At this point there was an outburst of cheering, and the judge ordered one person, a well-dressed woman, to be removed from the court.
The prosecution, continued Sir John, had made much play with the revolver question. It was true that the prisoner could not prove his explanation, but was it therefore not to be believed? That prisoner should destroy unimportant letters as soon as they were received was quite to be expected in a man of his character, and that Mr. Monsell should not have mentioned the loan of the revolver to anybody was also quite in keeping with the state of mind of a nervous man who is rather ashamed of his nervousness. On the face of it, the receipt of threatening letters by Mr. Monsell was a matter that hardly needed proof. Every public man received them; received them by every post and took no notice of them. “I could show the jury scores of threatening letters addressed to me on occasions when I have been contesting parliamentary elections—I could show them, I say, if I were not addicted to the same excellent habit as the prisoner—that of destroying unimportant letters as soon as they are received.”
Sir John proceeded to discuss the relationship of prisoner and Mrs. Monsell. This was not a court of morals, he declared, and the question of Mrs. Monsell’s illicit affection was only germane to the issue so far as it concerned the question of Mr. Monsell’s death. It was absurd to say that because Mrs. Monsell had fallen in love with a man not her husband, that man should be immediately presumed to wish to encompass her husband’s death. “In these days,” said Sir John, “when the three parties to the triangle are reasonable people, and when there is no financial problem attached, the settlement of such an affair can be arranged without murder. Prisoner and Mrs. Monsell were apparently running off to Norway. Well, if that were so, where was the need for getting rid of Mr. Monsell? He had no power to fetch them back. The prosecution’s theory of ‘motive’ was really no theory at all, but a bundle of fallacies.
“I say,” added Sir John, eloquently, “that the prosecution has not produced a single shred of evidence to justify a verdict of guilty. I am amazed that the case has been brought so far. I would not muzzle a dog, much less hang a man, on the statements that have been made by the witnesses for the prosecution. Nobody saw the prisoner commit the crime; there is no likely reason why he should have done so; and he has given an account of himself which, though unsupported, has not been in the least disproved by all the efforts of the prosecution, There can only be one verdict, gentlemen, and I ask you to give that verdict, and to set free an innocent man who has done great services in the past and is likely to honour his country, still further in the future.”
X
Sir Theydon Lampard-Gorian looked grimmer than ever as he began his final speech in his usual manner. “I shall disdain eloquence,” he declared, “and appeal to facts and facts alone. I do not share the opinions of learned counsel for the defence concerning the value of the evidence we have brought forward. He says he is surprised that the case has been brought so far. Well, I should be surprised if the case had been brought so far on totally worthless evidence—I should have been more than surprised, I should have been absolutely amazed if a farrago of nonsense had induced a coroner’s jury, a bench of magistrates, and a grand jury, to put this man on his trial for murder. No, gentlemen, the case of the prosecution is to be argued, if you like, but not to be abused. It is merely stupid to say that because the evidence is circumstantial it is therefore foolish.”
The prisoner, continued Sir Theydon, had got together a very ingenious tale that was hardly strong enough to stand merely on his own word. Wasn’t it a very curious thing that prisoner’s story was not only very extraordinary and improbable, but that he could find nobody to substantiate it? He said he lent Mr. Monsell his revolver to scare away the writers of threatening letters. Well, he couldn’t find a single person who could give even the least support to such a story. Nobody saw the revolver at the Hall; nobody saw even the threatening letters. Why didn’t somebody who wrote the threatening letters come forward? They would no doubt be pardoned, and would be giving valuable help in the interests of justice.
As for the most important part of the evidence for the prosecution, not the slightest attempt had been made to dislodge it. Prisoner had obviously been conducting an intrigue with his friend’s wife, and although this was certainly not a court of morals, it was at least to be hoped that it was a court of common sense. Defending counsel had said there was no motive. “No motive? Then Clytemnestra acted without motive, and so did Mary Queen of Scots, and Bothwell, and Henry the Eighth, and Therêse Raquin, and hundreds of celebrated people, real and imaginary, throughout the ages. No motive? When two people conceive a guilty relationship and a third party stands in the way of their complete freedom from restrictions and restraints, will any reasonable person say that there is not ample motive for getting rid of that third party?
“No, gentlemen,” went on Sir Theydon. “But I will tell you one or two things for which there are no motives. Why should the prisoner go out of that study by the window, unless he were in a hurry to get away and were afraid of being seen? That is a point where I see no motive, except one which the prisoner will not admit. The whole explanation given by the prisoner of why he left his friend’s room by the window seems to me the most ridiculous I ever heard. I do not even congratulate him on a clever invention. It is true it cannot be disproved. Nor could it be disproved if I said to you that there were exactly fifteen million hairs on my head.”
Sir Theydon went on to stress the importance of the letter from Mrs. Monsell that was found in prisoner’s possession when arrested. “I ask you, gentlemen, to take that letter, not as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, to be twisted this way and that, but as an ordinary letter which probably means what you or I would mean if we wrote the same thing in the same circumstances. Of course, we cannot be absolutely certain what it means, but in the light of other evidence, can any reasonable person have much doubt?
“As I said in my opening speech, this is no ordinary crime. But because the crime is extraordinary, that does not mean that all the motives are extraordinary, and that when you find a man stepping out of a window instead of through a door you must believe the most extraordinary explanation and reject the most ordinary one…
“As for the suggestion of suicide, is it likely that a man would commit suicide a few minutes before he would learn whether his life’s ambition had been realized or not? Is it likely that a suicide would take the trouble to throw his revolver out of the window after shooting himself? Much has been said about Mr. Monsell’s nervousness and highly-strung temperament. The fact is, quite evidently, that’ Mr. Monsell was not too nervous to stand for Parliament, to address meetings, and to stand up bravely against a man who had been tampering with his wife!”
* * *
Sir Theydon finished his speech at ten minutes to four.
The judge then began his charge to the jury.
* * *
The jury, said his lordship, must try to divest themselves of all impressions produced by recollections of prisoner’s past life. If prisoner had been in the past convicted for criminal assault, that fact would very rightly have been kept from the jury lest it might prejudice them in their verdict. In prisoner’s case the exact opposite applied. Prisoner’s past had been remarkable and distinguished, but they must try to forget that, just as they would forget or ignore a felon’s previous convictions. The question was: Had Aubrey Ward murdered Philip Monsell? If so, his distinguished past ought not to save him from the punishment usually meted out to the murderer. It would be a bad day for English justice if ever there came to be an unwritten rule that a famous or distinguished man could break the law and be treated leniently.
Then again they must not be led away into any misplaced leniency because it was a crime passionel. In certain foreign countries, including perhaps Hungary, where Mrs. Monsell came from, the crime of which prisoner was charged would be regarded sympathetically because its motive was sexual attachment. Happily, our English law had
never made such distinctions. A murder was a murder, and to kill a man to possess his wife was as heinous as to kill him for any other reason.
He would like the jury to consider the following points: Both prisoner and Mrs. Monsell had tried to conceal the guilty nature of their affection until cross-examination had forced them to admit it. Prisoner had said that he had never treated Mrs. Monsell other than honourably. Was it likely that this was the truth when Mrs. Monsell had written him such letters as had been read, and when she was preparing to follow him abroad? Prisoner’s account of himself on the night of the tragedy was so remarkable that the slightest impugnment of his veracity in any other matter would tend to make his evidence of little value without the support of witnesses. Could it fairly be denied that prisoner’s veracity had been impugned, when cross-examination revealed a relationship existing between prisoner and Mrs. Monsell which both had first of all denied?
It was true that circumstantial evidence must always be scrutinized carefully. If the jury thought that there was any reasonable doubt they must find the prisoner “not guilty.” But it would be absurd to feel a doubt merely because there was no actual witness of the crime. Crimes were very rarely witnessed. It was naturally in the prisoner’s interests that he should choose a time when no one should see him.
He (his lordship) would ask the jury to pay a great deal of attention to the letter written to the prisoner by Mrs. Monsell on the Saturday before the crime. Was that letter the sort of thing that a friend would write to another friend who had decided to join a polar expedition? The prosecution had put forward an explanation of that letter which, he was bound to say, seemed to him perfectly natural and logical. The defence explained a portion of it very obscurely, and at least one part of it not at all. The part to which he referred to was the sentence: “Is there no other way at all?” What could that mean? The jury must think carefully, and give prisoner the benefit of any reasonable doubt.
He would like to add a word or two about prisoner’s refusal to give evidence concerning the matter of his quarrel with Mr. Monsell. That refusal was bound, of course, as he had warned the prisoner, to create an unfortunate impression. The jury must not, however, be affected by it. The probable subject of the quarrel, was not difficult to guess, and prisoner had very likely refused his evidence from a desire—to a certain extent a praiseworthy desire—to spare Mrs. Monsell as much as possible. That, in his Lordship’s opinion, was an unwise thing to attempt, but it was not one that ought to count against him.
The jury must not concern themselves with anything except the guilt or innocence of the prisoner himself Whether Mrs. Monsell was or was not an accessory before or after the fact was a matter which was beyond their sphere. Their sole purpose was to discover whether or not the prisoner was himself guilty of murder…
His lordship then proceeded to review the evidence section by section, concluding his summing-up at five o’clock. Bailiffs were then sworn to take the jury in charge.
XI
“The moment,” wrote Mr. Milner-White, “was electric. The dying but still brilliant sunlight of a June day was streaming in through the windows of the court, lighting up the myriads of dust fragments that hovered in the turbid air, and kindling to silver the wigs of judge and counsel. It was such an evening as mortal man should have spent in the cornfields or on broad acres or upon the slopes of green and lovely hills. He should have been watching the village lads play cricket, or trudging homeward after his honest toil, or washing the smell of the earth off him in the tiny kitchen of a labourer’s cottage…Instead of that, he was entering the court with bowed head and pallid perspiring face, with weariness in his eyes and the message of death on his lips…I have thus personified the jury as one man because to me, half-drowsy with the heat and strain of the day, they seemed to re-enter the jury-box like a single Nemesis. The sunlight fell upon them, dappling their honest faces with gold; and the sum of them was Everyman, the half-human, half-heroic figure of the old mortality play.
“Like the Cantoris and Decani of doom came the colloquy between the Clerk of the Court and the Foreman of the Jury.
“‘Members of the Jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?’
“‘We have.’
“‘And do you find the prisoner Aubrey Ward guilty or not guilty of the murder of Philip Monsell?’
“‘Guilty.’
“‘That is the verdict of you all?’
“‘Yes.’
“The blow had fallen, and we looked at the prisoner to see how he had taken it. He was unmoved, passionless, statuesque. He reminded one of Ossian’s heroes (I hope I may not be deemed too fanciful)—’ tall as a rock of ice; his spar, the blasted fir; his shield, the rising moon; he sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on a hill.’ There was that in his attitude and countenance that well explained why this trial for murder, out of all the hundreds that take place annually, should have had the attention of the whole world focussed upon it.
“The Clerk of the Court turned to him. ‘Aubrey Ward,’ he said, ‘you stand convicted of murder. Have you anything to say why the court should not give judgment of death according to law?’ The prisoner answered with simple dignity: ‘I am not guilty. That is all I have to say.’
“His Lordship then asked if there were any questions of law to be pronounced, and Sir John Hempidge replied in the negative…Pause…The black cap…and then, more like a benediction than a sentence: I have now to pass upon you the sentence of the court, which is that you be taken from hence to a lawful prison, and from thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be buried in the precincts of the prison where you shall have last been confined after your conviction. And may God have mercy on your soul…”
“The chaplain’s deep-toned ‘Amen’ rolled out sonorously, and at that moment a shaft of sunlight pierced through the veil of dust and struck to gold the prisoner’s light brown hair. A woman’s voice in the well of the court broke the silence by a hoarse ‘It’s a shame—a shame—’ No attempt was made to remove her; it was as if a spell had been cast over the whole assembly.
“Then the final question and answer—‘Aubrey Ward, have you anything to say in stay of execution?’—‘Nothing, except what I have already said. I am not guilty.’
“When we groped our way into the street the heavens were aflame. A single window in Chassingford Old Church blazed out like a crimson star, and those of us who walked towards the town had our faces towards it as we hastened…”
XII
Miles away in Fleet Street the news was already known. The sub-editors were frantically blue-pencilling, the great Goss machines were pounding away, and in dark alleys newsboys waited like hounds on leash…
In the office of the Sunday Wire an editor was discussing with his proprietor whether Mrs. Monsell would accept a thousand pounds for an article.
“She’d probably jump at it,” remarked the proprietor. And he added, thoughtfully: “By the way, there’s a fellow who’d write it for you rather well. Chap named Milner-White, on the Manchester Sentinel. Bit highbrow, perhaps, but the-goods all the same…Better get hold of him…”
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
I
What many had said was quite true; Stella was so changed in appearance that those who had known her as Philip’s wife would hardly have recognized her after the trial. She was scarred with anxiety and suffering; but she was not cowed. As soon as the court was dismissed she went over to Sir John Hempidge and said, with perfectly controlled voice: “You will appeal, of course?”
Now, after the turmoil of the fight, she was staying for the while at Brighton. There were several reasons for this. One was that she could not, even if she had wished, have remained at Chassingford. The Hall was no longer open to her; by Philip’s will, it had been left to his mother, together with the Kensington flat and all his money and property.
During the final days of the trial, however, a letter reached
her from a lady who claimed to be connected with Ward in a rather extraordinary manner. “I am the mother,” she wrote, “of one of the men who went with Doctor Ward on his first polar expedition, and who would have lost his life but for Ward’s bravery and self-sacrifice. My boy (for I still think of him as that) is now happy and prosperous in Australia, and every hour of the day I offer up my thanks to the man who is now on his trial for murder. I have never been able to meet him, but now, I think, has come a chance to repay a little of my great debt. Will you (whether the trial goes well or badly for him) accept the hospitality of an old lady for just as long as you care to? Of course, you may have other plans—if so, please do exactly as you prefer. My only desire is to help you and the doctor, and it occurred to me that you might be wondering where to go and what to do afterwards. People in this world, as I well know, are very thoughtless and cruel; they neglect you most of all when you need their help…”
Stella replied simply: “Dear Mrs. Bowden,—Thank you very much for your kind offer, which I shall gratefully accept. I shall come straight away to you as soon as the trial ends…”
Mrs. Bowden proved to be an old and wealthy lady who lived alone in an enormous rock-like house on the borders of Brighton and Hove. For her age she was amazingly agile and enterprising, and she seemed to take a certain malicious pleasure in being seen out in company with the woman whom all England delighted to revile. “My dear,” she told Stella, “I have no reputation to keep up and consequently none to lose. If you knew more of my past life you’d understand why.”