by Q. Patrick
“Exhibit Twenty-six: ‘Why aren’t you sending me something—I wanted you to—you never do what I ask you darlint—you still have your own way always—If I don’t mind the risk why should you?’ After the rest comes this: ‘Have you studied bichloride of mercury?’ In answer to my question, we were told it is what is called a corrosive sublimate, a poison with which those who unfortunately have to come to these courts have to deal with.
“Then we come to this last letter at the end of September, Exhibit Sixty. It is quite obvious that that refers to a meeting, and, of course, quite properly, the Solicitor General asked a question which was fully answered, and much point was made of it. It is no point in the case now—‘Do not forget what we talked in the Tea Room, I will still risk and try if you will,’ and it is said it is poison or it is the dagger. We have got many things to consider; shall we run away if we can get the money; or shall we try poison? We will talk it over.’
“I should be wanting in my duty if I did not plainly explain to you that the meaning of these letters is entirely for you, and you have to ask yourselves, do they form a very strong case; and is she asking him clearly for his assistance to remove and murder her husband by the administration of poison? With regard to some of the statements, if they are accurate, they show that she administered it, but the important part of it is that they were plotting and planning, and you have heard her explanation, that she did it because it was to please him, to show how devoted she was to him. His story was: ‘I thought she advised me to do it, suggested I should do it, but I thought it was all vapor—melodrama.’ You bear in mind the force of those explanations; but it is a strong case for your consideration that on each of those voyages while he was away they are discussing the removal of her husband by poison, and it is said again, and I do not like to repeat myself, that throws light, not only on the motive of what he did, but it throws light on their intentions and their actions in what happened.”
Mr. Justice Shearman, with the minimum of personal comment, had manipulated Mrs. Thompson’s own words into a devastating case against her. By this time, his “unpleasant duty” had virtually been performed. But, to make assurance doubly sure, he pressed on once again to consider the crime itself, this time from Mrs. Thompson’s point of view. He reminded the jury that the prosecution claimed Mrs. Thompson had known Freddie was coming and actually saw him commit the crime, while Mrs. Thompson denied this. Here Mr. Justice Shearman snatched one of Sir Henry’s most valuable defense points and forged it into a weapon for the prosecution. Edith Thompson had been heard to cry out in piteous tones: “Oh, don’t, don’t!” Sir Henry had used this fact to prove that she had been taken completely unawares by the attack and was registering her horrified disapproval of it. But, asked Mr. Justice Shearman, wasn’t this point open to quite a different interpretation? Any woman, however guilty, might spontaneously cry, “Don’t, don’t,” at the actual moment of a knife blow. That did not in any way prove Mrs. Thompson’s innocence. But what did it do to her claim that she had been knocked on the head and was unconscious at the time? Didn’t it show once and for all that she must have been lying? Didn’t the “Don’t, don’t” prove conclusively that she had, as the prosecution claimed, actually seen the crime committed?
And what of Mrs. Thompson’s seeming “confusion, agitation, and hysteria” after the event? The defense had tried to use this as another proof of her innocence. But why couldn’t a woman whose whole life had been playacting have just as well been playacting at this moment too? And wasn’t it incontrovertible that her every statement, from the moment of the murder on, had been riddled with lies and evasions? Mr. Justice Shearman read the first signed statement that Mrs. Thompson had made to Inspector Sellars. As with the case of Bywaters, he exposed every untruth to be found in it. If this statement was false, he said, what reason was there to suppose that the final statement she had made, implicating Bywaters and claiming her own innocence, was any more accurate? Mr. Justice Shearman was a firm believer in the legal myth that a lying prisoner is a guilty prisoner. He had made this all too plain, and then, having charged into Peidi’s dream house and left nothing but havoc in his wake, he drew his summing up to a close with another of those paragraphs of seeming fair-mindedness that he had used so effectively to promote the cause of the prosecution.
“Gentleman, that is really the whole of the case. I ask your earnest consideration of it. I am not going to say another word to you about the case of the man, only to repeat that if you find the man guilty of murder, then you have got to consider, was this woman an active party to it; did she direct him to go; did she know he was coming; and are you satisfied that she was implicated directly in it? Her story is that she knew nothing about it; it was a surprise; in fact, she was pushed aside, and she immediately fainted. She did not see what was going on; when a man pushed her against the wall she did not look up to see what happened, she swooned away, and then at the end she sees Bywaters going away. You know exactly what was done before the fact; you know the fact of all the letters, and you know what she did after, and you know that her evidence is now that she knew nothing about it. In the letters she was merely saying she was poisoning her husband in order to make an appearance before Bywaters. Her whole case is, she says, she is quite innocent of this matter, and that she is shocked at everything that has happened, and had nothing to do with it. You will not convict her unless you are satisfied that she and he agreed that this man should be murdered when he could be, and she knew he was going to do it, and directed him to do it, and by arrangement between them he was doing it. If you are not satisfied of that you will acquit her; if you are satisfied of that it will be your duty to convict her. Will you please retire and consider your verdict?”
Chapter Eighteen
It was three-thirty when the climactic moment arrived. Mr. Justice Shearman rose and, with a fussy twitch at his scarlet robes, withdrew from the court. The prisoners were led away. One by one the jurors trooped out to the bare, unstimulating jury room, where they had at last to face their awesome responsibility.
The court, released from the restricting presence of its principal characters, was free to give vent to long controlled excitement. In the sudden humming life that broke out all over the room, Mr. Justice Shearman was by far the most dominating subject of conversation. The moments of Sir Henry’s glory had been almost completely forgotten. Sir Henry’s picture of the accused woman had had its startling effect, but, although it had momentarily stunned the spectators, it had made no deep contact with their inner selves. It was not the way they wanted to think about Mrs. Thompson. It was far more satisfying to think of her the way the newspapers had presented her. A monster was infinitely more titillating than “one of the most striking personalities of the time.” And Mr. Justice Shearman, with his gruff, pungent “common sense,” had shown a much shrewder grasp of mass psychology than the brilliant Sir Henry. Once and for all, he had given the public the Edith Thompson they wanted—which was, of course, the Edith Thompson he wanted himself.
The eager buzz grew ever louder as the mood of relaxed discipline increased. Of course Mrs. Thompson was guilty. How could they ever for a moment have doubted it? And of course the jury would convict her.
We are not in that courtroom. We are not whispering excitedly to Mrs. Jones, who came all the way up from Burnt Oak. We are not easing cramped leg muscles, suppressing the desire for a cigarette, longing for the catharsis that will justify the discomforts and tribulations we have been through to obtain a seat. But, while the jury sits in solemn conclave, we, under very different circumstances, must sit in conclave too. The time has come when we too want to make up our minds about what really happened on Belgrave Road and to what extent Edith Thompson was really implicated in that pitiful and bungled killing.
With Sir Montague Shearman a mere name in print and not a ferociously mustached, bristling, imposing presence at our elbow, we find that his summing up has little effect on us—unless perhaps to arouse our exasperation. Of
course the letters did not mean what he claimed they meant. Of course there was only prejudice and no proof to show that Edith Thomspon had been “play-acting” in her moments of bewilderment and terror after the crime.
Today it would take a very censorious mind to believe that those preposterous passages about poisons and light bulbs, sandwiched between tales of dances and hair-washings, were reports of actions that had really taken place. It would take a very naïve mind, also, to believe that a murder so clumsy, which shows no sign of any plan, any rehearsal, any organization whatever, could have been the result of months of continuous conspiracy. It is obvious today that Mrs. Thompson’s letters were fancies and that Freddie Bywaters never for a moment doubted this. It is just as obvious that the most terrible thing in the world that could have happened to the Peidi of the dream house was the actual, sordid reality of a dead suburban husband on a dingy suburban street. Edith Thompson did not have the faintest idea of what was going to happen that night, and never for a single moment had she wanted it to happen or even conceived that it could happen.
But it did happen. And that is the crux of the matter—and only by remembering this can we assess the degree of Edith Thompson’s guilt. That she was guilty of anything tangible enough for the law courts to punish is obviously not the case. However hard Sir Montague Shearman tried, Edith was not to be squeezed into any of the standard molds for criminals that the law provides. But the fact that Percy Thompson did get murdered must surely, from a moral point of view, be laid at Edith’s door. Freddie may not have believed her letters, but he had believed in her. Their romance, with all its affectations, its soaring flights, its dangerous distortions, was entirely Edith’s invention. Edith forced Freddie Bywaters to lead an existence that turned out to be unendurable for a boy of his temperament. Although Edith’s letters had never in any legal sense incited Freddie to the murder, they must have been the unintentional cause of it. For without the letters, without the sentimental pressure exerted on him by Edith, would Freddie Bywaters, the model son, the ship’s clerk of the excellent record, ever have killed Percy Thompson? It is almost inconceivable.
This, then, is the haunting irony of the case—and it makes a terrifying indictment of the sentimental attitude. Edith Thompson indulged in the fashionable and seemingly innocent pastime of transforming gaslight and cabbages into moonlight and roses. She made Freddie play, too. Together they pursued the game to its logical conclusion—and the logical conclusion turned out to be murder.
By five o’clock the jury had still not returned. The excitement in court began to be heightened by perplexity. What was going wrong? Surely they could not have spent all this time on a matter that any right-minded person could resolve in five minutes. Was it possible they were going to acquit her?
It was twenty minutes to six when the jury reached its decision; as it turned out, most of the time had been spent rereading the letters. The lights were already on in the courtroom and the dusty glass dome of the ceiling stretched December dusk above the spectators jammed in the gallery. Duly notified of the jury’s final agreement, Mr. Justice Shearman returned to the bench and seated himself beneath the sheathed sword of justice. In a silence so deep that it seemed to roar, the court waited and watched. The jurors, self-consciously aware of their suspense value, filed in. But through the shuffle of their settlement in the box, everyone was waiting for a different sound. Soon enough it came—the muffled sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up from the cells below the dock.
Freddie Bywaters, with two warders, was the first of the prisoners to appear. He looked firm, erect, very young—a suitable victim for the dreadful gravity of the ceremony. Behind him, guided by two wardresses who had almost to carry her to keep her from falling, came Edith Thompson. The fear that had her in its grip was so virulent now that it seemed to taint the air around her like a miasma. She collapsed into a chair on the dock, her face hidden behind the coq feathers of her hat. She was terrible to look at.
The court was now just what Mr. Justice Shearman had claimed it should never be—a stage watched as from the stalls of a theatre. In the smothering silence, the clerk of the court rose and asked the ancient, ritualistic sentences.
“Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?”
The foreman of the jury rose to face the clerk and his own sudden, unfamiliar importance.
“We have.”
“Do you find the prisoner Frederick Edward Bywaters guilty or not guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson?”
“Guilty, sir.”
“Do you find the prisoner Edith Jessie Thompson guilty or not guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson?”
“Guilty.”
In the gallery a woman gasped.
“You say they are severally guilty and that is the verdict of you all?”
With a faint, awkward nod, the foreman of the jury sat down again. The clerk of the court turned to the prisoners in the dock.
“Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson, you severally stand convicted of murder; have you, or either of you, anything to say why the court should not give you judgment of death according to law?”
Freddie Bywaters suddenly came to life. He stepped to the front of the dock, tossed back his head, and, in a voice ringing with defiance, cried:
“I say the verdict of the jury is wrong. Edith Thompson is not guilty. I am no murderer. I am not an assassin.”
In this final moment of his greatest ordeal, it is touching that Freddie’s loyalty to Edith Thompson remained unshaken. It is also touching and revealing to notice that the words he chose for his own defense had been borrowed from the closing sentences of his counsel’s address to the jury. “I am no murderer. I am not an assassin.” Those had been Mr. Whiteley’s words, and now it was as Mr. Whiteley saw him that Freddie was seeing himself. Our last glimpse of Freddie Bywaters is the most revealing. For all his masculine vigor and his unexpected sensitivity, he had no originality of vision whatsoever. He was completely passive; he could only reflect, like a mirror.
Mr. Justice Shearman did not look at Freddie Bywaters. Nor did he look at Mrs. Thompson as Freddie stepped back and the two wardresses supported the black bundle of clothing to the front of the dock. Under the white wig, Sir Montague’s bright terrier eyes were fixed on his old antagonist Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett.
“Is there any question of law, Sir Henry, as to the sentence I have to pronounce?”
A faint incoherent cry came from Edith Thompson. “I am not guilty.”
It merged with Sir Henry’s brief, resigned “No, my lord.”
An attendant was hovering with the square of black lace that is known as the “black cap.” He lowered it onto Mr. Justice Shearman’s wig. The judge picked up a sheet of paper and read the formal death sentence on Freddie Bywaters. Without pausing, he moved on to read Edith Thompson’s sentence.
“Edith Jessie Thompson, the sentence of the court upon you is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution and that you there suffer death by hanging and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be confined before your execution. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”
The effect of these dreadful words is always as chilling as the presence of Death itself. By British law, when any woman has been convicted on a murder charge, she must formally be asked whether or not she is pregnant, for a pregnant woman cannot be hanged. The clerk of the court, still on his feet, turned to Mrs. Thompson and asked the standard, veiled question:
“Edith Jessie Thompson, have you anything to say in stay of execution?”
It was then that Edith Thompson spoke. Her voice ripped through the musty silence, thin and blood-curdling as a ghost’s.
“I am not guilty,” she said. “Oh, God, I am not guilty.”
She fell against the edge of the dock—that shapeless, boneless huddle of black clothes that still, horribly, could whimper and moan. The wardresses carried her out of th
e court, past the motionless figure of Freddie Bywaters. The spectators had had their thrill, but, now it had come, it was a little more thrilling than they had bargained for.
Part IV: The Aftermath
Chapter Nineteen
A crowd had gathered in the evening gloom outside the Old Bailey. It booed several cars that drove away from the court on the chance that they might contain Freddie Bywaters or The Monster. Freddie was taken back to Pentonville and installed in the death cell. Edith Thompson, in complete collapse, was put to bed in Holloway Gaol under the care of a prison doctor.
Although a few of the spectators in Court Number One might have been chastened by the spectacle of Mrs. Thompson’s terrible defeat, the general public had no such qualms. To them, the trial was still a great big prurient thrill, and the next morning the newspapers, almost without exception, blared out the news of a just conviction. The Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Morning Post, the Manchester Guardian, even the venerable Times itself spoke with one voice. Edith Thompson had been guilty and the jury was to be commended for the courage of its verdict. The only paper to show qualified disagreement was the Daily News. “Against the man,” it wrote, “there could hardly have been another verdict. It seems difficult for us to believe that the woman incited Bywaters to commit the particular murder he did commit.” This implied that the News, although it questioned Edith’s complicity in the stabbing, was as convinced as its rivals that she had been guilty in the letters of inciting to kill by poison and ground glass. The letters had been too good copy to be jettisoned now.
But, tepid though it was, this was the nearest approach to a favorable notice that Edith Thompson got, and in the tornado of feeling against her that swept the country after the trial, it was little more than a straw to be blown away.