Fog, seeping into the Old Bailey, hung like a dingy transparency over black gowns and coarse grey wigs. It misted the yellow light-globes, quivered in wreaths over the packed rows of spectators, and blurred the twelve faces of the jury now turned, as one, on the witness undergoing cross-examination.
The witness was Nicholas Godfrey Blundell, solicitor. Strangers saw in the box a man slightly past middle age, more vigorous than most men in their twenties, and with a manner blunt, frank, and obliging. The anxious furrows graven on his forehead bespoke an earnest desire for accuracy and fairness; the semi-circular creases framing his wide mouth seemed ready for smiles at the least slackening of the tension. He looked a man who had suffered keenly but without parade or secret rancour; a man hurt and puzzled by influences beyond his control. There might be an open impulsiveness about him which the average Englishman would find it hard to understand, yet so compelling was his earnestness, so genuine his good nature, that those watching him felt inclined to condone his slight crudities.
Very different was the counsel conducting the cross-examination. Sir Kingsley Baxter, tall, angular, and calculating even in his suavity, gave an impression of altogether a more sophisticated type. He was polished, not bluff. There was a sharp edge to him, and a nervous brilliance soon to be more apparent than now, when every faculty was bent on eliciting facts concerning Rose Somervell’s illness which might throw an altered light on events as set forth by the prosecution. How he could accomplish this no one so much as dimly imagined; yet the feeling grew that there might be more in this case than had hitherto appeared.
Sir Kingsley, proceeding: In regard to your late secretary, Elsie Dilworth, Mr. Blundell. Was it a habit of hers to consult you at unsuitable times?
Blundell: Well—occasionally. She believed business always came first.
Sir Kingsley: On this occasion was the matter important? Or, better, could it have waited till your return to your own flat?
Blundell: I suppose the idea was she didn’t want to wait. It was Sunday, remember.
Sir Kingsley: Was it your suggestion or hers that she work on Sunday?
Blundell: She volunteered to come for the morning. She did that now and again when we were in a bit of a jam.
Sir Kingsley: So she volunteered to come. . . . Can you positively state it did not strike you as unusual for her to intrude on Mrs. Somervell’s luncheon-party?
Blundell (hesitating): I was a trifle surprised.
Sir Kingsley: Oh, you were surprised! Now, Mr. Blundell, can you say if Miss Dilworth had previous knowledge that the accused would be lunching with Mrs. Somervell?
Blundell: That I don’t know. She may have learned of it from chatting with Mrs. Somervell’s housekeeper.
A murmur ran through the court. Diana felt a shiver of excitement, which Colin Ladbroke, beside her, seemed to share.
Sir Kingsley: Exactly when did Miss Dilworth come into the dining-room?
Blundell: Midway through the meal. I remember I was at the side-table, carving a second helping of beef for Mrs. Somervell. Miss Dilworth stood by me, showing me the shorthand she couldn’t read.
Sir Kingsley: Had she often any difficulty deciphering her notes?
Blundell: Very seldom. Around that date she was getting nervous. These notes were all of a muddle.
Sir Kingsley: And what conclusion did you draw from that?
Blundell: That she wanted a long holiday. I made up my mind to see she got one.
Sir Kingsley: It did not occur to you she might have muddled her notes on purpose?
Blundell (after pause): No—not at the time.
Sir Kingsley: Have you thought of that explanation since?
Blundell: In a way. It would be unlike Miss Dilworth’s character as I know it, but she had certainly changed.
Sir Kingsley: Could you have said then what was responsible for her nervous condition? I’ll make it more definite. Had you any idea of her being the victim of an unfortunate love-affair?
Blundell: Absolutely none. I never connected love-affairs with my secretary.
Sir Kingsley: Not even when for some time she had worn quite different clothes? Adopted what two witnesses have described as a gay style of dress, coupled with the use of lipstick, rouge and other accessories?
Blundell (scratching his chin): I did wonder a bit. I can’t say I failed to notice it.
Here a ripple of amusement had to be checked by the judge.
Sir Kingsley: Did you at no time connect her altered appearance with a close association with the accused?
Blundell (frank smile): I never knew of any association. At most I’d have said they were acquaintances, owing to living in the same house.
Sir Kingsley now asked how long Miss Dilworth had remained in consultation over the notes. Blundell replied that it was long enough for the hostess to show distinct annoyance. Miss Dilworth had seemed unaccountably dense.
Sir Kingsley: Mr. Blundell, an incident occurred when your secretary quitted the room. I want to hear your account of it.
Blundell: On her way out, she knocked against the accused, who had got up to fetch the gravy and horseradish sauce from the sideboard.
Sir Kingsley: One moment, Mr. Blundell. Had you by that time served Mrs. Somervell’s plate?
Blundell: As far as I can recollect, I had handed it to the housekeeper, who had put it before her mistress.
Sir Kingsley: You are not perfectly certain of this?
Blundell: No, because I was carving more beef. I looked round when I heard a sort of cry from Miss Dilworth, who then went off into a fit of giggles. I saw her trying to wipe the gravy off where it had splashed over Doctor Somervell’s coat. She was using her handkerchief. He told her not to bother, but she insisted on repairing the damage she’d done.
Fully ten minutes of questions revolved about the points just covered. More clearly than ever Diana saw how simple it would have been for Elsie, while her employer studied the notes, to deposit a small portion of the grated aconite in what remained of the sauce on Rose’s plate. Just as easily could she have contrived the accident which would have enabled her to sift a few grains of the poison into Adrian’s pocket. Unfortunately Petty and Felix Arenson had already described the foregoing incidents, and from neither version could anything definite be deduced. The fact that the coat itself, produced in court, did actually show a faint grease stain down the two fronts tended to weaken the defence’s argument.
Blundell could not recall noticing if Elsie made any move towards the plate he was serving, nor could he say if any appreciable amount of sauce was left on the plate.
Sir Kingsley: Assuming there was a small residue of the sauce, do you think you would have noticed if a little grated or shredded aconite was placed on the same spot it would have caught your eye?
Blundell: I doubt it. I used my glasses for looking at the shorthand, but took ’em off again to go back to the carving.
Sir Kingsley: I shall demonstrate that aconite is so much the same colour of horseradish as to mingle with it indistinguishably. Now, then! Was Mrs. Somervell wearing glasses?
Blundell: No! She never put ’em on in company. Wore ’em only when she was by herself, or with an old friend, like me.
Sir Kingsley: But she did require glasses?
Blundell: Couldn’t read without ’em. It was the looks she objected to.
Colin Ladbroke scribbled a note on the back of an envelope. Diana saw the action, but let it pass, so wholly was she taken up by the next set of questions, dealing with the will. To her disappointment nothing new came out of them. Soon her godfather withdrew from the stand, to be replaced by Petty, trembling, gasping like a fish.
The matter of glasses was again touched upon. Petty averred that her late mistress, like most persons of her age, had grown extremely long-sighted, but she confirmed Blundell’s statement about the reluctance to wear glasses except under necessity. Very adroitly Sir Kingsley capitalised this fact; but, unluckily for the defence, the probability that the victim would not have seen a foreign substance on her plate before covering it over with a fresh helping of sauce could not counterbalance what was definitely known—namely, that the sauce was handed her by the accused. The prosecution had shown that aconite dropped into the ladle would have mingled with the sauce already there and been deposited with the first spoonful taken from it. In this way the victim would have received the full measure of the dose, while those who came after her got none.
In short, all Baxter succeeded in doing was to bring forward an alternative theory with rather less to support it than the one previously postulated. Whether he could persuade the jury that the accused lacked all knowledge of the will in his favour remained to be seen. It was evident, now, what he intended doing. Not only did he mean to show Adrian ignorant of the will, but Elsie informed. At the same time he was planning to suggest a motive in Elsie’s case—a tricky and delicate business.
Incredulously the audience heard him build up his structure. Elsie, in her statement to the Home Office, had been uncannily right in several respects. She had been accurate in declaring that the victim had just made a will bequeathing the bulk of her property to a man in financially low waters; accurate about the poison employed, and the manner of its administration. According to one witness—Petty—Elsie had been present in the room while the orders to the butcher and greengrocer had been telephoned. Later she had asked point-blank questions as to what guests were expected for the Sunday lunch. On top of these facts came her strange behaviour, all indicating emotional turmoil. The hospital incident was recounted, with fresh detail. Undoubtedly, having shot her bolt, Elsie had regretted it, and striven desperately to induce the accused to get away before arrest.
Round the court ran the admiring whisper, “He may do it yet.” Diana herself caught the infection. Sir Kingsley had hit on the one possible means of raising doubt in the jury’s minds, and then feeding it by placing the secretary in the limelight and fixing attention on her hysterical actions.
The first day closed on a note of definite hope.
Other whispers had arisen, but as yet were confined mainly to proletarian circles. However, Diana herself, on the second day, felt a growing resentment as she became aware of the idea subtly being instilled into the jury’s minds. Was she wrong, or did she sense a drop in temperature? She saw the new sort of glances the jurymen directed at the prisoner in the dock, understood, and at the noon adjournment vented her hot anger to Colin. He bade her be patient.
“After all,” he said, “Baxter’s got to show Somervell as a victim. How can he do that without furnishing some convincing excuse?”
“Do you mean there’s no other course but to let people think there was an affair between Adrian and Elsie? There wasn’t. You know that as well as I do. Look at the way he’s handling all these witnesses from the boarding-house! Oh, Colin, has he got to do it?”
“Baxter knows what he’s about,” was the answer, to her mind unsatisfactorily evasive. “You may be sure he sees exactly what he’s up against.”
Oh, well, was her bitter reflection, what did it matter that false belief was fostered if only Adrian was acquitted? Adrian himself must by now be past caring; and yet, when she next saw him, she wondered if this were so. He was still composed. His brown eyes behind their lenses continued to rest on each witness with unobtrusive detachment, one might almost call it scientific interest; but on his lean cheekbones had appeared the dull splashes of red which to her meant mortification. She recalled how little, at any time, he had pled in his own defence. Realising the futility of protesting against the predicament in which he found himself, he had chosen a dignified silence. Now he was forced to listen to hints he could not deny with any hope of belief—hints on the acceptance of which his very life depended. Diana could guess why Sir Kingsley had not been eager to hear her version of things. It might have interfered with his scheme.
George Petty had been wiped out of the picture. Felix Arenson proved a nervous, unhelpful witness, and Blundell’s two servants gave aid in only one direction—to show that Elsie Dilworth had bitterly disliked the victim. Once in the cook’s hearing she had spoken of Mrs. Somervell as a “damned, stingy old bitch,” and hoped she would “choke herself to death on that brandy she was forever tippling.” Laughter had to be suppressed over this, the only, reference to Rose’s fondness for drink. Admittedly the actress was a woman who did herself well, but it was not suggested she drank to excess, or that the indulgence affected her shrewd business judgment. Only in the matter of the will had she displayed impulsiveness, and even then she had taken her solicitor’s advice.
There was neither proof nor disproof that the victim had informed the accused of the will by which he benefited. If she wrote him a note, that note no longer existed; if she declared her intention on the afternoon he took tea with her and was invited to lunch, the fact was undiscoverable. In like manner total mystery surrounded the problem of when and how the aconite had been obtained—and so two minute but important flaws, emerging to view, heightened the tension. Baxter had scored two points, both of which he undoubtedly would use to the utmost advantage.
Adrian’s own testimony irritated by its meagreness. Diana would have been shocked at any attempt on his part to save himself at the expense of an Elsie now dead, but the flat repetitions of “I don’t remember,” and “I’m afraid I didn’t notice,” made her ready to sob with despair. Colin kept a tight grip on her arm.
“Don’t you see,” he muttered, “that’s his best possible defence? It’s typical of him not to have noticed what didn’t concern him.”
Perhaps; but then the jury had been pumped full of counter-suggestions. The accused to them was a quiet but unscrupulous Don Juan; and what of the victim’s initial antagonism towards him, with its sudden veering to partiality, mental states affirmed by her own solicitor? Unexplained they must indicate either seduction by designing charm, or threats of exposure. No middle course existed.
On the third day the defending counsel delivered his appeal. It was a masterly effort, combining skilled argument with forensic legerdemain. It dazzled; it hypnotised; it demolished with hammer blows every insecure premiss raised against it. From a simple and moving word-picture of the earnest student of medicine and brain surgery, Sir Kingsley passed to a hypothetical reconstruction of the crime which, if accepted, would exonerate the accused of both knowledge and blame. The court sat entranced as proofs of the dead secretary’s infatuation were cited, the linked chain of unbalanced actions terminating in suicide held up commiseratingly yet in such a manner as to show how Elsie Dilworth and only she could with malice aforethought have planned and executed the murder. Why her intricate plan had miscarried was developed convincingly. Just possibly too convincingly—for it was at this point the catastrophe occurred.
Somewhere, from the foggy rear of the gallery, a woman’s voice cried: “Shame!”
Few saw the interrupter as she was hurried out, weeping, but the one word, hurled into the spokes of oratory, had the force of an exploding shell. Listeners rubbed their eyes. Hundreds recalled that Elsie Dilworth—a working girl, perhaps herself a victim—had, when all was said, performed her duty as a citizen by passing on her suspicions to the authorities. Some might think she had shown great courage, foreseeing, as she must have done, an agony of mind which in the end was to make her take her own life. In a reflux of moral indignation they asked themselves what truth was contained in this rigmarole woven about a poor creature powerless to ward off slander.
Sir Kingsley continued, but to a public no longer his to sway. Cold scepticism had descended over the court long before the judge, with merciless logic, laid bare what emotionalism had so nearly concealed. The jury were instructed that in a case where evidence was of necessity circumstantial motive must be accorded full value. It was their task to decide which motive, as set forth by fact, carried the greater weight.
The jury filed out. Colin drew Diana outside, and procured her strong tea, which she forced down, though it sickened her. She clung to his arm.
“Colin! They must see he couldn’t have done it. What do you think?”
“They ought to. Baxter did a good job of it—on the whole. Blast that idiot woman!”
There was only twenty minutes to wait. Back the jury came, and the foreman, a carpenter with a soured expression, was addressed by the judge. In a firm Cockney-flavoured voice he gave the verdict of Guilty. It was over. The judge reached for the square of material which custom calls the Black Cap, spread it over his wig, and pronounced the death sentence.