by Ruth Rendell
I felt disproportionately upset and shocked. ‘When was this, Gordon?’
‘I can tell you the exact date. It was the day before Aubrey’s birthday, August the 12th, a Wednesday.’
Swanny had had her first stroke in August. I would have to look up the date but I was sure it had been on the 13th because Mrs Elkins had remarked on the ill luck associated with that date. Why hadn’t Swanny asked me to go with her to Lavender Grove? What had made her turn to Gordon Westerby?
Aubrey offered me brandy and I accepted, something I seldom do. They had begun to talk about their summer holiday, which they intended to spend in Denmark, rooting out Westerby and Kastrup ancestors. Would I see if I could find the family tree Swanny had made and spoken of? Meanwhile, I answered Gordon’s questions as best I could.
It wasn’t late when I phoned for a taxi to take me home, no more than a quarter to eleven. The wine and brandy I’d drunk sent me immediately into a deep sleep and awoke me again at three sharp, headachey but alert and with a drumming heart.
I put the light on, took three aspirins and, sitting up in bed, read Donald Mockridge’s account of the trial at the Central Criminal Court of Alfred Eighteen Roper.
14
THE TRIAL OF ALFRED ROPER
THE TRIAL OF Alfred Roper for the murder of his wife was one of the last in which Mr Howard de Filippis, K C appeared at the old building of the palace of justice called the Old Bailey. On October 16th, 1905, the court was presided over by Mr Justice Edmondson with Mr Richard Tate-Memling appearing for the Prosecution. Roper was charged with murdering his wife, Elizabeth Louisa Roper, on or about July 27th, 1905, by cutting her throat, to which charge he pleaded Not Guilty.
Mr de Filippis, a huge man of exceptional height and with bright piercing eyes, strode into the court preceded as usual by three clerks: one carried a pile of handkerchiefs, one a carafe of water and two glasses and the third an air cushion. These ‘props’ were to be used by the great advocate in tricks of the trade or distraction tactics and were seldom employed to greater effect than in the Roper case.
Mr Tate-Memling was an altogether smaller man—physically smaller, that is, for so commanding was his presence and effective the power of his voice that those present in the court soon forgot the insignificance of his stature. His voice was particularly famous, mellifluous, almost seductive, the tones of an actor but one on the stage of life itself.
The Judge, the former Queen’s Counsel Lewis Wilford Edmondson, was well-known for the silence he maintained throughout the trials over which he presided. Far from interrupting the proceedings with those inquiries and interpolations, witty or merely bothersome, that so often distinguish other members of the judiciary, he shed upon the court an oppressive coldness, listening intently, observing circumspectly, speechless for much of the process.
The jury was charged to try the case for the murder of Elizabeth Roper, and Mr Tate-Memling, having paused and surveyed the court in utter silence, having once eyed the equally silent and glowering judge, opened his address.
He said that the case was a very serious one and one that would command the jury’s serious attention. Upon the morning of Friday August 4th was discovered in a room on the second floor of Devon Villa, Navarino Road, Hackney, the body of a married woman, Mrs Elizabeth Louisa Roper, and lying close by her the body of her mother, Mrs Maria Sarah Hyde. However, Mrs Hyde’s death was a natural one and need not concern them at this time. Mrs Roper’s death was due to having had her throat cut from ear to ear and she had been dead for at least a week.
He spoke of the accused’s life at Devon Villa with his wife, his mother-in-law, his children and the various other persons who inhabited the house. The accused, he said, had been a pharmacist and apparently hoped to follow that calling again. He had, therefore, a degree of specialized knowledge of certain drugs. The court would hear how, during the spring and summer of 1905, he had administered to his wife, regularly and over a period of six months, a quantity of hyoscin hydrobromide, a substance highly toxic unless given in carefully controlled doses.
The aim had no doubt been to bring about Mrs Roper’s death. The marriage was not happy and Roper had expressed a wish to take his son to another part of the country and live there without his wife. However, in spite of the sustained administering of hyoscin, Mrs Roper did not die. The day came for the accused’s departure for Cambridge and still Mrs Roper lived and throve. Indeed, she expected to follow her husband within a week and to resume cohabitation with him in Cambridge.
It was the Prosecution’s contention that at about 4.30 on the afternoon of July 27th, the accused and his son left Devon Villa in a hansom cab for Liverpool Street Station, there to take the 5.15 train for Cambridge. However, when they reached the station, the accused told his son, a boy of six, that he had left a silver sovereign case, usually attached to his watch chain and containing four sovereigns, at home and must return for it. This same story he told to a porter whom he asked to look after his son till his return and to the cab driver who had brought him thither. The accused then returned to Navarino Road, Hackney, where he went upstairs to retrieve the sovereign case. In the bedroom he found his wife sleeping, under the influence of the drug he was administering to her. He cut her throat with a bread knife and returned to Liverpool Street, again by cab, having been gone for an hour and a half.
Father and son, having missed the 5.15 train, caught the 8.20 for Cambridge, arriving in that city at 9.40 p.m. No murder could be more demonstrative of the cool callousness of its perpetrator than this calculated planning and arranging of the crime, culminating as it did in a train journey to a new life accompanied by the murdered woman’s own child.
Evidence for the Crown
Dr Thomas Toon said he was an M D and one of the official analysts to the Home Office. He examined the body of Elizabeth Roper at Devon Villa, Navarino Road, on the morning of Friday, August 4th.
The position of the body (he said), was normal as during sleep. The head was on the pillow and the face calm and peaceful. Blood was everywhere; the bedding was soaked with blood, now perfectly dry.
The wound was very deep, extending from the lobe of the left ear to the lobe of the right ear, the head almost severed from the body, being only attached by the muscles. Everything had been cut through to the vertebrae. It was an incised cut, very deep, and once inflicted the deceased would have been unable to cry out. The carotid artery, the windpipe, the jugular vein and the pharynx down to the spine had all been severed.
From the condition of the stomach he concluded that the deceased had been murdered several hours after last partaking of food. Death must have been instantaneous. In his opinion, the weapon used was very sharp and used with great vigour. The wound could not have been self-inflicted. He could not, and cannot, form any accurate opinion of when the accused met her death beyond saying that it took place in something of the region of a week before the body came to his notice.
Later, at the mortuary at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, he further examined the deceased’s body. (Here Dr Toon described the condition of certain organs of the body as healthy and said that Mrs Roper had borne at least one child. She had not been pregnant at the time of her death.) In the stomach, liver, spleen and kidneys, he found hyoscin hydrobromide present, to the extent of just under a grain. In his opinion, hyoscin had not contributed to Mrs Roper’s death.
The Prosecution then called Dr Clarence Pond, a pharmacologist, to tell the court the properties of hydrobromide of hyoscin. He gave its chemical formula and described the substance. It was toxic only in large doses. A lethal dose was five grains.
He was shown a sugar basin by the police. (The sugar basin was then put in as Exhibit A and Dr Pond confirmed that this was the basin he had been shown and the contents of which he had analysed.) He said that he found the contents of the basin to be made up of approximately seven ounces of sugar and something over five grains of hyoscin hydrobromide.
Mr de Filippis had had no questions for Dr T
oon but he rose to cross-examine the pharmacologist.
Dr Pond, is not hyoscin used as a sexual depressant in cases of acute nymphomania, in inmates, for instance, of lunatic asylums?—That is so.
Is not that its principal use?—It is one of its uses.
I will put my question in simpler language and ask the jury to pardon a coarseness of terminology they will understand to be necessary. The principal use of hyoscin is to suppress strong sexual desires, is it not?—It is.
Detective Sergeant Arthur Hood said he went to Devon Villa as a result of information brought to Hackney Police Station on Friday, August 4th by Miss Florence Fisher. He saw Mrs Roper’s body in a bedroom on the second floor. The bedroom windows overlooked the garden at the rear of Devon Villa. Later, accompanied by Detective Constable Dewhurst, he searched the garden and found in a flowerbed a large bread knife, the blade of which was encrusted with dried blood. The knife was lying in a flowerbed close to the house and up against the fence dividing that garden from the one next door, as if it had been thrown from an upper window.
The bread knife was put in as an exhibit and Detective Sergeant Hood identified it as the one he had found. He said that on Tuesday, August 8th, he accompanied Detective Inspector Lawrence Poole to the village of Fen Ditton in Cambridgeshire where the accused was living. The accused accompanied the two officers back to London where he was charged at Hackney Police Station with wilful murder. Detective Inspector Poole charged him and Detective Sergeant Hood was present while he dictated a statement and later signed it.
Samuel William Murphy, cab drive of Judd Street, King’s Cross said that at about 4.30 p.m. on Thursday, July 27th he was waiting at the cab rank in Kingsland High Street when a boy employed as a cabbies’ runner approached him. As a result of what the boy said to him he went to Devon Villa in Navarino Road to pick up a fare for Liverpool Street Station.
He could see the fare in court. It was the prisoner Alfred Roper. The prisoner had a boy with him. When they reached the station the accused recollected having forgotten his sovereign case and he asked Mr Murphy to take him back to Navarino Road, having first handed the boy into the care of a porter. Mr Murphy took the accused back to Devon Villa and left him there. He was not asked to wait.
Robert Grantham, cab driver, of Dalston Lane, Hackney, said that at about six p.m. or somewhat after he was waiting at the cab rank in Kingsland High Street when a man approached him and asked to be taken to Liverpool Street Station. He took him there and last saw his fare entering the station precincts.
Mr Tate-Memling: Was there anything remarkable about this man?—He had cut his hand.
Which hand?—I cannot say that.
Did you see the cut?—No, he had wrapped his hand in a handkerchief. The blood had come through and there was blood on his coat sleeve.
Mr Tate-Memling (who must already have known only too well the unpromising answer to this question): Would you know the man who was your fare again, Mr Grantham?—
Not to say know. I could say who he was not. I could say he was not you or his Lordship.
Lord Justice Edmondson, making an uncharacteristic interruption: You may refrain from such negative identifications, Mr Grantham.—I thank your Lordship.
Can you see the man who was your fare on July 27th in court?—I might. I cannot be sure. He was not a young man but he was not old either. I did not take much notice of him. When you have as many fares as I do you do not take much notice of facial appearance.
Mr de Filippis, in cross-examination: But you take notice of their hands?—Sometimes I do.
You cannot remember a man’s face but you can remember he had a handkerchief tied round his hand?—I do remember that.
Was your fare the accused man, Alfred Eighteen Roper?—I do not know. It is a long time ago now.
At this point Mr de Filippis sneezed loudly. He asked sotto voce for a handkerchief and was given one from the top of the pile and water was poured from the carafe into one of the glasses for him.
I beg your pardon, my Lord. Would you repeat that, Mr Grantham?—Repeat what?
I asked you if your fare was the accused, Alfred Roper.—I can only say that to the best of my recollection, I do not know but he may have been.
John Smart, described as a clerk of Lillie Road, Fulham, he who had been Alfred Roper’s best friend, was the remaining witness for the Prosecution. Smart’s presence there caused something of a flurry in the public gallery and there were gasps of indignation when Mr de Filippis asked him if he were not the closest friend the accused had. Were you not the friend, Mr de Filippis asked, to whom he confided the innermost secrets of his heart?
Mr Smart was obliged to admit that he was. Before that, in giving his evidence, he told how on the occasions when they had met Roper had several times told him of the unhappiness of his marriage. One day in April 1905 they had met in an ABC teashop in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square.
He said that on that occasion the accused told him of a situation vacant as manager of a pharmacy in Cambridge. Smart said the idea was an excellent one and advised the accused to apply immediately. By these means, Alfred could remove his family from the evil influence of his wife’s mother and start a new life. But this was not in Alfred’s mind. Rather he meant to leave his wife and her daughter and begin his job in Cambridge as a widower with an only son. He confided to Smart his belief that the child Edith was not his. Roper believed, Mr Smart said, that his wife was unfaithful to him. He confided in Smart that she made demands on him he was unable to satisfy and this led, he concluded, to her need for other men.
Examined, Mr Smart went on to say that on another occasion, again in April of 1905 he thought it was, they had met in order to pay a visit to some City churches, as was their habit. The laughter which greeted this remark was immediately suppressed by the judge, who asked Mr Smart to go on.
The accused had told him, he said, it was his opinion that his wife Lizzie would go with anyone. It was an illness rather than a vice. He was treating her for it.
Treating her in what way?—He would not tell me then.
But he did tell you later?—Yes, my Lord. He said he was giving her hyoscin. He was giving her hyoscin in the sugar she took in her tea so that she should not know.
Should not know what?—That he was giving her medicine, my Lord.
Did you know the properties of hyoscin?—I knew it was a poison.
Did you know it was a sexual depressant?—No, I did not. He said it was but I did not know it.
Rising slowly to his feet, taking another drink of water, Mr de Filippis then asked his question about Mr Smart’s position as the prisoner’s closest friend. The court no doubt expected a rigorous cross-examination with particular reference to the description of hyoscin as a poison but all Mr de Filippis said was:
Were you acquainted with Mrs Elizabeth Roper?—Yes, I was.
You met her on several occasions?—Yes.
Sometimes, no doubt, you found yourself alone with her?—Once or twice, yes, when I arrived early and the prisoner was not yet home.
Did she—let me put this as delicately as I can—did she ever demonstrate to you, as a man, these amative tendencies alleged to be characteristic of her?—No, never.
The laughter which ensued was once more suppressed by the judge who threatened to clear the court if it were repeated. But Mr de Filippis had made his point. The woman who ‘would go with anyone’ had not found John Smart sufficiently attractive to make advances to him. He was a man scorned, which might as much as anything account for his presence as a Prosecution witness.
That was the case for the Prosecution in Rex v. Alfred Eighteen Roper.
Opening Speech for the Defence
Mr de Filippis: My Lord, I submit that there is no case to go to the jury. The law is well-established that the presumption of innocence is in favour of an accused person until his guilt is proved. In the first place there is an absolute and utter want of evidence that the weapon which perpetrated the deed wa
s ever in the hands of the accused. Secondly, there is an absolute and utter want of evidence that this crime was committed during the early part of the evening of July 27th. There was scarcely time for the commission of such a crime and, moreover, no signs about the person of the accused immediately after the alleged commission of this crime that he might have perpetrated it. Thirdly, there is not a suggestion of motive attributed to the accused. His point of contention with the deceased had been satisfactorily settled by the treatment he was administering to her. I ask your Lordship to say that the accused ought not to be put in any further peril on such evidence as that which has been put before the court. It is a matter for your Lordship to decide whether the jury is here for the purpose of trying mere suspicion.
Mr Justice Edmondson: I cannot say there is no case to go to the jury.
Here Mr de Filippis was seen to move his lips soundlessly and bow his head a fraction. He took another clean handkerchief and put it to his mouth. After a few seconds he spoke.
I will now call the accused and other witnesses. Roper shall speak for himself in the witness box and it will be for you, gentlemen of the jury, to judge his story. We will put that man into the witness box and you will see an injured man, a man who has suffered two of the worst blows fortune can inflict upon a breadwinner and father of a family in our degenerate days: the loss of his lucrative and satisfactory employment and the inconstancy of her who should be his loyal wife and helpmeet. You will see a man bowed down by care and well-nigh broken by the persecution and reverses of fate he has suffered—but you will see too an innocent man, prepared to tell you with absolute honesty the history of his recent life.
I will now come to that life. For all of it Alfred Eighteen Roper has been an honest and industrious man. There is not a stain upon his character, not even the faintest adumbration of a stain, gentlemen. All that has reference to Alfred Roper is as limpid and decipherable as an open book. There are no encoded passages in it and no uncut pages. It is a work which any of you without fear or hesitation might put into the hands of your womenfolk. It is pure and unsullied. Let us therefore read some of its early chapters.