by Q. Patrick
This was a help to the defense’s cause. If the jury believed Mrs. Thompson’s testimony, rather than the evidence of her letters, they must have realized that, in spite of all the remarks about imaginary poisons, she had allowed her sister to throw away the nearest approach to an actual poison that had ever come into her hands.
Q. “I used the ‘light bulb’ three times but the third time—he found a piece—so I’ve given it up—until you come home.” Is there any truth in that statement?
A. None whatever.
Q. Did you at this time or any time use the light bulb?
A. Never at all.
Q. Was there ever an occasion when your husband found a piece of glass in his food or anywhere?
A. Never.
Mr. Frampton then brought up Edith Thompson’s mania for novels and her habit of discussing them in the letters with Freddie. Her obsession with fictional romance was a point of the utmost importance to the defense, but Mr. Frampton made only one passing reference to it and had Mrs. Thompson repeat the titles of several books she had “reviewed” in the letters, including Robert Hichens’ “Bella Donna.” Then he moved on to the well-worn “enough for an elephant” quote.
Q. What was it that you were referring to there as being enough for an elephant?
A. Some quinine that Mr. Bywaters had given me in a small bottle before he went on his voyage.
Q. Had you given some of it to your husband?
A. No.
Q. Did you at any time give anything out of the ordinary to your husband?
A. No, never.
Q. In that paragraph you refer to the fact that you will wait until he gets some money. Was the want of money a hindrance to you both going away at that time?
A. It was.
Q. Further on in that letter you say: “I was buoyed up with the hope of the ‘light bulb’ and I used a lot—big pieces too—not powdered—and it has no effect—I quite expected to be able to send that cable—but no—nothing has happened from it and now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy.”
Once again, at a point where Freddie had made such a fool of himself, Mr. Frampton carefully guided Mrs. Thompson’s answer.
Q. Had you administered any glass fragments of light bulbs to your husband, either in large or small pieces?
A. Never at all.
Q. Had you arranged to send a cable to Bywaters about anything?
A. Yes, principally about if I was successful in getting a divorce from my husband.
Q. When you say, “ Your letter tells me about the bitter taste again,” what had that reference to?
A. Something Mr. Bywaters had said to me about a bitter taste, I suppose.
Q. Bitter taste of what?
A. Of the stuff I had in the bottle.
Q. Then you proceed: “Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder—like Beecham’s—try while you’re away.” What did you wish Bywaters to understand by that?
A. I wanted him to understand that I was willing to do anything he expected me to do or asked me to do—to agree with him. I wanted him to think I would do anything for him to keep him to me.
Q. Turn now to your letter of eighteenth May, Exhibit Twenty-two. You commence that letter with a quotation about digitalin and you say you have taken the passage from a book by Robert Hichens that you are reading. Did you know what digitalin was?
A. I had no idea.
Q. Why did you write and ask Bywaters, “Is it any use?”?
A. For the same reason; I wanted him to feel that I was willing to help him, to keep him to me. I have never had digitalin in my possession to my knowledge. My first knowledge of the existence of such a thing was from reading “Bella Donna.” Further on in that letter when I say: “Hurry up and take me away—to Egypt—if you like but anywhere where it is warm,” I just mean what I say—I wanted him to take me away at any cost; it would not matter what happened.
Q. What was the thought in your mind at this time—that you should go away with him?
A. The uppermost. I have already explained that I had been asking Bywaters to find a situation for me abroad.
Mrs. Thompson quoted from another letter to prove this point, showing that there had, at one time, been a chance of Freddie’s finding her work in Bombay.
Q. In that letter you tell Bywaters that you would like him to read “Bella Donna,” as he might learn something from it to help you. What were you referring to in “Bella Donna” which you wished him to read which might help you both?
A. The book was really about Egypt and I thought he might learn something in it about Egypt.
This naïve-seeming reply was in fact true. In one of the letters unused by the prosecution, Edith definitely stated that she wanted Freddie to read “Bella Donna” because it was about Egypt, a country that the S.S. Morea was going to visit. But Mr. Justice Shearman, whose exasperation was again uncontrollable, snapped:
“I should like to clear this up. Is not the main point of it that the lady killed her husband with slow poison?”
Mr. Inskip then showed signs of life. He rose and announced that he planned to bring out this point in his cross-examination. This mollified Mr. Justice Shearman and the examination continued.
A great deal of time was wasted by both the defense and the prosecution on the subject of “Bella Donna,” a novel about a woman married to one rich man who fell in love with another equally rich man and proceeded, by slow degrees, to poison her husband. In one of the letters Edith had written a long, savage analysis of Bella Donna’s character, vehemently pointing out to Freddie what a sensual, unscrupulous, abnormal, monstrous female she was. Mr. Frampton now read this paragraph in its entirety and asked Edith Thompson whether it represented her true opinion of Bella Donna. She replied, “Absolutely,” thus ranging herself uncompromisingly in the ranks of respectable womanhood. This may have made some illogically good impression on the jury, but Mr. Frampton might have done better to employ this time getting Mrs. Thompson to admit that whenever she read a novel, whatever its theme, she became carried away into its atmosphere and, as likely as not, played that character in her next letter to Freddie.
But he did not do this. He left “Bella Donna” eventually and introduced a new topic, with the following quotation from a letter of June 13, Exhibit 24:
“I’m trying very hard—very very hard to B.B. [Be brave.] I know my pal wants me to. On Thursday—he was on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and said he was dying and wanted to—he had another heart attack—thro me. Darlint I had to laugh at this because I knew it couldn’t be a heart attack.”
It was probable that the prosecution would press hard on this point, in an attempt to prove that Mrs. Thompson had had to laugh because she knew this apparent heart attack had in fact been the result of a poison attempt. Mr. Frampton was going to get the defense’s version in first.
Q. On that Thursday [the day before Bywaters sailed] had there been a scene between you and your husband?
A. Yes, in the evening. Mr. Bywaters had taken me out to dinner. I arrived home later than I usually do, and my husband made a scene. He was on the ottoman.
Q. Did he appear to have a heart attack?
A. Not to me, because I knew when he had a heart attack; it was entirely different. In the course of that scene he said he was dying and wanted to die. That scene which took place on the night before Bywaters sailed was entirely due to the fact that I had been out that night and did not return till late.
Q. That is what you mean when you say, “He had another heart attack—thro me”?
A. Yes, he said it was through me.
Q. Then you go on: “When he saw this had no effect on me—he got up and stormed—I said exactly what you told me to and he replied that he knew that’s what I wanted and he was not going to give it to me—it would make things far too easy for both of you (meaning you and me) especially for you he said.” What had you
said to him while this storm was going on?
A. I asked him to give me my freedom, and I even went so far as to tell him I would give him the information to get it.
Mrs. Thompson had pulled off that episode effectively for Mr. Frampton. Her explanation of the petulant, sulky Percy trying to frighten her with a sham heart attack was convincing.
In one of the letters Edith had told Freddie about the mother of one of the office boys who had died from ptomaine poisoning caused by a can of salmon. Mr. Frampton referred to this and Edith replied that she had mentioned the incident purely as local news. Another reference to “the easiest way” was explained by Edith as yet another hint at suicide. She claimed, with the vagueness she had used before, that she had urged Freddie to “send her something” because, although she had no idea what the thing might be, she was eager to have it and did not want to wait until he could bring it in person. Mr. Frampton touched on the subject of the bichloride of mercury and Edith said she had mentioned the poison to Freddie simply because Percy had told her an anecdote about a chemist who had used it in the wrong prescription.
Mr. Frampton then shifted his ground to the constant references in the letters to the five-year waiting period.
Q. For what were you waiting?
A. To live with Mr. Bywaters or go away with him, or be with him only.
Q. Had you made an arrangement with Bywaters to wait for five years?
A. Yes.
Q. What was to happen at the end of five years?
A. If he was not in a successful position to take me away or had not in the meantime found me something to go to—well, we should part.
During the course of a trial, it is the judge’s right and duty to step into the proceedings whenever he feels evidence has been confusing or whenever a point of law has been misinterpreted. It is not in his province to make purely personal moral judgments. On several occasions Mr. Justice Shearman had already been guilty of revealing his distaste for the prisoners. Now, with completely unwarranted contempt, he interjected:
“The other witness’s story was that they wanted to commit suicide, and he said, ‘Put it off five years,’ which seems to be the only sensible thing I have heard.”
Having thus implied to the jury that he had not so far believed a single word Freddie Bywaters or Edith Thompson had said, he turned to the prisoner and asked:
“Was that discussed when you wanted to commit suicide together, that you should put it off and wait five years to see how he was getting on?”
Edith Thompson, with no visible reaction, replied, “We might have discussed that, but I do not remember about it.”
Mr. Frampton, who had no way of redressing the damage done by the Judge, could only proceed with the examination. He asked Edith to explain what she had meant when she had written, “Darlint be jealous so much that you will do something desperate.” Edith said that the something desperate she had in mind was an elopement. Mr. Frampton then brought up the vitally important final letter, written only thirty-six hours before the murder (Exhibit 60). He quoted from it:
Q. “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?” Tomorrow night was the night you were going to the theatre. What had Bywaters to forget?
A. That I was going somewhere with my husband.
Q. What was he to do to make him forget?
A. I wanted him to take my sister Avis out.
Q. You say, “I will be hurt I know.” What did that mean?
A. I should have been hurt by Bywaters’ being with a lady other than myself.
Q. In that letter you also say: “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.” Did that really represent your feelings at the time, that you were prepared to go abroad with him at once?
A. Yes. We had discussed it on the Saturday.
Q. Look at the end of that letter: “Don’t forget what we talked about in the Tea Room. I’ll still risk it and try if you will.” What had you discussed in the tearoom?
A. My freedom.
In his opening address the Solicitor General had stressed these selfsame points and had tried, quite unsuccessfully to give them a sinister interpretation. Edith Thompson’s interpretation, however, is that she had to spend the evening with her husband. This made her feel selfish. To punish herself, she suggested that Freddie take Avis out. It is difficult to believe that a woman who had already entered into a definite conspiracy to murder would suggest that her fellow murderer take her sister out on the very night of the crime, or that thirty-six hours before the deed she would still write begging her lover to find her a job abroad.
These were telling points, and all the points made from then on by Mr. Frampton were effective. He made Mrs. Thompson describe her final meetings with Freddie up to the eve of the crime, and made her once again deny that there had been the slightest hint between them of a conspiracy to murder. He then moved to the day of the crime itself and Mrs. Thompson told of lunching with Freddie and seeing him again at a quarter past five.
Q. Did you anticipate, or had you any reason to think, that you would see Bywaters again that day or not?
A. None whatever. I had made arrangements to see him on the following day at lunchtime at One-sixty-nine Aldersgate Street.
Q. Did you know where he was going to spend the evening of Tuesday the third?
A. Yes, with my people at Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park.
Q. Was your husband going to do anything the next day, the fourth?
A. Yes, we had arranged to meet a maid who was coming up from Saint Ives at Paddington station. That was a maid who was to come to relieve me of domestic duties, because I was working all day.
This was the maid with whom Sir Henry had made such play in his cross-examination of Mrs. Lester. She was, of course, a strong point for the defense. It was hard to believe that Edith, if she had planned to murder her husband, would have gone to the trouble of hiring a maid who was to arrive on the very day after the planned murder.
Mr. Frampton then had Edith Thompson describe in detail the harrowing and now familiar incidents of the walk home from the tube station and the crime itself. Edith’s confusion and bewilderment after the crime came through very plainly.
Q. Had Bywaters ever at any time said anything to even suggest he was likely to stab your husband?
A. Never. I did not know that he was possessed of a knife; I had never seen it until it was produced in these proceedings.…
Q. After the scuffle did you see him running away?
A. I saw somebody running away and I recognized the coat and hat.
Q. Was that the coat and hat of the prisoner Bywaters?
A. Mr. Bywaters.
Mrs. Thompson admitted that she had, in her earlier statement, deliberately falsified the truth in an attempt to protect Freddie.
Q. You have told us when you were walking with your husband a man rushed at you and pushed you aside. Did you fall at all?
A. I think I must have done so. I have a recollection of getting up when I went to my husband. I had a large bump on my head, on the right side of my ear. That bruise was seen both by my mother and the matron at the police station. My mother remained with me at the police station until nine o’clock on the Thursday evening.
Q. Had you the remotest idea that any attack was going to be made on your husband that night?
A. None whatever.
Q. Or at any time?
A. Never at any time.
At that point Mr. Frampton closed the examination for the defense.
Although Edith Thompson had been as unable to explain the letters as if they had been written by somebody else, she had flatly and steadfastly denied that she had committed any of the criminal actions that the letters described. When she could—as in the case of the final letter—she had given truthful
and convincing answers that might even have helped her cause. And there was still no evidence to show that she had had the slightest foreknowledge of the crime.
But there is an immense difference between the testimony as it is read here and the testimony as it must have sounded in the Old Bailey. Mrs. Thompson had been addressing a court jammed with excited, irrational people to whom she was the Whore of Babylon; she had been addressing a jury to whom her very name had become a symbol of all that was shocking and abnormal; she had been addressing a judge who had already shown an almost savage eagerness to pounce on her.
To most people in court, she had been defeated before she had opened her mouth.
Chapter Thirteen
Mr. Inskip began his cross-examination of Edith Thompson with a thorough consideration of the murder itself. Although the public might have forgotten the actual purpose of the trial, Mr. Inskip was fully conscious of the fact that it was his job to expose Mrs. Thompson as a conspirator to murder, which implied that she must, at the time of the crime itself, have had foreknowledge of it. This was the point he tried to prove—with no success.
It was easy to make Mrs. Thompson admit that she had, in fact, recognized Freddie as the man who had attacked her husband. It was easy, too, to show that she had held back this knowledge in her first statements to the police. But Mrs. Thompson’s explanation that she had done so to protect both Freddie and her own reputation was convincing. All the eyewitness evidence indicated that, after the crime, Mrs. Thompson had shown every symptom of horrified shock, confusion, and bewilderment. Mr. Inskip was unable to circumvent this. He attempted to prove that she could not have recognized Bywaters in the darkness simply from his hat and coat, unless she had known beforehand that he was going to be there waiting for them. But he failed in this too, for Belgrave Road had riot been in total darkness and it is hardly likely that a woman would have difficulty in distinguishing her lover from other men.
He tried one last leading question.
Q. Now, Mrs. Thompson, is it not the fact that you knew that Bywaters was going to do something on this evening and that these two false statements were an attempt to prevent the police getting wind of it?