The 12.30 from Croydon (34 page)

Heppenstall then asked him as to the law of supplying poison to customers and made him admit that in the instance in question he had broken it. Peabody, however, admitted his fault so readily that the point did not discredit him as it otherwise might, and Heppenstall slid gently away from it.

‘Now, Mr Peabody,’ Heppenstall went on, ‘look at this plan.’ He passed up a drawing. ‘Have you seen it before?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘What is it a plan of?’

‘Of my shop.’

‘Of your shop. Do you see two points on it marked respectively “A” and “B”?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do these points indicate?’

‘They’re supposed to show where the customer and I stood when I sold the cyanide.’

‘Do they as a matter of fact show these positions correctly: approximately correctly, I mean?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Which point indicates the purchaser?’

‘Point “A”.’

‘Then does Point “B” represent where you stood?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll prove the plan later, m’lud,’ Heppenstall remarked as the sheet was handed up to his lordship.

This completed the cross-examination and a Mr Horace Drinkwater was called. He was, he said, a handwriting expert. He had obtained samples of the prisoner’s handwriting and had compared these with the entries in the previous witness’s poison book. In his opinion, the two sets of writing were by the same hand.

His cross-examination by Heppenstall was very short. In fact, he only asked him three questions.

‘You say, Mr Drinkwater, that the two sets of writing were, in your opinion, done by the same hand. Do you swear that they were?’

‘No,’ the witness returned, ‘no expert would do so. I say they were to the best of my opinion and belief, but I naturally can’t swear it.’

‘Quite so. Now, have you had much experience of comparing and judging handwriting?’

‘I’ve been doing it for more than twenty-five years.’

‘Now, tell me, Mr Drinkwater.’ Heppenstall’s manner had got suddenly sharper. ‘In all that long period, have you ever known your opinion to be incorrect?’ He leant forward and transfixed the witness with a hard, frowning stare.

Drinkwater hesitated. ‘Why, no,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t think so. Not very often, at all events.’

‘
Not
omniscient,’ Heppenstall murmured
sotto voce
and sat down.

A Miss Isobel Cumming was then called to prove the purchase of the Francis Carswell visiting cards. She said the accused was like the purchaser, but admitted to Byng that she could not say they were the same.

The real Mr Francis Carswell deposed that he had not visited Mr Peabody’s shop on the 23rd of August, had not purchased potassium cyanide from him or any other person, and had not ordered visiting cards from the previous witness. The defence did not cross-examine.

Mrs Shearman, with evident reluctance, described Charles’s excitability and anxiety during the cruise, stating that she had commented on it, and that he had explained it by saying that he had not been well, that something had gone wrong with his nerves, and that he had in consequence gone away for a change. She was followed by a clerk from the
Jupiter,
who gave evidence as to Charles’s eagerness in applying for letters and telegrams.

In each of these last two cases Byng tried to obtain an admission that the alleged facts were the mere opinions of the witnesses, unsupported by definite actions on Charles’s part. Charles thought this fairly satisfactory, the evidence apparently not appealing strongly to the jury.

A clerk from Messrs Cook’s gave evidence as to Charles’s purchase of the tickets for the cruise. His cross-examination was unproductive.

Mr Spiller, of Messrs Spiller & Morgan, gave evidence about the loan of £5,000 which his firm had made to Charles. As in the case of the previous witness, little was gained by the cross-examination.

Dr Gregory was then examined at considerable length. He repeated the evidence which he had given at the inquest about the deceased’s health and his fitness to travel in an aeroplane. He described the effect of potassium cyanide and stated that the presumption that it had been taken in the pill would in his opinion account for all the facts which had been observed.

Mr Gavin Grant, the analyst, added somewhat to his former evidence. He had found potassium cyanide in the organs sent him, which, it had been stated in evidence, had been taken from the deceased’s body. Moreover, the amount – about three grains – was just about the quantity which could be introduced into a pill of the size of those taken by the deceased. This would have been quite sufficient to cause death.

‘Now, Mr Grant,’ went on Brander, ‘did you analyse the pills which remained in the deceased’s bottle?’

‘Inspector Appleby handed me a bottle of Salter’s Anti-Indigestion Pills which I understood were found on the deceased. I analysed them.’

‘You need not go into details, but you found they contained certain substances?’

‘Yes, I prepared a complete analysis.’

‘Now, tell me, did you find in the deceased’s organs these same substances?’

‘No, I found no trace of them.’

‘From that, are you or are you not in a position to say the deceased did not take one of these pills after lunch in the plane?’

‘Assuming he died shortly after lunch, as has been stated, I am prepared to swear he did not take one of these pills. If he had done so, I should have found traces.’

‘We have Mr Peter Morley’s evidence that the deceased did take a pill after lunch. If this evidence is correct, can you account for the discrepancy?’

‘If a pill was taken, it must have contained something other than the indigestion remedies.’

‘Quite so. That is what I want.’

Once again Charles thought the cross-examination extremely perfunctory. A show was made of trying to trip up the witness, but nothing really was gained.

When Grant left the box Sir Richard Brander got up and said that that was his case. It being past one, the court immediately adjourned for lunch.

As he went down the stairs from the dock Charles thought that at last he knew the worst. It was bad, a hundred times worse than he could have had any idea of. How the police had discovered that awful fact about his buying the cyanide, he could not imagine. Even now he couldn’t see the loophole he must have left.

He was so filled with misery and despair as to have become almost apathetic. He seemed to be existing outside himself, looking down upon himself as from some great distance. The whole trial began to feel impersonal. He could wonder what, if any, chance he had, without seeming to realize that it was his own life that was at stake.

Mechanically he forced himself to eat and then mechanically ascended that tragic stair down which so many had passed to despair and death. Perhaps before night he would have joined their ranks.

It was with a sense of utter weariness that Charles once again reached the dock. How he loathed the court and everyone connected with it! Sir Richard Brander, with his large nose, his square chin, his thin lips, his look of implacable determination. Mr Heppenstall and his eyeglass. The downright ‘practical’ foreman of the jury and his weak, fanciful neighbour. The two comfortable-looking women and their thin, spiteful companion. His lordship, with his tired, dried-up face. A clerk with a cast in his left eye. Oh, how he hated and loathed them all!

But he had little time to consider these matters. Directly he had taken his seat Heppenstall rose to open the case for the defence.

‘Members of the jury,’ he began, in his deep but pleasantly modulated voice, ‘as I am only going to call four witnesses, and none will occupy the time of the court for long, I am going to break away a little from precedent and call these witnesses before I put before you the case for the defence. But there is one thing which I wish to say now, and that is that I do not propose to call my client to give evidence.

‘The right of the accused to go into the box and testify on his own behalf has been recognized by the law for many years. This recognition was not granted before it was due. It was a terrible thing that the true explanation of apparently suspicious circumstances could not be given by the accused, who so often was the only person capable of giving it. That injustice has now fortunately been removed.

‘But, like every other good thing, this power of putting the accused into the box has its drawbacks. One very unexpected and very unfortunate result has followed. It has actually began to tell against the accused if he is not put into the box. That, members of the jury, is an extremely unfortunate state of affairs, because many persons, innocent and guilty alike, are not constitutionally able to stand a grilling cross-examination without showing signs of distress, and unhappily these signs are often – though wrongly – taken as indicating guilt. For this reason I at least have decided to make a stand against this practice which has grown up, and in no case will I put the accused I may be defending into the box unless I am satisfied that he could give material evidence which could be obtained in no other way. In the present instance we have, in my opinion, all the evidence from other sources which my client could give us, and I do not therefore intend to call him. I have made this somewhat tedious digression simply in order that you may not misunderstand my motive.

‘With this preface I shall call my witnesses. Mr Godfrey Anderson!’

Charles, who had never heard of Mr Godfrey Anderson, felt a sudden quickening of his interest as an alert young man entered the box and was sworn.

‘You are engaged in the Meteorological Office as a record clerk?’ asked Byng, when he had ascertained the witness’s name and qualifications.

‘I am.’

‘Have you there with you the records of the weather in London on the 23rd of August last?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you tell the jury what it was like between eleven and twelve on that morning?’

‘A deep depression centred…’

‘Never mind that, Mr Anderson. What was the weather like in London in everyday language that we can all understand?’

‘Well, the barometer stood at twenty-nine point…’

‘Even that is more technical than I want. Tell me, was it fine or wet at the time?’

‘It was not actually raining, but it was heavily overcast and precipitation was…’

‘It was heavily overcast. That’s what I want. Was it, in other words, a dark day or a bright day?’

‘It was a dark day.’

‘Quite! It was a dark day, heavily overcast with clouds.’ Byng sat down.

The prosecution satisfied themselves by extracting from the witness the admission that the darkness was the ordinary dullness of a day on which the sun was not shining and not something abnormal.

‘Arthur Higginbotham!’ called Heppenstall, and another man unknown to Charles entered the box. He was small and sharp-featured and had the eager, deprecating manner of a young fox-terrier.

He was, he explained, a photographer, and he had taken certain views of Mr Ebenezer Peabody’s shop. Yes, these – Exhibits 73, 74, 75, and 76 were handed up – were the photographs in question. The exhibits were passed to his lordship and the jury. Mr Higginbotham admitted that the pictures were poor – far below his usual standard – but he had found the shop very dark and had had to give an exceptionally long exposure to get any results at all. He had taken the pictures by daylight at about midday on a bright day, No, he had not used any artificial light.

Still another stranger to Charles was the third witness. Maurice Barlow said he was an architect. He had made a plan of Mr Peabody’s shop. (The plan Heppenstall had shown to Peabody was once again produced.) Yes, this was the plan, and to the best of his knowledge and belief it was correct. He had marked upon it certain positions, A and B, which had been pointed out to him by Mr Peabody. He had tried an experiment in the shop. He had placed Mr Peabody in position A, in which, as had been given in evidence, the purchaser had stood at the time of the purchase; and he had himself taken up position B, in which it was similarly stated Mr Peabody had stood. He had found that he could not see Mr Peabody’s features clearly owing to his having his back to the light.

He had also made a professional examination of the shop. It was dark – for two reasons. First, the windows were much too small for the area of the room. Here Barlow gave figures comparing the actual area of glass with that required by normal architectural practice. Secondly, such glass as there was, was much obstructed by the window display. He might point to photograph, Exhibit 75, in proof of his evidence. Again Exhibit 75 was examined by judge and jury.

For once Charles thought the conduct of the case by the prosecution was perfunctory. Mr Coppard cross-examined, but even Charles could see that he did not make much out of it. Indeed, after what seemed a mere formal effort, he sat down.

‘Arthur Newport!’

The fourth witness for the defence was known to Charles. He was a small, stooped old man, with a peering expression and a dry manner. He said he was a scientist, that was to say, a handwriting expert. He had certain qualifications and had held certain positions, all of which he detailed. Byng handed him a paper.

‘Have you seen that paper before, Mr Newport?’

‘I have.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is a sample of the accused’s handwriting. He wrote it in my presence.’

‘Hand up Exhibit 57.’

Mr Peabody’s poison register was passed to the witness.

‘Do you see the entry purporting to be signed by Francis Carswell and dated the 23rd of August?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you say whether or not it was written by the accused?’

The witness moved uneasily. ‘It is not possible to be absolutely sure, but to the best of my opinion and belief it was not.’

‘You think it was not written by the accused. Thank you.’ Byng sat down.

Lionel Coppard jumped up.

‘You say that it is not possible to be sure whether this entry was written by the accused or not?’

‘It’s not possible to be absolutely sure, but it is my opinion that he didn’t write it.’