by Howard Engel
In the courtroom, I heard how the accused had been recognized by the three witnesses at the scene and how he had desperately tried to pawn the stolen diamond brooch. He was identified by other witnesses as the man seen loitering in the street on several occasions prior to the crime. It was pointed out that, apart from the highly suspect testimony of a mistress and a servant, the accused could not account for his time for some hours before and after the fatal assault upon Mlle Clery and Gordon Eward. In cross-examining Lambert’s servant, the Lord Advocate drew from her the fact that Lambert’s mistress sometimes entertained visitors when Lambert was from home. He left the jury with the impression that Lambert was living off the avails of prostitution and otherwise maintaining an existence that was well beyond his means, but also beyond the moral pale of every Scot on the jury.
Sir George did not question witnesses, he assailed them, he flailed them. And as they sputtered in incoherence on the stand, Currie rolled his eyes at the jury, suggesting that the corruption of the witness was so inbred as to render him quite helpless before an honest enquiry into plain facts. “I can, members of the jury, draw seven—yes, seven!—priceless inferences from that last admission. I hope that you will do the same.” Or again, he tried to suggest, in his examination of the maid, Hélène André, that the murders were deliberately timed to coincide with her nightly search for the evening paper. To him, this “proved” premeditation. It meant nothing to Sir George that the murderer would have had a better opportunity for his crime if he had committed it on one of the maid’s weekly two half-days off. The defence witnesses were savagely bruised by the Lord Advocate. On descending the stand, they fled the courtroom as though being followed by a swarm of revengeful furies.
But in his evidence and cross-examination, the Lord Advocate was merely toying with the witnesses. When it came time for his final address to the jury, he brought out his heavy artillery. He rose to speak after a morning recess and spoke continuously and extemporaneously for two hours. He began in a low voice, resting his left hand on a small pile of books on the table, his right holding a sheaf of paper. “May it please your lordship—gentlemen of the jury, on the evening of the 21st July last, two young people, one a talented and beautiful artist, the other a promising civil servant, both, as far as we know, without a single enemy in the world, were found murdered in the upper rooms of the female victim’s dwelling in Coates Crescent of this city. The two were discovered under circumstances of such savage ferocity as to beggar all description…”
While he was speaking, no one who heard him was aware of anything else going on in the world outside. Had the Parliament House caught fire, we would not have moved from our seats. He held us like an Irving or a Mesmer. We could not choose but hear. He painted a picture of the accused as a low beast, wallowing in the worst sort of sin and debauchery, coming from his lair to pluck out the life of an artist whose talent lay far beyond his stunted imaginative grasp. He depicted him loitering, planning and executing the crime. He told how he took the knife he had brought with him and cut the fairest throat in all the land; how he had stilled the greatest voice of the century; how he had blackened the name of this city in all the art capitals of the world with his deed.
“... Up to yesterday afternoon,” the Lord Advocate continued, “I should have thought that there was one serious difficulty which confronted you, gentlemen of the jury—the difficulty of conceiving that there was in existence a human being capable of doing such a dastardly deed. Gentlemen, that difficulty, I think, was removed when we heard from the lips of one who seemingly knew the prisoner better than anyone else, that he had followed a life which descends to the very lowest depths of human degradation, for by the universal judgment of mankind, the man who lives upon the proceeds of prostitution has sunk to the lowest depths, and all moral sense has been destroyed and has ceased to exist. That difficulty removed, I say without hesitation that the man in the dock is capable of having committed this dastardly outrage...”
His soaring voice went on and on. He reviewed the evidence, including the brutal, totally unnecessary murder of Eward, the unexpected second person in the flat when the maid left to perform an errand. It was magnificent. When he sat down at last, the instinct to applaud was all but overpowering. I felt as though I had heard one of the great actors or preachers of our age. No one spoke for some time.
Counsel for the accused made a short logical speech which left no impression at all on the members of the jury. Even the judge in his summation and charge to the jury carried echoes of the Lord Advocate’s mastery. The day concluded with the jury retiring to settle on its verdict.
I recited my account of all this to Bell when he welcomed me for the first time into the sitting-room on the first floor of his house in Lothian Street. It was a rumpled set of bachelor rooms, with books and papers left on every available horizontal surface. The walls were lined with medical books, the table held a microscope and other scientific apparatus, half-hidden under a discarded dressing-gown. It was a comfortable, leathern lair showing no hand of the fair sex in any of its appointments. He offered me a seat near a window looking out on the museum, where, as I have said, I related what I had seen and heard without knowingly gilding the facts.
“And he did all this without a word on paper,” I said, trying, in my enthusiasm, to re-create the feeling in the courtroom, “without notes of any kind!”
“That,” said Bell in a dry whisper, “may account for the manifold inaccuracies.”
“What?”
“In what you have reported to me, I have counted no fewer than five-and-twenty erroneous statements of fact and false inferences from the evidence. I am, of course, relying on the summaries of the evidence you have provided. For instance, in his opening statement, the Lord Advocate said: ‘We shall see in the evidence that we shall present to you how it was that the prisoner came to know that Mlle Clery was possessed of these jewels.’”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well, you were in court every day of the trial. Did you at any time hear him elucidate on that? He promised to show the jury a connection between the accused and the singer’s jewels. Did he deliver on that promise? Unless you forgot to tell me, he did not. What is worse, the learned judge, no Daniel evidently, failed in his summation to comment on the Lord Advocate’s delinquency.”
“What is to be done?”
“At the moment? Nothing. If the jury has its wits about it and uses its eyes as well as its ears, it will find for the accused. The description of the wanted man bears no resemblance to the man in the dock. But, as I fear may happen, their ears still ringing with the sound and fury of Sir George Currie, the Lord Advocate will triumph and our man will be convicted. Whatever happens, there is nothing for us to do but wait. In the meantime—”
“Yes, Dr Bell?”
“May I offer you a glass of sherry?”
SIX
The jury considered its verdict for one hour and ten minutes in the morning session, having been closely cloistered overnight. When the jury had entered for the last time, walking to their places with their looks ahead of them and not out into the room, the judge returned to his bench, letting his eyes roam over the courtroom as though he were counting the house. The Clerk of the Court rose. “What is your verdict, gentlemen?”
“The jury, by a majority,” said the foreman, glancing at the scrap of paper in his hand, “find the prisoner guilty as libelled.”
It found the defendant guilty! The vote was: Guilty, 9; Not Proven, 5; Not Guilty, 1. The courtroom let out the breath it had been holding since the foreman of the jury got to his feet. The man in the dock jumped to his feet. “My lord, may I say a word? Will you allow me to speak?” All voices in the courtroom became mute; all eyes were on the man in the dock.
“Sit down just now,” the judge said, when he had found his voice. He nodded to the clerk of the court to continue, to try to rescue the rhythm of the proceedings.
“Then this is your verdict?” the clerk dem
anded. The foreman nodded his head and then affirmed that it was. With unseemly speed, the junior Crown advocate was on his feet:
“I move for sentence,” he said. It was received as though he had shouted an indecency at the bench. A moment later, the prisoner was passionately protesting his innocence, demanding justice and his rights under the law.
“My lord, I came back here on my own account… I came to defend my right. I know nothing of the affair! You are convicting an innocent man!” The blood fled from the face of the judge. He began to clean his spectacles absently with one of his white tabs.
“I think you ought to advise the prisoner,” he said in the direction of Mr Veitch’s table, “to reserve anything he has got to say for the Crown authorities.” Then, struggling with the two officers who had flanked him, the prisoner was removed from the courtroom down to the cells below. When he had been calmed to a degree, he reappeared in the dock, his knuckles quite white with tension. The judge donned the black cap and solemnly condemned the prisoner at the bar to death by hanging. After the fuss and fury of the trial, the sentence came as a relief to the chief law officers of the Crown, as a shock to many in the courtroom and as a matter of indifference to the judge, to whom it appeared the hearing of capital cases was no different from petty larceny. I tried to find among the expressions on the faces of the jurors which one of the fifteen had not been convinced of poor Lambert’s guilt.
I sadly brought this news back to Lothian Street, where Bell accepted it as well as he could.
“Now we must shift our stumps,” he said. “Three clear Sundays must pass before the execution,” he said. “If tradition is any help, our man will be executed on Thursday, the 23rd.”
“Yes,” I said. “That was part of the sentence. I should have told you.”
“My friend, since there is no regular appeal in Scottish cases, we haven’t a moment to lose. We will have to be clever, reading between the lines of the evidence that was presented.”
“Between the lines, I don’t understand.”
“The public record shows what was placed in evidence in the trial. We must assume that some evidence in the possession of the police was not made available to the prosecution and that all of what the prosecution knew was not disclosed to the accused’s counsel.”
“But that’s outrageous!”
“Nevertheless it is common practice in this country. It is well to cultivate a certain cynicism when dealing with the practical side of the law. The theory is all very well. Now, we have no legitimate way of gaining access to such evidence. So, we must tap the sources ourselves.”
“Good! Where do we begin?”
“Why, at the pawnshop, my dear fellow. At the pawnshop.”
Together we took a cab from the rank in front of the museum to the address I gave the driver, who urged his horse forward without a suspicion that a man’s life might hang in the balance of our findings at Aiken’s Pawnshop in Rose Street. As we drove, Bell mused to himself, sometimes gnawing at the leather of his glove. “We will never be able to see the precognitions taken by the police! Damnation!”
“Precognitions?”
“The statements the police took down in writing from the witnesses. It was from these that the prosecution built its case. It is a pity that I am not a consulting detective, Doyle. I should otherwise have friends in the police who might have allowed us access to the precognitions. But, our friend Graeme Lambert knew we were neophytes when he took us on. If only the consequences of failure were less severe for his brother. A broken neck is well beyond my healing arts.”
The cab rumbled over The Mound, crossing the railway tracks by the National Gallery. From there it was but a short distance to Rose Street, which was noted for its dram shops and public houses. The three tarnished brass balls of Aiken’s shop could be seen from afar. Bell paid the cab and we climbed down. A cold wind blew down the street, whipping up fallen leaves lying in the gutters. A bell sounded as I opened the door for my friend.
A middle-aged man wearing thick lenses greeted us with a frown as we approached the caged counter of his establishment. He moved an ormolu clock to the top of a display case.
“Gentlemen, in what way may I serve you?” he said in an oily voice that reminded me of an unsavoury character in Dickens.
“I am sorry to interrupt you at dinner, sir, and, moreover, get you up when you would much prefer to be lying down.”
“I beg your pardon? How did you—?”
“Not very difficult, Mr Aiken, if, indeed, you are he. You wear some of your dinner on your waistcoat and chin, and the smell of liniment about you is enough to bowl one over. I can also see that you are favouring your left foot. I will leave you a prescription that might ease the pain, sir.”
“But, sir, you did not come here to enquire after my health.” It was said as a statement of fact, but intended as a question. Bell smiled at his acuity.
“My friend and I are looking into the particulars of the Lambert case.”
“Ah! That poor fellow! I read about the trial in the paper. My neighbour next door has just looked in to say the young man is condemned. He has but three weeks to live and then—” Here, the pawnbroker made a demonstration with his hands and neck of the fate in store for our client on the 23rd. “I knew the young man well, you know. In this business, gentlemen, we meet many different kinds of people. Who would have thought—?” Again, he left the thought incomplete except for a pantomime gesture with his hands.
“Tell me about the brooch he placed in pawn with you,” demanded Bell, with authority enough to concentrate the pawnbroker’s ramblings.
“A fine piece,” he said. “A very pretty brooch. A work of art, I assure you.”
“When did you first see it?”
“Let me see, let me see.” He rubbed his grizzled chin with the back of his hand, removing traces of his meal incidentally. “I have the date here in my book.” He wet his finger with his tongue and began turning over the pages. “Let me see, let me see,” he repeated again and again. At last his finger stopped in its travels down the columns. “Aye, here it is.”
“Let me see it!” Bell almost barked the command.
The pawnbroker began to turn the ledger around, when a face came around the corner of the door leading to the back of the shop.
“What is it, Otto?” demanded a large auburn-haired woman.
The pawnbroker turned and with evident embarrassment limped across the floor to the woman. For a moment or two they whispered in a language unknown to me with evident signs of excitement in both of their voices. The foreigner distrusts all invasions. Every knock on the door is a threat. Together, they regarded Bell and me: representatives of that alien world that had dogged their nights and days. “Just one moment, gentlemen, my wife—” Here he indicated unnecessarily the woman frowning at his side. “But the police have instructed us to be cautious about enquiries of the kind that you are making. I am sorry, but I don’t think I can assist you further. If I could, believe me I should—” Again he broke off. No doubt he had noticed that Bell, totally ignoring both of them, had turned the ledger around and was studying it.
“Sir, if you please—”
“Mister, you have no right—” This from the pawnbroker’s buxom wife.
Bell paid them no notice whatever. He turned to me: “Doyle, this brooch was placed in pawn three weeks before the murders. It has been here ever since. Tell me,” here he looked at the man with the wet, shifty eyes, “tell me at once, what you know about this brooch!”
“I have been cautioned by the police, gentlemen.”
“You will be breaking granite in Peterhead with a pick, if you don’t tell me what you know!”
“The brooch, he said it was his mother’s. It was an heirloom. I could see he treasured it. I gave him what I could. Not what it is worth, to be sure, but, I am a businessman. I have to use my judgment in these matters. But, you are right, the date is marked on the ticket as well as here in the book.”
“The
n the police know—have known for more than two months—that this is not the brooch taken from the scene of the crime! The police have had that information in their hands from the very beginning.”
“I can’t believe it,” I muttered.
“If you would please keep our names out of this, gentlemen, it would be appreciated, I assure you.”
“The brooch was the only piece of evidence connecting Lambert to the crime. And now we see that that link in the chain has broken. Indeed, it never existed!”
“It was M’Leod, the cycle dealer, who started this,” I added, attempting to be helpful. “He said that Lambert was trying to sell the pawn-ticket for ready cash.”
“Aye, but the brooch had been in the shop long before he needed the money the sale of the ticket might have obtained.”
“True, sir. He made regular payments on the article until he fled the country,” said the pawnbroker. His wife nodded her concurrence.
“Where is the brooch now?” I ventured to ask.
“Oh, sir, the police took it along. ‘Evidence’ they said.”
“A diamond brooch is but a trifle here,” said Bell. “Come, Doyle, there’s more to be done and none of it here.” He turned to the front door, leaving it for me to nod our thanks and leavetaking to the pawnbroker and his wife. I followed Bell into the street as he hailed a cab near the corner of Castle Street. As I climbed up behind him, he sniffed the sharp air. “I begin to scent the fox, Doyle, and we haven’t a moment to lose!”
“Where are we going?” I asked, incredulous.
“To Waverley Station to catch the 12:15 train to Liverpool.”
SEVEN
In the train, Bell took me over my notes about Lambert’s flight from Edinburgh to America. We had the compartment to ourselves for most of the journey, allowing my friend, for so I now deemed my teacher and benefactor, to enjoy his pipe as the train made its way south. Another time I would have marked our progress with greater enjoyment. Apart from occasional glimpses of roofless Gothic arches against the sky, hilltop castles and the estuaries of salmon streams, all of which rescued me from my preoccupations, for the most part the scenery could have been painted on the wall of a cyclorama. I was not in the mood to have my spirits lifted by the works of nature or of man.
