Trial and Error (21 page)

This news had to be broken to Mr Todhunter with such circumspection and care that it was two whole hours before he realised that the home secretary considered him no more than a deliberate and rather childish liar.

“Very well,” said Mr Todhunter with creditable coolness, “On the day they excuse Palmer I will shoot myself on the steps of the Home Office.”

“Gad, we'll tell the papers that,” cried Sir Ernest Prettiboy with enthusiasm. “Nothing like a bit of publicity in the right direction.”

Sir Ernest was as good as his word. In consequence every popular newspaper the next morning carried a banner headline to this effect, while the more solid journals referred to it with some disgust on an unimportant page. It had interested Mr Todhunter to observe that the popular press supported him to a lord, while the other newspapers, although inclined to think that this was a case in which the home secretary might perhaps exercise his prerogative of mercy, professed no doubt concerning the prisoner's guilt.

The banner headlines had no effect. The home secretary was a dry and legal man, full of precedents and the letter of the law, and a popular agitation was quite enough to stiffen him in any unpopular course of action. If the home secretary could manage it, Vincent Palmer should hang.

“We'll save him yet. I swear we'll save him,” fumed Sir Ernest. “My God, if we'd only got a
man
at the Home Office instead of this bundle of old parchment tied up with red tape. The very worst home secretary there's been for a century, for our purpose. But we're not done yet. There's still old Powell-Hancock.”

Mr Chitterwick nodded brightly. Mr Todhunter looked doubtful. Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock was another of Sir Ernest's “strings.”

Mr Todhunter had indeed been astonished at the reliance which Sir Ernest Prettiboy placed on his “strings,” as Mr Todhunter termed them to himself. One would have said that Sir Ernest was a man of fairly definite purpose and direct action, but it seemed that according to the rules of the game no one must ever do anything himself. Somebody else always had to be approached, and the more circuitously, the better, to do it for one. These persons Sir Ernest would refer to as “a string to pull.” Old This could pull a string with the king's proctor, old That was at school with the attorney general, old the Other knew a second cousin of the home secretary's wife and might be a useful string. Everything must be done on personal grounds, never on the rights or wrongs of the actual case. Sir Ernest knew all these important persons himself, and apparently quite well; but he seemed to think that the home secretary's decision was much more likely to be influenced by an elderly aunt of the permanent secretary's, over a tea table in Bayswater, than by a discussion on the justice of hanging an innocent man in the cold formality of the home secretary's own office. It amazed Mr Todhunter still more that the solicitors, and indeed everyone who might be expected to know the ropes, not merely shared this view but seemed to think that no other view was possible.

Mr Chitterwick, with whom Mr Todhunter discussed this phenomenon, knew better and tried to explain the inert mass of unimaginative bureaucratic dead weight against which any reform or even any measure of plain humanity had to strive.

Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock was Sir Ernest's parliamentary “string.” Mr Todhunter's amazement had been deepened on finding that there was a disposition to treat the hanging of Vincent Palmer as a political question. Members of Parliament who supported the government were, it seemed, on the whole disposed to back the home secretary and execute Palmer; members of the opposition professed to regard Mr Todhunter's story as true, or at any rate worthy of examination, and accused the government of persecution, injustice and, probably, simony; while the
News Chronicle,
in a thoughtful, leader, tried to prove that the civil war just then raging in Spain was entirely due to the government's malicious intention to hang an innocent man.

Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock, although a supporter of the government, had almost undertaken to raise the question of the execution in the House of Commons. (Mr Todhunter gathered that it was expected to win him over finally through some arguments concerning the removal of the tolls on a bridge in his constituency, which did not at first sight appear very relevant but in which Sir Ernest seemed to have considerable faith.)

Exactly four days before Vincent Palmer was due to die Sir Arthur at last succumbed to the argument of the toll bridge and formally gave notice of his intention to raise the question on the adjournment or whatever it is that members do raise questions on; Mr Todhunter was a little bewildered on the point.

Mr Todhunter was indeed a little bewildered altogether during these two weeks. The matter seemed to have been taken out of his hands completely. Although the principal actor, he was to play his part now, it seemed, entirely off stage. Sir Ernest Prettiboy spoke for him, acted for him, agitated for him and almost ate his meals for him. In fact Sir Ernest strongly advised Mr Todhunter to retire to his bed and stay there, for he could do nothing more to help except by remaining alive. On the day that Sir Arthur tabled his motion Mr Todhunter took this advice—after a final visit to Maida Vale, a last interview with Mrs Farroway, whose distress was now beginning to show through her self-imposed front of calm confidence, and a last desperate entreaty to her to do nothing, say nothing and generally keep out of things until 6 a.m. on the day that Vincent Palmer was to die. After that hour, said Mr Todhunter in some despair, anybody could do anything so far as he was concerned.

4

The report of the proceedings in the House of Commons was given to Mr Todhunter in his bed that evening by Mr Chitterwick, who attended in person, and by the indefatigable Sir Ernest Prettiboy, who, having thrown all precedent and procedure to the winds, was scandalising his professional colleagues more and more every day.

Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock rose, in a somewhat apathetic House, to raise the question of Palmer's execution on the motion that the House should go into Committee of Supply. Roughly, members were divided into five groups. There were those who regarded the question as a political one and intended to support the home secretary in his refusal to intervene, and there were, of course, those less tape-bound members who honestly believed in the infallibility of trial by jury. On the other side, supporting Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock, there were those few members who believed Mr Todhunter's story; there were the members of the opposition who were politically minded; and finally there was a large body of opinion which was seriously disturbed by doubts as to Palmer's guilt and considered that there could be at any rate no harm in sparing Palmer's life in order to review Mr Todhunter's confession, whether they had to keep the fellow in prison for the rest of his life or not. It was on this last group that Sir Ernest Prettiboy chiefly relied, and it was towards increasing their numbers that his ardent lobbying had been mostly directed.

Not even Sir Ernest's eloquence, however, nor the fiery articles that had appeared in the press for or against Palmer had done very much to rouse enthusiasm on either side; and Sir Arthur's rather dull speech did not help to increase it. The debate dragged on and gradually developed into an academic discussion from which it was hard to realise that a man's life could be at stake. Indeed about the best help that Palmer received was from the home secretary himself, who spoke with such inhumanity and arid lack of any of the broader warmth or understanding as to alienate even some of his own supporters.

In spite of this small profit to Palmer's cause, it seemed certain, however, that the division must go against him, when Sir Ernest played his trump card. It was an unexpected card, and its existence had been unknown even to Sir Arthur Powell-Hancock himself; nor did Sir Ernest play it until quite sure that the debate was going definitely against him. Then a note was brought by an attendant to Sir Arthur, who stared at it in perplexity for some moments and then fumbled for the Speaker's eye.

Catching it, he rose and said:

“I have just received a note. Its purport is not altogether clear, but I understand that a—hum!—a civil action for murder is actually being brought, or entered, against this Mr—hum!—Lawrence Todhunter. A—hum!—a
civil
action for murder. My legal friends may understand better than I do what that exactly means. But if any action for murder is being brought in the courts against this gentleman—that is, for the same murder under which Vincent Palmer now lies condemned, I think I can hardly be wrong in suggesting that it would be the wish of the House that the execution of Palmer should be delayed at least until the outcome of this trial—if ‘trial' is the correct term—has been reached.”

Sheer bewilderment, in fact, had prevented Sir Arthur from being as prosy as he preferred, and, on the division being taken at once, it was announced that the motion respiting Vincent Palmer had been carried by the narrow majority of a hundred and twenty-six to a hundred and seven.

“My God!” said Mr Todhunter and ate a grape.

CHAPTER XIV

Mr Todhunter had found himself caught up into great issues. His actions had been discussed in Parliament; precedents had been created in his name; and now he found himself the centre of an almost unheard-of legal crisis. It gave him a curious and irksome feeling of impotence to find that though now the centre of these great and controversial activities, he could no more direct them than he could direct the course of the moon round the earth: he was the centre only, fixed, immovable—and bed was about the best place for him.

The notion of a private prosecution for murder was perhaps the most brilliant flash of genius in all Sir Ernest Prettiboy's brilliant career. The course was, in point of fact, not unprecedented, but it took a legal genius to realise that the machinery for a resuscitation of this curious civil right was still in perfect working order.

Briefly, the essence of the matter is that although, in all criminal cases, it is the Crown which is almost invariably named as prosecutor and has indeed in theory the prerogative of acting in this capacity, in practice prosecution for minor criminal offences is almost always undertaken by the private person who has suffered damage, acting, of course, in conjunction with the police.

“But in this case, my boy,” expounded Sir Ernest jovially, “the police not only won't help; if they can, they'll jolly well hinder. And why? Because they've already prosecuted their own candidate for the rope, and to help indict another would only be to make them, as well as the original conviction, look silly. Besides, they're still convinced they've got the right man.”

“But this isn't a minor case,” objected Mr Todhunter, who liked to get one thing clear at a time.

“You're right it isn't. By the way, we're a wily lot, aren't we? By custom and so forth we've gradually put the responsibility for the repression of minor crime onto the shoulders of the injured parties themselves. Saves the authorities such a lot of trouble, that does. It's a practice peculiar to this country. It would be.”

“Yes, but murder isn't a minor crime.”

“No, but if they allow it in minor offences, they must in major ones too; though of course it's very rarely done when the authorities themselves aren't willing to act. The private prosecutor has to put up the dibs himself, you see, and there's precious few of us who wouldn't let a criminal get away with anything he likes so long as we don't have to foot any bill for putting him in gaol.”

“But you said,” Mr Todhunter pointed out patiently, “that in such cases it's the injured party who prosecutes. In a case of murder that can hardly apply, can it? I mean, the person who suffered the damage is hardly in a position to prosecute, being dead.”

“Oh, it needn't always be the injured party,” returned Sir Ernest glibly. “Haven't you ever heard of a common informer? That's what a bloke is called who prosecutes in any case of felony or misdemeanour in which he himself has suffered no damage.”

“Then the person who prosecutes me will be a common informer?” suggested Mr Todhunter with acumen.

“Not a bit of it. A common informer prosecutes in the hope and for the purpose of obtaining for himself the reward, pain or penalty prescribed for the offence in question, or a goodish lump of it, or for any other reason working to his own advantage, such as turning king's evidence.”

“Then what will the person who prosecutes me be called?” demanded Mr Todhunter in despair.

“The prosecutor,” replied Sir Ernest simply. “He will in fact be usurping the functions of the Crown, and he'll have a hurdle or two to jump before he'll be allowed to do it too.”

“Hurdle?”

“Yes. There'll be the grand jury to be argued into returning a true bill against you, the magistrates to be persuaded into committing you, and goodness knows what other merry little obstructions that the hostile authorities won't be able to devise.”

“They make it very difficult for a man who only wants to get himself hanged,” lamented Mr Todhunter.

“You bet they do,” agreed Sir Ernest with great heartiness. “Otherwise chaps like you with these dam' delicate consciences would be getting themselves hanged in rows at 8 a.m. every morning of the week in every prison in the country.”

2

Naturally this intricate legal situation required much discussion.

In a way Mr Todhunter enjoyed these conferences. They made him feel important, and also he had taken a liking to the solicitor whom Sir Ernest had brought in on his behalf, a youngish man named Fuller, who was as unlike the usual idea of a solicitor as Mr Todhunter, unknown to himself, was like it. Fuller had a shock of blond hair through which he would run an occasional hand or even, when the situation seemed to demand it, both hands; he had also a suit which seemed permanently a little rumpled and a manner so eager and enthusiastic that when he became excited, as he often did, his words would run so closely together that they could hardly be disentangled.

His knowledge of law was, however, first rate, and he had put all of it at Mr Todhunter's disposal, together with his vast measure of enthusiasm for so entrancing a case. In fact young Mr Fuller entered the chase with such zest that Mr Todhunter felt at times, not without uneasiness, that nothing mattered to him but to get his client well and truly, if quite academically, hanged.

As for the person who was to undertake the role of nominal prosecutor, Mr Todhunter himself had had an inspiration there. It seemed to him that there was only one person to act in that capacity: Furze. With characteristic energy Sir Ernest had at once hurled himself off there and then to the offices of the Middleman's League and put the case to Furze on the spot.

Furze had been delighted to oblige. The idea appealed to his somewhat intricate sense of humour, which had always enjoyed defeating the deficiencies of the law by its own excesses.

Then there was the question of finance. The bill for his own prosecution was of course to be footed by Mr Todhunter himself, and the satisfactory sums rolling in upon him each week now from the Sovereign Theater appeared expressly designed for this purpose—as Mr Todhunter had indeed thoughtfully pointed out to the mother of their chief cause and creator, Felicity Farroway.

And there was plenty of need for funds. Sir Ernest Prettiboy had naturally been instructed—or rather, had instructed himself—for the prosecution, and the matter of fees was not in question there; but there were juniors, there were the solicitors, there were the usual expenses connected with witnesses, there were a hundred and one alleys down which Mr Todhunter's money was scurrying as fast as it could roll. For it was not merely a question of a trial. There were, first, the proceedings before the magistrate; for which, as was to happen at the ensuing trial should the magistrates prove so obliging as to commit him, Mr Todhunter had to stand the expenses not merely of his prosecution but of his own defence against his own prosecution.

The situation was indeed becoming more and more fantastic. In the first place Sir Ernest Prettiboy was almost more worried by the possibility of the magistrates' dismissing Mr Todhunter's case against himself than he was over the chances of a jury subsequently failing to convict. In consequence it had been decided, by him and young Mr Fuller, but not of course by Mr Todhunter, that although the charge against him was that to which he had been confessing so long and so hard, when the thing actually came into court Mr Todhunter was to plead not guilty.

“But I am guilty!” Mr Todhunter had cried from his bed. “What's the good of saying I'm not? I may get off.”

“You're much more likely to get off if you plead guilty,” countered Sir Ernest. “Don't you understand, if you plead guilty there can't be a trial. You'll never have a chance to call your witnesses, such as they are. I can't thunder against you to convince a muttonheaded jury. They'll just accept your plea, smile and stick you in an insane asylum for the rest of your life—and keep Palmer in clink. That's my view.”

“But how can I plead not guilty?” asked the harassed Mr Todhunter.

“You'll plead not guilty to murder, but guilty of manslaughter,” replied Sir Ernest glibly. “What you did was to take a revolver with you to that interview with Jean Norwood with the intention of threatening her, which you duly did, but in your excitement and inexperience of firearms the thing went off, and she was killed. Isn't that what happened?”

“Good heavens, no,” said Mr Todhunter with disgust. “I intended all the time—”

“Isn't that what happened?”
shouted Sir Ernest at the top of his exceedingly powerful voice.

“Oh, all right,” agreed Mr Todhunter sulkily. “Yes, that's what happened.”

“I thought so,” said Sir Ernest with satisfaction.

“But don't you get me off on it,” ordered Mr Todhunter.

“You forget, my bonny boy,” retorted Sir Ernest, “I'm for the prosecution. I'm out for your blood, by Jove—and I'm going to, get it.”

“Then who's going to defend me?”

“Ah!” said Sir Ernest thoughtfully. “We've got to think about that, haven't we?”

“What about Jamieson?” asked Fuller. “I'd say he's clever enough to put up a good show and not clever enough to get our friend off.”

“Jamieson's the man,” agreed Sir Ernest.

“Is he?” said Mr Todhunter in a depressed way.

3

Things were indeed enough to depress him. Mr Todhunter had always found difficulty in grasping details, and the details of his own case were now becoming so complicated that at times he despaired of unravelling them.

Furze, for instance, who sometimes joined these conferences too—Furze had of course instructed solicitors of his own, who had to be in the game, too, and it was under the instructions of these that Sir Ernest nominally was acting; whereas Mr Todhunter, in constant conference with the counsel who was to prosecute him, never even met his own counsel who was to defend him against the best efforts of the man who was putting the case which he himself was trying to strengthen by every means in his limited power. It was all very muddling.

The newspapers found it no less so. Sir Ernest Prettiboy was usually referred to as acting for Mr Todhunter, as indeed he was unofficially though officially exactly the reverse, and Mr Todhunter appeared somehow to be regarded as chief witness for the prosecution and defendant combined; as indeed he was again, in fact if not in legal fiction. The more sober periodicals tried occasionally to disentangle the riddle for their readers, with an air of aloof distaste; the less sober ones, caring nothing for details, continued to serve Mr Todhunter with such a continued roar of publicity as caused Sir Ernest to chuckle with gratification.

“Bound to have its effect on the jury,” he would gloat. “Bound to. They'll feel they won't be playing the game unless they convict you. Bound to. You'll see.”

In the meantime the preparation of the case went methodically forward. Witnesses were interviewed who could support the fantastic story from its very beginning, which Mr Todhunter fixed as the little dinner party he had given to what seemed now a collection of ghosts a hundred years ago. Fortunately he had consulted so many people and discussed murder in theory with so many others that there was no lack of persons to speak to the idea that murder must have been very much present in Mr Todhunter's mind, while Mr Chitterwick and Furze could both speak to a more particular intention. So far as all this went, things were not unsatisfactory; and with the help of so many witnesses and other witnesses, too, who were prepared without hesitation to give testimony of the kind that Mr Todhunter had “always been queer since a boy,” even his own tale might be expected to grow more and more credible in the minds of the jury, if only through sheer repetition.

It was over the question of actual proof that heads were shaken; for here it had to be admitted that, out of sheer bad luck, no doubt, but nevertheless definitely, the proofs of Mr Todhunter's guilt were not nearly so striking as the police case against Vincent Palmer.

“That bracelet,” would moan Mr Fuller and look as if about to beat his breast.

It was the bracelet that had caught young Mr Fuller's attention from the start. Under his directions Mr Chitterwick's enquiries were renewed and all the old ground covered once more—but only the old, for no one could find any new ground. The result, as before, was completely negative, but Mr Fuller, alone of the four, refused to give up hope.

“With that bracelet we've got a case,” he kept repeating. “Without it, I don't know.”

“There's the second bullet,” one of the others would remind him.

“Which proves that Todhunter knew of its existence. But nothing more. The police will simply say that he heard two shots when he was in the garden that night, knew that only one bullet had been traced and inferred that the other must be somewhere. That's all.”

And Mr Todhunter, who had prided himself a good deal on that second bullet, would feel more depressed than ever.

4

Nevertheless it did not seem as if the loss of the bracelet were to prove an insuperable handicap. For in due course Mr Todhunter left his bed and appeared before the magistrates, and in due course again, much later and after a number of further appearances which he felt to be altogether excessive, Mr Todhunter found himself committed for trial by a completely bewildered bench—just (it seemed) to be on the safe side.

Mr Todhunter disliked these appearances excessively. He was almost mobbed each time he arrived at or left the court, and he was usually cheered too; for what reason he could not quite determine, possibly for having murdered a popular idol whose feet had proved to be composed mainly of clay. He was photographed, sketched and headlined, and the most determined attempts were made to interview him, if it was only to extract a single word from his almost fanatically closed lips. In short, had Mr Todhunter been a lady of rank with a title to sell, the publicity he was getting would have made him almost delirious with delight; as things were, it left his somewhat old-fashioned mind reeling with disgust.