The Girl on the Gallows

by Q. Patrick

  In a voice that was clear and always convincing, he pleaded Freddie Bywaters’ cause. He began by deploring the fact that the two prisoners had been tried together. The case against Bywaters, he said, should have been simple. Freddie had admitted killing Percy Thompson. The bare facts of the murder itself should have been examined and the jury should have decided, on the strength of those facts alone, whether Freddie had been guilty of “willful murder, or of manslaughter or some other verdict.”

  But it hadn’t happened that way. The prosecution, eager to convict Mrs. Thompson as well, had confused the issue, so far as Freddie was concerned, with a mass of irrelevant evidence. The jury was to remember, said Mr. Whiteley, that the question of whether Mrs. Thompson had ever at any earlier time tried to poison her husband was completely beside the point. That charge was not one that was under trial at the moment, and the autopsy evidence had, in any case, proved quite definitely that no such poison attempts had taken place. Since the prosecution had introduced Mrs. Thompson into the trial, there was nothing to be done about it, but the jury must never forget that the only indictment against her that they had to consider was whether she had “aided, abetted, and assisted” Bywaters in the actual murder and whether she had “counseled, procured, and commanded him to commit it.”

  In a digression, Mr. Whiteley pointed up the tragedy of Freddie’s position in having to face not only his own trial, but also the anguish of seeing the ordeal of the woman he loved. For the first time, he was able to tell the jury of his client’s chivalrous attitude toward Mrs. Thompson.

  “You may have noticed that I asked no questions of Mrs. Thompson, although I was entitled to do so. Why did I not? For this simple reason: My instructions, and those given to my learned friend, were that neither by word nor deed, in conducting this case on behalf of this man, should a word be said by us or any action taken by us which would in any way hamper the defense of Mrs. Thompson. That was the position when Bywaters was called into the witness box. That being the state of his mind, it was an anxiety that nothing he should say should in any way hurt Mrs. Thompson. Yet he had to go through the torture of being cross-examined, the whole object being, in some way or other, to get evidence to connect these two together before the fatal evening of third October.”

  Having thus tried to give the jury a sympathetic explanation for Freddie’s unfortunate evasiveness on the stand, Mr. Whiteley briefly sketched in a picture of the triangle at 41 Kensington Gardens and then returned to the all-important subject of the “conspiracy” as charged by the Crown. He attacked the existence of this conspiracy with a logic that should have been difficult to refute.

  “We know that although there have been only thirty-two letters produced, there were in fact found in the possession of Bywaters no fewer than sixty-five. [Sixty-two letters and three telegrams.] As I say, the letters simply conveyed to Bywaters the impression that Mrs. Thompson was extremely anxious to retain his affection. Where is the evidence that Bywaters really entered into any conspiracy? What did Bywaters do when he came home? Those letters had been written for some weeks, but when he returned he did nothing. He took Mrs. Thompson out, as he had done on former occasions. He was on friendly terms with the family of Mrs. Thompson. He showed no hostility or violence towards Mrs. Thompson’s husband. Bywaters had been away from this country after thirteenth June for a period of three months, and it was fully four months since he received the letters upon which the prosecution rely [the poison and light-bulb letters]. Far from there being any conspiracy or intention in Bywaters’ mind from sixth June onwards to injure Mrs. Thompson’s husband, you can see clearly from every page in those letters of hers that he was trying to break away from the entanglement, and there had not been a great deal of enjoyment in it for Bywaters except when he was at home on leave. He saw the impossibility of the situation and he was gradually trying to break away; but, unfortunately for him, Mrs. Thompson was determined that it should not be so, and so she wrote those letters complaining of her life, and always holding out the hope that they might be able to join each other. The letters should be read from the point of view of the recipient, and not of the writer, and in that light you must come to the conclusion that, whatever her intentions may have been, whatever, in fact, she may have been doing, Frederick Bywaters was no party to it. I go on to inquire if Bywaters became a party to any such agreement after twenty-third September. I contend that the whole, case for the prosecution shows that he did not.”

  Having delivered this blast against the prosecution’s contention of a conspiracy, Mr. Whiteley stressed Bywaters’ excellent character record and moved on to what he called “the real issue.” He gave a plausible and sympathetic description of the state of Freddie’s mind on the night of the crime when he had left the Graydons and was walking toward Ilford. He then read Freddie’s “self-defense” testimony from the court record, stressing the fact that all seagoing men carry knives and that Freddie’s possession of one was not therefore incriminating.

  He had already asked Mr. Justice Shearman to tell the jury the three possible verdicts they could bring in against Freddie—(a) justifiable homicide, (b) manslaughter, (c) murder. Now he put the issue squarely up to the jury. If they believed Freddie’s story that he had gone to Ilford with no murderous intention and had been panicked by Percy Thompson’s threats into using the knife in self-defense, then their verdict should be justifiable homicide. If they believed that Freddie had started the fight and, in a moment of passion, had whipped out the knife, believing that Percy Thompson was going to use a gun, then they should bring in a verdict of manslaughter.

  Mr. Whiteley knew, all too well, that the jury would remember the discrepancy between Freddie’s self-defense testimony given in court and his earlier statement to the police, which had made no mention of Percy’s gun. To counteract this, he criticized police methods in obtaining statements from prisoners, stating that these statements were often inaccurate and obtained at times when the suspects were in a condition of emotional confusion. He also deplored the fact that the Crown had the right to speak last at the trial and therefore had the final word. He ended his own plea with an exhortation that was as eloquent as it was understated.

  “I again challenge the prosecution to point to one stable piece of evidence, to any evidence, on which you can rely, on which you can say that that man had agreed with Mrs. Thompson to do some harm or some violence to Percy Thompson. One life has already been sacrificed in this sordid and horrible drama. Is there to be yet another? Frederick Bywaters makes his last appeal to you through me, and he says to you, ‘It is true, only too true, that I have been weak, extremely weak. It is true, only too true, that I allowed myself to drift into this dishonorable entanglement and intrigue with a married woman living with her husband. It is true that I had not the moral courage to cut myself adrift from it and end it all. It is true, only too true, that she confided in me, that I was flattered that she should come to me, a young man of nineteen, and confide in me. It is true that I pitied her, and that my pity turned to love. I did not realize, I did not know, I had not enough experience in this life to know, that true love must mean self-sacrifice. All this is true,’ he says, ‘but I ask you to believe, and by your verdict to proclaim to the world, that in all this history I am not an assassin. I am no murderer.’”

  Mr. Whiteley had spoken with energy and common sense. He had dispersed a great deal of the mist that had obscured the real issues at stake. What effect this speech had on the jury remained to be seen. But its effect on Freddie Bywaters himself was obvious and touching. Ever since his own cross-examination, he had sat a defiant and solitary figure, ignoring the court, which had rejected him as Peidi’s champion. Now, as he listened to Mr.

  Whiteley’s testimonial to him, he suddenly started to cry. The tears trickled down his young cheeks and he did not brush them away. He stumbled as he left the dock and a warder had to give him a hand.

  On every rising of the court, Freddie’s mother had managed to come up t
o the glass screen behind the dock and wave to him. On this occasion she was there to wave too, but for the first time Freddie forgot to notice her.

  Mrs. Thompson, back again in the dark, remote world of her own dream, paid no attention to Freddie or to anyone or anything else.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The time had come at last for Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett to show his mettle. As he rose to address the jury—large, imposing, exuding what seemed like the utmost self-assurance—the court was conscious of him as if he had been a charge of electricity. Mrs. Thompson’s black, huddled figure in the dock was forgotten in the crackle of excitement caused by her counsel.

  “May it please your lordship, members of the jury—at last I have an opportunity of putting Mrs. Thompson’s case to you.”

  The golden voice was slightly hushed to indicate the immense solemnity of the occasion. Having reminded the jury that, although there had been other, irrelevant indictments against Mrs. Thompson, the only indictment concerning them was the uncompromising one of murder, he turned a cold, disdainful eye upon the methods of the prosecution.

  “For some reason—you members of the jury may possibly understand the reason; I don’t pretend to—the prosecution here have elected to put these two people into the dock together and charge them with murder. As far as I know, there is no other case in which a jury have been empaneled to try either man or woman with murder where it could not be alleged by the prosecution that that person did any act when the murder, if it were a murder, was committed.”

  This lofty contempt may have registered with the jury, but it was less impressive to Mr. Justice Shearman. In the first of a series of tussles that indicated that Sir Montague found Sir Henry almost as exasperating as Mrs. Thompson, the Judge challenged this sweeping statement and sharply rapped Sir Henry’s knuckles.

  But it took more than this to ruffle Sir Henry’s monumental placidity. Ignoring the interruption as if it had not taken place, he continued his withering attack upon the Solicitor General.

  “I suppose that the case for the prosecution is founded upon nothing but those letters, written over a period of time, and founded outside that on nothing but guesswork, contradicted when you come to test it. I suppose the case is that there was an arrangement upon that night that Thompson should be murdered, that Mrs. Thompson was party to it, and that Mrs. Thompson knew quite well as she was walking down the road near her home that at any moment her husband was going to be taken from her side and murdered in cold blood. I contend that every single action of Mrs. Thompson upon the night when the killing took place shows that she knew nothing of what was going to happen.”

  With a lightning change of mood, Sir Henry was no longer scornful. He swept around to the jury, beaming at them, mellowing them, gathering them up into that world of sophistication and sensitive insight where they and Sir Henry so obviously belonged and where the Solicitor General would have been as out of place as a navvy at a duchess’ tea party.

  “You have got to get into the atmosphere of this case. This is no ordinary case you are trying. These are not ordinary people. This is not an ordinary charge against ordinary people. It is very difficult to get into the atmosphere of a play or opera, but you have to do it in this case. Am I right or wrong in saying that this woman is one of the most extraordinary personalities that you or I have ever met? Bywaters truly described her, did he not, as a woman who lived a sort of life I don’t suppose any of you live in—an extraordinary life of make believe, and in an atmosphere which was created by something which had left its impression on her brain. She reads a book and then imagines herself one of the characters of the book. She is always living an extraordinary life of novels. She reads a book, and although the man to whom she is writing is at the other end of the wide world—in Bombay, Australia, the Suez Canal—she wants his views regarding the characters in the books she has just read. You have read her letters. Have you ever read, mixed up with criticisms of books, mixed up with all sorts of references with which I shall have to do, more beautiful language of love? Such things have been very seldom put by pen upon paper. This is the woman you have to deal with, not some ordinary woman. She is one of those striking personalities met with from time to time who stands out for some reason or another.”

  This rhetoric was as daring as it was flattering to his auditors. Whatever we may think about Edith Thompson, the jury had almost certainly not looked upon her as “one of those striking personalities met with from time to time,” nor had it occurred to them that her letters contained “beautiful language of love.” To them, as to Freddie’s mother, she had always been “that woman.” But now Sir Henry had planted a seed of doubt.

  “I ask you again to get into the atmosphere of the life of Mrs. Thompson. I do not care whether it is described as an ‘amazing passion,’ to use the expression of the Solicitor General, or as an adulterous intercourse. Thank God, this is not a court of morals, because if everybody immoral was brought here I would never be out of it, nor would you. Whatever name is given to it, it was certainly a great love that existed between these two people.”

  Brashly Sir Henry had turned the jury into “men and women of the world,” and from this worldly point of view, which they now shared in common with him, he reviewed Mrs. Thompson’s “great love.” Was it conceivable that this great love could have involved a sordid conspiracy to murder? After their attempt to get a divorce had failed, hadn’t the lovers made a pact to wait for five years? Did that look like the action of murderers? How easy it had been for the prosecution, by quoting random, disconnected passages from the letters, to distort their true meaning! How laughable had been Mr. Inskip’s pretense of taking seriously the poison and light-bulb passages, when the autopsy reports had proved that no attempt to murder Percy by those methods had ever taken place! Wasn’t it obvious that they were just the fantasies of this extraordinary woman desperate to retain the affection of a lover who had started to slip away from her? And wasn’t it irrefutable that all Mrs. Thompson’s pleas to Freddie to “do something” and all her fears of the “risk” involved were nothing more sinister than her earnest desire to throw respectability to the winds and run away with her lover?

  With a great sweep of the arm, Sir Henry challenged:

  “You would not send anyone to prison for a month on that evidence. With regard to the giving of the quinine to Mrs. Thompson, it may be that Bywaters thought she was a woman to be pandered to. He knew the sort of woman she was, and he has described her to you as living in books and melodramatic. It is suggested that in the letters there are references to the death of Mr. Thompson. Unfortunately, there is a lot of loose talk amongst us all. We often hear the expression ‘He should be shot,’ or ‘I would like to poison him,’ even in ordinary conversation. This was loose talk by Bywaters, and it was the sort of language a man who had intrigued with a married woman might use. He may have said of the husband, ‘I wish he would die,’ but he did not mean it. Mrs. Thompson, wishing to show him that she would back him up, because she loved him, so wrote the letters that she did write.”

  The jury was watching him fascinated as, triumphantly, Sir Henry swept on to “Bella Donna.” He had managed to exalt Mrs. Thompson’s “great love” into the realms of fiction, and now he planned to make the subtle switch to fiction itself. But suddenly Mr. Justice Shearman snapped:

  “Are you going to put in the book? If you do, the jury will have to read the whole of it.”

  Sir Henry: “I do riot wish to do that. I think your lordship gave a description of the book. I will if necessary put in the book.”

  Mr. Justice Shearman: “Surely not. I don’t think that is necessary. I hope not—I hope you will not put it in. You can deal with anything that has been given in evidence about it.”

  Sir Henry faltered, but only for a moment. He realized that the time to adjourn court was rapidly approaching. He realized too that, since it was Saturday, a whole week end of private meditation and discussion stretched ahead for the jury. This wa
s a crucial moment. It was enormously important to make sure that, when they left the box, the jurors should still be men and women of the world who saw Mrs. Thompson and Freddie Bywaters not as the prosecution saw them, but through the elegant, rosytinted spectacles provided for them by Sir Henry himself.

  He pressed on, finishing his flattering portrait of his client, adding a stroke here, blurring an awkward feature there. It was working. Experienced campaigner that he was, he could feel the jury’s response. Yes, they were coming up, up. For a whole week end they would be his.

  Then Mr. Justice Shearman fired again, and fatally. As he adjourned the court, Mr. Justice Shearman, with all the weight of the bench behind him, made the following emphatic statement:

  “Before the court rises for the day I wish to offer you, members of the jury, this advice. Of course, you will not make up your mind until you have heard the whole case. The only other thing is, having regard to the surroundings for so many days, by all means look at the atmosphere and try to understand what the letters mean, but you should not forget that you are in a court of justice trying a vulgar and common crime. You are not listening to a play from the stalls of the theatre. When you are thinking it over, you should think it over in that way.”

  Mr. Justice Shearman, who had already damned Mrs. Thompson as a liar, now just as effectively and perversely damned her champion as a theatrical fake.

  “You should not forget that you are in a court of justice trying a vulgar and common crime. You are not listening to a play from the stalls of the theatre.” Mr. Justice Shearman flicked at a fold in his scarlet robes and withdrew from the court.

  He had won the week end for the prosecution.

  A week end break in any criminal case is an ordeal for all parties concerned. It condemns the prisoners to an added thirty-six hours of suspense. It offers counsel a pseudo respite at a time when they would much prefer to finish up the job. And for the jury, isolated from their normal lives, it provides a period of deadly boredom, tainted by anxiety that their great responsibility inevitably brings them. In this instance, the jury was offered the dubious diversions of a sight-seeing bus trip and a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but it is certain that the haunting image of the man and woman whose fate was theirs to decide seldom left their, minds.