The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (73 page)

With Mrs Georgina Crisp, Wild showed himself at his worst. The lady, it will be recalled, was no longer definite about hearing the scream between one and two o’clock and it suited Wild that she should revert to her original timing, because of the footprint evidence. Instead of approaching her tactfully, Wild practically called her a liar and lost his temper when she kept calling him “Mr Wild”: for this she is hardly to be blamed as Wild had called on her three weeks before the trial to inspect the scene of the crime. His attacks on her failed to produce the result he desired, although they did impel the Deacon (who had been given a seat on the bench beside the judge) to intervene: Mr Justice Lawrance silenced the Deacon, and Wild sneered “Is this the
deaf
gentleman?”: counsel then produced the red herring that Crisp had behaved badly in not investigating the scream at the time. In the end, Mrs Crisp became so muddled that she was unable to say whether or not the storm was continuing at the time of the scream: had she been handled more gently, she would probably have accepted Wild’s contentions as not impossible.

Wild did not bother much with Burgess: there was no doubt that he was on his doorstep at ten o’clock, but so were many other villagers. Mrs Rosanna Dickenson was almost a defence witness. She said that Mrs Gardiner had come to her home at about half-past eleven and that Gardiner had followed about half an hour later: they had both left together at about half-past one, just as the storm was passing over. The Crown left it to the jury to infer, if they so wished, that the crime was committed
before
Gardiner called on this witness: it certainly appears that Gardiner had originally suggested that he had gone to the witness together with his wife.

This was somewhat sloppy, since Morriss, who was the next witness, made it clear that the footprints that he saw between Providence House and Gardiner’s house had been made after the storm was over, as otherwise all trace of them would have been washed away. He agreed with Wild that if the police had not come to him, he would probably never have mentioned the matter at all. Stammers told of the fire lit by Gardiner on the Sunday morning: he denied that he had been coaxed by the judge at the first trial into saying that it was a
large
fire and that he had originally described the conflagration without the adjective: on being pressed, Stammers added that, in the twelve months that he had lived opposite the Gardiners, he had not known them light a fire there on a Sunday morning.

John Samuel Rickards produced samples of Gardiner’s handwriting: the reprimanding of Wright had been subsequent to the chapel incident: envelopes similar to that which had contained the assignation note were used at the Drill Works: they were very ordinary and cost about three shillings per thousand.

After Rose’s father had told of finding her body, Constable Nunn described the appearance of the corpse: the constable had collected all Gardiner’s clothing and found him to possess only two shirts.
³⁶
Wild’s cross-examination of him was directed largely to show the inadequacy of his acoustic tests at the Doctor’s Chapel and brought a rebuke from the judge: “You put it offensively to him and then blow him up if he makes an observation; it is not fair to any witness.” Wild’s next gambit was that the India rubber shoes were visible to Morriss when he made his sketch, but this suggestion was clearly groundless. He then tried to persuade Nunn that he had been improper in interviewing Mrs Gardiner while her husband was more or less under arrest: Nunn retorted that he felt it his duty to stop the pair getting together, even if no admission from the wife would have been admissible against her husband. Nunn did agree that he had altered his record of his conversation with the wife in his notebook, but otherwise his evidence was practically unshaken.

Superintendent Staunton said that the only difference between Gardiner’s and his wife’s version of their movements was whether or not they had gone to Mrs Dickenson together: he said they had, she said they had not. Wild used the opportunity of having him in the box to put in three separate confessions to the murder by palpable lunatics. Dickens protested mildly, but the judge said that he would not be too strict. Wild suggested that one of the letters might have come from a brewer called Goodchild but Dickens elicited the fact that this man was never in the right place to post the assignation letter. It was just another of Wild’s red herrings: the merit of the letters may be summed up by one quotation from one of them: “Must I give myself up to the law? I cannot. My beard is grown like Brother Gardiner’s. I must wander on the sea.”

The medical evidence is already known to the reader, and was not particularly helpful. Dr Stevenson, the senior Home Office analyst, told of his unsuccessful search for blood-stains and paraffin on Gardiner’s clothing, and of the minor discovery on the penknife: the condition of this knife was certainly curious:

Dr Stevenson’s evidence about the little bottle hardly fitted the prosecution theory, as he thought that some, if not all, of the broken bits had been fractured by heat. He agreed that the cork had been so forced into the neck that it could not be prised out by the fingers: this fitted Dickens’s theory. Wild did not cross-examine him at length, contenting himself with the fact that the expert had found a minute piece of cloth which did not match with any of Gardiner’s known clothing: on being asked where he found it, the doctor gave the curious reply:

So, although Wild relied largely on this fragment, it may well be that it had nothing whatever to do with the case.

It is unnecessary to follow the luckless Davis through his admissions and denials: asked if he was not surprised that Rose should have asked him for the dirty ditties, he said that there were worse girls than Rose “at the present day”. Wild again conceded that he did not suggest that Davis was the murderer. Still less, as this is not a text-book, need we follow the evidence of Thomas Gurrin, the handwriting expert: it seems an almost irresistible conclusion that it was Gardiner who wrote the letter making the midnight appointment.

Wild opened the defence by pointing out that Gardiner had spent 234 days in custody, besides making the conventional attack on circumstantial evidence. Gardiner was “perhaps not too popular owing to the fact that he is a teetotaller, and that he is a man professing religion” but he was certainly no scoundrel. In any case, would a man commit misconduct with a girl less than 200 yards from her home “with the louts loitering about”? Gardiner was cleared of the scandal at the time and, if Guy said that he was in a dilemma, Guy was mistaken and there was no dilemma at all: as for Rouse, he was nothing but a prurient old scoundrel unworthy of credence. Even if the jury believed that Gardiner wrote the letter of assignation, that did not show him to be guilty of the murder, however grave the suspicion might be. Certainly he did not keep the appointment for midnight, and the prosecution seemed to suggest that he had visited the girl at about half-past one. In any event, it was dangerous to convict any man on the evidence of handwriting experts. The accused would explain the blood on the knife, and his wife would explain how the bottle came to be in Providence House. Morriss’s evidence was probably mistaken. Stammers had exaggerated the size of the fire: if anything had been burnt, Stammers would have smelt it and the police would have found the remains. Gardiner could not have done the murder without getting scratched or getting his clothing stained, and there was no suggestion that this had happened. The evidence pointed just as strongly at Davis as it did at Gardiner, and one of the confession letters suggested that the real murderer was trying to blame Goodchild. Not only was the case against Gardiner not proven: he was entitled to a verdict of not guilty on this unjust charge brought against him.

Mrs Gardiner was examined at length: she had always believed her husband innocent of the Harsent scandal and said that, apart for a brief period about eleven o’clock when she went over to Mrs Dickenson and he followed after assuring himself that their children were safely tucked up in bed, they had been together all the evening. She fainted before she could be cross-examined and was evidently in a high state of nervous tension. “There had been much cruel suspense connected with the case,” comments Mr Henderson, “but a belief in her husband’s innocence might have been expected to inspire her with greater fortitude, unless of course she was in weak health or abnormally temperamental.” She admitted that a fire had been lit in the yard on the Sunday morning, although only for the purpose of boiling a kettle. And she agreed that her husband had not seemed much shocked at the violence of Rose’s end.

Her cross-examination had to be postponed, and Gardiner himself then gave evidence. His explanation of the chapel incident was that Rose had asked him to help her with the door which was somewhat stiff. His story generally was an out-and-out denial: Wright, Skinner, Rouse, and Stammers were all liars: Morriss was in all probability mistaken. His writing was similar to that in the letter of assignation, but he had not written that letter. He could not remember cleaning his knife about the time of the murder, nor did he ever recall scraping it inside: he had hulked the rabbit in May, which he conceded was rather late for so doing, indeed the rabbit was breeding and had had to be buried. He possessed only two shirts and knew nothing about them as his wife bought them and supplied him with clean ones as he required them: he agreed that his laundry was washed fortnightly and that he changed his shirt every Sunday, which makes the feat somewhat difficult to accomplish.

Mrs Pepper had to agree that the person she heard moving in Gardiner’s house at twenty past two in the morning might have been Gardiner himself and that it was only Mrs Gardiner’s own statement that made her think it was not. Her story of waiting downstairs for a couple of hours hardly strikes one as credible. After her performance, Mrs Walker recounted the history of the medicine bottle and an accountant and a bank clerk said that they did not believe Gardiner had written the letter in question. A fowl dealer said that he had passed by Providence House at four o’clock in the morning and had not noticed the footprints observed by Morriss. An architect and a quantity surveyor said that they had made tests at the Doctor’s Chapel and that, in their view, it was not possible to hear from outside what was going on inside. The defence solicitor was also called, ostensibly to support them but, one suspects, rather for Wild to import some more prejudice into the case: he received short shrift from the judge.

A host of elders were called to contradict the memory of the Rev. Mr Guy, which they did reluctantly, and to declare their faith in the accused, which they did more enthusiastically. Brother Abraham Goddard said that Guy had called it a fabrication and a trumped-up affair: in cross-examination, he agreed that Guy had used the word dilemma and had said that he preferred to believe his own church. Brother Cripp, who had known Gardiner for twenty-eight years, said that he was first asked to give evidence less than a week before the second trial began. Guy had certainly called the affair a fabrication but had not mentioned the word dilemma in the discussion with Brother Goddard. Brother Noah Etheridge agreed with Brother Cripp: he too had not given evidence at the first trial. Brother Samuel Goddard said that Guy had expressed the view that Gardiner was “in the clear” and had never used the word dilemma, although he believed that the minister had stated his preference for believing two in the church rather than two out. Similar evidence was given by Brother Fiddler. The trial seemed to be more concerned with what Guy had said in 1901 than with what Gardiner had done in 1902: Dickens commented on the skill with which the brethren remembered a conversation that had taken place twenty months before.

Wild said that, apart from the cross-examination of Mrs Gardiner, that concluded the defence. The judge said that he had caused the man Goodchild to be brought to the court and that if the defence made any suggestion that he had anything to do with the murder, he would be given the fullest opportunity to defend himself. The court adjourned with Wild expressing the hope that he had said nothing improper. On the next day, Mrs Gardiner threw a fit of hysterics on the way to the court. Wild called Brother Etheridge to say that she was in no state to give evidence and that, on the previous day, she had lain on the table in the waiting-room for four hours in a state of collapse. A doctor was sent to her and she was recalled. She was not seriously shaken by Dickens: she had slept on the night of the murder only from five till eight o’clock and her husband had certainly not lit the fire in the yard at seven o’clock as suggested by Stammers. She made her husband’s shirts and he had only two: if he got wet, “he had to get dry again”.