The Palliser Novels (379 page)

“I didn’t think of Mr. Finn at the time,” said Lord Fawn in answer to the last question.

“So I understand. The man didn’t strike you as being tall.”

“I don’t think that he did.”

“But yet in the evidence you gave before the magistrate in Bow Street I think you expressed a very strong opinion that the man you saw running out of the mews was Mr. Finn?” Lord Fawn was again silent. “I am asking your lordship a question to which I must request an answer. Here is the
Times
report of the examination, with which you can refresh your memory, and you are of course aware that it was mainly on your evidence as here reported that my client stands there in jeopardy of his life.”

“I am not aware of anything of the kind,” said the witness.

“Very well. We will drop that then. But such was your evidence, whether important or not important. Of course your lordship can take what time you please for recollection.”

Lord Fawn tried very hard to recollect, but would not look at the newspaper which had been handed to him. “I cannot remember what words I used. It seems to me that I thought it must have been Mr. Finn because I had been told that Mr. Finn could have been there by running round.”

“Surely, my lord, that would not have sufficed to induce you to give such evidence as is there reported?”

“And the colour of the coat,” said Lord Fawn.

“In fact you went by the colour of the coat, and that only?”

“Then there had been the quarrel.”

“My lord, is not that begging the question? Mr. Bonteen quarrelled with Mr. Finn. Mr. Bonteen was murdered by a man, — as we all believe, — whom you saw at a certain spot. Therefore you identified the man whom you saw as Mr. Finn. Was that so?”

“I didn’t identify him.”

“At any rate you do not do so now? Putting aside the grey coat there is nothing to make you now think that that man and Mr. Finn were one and the same? Come, my lord, on behalf of that man’s life, which is in great jeopardy, — is in great jeopardy because of the evidence given by you before the magistrate, — do not be ashamed to speak the truth openly, though it be at variance with what you may have said before with ill-advised haste.”

“My lord, is it proper that I should be treated in this way?” said the witness, appealing to the Bench.

“Mr. Chaffanbrass,” said the judge, again looking at the barrister over his spectacles, “I think you are stretching the privilege of your position too far.”

“I shall have to stretch it further yet, my lord. His lordship in his evidence before the magistrate gave on his oath a decided opinion that the man he saw was Mr. Finn; — and on that evidence Mr. Finn was committed for murder. Let him say openly, now, to the jury, — when Mr. Finn is on his trial for his life before the Court, and for all his hopes in life before the country, — whether he thinks as then he thought, and on what grounds he thinks so.”

“I think so because of the quarrel, and because of the grey coat.”

“For no other reasons?”

“No; — for no other reasons.”

“Your only ground for suggesting identity is the grey coat?”

“And the quarrel,” said Lord Fawn.

“My lord, in giving evidence as to identity, I fear that you do not understand the meaning of the word.” Lord Fawn looked up at the judge, but the judge on this occasion said nothing. “At any rate we have it from you at present that there was nothing in the appearance of the man you saw like to that of Mr. Finn except the colour of the coat.”

“I don’t think there was,” said Lord Fawn, slowly.

Then there occurred a scene in the Court which no doubt was gratifying to the spectators, and may in part have repaid them for the weariness of the whole proceeding. Mr. Chaffanbrass, while Lord Fawn was still in the witness-box, requested permission for a certain man to stand forward, and put on the coat which was lying on the table before him, — this coat being in truth the identical garment which Mr. Meager had brought home with him on the morning of the murder. This man was Mr. Wickerby’s clerk, Mr. Scruby, and he put on the coat, — which seemed to fit him well. Mr. Chaffanbrass then asked permission to examine Mr. Scruby, explaining that much time might be saved, and declaring that he had but one question to ask him. After some difficulty this permission was given him, and Mr. Scruby was asked his height. Mr. Scruby was five feet eight inches, and had been accurately measured on the previous day with reference to the question. Then the examination of Lord Fawn was resumed, and Mr. Chaffanbrass referred to that very irregular interview to which he had so improperly enticed the witness in Mr. Wickerby’s chambers. For a long time Sir Gregory Grogram declared that he would not permit any allusion to what had taken place at a most improper conference, — a conference which he could not stigmatize in sufficiently strong language. But Mr. Chaffanbrass, smiling blandly, — smiling very blandly for him, — suggested that the impropriety of the conference, let it have been ever so abominable, did not prevent the fact of the conference, and that he was manifestly within his right in alluding to it. “Suppose, my lord, that Lord Fawn had confessed in Mr. Wickerby’s chambers that he had murdered Mr. Finn himself, and had since repented of that confession, would Mr. Camperdown and Mr. Wickerby, who were present, and would I, be now debarred from stating that confession in evidence, because, in deference to some fanciful rules of etiquette, Lord Fawn should not have been there?” Mr. Chaffanbrass at last prevailed, and the evidence was resumed.

“You saw Mr. Scruby wear that coat in Mr. Wickerby’s chambers.” Lord Fawn said that he could not identify the coat.

“We’ll take care to have it identified. We shall get a great deal out of that coat yet. You saw that man wear a coat like that.”

“Yes; I did.”

“And you see him now.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Does he remind you of the figure of the man you saw come out of the mews?” Lord Fawn paused. “We can’t make him move about here as we did in Mr. Wickerby’s room; but remembering that as you must do, does he look like the man?”

“I don’t remember what the man looked like.”

“Did you not tell us in Mr. Wickerby’s room that Mr. Scruby with the grey coat on was like the figure of the man?”

Questions of this nature were prolonged for near half an hour, during which Sir Gregory made more than one attempt to defend his witness from the weapons of their joint enemies; but Lord Fawn at last admitted that he had acknowledged the resemblance, and did, in some faint ambiguous fashion, acknowledge it in his present evidence.

“My lord,” said Mr. Chaffanbrass as he allowed Lord Fawn to go down, “you have no doubt taken a note of Mr. Scruby’s height.” Whereupon the judge nodded his head.

The case for the prosecution was completed on the Saturday evening, Mrs. Bunce having been examined as the last witness on that side. She was only called upon to say that her lodger had been in the habit of letting himself in and out of her house at all hours with a latch-key; — but she insisted on saying more, and told the judge and the jury and the barristers that if they thought that Mr. Finn had murdered anybody they didn’t know anything about the world in general. Whereupon Mr. Chaffanbrass said that he would like to ask her a question or two, and with consummate flattery extracted from her her opinion of her lodger. She had known him for years, and thought that, of all the gentlemen that ever were born, he was the least likely to do such a bloody-minded action. Mr. Chaffanbrass was, perhaps, right in thinking that her evidence might be as serviceable as that of the lords and countesses.

During the Sunday the trial was, as a matter of course, the talk of the town. Poor Lord Fawn shut himself up, and was seen by no one; — but his conduct and evidence were discussed everywhere. At the clubs it was thought that he had escaped as well as could be expected; but he himself felt that he had been disgraced for ever. There was a very common opinion that Mr. Chaffanbrass had admitted too much when he had declared that the man whom Lord Fawn had seen was doubtless the murderer. To the minds of men generally it seemed to be less evident that the man so seen should have done the deed, than that Phineas Finn should have been that man. Was it probable that there should be two men going about in grey coats, in exactly the same vicinity, and at exactly the same hour of the night? And then the evidence which Lord Fawn had given before the magistrates was to the world at large at any rate as convincing as that given in the Court. The jury would, of course, be instructed to regard only the latter; whereas the general public would naturally be guided by the two combined. At the club it was certainly believed that the case was going against the prisoner.

“You have read it all, of course,” said the Duchess of Omnium to her husband, as she sat with the
Observer
in her hand on that Sunday morning. The Sunday papers were full of the report, and were enjoying a very extended circulation.

“I wish you would not think so much about it,” said the Duke.

“That’s very easily said, but how is one to help thinking about it? Of course I am thinking about it. You know all about the coat. It belonged to the man where Mealyus was lodging.”

“I will not talk about the coat, Glencora. If Mr. Finn did commit the murder it is right that he should be convicted.”

“But if he didn’t?”

“It would be doubly right that he should be acquitted. But the jury will have means of arriving at a conclusion without prejudice, which you and I cannot have; and therefore we should be prepared to take their verdict as correct.”

“If they find him guilty, their verdict will be damnable and false,” said the Duchess. Whereupon the Duke turned away in anger, and resolved that he would say nothing more about the trial, — which resolution, however, he was compelled to break before the trial was over.

“What do you think about it, Mr. Erle?” asked the other Duke.

“I don’t know what to think; — I only hope.”

“That he may be acquitted?”

“Of course.”

“Whether guilty or innocent?”

“Well; — yes. But if he is acquitted I shall believe him to have been innocent. Your Grace thinks — ?”

“I am as unwilling to think as you are, Mr. Erle.” It was thus that people spoke of it. With the exception of some very few, all those who had known Phineas were anxious for an acquittal, though they could not bring themselves to believe that an innocent man had been put in peril of his life.

On the Monday morning the trial was recommenced, and the whole day was taken up by the address which Mr. Chaffanbrass made to the jury. He began by telling them the history of the coat which lay before them, promising to prove by evidence all the details which he stated. It was not his intention, he said, to accuse any one of the murder. It was his business to defend the prisoner, not to accuse others. But, as he should prove to them, two persons had been arrested as soon as the murder had been discovered, — two persons totally unknown to each other, and who were never for a moment supposed to have acted together, — and the suspicion of the police had in the first instance pointed, not to his client, but to the other man. That other man had also quarrelled with Mr. Bonteen, and that other man was now in custody on a charge of bigamy chiefly through the instrumentality of Mr. Bonteen, who had been the friend of the victim of the supposed bigamist. With the accusation of bigamy they would have nothing to do, but he must ask them to take cognisance of that quarrel as well as of the quarrel at the club. He then named that formerly popular preacher, the Rev. Mr. Emilius, and explained that he would prove that this man, who had incurred the suspicion of the police in the first instance, had during the night of the murder been so circumstanced as to have been able to use the coat produced. He would prove also that Mr. Emilius was of precisely the same height as the man whom they had seen wearing the coat. God forbid that he should bring an accusation of murder against a man on such slight testimony. But if the evidence, as grounded on the coat, was slight against Emilius, how could it prevail at all against his client? The two coats were as different as chalk from cheese, the one being what would be called a gentleman’s fashionable walking coat, and the other the wrap-rascal of such a fellow as was Mr. Meager. And yet Lord Fawn, who attempted to identify the prisoner only by his coat, could give them no opinion as to which was the coat he had seen! But Lord Fawn, who had found himself to be debarred by his conscience from repeating the opinion he had given before the magistrate as to the identity of Phineas Finn with the man he had seen, did tell them that the figure of that man was similar to the figure of him who had worn the coat on Saturday in presence of them all. This man in the street had therefore been like Mr. Emilius, and could not in the least have resembled the prisoner. Mr. Chaffanbrass would not tell the jury that this point bore strongly against Mr. Emilius, but he took upon himself to assert that it was quite sufficient to snap asunder the thin thread of circumstantial evidence by which his client was connected with the murder. A great deal more was said about Lord Fawn, which was not complimentary to that nobleman. “His lordship is an honest, slow man, who has doubtless meant to tell you the truth, but who does not understand the meaning of what he himself says. When he swore before the magistrate that he thought he could identify my client with the man in the street, he really meant that he thought that there must be identity, because he believed from other reasons that Mr. Finn was the man in the street. Mr. Bonteen had been murdered; — according to Lord Fawn’s thinking had probably been murdered by Mr. Finn. And it was also probable to him that Mr. Bonteen had been murdered by the man in the street. He came thus to the conclusion that the prisoner was the man in the street. In fact, as far as the process of identifying is concerned, his lordship’s evidence is altogether in favour of the prisoner. The figure seen by him we must suppose was the figure of a short man, and not of one tall and commanding in his presence, as is that of the prisoner.”