The Dawn of Reckoning

by James Hilton

  “Both.”

  “You see no inconsistency?”

  “No.”

  “Very well, we will leave it at that. No doubt the jury will form their own opinions as to your consistency or inconsistency. Now let us turn to the matter of the revolver. You say that Mr. Monsell borrowed it from you because he had been threatened?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wrote you a letter asking for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you got that letter to show the court?”

  “No. It is destroyed.”

  “Do you always destroy letters?”

  “Those that are unimportant, yes.”

  “Did anyone beside yourself see that letter?”

  “We have called several witnesses who have said that they had no knowledge of any threats uttered against Mr. Monsell, nor of any attempted burglaries. Can you give us any details about these threats or about the attempted burglaries?”

  “No.”

  “When you lent the revolver, didn’t you question Mr. Monsell about the threats?”

  “No.”

  “Weren’t you at all curious?”

  “Not very. Mr. Monsell was very nervous and highly-strung, and from the doctor’s point of view an imagined danger is just as serious as a real one. I should have lent my revolver just as willingly if I had been quite certain that the threats were mere hallucinations.”

  “Now I want to question you about your visit to the Hall on the night of the tragedy. Why did you leave your motor-cycle outside in the lane?”

  “The gates were locked and there was only a small wicket-gate to pass through.”

  “When you were admitted by Mr. Monsell’s butler you did not offer him your coat or hat. Why not?”

  “Chiefly because he is very deaf, and on previous occasions it has taken as much as ten minutes to shout him from his room afterwards. I preferred to save both myself and him a good deal of trouble.”

  “When you left the study you went out by the window?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your reason was that Mr. Monsell told you to go out that way because the butler had already locked up?”

  “That was what he told me, yes.”

  “Didn’t you think it rather a curious thing that on the night of a candidate’s election his front-door should be locked and barred before midnight? Didn’t you think it rather curious that a man should allow his butler to lock up the house while a guest was still inside?”

  “I have thought so since, but I did not think so at the time. After all, if an old friend asks you to go out by the window instead of by the door, your first instinct is to do so without suspecting his motives.”

  “So you suspect his motives now, do you?”

  “I did not say that. I admit, however, that I am puzzled as to why I was asked to go out by the window.”

  “I notice that you call Mr. Monsell an old friend at the time you bade him good-bye. You had got over your quarrel by that time?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Now tell me this. What was your quarrel about?”

  “I would rather not say.”

  “I put it to you that your quarrel was about your relations with deceased’s wife?”

  Prisoner did not answer.

  “I put it to you that Mr. Monsell taxed you with having had immoral relations with his wife?”

  “That is a damned lie!”

  “Do you mean that it is a lie to say that Mr. Monsell taxed you with it?”

  “I mean that it is a lie—an absolute lie—to say that I have ever treated Mrs. Monsell other than honourably.”

  “But all the same, it is not a lie to say that Mr. Monsell taxed you with such a thing, and that you were indignant then as you are now, and that in that way you began your quarrel?”

  Prisoner did not answer.

  “I will go further and suggest that it was in your anger that you stood up facing Mr. Monsell as the butler saw you when he entered?”

  Prisoner again made no answer.

  “You refuse to answer any questions on the subject?”

  “I would rather not.”

  “The court is not likely to draw favourable conclusions from your silence.”

  Here the judge interposed: “I think, Sir Theydon, it had better be put this way, that the prisoner is doing his case a good deal of harm by declining to answer questions which seem to me perfectly right and proper.”

  After further detailed cross-examination of the prisoner the court adjourned till the following day.

  VIII

  The most sensational feature of the next day’s proceedings, indeed perhaps of the entire trial, was the examination and cross-examination of Mrs. Monsell. Mr. Milner-White wrote of her: “She is a slim, frail woman, pale-cheeked and dark-eyed, possessed of some secret vitality which, even through her nervous glance and stumbling answers, seemed to communicate itself to all who saw and heard her. Yet for all this vitality, she is spirituelle, a wraith of a woman, with all the marks of nerve-torture upon her…People who knew her a year ago tell me that they can hardly think she is the same woman. She looked a girl then; now she is ageless, with the agelessness born of suffering…It was easy to see that her public appearance and examination was forcing a great strain upon her; once or twice she lost control of her voice and became inaudible…But it was when Sir Theydon began his cross-examination that the really terrible phase was entered. He gave her no quarter. There was something unholy, almost obscene, in the contest—like that between a python and a gazelle. To watch it was to see a creature torn and twisted upon the rack. The result was nausea, and when, after two hours of the agony, the victim fainted and had to be carried out of the witness-box, a man turned to me and said: ‘That was the most dreadful thing I ever saw…’ Luckily the court adjourned for the lunch interval. Even the June sunlight blazing on the pavements outside the court seemed first of all a mockery.”

  Counsel for the defence began by taking Mrs. Monsell rapidly over the ground of the trial. He induced her to describe the finding of the body, and then questioned her about her late husband’s health, private circumstances, etc. She replied carefully and without hesitation.

  Her manner changed, however, as soon as Sir Theydon rose. “His first question, like a champion boxer’s first blow, sent her staggering to the ropes.”

  “What,” began Sir Theydon, “were your relations with the prisoner?”

  Witness replied very softly and nervously: “We were friends.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you quite sure that was all?”

  “Yes.”

  Sir Theydon then began to read from a sheet of foolscap paper. It was a copy of a letter written, apparently, from Mrs. Monsell to the prisoner, but never delivered because Mr. Monsell intercepted it.

  At the conclusion he asked: “Would you regard that letter as the letter of a friend to a friend?”

  Witness’s almost inaudible reply was: “I wanted him to help me.”

  Sir Theydon then read out other letters, asking at the end of each one the same question. There were five letters altogether and during the reading of them the witness gradually lost her calmness. At the finish she exclaimed shrilly: “I was hall-mad with worry when I wrote those letters! It is not fair to read them and try to prove things from them!”

  “Never mind what is fair and what is not fair, Mrs. Monsell. I want you to tell me whether you think that your husband, reading those letters, was justified in suspecting you of infidelity with the prisoner?”

  “He may have been. I ought not to have written them.”

  “Were you happy with your husband?”

  “I was—sometimes.”

  “But not always?”

  “No, not always.”

  “I put it to you that for some time before the tragedy you were anything but happy with him—in fact, that you had as little to do with him as possible?”

  “I worked with him a good deal
during the election.”

  “Ah, yes, I am coming to that. As a matter of fact, it is not quite correct to say that you worked for him a good deal during the whole of the election campaign.”

  His lordship here remarked: “I think Mrs. Monsell did not say that, Sir Theydon.”

  Sir Theydon: “I thank your Lordship for correcting me. Now, Mrs. Monsell, it is a fact, I believe, that you did no work in your husband’s election campaign until a few days before the poll?”

  “Yes.”

  “‘Why was this?”

  “I made up my mind that I would do all I could to help him.”

  “You made up your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “You visited the prisoner at Bethnal Green on the 22nd?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suggest to you that at that meeting he gave you particular instructions that you were to help your husband all you could?”

  “I admit that he advised me to. After all, why shouldn’t he?”

  “I think the question is rather: ‘Why should he?’ I suggest to you that the prisoner wished you to help your husband in order to further his own particular plan.”

  “I don’t think he did at all.”

  “Very well…Now let us turn to another side of the question. What were you intending to do on the night of the election?”

  “I was going home to tell my husband that he had won.”

  “And after that?”

  Witness was silent.

  “I put it to you that you had your luggage all packed and were going to follow the prisoner by a later boat and meet him in Norway?”

  Here Mrs. Monsell covered her face with her hands. After a very long silence, she said, almost inaudibly: “That is so. But he did not know anything about it. I swear he did not know anything about it!”

  “Whether he did or not, that was what you intended to do. Do you think that is the sort of thing that could happen between two people who were merely friends?”

  “I was driven to it.”

  “Ah I Now what do you mean by that?”

  “I was unhappy.”

  “Had you no other friends besides the prisoner?”

  “Not so much a friend.”

  “A curious phrase, that. ‘Not so much a friend!’ You are a Hungarian, I believe?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you lived in England?”

  “Since I was fifteen.”

  “So that you know the people fairly well?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you know that English custom is against a wife having as her greatest friend a man other than her husband?”

  Witness did not answer.

  “I put it to you that your ‘great friend’ could have been described far more accurately as your lover?”

  Again witness was silent.

  “To put the matter quite plainly, Mrs. Monsell, I suggest that the prisoner murdered your husband, and that you were and are more or less in the secret.”

  The witness here startled the court by a shrill protest. “That is not true,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. “I swear before God that is not true!”

  “You say that your husband’s death and manner of death was a great surprise to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had had no conversation with the prisoner on the question of getting rid of your husband?”

  “Most certainly we had neither of us ever dreamed of it.”

  “You had better answer for yourself only. You say you hadn’t the slightest idea that the prisoner was contemplating such a crime?”

  “I hadn’t, because he never contemplated it!”

  “Very well. Now I will read to you a letter which was found in the prisoner’s possession when he was arrested. It is signed ‘Stella’ and was written apparently on the Saturday preceding the crime. It runs as follows:

  My Dear, Dear Man,— (the second ‘dear’ is underlined) Your letter has made me the most miserable woman on earth. I only read it once hastily, because I heard Philip’s footsteps outside the room, and I got in such a panic that I threw the whole letter into the fire. Oh, why, why (the second ‘why’ underlined) are you going to do this dreadful thing? Is there no other way at all? I feel blind, deaf, and dumb with misery, now that I know what you are going to do, Oh, my man, think of the danger I It frightens me—I’m too absolutely scared to write any more. If you do come here, for God’s sake don’t have anything to do with me, for at the first sight of you I should go raving mad and give the whole game away. I shall help Philip till the polling is over, but after that—God help me, and you too I I feel disaster all about you, but then, you won’t take heed of my warning. Oh, if I had known you when I was a girl, all these terrible things would never have happened. Good-bye, dearest—goodbye.—Your own always, whatever you do—

  “Stella.”

  During the reading of this, the witness sobbed convulsively.

  “Now,” said Sir Theydon, “do you admit writing that letter?”

  After a long pause Mrs. Monsell answered: “Yes, I wrote it.”

  “Now be very careful how you reply to the questions I am going to ask you. What had the prisoner written in the letter you were so quick to destroy?”

  “He had said he would go on another expedition to the South Pole.”

  “Then, if that was all that was in the letter, why were you so anxious to conceal it from your husband?”

  Witness did not reply.

  “What did you mean by writing to the prisoner: ‘Why are you going to do this dreadful tiling?’ What was this dreadful thing?”

  “His going on the expedition was dreadful to me.”

  “Well, then, if that is so, what did you mean by telling him not to have anything to do with you if he visited Chassingford, lest you should give the whole game away? Come, come, Mrs. Monsell, what was this game that you were afraid to give away? ‘Going to the South Pole’ will not quite do for an answer, will it?”

  Witness did not reply.

  “You wrote to the prisoner: ‘Is there no other way at all?’ What did that mean?”

  Witness was still silent.

  “I suggest to you that the question you asked the prisoner had nothing at all to do with the South Pole. I suggest that it meant: Is there no other way of continuing our guilty relationship than by murdering my husband!”

  Sir Theydon paused a long while for an answer, and when none was forthcoming, continued: “Will you, in the face of the letter I have just read, persist in your assertion that your relations with the prisoner were no more than friendly?”

  After a tense silence witness slowly shook her head. Then, in hardly more than a whisper, she said: “It is true. I love him.”

  “Then the statements you made a little while ago were untrue?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Deliberately untrue?”

  Mrs. Monsell seemed here to summon up the last fragments of control she possessed. She lifted her face for a moment and looked at Sir Theydon.

  “You have tried to trap me,” she said quietly, “and you have succeeded.”

  Sir Theydon retorted sharply. “You have no right to say that. My aim is not to trap you, but to get the truth out of you. You have deliberately sought to mislead the court as to your relations with this man. I hope his lordship will take note—”

  “You may rest assured, Sir Theydon,” interposed the judge, “that I am perfectly aware of the duties appertaining to my office.”

  Sir Theydon bowed, and, with a curt inclination of the head towards the witness-box, added: “That is all I have to ask, my lord.”

  “The battle was over,” wrote Mr. Milner-White, “and with the cessation of the cannonade the pent-up emotions swelled over and wrought chaos. Mrs. Monsell gave a low cry and fell back into the arms of a police-constable…Everybody in the well of the court craned forward to look; the judge made some remark, obviously of a sympathetic kind, to one of the ushers; and Sir Theydon
glowered upon the scene and carefully moistened his lips with a tumbler of water. Perhaps the most terrible thing of all was the prisoner’s face. Outwardly it was unmoved, but there was a hint of fearful struggle in the tightly closed lips and sunken eyes.”

  IX

  All else after that was anti-climax, even the final speeches and the summing-up. The next day was occupied by more examinations and cross-examinations of witnesses for the defence, and by certain re-examinations. The court was then adjourned till the following Monday.

  On that day, exactly a week after the opening of the trial, Sir John Hempidge began his closing speech for the defence. He wished the jury to regard the whole case logically. It was obviously one of those cases where the really important evidence was circumstantial. Mr. Monsell had been shot; nobody had seen him being shot; therefore logic propounded three solutions—suicide, accident, or murder. It was not their business to suggest an alternative explanation of the tragedy; but it was still less their business to send a man to the gallows because his guilt fitted in with certain cunningly constructed theories of people whose business it was to construct theories. In short, if they had the least doubt about the prisoner’s guilt it was their duty to find the prisoner “not guilty.”

  Sir John stressed the fact that though prisoner had made a good many statements that he had unfortunately been unable to prove, the prosecution had been equally unable to disprove them. They could only say that they were improbable and extraordinary. Well, remarked Sir John, there were improbable and extraordinary things in everybody’s life, and, to turn the thing into a sort of paradox, it would be most improbable and extraordinary of all if there weren’t. The prosecution, for example, had made much of the fact that the prisoner motorcycled to Hull when he might have travelled by train. Well, why shouldn’t he? Prisoner was a man who liked to do unusual and exciting things; he loved adventure, and because in these pallid days so few of us could sympathize with such a love, the prosecution were trying to make out that it could not be sincere. “Granted,” said Sir John, “that neither you nor I would greatly enjoy a two-hundred mile night-ride on a motor-cycle in winter-time; what reason have we to doubt the prisoner’s statement that he did it because he enjoyed it?” After all, perhaps there were other things in the prisoner’s life that might seem to the average citizen both improbable and extraordinary. That same species of madness that drove the prisoner on his motorcycling escapade, drove him also almost to the South Pole. “It is a madness,” added Sir John, “that England as a nation dare not lose.”