by Ellen Wood
“Did they appear to be on good terms?”
“Very good terms, sir. Mr. Brittle was laughing when he opened the gate for the deceased, and told him to mind he did not kiss the grass; or something to that effect.”
“Were you close to them?”
“Quite close, sir. I said ‘Good night’ to the deceased, but he seemed not to notice it. I stood and watched him over the grass. He reeled as he walked.”
“What time was this?”
“Nigh upon half-past eleven, sir.”
“Did you detect any signs of people moving within the house?”
“Not any, sir. The house seemed quite still, and the blinds were down before the windows.”
“Did you see any one enter the gate that night besides the deceased?”
“Not any one.”
“Not the prisoner?”
“Not any one,” repeated the policeman.
“Did you see anything of the prisoner later, between half-past one and two, the time he alleges as that of his going home?”
“I never saw the prisoner at all that night, sir.”
“He could have gone in, as he states, without your seeing him?” interposed the prisoner’s counsel.
“Yes, certainly, a dozen times over. My beat extended to half-a-mile beyond Mr. Dare’s.”
One witness, who was placed in the box, created a profound sensation: for it was the unhappy father, Anthony Dare. Since the deed was committed, two months ago, Mr. Dare had been growing old. His brow was furrowed, his cheeks were wrinkled, his hair was turning white, and he looked, as he obeyed the call to the witness-box, as a man sinking under a heavy weight of care. Many of the countenances present expressed deep commiseration for him.
He was sworn, and various questions were asked him. Amongst others, whether he knew anything of the quarrel which had taken place between his two sons.
“Personally, nothing,” was the reply. “I was not at home.”
“It has been testified that when they were parted, your son Herbert threatened his brother. Is he of a revengeful disposition?”
“No,” replied Mr. Dare, with emotion; “that, I can truly say, he is not. My poor son, Anthony, was somewhat given to sullenness; but Herbert never was.”
“There had been a great deal of ill-feeling between them of late, I believe.”
“I fear there had been.”
“It is stated that you yourself, upon leaving home that evening, left them a warning not to quarrel. Was it so?”
“I believe I did. Anthony entered the house as we were leaving it, and I did say something to him to that effect.”
“The prisoner was not present?”
“No. He had not returned.”
“It is proved that he came home later, dined, and went out again at dusk. It does not appear that he was seen afterwards by any member of your household, until you yourself went up to his room and found him there, after the discovery of the body. His own account is, that he had only recently returned. Do you know where he was, during his absence?”
“No.”
“Or where he went to?”
“No,” repeated the witness in sadly faltering tones, for he knew that this was the one weak point in the defence.
“He will not tell you?”
“He declines to do so. But,” the witness added, with emotion, “he has denied his guilt to me from the first, in the most decisive manner: and I solemnly believe him to be innocent. Why he will not state where he was, I cannot conceive; but not a shade of doubt rests upon my mind that he could state it if he chose, and that it would be the means of establishing the fact of his absence. I would not assert this if I did not believe it,” said the witness, raising his trembling hand. “They were both my boys: the one destroyed was my eldest, perhaps my dearest; and I declare that I would not, knowingly, screen his assassin, although that assassin were his brother.”
The case for the prosecution concluded, and the defence was entered upon. The prisoner’s counsel — two of them eminent men, Mr. Chattaway himself being no secondary light in the forensic world — laboured under one disadvantage, as it appeared to the crowded court. They exerted all their eloquence in seeking to divert the guilt from the prisoner: but they could not — distort facts as they might, call upon imagination as they would — they could not conjure up the ghost of any other channel to which to direct suspicion. There lay the weak point, as it had lain throughout. If Herbert Dare was not guilty, who was? The family, quietly sleeping in their beds, were beyond the pale of suspicion; the household equally so; and no trace of any midnight intruder to the house could be found. It was a grave stumbling-block for the prisoner’s counsel; but such stumbling-blocks are as nothing to an expert pleader. Bit by bit Mr. Chattaway disposed, or seemed to dispose, of every argument that could tell against the prisoner. The presence of the cloak in the dining-room, from which so much appearance of guilt had been deduced, he converted into a negative proof of innocence. “Had he been the one engaged in the struggle,” argued the learned Q.C., “would he have been mad enough to leave his own cloak there, underneath his victim, a damning proof of guilt? No! that, at any rate, he would have taken away. The very fact of the cloak being under the murdered man was a most indisputable proof, as he regarded it, that the prisoner remained totally ignorant of what had happened — ignorant of his unfortunate brother’s being at all in the dining-room. Why! had he only surmised that his brother was lying, wounded or dead, in the room, would he not have hastened to remove his cloak out of it, before it should be seen there, knowing, as he must know, that, from the very terms on which he and his brother had been, it would be looked upon as a proof of his guilt?” The argument told well with the jury — probably with the judge.
Bit by bit, so did he thus dispose of the suspicious circumstances: of all, except one. And that was the great one, the one that nobody could get over: the refusal of the prisoner to state where he was that night. “All in good time, gentlemen of the jury,” said Mr. Chattaway, some murmured words reaching his ear that the omission was deemed ominous. “I am coming to that later; and I shall prove as complete and distinct an alibi as it was ever my lot to submit to an enlightened court.”
The court listened, the jury listened, the spectators listened, and “hoped he might.” He had spoken, for the most part, to incredulous ears.
CHAPTER XI.
THE WITNESSES FOR THE ALIBI.
When the speech of the counsel ended, and the time came for the production of the witness or witnesses who were to prove the alibi, there appeared to be some delay. The intense heat of the court had been growing greater with every hour. The rays of the afternoon sun, now sinking lower and lower in the heavens, had only brought with them a more deadly feeling of suffocation. But, to go out for a breath of air, even had the thronged state of the passages permitted the movement, appeared to enter into no one’s thoughts. Their suspense was too keen, their interest too absorbing. Who were those mysterious witnesses, that would testify to the innocence of Herbert Dare?
A stir at the extreme end of the court, where it joined the other passage. Every eye was strained to see, every ear to listen, as an usher came clearing the way. “By your leave there — by your leave; room for a witness!”
The spectators looked, and stretched their necks, and looked again. A few among them experienced a strange thrill of disappointment, and felt that they should have much pleasure in being allowed the privilege of boxing the usher’s ears, for he preceded no one more important than Richard Winthorne, the lawyer. Ah, but wait a bit! What short and slight figure is it that Mr. Winthorne is guiding along? The angry crowd have not caught sight of her yet.
But, when they do — when the drooping, shrinking form is at length in the witness-box; her eyes never raised, her lovely face bent in timid dread — then a murmur arises, and shakes the court to its foundation. The judge feels for his glasses — rarely used — and puts them across his nose, and gazes at her. A fair girl, attired in the s
imple, modest garb peculiar to the sect called Quakers, not more modest than the lovely and gentle face. She does not take the oath, only the affirmation peculiar to her people.
“What is your name?” commenced the prisoner’s counsel.
That she spoke words in reply, was evident, by the moving of her lips: but they could not be heard.
“You must speak up,” interposed the judge, in tones of kindness.
A deep struggle for breath, an effort of which even those around could see the pain, and the answer came. “They call me Anna. I am the daughter of Samuel Lynn.”
“Where do your live?”
“I live with my father and Patience, in the London Road.”
“What do you know of the prisoner at the bar?”
A pause. She probably did not understand the sort of answer required. One came that was unexpected.
“I know him to be innocent of the crime of which he is accused.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because he could not have been near the spot at the time.”
“Where was he then?”
“With me.”
But the reply came forth in so faint a whisper that again she had to be enjoined to speak louder, and she repeated it, using different words.
“He was at our house.”
“At what hour did he go to your house?”
“It was past nine when he came up first.”
“And what time did he leave?”
“It was about one in the morning.”
The answer appeared to create some stir. A late hour for a sober little Quakeress to confess to.
“Was he spending the evening with your friends?”
“No.”
“Did they not know he was there?”
“No.”
“It was a clandestine visit to yourself, then? Where were they?”
A pause, and a very trembling answer. “They were in bed.”
“Oh! You were entertaining him by yourself, then?”
She burst into tears. The judge let fall his glasses as though under the pressure of some annoyance, every feature of his fine face expressive of compassion: it may be, his thoughts had flown to daughters of his own. The crowd stood with open mouths, gaping with undisguised astonishment, and the burly Queen’s counsel proceeded.
“And so he prolonged his visit until one o’clock in the morning?”
“I was locked out,” she sobbed. “That is how he came to stay so late.”
Bit by bit, with question and cross-questioning, it all came out: that Herbert Dare had been in the habit of paying stolen visits to the field, and that Anna had been in the habit of meeting him there. That she had gone in on this night just before ten, which was later than she had ever stayed out before: but, finding Hester had to go out for medicine for Patience, she had run to the field again to take a book to the prisoner; and that upon attempting to enter soon afterwards, she found the door locked, Hester having met the doctor’s boy, and come back at once. She told it all, as simply and guilelessly as a child.
“What were you doing all that time? From ten o’clock until one in the morning?”
“I was sitting on the door-step, crying.”
“Was the prisoner with you?”
“Yes. He stood by me part of the time, telling me not to be afraid; and the rest of the time — more than an hour, I think — he was working at the wires of the pantry window, to try to get in.”
“Was he all that time at the wires?”
“It was a long time before I remembered the pantry window. He wanted to knock up Hester, but I was afraid to let him. I feared she might tell Patience, and they would have been so angry with me. He got in, at last, at the pantry window, and he opened the kitchen window for me, and I went in by it.”
“And you mean to say he was all that time, till one o’clock in the morning, forcing the wires of a pantry window?” cried Sergeant Seeitall.
“It was nearly one. I am telling thee the truth.”
“And you did not lose sight of the prisoner from the time he first came to the field, at nine o’clock, until he left you at one?”
“Only for the few minutes — it may have been four or five — when I ran in and came out again with the book. He waited in the field.”
“What time was that?”
“The ten o’clock bell was going in Helstonleigh. We could hear it.”
“He was with you all the rest of the time.”
“Yes, all. When he was working at the pantry window I could not see him, because he was round the angle of the house, but I could hear him at the wires. Not a minute of the time but I heard him. He was more than an hour at the wires, as I have told thee.”
“And until he began at the wires?”
“He was standing up by me, telling me not to be afraid.”
“All the time? You affirm this?”
“I am affirming all that I say to thee. I am speaking as before my Maker.”
“Don’t you think it is a pretty confession for a young lady to make?”
She burst into fresh tears. The judge turned his grave face upon Sergeant Seeitall. But the sergeant had impudence enough for ten.
“Pray, how many times had that pretty little midnight drama been enacted?” he continued, whilst Anna sobbed in distress.
“Never before,” burst forth a deep voice. “Don’t you see it was a pure accident, as she tells you? How dare you treat her as you might a shameless witness?”
The interruption — one of powerful emotion — had come from the prisoner. At the sound of his voice, Anna started, and looked round hurriedly to the quarter whence it came. It was the first time she had raised her eyes to the court since entering the witness-box. She had glanced up to answer whoever questioned her, and that was all.
“Well?” said Sergeant Seeitall, as if demanding what else she might have to communicate.
“I have no more to tell. I have told thee all I know. It was nearly one o’clock when he went away, and I never saw him after.”
“Did the prisoner wear a cloak when he came to the field that night?”
“No. He wore one sometimes, but he did not have it on that night. It was very warm — —”
But, at that moment, Anna Lynn became conscious that a familiar face was strained upon her from the midst of the crowd: familiar, and yet not familiar; for the face was distorted from its natural look, and was blanched, as of one in the last agony — the face of Samuel Lynn. With a sharp cry of pain — of dread — Anna fell on the floor in a fainting fit. What the shame of being before that public court, of answering the searching questions of the counsel, had failed to take away — her senses — the sight of her father, cognizant of her disgrace, had effected. Surely it was a disgrace for a young and guileless maiden to have to confess to such an escapade — an escapade that sounded worse to censuring ears than it had been in reality. Anna fainted. Mr. Winthorne stepped forward, and she was borne out.
Another Quakeress was now put into the witness-box, and the court looked upon a little middle-aged woman, whose face was sallow, and who showed her defective teeth as she spoke. It was Hester Dell. She wore a brown silk bonnet, lined with white, and a fawn-coloured shawl. She was told that she must state what she knew, relative to the visit of Herbert Dare that night.
“I went to rest at my usual hour, or, maybe, a trifle later, for I had waited for the arrival of some physic, never supposing but that the child, Anna, had gone to her room before me, and was safe in bed. I had been asleep some considerable time, as it seemed, when I was awakened by what sounded like the raising of the kitchen window underneath. I sat up in bed and listened, and was convinced that the window was being raised slowly and cautiously, as if the raiser did not want it to be heard. I was considerably startled, the more so as I knew I had left the window fastened: and my thoughts turned to house-breakers. While I deliberated what to do, seeing I was but a lone woman in the house, save for the child Anna, and Patience who was disabled in
her bed, I heard what appeared to be the voice of the child, and it sounded in the yard. I went to my window, but I could not see anything, it being right over the kitchen, and I not daring to open it. But I still heard Anna’s voice: she was speaking in a low tone, and I believed I caught other tones also — those of a man. I thought I must be asleep and dreaming: next I thought it must be young Gar from the next door, Jane Halliburton’s son. Her other sons I knew to be not at home; the one being abroad, the other at the University of Oxford. I deliberated, could anything be the matter at their house, and the boy have come for help. Then I reflected that that was most unlikely, for why should he be stealthily opening the kitchen window, and why should Anna be whispering with him? In short, to tell thee the truth” — raising her eyes to the judge, whom she appeared to address, to the ignoring of everyone else— “I did not know what to think, and I grew more disturbed. I quietly put on a few things, and went softly down the stairs, deeming it well, for my own sake, to feel my way, as it were, and not to run headlong into danger. I stood a moment at the kitchen door, listening; and there I distinctly heard Anna laugh — a little, gentle laugh. It reassured me, though I was still puzzled; and I opened the door at once.”
Here the witness made a dead pause.
“What did you see when you opened the door?” asked the judge.
“I would not tell thee, but that I am bound to tell thee,” she frankly answered. “I saw the prisoner, Herbert Dare. He appeared to have been laughing with Anna, who stood near him, and he was preparing to get out at the window as I entered.”
“Well? what next?” inquired the counsel in an impatient tone; for Hester had stopped again.
“I can hardly tell what next,” replied the witness. “Looking back, it appears nothing but confusion in my mind. It seemed nothing but confusion at the time. Anna cried out, and hid her face in fear; and the prisoner attempted some explanation, which I would not listen to. To see a son of Anthony Dare’s in the house with the child at that midnight hour, filled me with anger and bewilderment. I ordered him away; I believe I pushed him through the window; I threatened to call in a policeman. Finally he went away.”