The Judas Window shm-8

by John Dickson Carr

  'We have no objection to my learned friend's proposal, my lord.'

  The judge nodded. H.M. remained silent for what seemed a very long time.

  'I see Inspector Mottram is at the solicitors' table,' said H.M., while Mottram's heavy face turned round abruptly. 'I'll just ask him to oblige me by pullin' out one of the Crown's own pieces of evidence. We've had shown here the steel shutters on the windows of the study, and the big oak door as well. Let's have the door out again ...

  'The inspector - and all policemen here too - will have heard of a little dingus called The Judas Window. It's supposed to be confined exclusively to gaols. The "Judas window" is in the doors of cells. It's the little square opening, with a panel over it, through which coppers in general can look in and inspect the prisoner without being seen themselves. And it has a good deal of application to the case.'

  'I do not understand you, Sir Henry,' said the judge sharply. 'There is no "Judas window", as you call it, in the door there before us.'

  'Oh, yes there is,' said H.M....

  'Me lord,' he went on, 'there's a Judas window in nearly every door, if you just come to think of it. I mean that every door has got a knob. This door has. And, as I've pointed out to several people, what a whackin' big knob it is’

  'Suppose you took the knob off that door; what'd you find? You'd find a steel spindle, square in shape, runnin' through a square hole - like a Judas window. At each end of this, a knob is attached by means of a little screw through a hole in each end of the spindle. If you took everything out, you'd End in the door an opening - in this case, as we'll see, an opening that must be nearly half an inch square. If you don't realize just how big a space half an inch can be, or how much you can see when you look through it, we'll try to indicate it in just a minute. That's why I objected to the word "sealed".

  'Now, suppose you're goin' to prepare this simple little mechanism in advance. From the outside of the door, you unscrew the knob from the spindle. You notice that there's a very small screw-driver contained in the suitcase that was left at Paddington Station; so I'll just ask the Inspector to do it for us now. Ah! That gives you, in the end of the spindle, a little hole where the screw had been. Through this hole you tie tightly a very heavy length of black thread, with a good length of slack. Then you take your finger and push the spindle through its hole to the other side of the door, the inner side of the door. There's now only one knob - the one inside the door - fastened to the spindle; on the other end is attached your length of thread, and you're paying out the slack. Whenever you want the spindle and knob back up again, you simply pull the thread and up it comes. The weight of the knob inside the door is sufficient to make it hang down dead straight, so you've got no difficulty in gettin' the square spindle back in the square hole; it comes up in a straight line and slides in as soon as the edge of the spindle crosses the edge of the Judas window. As soon as it's back in again, you jerk off your thread; you put the outside knob of the door back on the spindle again; you screw it up again ... It's heart-breakin'ly simple, but the door is now apparently sealed.

  'Again suppose you'd prepared the mechanism in advance, with the thread already twined. Somebody is in that room with the door bolted. You start to work your mechanism. The feller inside don't notice anything until he suddenly sees the knob and spindle beginnin' to be lowered a little way into the room. You want him to see it. In fact, you begin to talk to him then through the door. He wonders what the - he wonders what is goin' on. He walks towards the door. He bends down, as anyone will when wantin' to look close at a knob. As he bends forward - a target only three feet away from your eye, where you can't miss -'

  'My lord,' cried Sir Walter Storm, 'we are willing to grant all liberties, but we must protest against this argument in -'

  '- with your arrow balanced in the opening,' said H.M., 'you fire through the Judas window.'

  There was a sort of thunderous pause, while Inspector Mottram stood with the screw-driver in his hand.

  'My lord, I've had to say it,' said H.M. apologetically, 'in order to make clear what I'm goin' to show you. Now, that door has been in the possession of the police ever since the night of the murder. Nobody could 'a' tampered with it; it's just as it was ... Inspector, have you unscrewed one knob from that spindle? So. Will you sort of tell my lord and the jury what there seems to be tied to the hole in the spindle?'

  'Please speak up,' said Mr Justice Rankin. 'I cannot see from here!'

  Inspector Mottram's voice rose, a ghostly kind of effect, in the silence. I am not likely to forget him standing there under the glow of the yellow light, with the oak panelling, and the yellow furniture, and the tiers of people who were now frankly standing up. Even the white wigs and black gowns of counsel had reared up furtively to obscure our view. At the core of all this, as though in a spotlight under the white dome of the Old Bailey, Inspector Mottram stood looking from the screw-driver to the spindle.

  'My lord,' he said, 'there appears to be a piece of black thread tied to the hole in the spindle, and then wound a few lengths round -'

  The judge made a note in his careful handwriting.

  'I see. Proceed, Sir Henry.'

  'And next, Inspector,' pursued H.M., 'just push the spindle through with your finger - use the point of the screw-driver if it's more convenient - and take the whole thing out. Ah, that's got it We want to see the Judas window, and ... ah, you've found somethin', haven't you? There's somethin' lodged in the opening between the spindle and the Judas window, stuck there? Quick, what is it?'

  Inspector Mottram straightened up from inspecting something, in the palm of his hand.

  'It would appear,' he said carefully, 'to be a small piece of blue-coloured feather, about a quarter of an inch, triangular in shape, evidently torn off something -'

  Every board in the hardwood floor, every bench, every chair seemed to have its own separate creaking. At my side Evelyn suddenly sat down again, expelling her breath.

  'And that, my lord,' said H.M. quite mildly, 'together with the identification of the last piece of feather, will conclude the evidence for the defence. Bah!'

  XVIII

  'The Verdict of You All

  4.15 p.m.-4.32 p.m. From the Closing Speech for the Defence, by Sir Henry Merrivale

  '... and so, in what I've just spoken to you about, I've tried to outline what we'll call the outlying phases of this case. You have been told, and I think you believe, that this man was the victim of a deliberate frame-up. You have heard now that, far from taking a pistol to that house, he was goin' to see the one man in the world he wanted most to please. You have heard the details that twisted up everything he said to an extent that will make me, for one, walk warily henceforward. That frame-up has been concealed and elaborated by several people -notably one you heard speak right up before you, and in his own malice try to send this man to the rope. That's a pretty thought to take with you when you consider your verdict.

  'But you have nothing to do with pity or sympathy. Your business is justice, plain justice, and that's all I'm asking for. Therefore I'm goin' to submit that the whole point of this case depends on two things: a piece of feather and a cross-bow.

  'The Crown ask you to believe that this man - with no motive - suddenly grabbed an arrow down from the wall and stabbed Avory Hume. It's a simple case, and makes a simple issue. Either he did do that, or he didn't. If he did do that, he's guilty. If he unquestionably did not do it, he's unquestionably innocent.

  'Take first the feather. When Dyer left the prisoner in that study, alone with Avory Hume, the feather was on the arrow - all of it - intact. That's a simple fact which hasn't been disputed by anyone, and the Attorney-General will acknowledge it to you. When the door was unbolted, and Dyer and Mr Fleming went into that room, half that feather was gone from the arrow. They searched the room immediately, and the feather was not there: that's also a simple fact. Inspector Mottram searched the room, and the feather was not there, and that's a simple fact too. All this time, yo
u remember, the accused had not left the study.

  'Where was the feather? The only suggestion the police can make is that it was unconsciously carried away in the prisoner's clothes. Now, I submit to you simply that this couldn't possibly be true. There are two reasons. First of all, you saw it demonstrated here that two people could not possibly tear that feather - in a struggle - in the way it was torn; therefore there wasn't any struggle, and what becomes of the prosecution's case on that score alone? Second, and even more important, we know where the feather actually was.

  'You've heard it testified by the manager of the Left-Luggage Department at Paddington that a certain person - not the prisoner - left a suitcase at the station early in the evening of January 4th. (In any case, the prisoner was not in a position to go on any errands, having been under the eye of the police from the time the murder was discovered until the followin' morning.) That suitcase contained the cross-bow you've seen; and stuck into the teeth of the windlass was a big part of the missing piece of feather.

  'We can't doubt, I think, that this was a part of the feather on the arrow. You've seen micro-photographs in which you can compare every detail, you've heard it identified by the man who attached it to the arrow: in short - as in other things in this case - you've been able to see and decide for yourselves. Well, how did that feather get there? How does this fact square with the prosecution's theory that the prisoner dragged down the arrow and used it as a dagger? That's the picture, I submit, you've got to keep in your minds. If he stabbed the deceased, there are a lot of things I'll submit with my hand on my heart that he didn't do it. He didn't tear the feather apart with a power beyond him. He didn't shove one end of it into the teeth of a crossbow. He assuredly didn't put the whole apparatus into Spencer Hume's suitcase - which, you recall, was not even packed or brought downstairs until six-thirty.

  'Just a word about that suitcase. I'll suggest to you that in itself it destroys any reasonable doubt of this man's innocence. I'm not suggestin' that Miss Jordan packed a week-end cross-bow among the collar-studs and the slippers. No; I mean that it was standin' downstairs in the hall, and someone used it. But how does this apply to the prisoner? The suitcase was packed and brought downstairs at six-thirty. From that time until the time the three witnesses entered the study, it was always under somebody's eye. Did the prisoner leave the study at any time? He did not. You've heard that too frequently -especially from the prosecution. Did he approach the suitcase, to put in a cross-bow or a decanter or anything else (which, I suggest, were already somewhere else waiting to be put in)? Did he, in short, have anything to do with the suitcase? He did not have an opportunity before the crime was discovered, and he most certainly didn't have an opportunity afterwards.

  'Why, burn me — HURRUM — members of the jury, I'll call your attention to another point. Part of the missin' feather is in a suitcase which, we can decide, James Answell's ghost didn't take to Paddington Station. But there's another part of that feather. You know where it was, and is. You saw it there. It was in what, for the sake of convenience, I've called the Judas window. Still keepin' in mind the prosecution's belief that Answell used the arrow as a dagger, how does this square with the presence of the feather in the Judas window?

  'It doesn't. There's no doubt the feather is there. There's no doubt it got there at the time of the murder. Inspector Mottram, as you've heard, took away that door on the night of the murder, and has kept it at the police-station ever since. From the time the murder was discovered to the time Inspector Mottram took the door away, there was always somebody in the study; so the feather couldn't have landed there at any time except the time of the murder. Only a minute ago you saw Professor Parker recalled to the witness-box; you heard him identify this feather as undoubtedly the last missin' piece; and he told you why he thought so. It is the feather, then, and it was there. Well, how does my learned friend say it got there? Now, I'm not here to toss dull ridicule at a group of men like Counsel for the Crown, who've conducted their case with scrupulous fairness towards the accused, and given the defence all the latitude we could hope for. But what can I say? Just fix your minds on the stupefyin' suggestion that James Answell wildly arose and killed Avory Hume, and at the same time a bit of feather off that arrow managed to get into that hole that supports the knob-spindle in the door. Can you think of any reason for it, however ingenious, that doesn't become mere roar-in' comedy?

  'You've already heard reasons why the prisoner could not conceivably have come near the cross-bow or the suitcase; in fact, it's never been suggested that he has. The same, in general, applies to the feather in the door and the little mechanism of thread on the spindle. That little mechanism. I think you'll agree, was prepared beforehand. Answell had never been in the house before in his life. That little mechanism was meant to work only from outside, to let the knob down from the other end. Answell was inside the room, with the door bolted. As I say, merely to ridicule is useless; but I'm convinced that the more you think of it the more out of question it will become, or you're a greater group of fat-hea - URR -or you're not the intelligent English jury I know you are.

  'Still, the feather was there. It got there somehow; and it's not exactly a common place to find one. I'll venture to suggest that you could go home to-night and take the knobs out of all the doors in your own house: and all down the street through your neighbours' houses: and still you wouldn't End a feather in the Judas window. I'll further venture to suggest that there's only one set of circumstances in which you could find both the feather and the thread-mechanism in the Judas window. It's got nothing to do with an arrow snatched down from the wall to stab, except in so far as a drugged man inside could be used as a scapegoat. That set of circumstances is the one I hinted at a while ago: someone who stood outside that bolted door, and fired an arrow into Avory Hume's heart when the murderer was almost close enough to touch him with it.

  'With your indulgence, then, I'm goin' to outline to you the way in which we believe the crime was really committed; and I'll try to show you how the facts that have been produced support it and bear against the prosecution's case.

  'But, before I do, there's one thing I feel I must face. You can't disregard a beetle on the back of your neck or an unexplained statement in a court of law. Members of the jury, yesterday afternoon you heard the prisoner tell a great big thundering lie: the only lie he has told in this room: a lie that he was guilty. Mebbe he didn't say it under oath; mebbe you were inclined then to believe it all the more because he didn't. But you know now why it was told. Mebbe he didn't care then whether or not he convicted himself; others, you observe, have been tryin' hard enough to do it for him. But you'll judge whether you think the worse or the better of him for saying what he did. And the time has come now when I can stand up and accuse my own client of falsehood. For he said he stabbed Avory Hume with an arrow, whose feather broke off in the struggle. Unless you believe that statement, you cannot and you dare not return a verdict of guilty; and that statement you cannot and you dare not believe; and I will tell you why.

  'Members of the jury, the way in which we believe this crime was really committed

  4.32 p.m.-4.55 pjn.

  From the Closing Speech for the Crown, by Sir Walter Storm

  '... thus my learned friend need have no fear. I shall not ask you to wait until my lord addresses you before you learn this: If you are dissatisfied with the story of the prosecution, the prosecution have thereby failed to make out their case and it is your duty to return a verdict of not guilty. I do not think that any of you, having heard my opening speech in this case, could labour under any misapprehension as to that point. I put it before you, then, that the burden of the proof was on the prosecution, as I trust I shall always do when it becomes my duty to lay such a case before a jury.

  'But it is likewise my duty to stress against the prisoner such of the material facts as constitute evidence. Facts: as I said in my opening speech. Facts: as I have said all along. Therefore I must ask you, dispassi
onately: how many of the material facts in this case have been altered or disproved?

  'My learned friend has attempted well and eloquently to explain; but I must submit to you that he cannot explain away.

  'What remains? It is a fact that the prisoner was found with a loaded pistol in his pocket. He denies that he took this pistol to the house; and what is there to corroborate his denial? There is the testimony of the witness Grabell. You have heard that witness in the box: you have heard his replies to my questions: you have observed his demeanour. He, and he alone, claims to have seen the deceased at D'Orsay Chambers on Friday morning. How did a stranger in those flats escape the attention of every other attendant? How is the deceased presumed to have gained access to the prisoner's flat? How, in fact, did Grabell come conveniently to be cleaning out a dustbin in darkness, when he himself acknowledges that the dustbin would have been cleaned out a fortnight before? Grabell - whose notion of honour and truthfulness you have been able to judge - is the sole witness to this. Is there any other witness who can give even second-hand corroboration to the alleged theft of the pistol by Avory Hume? There is Reginald Answell. But here I confess I am on difficult ground. Members of the jury, I must tell you frankly that, when he told you that story from which you were supposed to infer the prisoner's guilt, I did not believe him. He was (in fact) a witness for the prosecution; and I did not believe him. You will have been able to decide whether or not my learned friend disposed of his testimony in a court where - whether for the prosecution or for the defence - we will not avail ourselves of lies. But it is Reginald Answell, this same witness, who testifies to his conversation with Grabell about the pistol. If we believe that a man has borne false witness in the last part of his testimony, shall we therefore believe that he has borne true witness in the first part of it?’

  'If the prisoner did in fact take that pistol to Mr Hume's house, there is premeditation. And I suggest to you that he did.’