“He said, ‘May I wish you prosperity?’ and his expression seemed to change, and become—I did not like it. He said, ‘Mr. James Caplon Answell,’ to the air, as though he were repeating it. Then he looked at me and said, ‘That marriage would be advantageous—to both sides, I might say.’”
H.M.’s lifted hand stopped him.
“Just a minute. Be careful. He said, ‘That marriage,’ did he? He didn’t say, ‘This marriage?’”
“No, he did not.”
“Go on.”
“Then he said, ‘As you know, I have already given my consent to it.’”
“Let me repeat that,” interposed H.M. quickly. He lifted his blunt fingers and checked off the words. “What he actually said was, ‘That marriage would be advantageous; I have already given my consent to it?’”
“Yes.”
“I see. And then, son?”
“He said, ‘I can find absolutely nothing against it. I had the honor to be acquainted with the late Lady Answell, and I know that your family financial position is sound.’”
“Wait again! Did he say, ‘Your financial position,’ or ‘Your family financial position?’”
“It was, ‘Your family financial position.’ Then he said, ‘Therefore I propose to tell you—’ That was all I heard, distinctly. There was a drug in that whisky, and it got me.”
H.M. exhaled a deep breath, and shook his gown; but he kept on steadily in that rumbling monotone.
“Right here let’s cut back to the telephone conversation by which you got summoned to Grosvenor Street. The deceased knew you were comin’ to London by a train that left Frawnend at nine o'clock?”
“He must have.”
“He also knew, didn’t he, that the train wouldn’t arrive until 10:45; and that he couldn’t possibly get in touch with you before eleven?”
“Mary told him so.”
“Exactly. Yet still he kept ringin’ up your flat incessantly from as early as nine in the morning—when you hadn’t started from Frawnend?”
“Yes.”
“When you talked to him over the phone at 1:30 on Saturday afternoon, had you ever heard his voice before, or seen him?”
“No.”
“I want to hear about the beginnin’ of that conversation on the telephone. Just tell us how it began.”
“The phone rang,” replied Answell in a calm voice. “I picked up the receiver,” he illustrated. “I was sitting on the couch, and I reached over after it while I was looking at a newspaper. Mr. Hume spoke. At that time I thought he said, I want to speak to Caplon Answell.’ So I said, ‘Speaking.’”
H.M. leaned forward.
“Oh? You thought he said, I want to speak to Caplon Answell.’ But later, when you looked back on it, did you realize he said something different?”
“Yes, I did. I knew it must be.”
“What did he really say, then?”
“Something different.”
“Did he really say this: Did he really say, ‘I want to speak to Captain Answell’?”
“Yes.”
H.M. dropped his brief on the desk. He folded his arms, and spoke with a ferocious gentleness.
“In short,” said H.M., “during that whole conversation, and afterwards at his own house, he thought he was talkin’ to your cousin, Captain Reginald Answell: didn’t he?”
XI—In Camera
FOR perhaps ten seconds there was not so much as a whisper or a creak in the courtroom. I imagined I could hear people breathe. The implication penetrated slowly; we had seen it suddenly appear and come closer; but it had to be adjusted to the case, and I wondered whether the judge would allow it. The prisoner, whose tired face now wore a sardonic look, seemed challenging Reginald Answell to meet his eye. Reginald did not. His back was to the witness-box as he sat at the solicitors’ table; he had his hand on the water-bottle, and he scarcely appeared to have heard. His saturnine face, with hair the same color as the prisoner’s, showed only a rather bored astonishment.
“Yes, I mean that man there,” insisted H.M., drawing attention to him.
Captain Reginald shook his head and smiled contemptuously. Sir Walter Storm rose in full panoply.
“My lord,” he snapped, “may I suggest that the prisoner is hardly an authority on what Mr. Hume may or may not have been thinking?”
The judge considered, rubbing his temples lightly with his small hands.
“The point is well taken, Sir Walter. At the same time, if Sir Henry has any evidence to put forward in this matter, I think we may allow him some latitude.” He looked at H.M. with some sharpness.
“Yes, my lord, we got the evidence.”
“Then continue; but remember that the prisoner’s suspicions are not evidence.”
Although the Attorney-General sat down without attack, it was clear that he had declared war. H.M. turned again to Answell.
“About this telephone-call which we’re trying to explain: your cousin had come up to London the night before, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, from the same place I was staying.”
“And, when he was in London, he always stayed at your flat? I think we’ve heard that testified here?”
“That is true.”
“So, if the deceased wanted to get in touch with him, it’s natural that he should have rung up your flat as early as nine on Saturday morning?”
“Yes.”
“When you went to Grosvenor Street on Saturday evenin’, was your first name mentioned at any time?”
“No. I said to the butler, ‘My name is Answell’; and, when he announced me, he said, ‘The gentleman to see you, sir.’”
“So, when the deceased said, ‘My dear Answell, I’ll settle your hash, damn you,’ you believe he was not speaking about you at all?”
“I am sure he was not.”
H.M. shuffled with some papers in order to allow this to sink in. Then, beginning with the drinking of the whisky, he went through the story. We knew that part of it to be true; but still, was he guilty? The man was not the world’s best witness; but there was an air of fierce conviction about everything he said. He conveyed a little of that trapped feeling which must have possessed him if he were innocent. It was a long examination, and Answell would have made a good impression if only—last evening—he had not announced his own guilt from the dock. It hung over every word he said now, even if nobody referred to it. He was a self-confessed murderer before he started. It was as though there were two of him, merging each into the other like figures on a double-exposed photographic plate.
“Finally,” growled H.M., “let’s take the reasons for various things. When did you first begin to believe that a mistake had been made, and that all that evening the deceased had been mistakin’ you for your cousin?”
“I don’t know.” Pause. “I thought of it that same night, later, but I could not believe it.” Pause. “Then I thought about it again. Afterwards.”
“Was there a reason why you didn’t want to say anything about it, even then?”
“I—” Hesitation.
“Just tell me: did you have a reason?”
(Watch your step, H.M.; for God’s sake watch your step!)
“You have heard the question,” said the judge. “Answer it.”
“My lord, I suppose I did.”
Mr. Justice Bodkin frowned. “You either had a reason, or you had not?”
“I had a reason.”
It was possible that H.M. was beginning to sweat. “Just tell me this: Do you know why the deceased might have wanted to make an appointment with your cousin and not you?”
Between counsel and prisoner there seemed to be a scales; and now the scalepan dipped. The young blockhead squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Putting his hands on the rail, he looked with a clear eye round the court.
“No, I don’t know,” he replied clearly.
Silence.
“You don’t know? But there was a reason, wasn’t there, why this mistake might have occurr
ed?”
Silence.
“There was a reason, wasn’t there, why the deceased may have disliked Captain Answell, and wished to ‘settle his hash?’”
Silence.
“Was it because—?”
“No, Sir Henry,” interposed the judge into that tightening strain, “we cannot let you lead the witness any further.”
H.M. bowed, and leaned his weight on his fists. He clearly saw that it was useless to go on with this. All sorts of speculations must have been buzzing soundlessly in the court, behind those impassive faces banked up round us. The first thing which occurred to me was that it almost certainly concerned Mary Hume. Suppose, for instance, that there had been an affair of striking proportions between Mary Hume and the penniless Captain Answell? And suppose that the practical Avory Hume meant to cut it through to the core before it spoiled a good marriage? It fitted every circumstance; and yet would the prisoner have put his neck in a rope rather than acknowledge it? This was incredible. Let us face it sensibly: it does not happen nowadays. It is carrying chivalry too far. There must be some other reason which concerned Mary Hume—but what it was none of us, I think, then guessed. When we did learn, we understood.
Presently H.M. relinquished his witness, and the formidable Sir Walter Storm rose to cross-examine. For a moment he did not speak. Then in a tone of calm and detached contempt, he threw out one question.
“Have you made up your mind whether or not you are guilty?”
There are certain tones you must not take with any man, even when he is helpless. What nothing else could do, this did. Answell pulled up his head. Across the well of the court he looked the Attorney-General in the eye.
“That is like asking, ‘Have you stopped cheating at poker?’”
“It would be irrelevant to question you about your habits with cards, Mr. Answell. Just oblige me by answering my questions,” said the other. “Are you guilty or not guilty?”
“I did not do it.”
“Very well. I take it that your hearing is normally acute?”
“Yes.”
“If I say to you, ‘Caplon Answell,’ and then, ‘Captain Answell,’—even in spite of all the unfortunate noise going on in this court—you will be able to distinguish between the two?”
At the solicitors’ table Reginald Answell smiled slightly and turned his eyes round. What impression all this had made on him it was impossible to say.
“Please speak up. I take it that you do not have periodic fits of deafness?”
“No. But as it happens, I did not pay much attention at the time. I was looking at a paper. I picked up the phone with the other hand, and I did not give it close attention until I heard Mr. Hume’s name.”
“But you heard his name well enough?”
“Yes.”
“I have here your statement, exhibit 31. Regarding this theory that the deceased may have said ‘Captain Answell’ rather than ‘Caplon Answell,’—did you mention this to the police?”
“No.”
“Although you tell us that it occurred to you as early as the night of the murder?”
“I did not think seriously of it at the time.”
“What made you think more seriously of it later?”
“Well—I got to thinking it over.”
“Did you mention it when you were before the magistrates?”
“No.”
“What I am endeavoring to get at is this: When did such an idea first crystallize in your mind?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What caused it to crystallize in your mind, then? Do you remember that? No? In short, can you give one good and solid reason for this whole extraordinary notion of yours?”
“Yes, I can,” shouted the witness, bedeviled out of his torpor. His face was flushed; he looked, for the first time, natural and human.
“Very well; what reason?”
“I knew that Mary had been very friendly with Reg before we met; it was Reg who introduced me to her, at the Stonemans’—”
“Oh?” inquired Sir Walter, with rich suavity. “Are you suggesting that you believed there had been anything improper in their relations?”
“No. Not exactly. That is—”
“Had you any reason to suspect anything improper in their relations?”
“No.”
Sir Walter tilted back his head, and seemed to be massaging his face with one hand as though to get curious ideas in order.
“Tell me, then, whether I correctly state the various suggestions you have made. Miss Hume was friendly with Captain Answell, there being nothing to which anyone could take exception. Because of this, the eminently reasonable Mr. Hume conceives a violent dislike of Captain Answell and resolves suddenly to ‘settle his hash.’ He telephones to Captain Answell, but the message is intercepted by you under the mistaken impression that it is for you. You go unarmed to Mr. Hume’s house, where he gives you a drink of drugged whisky in the belief that you are Captain Answell. While you are unconscious, someone places Captain Answell’s pistol in your pocket and (as I think you have told my learned friend) employs his time in pouring mint extract down your throat. When you awake, your fingerprints are found on an arrow which you have not touched, and the whisky has flown back into a decanter without fingerprints. Have I correctly stated your position in the matter? Thank you. Can you reasonably expect the jury to believe it?”
There was a silence. Answell put his hands on his hips and glanced round the court. Then he spoke in a natural, offhand tone. He said:
“So help me, by this time I don’t expect anybody to believe anything. If you think everything a person does in life is governed by some reason, just try standing where I am for a while and see how you like listening to yourself.”
A sharp rebuke from the bench cut him short; but his nervousness had been conquered and the glazed fixity was gone from his eyes.
“I see,” intoned Sir Walter imperturbably. “Do you next suggest that no reason governs any of your own actions?”
“I always though it did.”
“Did reason govern your actions on the night of January 4?”
“Yes. I kept my mouth shut when they were talking to me as you are now.”
It earned another reproof from the bench; but Answell was making a better impression here than under chief-examination. The good impression was quite irrational, for Sir Walter proceeded to tie him into such knots that probably not three people in court believed a word he said. But—after he had let H.M. down badly—there it was. I wondered whether the old man had arranged this to happen exactly as it did.
“You have told us that the reason why you refused to remove your overcoat, and spoke to one witness in a tone that has been described as savage, was because you did not wish to ‘look like a damned fool.’ Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think that you would look more like a damned fool with your overcoat off than with it on?”
“Yes. No. I mean—”
“What precisely did you mean?”
“It was the way I felt, that’s all.”
“I put it to you that the reason why you did not remove that coat was that you did not wish anyone to notice the bulge of the pistol in your hip-pocket?”
“No, I never thought of that.”
“You never thought of what? Of the pistol in your pocket?”
“Yes. That is, there was no pistol in my pocket.”
“Now, I call your attention again to the statement you made to the police on the night of January 4. Are you aware that the suggestions you have made today directly contradict this statement you gave to the police?”
Answell drew back, fidgeting again with his tie. “No, I do not follow that.”
“Let me read you a few of them,” said Sir Walter, with the same unruffled heaviness. “‘I went to his house,’ you say, ‘at 6:10. He greeted me with complete friendliness.’—You now imply that his attitude was the reverse of friendly, do you not?”
“Then which of these two attitudes do you wish us to believe?”
“Both of them. That is what I mean: I mean that on that night he took me for someone else, and his attitude was not friendly; but he was actually friendly enough towards myself.”
For a moment Sir Walter remained looking at the witness, and then he lowered his head as though to cool it.
“We need not stop to disentangle that; I am afraid you do not appreciate my question. Whoever he thought you were that night, was his attitude during your interview friendly?”
“No.”
“Ah, that is what I wished to find out. Then this particular assertion in your statement is false, is it not?”
“I thought it was true at the time.”
“But you have completely changed your mind since then? Very well. Again you tell us, ‘He said that he would drink my health, and he gave his full consent to my marriage with Miss Hume.’—Since you have now decided that he was unfriendly, how do you reconcile this quoting of actual words with an unfriendly attitude?”
“I misunderstood him.”
“In other words,” said the Attorney-General, spacing his words after a pause, “what you ask the jury to believe now is a direct contradiction to several of the most essential assertions in your statement?”
“Technically, yes.”
For a full hour Sir Walter Storm gravely took the witness to pieces like a clock. He went through every bit of testimony with great care, and finally sat down after as pulverizing a result as I have ever listened to. It was expected that H.M. would re-examine, in an attempt to rehabilitate his witness. But he did not. All he said was:
“Call Mary Hume.”
A warder took Answell back to the dock, where the door was unlocked again, and he was led up into his open pen. A cup of water was brought up from the cells for him; he drank it thirstily, but he peered up with a quick start over the rim when he heard H.M. call the witness.
Where Mary Hume had been during the previous examination you could not tell. She seemed to appear in the middle of the court, as though there should be no hesitation or halt in the shuttle that moved witnesses to and from justice. Answell was already last minute’s pattern. And Reginald Answell’s expression changed. It was not anything so obvious as a start: only a certain awareness, as though someone had tapped him on the shoulder from behind, and he did not quite want to look round. His long-jawed good looks had a bonier quality; but he assumed a pleasant expression, and his finger tapped slowly on the water-bottle. He glanced up at the prisoner—who smiled.
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