Trial and Error (25 page)

“Will you tell the jury how you can be so sure?” suggested Sir Ernest.

“Certainly. In the revolver which is labelled B, there is a barrel flaw which leaves a unique and clearly defined mark on any bullet fired from it. Although the bullet labelled C is so much damaged, the barrel mark of revolver B, it can easily be seen, is definitely missing.

“So that, although you can prove that revolver B did not fire that bullet, that does not necessarily mean that you can say what revolver did fire it?”

“That is so.”

“Have you examined the revolver labelled A?” The revolver labelled A was that belonging to Mr Todhunter.

“I have.”

“Could that have fired this bullet C?”

“I have made tests with it and undoubtedly it could have done so, but it is not possible to say that it actually did.”

Sir Ernest nodded and had the statement repeated in two or three different ways, so that not even the most obtuse jury could fail to understand that Vincent Palmer could not possibly have fired the bullet which lodged in the barn, but that Mr Todhunter could have done so.

With this interesting point established, the witnesses' tale went on.

Mrs Farroway came next, to testify to the good offices of Mr Todhunter, the help he had given her and her family and the distress he had shown on their behalf. She agreed that his feelings towards Miss Norwood had seemed very bitter and that he had expressed them quite plainly. Felicity Farroway was not called, to the disappointment of the spectators. Her evidence could only have corroborated her mother's, and after the scene in his bedroom Mr Todhunter had put down a very firm foot against her being allowed anywhere near the court. An outburst of hysterics would obviously do his case no good.

To compensate for Felicity's nonappearance however, Sir Ernest was able to produce a real thrill in his last witness on this day.

“I now call,” he declaimed in his most resonant tones, “I now call Vincent Palmer.”

A delighted shudder went round the whole court. Only the judge looked unmoved; but under his wig even he must have experienced a shock. To hear called as a witness the man already under sentence of death for the very murder for which he was now trying a totally different person must cause even a judge to quiver slightly, albeit inside his robes.

Not that young Mr Palmer really had anything very much of importance to tell. Sir Ernest suggested that, in order to save the time of the Court and to ensure that the death of Miss Norwood should be considered from every possible angle, the official report of the examination and cross-examination of Palmer at his own trial should be put in now as evidence. The judge assented, and the jury were bidden to study the typewritten sheets now handed to them, at their leisure.

In this evidence Palmer had admitted having visited Miss Norwood that evening but asserted that he had left her, alive and well, before nine o'clock. It was a fact that Miss Norwood had been seen, very much alive, after this hour, but no evidence had been produced to show that Palmer had left at that time. It had been the police theory that Miss Norwood had left him for a few minutes and then returned.

In response to Sir Ernest's questions Palmer now once again asserted that he had heard a church clock striking nine as he walked down a road at some distance from that in which Miss Norwood's house had lain, in point of fact towards a bus stop; and he was able to remember this because he had unconsciously fitted his steps to the chimes and found that he could take four paces to each stroke. This was interesting, but of course the discovery could have been made at any time, together with its corollary that, in order to have reached this particular road by nine o'clock, Palmer must have left the Norwood premises certainly before 8:55 p.m.

“And when you left, you neither heard nor saw anyone else in the garden?” asked Sir Ernest.

“No one. It was getting pretty dark then, and I was het up in any case. We'd had a row, you see. I doubt if I'd have heard if anyone had been there; I certainly saw no one.”

“Most unfortunate, for all our parts. . . . In our submission, my lord,” remarked Sir Ernest confidentially to the judge, “the witness must have been leaving the grounds just as the accused was entering them.” Sir Ernest was allowing himself a good deal of latitude, but there were no objections to be expected from his colleague on the other side. “Had you, while in the gardens, noticed whether there was a punt moored to the bank at the bottom of the garden?” he continued to the witness.

“No, I didn't go down to the river.”

“Let me see.” Sir Ernest shuffled hastily through the typescript of evidence. “You have stated that you were not on the premises more than twenty minutes. During the whole of that period you neither saw nor heard nor had any reason to suspect the presence of any unauthorised person in Miss Norwood's grounds that evening?”

“No.”

Counsel then went on to ask a few questions concerning the meeting between Palmer and Mr Todhunter at the Farroway flat on the following morning. But here again Palmer had not much to say. He had found his revolver in Mr Todhunter's possession when he arrived at the flat; he could not suggest any reason why it should have been in Mr Todhunter's pocket or why Mr Todhunter should have shown so much interest in it; yet he knew now that Mr Todhunter had a revolver of his own of identical pattern and that Mrs Farroway (as she had stated in evidence) had seen it in its owner's possession before he, Palmer, arrived. Would it strike him, knowing the circumstances, as a feasible explanation if Mr Todhunter had intended to substitute his own guilty revolver for Palmer's innocent one with the feeling usual to the guilty person that he must be the only person whom the police suspect and that incriminating evidence will be safer in anyone else's possession rather than his own? Mr Palmer, somewhat sulkily, could not give an opinion on the point.

Sir Ernest smiled his sulkiness away. He had got the point before the jury so early in the proceedings and that was all he cared about.

In the same way Sir Ernest did not seem worried when young Palmer, after two or three more unimportant questions, left the witness box in the charge of his two warders without having contributed anything of value to his case. He had brought the wrongfully condemned man before the jury and given them a first-class thrill, and he expected them to show their gratitude with their verdict.

3

The next morning it was Mr Chitterwick's turn.

He was examined by Sir Ernest at some length and was able to give evidence of importance, from the occasion when Mr Todhunter had consulted him concerning some person whom he might conveniently murder, to the last discovery of all, that of the whereabouts of the missing bracelet. His modesty and diffidence made an excellent impression on all concerned; and, led very subtly by Sir Ernest, the effect he quite unknowingly produced was that if so charming a person as Mr Chitterwick thought that a thing was so, then it probably was.

After Mr Chitterwick came the sensation of the third day, with the great Sir Ernest Prettiboy himself entering the box to create a precedent in the annals of the English Bar, and allowing himself to be examined by his own junior. With fearful solemnity Sir Ernest corroborated the findings in the gardens which Mr Chitterwick had already described and managed to insert an opinion that it would have been quite impossible for Mr Todhunter to have faked these or even to have known where to look for them, had he not made them himself. Sir Ernest then quickly left the box before the judge or any other interfering person could remind the jury that nobody now, not even the police, disputed Mr Todhunter's presence in Miss Norwood's garden at some time on the fatal evening, and therefore the traces of his entry in no way helped to prove that it had been his finger that pulled the trigger. Sir Ernest's hushed solemnity was worth a ton of dull evidence.

The police officers who had been instrumental in recovering the stolen bracelet, upon information furnished by Mr Todhunter, came next; and naturally Sir Ernest took the opportunity of rubbing into the jury the importance of this testimony. The afternoon was taken up with medical evidence to the effect that the time at which Miss Norwood's death must have occurred seemed to indicate that Mr Todhunter rather than Palmer was probably the cause of it; and this was followed by other evidence, including that of Mr Todhunter's own doctor, of Mrs Greenhill and Edie and of various of Mr Todhunter's friends to prove that he was probably the sanest person walking about London during the past year. The judge did become a little restive under all this testimony, pointing out to Sir Ernest that as no one had questioned the sanity of the accused and as the accused's own counsel had already dealt with the matter there was perhaps little need to emphasise it quite so much.

“My lord,” replied Sir Ernest, “with the greatest respect, I understand that the question of the sanity of the accused, on which my learned friend and I are fully agreed may be raised in another quarter, and I therefore feel it my duty to show that he was fully responsible for his actions.”

“Very well,” said the judge resignedly.

4

Mr Todhunter made a note.

“I am astonished at the strength of our case. I thought, before the proceedings opened, that we should have some difficulty in making it appear feasible, let alone convincing. But it is very different when one hears the evidence marshalled like this from the beginning of the story to the end. I should say now that our case is conclusive. What I can add myself in the witness box will be only a supererogation. This is very satisfactory.”

Sir Ernest, however, was not quite so certain.

“Wait till you've heard the police johnny, my boy,” he said. “There are some pretty big holes in our story, you know, and he'll know how to tear 'em bigger.”

“I wish, we'd never invited him to come and interfere,” said Mr Todhunter, alarmed by this prognostication.

“Oh, much better. Otherwise, supposing you were found guilty, the verdict would only be upset on appeal, on the ground that the true verdict had never been put to the jury for their consideration.”

“But how could there be an appeal if both prosecution and defence are satisfied with the verdict?”

“The Crown would appeal.”

“But has the Crown any right to intervene with an appeal in a case in which it has not acted?”

“Don't ask me silly questions,” said Sir Ernest.

5

The next morning the case for the defence opened with a brief statement by Mr Jamieson on the lines which he had already indicated. He then called his one and only witness, and Mr Todhunter shuffled into the box.

Mr Todhunter had passed a very bad night. He had been dreading this ordeal. Not least did he dislike the necessity for committing perjury. It seemed to him most exasperating that, in order to obtain a trial at all, he had to commit perjury. But there it was, and perjury was what he had to commit.

The first part was easy enough, though even with all Mr Jamieson's most persuasive leading Mr Todhunter was not sure that he had managed to put before the jury the exact state of mind which had led him into Miss Norwood's garden that night.

“I. . . um . . . formed my decision on the unwitting advice of many people,” he mumbled when invited by his counsel to explain to my lord and the jury just how it was that he had arrived at so drastic a determination as to commit murder. “I knew that if they gathered I was serious, they would not tell me what they really thought. I therefore put to them an . . . um . . . hypothetical case. The unanimity with which I was advised on all sides to commit murder impressed me. And the more I considered it, the more reasonable I found it. Murder of an entirely impersonal . . . um . . . nature seemed to suit my exactly.”

“It did not occur to you that perhaps your friends might be joking?”

“I'm afraid it didn't. And I don't believe,” said Mr Todhunter with some defiance, “that they were. I believe they meant what they said.”

“Please explain a little more fully what you mean when you say that murder seemed to suit your case exactly?”

“I mean, I never expected to live to be hanged,” said Mr Todhunter simply.

“You did not expect to live as long even as this?”

“I thought at that time that I should . . . um . . . be dead about a month ago,” said Mr Todhunter shamefacedly.

“Perhaps, in the circumstances, it's lucky you weren't,” commented his counsel drily.

Slowly, by means of laborious question and answer, Mr Todhunter brought his tale up to the moment of his decision that Miss Jean Norwood must be eliminated.

“By that time,” he explained, “I had made the fullest enquiries, and I was unable to evade the conclusion that her death would bring . . . um . . . happiness to a remarkable number of people.”

“You formed the conclusion that she was a bad woman?”

“She was a poisonous bitch,” replied Mr Todhunter, to the shocked delight of everyone in court.

Five minutes later he was committing manful perjury.

“I think I intended to kill her right up to the moment when I came face to face with her. Then. . .”

“Yes?” prompted Mr Jamieson amid a hushed expectancy.

“Well, I . . . um . . . I suppose I lost my nerve.”

“Did you threaten her with the revolver?”

“Yes. And . . . er . . . it went off. Twice. I'm not used to firearms,” apologised Mr Todhunter.

“How could it have gone off twice?”

“Well, the—the first shot made me jump. It was . . . er . . . unexpected, you see. And I suppose the shock made me tighten my finger on the trigger. I . . . er . . . um . . . can't account for it in any other way.”

“And what happened next?”

“I was a little dazed,” said Mr Todhunter, relieved to be back on the path of truth again. “Then I realised that she had fallen back in her chair. There was . . . er . . . blood all over the front of her dress. I didn't know what to do.”