by Bruce, Leo
“Or it may have been almost anyone,” added Sir William; “but the point is that an outsider could have, and possibly did, enter the house that evening.”
“Exactly, sir,” said Beef; “there you have it. But I think that my most important piece of evidence concerns this swordstick,” he continued, brandishing the weapon which he had purchased from the second-hand shop. “But again I’ve got to tell you that I can’t get anything definite out of it. It may mean everything, or nothing, and I don’t believe that we shall ever know. I found it in a shop in Sydenham during my investigations, and when I inquired how that shop had come by it they said that they had bought it from an old tramp on what turned out to be the morning after the murder. With a great deal of trouble and some expense I’ve been able to trace that old tramp.” Beef leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked from Sir William Petterie to Nicholson as though he expected to be congratulated.
“He is the most disreputable old man,” he continued, “and sleeps in a place which, if I was still in the Service, I should never have allowed. But policemen aren’t as smart as they were, and sanitary inspectors don’t see everything. Unfortunately, when I came to interview this individual, I was unable to extract any information at all. He mumbles a lot of nonsense about foreign places, but whether he does that to make you think he’s dippy, or whether he really is a bit simple, nobody in the district seems to be able to say. But what we do know about him is that Ed Wilson saw him coming out of the drive of the Cypresses early the following morning, carrying a stick. Now I have reason to suppose that someone has slept in that summer-house recently….”
“What reason?” said Nicholson.
Beef pulled out his pocket-case and presently showed us, between his wide fingers, the little pieces of charred paper which he had recovered from the floor of the summer-house when we searched it. “These,” he said. “You know what they are? Pieces off fag-ends what somebody’s used for a pipe. Now let’s suppose that this old bird went to the summer-house that evening and slept there, found the swordstick, and walked out the following morning with it over his arm.”
“Exactly,” said Sir William. “Let’s suppose that. How does that connect him with the crime? Is there any reason to think that he was connected?”
“Well, it seems a bit funny,” said Beef. “A man is stabbed to death, and on the morning after an old man what’s been hanging round the house all night walks out with a swordstick in his hand. It’s a bit of a coincidence, as you might say,” and he shook his head warningly.
“But if, as you suggest, he had some connection with the crime,” put in Nicholson, “do you suppose he would have stayed on the scene of it for the rest of the night, and walked away in broad daylight? And if he’d used that stick to commit a murder with, would he have sold it in a local shop?”
“I didn’t say he’d done it,” pointed out Beef, “but I don’t think it was all just by chance that he was there.”
“Do you think that stick was used at all in the murder?”
“Well, there’s that stain on the cushion,” said Beef.
“Yes,” said Sir William, “there is that.”
“Now there’s only one more point I want to make,” said Beef, “and that’s that sentence that Duncan overheard: ‘It’s in my surgery now.’ When I asked Stewart Ferrers about that he said he couldn’t remember its being said, and couldn’t think what it could have been about. Now when a man’s on trial for his life his wits are pretty wide awake. If that sentence had just referred to a book he’d lent Benson, or anything of that sort, it’s ten to one he could have given some explanation. But I thought, by the way he said it, that he knew very well what Benson was talking about and just wasn’t going to admit it.”
“What do you suppose it was?” asked Sir William.
“Ah, there you’ve got me,” said Beef. “When the man you’re trying to clear won’t tell you what he knows, you can’t get very far, can you? Well, gentlemen, that’s all I’ve been able to find out, and I can’t piece it together to find anyone guilty.”
“I see,” said Sir William, turning a ring slowly on his finger. Then suddenly the lawyer looked up. “I don’t think we shall need to call you, Sergeant,” he said briskly, “though you’ve given us some important evidence. I shall get Mr. Nicholson to get in touch with that girl, and have the mechanic’s evidence clear. I’m afraid there won’t be much point in producing this swordstick, or referring to the matter of the poisoned whisky.”
“How will you go about getting him off, then?” asked Beef ingenuously.
Nicholson came primly to the rescue. “It’s not usual for an investigator employed in a case like this to question the counsel on the methods he proposes to use,” he explained, and Beef subsided.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to do any better,” he said, “but there you are,” and he reached for his bowler hat.
“You’ve done very well,” said Sir William, and shook hands warmly. But I felt that he was the only man in the room who thought this. I myself was dismally disappointed in Beef, and blamed myself for having an almost superstitious faith in his abilities. When we were out in the open air, I tried to put this to him.
“You realize, I suppose, that if Stewart Ferrers is found guilty, not only will you have failed to save an innocent man, but have ruined you own reputation for ever?”
Beef seemed oddly stoical—even indifferent. “Can’t help that,” he said. “I done my best.”
“Why didn’t you produce that bit of paper which you found in Peter Ferrer’s bedroom?”
“Well, I couldn’t do that,” he replied, “not after searching in there without permission, could I?”
“Why so scrupulous? You thought yourself justified in going through his things.”
“Well, but it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” said Beef, reasonably enough. “If it was something that would help to get Stewart Ferrers off, that would be different. But I don’t know where it fits into this case—if it fits in at all.”
I tried to rally him. “It isn’t like you, Beef,” I said. “Your methods may have been unorthodox, but you always seem to get your man.”
“I need a drink,” said Beef irritably, and he led the way into a public bar.
Chapter XXVI
THE trial of Stewart Ferrers for the murder of Dr. Benson did not arouse the last ecstasy of public opinion. Its headlines, unlike those of many other murder cases, were no larger than those which announced a new war in the East, or a battle in Spain. But it was taken seriously enough for the evening papers to give whole pages of type to the evidence.
The Court, of course, was crowded, and when I looked at the faces in the spectators’ gallery it seemed to me that nothing but boredom could have brought all those people together, waiting, neither patient nor impatient, in their seats. Neither relatives nor acquaintances, they had come to watch the slow mental torture of the prisoner in the dock, though to them the whole case was unreal and novelettish, as if the characters involved were no more than cardboard cut-outs designed from the latest thriller. I had expected an avid, even bloodthirsty, interest to be obvious on each face. I had expected to see signs of carefully nursed cruelty in the way this woman leaned forward in her seat. But there was nothing of the sort to be seen anywhere. There was a low hum of voices such as a crowd of people make when they talk desultorily about their gardens or the weather, and no more interest in each succeeding witness, after the case had started, than they would have shown if each were a little twisted piece of wood that fitted somewhere in a puzzle. They could feel neither pity nor pleasure for the fate of the people involved, for to them they were not real people. It passed away an hour or so.
Beef and I had been given seats, and intended to witness the whole case. I was not very comfortable about it, feeling that too many people knew about Beefs unsuccessful part in the matter, and my own association with him. I still had some hope that during the evidence an idea might occu
r to him which, before it was too late, might even yet enable him to suggest an arrest. But he himself seemed surly and almost inattentive.
When Stewart was eventually brought in there was the usual noticeable hush over the court, and I myself was stangely disturbed. When I had last seen Stewart in prison he had been drawn and worried, but he had given me the impression that it was his innocence and a complete bewilderment at the police’s case which had caused it. Now as I watched him enter the Court I felt for the first time in the case the possibility that Beefs assurance might be misplaced. Stewart seemed to be quite unaware of the hundreds of eyes which were fixed on him, although it was obvious that he was nervous to a degree of hysteria. The dark shadows under his eyes made them look unnaturally large even though he kept them cast down as though to ward off, until the last possible moment, the sight of those come to try him. But somehow, and it is difficult to say quite why, I felt that in his actions he was moving as only a guilty man would move. There seemed to be neither defiance nor hope in him.
The case was to be tried by Mr. Justice Seebright, whose reputation I already knew. He belonged to a class of judges which the newspapers have greatly popularized, and one with which I found myself in little sympathy. By posing as unworldly, living in a rarefied atmosphere untouched by the normal trivialities of life, they were able to bring out questions of unbelievably simple ingenuousness to the immense and satisfying laughter from the body of the Court. I could not tell whether Mr. Justice See-bright would indulge his exhibitionism in this way during this particular case, but I hoped, for the sake of the man on trial, that he would not. I may be conservative in feeling that it is bad taste to joke a man’s life away, but I felt that Stewart was in no condition to be made part of a music-hall turn.
There was, however, another side to this man which had been little publicized by the press, and that was a wide and observant knowledge of human psychology. However objective a judge should be, it is not possible for him to be a completely passionless cypher, and previous cases which I had read showed Mr. Justice Seebright as being more concerned with the human application of the law rather than an automatic servility to its precise letter.
I do not feel that any purpose would be served by my writing here the long and painful story of those proceedings. They can be found in any newspaper of the time, and except at certain moments there was nothing in them which would seem to have helped Beef to establish the prisoner’s innocence, or me to persuade myself (for it had come to that) that Stewart had, in fact, not murdered Dr. Benson.
I remember the prosecuting counsel, Harris FitzAllen, whose narrow bespectacled eyes turned shrewdly on Stewart during his cross-examination seemed to affect him strangely. His cross-examination lasted the whole of one afternoon, and there were one or two memorable moments in it.
“You know,” said FitzAllen at one point, “that your finger-prints were on the knife, and that moreover they were the only finger-prints there?”
Stewart assented almost inaudibly.
“Can you explain that?”
“I suppose I must have used the knife some time during that day. I often play with it if I am sitting at my desk thinking.”
“But that does not explain why there is only one set of finger-prints on it.”
“No,” said Stewart quietly without attempting to give any further explanation, and the counsel passed on to another question.
Later, when the question of the pre-selection gears came up, Stewart’s answers were even less satisfactory. After he had told the Court about wishing to buy a new car as a reason for questioning the chauffeur, the counsel turned suddenly to him.
“And who did you intend to buy this car from?” he asked sharply.
There was a pause before Stewart replied, and a faint shadow seemed to cloud his eyes for a moment. “I had not actually taken the matter as far as that,” he said at last. “I had heard much about the car and wanted to buy a new one, anyway, but I thought it best to find out a little about that particular sort of gear from Wilson before doing anything definite about it. I have a rather cautious nature,” he went on with a slight smile, “and I always like to know the details of anything before I undertake it.”
“And yet you asked your chauffeur the exact details of driving such a car? One would think the purchase very near for you to take such an interest in that side of the question. How often do you drive your own car, usually?”
“Very seldom,” said Stewart, “but I think you over-estimate my interest. It was rather Wilson’s mechanic’s zeal. As far as I remember I merely asked him a general question as to their suitability, and the detailed answer I received was rather a reflection of his own interest than of mine.”
When Freda entered the box the prosecuting counsel was frankly cynical. He asked her very few questions, merely revealing the fact that she had had no idea of the time she had seen the two figures in the drive. He appeared to attach little importance to the second figure. Moreover, the mechanic had not actually seen the other person but only what had seemed to be a movement in the bushes.
Slowly the case dragged on over a second and then into a third day. For the most time the courtroom was intolerably hot and stuffy, and the terrible passiveness of the crowd seemed to be becoming intolerable to the prisoner. At the beginning of the case he had appeared not to notice them at all, but now whenever some sound, even of a cough, came from them, I could see his neck tighten suddenly and his hands clench together in his lap. He was showing the strain of these days very clearly, sometimes sitting for an hour or more staring at nothing without any movement or recognition that evidence was still being given and witnesses questioned.
Strangely enough, it was Mrs. Duncan’s evidence which was the most damning in a way, for although she had very little to tell she stressed her late husband’s devotion to the family so much that when she had finished it appeared that Duncan could only have committed suicide for one reason—to shield Stewart. Of course, she herself knew nothing, but I felt that her insistence on such phrases as “he knew a lot that he wouldn’t tell,” and “the knowledge was too much for him,” could have only one interpretation placed on it by the jury.
The case for the prosecution, on the other hand, was brisk and to the point. One could see the hand of Stute behind it as each point was given and corroborated by finger-print experts, doctors, policemen, and Stute himself. Beef moved restlessly in his seat, but he appeared to be taking more interest in the case than he had been at first.
“Can’t you think of anything at all?” I asked despairingly, but he simply shrugged his shoulders heavily.
“What can I do?” he said. “They won’t use all the evidence I gave them now. I’d like to see what that Fitz, whatever his name is, would say to me if I told him there was poison in the whisky. I can’t understand Sir William at all, he doesn’t seem to have established the possibility of it being someone outside the house.”
But the biggest surprise of the prosecution came when the last of their witnesses seemed to have been called and then we heard the name Wilkinson and remembered the “surly Tapster.” I looked at Beef in astonishment. Neither of us had any idea that Stute had got on to the man, and since Beef had obtained nothing from him, we had rather easily assumed that he had nothing to tell.
He came into the court-room and entered the box with a deep scowl on his face as though the whole business was a criminal waste of his time. The counsel had some difficulty in extracting any information from him at all, but in little growls and short grudging sentences his evidence was pieced together. In effect it was that he had been the witness of a quarrel between Stewart and Dr. Benson. It had taken place some months back when he was still actively supervising the garden at the Cypresses. He was, he said, working in a part of the kitchen garden which was screened from the house by the row of cob-nut trees. Stewart and Benson had come out of the house in the middle of an argument and continued it on the lawn, so that he could hear the angry sound of their voices but c
ould not gather what was the subject of their quarrel. Mr. Wilkinson was quite sure on this point. He did not know what the argument had been about—all he could say was that they had certainly argued. More than that, it had eventually become an almost uncontrolled fight with both men apparently threatening each other. At the height of it Dr. Benson had suddenly turned away and gone round the side of the house and Stewart had stamped indoors slamming the door behind him.
With this witness the prosecution completed their case. Watching the whole thing through, I was impressed by the widely different characters of the two lawyers and the methods they used to try to convince the jury of their case. It was not that either of them used anything else than the facts already produced in the court-room, but in their methods of seeing those facts one recognized something of the two men. Sir William Petterie spoke brilliantly, so that one felt behind his defence a great knowledge of men, a culture and an understanding that would perhaps, had he been a writer, have made of him one of the great humanitarians of which Zola is the best example. He did not try to trick his audience into believing something which he himself did not feel to be completely true, he tried to show in clear, forceful, and persuasive language the real human side of the case which the police’s evidence ignored.
On the other hand, FitzAllen was cold and efficient, giving no more or less than the full value of each piece of evidence. He seemed to be saying to jury, “I’m only here to extract this for you—it is for you to decide its meaning and its importance.” He had a straightforward case to present, the importance of which lay in the clear sequence of facts and evidence bearing on them. I thought he made his case in the shrewdest possible way. He too had much experience of mankind—but it was at the jury that he directed this knowledge. He seemed to have summed them up both as a group and as individuals.