Below Suspicion (6 page)

"You had been for some years, I believe, her personal physician?"

"To be exact, for five years."

'For five years. Was there anything organically wrong with her?"

"There was not. In my opinion, she could have walked to China and carried her own suitcase. But her state of mind was not healthy."

Mr. Lowdnes frowned. "Not healthy? Will you explain that?"

"Mrs. Taylor, at the age of seventy, was in the habit of dyeing her

hair, painting her face, and asking me whether I knew of any rejuvenating drug which would still make her attractive to men."

"A harmless peccadillo, surely?"

Dr. Bierce raised his eyebrows, sending many wrinkles up the domed freckled skull. "That depends on the point of view."

"If someone had handed her what appeared to be a tin of Nemo's salts, do you think she would have swallowed a dose?"

"If someone she trusted had offered it to her, I should have expected her to swallow anything."

" 'Someone she trusted.' I see. Can you tell us whether her relations with the prisoner were, or were not, cordial?"

"In my opinion, much too cordial. The whole house was unhealthy. I did not consider it a good atmosphere for one"—here Dr. Bierce glanced briefly towards Joyce—"with so little knowledge of the world."

"You refer to the prisoner?"

"I do."

Mr. Lowdnes spoke dryly. "As a medical man. Doctor, have you heard of the vilest crimes committed by those with little knowledge of the world?"

"In books, yes."

"I refened to real life. Have you never heard of Marie Lafarge? Or Constance Kent? Or Marie Morel?"

"Those ladies, I fear, lived before my time."

"I tell you this, sir, as a historical fact!"

"Then I accept it ... as a historical fact."

"When you arrived at The Priory' in response to the 'phone call, what did you do and what were your conclusions?"

"I examined the deceased." Dr. Bierce locked his fingers together even more closely. "I concluded that death was due to a large dose of some irritant poison, probably antimony,"

"At what hour had the death occurred?"

"Again in my opinion, at some time on the previous evening between ten o'clock and midnight. I can go no further than that."

"What did you do next?"

"I telephoned the police, saying that I was unable to issue a death certificate. Later I received instructions from the coroner to perform a post-mortem examination. I removed certain organs from the body, and put them in charge of the Home Office analyst."

"Did you examine the Nemo's tin and the glass on the bedside table?"

Dr. Bierce had done so, and stated it emphatically. The tin contained pure antimony, the dregs of the glass a solution of water and about one-tenth of a grain of antimony. Whereupon Mr. Lowdnes referred back to the third witness at the beginning to the trial: Sir Frederick Preston, the Home Office analyst, who had testified to finding thirty-two grains of this poison in the deceased's body.

"That is a large dose of antimony, Dr. Bierce?"

"A very large dose. Yes."

"Do the sjTTiptoms come on suddenly or slowly?"

"Very suddenly, after some fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Now I ask your considered opinion. Doctor," pursued the other, e-nun-ci-a-ting each word. "Even though the symptoms were sudden, could the deceased have reached the bell-push beside her?"

"Oh, yes. Quite readily."

"Thank you. Doctor. I have no more questions."

Joyce Ellis had her hand at her throat. But, as counsel for the defence rose, the sensitiveness of that courtroom made clear that a climax was rushing towards them for good or ill.

Butler steadily contemplated the witness.

"Doctor," he said, "would you please describe for us the onset of these symptoms?"

Dr. Bierce nodded curtly. "I should expect in most cases a metallic taste in the mouth, nausea, incessant vomiting—"

"Ah!" The syllable struck across like an arrow. "But may I ask whether the deceased had vomited?"

"No, she had not."

"I quite agree with you, Doctor! At the same time, will you give us your reasons for saying so?"

"It is the first active symptom felt by the patient." Dr. Bierce, clipping his words, grew alert and watchful. "The vomiting is violent and uncontrollable. I have never heard or read of a case, where vomiting was present, in which traces were not left. Besides, the digestive organs showed. . . ."

"Exactly! How does this affect the other symptoms?"

"Sometimes," replied Dr. Bierce, with a mirthless little professional smile under his steady brown eyes, "it is the difference between recovery and death. All the symptoms are strongly intensified."

"These symptoms being?"

"Soreness in mouth and throat, congestion of head and face, cramps in arms and legs, intense stomach-cramps. . . ."

"Crampsl" said Butler. "Now I quite agree with you that Mrs. Taylor could have reached the bell if it lay near her hand. But suppose the bell-cord had been hanging down behind the bed?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Doctor, did you hear the testimony of the witnesses Alice Griffiths and Emma Perkins?"

The question was purely rhetorical. Witnesses at the Central Criminal Court, except on some occasions police-officers, are never permitted in court to hear the other witnesses. While Butler explained what Alice and Emma had said. Dr. Bierce's domed forehead seemed to rise as though he were growing taller in the box.

"You understand the position. Dr. Bierce?"

"I do."

"In order to reach that bell, the deceased would have had to leave her bed and push the heavy bed out from the wall to reach behind. Or she would have had to stand up on the bed, as we have heard. With the intense cramps you describe, do you consider that she could have done this?"

"No, I do not."

"In fact, should you call it definitely impossible?"

"I should call it," snapped the witness, "so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. Yes!"

Butler's big voice rose.

"Then Mrs. Taylor never rang the hell," he inquired, "because she could not reach the hell?"

Without waiting for an answer, Butler sat down.

You could hear, metaphorically speaking, the crash as one part of the Crown's case collapsed. To the spectators certainly, and to the jury very probably, Butler's cross-examination of Alice and Emma had already been left and right jaw-punches to the prosecution. And this seemed to finish it.

Joyce had observed, out of the comer of her eye, the behavior of the beautiful Lucia during that last cross-examination. Lucia had been half-standing up, with one hand pressing the mink coat against her breast, her eyes on Dr. Bierce as though for some telepathic communication.

And Joyce had been conscious, too, of Mr. Charles Denham. Mr.

Denham, who had been so decent to her, was sitting white-faced at the solicitors' table, his fingers playing with the top of a glass water-bottle. At Butler's final question to Dr. Bierce, Denham closed his eyes as though praying.

From that moment onwards, through the afternoon session and most of the next day, the defence seemed to have its own way.

With the police witnesses, Patrick Butler was deadly. Though he pretended immense respect for the judge and the jury, he had no mercy —as usual—on the police. His duellist's attack rattled and confused even so experienced an officer as Divisional Detective-Inspector Wales.

"On your oath did you question Alice Griffiths and Emma Perkins about the position of the bell-push?"

"No, sir. But—"

"You simply assumed the bell-push had always been in the position where you first saw it?"

"Will you let me explain, sir? I think the deceased could have pressed the bell wherever it was."

"Then you presume to doubt the medical evidence. Is that it?"

"Dr. Bierce merely expressed an opinion, that's all."

"So you doubt the opinion of your own witness? Did you, or did you not, proceed on a mere assumption?"

"In a way, yes."

"In a way!" said Butler, and sat down.

Endlessly the witnesses paraded. On the following day, March 20th, Butler opened and closed for the defence. He put Joyce Ellis into the witness-box; and, despite severe cross-examination by Mr. Lowdnes, she made a good impression. Counsel for the defence, producing a key which he said belonged to the back door of his own house, demonstrated that it would fit the back door of "The Priory." Calling witnesses, he showed that the lock was a "Grierson," which had been fitted to nine-tenths of the houses built in London during the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. In his closing speech he had never been more brilliant; Mr. Lowdnes could only flounder in his wake.

It was a triumph, or seemed so. Joyce, who scarcely dared to hope, found herself desperately hoping. Until. . . .

Until, with sickening abruptness, the whole effect was wrecked. It was wrecked by the summing-up of Mr. Justice Stoneman.

"Oh, yes," Mr. Justice Stoneman confessed long aften\'ards, to a few of his cronies, "I felt the girl was innocent. But instinct, however ex-

perienced, is not evidence. Many of Mr. Butler's pyrotechnics"—here the learned judge seemed to be doing sardonic tricks, behind closed lips, with his false teeth—"had only an indirect bearing on the matter before us. It was my duty to indicate as much to the jury."

And, with cool and merciless words, he summed up dead in favour of the prosecution.

"God!" breathed Charlie Denham at the solicitors' table.

The summing-up lasted an hour and ten minutes. To Joyce, trying to shrink herself together, it seemed an eternity. Few persons in that room ever forgot the judge's soft voice, his vivid old eyes flashing up and back from the notebook, the long pauses during which his wrinkled face seemed to ruminate in a vacuum.

Without ever saying a word which would constitute grounds for an appeal, Mr. Justice Stoneman intimated that Alice Griffiths, William Griffiths, and Emma Perkins were liars either unintentional or deliberate.

"Of course, members of the jury, I remind you again that you are the judges of the facts. I am not tlie judge of the facts at all. On the other hand, you may think it difficult to believe that. . . ."

On and on and endlessly on!

In a dulled way Joyce noticed that all this day Lucia Renshaw had been absent from among the spectators. An usher, approaching the solicitors' table on creaky tiptoe, stooped to whisper in Charles Den-ham's ear. Denham started, looked round, and then, after hesitating, crept out of the court. Patrick Butler—the judge's voice was still droning—sat motionless, head down, elbows on desk, hands over his ears; but even the back of his neck looked murderous.

Once, with suffused violence, Butler made a move to rise. But his junior, seizing imploringly at the side of his gown, muttered some words of which Joyce could only make out, "contempt of court."

"Members of the jury, you will now retire to consider your verdict. Mr. Foreman, if you should want any of the things which have been produced in this case, what I call the exhibits, please let me know."

The jury-with that same self-consciously stuffed and dead-pan look they had tried to keep throughout—were shepherded away. One of the matrons touched Joyce's arm.

"Come below, dearie," the matron said in a commiserating voice which removed the last hope.

And so, at a quarter to four in the afternoon, when sleet stung the

glass dome top and the jury had been out for thirty-five minutes, Patrick Butler sat motionless—alone in the front seat of counsels' benches in a nearly deserted court—stared at the wristwatch on the desk in front of him.

Thirty-five minutes!

By ancient legal maxim, the longer a jury deliberated the more omens favoured the accused. Yet Butler didn't believe this, or didn't want to believe it. He wanted a quick acquittal, a burst of applause, the tingle of pleasure that always ran through him.

It was unthinkable, he told himself again, that he should lose this case. He was not thinking of Joyce at all. His pride would be scraped raw, he would explode and do something damned silly, if he lost. Above all, his hatred of Mr. Justice Stoneman gathered in his brain like a red blood clot.

Far across from him the revolving door to the corridor, where a helmetless policeman stood guard, whished once more as someone pressed through. Charles Denham, footsteps clacking on a polished floor in that intense quiet, threaded his way across towards counsels' benches.

Patrick Butler, to keep his hands steady, picked up a yellow pencil and toyed with it.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"I went out to answer a 'phone call," Denham said in a curious tone. And then, "It may help take some of the conceit out of you."

Butler's fingers tightened on the yellow pencil. The word "conceit" scratched him. He would have affirmed, and seriously beHeved, that there was not an ounce of conceit in him.

"Meaning what, Charlie?"

"Have you got your car here?" Denham asked.

"Yes. It's parked near the front entrance, about thirty yards down Old Bailey." Butler meant the street, not the building. "Why? What's up?"

'Tell you later," said Denham. His dark eyes never moved. "You've lost your case, you know."

"Like to bet on that, Charlie?"

"You faked a defence," Denham stated, "and old Stony saw through it."

Butler's fingers snapped the yellow pencil in two.

"It might interest you to know," he said in a repressed voice, "that except for two points my defence was as correct as. . . ."

"But don't worry!" the solicitor interrupted. "With what I've just heard, we've got grounds for a successful appeal."

"I never appeal," Butler said. "I never need to."

"God help you, Pat."

"Thank you," snarled Butler. "I prefer to stand on my own feet. What's all this mysterious news?"

"Have you seen the papers this afternoon? Or did you notice Lucia Renshaw yesterday?"

"WTio's Lucia Renshaw? —Oh! You mean Mrs. Taylor's niece? ^Vhat about her?"

"Yesterday," and Denham pointed, "she was in the Corporation seats behind you. This morning. . . ."