicate that Wilkins was innocent of the crime.

  “I come now to the evidence of the bloodstains. About these we must be very clear. There were two patches on Wilkins’ sports jacket and two on his trousers, that were certainly blood. The prosecution say they got there when Wilkins murdered Sheila Morton. The defence attribute their presence to the fact that at some time during the evening Wilkins cut his thumb. Wilkins and Miss Morton were of the same blood group. You will have to decide whether these four small but distinct stains could possibly have been made when Wilkins cut his thumb. The cut was a quite considerable gash, nearly two inches long and fairly deep. Do you believe that this cut, however it was made (I will come to that later), could have caused the stains on jacket and trousers which you saw? Those four distinct patches? You may think that only under the pressure of some extreme emotion could the prisoner have failed to notice that blood was dripping on to his clothes.

  “I must put into a different category the stains, invisible to the naked eye, which were identified as bloodstains by the scientific witness, Mr Ritchie, through his use of what is known as the benzidine test. But are these marks bloodstains? You have heard Mr Ritchie’s evidence, and Mr Newton’s penetrating cross-examination. Mr Ritchie says that in his experience the benzidine test always produces positive results, and he maintained this in face of a number of textbooks. When, however, I asked him whether he could say whose blood it was, or when it came there, he admitted that he could offer no evidence on those matters. I think I am bound to direct you that it would not be safe, where experts disagree so violently, to rely on the results of the benzidine test. You will consider as evidence only the four stains positively identified as blood.”

  Magnus Newton let his cheeks collapse slowly, with a sigh of satisfaction. He had been certain in his own mind that the benzidine test results would be thrown out, yet there was something comforting in hearing the actual words spoken. It was a point gained, and a considerable one.

  “I come back, again, to the four undisputed bloodstains. In making up your minds about them you will have to remember the evidence of the wife. She told us that when Wilkins came in he said he must wash his hands, and she saw dried blood on them. There was quite a lot of blood, she said, on his right hand, and possibly some on his left. She noticed the dark stains on his jacket sleeve, mentioned those also, asked – very naturally – where he had been, and received the reply that she should mind her own business. She says that he snatched the jacket away from her, and hung it on the back of a chair. He did not, however make any attempt to remove the stains. Was this because he simply did not know what he was doing, or because he realised that such an attempt could do no good now that his wife had seen the stains, or because he really had nothing to hide in connection with them?

  “Then there are questions you must ask yourselves, also, about the evidence given by Miss Prenton for the defence. She is a prostitute and one, as you will have gathered, who is not ashamed of her calling. Her evidence, taken alone, does not establish the prisoner’s innocence. It does, however, place him in her house from roughly nine-thirty to eleven o’clock. It would have taken him some fifteen minutes to walk back to the spot where Sheila Morton was murdered, and that would mean he did not meet her until, say, a quarter past eleven or a little later. Mr Newton argued very forcibly that this left him little time to murder Miss Morton and be back in his room at the hotel at twenty-five minutes to twelve. This argument, of course, only has validity if you accept Mrs Wilkins’ evidence about the time of his return.
Mr Newton also argued that if we accept Miss Prenton’s story which places the time of meeting no earlier than eleven fifteen, Miss Morton must have been out walking for more than an hour when she met Wilkins. He said that this was most unlikely, since her father was ill, and she had said she would not be very long. Does this argument seem to you conclusive? Bear in mind that she knew a night nurse was installed, that there was nothing she could do for her father, and that she had been with him continuously since his heart attack on Saturday evening. It is for you to decide whether Mr Newton laid undue stress on this point.

  “But you must consider, further, whether you do give credit to Miss Prenton’s evidence.

  "At one point her story is inconsistent with that told by Mrs Wilkins. She says that the prisoner opened a tin of baked beans for her, cut his thumb, and used his handkerchief to stanch the bleeding. According to Mrs Wilkins there was no handkerchief round the prisoner’s thumb when he arrived home, and no bloodstained handkerchief in his pockets.

  "Then there are other curious features of Miss Prenton’s story. In spite of her professed sympathy for the prisoner she did not come forward immediately, not until a private investigator employed by the prisoner’s family had called on her. She said that this was because she feared the effect of calling police attention to her occupation, a statement which somewhat lost force when Mr Hayley pointed out that she had several convictions, the last only a few weeks ago, so that she was already well known to the police. The prosecution suggested that she had been moved solely by a desire to be the centre of interest, and that her story bore the stamp of falsehood. Is that a sufficient motive for her action in coming forward into the glare of publicity? You had the opportunity of seeing Miss Prenton in the witness box, and you must decide. Does it seem credible to you that this prostitute should take a man home for an hour and a half, refuse to accept money from him, and even cook him a snack meal? And if you do not believe this part of her story, can you believe the rest of it? Can you believe her account of the opening of the baked beans, and the cut thumb, and the handkerchief wound round it, which so strangely disappeared…?

  “I come now to the prisoner’s attitude when interviewed by the police. On Tuesday morning he had gone again to the Langland Hotel and had been told of Sheila Morton’s death. Inspector Kenning has said that Wilkins showed anxiety at once when the stains on his jacket were pointed out to him, and mentioned that he had cut his thumb. Was this a perfectly natural anxiety, since he knew Sheila Morton had been murdered, or did it show a consciousness of guilt? You will remember that he made no attempt at any time to expunge the marks from the jacket or trousers. Then there is the remark he made at the time of his arrest – ‘I loved Sheila. I would never have hurt her if I’d been in my right mind.’ Was this the remark of a murderer who knew he had been found out, or does it simply mean what the prisoner said in the box – ‘I had a blackout. I didn’t know what I might have done.’ You are confronted all the time with the fact that the prisoner says he can offer no help in relation to the events of that Monday evening after he left Lonergan. He is saying in effect, ‘I do not know what I did that evening. I cannot help you. I must leave it to you to find out the truth.’

  “Lastly, I must say to you something about the question of motive, which was so much stressed by Mr Hayley in his closing speech.

  "The motive attributed to the prisoner is that of frustrated passion. He had developed an extravagant fantasy about Sheila Morton, of that there can be no doubt. You have heard how he pursued her at the tennis club, you have heard how he induced his wife to come down to Brighton when he heard that Sheila Morton was there. What did he hope to achieve by this? You may think that he hardly knew himself, that he hoped for some extraordinary combination of circumstances that would enable him to carry on an affair with her even when his wife was in Brighton. Of course, such a combination of circumstances could never have occurred, and if it had come to pass we may be sure that Sheila Morton would not have accepted his advances. But still, consider the effect upon such a mind as the prisoner’s of the sudden discovery that she was engaged to be married. He does not deny that this was a shock to him, and that it set him off on an evening of drinking. You may think that there is a pattern suggestive of the fear of violence in his actions, and it is certainly very striking that he preferred to visit a doctor he did not know, like Doctor Glenister, rather than his own local doctor. Was this, perhaps, because he was afraid of what he might learn about his own nature…?

  “In his closing speech for the defence Mr Newton suggested, if I followed him rightly, that the prisoner’s psychological make-up was of such a kind that had he murdered anybody it would have been his wife – that their mutual lack of confidence had developed on his side at least into hatred, and that in his mind she stood in the way of his achieving happiness with Sheila Morton. You will give such weight to this argument as you feel it justifies, but you may think it is a far-fetched idea, particularly in view of the fact that Wilkins had just heard of Sheila Morton’s engagement. Mr Newton also suggested that Sheila Morton might have gone from the promenade to the beach, and have been attacked there by a complete stranger.

  "Does it seem to you within the bounds of possibility that such a girl as Sheila Morton would have gone down to the beach on this very dark night, alone?

  “I must stress, however, that it is not necessary for the defence to provide an acceptable explanation of the events of that tragic Monday night, or to say how Sheila Morton met her death. The onus is upon the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that John Wilkins was guilty of the crime with which he is charged. However strong his motive, that is not in itself enough. Suspicion, however strong, is not enough. You must be certain…”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They took John Wilkins down to his cell when the judge had finished, talking to him firmly but kindly, telling him that he must be patient and that perhaps the jury would not be long. The prisoner, however, showed no sign of impatience. He sat down with perfect docility in the cell and, hands upon knees, stared at the blank wall. What was he thinking – or was he thinking anything? one of the prison officers, who was of an imaginative turn of mind, wondered.

  The time after the jury has retired in a murder trial, the supreme climax of the case as the uninformed might think, is in fact anticlimactic, a period of waiting during which spectators stretch and yawn, and counsel leave the court to smoke and talk in their rooms.

  “What do you think?” Charlie Hudnutt asked Newton, as they sat smoking in the little room provided for them. Hudnutt sat on a table swinging his legs, Newton paced the floor.

  “If they’re back inside an hour, all right. If it’s longer –” He did not complete the sentence.

  “That chap second from left, the one with the handlebar moustache, was lapping up everything you said.” Newton grunted. “Old Morland was fair enough. Always is. He was bound to throw that benzidine stuff out, wasn’t he? Well, it’s over. I’ll be glad to get back to London.”

  Newton nodded to him abruptly, opened the door and went out. Charlie Hudnutt shrugged his shoulders and then, whistling, consulted his diary. He felt entitled to a little relaxation. A telephone call to Gillian now – or should it be Margaret? His whistling became louder.

  In the gallery a good many spectators stuck it out, reading newspapers or books, and whispering among themselves. Below them sat a number of people involved in the case. Old Mrs Wilkins sat with hands folded over her stomach, her heavy features composed. She did not speak to Uncle Dan, who shuffled his long legs on the floor, fumbled in his pocket for a paper, and once or twice put up a hand to hide the persistent tic in his cheek. Mr Morton sat near them, jaunty in a silk shirt and a black bow tie with white spots on it, his delighted glance twinkling every so often up to the watchers in the gallery as though he would like to say to them: “Here I am, the father of the murdered girl, the sick man who has so triumphantly survived.” Putting his hand into his pocket Mr Morton stea
lthily withdrew it, conveying to his mouth a custard cream biscuit.

  In the row behind him Betty Prenton sat, next to May Wilkins. May’s eyes stared directly forward as though fixed, unaware of the disreputable member of society who sat so close to her, only a few inches between them.

  The judge’s summing up had finished at eleven o’clock. At a quarter to twelve Uncle Dan said, “Disagreement. Must be good for the boy, mustn’t it? Odds on a not guilty verdict now, I’d say.”

  “They cannot find him guilty,” Mrs Wilkins said.

  “Of course not,” Uncle Dan said hastily. “Think I shall stretch my legs a minute. They won’t be back yet. Might have a cup of tea over the road. Keep my eye on what happens here, of course. Coming?”

  She shook her head. He went out of the court into the heat, crossed the road and ordered a cup of tea in a small café. He noticed Betty Prenton at a table farther inside the room, and walked over to her.