Trial and Error

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Yes. I think I told him to have a good time and forget about Hitler and everyone else.”

  “Very practical. It is only to be regretted that Mr Todhunter did not see fit to follow it. Was anything else said that you think the jury should hear?”

  “I think something was said about the possibility of murdering a blackmailer or any other person who was making the lives of several people a burden.”

  “Ah yes. You discussed with Mr Todhunter the idea of murdering some person, some complete stranger, who could be shown to be a cause of widespread unhappiness and misery?”

  “Yes.”

  “But for your part you did not take the discussion seriously?”

  “Not for a moment.”

  “Nor did you realise that Mr Todhunter was serious?”

  “I thought he was toying with the idea, in an academic and idealistic way, but I certainly did not think that he would ever put it into action.”

  “Precisely. Now you alluded to two conversations. What was the second?”

  “The second took place about two months ago; that is, after Palmer’s arrest for the murder but before his trial. Mr Todhunter visited me in my office and told me that it was he who had committed this murder. He asked my advice as to what he should do, since the police obviously did not believe his confession.’’

  “Yes, and what did you tell him?”

  “I told him in that case it would be necessary to prove his contention, and I advised him to get into touch with a common friend, a Mr Chitterwick, who had had some experience in the detection of crime, and see if he could be persuaded to help detect the murder.”

  “You mean, Mr Todhunter was to collaborate with Mr Chitterwick in detecting his own crime?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Was anything else said?”

  “Yes. I advised Mr Todhunter not to be too much upset, since I considered it very doubtful that Palmer would be convicted. In fact I hardly considered it possible that he could be convicted in view of Mr Todhunter’s story.”

  “The conviction came as a great surprise to you?”

  “A very great surprise.”

  “You felt that a miscarriage of justice had occurred?”

  “I was convinced that an appalling blunder had occurred.”

  “Did you take any steps yourself?”

  “Yes. I interviewed a high police official and satisfied myself that the authorities were quite genuine in their belief that they had the real murderer under lock and key.”

  “But that did not allay your anxiety?”

  “On the contrary, it increased it; because this could only mean that the police would prove obstructive to any reopening of the case.”

  “You kept in touch with the investigations of Mr Chitterwick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did what you leaned from him confirm or lessen your feeling that a miscarriage of justice had occurred?”

  “It confirmed my opinion.”

  “So in the end, acting with the full approval and co-operation of Mr Todhunter himself, you took this drastic step of filing a private charge of murder against him?”

  “I did.”

  “Thank you, Mr Furze.”

  Mr Jamieson asked only a question or two, to bring out more strongly Furze’s original impression that Mr Todhunter was only toying with the idea of murder; and Furze agreed that a man might carry such make-believe, right up to the last moment and yet never intend murder in his heart of hearts.

  2

  The stream of witnesses went on.

  It lasted for three more full days, and it would be impossible even if it were of any use, to give so little as a summary of all their evidence.

  Young Fuller had done his work well. Anyone who could give the smallest corroboration was called. The judge was very patient.

  Witnesses were taken more or less in their consecutive order in the story.

  At one point Mr Todhunter had a surprise. He knew that Farroway had been subpoenaed, but had never expected him to appear. A doctor’s certificate of inability to attend seemed to Mr Todhunter the natural sequence of subpoenaing Farroway. But whether it was that young Fuller’s methods were more efficacious than those of Palmer’s solicitor or not, when Farroway’s name was called, it was Farroway who entered the box.

  Sir Ernest spared him as much as possible. His liaison with Jean Norwood was mentioned but not emphasised. It was upon certain conversations which he had held with Mr Todhunter that Farroway’s evidence was chiefly required. Sir Ernest questioned him upon them.

  Farroway responded nobly. If Sir Ernest was willing to spare him, he was not willing to spare himself. (Mr Todhunter suspected some plain speaking from Farroway’s wife.) He was a useful witness in another way, too, for it was clear that he held no doubts about Mr Todhunter’s guilt; and the more people who clearly felt that way, the more likely it was that the jury would follow them.

  Farroway described his conversations with Mr Todhunter, at lunch in the expensive restaurant when Mr Todhunter had learned the extent of his infatuation for Miss Norwood and how it had broken up his home; and secondly, that long and fatal conversation in Farroway’s lodgings.

  While Farroway was describing this, the court was completely silent. At times Farroway’s voice sunk almost to a whisper, but there was no need to ask him to speak up. The jury and the judge could hear even a whisper.

  “I told him,” muttered Farroway in so broken a way that Mr Todhunter felt acutely embarrassed in his dock, “I told him, I think, that she was the wickedest woman I knew. I know I told him that I’d often thought of killing her myself but hadn’t the courage. I remember saying she was more worth killing than anyone I’d ever met. I loved her then,” whispered Farroway with desperate courage, “but I couldn’t help knowing what she was.”

  “Mr Farroway,” said Sir Ernest, no less solemnly, “it is my duty to put a very painful question to you. Assuming that the accused was at that time debating with himself whether to kill this woman or not, do you agree that the words you used to him and the attitude you showed to him on this occasion were enough to turn the scale?”

  Farroway lifted his head. “Yes,” he said, more loudly than he had spoken before. “It’s a conclusion I can’t escape. I must have incited him to kill her.”

  Mr Jamieson’s few questions, designed to show that Farroway as a novelist and therefore a student of character was quite ready to agree that Mr Todhunter had been incited not to kill Miss Norwood but merely to frighten her by the flourishing of a revolver, came as very much of an anticlimax.

  On the whole Farroway’s evidence was the most telling that had yet been given. It was obvious that the jury had been deeply impressed by it.

  Then came Mr Budd, who no less nobly admitted to having inflamed Mr Todhunter with tales of Miss Norwood’s unpleasing behaviour in her theatre. Mr Budd further was able to establish that Mr Todhunter had without a shadow of doubt been making enquiries about Miss Norwood and especially about her less attractive nature; and this, too, Mr Pleydell was able to confirm, with the notable addition of Mr Todhunter’s question of whether, taking it by and large, the world would not be a more pleasant place with Miss Norwood out of it. Then came Mrs Vincent Palmer, to drive the point still further home.

  Mrs Palmer was asked one other series of questions, which sounded highly mysterious.

  “Have you,” said Sir Ernest, looking extremely cunning, “have you ever seen a revolver in the possession of your husband?”

  Mrs Palmer agreed that she had.

  “To your knowledge he possessed a revolver?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever handled it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever fired it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought I’d like to, to see what it was like, one day when my husband was out.”

  “When was that?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say. Not ver
y long ago.”

  “Was it within the last year?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Within the last six months?”

  “Possibly. I think it was one day in the late summer—last summer.”

  “What did you fire at?”

  “I fired it into a bed in the garden.”

  Like a conjurer Sir Ernest whisked a piece of paper from the desk in front. “Please look at this.” The usher took it across the court, and Mrs Palmer duly looked at it. Mr Todhunter gazed at her with admiration. She was acting so well that it might have been the first time her eyes had ever rested on that piece of paper; but Mr Todhunter had learned a thing or two by this time about witnesses and their treatment, before and after entering the box.

  “Is that a plan of your garden, Mrs Palmer?”

  “Yes, I see that it is.”

  “The flower beds are clearly marked?”

  “Quite.”

  “Will you show the jury into which bed you fired that shot?”

  “Into this one. It’s marked with a red cross.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Palmer. That’s all.”

  The jury studied the plan while Mrs Palmer slipped quietly out of court. It had been an ordeal for her, as Mr Todhunter well knew, but she had carried it off bravely.

  Sir Ernest caught Mr Todhunter’s eye and very nearly winked. Mr Todhunter looked hastily the other way.

  The questions had not been mysterious to him. In fact the whole idea behind them had been his own, and very proud Mr Todhunter was of it.

  It had been a point against Palmer, at his own trial, that his revolver had been recently fired. Palmer had denied having fired it himself for years. Either his solicitor had omitted to cover the possibility of someone else having fired it, or else Mrs Palmer had unaccountably forgotten that she herself had done so. In either case Mr Todhunter, while still allowed to make enquiries on his own account, had eluded Mr Chitterwick one day and paid another visit to Bromley where, without preamble, he had bluntly asked Mrs Palmer whether it might not have been she who had fired the revolver; and Mrs Palmer, after a long pause, had agreed that it might.

  Mr Todhunter had then ascertained that Mrs Palmer had in fact fired into a certain flower bed, and he had gone back to London to send both Mr Chitterwick and the firearms expert down to Bromley in their turn. The expert had been given a spade and told to dig in the flower bed. In due course he had turned up a lead bullet which could only have been fired from an army pattern revolver; and when the bullet came to be examined, there was no difficulty in proving that it had been fired from Palmer’s own revolver. And of course there could have been no hanky-panky about the whole thing, for Palmer’s revolver was still in the possession of the police and could not have been borrowed for any such reprehensible purpose as the faking of evidence. By a piece of smart work, therefore, Mr Todhunter had seriously damaged if not destroyed one of the worst points against Palmer.

  To clear the matter up, Sir Ernest called the firearms expert next to prove both where the bullet had been found and what revolver it must have been fired from.

  Sir Ernest then put the bullet in as an exhibit and produced another cat out of his bag. Showing the expert the shapeless piece of lead that had been dug out of the beam in Miss Norwood’s barn, he asked if that could also have been fired from the same revolver. And most obligingly the expert replied that it could not.

  “Will you tell the jury how you can be so sure?” suggested Sir Ernest.

  “Certainly. In the revolver which is labelled B, there is a barrel flaw which leaves a unique and clearly defined mark on any bullet fired from it. Although the bullet labelled C is so much damaged, the barrel mark of revolver B, it can easily be seen, is definitely missing.

  “So that, although you can prove that revolver B did not fire that bullet, that does not necessarily mean that you can say what revolver did fire it?”

  “That is so.”

  “Have you examined the revolver labelled A?” The revolver labelled A was that belonging to Mr Todhunter.

  “I have.”

  “Could that have fired this bullet C?”

  “I have made tests with it and undoubtedly it could have done so, but it is not possible to say that it actually did.”

  Sir Ernest nodded and had the statement repeated in two or three different ways, so that not even the most obtuse jury could fail to understand that Vincent Palmer could not possibly have fired the bullet which lodged in the barn, but that Mr Todhunter could have done so.

  With this interesting point established, the witnesses’ tale went on.

  Mrs Farroway came next, to testify to the good offices of Mr Todhunter, the help he had given her and her family and the distress he had shown on their behalf. She agreed that his feelings towards Miss Norwood had seemed very bitter and that he had expressed them quite plainly. Felicity Farroway was not called, to the disappointment of the spectators. Her evidence could only have corroborated her mother’s, and after the scene in his bedroom Mr Todhunter had put down a very firm foot against her being allowed anywhere near the court. An outburst of hysterics would obviously do his case no good.

  To compensate for Felicity’s nonappearance however, Sir Ernest was able to produce a real thrill in his last witness on this day.

  “I now call,” he declaimed in his most resonant tones, “I now call Vincent Palmer.”

  A delighted shudder went round the whole court. Only the judge looked unmoved; but under his wig even he must have experienced a shock. To hear called as a witness the man already under sentence of death for the very murder for which he was now trying a totally different person must cause even a judge to quiver slightly, albeit inside his robes.

  Not that young Mr Palmer really had anything very much of importance to tell. Sir Ernest suggested that, in order to save the time of the Court and to ensure that the death of Miss Norwood should be considered from every possible angle, the official report of the examination and cross-examination of Palmer at his own trial should be put in now as evidence. The judge assented, and the jury were bidden to study the typewritten sheets now handed to them, at their leisure.

  In this evidence Palmer had admitted having visited Miss Norwood that evening but asserted that he had left her, alive and well, before nine o’clock. It was a fact that Miss Norwood had been seen, very much alive, after this hour, but no evidence had been produced to show that Palmer had left at that time. It had been the police theory that Miss Norwood had left him for a few minutes and then returned.

  In response to Sir Ernest’s questions Palmer now once again asserted that he had heard a church clock striking nine as he walked down a road at some distance from that in which Miss Norwood’s house had lain, in point of fact towards a bus stop; and he was able to remember this because he had unconsciously fitted his steps to the chimes and found that he could take four paces to each stroke. This was interesting, but of course the discovery could have been made at any time, together with its corollary that, in order to have reached this particular road by nine o’clock, Palmer must have left the Norwood premises certainly before 8:55 p.m.

  “And when you left, you neither heard nor saw anyone else in the garden?” asked Sir Ernest.

  “No one. It was getting pretty dark then, and I was het up in any case. We’d had a row, you see. I doubt if I’d have heard if anyone had been there; I certainly saw no one.”

  “Most unfortunate, for all our parts. . . . In our submission, my lord,” remarked Sir Ernest confidentially to the judge, “the witness must have been leaving the grounds just as the accused was entering them.” Sir Ernest was allowing himself a good deal of latitude, but there were no objections to be expected from his colleague on the other side. “Had you, while in the gardens, noticed whether there was a punt moored to the bank at the bottom of the garden?” he continued to the witness.

  “No, I didn’t go down to the river.”

  “Let me see.” Sir Ernest shuffled hastily through the typescript
of evidence. “You have stated that you were not on the premises more than twenty minutes. During the whole of that period you neither saw nor heard nor had any reason to suspect the presence of any unauthorised person in Miss Norwood’s grounds that evening?”

  “No.”

  Counsel then went on to ask a few questions concerning the meeting between Palmer and Mr Todhunter at the Farroway flat on the following morning. But here again Palmer had not much to say. He had found his revolver in Mr Todhunter’s possession when he arrived at the flat; he could not suggest any reason why it should have been in Mr Todhunter’s pocket or why Mr Todhunter should have shown so much interest in it; yet he knew now that Mr Todhunter had a revolver of his own of identical pattern and that Mrs Farroway (as she had stated in evidence) had seen it in its owner’s possession before he, Palmer, arrived. Would it strike him, knowing the circumstances, as a feasible explanation if Mr Todhunter had intended to substitute his own guilty revolver for Palmer’s innocent one with the feeling usual to the guilty person that he must be the only person whom the police suspect and that incriminating evidence will be safer in anyone else’s possession rather than his own? Mr Palmer, somewhat sulkily, could not give an opinion on the point.

  Sir Ernest smiled his sulkiness away. He had got the point before the jury so early in the proceedings and that was all he cared about.

  In the same way Sir Ernest did not seem worried when young Palmer, after two or three more unimportant questions, left the witness box in the charge of his two warders without having contributed anything of value to his case. He had brought the wrongfully condemned man before the jury and given them a first-class thrill, and he expected them to show their gratitude with their verdict.

  3

  The next morning it was Mr Chitterwick’s turn.

  He was examined by Sir Ernest at some length and was able to give evidence of importance, from the occasion when Mr Todhunter had consulted him concerning some person whom he might conveniently murder, to the last discovery of all, that of the whereabouts of the missing bracelet. His modesty and diffidence made an excellent impression on all concerned; and, led very subtly by Sir Ernest, the effect he quite unknowingly produced was that if so charming a person as Mr Chitterwick thought that a thing was so, then it probably was.