Conan Doyle for the Defense

by Margalit Fox

  Escorted from his basement cell by two policemen, Slater entered the courtroom—or rather he seemed to glide upward, “like a pantomime genie,” as one writer has put it, through a trap door in the floor. It was an eerie harbinger in reverse of what might happen on the scaffold.

  * * *

  —

  THE CASE AGAINST SLATER was deeply flawed. The brooch clue had long since broken down. So had the scenario of his supposed flight from justice. Nor could the Crown, even after tireless investigation, demonstrate a single link between Oscar Slater and Marion Gilchrist. But the crime was a newspaper sensation, and the police had the onus of solving it. By chance, fortune had delivered them a more than suitable suspect. To build an artificial case against Slater, then, witness identification would have to shoulder the burden, as it had at the extradition proceedings.

  “Evidence of this kind might be of some value if supplementary to some strong ascertained fact,” Conan Doyle would point out. “But to attempt to build upon such an identification alone is to construct the whole case upon shifting sand.”

  The prosecution’s case would take up the first two and a half days. Unlike their English and American counterparts, Scottish trials have no opening statements by counsel, instead cutting straight to the examination of witnesses. The Crown planned to present ninety-eight of them, who besides Lambie, Barrowman, Arthur Adams, and various law officers included a spate of neighbors who claimed to have seen the “watcher”; Allan McLean, the bicycle dealer who had led the police to Slater; forensic experts; a Glasgow subway clerk; and Hart, the procurator fiscal. The defense had just thirteen names on its witness list.

  Testifying for the Crown, Glasgow detectives glossed over their initial reason for suspecting Slater. “It is one of the new points against the police,” a period article in the Empire News said, “that the Jury was entirely misled at the trial as to the nature of the originating cause of the arrest of Slater….As little as possible, apparently, was said about the brooch clue….The Lord Advocate told the Jury that the description furnished by [the] eye-witness, Barrowman, had been so accurate it had enabled the police to trace the prisoner.”

  The undisputed star of day one was Lambie, last to enter the box. “Helen Lambie’s evidence had greatly stiffened during the three months between the New York and the Edinburgh proceedings,” Conan Doyle would write. “In so aggressively positive a frame of mind was she on the later occasion, that, on being shown Slater’s overcoat and asked if it resembled the murderer’s, she answered twice over: ‘That is the coat,’ although it had not yet been unrolled.”

  Lambie’s testimony had stiffened in other ways. On the night of the murder, she told the police that she hadn’t seen the intruder’s face. Later, in New York, she said she recognized Slater by his walk, as well as by his height and hair color. Now, cross-examined by Slater’s lawyer McClure, she cemented her identification even more firmly:

  Q. Was it only his walk and his height and dark hair?

  A. Yes, and the side of his face…

  Q. You have told us to-day that you recognised him by his face?

  A. The side of his face.

  Q. I will read the question again that was put in America, “Now, will you describe, please, this man that you saw on that night that passed you at that doorway, the height if you can tell, the clothes if you can tell, or such other description of him that would in any way identify him to anybody else?” and your answer is, “The clothes that he had on that night he has not got on to-day, but his face I could not tell”—did you say that?

  A. Not the broad face, but the side.

  Q. The Commissioner said, “What did you say about his face?” and your answer is, “I could not tell his face; I never saw his face.” Now, when you said these things in America and stated on two different occasions that you never saw his face, why do you go back upon that now and say that you saw the man’s face and recognised him?

  A. I did see his face….

  Q. Why did you say “I could not tell his face; I never saw his face”?

  A. I did not see the broad face. He held down his head, and it was only the side of his face….

  Q. What are you going on now?

  A. I am going on his face now.

  There was a reason for Lambie’s newly acquired certainty about Slater’s face, though it would not be widely known for years.

  * * *

  —

  THE CROWN’S CASE CONTINUED the next day and was if anything even more damning. Testifying was Mary Barrowman, who, like Lambie, was more certain than ever of Slater’s guilt. Shown a black felt hat taken from his luggage, she identified it as the Donegal cap that the intruder had worn on the night of the murder. (The hat presented to her was no Donegal cap.)

  Cross-examined about her New York testimony, Barrowman disclosed the following:

  Q. You were shown a photograph at Mr. Fox’s office before you went to the Court?

  A. Yes.

  Q. How many photographs?

  A. Three…

  Q. Now, as soon as you saw the photographs, did you recognise the man?

  A. Yes…

  Q. You recognised the photographs at once?

  A. One of them.

  Q. Then when you went down to the Court were you looking for a man who was like the photograph?

  A. Yes.

  Barrowman’s courtroom testimony differed markedly from her original statement to the police. This time, she took pains to say that the man running from the scene had bumped into her as he fled and had done so directly under a streetlamp—two points she hadn’t mentioned initially. Those things, she now said, let her scrutinize him minutely as he tore down the street.

  Also testifying on day two was Arthur Adams. Characteristically moderate, he said only that Slater was a man “closely resembling” the intruder. He added: “It is too serious a charge for me to say from a passing glance.”

  A third Crown witness was Annie Armour, a ticket clerk in the Glasgow subway.*2 She testified that on the night of the murder, she was on duty behind the window at the Kelvinbridge station, not far from Miss Gilchrist’s home. At about 7:45—more than half an hour after the crime—she saw a dark-haired man come tearing into the station. The man, who wore a light overcoat, flung down a penny for his fare and, without stopping to collect the proffered ticket, dashed for the stairway leading to the platform. She did not notice any blood on his clothing. Two months later, at Glasgow’s Central Police Station, Armour identified Slater as having been that man. It did not hurt that she, too, had been shown Slater’s photograph.

  To account for the unnatural length of time it had apparently taken Slater to walk from Miss Gilchrist’s house to the Kelvinbridge station (normally a journey of about seven minutes), Ure, the prosecutor, asserted that he had spent the intervening half hour weaving up and down side streets, to put police off the scent, before entering the subway.

  The last major Crown witness on day two was the forensic pathologist John Glaister. A Glasgow University faculty member, Glaister was professor of medical jurisprudence, the field at the nexus of medicine and the law that is today known as forensic medicine. At the Crown’s request, he had examined the crime scene, led the autopsy of Miss Gilchrist’s body, and conducted forensic examinations of Slater’s hammer, raincoat, and other belongings.

  Glaister, born in 1856, was something of a legend in Scottish criminal courts. “Over his 33 years as a medical jurist he developed his innate sense of theatre which both served the purpose of the prosecuting counsel and endeared Glaister to press and public,” two historians have put it. “Smoking thick black cheroots incessantly, he gave an impression of immense energy. In old age his hawk-like features, shiny bald head, vigorous moustache and small ‘imperial’ beard, together with his idiosyncratic retention of the Victorian style of silk hat, frock coat
and wide Gladstonian collar, made him an unmistakable figure….Like other great medical detectives, Glaister believed himself completely impartial in his evidence, but his reputation and sharp repartee had an obvious power to diminish the defence’s case.”

  Taking the witness box, Glaister read the autopsy report into the record. “The body was that of a well-nourished elderly woman,” it said, continuing:

  The following marks of violence were seen externally: Generally speaking, the face and head were both badly smashed….Several fractures of the lower jaw, upper jaw, and cheek bones were found, the bones being driven into the mouth….On deeper examination it was found that the bones of the orbit, the nose, and the forehead were completely smashed in and broken into many pieces….

  The entire hair of the scalp, which was grayish at the roots, was, with the scalp itself, saturated and covered with blood….

  On removal of the brain it was found that the skull was fractured through its base, extending from the front right to the back….On dissecting [the chest] cavity, it was found that the breast bone had been fractured completely through its entire thickness….On the right side of the chest in front, fractures of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were found, the third rib being broken in three different places….

  From the foregoing examination we are of the opinion…that the said injuries were produced by forcible contact with a blunt weapon, and that the violence was applied with considerable force.

  Glaister went on to state confidently that Slater’s eight-ounce hammer could have caused those injuries. “I did not find in the dining-room,” he said, “any implement which looked as if it had been used for the purpose of murdering Miss Gilchrist,” a statement that conspicuously overlooked the heavy chair that seemed a more likely weapon.

  On Slater’s raincoat, Glaister identified twenty-five stains, most brownish red. Microscopic examination, he said, showed that some contained red corpuscles resembling those of mammalian blood. But in so small a sample, tests of the period could not distinguish between human blood and that of any other mammal. Though Glaister did not acknowledge the fact, the stains on Slater’s coat could have been, in the words of Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol, “more of gravy than of grave.”

  The defense would put on its own medical expert, but by then Glaister’s testimony had almost certainly done its work. “In the absence of more definite proof, the medical evidence should have counted for very little,” the historians have written. “But in the hysterical atmosphere surrounding the trial, Glaister’s air of certainty doubtless influenced the jury.” They added: “The case later provided…substantial instruction to police cadets in Glasgow as an example of how not to conduct a murder inquiry.”

  * * *

  —

  DAY THREE SAW THE last Crown witnesses. Among them was McLean, the bicycle dealer, who recounted Slater’s efforts to sell his pawn ticket. Midway through the day the Crown rested its case, though it would do worse to Slater before the trial was over.

  Throughout the prosecution’s case, Slater’s lawyer, McClure, had seemed well intentioned but weak. On day two, cross-examining Superintendent John Ord, he did get him to admit that the brooch clue had proved worthless:

  Q. Did you find out that the crescent brooch which Slater was endeavouring to sell…was one which had been in pawn originally in the month of November?

  A. Yes…

  Q. Was it the coincidence in the date, 21st December, of the last advance upon this brooch that made you think it might be Miss Gilchrist’s brooch?

  A. Most assuredly that had some bearing on the case.

  Q. Did you discover immediately that this was not the brooch at all?

  A. We knew that morning.

  But for reasons known only to him, McClure failed to ask the essential follow-up question: Why, when the clue collapsed, did police pursue Slater anyway? His examination of other Crown witnesses was also lackluster. He did not probe the inconsistencies in Lambie’s and Barrowman’s testimony, nor press Glaister on the question of how a small hammer could have caused Miss Gilchrist’s devastating injuries, nor ask the police to account for the fact that Slater’s fingerprints were found nowhere in her flat.

  “McClure would have scored heavily if he had merely tabulated some of the lunacies of which Slater was guilty, supposing that he was the murderer,” Hunt has written. “This admittedly intelligent man is supposed to have got rid of the clothes in which he was watching the house, whilst retaining those in which he murdered the old lady, together with the murder weapon. Once inside the house he did not leave the door open anywhere for a quick escape, wasted time murdering its occupant when all he wanted was her jewels,…ran away from the house in a direction entirely opposite to his nearest point of safety, and then (without changing his clothes) walked out into the streets….Then, when the hue-and-cry for the murderer was on, he walked all over Glasgow, just as usual, making no attempt to conceal his movements.” But McClure invoked none of these things.

  Nor could McClure protect his own witnesses from the Crown’s suggestive cross-examination. Testifying for the defense, Slater’s friend Hugh Cameron replied this way when cross-examined by Ure, the Lord Advocate:

  Q. When you first knew him in 1901 what was the name he went by?

  A. Oscar Slater…

  Q. After you became acquainted with him did you become aware what he was?

  A. He was a gambler.

  Q. Anything more?

  A. Yes, I had it that the man, like a great number of those who came to Glasgow, lived on the proceeds of women.

  Q. Did you not know from the first that his mode of living was on the proceeds of women’s prostitution?

  A. I cannot say that I knew from the first.*3

  As in New York, Slater was advised by counsel not to testify on his own behalf. At issue were his uncertain English and heavy accent; of even greater concern were the profound ways in which he discomforted middle-class British society. “The treasured and conspicuous emblems of this civilized style were good manners at the table, a piano in the parlor, a well-thumbed library, concert tickets and museum visits, a program to help others help themselves, and the public subscription to a favorite charity,” Peter Gay has written, describing the late Victorian bourgeoisie. “Naturally, temperance in all its meanings figured prominently in this idealized self-portrait.”

  To post-Victorian sensibilities, Slater’s foreignness, his Jewishness, and his intemperate livelihood were disturbing enough. But what may have rattled the public even more was that in a period still highly dependent on social signifiers, Slater was unsettlingly beyond category. To outward appearances he was a superlatively well-tailored man of leisure, yet he was no gentleman. For all his alleged debauchery, he had seemed, until the murder case against him, neither desperate nor depressed—he appeared, in fact, almost constitutionally cheerful. Slater’s entire mien (one to which, by the prevailing mores of the time, he was not remotely entitled) confounded the protective ease with which social diagnoses were traditionally made.

  Testifying for the defense, Schmalz and Antoine added to the discomfort. Taking the witness box, Schmalz stated that Slater was dining at home at the time of the murder. Cross-examined by Ure, however, she disclosed information that was bound to cause the jury immense disquiet:

  Q. Who engaged you?

  A. Madame Junio.

  Q. Was she living then at 45 Newman Street, London?

  A. Yes.

  Q. She received gentlemen there?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And among the gentlemen was Oscar Slater one?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did he come oftener than the other gentlemen did?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did he sometimes live there?

  A. He stayed sometimes there….

  Q. Stayed th
ere as the husband of Madame Junio?

  A. Yes…

  Q. When you came to Glasgow, to 69 St. George’s Road…did anybody come to the house at all except Madame and Slater himself?

  A. Yes, friends of Madame came.

  Q. Gentlemen in the evening?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And did Madame go to the Empire and Palace Music Halls?

  A. Yes…

  Q. What did Slater do during the day?

  A. He went out sometimes in the morning and in the afternoon—I do not know what he did.

  Q. So far as you know, he did no business?

  A. Not so far as I know.

  Antoine’s turn in the box only made things worse. The Victorian ideal of the woman as the “angel in the house”—articulated in Coventry Patmore’s effusive 1854 poem of that name—was still held dear in the early twentieth century. This domestic angel came in two varieties: virginal (the virtuous daughter) and maternal (the doting, asexual wife and mother). Antoine was conspicuously neither. Even her avowed profession, music-hall singer, was shameful enough. “The public careers of actresses, singers, and dancers were considered almost by definition to connote sexual promiscuity,” the scholar Rosemary Jann has written. “The expression ‘a young person of the theater’…was a euphemism for a prostitute.”*4

  Antoine, too, alibied Slater as having been home at the time of the murder. But by the time she took the witness box, Schmalz had told the court about her stream of gentleman callers. Between them, the two women managed to trigger the full spectrum of late Victorian unease: over class, over sex, over foreignness, and perhaps above all over knowing—or rather not knowing—one’s place in the rigorous social order of the day. Offered the chance to cross-examine Antoine, the Lord Advocate replied simply, “I have no questions to ask,” a clear indication that as far as the prosecution was concerned, she had already been remarkably effective.