CHAPTER TWENTY

Deveen’s closing speech had taken him to the end of the day; and Mr. Justice Lane adjourned until the next day, while the jury went off to the hotel at the other end of Caernarvon where all twelve of them were staying.

The next morning, Wednesday, 24th October, when they returned to their place in the jury box, Ainger got to his feet slowly, removing his pince-nez and replacing it upon his nose and told the jury plainly that the burden of proof in this case rested on the Crown.

It was for the Crown to satisfy them beyond reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused, if guilt there be.

By its frankness and its fair-mindedness Ainger’s whole tone began to enlist the jury’s interest and growing understanding. When he had decided they were ready for it, Ainger struck.

‘Now, members of the jury, you may well think that this whole case hinges upon the evidence of William Llewellyn. If you accept his evidence, then it is clear beyond the possibility of argument that the accused was in possession of poison at the time when Stone called upon him at his office. If he was, then you will have little doubt that he was in possession of it at the time of the dinner party, and that he attempted to poison Mr. Stone.’

He paused as if awaiting their unspoken agreement to his argument.

‘But the evidence goes further than that,’ he went on, conveying the impression that, of course, they did agree with him. ‘If the accused attempted to poison Mr. Stone, the poison he used was arsenic. What was he doing, secretly using a lethal poison, and denying that he had it, unless it was for some deadly and surreptitious purpose? It was not aspirin he was hiding, or soda mints, it was this murderous arsenic. If then he used arsenic to poison Stone, have you any doubt that he had it secretly during his wife’s illness, and that she died from arsenical poisoning?’

If they accepted this, he said, then they must be left in no doubt as to the accused’s guilt.

‘Now, members of the jury,’ and Ainger’s voice became more urgent in its appeal, ‘I doubt whether poison is ever witnessed being administered. You are able to act on evidence sure and certain in other cases, but in a case of poisoning you will always find subtlety and cunning attempts to cover up the tracks of so inscrutable a crime.’

The defence admitted that Mrs. Merrill died of arsenic. ‘How was that poison administered to her? “Suicide,” says my learned friend; and he also suggested that Mrs. Merrill’s symptoms were due to acute indigestion and rheumatism, causing toxaemia, which in turn caused peripheral neuritis which produced the symptoms confused with arsenical poisoning.’

And, Ainger added, because of the great experience and ability of Dr. Mortlake, Wiltshire and Kilrain, their evidence ought to be discounted in favour of the prisoner. But surely in investigating this case of the death of a subject of the Crown, the Crown is obliged to engage experts of the highest ability?

According to their evidence, Ainger went on, arsenical poisoning has an immediate effect on the stomach. First, vomiting; secondly, after the vomiting and the arsenic itself has been expelled, upon the nervous system, causing peripheral neuritis; not local neuritis in one joint, but in the nerves and extremities of the limbs generally.

‘Mrs. Merrill showed all of those symptoms quite clearly. Were these symptoms due to arsenical poisoning, or to toxaemia? I ask you to accept Dr. Griffiths’s evidence and that of the others that she was suffering from arsenical poisoning. On 11th January Dr. Griffiths called, and he endeavoured to get Mrs. Merrill to walk. He described how she complained of this high-stepping walk, a symptom of peripheral neuritis, which can be caused by toxaemia—or arsenical poisoning.’

During the last four days of her life Mrs. Merrill was lying helpless, unable to take any food, according to her trusted physician, observing her day by day.

He dealt with the possibility of suicide; that because the arsenic she had herself taken became encapsuled in her stomach with consequent delayed action, she did not die until four days later. ‘No word was revealed by her that she contemplated poisoning herself. Can you believe it?’

Ainger paused and let his gaze range over the faces before him, then resumed his button-holing technique.

‘Members of the jury, there is one certainty about this case, and it is that a doctor can tell, within a few hours, at what time an arsenic dose must have been taken; and all the doctors for the Crown have told you that there must have been a fatal dose administered to Mrs. Merrill within twenty-four hours of her death, and that the idea of suicide was an impossible one to believe.’

He turned to the question of motive.

‘Not all the wealth of the Indies could offer you or me a motive for committing a crime so terrible as this murder. But some people might reckon £5,000 a suitable motive for murder, others might do it for £50,000. Or perhaps not money at all; perhaps Merrill did it because he was out of love with his own wife, and in love with someone else’s.’

As for Stone, the jury should ask themselves whether the opportunity for poisoning Stone by arsenic arose and was taken at Merrill’s dinner party. ‘The defence say that this trace of arsenic in Stone’s urine may have arisen from a dirty bottle. Mr. Pryce, a chemist of experience and repute, selected the bottle; he tells you he washed it half-a-dozen times, he realized the importance of a clean bottle.’

The fact was that Stone went home after having dinner with Merrill, became ill, vomited throughout the night, suffered severe stomach pains and subsequently one thirty-third of a grain of arsenic was found in his urine.

‘The extraordinary similarity between the symptoms in both Stone’s illness and that of Mrs. Merrill is so remarkable that you have the confident opinion of the experts that they arose from the same cause, poisoning by arsenic. Who had the opportunity and the means to administer that arsenic? Who had the motive?’

Ainger began building to his climax.

‘My learned friend has called your attention to the fact that this is a matter of life and death. Yes; but whose life? Whose death? Has there not arisen before you the scene at this house named Fancy, of that wretchedly sick wife lying there helpless, meeting an agonizing death? By whose hand? I say, by the prisoner’s hand. If the evidence that you have heard compels you to agree that I am right, your duty is plain, and I therefore ask you to say that the prisoner is Guilty.’

It was about an hour after the court had resumed when Ainger finished his closing speech, and he sat down.