by Q. Patrick
Darlint, think for me, do. I do want to help. If you only knew how helpless and selfish I feel letting you do such a lot for me and I doing nothing for you. If ever we are lucky enough to be happy darlint I’ll love you such a lot. I always show you how much I love you for all you do for me. Its a terrible feeling darlint to want—really want to give all and everything and not be able to give a tiny little thing—just thro’ circumstances.
I didn’t know that you would be in London a month this time—altho I had a little idea. That month—I can’t bear to think of it a whole four weeks and things the same as they are now. All those days to live thro for just one hour in each.
All that lying and scheming and subterfuge to obtain one little hour in each day—when by right of nature and our love we should be together for all the 24 in every day.
Darlint don’t let it be—I can’t bear it all this time—the pain gets too heavy to bear—heavier each day—but if things were different what, a grand life we should start together. Perhaps we could have that one week I could be ill from shock. More lies—but the last. Eh darlint.
Do experiment with the pills while you are away—please darlint.
No we two—two halves—have not yet come to the end of our tether. Don’t let us.
I’m sorry I’ve had to use this piece of paper but the pad was empty—I sent the boy for a fresh one and they will have none in until tomorrow.
We started on the 5th week of your absence now—each week seems longer than the last and each day the length of two.
Do you know darlint that the Saturday I usually have off when you are home is Whit Saturday and I shan’t be able to see you nor on Monday following.
Three whole days—and you so near and yet so far—it mustn’t be darlint—we mustn’t let it somehow.
Goodbye now darlint I can’t write any more. You said you have a lump—so have I in fact its more than a lump now.
Good bye until Marseilles next week. I do always love you and think of you.
PEIDI
Exhibit 60; Monday, October 2 [the day before the murder]
Darlingest lover of mine, thank you, thank you, oh thank you a thousand times for Friday—it was lovely—its always lovely to go out with you.
And then Saturday—yes I did feel happy—I didn’t think a teeny bit about anything in this world except being with you—and all Saturday evening I was thinking about you. I was just with you in a big arm chair in front of a great big fire feeling all the time how much I had won—cos I have darlint, won such a lot—it feels such a great big thing to me sometimes—that I can’t breathe.
When you are away and I see girls with men walking along together—perhaps they are acknowledged sweethearts—they look so ordinary then I feel proud—so proud to think and feel that you are my lover and even tho’ not acknowledged I can still hold you—just with a tiny ‘hope’.
Darlint, we’ve said we’ll always be Pals haven’t we, shall we say we’ll always be lovers—even tho’ secret ones, or is it (this great big love) a thing we can’t control-dare we say that—I think I will dare. Yes I will ‘I’ll always love you’—if you are dead—if you have left me. even if you don’t still love me, I always shall you.
Your love to me is new, it. is something different, it is my life and if things should go badly with us, I shall always have this past year to look back upon and feel that “Then I lived” I never did before and I never shall again.
Darlingest lover, what happened last night? I don’t know myself I only know how I felt—no not really how I felt but how I could feel—if time and circumstances were different.
It seems like a great welling up of love—of feeling—of inertia, just as if I am wax in your hands—to do with as you will and I feel that if you do as you wish I shall be happy, it’s physical purely and I can’t really describe it—but you will understand darlint won’t you? You said you knew it would be like this one day—if it hadn’t would you have been disappointed. Darlingest when you are rough, I go dead—try not to be please.
The book is lovely—it’s going to be sad darlint tho’, why can’t life go on happy always?
I like Clarie [heroine of a novel]—she is so natural, so unworldly.
Why arn’t you an artist and I as she is—I feel when I am reading frightfully jealous of her—its a picture darlint, just how I did once picture that little flat in Chelsea—why can’t he go on loving her always—why are men different—I am right when I say that love to a man is a thing apart from his life—but to a woman it is her whole existence.
I tried so hard to find a way out of tonight darlingest but he was suspicious and still is—I suppose we must make a study of this deceit for some time longer. I hate it. I hate every lie I have to tell to see you—because lies seem such small mean things to attain such an object as ours. We ought to be able to use great big things for great big love like ours. I’d love to be able to say “I’m going to see my lover tonight”. If I did he would prevent me—there would be scenes and he would come to 168 and interfere and I couldn’t bear that—I could be beaten all over at home and still be defiant—but at 168 it’s different. You wouldn’t let me live on him would you and I shouldn’t want to—darlint its funds that are our stumbling block—until we have those we can do nothing. Darlingest find me a job abroad. I’ll go tomorrow and not say I was going to a soul and not have one little regret. I said I wouldn’t think—that I’d try to forget—circumstances—Pal, help me to forget again—I have succeeded up to now—but its thinking of tonight and tomorrow when I can’t see you and feel you are holding me.
Darlint—do something tomorrow night will you? something to make you forget. I’ll be hurt I know, but I want you to hurt me—I do really—the bargain now seems so one sided—so unfair—but how can I alter it?
Darlint do I flatter myself when I think you think more of the watch [a present from Edith] than of anything else. That wasn’t a present—that was something you asked me to give you—when we decided to be pals a sort of sealing of the compact. I couldn’t afford it then, but immediately I could I did. Do you remember when and where we were when you asked me for it? If you do tell me, if you don’t, forget I asked.
How I thought you would feel about the watch, I would feel about something I have.
It isn’t mine, but it belongs to us and unless we were differently situated than we are now, I would follow you everywhere—until you gave it back to me.
He’s still well—he’s going to gaze all day at you in your temporary home—after Wednesday.
Don’t forget what we talked in the Tea Room, I’ll still risk and try if you will—we only have 3¾ years left darlingest.
Try help
PEIDI
Chapter Six
While the British nation was busy reading these letters, Mrs. Thompson and Bywaters were awaiting trial, Edith at Holloway Gaol and Freddie at Pentonville. Every day, feeling in the country rose higher and higher against Edith Thompson, and, by contrast, a certain general sympathy was aroused for Freddie Bywaters. He was, after all, only twenty, and he was so good-looking. The poor lad, could you really blame him, when that dreadful, scheming woman, old enough to be his mother.…
But popular sentiment of this sort, damaging as it was to Edith, brought little practical help to Freddie Bywaters. Ever since he had confessed to the killing, Freddie’s predicament had become virtually hopeless. The counsel chosen to defend him was Cecil Whiteley, a small, alert, high-strung, and intelligent man who had been one of the Treasury Counsel at the Old Bailey and was later to sit on the bench as Common Sergeant of the City of London. From the beginning, Whiteley realized that his job was going to be a difficult one, and Freddie Bywaters made it even harder by his stubborn insistence that nothing that could possibly prejudice the court against Edith Thompson was to be employed in his defense.
Freddie’s mood of courageous, almost phlegmatic calm had not left him. Perhaps, even though he was a prisoner awaiting trial on a capital charge, he found it a relief
that the fascinating but exhausting and bewildering days of being Edith’s “darlingest pal” were over. Now at least he was free to act according to his own natural instincts. Now he was a real man again, up against a situation that, though terrifying, was real. He had killed someone and must face the consequences. His simple goal was to see that no harm came to the woman he loved. Supported by this selfless and gallant ambition, he could look without flinching toward a future without hope.
But there was still hope for Edith Thompson. At the Magistrate’s Court, the Crown had already given a preview of the case it was to bring against her. There was to be no attempt to prove that she had struck a blow at her husband or that she had in any way assisted Bywaters physically in those moments of violence on Belgrave Road. The case against her was to be based entirely upon the letters. It was going to try to show, from the letters, that Edith Thompson was the mind behind the hand that struck the blow. This case was not at all a strong one. The right counsel, in spite of the prejudices that had been unleashed, might still be able to defeat it.
The time had come to choose the right counsel for Mrs. Thompson, and the choice fell on Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, K.C. In 1921, Curtis-Bennett was one of the most famous and colorful figures at the bar. When he took Mrs. Thompson’s case, he had already defended forty-eight clients on murder charges. Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett was not only a master at arguing points of law and a great seducer of juries; he was also a man of the world with a reputation for warm human feeling and imagination. It seemed that Edith Thompson had found the ideal champion.
From the first interview. Sir Henry felt a deep personal sympathy for his client. On reading the letters, he instantly recognized their quality of make-believe and was convinced of her innocence. For a man so convinced, so personally affected, so wise in the ways of court behavior, the defense of Mrs. Thompson was a task to inspire his most brilliant capabilities.
But Sir Henry knew all too well how enormously the much publicized though irrelevant fact of his client’s adultery was going to militate against her with a jury. As a lawyer, he was not likely to have forgotten that Florence Maybrick had been convicted of murder not so many years before by a Liverpool jury almost solely on the grounds of what appeared to be her moral irregularity. In the case of Edith Thompson, there was no mere question of the appearance of moral irregularity. There was moral irregularity itself, mercilessly exposed in black and white and already a byword throughout the nation.
Mrs. Thompson stood in great peril of being hanged as an adulteress.
But, real as this danger was, it was not one that could be minimized by legal action, and there were other definitely legal dangers that he would have to combat. These were three in number.
The first danger was the Crown’s decision to try both the prisoners together. Since Frederick Bywaters was admittedly guilty, it was inevitable that Edith, hitched into the same trial, was in peril of standing or falling, not on the merits of her own case, but on those of Bywaters’. Sir Henry and Mr. Whiteley decided that they would fight jointly for separate trials.
The second and greatest danger, of course, was the letters themselves. There were legal grounds on which their admissibility as evidence could be challenged. The final decision would rest with the judge, and it was not likely that Sir Henry would be able to win this point, but he would certainly have to make an all-out attempt to win—for, if the letters were kept out of court, the case against Mrs. Thompson automatically collapsed.
The third danger was the potential one of Edith Thompson’s cross-examination on the witness stand. It is an axiom that when an accused refrains from giving testimony, his silence is taken by a jury as a sign of guilt. It is also true that the judge may make an adverse comment upon this silence in his summing up. Sir Henry was conscious of these two facts, but he was even more conscious of the immense danger of exposing Edith Thompson, the woman taken in adultery, to the ordeal of a cross-examination. He personally saw the letters as a fabric of fantasy, but not because Edith had given any such explanation of them; his insight sprang from his own sophisticated understanding of human nature. Juries, Sir Henry knew, possessed no such sophisticated understanding. He was convinced that his only chance was to keep his client out of the stand, to let the Crown do what it could with the letters, and then to rely on his own eloquence to convince the jury that a conviction on such indefinite grounds would be unjustifiable.
This, then, was Sir Henry’s original blueprint for the defense, and it was an excellent one. His keen legal mind, however, had overlooked one important factor—Edith Thompson. When he explained the plan to Edith in Holloway Gaol, she vetoed it. She wanted the letters to be read in court. And not only that, she insisted upon appearing on the witness stand. Her solicitor joined Sir Henry in pleading with her, but she remained adamant.
This decision, like everything else connected with Edith Thompson, was touchingly consistent. That it should have come as a surprise to Sir Henry indicates that he understood her less well than he imagined. Stunned, so nearly defeated as she was, Edith Thompson could only react as Edith Thompson. She who had been Misunderstood Womanhood, the Erring Wife, and then the Great Sinner was confronted with another romantic role that demanded to be played. She must be the Woman in Court. The mob had reviled her. The mob was being as coarse and insensitive as Percy. But she must get in the witness box and Make Them Understand. Above all, she must Stand By Her Darlingest Pal.
Edith Thompson knew nothing about law and she cared less about her danger. It is probable that she did not really grasp this danger, for her imagination, so vivid in a dream world, was utterly incapable of functioning in a real situation. Her Duty was there. She saw it. No lawyers could make her shirk her Duty.
After many futile conferences in the prison, Sir Henry, with great reluctance and a feeling of doom, finally gave in to his client. Subsequently he was criticized for not, there and then, turning in his brief. If Mrs. Thompson refused to be defended his way, it was argued, he should haye left the defense to someone else. But here Sir Henry had become the victim of his own sympathy and pity. He was sure that if he withdrew from the case, public opinion would be further prejudiced against her. So he compromised on his planned defense. He would plead for a separate trial, he would plead the inadmissibility of the letters as evidence, but he would let Edith Thompson appear on the stand.
This was his final position when, on December 6, 1922, the case of the King against F. E. F. Bywaters and E. J. Thompson began in Number One Court at the Old Bailey.
Part III: The Trial
Chapter Seven
The trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters had terrific advance publicity. For weeks, anticipation had hummed in hundreds of thousands of English sitting rooms like the buzz of a billion angry bees. By three A.M. on the opening day of the trial, the swarms had already started to descend upon the Old Bailey. There are, in fact, very few public seats in the gallery of the Old Bailey’s antiquated Court Number One, and most of the eager sensation-seekers who started to line up must have known that they would inevitably be turned away. But they came anyhow, as if a fruitless wait in the queue gave them some sort of feeling of contact with the drama of blood and sex, so kindling to the imagination, that was about to unfold itself inside.
When the doors of the court were finally opened, the few lucky firstcomers crowded into the gallery. Meanwhile, the actors in the drama were slowly beginning to gather below. The minor figures put in their appearance first—petty court officials, the raw material from which a jury was to be picked, policemen, minor solicitors and barristers, and, of course, the witnesses.
The hum of anticipatory gossip was allowed to continue. It was not perceptibly dimmed even when the stars began to arrive. The first male lead to enter was His Majesty’s Solicitor General, Mr. Thomas Inskip, with his two aides, Travers Humphreys and Roland Oliver. Mr. Inskip had only lately been appointed by Bonar Law’s Conservative government, which had taken the place of the defeated Lloyd Ge
orge coalition. This was his debut in court. Soon after him, Cecil Whiteley, counsel for Bywaters, took his place. It was Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, of course, that made the most spectacular entrance.
Sir Henry’s court entrances were famous. Throughout the years, he had perfected them down to the smallest detail. First his clerk, a priestly acolyte, appeared, carrying the brief itself, a pile of lawbooks, a bundle of colored pencils, and a box of cough lozenges. These props he carried to the desk nearest the dock, and there, neatly, ritualistically, he arranged them in a classic pattern. By that time a deep silence had automatically been achieved, and, precisely at the most telling moment, Sir Henry, a big man, immaculately dressed, imposing in manner, exuding self-confidence, made his solemn entrance and his even solemner processional toward his place.
While the limelight played on Sir Henry, the entrances of Edith herself, accompanied by wardresses, and Freddie, accompanied by warders, passed almost unnoticed. They were slipped unobtrusively into the dock, and before the onlookers had much of a chance to feast their eyes on them, a hush even more awesome than that inspired by Sir Henry fell on the court, and the judge, Sir Montague Shearman, in his scarlet robes and white wig, took his seat upon the bench.
Sir Henry had known for some time that Mr. Justice Shearman was to be the judge, and he must have realized that this was a most unfortunate selection for his client. A famous former amateur athlete, who had, among other feats, swum Niagara under the falls, Sir Montague was a man of overwhelming moral rectitude. His private life was as blameless as his contempt for all kinds of laxity was harsh. Fate could not have picked a residing officer less likely to sympathize with “the woman taken in adultery.”
But there was nothing that could be done about that now. Sir Henry and Cecil Whiteley had decided between them that it should be Whiteley who made the appeal for separate trials. Immediately after the court had been called to order, Bywaters’ counsel rose and addressed the Judge: