The Dawn of Reckoning (26 page)

“I say,” added Sir John, eloquently, “that the prosecution has not
produced a single shred of evidence to justify a verdict of guilty. I am
amazed that the case has been brought so far. I would not muzzle a dog, much
less hang a man, on the statements that have been made by the witnesses for
the prosecution. Nobody saw the prisoner commit the crime; there is no likely
reason why he should have done so; and he has given an account of himself
which, though unsupported, has not been in the least disproved by all the
efforts of the prosecution, There can only be one verdict, gentlemen, and I
ask you to give that verdict, and to set free an innocent man who has done
great services in the past and is likely to honour his country, still further
in the future.”

Sir Theydon Lampard-Gorian looked grimmer than ever as he
began his final speech in his usual manner. “I shall disdain eloquence,” he
declared, “and appeal to facts and facts alone. I do not share the opinions
of learned counsel for the defence concerning the value of the evidence we
have brought forward. He says he is surprised that the case has been brought
so far. Well, I should be surprised if the case had been brought so far on
totally worthless evidence—I should have been more than surprised, I
should have been absolutely amazed if a farrago of nonsense had induced a
coroner’s jury, a bench of magistrates, and a grand jury, to put this man on
his trial for murder. No, gentlemen, the case of the prosecution is to be
argued, if you like, but not to be abused. It is merely stupid to say that
because the evidence is circumstantial it is therefore foolish.”

The prisoner, continued Sir Theydon, had got together a very ingenious
tale that was hardly strong enough to stand merely on his own word. Wasn’t it
a very curious thing that prisoner’s story was not only very extraordinary
and improbable, but that he could find nobody to substantiate it? He said he
lent Mr. Monsell his revolver to scare away the writers of threatening
letters. Well, he couldn’t find a single person who could give even the least
support to such a story. Nobody saw the revolver at the Hall; nobody saw even
the threatening letters. Why didn’t somebody who wrote the threatening
letters come forward? They would no doubt be pardoned, and would be giving
valuable help in the interests of justice.

As for the most important part of the evidence for the prosecution, not
the slightest attempt had been made to dislodge it. Prisoner had obviously
been conducting an intrigue with his friend’s wife, and although this was
certainly not a court of morals, it was at least to be hoped that it was a
court of common sense. Defending counsel had said there was no motive. “No
motive? Then Clytemnestra acted without motive, and so did Mary Queen of
Scots, and Bothwell, and Henry the Eighth, and Therêse Raquin, and hundreds
of celebrated people, real and imaginary, throughout the ages. No motive?
When two people conceive a guilty relationship and a third party stands in
the way of their complete freedom from restrictions and restraints, will any
reasonable person say that there is not ample motive for getting rid of that
third party?

“No, gentlemen,” went on Sir Theydon. “But I will tell you one or two
things for which there
are
no motives. Why should the prisoner go out
of that study by the window, unless he were in a hurry to get away and were
afraid of being seen? That is a point where I see no motive, except one which
the prisoner will not admit. The whole explanation given by the prisoner of
why he left his friend’s room by the window seems to me the most ridiculous I
ever heard. I do not even congratulate him on a clever invention. It is true
it cannot be disproved. Nor could it be disproved if I said to you that there
were exactly fifteen million hairs on my head.”

Sir Theydon went on to stress the importance of the letter from Mrs.
Monsell that was found in prisoner’s possession when arrested. “I ask you,
gentlemen, to take that letter, not as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, to be twisted
this way and that, but as an ordinary letter which probably means what you or
I would mean if we wrote the same thing in the same circumstances. Of course,
we cannot be absolutely certain what it means, but in the light of other
evidence, can any reasonable person have much doubt?

“As I said in my opening speech, this is no ordinary crime. But because
the crime is extraordinary, that does not mean that all the motives are
extraordinary, and that when you find a man stepping out of a window instead
of through a door you must believe the most extraordinary explanation and
reject the most ordinary one…

“As for the suggestion of suicide, is it likely that a man would commit
suicide a few minutes before he would learn whether his life’s ambition had
been realized or not? Is it likely that a suicide would take the trouble to
throw his revolver out of the window after shooting himself? Much has been
said about Mr. Monsell’s nervousness and highly-strung temperament. The fact
is, quite evidently, that’ Mr. Monsell was not too nervous to stand for
Parliament, to address meetings, and to stand up bravely against a man who
had been tampering with his wife!”

Sir Theydon finished his speech at ten minutes to four.

The judge then began his charge to the jury.

The jury, said his lordship, must try to divest themselves of all
impressions produced by recollections of prisoner’s past life. If prisoner
had been in the past convicted for criminal assault, that fact would very
rightly have been kept from the jury lest it might prejudice them in their
verdict. In prisoner’s case the exact opposite applied. Prisoner’s past had
been remarkable and distinguished, but they must try to forget that, just as
they would forget or ignore a felon’s previous convictions. The question was:
Had Aubrey Ward murdered Philip Monsell? If so, his distinguished past ought
not to save him from the punishment usually meted out to the murderer. It
would be a bad day for English justice if ever there came to be an unwritten
rule that a famous or distinguished man could break the law and be treated
leniently.

Then again they must not be led away into any misplaced leniency because
it was a
crime passionel
. In certain foreign countries, including
perhaps Hungary, where Mrs. Monsell came from, the crime of which prisoner
was charged would be regarded sympathetically because its motive was sexual
attachment. Happily, our English law had never made such distinctions. A
murder was a murder, and to kill a man to possess his wife was as heinous as
to kill him for any other reason.

He would like the jury to consider the following points: Both prisoner and
Mrs. Monsell had tried to conceal the guilty nature of their affection until
cross-examination had forced them to admit it. Prisoner had said that he had
never treated Mrs. Monsell other than honourably. Was it likely that this was
the truth when Mrs. Monsell had written him such letters as had been read,
and when she was preparing to follow him abroad? Prisoner’s account of
himself on the night of the tragedy was so remarkable that the slightest
impugnment of his veracity in any other matter would tend to make his
evidence of little value without the support of witnesses. Could it fairly be
denied that prisoner’s veracity
had
been impugned, when
cross-examination revealed a relationship existing between prisoner and Mrs.
Monsell which both had first of all denied?

It was true that circumstantial evidence must always be scrutinized
carefully. If the jury thought that there was any reasonable doubt they must
find the prisoner “not guilty.” But it would be absurd to feel a doubt merely
because there was no actual witness of the crime. Crimes were very rarely
witnessed. It was naturally in the prisoner’s interests that he should choose
a time when no one should see him.

He (his lordship) would ask the jury to pay a great deal of attention to
the letter written to the prisoner by Mrs. Monsell on the Saturday before the
crime. Was that letter the sort of thing that a friend would write to another
friend who had decided to join a polar expedition? The prosecution had put
forward an explanation of that letter which, he was bound to say, seemed to
him perfectly natural and logical. The defence explained a portion of it very
obscurely, and at least one part of it not at all. The part to which he
referred to was the sentence: “Is there no other way at all?” What could that
mean? The jury must think carefully, and give prisoner the benefit of any
reasonable doubt.

He would like to add a word or two about prisoner’s refusal to give
evidence concerning the matter of his quarrel with Mr. Monsell. That refusal
was bound, of course, as he had warned the prisoner, to create an unfortunate
impression. The jury must not, however, be affected by it. The probable
subject of the quarrel, was not difficult to guess, and prisoner had very
likely refused his evidence from a desire—to a certain extent a
praiseworthy desire—to spare Mrs. Monsell as much as possible. That, in
his Lordship’s opinion, was an unwise thing to attempt, but it was not one
that ought to count against him.

The jury must not concern themselves with anything except the guilt or
innocence of the prisoner himself Whether Mrs. Monsell was or was not an
accessory before or after the fact was a matter which was beyond their
sphere. Their sole purpose was to discover whether or not the prisoner was
himself guilty of murder…

His lordship then proceeded to review the evidence section by section,
concluding his summing-up at five o’clock. Bailiffs were then sworn to take
the jury in charge.

“The moment,” wrote Mr. Milner-White, “was electric. The
dying but still brilliant sunlight of a June day was streaming in through the
windows of the court, lighting up the myriads of dust fragments that hovered
in the turbid air, and kindling to silver the wigs of judge and counsel. It
was such an evening as mortal man should have spent in the cornfields or on
broad acres or upon the slopes of green and lovely hills. He should have been
watching the village lads play cricket, or trudging homeward after his honest
toil, or washing the smell of the earth off him in the tiny kitchen of a
labourer’s cottage…Instead of that, he was entering the court with bowed
head and pallid perspiring face, with weariness in his eyes and the message
of death on his lips…I have thus personified the jury as one man because to
me, half-drowsy with the heat and strain of the day, they seemed to re-enter
the jury-box like a single Nemesis. The sunlight fell upon them, dappling
their honest faces with gold; and the sum of them was Everyman, the
half-human, half-heroic figure of the old mortality play.

“Like the Cantoris and Decani of doom came the colloquy between the Clerk
of the Court and the Foreman of the Jury.

“‘Members of the Jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?’

“‘We have.’

“‘And do you find the prisoner Aubrey Ward guilty or not guilty of the
murder of Philip Monsell?’

“‘Guilty.’

“‘That is the verdict of you all?’

“‘Yes.’

“The blow had fallen, and we looked at the prisoner to see how he had
taken it. He was unmoved, passionless, statuesque. He reminded one of
Ossian’s heroes (I hope I may not be deemed too fanciful)—’ tall as a
rock of ice; his spar, the blasted fir; his shield, the rising moon; he sat
on the shore, like a cloud of mist on a hill.’ There was that in his attitude
and countenance that well explained why this trial for murder, out of all the
hundreds that take place annually, should have had the attention of the whole
world focussed upon it.

“The Clerk of the Court turned to him. ‘Aubrey Ward,’ he said, ‘you stand
convicted of murder. Have you anything to say why the court should not give
judgment of death according to law?’ The prisoner answered with simple
dignity: ‘I am not guilty. That is all I have to say.’

“His Lordship then asked if there were any questions of law to be
pronounced, and Sir John Hempidge replied in the negative…Pause…The black
cap…and then, more like a benediction than a sentence: I have now to pass
upon you the sentence of the court, which is that you be taken from hence to
a lawful prison, and from thence to a place of execution, and that you be
there hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be buried in
the precincts of the prison where you shall have last been confined after
your conviction. And may God have mercy on your soul…”

“The chaplain’s deep-toned ‘Amen’ rolled out sonorously, and at that
moment a shaft of sunlight pierced through the veil of dust and struck to
gold the prisoner’s light brown hair. A woman’s voice in the well of the
court broke the silence by a hoarse ‘It’s a shame—a shame—’ No
attempt was made to remove her; it was as if a spell had been cast over the
whole assembly.

“Then the final question and answer—‘Aubrey Ward, have you anything
to say in stay of execution?’—‘Nothing, except what I have already
said. I am not guilty.’

“When we groped our way into the street the heavens were aflame. A single
window in Chassingford Old Church blazed out like a crimson star, and those
of us who walked towards the town had our faces towards it as we
hastened…”

Miles away in Fleet Street the news was already known. The
sub-editors were frantically blue-pencilling, the great Goss machines were
pounding away, and in dark alleys newsboys waited like hounds on leash…

In the office of the
Sunday Wire
an editor was discussing with his
proprietor whether Mrs. Monsell would accept a thousand pounds for an
article.

“She’d probably jump at it,” remarked the proprietor. And he added,
thoughtfully: “By the way, there’s a fellow who’d write it for you rather
well. Chap named Milner-White, on the
Manchester Sentinel
. Bit
highbrow, perhaps, but the-goods all the same…Better get hold of
him…”