Trial and Error (20 page)

“Ricocheted,” corrected Sir Ernest.

“Ricocheted,” accepted Mr Chitterwick gratefully, “why it might be almost anywhere.”

“But, damn it all, he wouldn't have hit the ground,” objected Sir Ernest. “You wouldn't have hit the ground, Todhunter, eh?”

“I might have hit anything, and the ground is certainly the largest,” said Mr Todhunter with a mirthless grin.

“Pretty poor shot, are you?”

“Probably the worst in England.”

“Humph!” said Sir Ernest and joined Mr Chitterwick in looking in the most unlikely spots for the bullet rather than in the most likely ones.

These tactics met almost at once with success. It was, in point of fact, Mr Chitterwick who actually discovered the shapeless little lump of lead embedded in a tie beam right at the other end of the barn; though to hear Sir Ernest's satisfaction, not unmixed with a suggestion of self-commendation, one would have said that it must have been he who had found it.

It was, at any rate, Sir Ernest who dug it carefully out with his penknife.

“I'm your witness,” he announced when Mr Chitterwick expressed a hesitation as to whether it might not be better to leave this important evidence in situ. “That's quite in order. Besides, we want this. I'm no ballistics expert myself, though I do know a bit about firearms, and we shall want a report on this. If it proves to have been fired from your gun, Todhunter, I should say we've got 'em cold.”

Mr Todhunter looked doubtfully at the squashed and misshapen fragment now balanced in Sir Ernest's palm.

“Can they really tell what gun that came from?” he asked.

“Well, I'm not so sure,” Sir Ernest had to admit, his optimism faltering slightly. “Doesn't look as if it'll carry much marking, does it? That's the worst of these lead bullets. Especially after bouncing off this floor. Now if it had been nickel . . .” His tone conveyed disapproval of Mr Todhunter's remissness in using a lead bullet. It also seemed to suggest that for his next murder, if he wanted it detected without all this difficulty Mr Todhunter had better employ nickel bullets.

“Anyhow,” he went on, “we must hope for the best. I know the fellow we must send it to. And that revolver of yours must go with it. I'd like to look at that revolver myself too. I'll get the car out.”

“The car?” Mr Todhunter echoed stupidly.

Sir Ernest looked surprised. “We've finished here, haven't we? Well, we'll go round and have a look at that revolver. No time to let the grass grow under our feet, you know.”

As a result of Sir Ernest's hustling methods, Mr Todhunter found himself unlocking his own front door less than twenty minutes later. Feeling a little overwhelmed, he invited the other two to follow him upstairs.

In the bedroom Sir Ernest showed interest in the drawer from which the bracelet had disappeared and took the revolver from Mr Todhunter with the easy familiarity of one used to firearms. Mr Todhunter watched him with interest as he squinted down the barrel and up the barrel, sniffed it, twirled the chamber and generally put the weapon through its paces.

“That sergeant's a fool,” he pronounced at last.

“What?” said Mr Todhunter.

“That sergeant. Said this revolver had never been fired, didn't he? Well, he's wrong. It has been fired, and pretty recently; though it's been carefully cleaned since.”

“Exactly what I told him,” said Mr Todhunter, not without relief.

“We're getting on,” beamed Mr Chitterwick.

CHAPTER XIII

Mr Chitterwick had been over-optimistic.

The next day was a Sunday, and little could be done then. Vincent Palmer's trial was to open at the Old Bailey on the following Thursday. That gave just three working days for the proving of the case against Mr Todhunter. It was very short.

During those three days Mr Chitterwick worked like a demon. He spent a whole day trying to get on the trail of the missing bracelet and managed to interview every single person whom Mrs Greenhill could name as having visited the house while its owner was away. In each case he not only drew a blank but was able to feel convinced that the person had had no hand in the theft. Nor could he uncover any evidence that an unauthorised person might have got into the house and purloined the bracelet. He questioned and cross-questioned Mrs Greenhill and Edie, regardless of their tears, protests and indignant handing in of notices. And he advanced not one single step.

Mr Chitterwick also inserted a desperately worded appeal in the personal column of every national newspaper to the occupant of the empty punt which had been moored at the bottom of Miss Norwood's garden on the fatal night. No one came forward.

To add to the depression, the report of the ballistics expert on the bullet found in the barn was disappointing. It was too much damaged for positive identification, and all that could be said of it was that it could have been fired from Mr Todhunter's gun. The bullet was then handed over to Scotland Yard, and Chief Inspector Moresby confidentially told Mr Chitterwick that the report of their own man was to the same effect. As a decisive factor in the case the bullet, on which such hopes had been pinned, was a failure.

During these three days Mr Todhunter was equally busy. At first Mr Chitterwick tried to look after him as a hen guarding a chick, for fear that in the rush and scurry Mr Todhunter might wreck the case by bursting his aneurism prematurely, and Sir Ernest Prettiboy was also inclined to act as watchdog over their precious but fragile witness. When, however, Mr Todhunter, irked by his guardianship and feeling himself perfectly capable of safeguarding his own aneurism, had been induced to promise that he would behave as calmly and circumspectly as if nothing was in the air at all, he was allowed to go off by himself in taxis and conduct his own interviews. In this way he again saw Furze, who had to report that the assistant commissioner whom he had sounded had pooh-poohed the whole thing. The opinion at Scotland Yard was quite definite. They no longer considered Mr Todhunter mad. Enquiries had been made about him already, and the state of his health had been ascertained.

“So what?” demanded Mr Todhunter as Furze paused.

“So they think you're just trying to save Palmer, as a friend of the family, knowing it can't make much difference to the length of your own life.”

“The devil they do!” Mr Todhunter remained calm only by an effort. “And they think all the evidence I can produce quite worthless?”

“Quite.”

“But—but—”

“You see,” Furze pointed out, “they're quite prepared to believe that you were in the garden that night. They see no reason why you shouldn't have called on Miss Norwood yourself. In fact, I gather that they've put you down in their minds as the owner of the empty punt. But they think you arrived there, if you did arrive at all,
after
the woman was shot.”

“Damn!” stormed Mr Todhunter. “Damn! Blast! Hell! Blazes!”

“Steady!” implored Furze. “Steady, for goodness' sake.”

“Yes,” agreed Mr Todhunter grimly, “I'm damned if I'll die just yet.”

Mr Todhunter also had another interview with Mrs Farroway, in which a good deal of veiled and careful talk passed. Felicity was at the theatre, so again Mr Todhunter did not see her; if the truth were told, Mr Todhunter had deliberately avoided the meeting. He did not know much about actresses, and what he did know was not encouraging; and he feared that Felicity might carry drama into private life. Mrs. Farroway, on the other hand, was remarkably calm. She did not appear to think it of very great importance that Mr Todhunter's efforts to prove his guilt should have been so far abortive, or indeed that her son-in-law was standing trial for a crime that he had not committed. Indeed Mrs. Farroway went so far as to say that she thought it would do Vincent a great deal of good.

“But supposing, he's convicted?” asked Mr Todhunter.

“He won't be,” replied Mrs Farroway with a confident smile.

Mr Todhunter could only be impressed by such optimism. For himself, he had regarded the trial as tantamount to a conviction, though he could not have said why.

On one evening only did Mr Todhunter permit himself a certain relaxation. Taking Sir Ernest and Lady Prettiboy with him (Mr Critterwick was far too busy), he paid a visit to the Sovereign Theatre and witnessed Felicity and the play. To his great indignation there was no box available, and only by great luck were three stalls empty, returned at the last moment. Mr Todhunter, who had not thought to ring up the theatre in advance and arrived with his guests only a minute or two before the certain went up, felt vaguely that there was some mismanagement in this and complained as much to Mr Budd in the interval. Mr Budd, however, was so full of exuberance, of congratulations and (it must be admitted) of whiskey, that it is doubtful whether he ever heard anything that Mr Todhunter mumbled to him.

After the performance Mr Todhunter felt constrained to apologise to his guests. Felicity Farroway had been good—yes, quite good. But the play, in Mr Todhunter's opinion, was the most dreadful trash he had ever seen. Mr Todhunter was genuinely surprised that both his guests should disagree with him and ascribed their protests to politeness.

The next morning the trial of Vincent Palmer opened.

2

The trial was a full-dress affair. The expectation was that it would last ten days. In point of fact it lasted eight, from the ninth to the sixteenth of December.

From the beginning the defence were confident. The case against the prisoner, though one of the gravest suspicion, was felt to be lacking in definite proof. Even the fact that Palmer's revolver had been recently fired was not of particular importance, for there was no bullet to prove that it had been his gun which had killed Miss Norwood. If there had been a bullet, and if it could have been shown that this bullet had definitely not been fired from Palmer's gun, there would have been no real case against him at all (as Mr Todhunter was becoming rather tired of hearing people point out); but even in the absence of such concrete evidence for the defence it was felt that there was not nearly enough concrete evidence for the prosecution.

The question of whether Mr Todhunter should or should not be called was undecided until the last possible moment. Palmer himself was against it. Knowing himself innocent, he could not believe that there was any real chance of his being convicted, and he saw no reason why Mr Todhunter should voluntarily brand himself as a murderer on his, Palmer's, behalf. In other words young Mr Palmer, who unaccountably seemed to have taken a dislike to Mr Todhunter at sight, announced that he did not want any favours from that quarter and would, in fact, be damned if he'd have any.

On the whole counsel supported this view. The police opinion was known, that Mr Todhunter had come forward in a spirit of altruistic idiocy, and some difficult cross-examination could be expected on this point. There was, too, the possible effect on the jury, who might be inclined to think that the defence must feel themselves in a very weak position to rely upon such a fantastic tale. For the unfortunate truth was that Mr Todhunter's tale still sounded fantastic, and Mr Todhunter himself looked like being a most unconvincing witness to it. Moreover neither counsel nor the solicitors for the defence believed it for one moment.

It was finally decided, therefore, in spite of the unofficial urging of Sir Ernest Prettiboy, not to call Mr Todhunter. In consequence that gentleman, not quite knowing whether to be disgusted or relieved, was able to sit in a privileged position on the witnesses' benches and listen to the whole trial.

At first all went well. The opening speech for the prosecution showed clearly the weakness of the case against Palmer, and the attorney general, who was conducting the case in person, spoke with such obvious moderation that the only inference was that he himself was none too convinced of the prisoner's guilt. Right until the last witness had testified for the Crown the odds were strongly in the prisoner's favour.

And then things seemed to go wrong. Palmer himself made an exceedingly bad witness: truculent, assertive and stubborn. The sulky way in which he admitted the rivalry of his father-in-law and himself for the dead woman's favours, the contempt with which he spoke of Miss Norwood and the obvious change of heart that he must have experienced towards her (he spoke as if her memory were repellent to him), the occasional violence with which he met some particularly awkward question—all these could not but have a bad effect on the jury.

There was, for instance, the question why he had first of all denied having been in Richmond at all on the fatal evening. This denial, as Mr Todhunter and his advisers knew, had produced an exceedingly bad effect on the police; for Palmer's story that he had been at home had been supported originally by his wife. Only when incontrovertible evidence was put to him that he had been positively identified at the Norwood house did Palmer retract this fiction and admit his presence; and he had added that his wife had supported his story upon instructions from himself. To the police this naturally appeared in the light of a conspiracy and pointed overwhelmingly to Palmer's guilt.

It was not possible to question Mrs Palmer in court upon her part in this conspiracy since this would be tantamount to requiring her to give evidence against her husband, nor was she charged as an accessory after the fact. Palmer himself however was pressed on the point; and admitted that first of all he had denied being at Richmond in order to spare his wife pain, since she knew of his interest in Miss Norwood and it had made her unhappy; and secondly, when asked where he was if not at Richmond, he had lost his head and said he was at home without realising that this would involve his wife in supporting or denying his statement.

Mr Todhunter, however, when he heard of this explanation, was sceptical. He had expressly asked Palmer whether his wife would be prepared to back up his statement, and Palmer had replied that she would. Obviously there had been a conspiracy between them, arranged probably between Palmer's two visits to the Farroway flat; and if the evidence of the Norwood servants had not burst the balloon, both husband and wife would have stuck to the story. This looked bad.

Then again there was the still more difficult question of why Palmer should have brought his revolver round to his sister-in-law's flat early that morning, directly the news of the murder became known. Was this the action of an innocent man who feared he might be wrongly accused, or was it the action of guilt? Palmer sullenly maintained that it was the former; fearing that his quarrel with the dead woman might have been overheard, he had thought that it might be better that no revolver should be found in his house. Pressed as to how it was that the revolver showed signs of having been recently fired, Palmer rather unconvincingly denied that it had showed anything of the sort. His counsel tried hard in re-examination to smooth these difficulties out, but a bad impression had been made and Palmer's demeanour did nothing to help matters.

On top of all this, the judge, for some reason best known to himself, showed himself definitely hostile; and when he summed up, although his words were scrupulously fair, his own opinion could be plainly discerned between them. Moreover he commented, as indeed he was quite entitled to do, on the unfortunate absence in the flesh of Farroway himself, whose evidence, owing to his continued ill-health had had to be taken in the form of an affidavit. Farroway, observed the judge, might have been able to clear up several points that remained obscure. As he had not appeared to do so, the jury must form their own opinions on the points in question. And the implication was only too plain that, to the judge's mind, Farroway's evidence under cross-examination would have been definitely damaging to the prisoner; and its absence was due to a family conspiracy to protect him.

The jury were out nearly five hours, and they were the five longest hours Mr Todhunter had ever known. When at last they returned, there was hardly a person in court who had not anticipated the verdict of “Guilty” which they returned.

“And what,” rather shrilly demanded Mr Todhunter of Sir Ernest Prettiboy as they followed the others outside, “what the hell do we do now?”

“Hush, hush,” soothed Sir Ernest. “We'll put your case forward. I knew they were wrong. You'll see. It'll be all right. They can't hang him.”

3

It seemed that the home secretary disagreed with Sir Ernest.

In due course Palmer's appeal was heard, on the grounds that the verdict had been against the weight of evidence. It was dismissed, very solemnly, by three learned judges.

Then a petition was drawn up, couched in ancient and magnificent language, and here it was definitely stated that Lawrence Butterfield Todhunter had already confessed to being responsible for the death of the said Jean Norwood and was prepared to submit to all necessary interrogations, pains and penalties for his deed, in view of which fact and the grave doubts at least which it cast upon the guilt of the prisoner Vincent Palmer, the home secretary's petitioner did very humbly beg and pray that a stay of execution be granted while the statement of the said Lawrence Butterfield Todhunter was examined by the law officers of the Crown (the said petitioners knowing very well that once a stay of execution is granted the execution is never carried out). To all of this the home secretary replied, curtly, that the prisoner Vincent Palmer had been properly condemned by a jury capable of estimating the facts, that he had consulted with the learned judge who had heard the appeal, and that as a result he saw no reason to interfere with the jury's verdict.