‘What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?’
Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet
Curiously enough, testimony emerged that the defence had, at least for a time, been in possession of the evidence that could have conclusively proved Monson’s innocence – or perhaps his guilt. Dr Macmillan was the one who indirectly revealed the fact. ‘The day on which Mr Blair [Monson’s solicitor] was at Ardlamont was the first occasion on which I heard Monson speak about killing a rabbit on the day of the accident. On that occasion Mr Blair and Monson went to the wood; I was a little behind them, and overtook them when they reached the spot where the rabbit was found.’ If this was, in fact, the same rabbit that Monson had shot, a post-mortem on the unfortunate creature would likely have confirmed with what type of shot it was killed and, thus, which gun Monson had been carrying that day. If it was killed with a cartridge from the twenty-bore gun, it would have confirmed Monson’s story that Cecil was in possession of the twelve-bore gun that killed him. If, on the other hand, it had been killed with ammunition from the twelve-bore, things would have looked very dark for Monson. That the carcass of the rabbit was never entered into evidence is certainly suggestive, although hardly conclusive.
Comrie Thomson, meanwhile, ploughed the furrow of the ‘accidental death’ argument for all he was worth. He was aided in that enterprise by two witnesses who provided some particularly entertaining evidence. First came Tom Speedy, the estate factor and shooting agent, who gave the court the benefit of his anecdotal evidence (as well as supporting Hay’s assertion that the fatal shot probably came from around two feet). ‘According to my experience,’ he said, ‘accidents with guns happen in the most inconceivable ways. I remember the case of a gentleman who was out shooting a year or two ago, and who met with an accident. He felt himself falling and flung the gun from him.’ When the Solicitor-General asked if he had been present at the event itself, Speedy confirmed that he hadn’t been but that he collected ‘the facts about such accidents and take an interest in them’. ‘Accidents happen in the most unexplainable ways,’ he went on, ‘and the shot, when the gun goes off accidentally, enters the body, to my knowledge, in the most unaccountable manner by the crown of the head, the back of the neck, or the sole of the foot. The last-mentioned case was one which came under my own personal knowledge. An Edinburgh gentleman let his gun fall, both barrels went off and one of the shots went through the sole of his foot horizontally. There was another man, whom I knew, who shot himself in the palm of his hand and the shot went up his arm.’ Somewhat ruefully, he added, ‘I did not see him just when it happened.’ The judge, meanwhile, had heard enough, his frustration clear as he stepped into proceedings: ‘I do not see how these illustrations can possibly be of the least use.’
Next to the stand was the remarkable figure of George Tillard. A retired colonel of the Madras Staff Corps, he explained that his former brother-officer, one Colonel Kilgour, had persuaded him that it was his duty to come forward in the Ardlamont investigation. His moment arrived late in the trial, coming only on the afternoon of the ninth day, but it proved something of a sensation to those who heard it. ‘I was twenty-eight years in India,’ he explained. ‘I had a gun accident in March 1871. I was just starting out for snipe shooting, and was carrying a small double-barrelled covert gun. It was at half-cock. I turned round to call my servant, who was loitering behind. As I turned round my foot slipped on some rocks I was walking over, and I fell backwards. I have no recollection of what happened after that for some minutes. My last sensation was feeling myself going backward. On coming to myself I found my servant standing at the same place where he was before, and called for him to assist me. I got back to my tent about five minutes afterwards, and found both barrels of the gun had gone off. The gunshot blew away a portion of my ear, and dug a trench in behind the ear in a horizontal direction. The shot scraped the periosteum of the skull. It was a glancing shot through the flap of the ear, furrowing the flesh and scraping the bone, but no part of the shot entered the skull. The shot came from the front. That was my idea. The doctor said so. The direction of the shot was as nearly as possible horizontal. I cannot say how I was carrying my gun.’ With the light fading on the trial, Colonel Tillard had thrown a late curveball with the potential to alter the entire direction of the trial. Here was a man with no axe to grind and of unimpeachable pedigree, presenting himself as living proof that an individual could inflict upon themselves injuries remarkably similar to those endured by Cecil, and to do so entirely accidentally.
It all ensured that the closing statements of Asher and Comrie Thomson were more important than ever. The pressure was on each side to tie together the vast array of evidence that had been set before the court and build around it the narrative that would decide the case one way or the other. The Solicitor-General was the first to go. Over six hours, Asher gave a bravura performance – many regarded it as the finest address to a jury that he ever gave. He explicated the financial evidence, unpicking what he claimed was the devious manner in which Monson came to insure the life of his young charge. As for the suggestion that Monson knew that the policies would be invalid should Cecil die before his twenty-first birthday, he was dismissive. Why, he demanded, would Monson have got Cecil to author letters of assignation if he did not believe they would have any legal value? Similarly, why did he allow Tot to seek a payout from them if he knew that there was no such entitlement? As he convincingly put it: ‘Mr Monson manifestly thought he was armed with the necessary means of securing the total amount of both of the policies, in the event of anything afterwards happening to Cecil Hambrough.’
As well as making his own case as strongly as he could, Asher sought to head off the defence wherever possible. Monson said he and Scott had moved the body, yet there was absolutely no evidence to support the claim. The defence would claim the ground was dangerous underfoot, ripe for an accident to occur. Yet the land surveyor, James Brand, engaged to survey the scene of death, found that the ground where Cecil likely walked was almost level. Then there was the question of who was carrying which gun. Monson did nothing to disabuse Dr Macmillan of his belief on the day of the shooting that Cecil had been carrying the twenty-bore. Yet when the Procurator-Fiscal began to show reservations about Monson’s version of events, Monson was at pains to suggest he had carried the twenty-bore and Cecil the twelve-bore. And why were the guns taken straight from the scene of the accident and unloaded, even before anybody else had been told what had occurred? Then there was Cecil’s jacket, worn the morning of the hunt and stuffed with ammunition for the twenty-bore. What was one to make of that?
The Solicitor-General also made much of the appearance and then disappearance of Scott. ‘Why has a person who was present on the scene absolutely disappeared from all human ken?’ he asked. ‘What are likely to have been the circumstances in which he was participating when at Ardlamont as deduced or inferred from the fact of his disappearance? I am not now dealing with any doubtful question as to his identity. I am dealing with a matter as to which there is no dispute. One of the men who was there has fled and hidden himself. Why has he done that?’ Furthermore, he demanded, what was Monson’s motive for stating to the police that Scott was an engineer with connections in Greenock? ‘For what purpose was that statement made?’ he asked. ‘Was it for the purpose of giving truthful information, or deceiving and misleading the authorities?’
Conscious of potential weaknesses in the individual links of the case, Asher was desperate that the jury consider the mass of evidence in the round – the suggestions of Monson’s bad character, his shady financial dealings, the incriminating insurance policies, the forensic evidence that pointed to a third-party shooter and the disappearance of Monson’s putative (and highly mysterious) partner in crime. Succeed in that plea, and the day would surely be his.
He ended his address with the following words: ‘I shall not detain you, gentlemen, by reviewing all the facts, all the various heads under which I have grouped the points on which I have thought it my duty to speak. But, gentlemen, whilst I have repeated them one by one – compelled to do so by the circumstances of the case – I say again to you that you must take them not only singly, but in the lump. You must take the features of this case as they occur, and make up your minds, I repeat, severally and separately. But when you have done that my wish is that you should place them side by side, look at them in their relationship to one another, and consider whether they do not establish the grave and serious chain to which I have referred – whether the circumstances do not infallibly and inevitably lead to one result, connecting the prisoner with the crimes with which he is charged. If you can find serious, intelligible, and honest ground that will influence you in coming to the conclusion that these facts are quite consistent with the innocence of the prisoner, by all means acquit him. But, gentlemen, if on the consideration of these you come to the conclusion that they are reasonably consistent with one, and only one, result, then your duty to the public, your duty to the oath which you have taken, is to find the prisoner guilty of the crime with which he is charged.’
If Comrie Thomson was surprised by the aplomb with which Asher delivered his argument, he was nonetheless up for the fight. Crucially, he realized that his job was not to prove beyond doubt Monson’s innocence but simply to show that the prosecution had failed to prove his guilt. He picked away at every hole he could find in the opposition’s case. Why, he asked the jury, would Monson kill a man who was worth far more to him alive? The Monsons, he argued, were reliant upon the money bestowed upon them by Tot, which he only supplied in the hope that the relationship with Cecil could be cultivated to the point of life-altering profitability. Cecil, he suggested, would be at the peak of his earning potential for Monson and Tot only when he gained the age of majority. By killing Cecil, he insisted, Monson was killing ‘a man upon whose life his income and subsistence depended’. No Cecil, no oof.
As for the insurance policies, he maintained that negotiations for the future of the Steephill estate on the Isle of Wight had still been up for grabs. The insurance on Cecil, he said, was a crucial step towards satisfying Eagle Insurance that the Cecil–Monson–Tot consortium could take over the mortgage. Comrie Thomson went as far as to suggest that ‘nothing was more natural than that Monson should proceed to effect insurances the moment the 1st of August arrived, because he knew that that had been the difficulty in the way of the competing scheme, and that if he went to Eagle Insurance with good policies of insurance in his hand, and said, “Here are the policies – this young man has consented that his life should be insured – here they are,” he would have been certain to get the contract.’ This was perhaps a liberal reading of how warmly Eagle Insurance felt to the Cecil grouping but to a jury rendered somewhat punch-drunk by the complexity of the financial evidence, it must surely have seemed at least a credible interpretation of affairs. Moreover, Comrie Thomson insisted, Monson knew that he could not claim upon those same insurance policies in the event of Cecil’s death before his next birthday in 1894. ‘Where the motive to take the life of a man … comes in, I confess myself entirely unable to see,’ Comrie Thomson opined. ‘Their one interest, the one thing that was essential to the carrying out of this arrangement, was that the young man should live.’
So what of Tot’s attempt to cash-in the policies? Comrie Thomson was well aware that Tot was hardly the kind of witness likely to win the hearts of a jury, yet he actively played upon Tot’s shady image. ‘I rather think Tottenham produced the impression upon you of being rather a queer fish,’ he acknowledged. ‘I do not think he is the kind of man that you and I – quiet-going Scottish folk – are in the habit of meeting, or even I do not know that any of us desire to make his more intimate acquaintance. But he told us quite distinctly, after a little hesitation and pressing, when asked why he made a claim when Monson knew, as he said, that the policy was worthless, because it was not a good assignation, he told us, what I have no doubt you believe to be absolute truth, that he was “trying it on” with the insurance company. “I was bluffing them,” he said; and observe, it is well known that insurance companies – there being such great competition in the business – very often pay claims in order to save their credit, in order to keep them popular, which they know are not strictly and legally due by them.’
He then explored the doubts pertaining to the forensic evidence. On the possibility that the body had been moved, he asserted: ‘Now, then … if you think it is proved that he was moved, the whole foundation of the Crown case crumbles to pieces, because they have no data for which there is any justification on which their measurements and evidence as to direction shall depend.’ He also once more went over the disparity among the expert witnesses as to the distance at which the shot was fired, and claimed that Monson had mentioned to two witnesses on the day of the shooting that he had been carrying the twenty-bore gun and Cecil the twelve-bore (although by his own admission, this evidence only emerged through indirect statements). As to the cartridges found in Cecil’s jacket pocket, he implied Monson had put them there for convenience when preparing the package of clothes, guns and ammunition requested by the Procurator-Fiscal at the end of August. Not unreasonably, he pointed out that if the pockets had been stuffed with nineteen cartridges on the day of the shooting, surely Steven or Dr Macmillan would have noticed them when attending to the body.
There was even time for an ad hominem assault on Littlejohn, whom he characterized as the ‘only witness in the case who seems not to be open to entertaining any view but that which involves the guilt of the prisoner … I claim as witnesses in my favour both Dr Heron Watson and Dr Bell, and I will tell you why. Because they say that in the conclusions they arrived at, I do not doubt with perfect accuracy, they were in the region of conjecture, and that there were infinite possibilities by which Hambrough’s life might have been lost besides that which involves guilt on the part of the accused. I claim these two gentlemen, from the Crown list. It is all I need. If you are in the region of conjecture you cannot convict. If there is a reasonable possibility you must give effect to it. Both of these men say that they are in the region of conjecture, and that the possibilities are infinite. And I add to these Professor Hay, whose evidence you heard given under great physical weakness, he having risen from his bed, to which he had been confined by a severe attack of influenza.’
Once again, Comrie Thomson was not averse to stretching his interpretation of testimony in the interests of his client. It was true that Littlejohn certainly believed in Monson’s guilt but he was no more aggressive in asserting the fact than his colleagues, nor any less willing to accept that his evidence relied on accepting that the body fell where it was first seen by the estate staff. By sowing the idea that the prosecution’s experts were somehow split among themselves (they clearly weren’t), Comrie Thomson hoped not only to diminish the impact of their combined testimony but to undermine the authority of each individually.
As for the Scott problem, he employed skilled sleight of hand. Firstly, he sought to suggest that Monson had been in no way disingenuous in his representation of the supposed yacht engineer. ‘The statement was made,’ Comrie Thomson said, ‘and it has not been contradicted by anybody, that Scott came in order to act for Hambrough in connection with the boilers of the yacht.’ This statement was, of course, disputed by many – it was instead the case that those voicing their doubts could not prove their misgivings in the absence of the man himself. Comrie Thomson was thus free to brazenly explain away the mystery man’s disappearance:
After the accident Scott’s position is this, that his occupation is gone, that the man who hired him is dead. There is to be no yacht now, because there is no owner of the yacht. He is very much shocked at what has happened, necessarily – I am assuming, of course, that it was an accident – but there is no reason for his remaining. He does not, however, go away at once. He waits till the afternoon before he leaves, and takes the fifth boat which left Tighnabruaich that day. He remains in the neighbourhood with those who are concerned with the moving and the dressing of the body. He remains to the sad and silent luncheon that they partook of in the middle of the day.
But Comrie Thomson was wily enough to know that Scott was a problematic figure. What if he really was the bookies’ clerk, as had been suggested? It was a question he couldn’t avoid. So, he set out to paint Edward Sweeney – the man who might be Scott – as ‘one of the gentlest, most amiable, and quietest of men’. ‘A bookmaker he was, but he was a sick bookmaker, a dying bookmaker,’ he said, conjuring up an image of Dickens-esque pathos. ‘And Sidney Russell [Sweeney’s bookmaker employer] and his brother both concurred in telling you that he was the last man that would be party to a cruel act – he would not harm a fly; and yet the suggestion is, the most preposterous I ever listened to, that, for some mysterious reason, Monson invites this mild, amiable man to come down and be an eyewitness to an attempt to murder, and then takes him along with him to be an eyewitness to an act of murder, and does not take means to detain him so that he may give evidence in his favour. Is not that a thing perfectly absurd on the face of it? If Monson was to drown this man, or shoot him, why does he bring Scott? He does not want any assistance; wants no third party to throw him out of the boat; wants no third party to shoot him. He brings down this man, the suggestion is, that he might aid and abet him. What earthly help could be got from him? Did he not bring down a man who could have deponed here, if there was foul play, “I saw it.”’ Whether the individual jurymen believed Scott to be an engineer or a turf accountant, Comrie Thomson had done his best to tackle their various presumptions. ‘Gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘it is probably the greatest calamity that could befall my client that Scott is not here. I do not pretend to know what he would have said, but according to my information, according to the instructions by which I am guided – I go no further than that, but I am justified in going so far as that – I think it is the greatest calamity that ever befell mortal man that Scott has not been able to enter this witness box.’
No motive, no forensic case, nor anything in the least bit suggestive in the disappearance of Scott – the defence counsel had finished its attempts to dismantle the case against Monson. ‘In most cases of crime,’ he argued, ‘the fact that a crime has been committed is easily demonstrated. If a house is broken into and goods are removed, you know that there has been a crime – housebreaking. If a man is found shattered, as with the blows of a sledgehammer, you know that he has been murdered. But in the present case the question you have to determine is, has there been a crime at all?’
Only three men truly knew what happened out in those woods, he said – one being dead, one silenced by the judicial system, and the third not to be got. The Crown, then, was forced to rely upon indirect or circumstantial evidence. It was on this point that Comrie Thomson was perhaps at his eloquent best: ‘Now, gentlemen, it has often been said that, in a certain sense, you can never get better evidence than circumstantial evidence, because facts do not lie, as human beings sometimes do. But it is essential that you should realize exactly what is meant by circumstantial evidence, and what is necessary before circumstantial evidence can be taken as valuable at all, or as equivalent in value to direct evidence. In the first place, gentlemen, observe this – and I have suspected it is sometimes overlooked – that it is an essential part of the value of circumstantial evidence that each circumstance should be distinctly proved. Circumstantial evidence does not mean a lot of suspicious circumstances. That is not it at all. You must have each circumstance which is founded upon, those which are to be pieced together into one whole, and from which the conclusion is to be derived, clearly demonstrated by evidence. It will not do to say, “That is rather suspicious,” unless it is proved, proved in the usual way, proved by direct evidence. Then, gentlemen, having got your full proof of each circumstance, it is necessary that the effect of each shall not be misapprehended, or misapplied, or misjudged. And it is only when you have got each circumstance established by evidence, and when you are satisfied not only of its full authentication, but also that the inferences drawn from it have been justifiable and true inferences, that you are in a position to determine when that body of evidence so established and so applied is sufficient to exclude every theory except that of guilt.’
Comrie Thomson then adopted a risky tactic: he referred to the fact that Monson had taken his son with him when he showed Dr Macmillan the scene of the shooting just a few hours after it had occurred. ‘Can you conceive,’ the defence counsel pondered, ‘that, if that man had within recent hours been guilty of murdering his friend who had been living with him, and had been attached to him for years past, he would take probably the purest and the simplest being within his reach to show him the place at which that horrible crime had been committed by his own father? We know that there is almost no limit to the depths of human depravity; but the notion that a murderer, when his hand was still red with the blood of the victim, would take his little boy by the hand to show him the spot where he had committed the crime is, I think, absolutely incredible.’ It takes a brave lawyer to declare the charges laid against his client to be so monstrous as to be unbelievable. But that was just what Comrie Thomson urged the jury to conclude. They might, though, have decided that the allegation was actually proof of Monson’s monstrousness.
Comrie Thomson then revisited his core theme one final time: ‘Have I not demonstrated that there is ample room for entertaining serious doubt?’ he asked. ‘Gentlemen, we are all liable to make mistakes. I pray you make no mistake in this terribly serious matter. The result of your verdict is final, irreparable. What would any of you think if some day, it may be soon, this mystery is entirely unravelled, and it is demonstrated that that man was innocent, while your verdict has sent him to his death? He will not go unpunished if he is guilty. There is One in Whose hands he is. Who is Infallible and Omniscient. “I will repay, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”’
And so the defence rested.