Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1245 page)

So far the police had undoubtedly a very strong case, and they endeavoured to make it more convincing still by producing evidence to show that Mullins had been seen both going to the crime and coming away from it. One, Raymond, was ready to swear that at eight o’clock that evening he had caught a glimpse of him in the street near Mrs. Emsley’s. He was wearing a black billy-cock hat. A sailor was produced who testified that he had seen him at Stepney Green a little after five next morning. According to the sailor’s account his attention was attracted by the nervous manner and excited appearance of the man whom he had met, and also by the fact that his pockets were very bulging. He was wearing a brown hat. When he heard of the murder he had of his own accord given information to the police, and he would swear that Mullins was the man whom he had seen.

This was the case as presented against the accused, and it was fortified by many smaller points of suspicion. One of them was that when he was giving the police information about Emms he had remarked that Emms was about the only man to whom Mrs. Emsley would open her door.

‘Wouldn’t she open it for you, Mullins?’ asked the policeman.

‘No,’ said he. ‘She would have called to me from the window of the area.’

This answer of his — which was shown to be untrue — told very heavily against him at the trial.

It was a grave task which Mr. Best had to perform when he rose to answer this complicated and widely-reaching indictment. He first of all endeavoured to establish an alibi by calling Mullins’s children, who were ready to testify that he came home particularly early upon that particular Monday. Their evidence, however, was not very conclusive, and was shaken by the laundress, who showed that they were confusing one day with another. As regards the boot, the counsel pointed out that human hair was used by plasterers in their work, and he commented upon the failure of the prosecution to prove that there was blood upon the very boot which was supposed to have produced the blood-print. He also showed as regards the bloodstain upon the pencil-case that the barman upon buying the pencil had carefully cleaned and polished it, so that if there was any blood upon it, it was certainly not that of Mrs. Emsley. He also commented upon the discrepancy of the evidence between Raymond, who saw the accused at eight in the evening in a black hat, and the sailor who met him at five in the morning in a brown one. If the theory of the prosecution was that the accused had spent the night in the house of the murdered woman, how came his hat to be changed? One or other or both the witnesses must be worthless. Besides, the sailor had met his mysterious stranger at Stepney Green, which was quite out of the line between the scene of the crime and Mullins’s lodgings.

As to the bulging pockets, only a few small articles had been taken from the house, and they would certainly not cause the robbers pockets to bulge. There was no evidence either from Raymond or from the sailor that the prisoner was carrying the plasterer’s hammer with which the deed was supposed to have been done.

And now he produced two new and very important witnesses, whose evidence furnished another of those sudden surprises with which the case had abounded. Mrs. Barnes, who lived in Grove Road, opposite to the scene of the murder, was prepared to swear that at twenty minutes to ten on Tuesday morning — twelve hours after the time of the commission of the crime, according to the police theory — she saw someone moving paper-hangings in the top room, and that she also saw the right-hand window open a little way. Now, in either of these points she might be the victim of a delusion, but it is difficult to think that she was mistaken in them both. If there was really someone in the room at that hour, whether it was Mrs. Emsley or her assassin, in either case it proved the theory of the prosecution to be entirely mistaken.

The second piece of evidence was from Stephenson, a builder, who testified that upon that Tuesday morning he had seen one Rowland, also a builder, come out of some house with wall-papers in his hand. This was a little after ten o’clock. He could not swear to the house, but he thought that it was Mrs. Emsley’s. Rowland was hurrying past him when he stopped him and asked him — they were acquaintances — whether he was in the paper line.

‘Yes; didn’t you know that?’ said Rowland.

‘No,’ said Stephenson, ‘else I should have given you a job or two.’

‘Oh, yes, I was bred up to it,’ said Rowland, and went on his way.

In answer to this Rowland appeared in the box and stated that he considered Stephenson to be half-witted. He acknowledged the meeting and the conversation, but asserted that it was several days before. As a matter of fact, he was engaged in papering the house next to Mrs. Emsley’s, and it was from that that he had emerged.

So stood the issues when the Chief Baron entered upon the difficult task of summing up. Some of the evidence upon which the police had principally relied was brushed aside by him very lightly. As to the tape, most tape consisted of thirty-two strands, and it appeared to him that the two pieces were not exactly of one sort. Cobbler’s wax was not an uncommon substance, and a plasterer could not be blamed for possessing a plasterer’s hammer. The boot, too, was not so exactly like the blood-print that any conclusions could be drawn from it. The weak point of the defense was that it was almost certain that Mullins hid the things in the shed. If he did not commit the crime, why did he not volunteer a statement as to how the things came into his possession? His remark that Mrs. Emsley would not open the door to him, when it was certain that she would do so, was very much against him. On the other hand, the conflicting evidence of the sailor and of the other man who had seen Mullins near the scene of the crime was not very convincing, nor did he consider the incident of the key to be at all conclusive, since the key might have been returned in the course of the day. On the whole, everything might be got round except the hiding of the parcel in the shed, and that was so exceedingly damning that, even without anything else, it amounted to a formidable case.

The jury deliberated for three hours and then brought in a verdict of ‘Guilty,’ in which the judge concurred. Some of his words, however, in passing sentence were such as to show that his mind was by no means convinced upon the point.

‘If you can even now make it manifest that you are innocent of the charge,’ said he, ‘I do not doubt that every attention will be paid to any cogent proof laid before those with whom it rests to carry out the finding of the law.’

To allude to the possibility of a man’s innocence and at the same time to condemn him to be hanged strikes the lay mind as being a rather barbarous and illogical proceeding. It is true that the cumulative force of the evidence against Mullins was very strong, and that investigation proved the man’s antecedents to have been of the worst. But still, circumstantial evidence, even when it all points one way and there is nothing to be urged upon the other side, cannot be received with too great caution, for it is nearly always possible to twist it to some other meaning.

In this case, even allowing that the evidence for an alibi furnished by Mullins’s children was worthless, and allowing also that Mr. Stephenson’s evidence may be set aside, there remains the positive and absolutely disinterested testimony of Mrs. Barnes, which would seem to show that even if Mullins did the crime he did it in an entirely different way to that which the police imagined. Besides, is it not on the face of it most improbable that a man should commit a murder at eight o’clock or so in the evening, should remain all night in the house with the body of his victim, that he should do this in the dark — for a light moving about the house would have been certainly remarked by the neighbours — that he should not escape during the darkness, but that he should wait for the full sunlight of an August morning before he emerged?

After reading the evidence one is left with an irresistible impression that, though Mullins was very likely guilty, the police were never able to establish the details of the crime, and that there was a risk of a miscarriage of justice when the death sentence was carried out.

There was much discussion among the legal profession at the time as to the sufficiency of the evidence, but the general public was quite satisfied, for the crime was such a shocking one that universal prejudice was excited against the accused. Mullins was hanged on the 19th of November, and he left a statement behind him reaffirming his own innocence. He never attempted to explain the circumstances which cost him his life, but he declared in his last hours that he believed Emms to be innocent of the murder, which some have taken to be a confession that he had himself placed the incriminating articles in the shed. Forty years have served to throw no fresh light upon the matter.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EMSLEY MURDER TRIAL

Proceedings Of The Old Bailey
, 22nd October 1860

Before Lord Chief Baron Pollock

Reference Number: t18601022-874

874. JAMES MULLINS (52), was indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Emsley;
he was also charged on the coroner’s inquisition with the like offence.

MR. SERJEANT PARRY,
with
MESSRS. CLERK
and
ORRIDGE
conducted the Prosecution
.

WILLIAM ROSE. I am a solicitor residing in Victoria-park square — I knew Mrs. Mary Emsley, who lived at 9, Grove-road — she was a client of mine, and had been so for some years prior to her death — she was possessed of considerable house property in that neighbourhood — she collected a great part of her rents herself from weekly tenants — she lived alone, without any servant — I know a person of the name of Walter Emm — he occasionally assisted her in the collection of rents — On Friday, 17th August, Emm called on me and made a communication to me — I did not go with him, but sent him, and appointed to meet him at the house in Grove-road — I met Dillon there — the door of the house was fastened when we got there — we knocked at the front door and there was no admittance to be gained — I then desired the constable to get over the garden wall at the back — he did so, and said the door was open, and I went over the wall and followed him in the same way — we went through the house — we found no person on the ground floor — the door of the parlour was open, and the back window appeared to be a little open — there is a front and back parlour; they open from the one to the other, and form one room — we then went up on to the first floor — the door of the front bedroom on the first floor was open — that was the room used by the deceased as her bedroom — there is a small back room as well with lumber in it — the bed appeared not to have been slept in — we then went up stairs to the second floor — the door of the front room was open, and I there saw the body of Mrs. Emsley, with her head towards the landing, near the doorway — the body was lying so much in the doorway as to prevent the door from closing — you could scarcely enter the room without treading over the body — there was a bundle of papers for papering rooms in front of her, and two pieces of paper under her arm — Dr. Gill was then sent for at my request; he came almost immediately — the deceased remained in the position in which she was lying until the doctor came, at my request, she was not disturbed in any way — when I was there that day I noticed this key (
produced
) — it is a remarkable one — I saw it in the bedroom of the deceased, on the first floor — that is the room underneath that in which she was found dead — the key was on the table — there was a table in the bed-room next to the window, and I am not sure whether it was not in a basket, I think it was — there was some biscuit in the basket, and I think some other keys, but I noticed that key particularly on account of the bow being remarkable.

Cross-examined by
MR. BEST (
with
MR. PALMER).
Q.
You have known the prisoner, I believe?
A.
I don’t think I ever saw him till he was in custody; I think that was the first time I ever saw him; to my knowledge I had never seen him before — I think Mrs. Emsley bad a person of the name of Rowland who assisted her in the collection of rents — I never heard of a man of the name of Wright — I am not sure that a person of the name of Wilson, of Ratcliffe, did not collect some rents — he is a tenant of hers — I have no personal knowledge of that — the fastening to the front door was a common lock and a latch-key lock — I looked at the street door and found that the door had been apparently pulled to — it was not fastened inside — there are bolts inside — those were not fastened — there did not appear to have been any force at all — there was a great quantity of blood about in this room where we found the deceased lying — not all over her; there was a pool of blood; I did not notice particularly as to any splashes about the room — the smell and appearance was so offensive I did not enter the room to examine it minutely.