by G. Roy McRae
For the first time Eleanor roused herself to the proceedings. The statue throbbed into life, drew herself up proudly; and with a haughty poise of her head, her grand eloquent brown eyes looked up at the witness, and bore the challenge.
For fully a moment eye met eye, soul looked into soul, with only a few feet of space dividing prisoner from witness. And it was Vera’s eyes that dropped first, her face that flamed scarlet and then withered to an ashen pallor. She fidgeted on her feet.
But as she told her story her voice warmed and became scornful; the tiny licking flame of malice crept again into her eyes as she repeatedly glanced across at her former mistress.
‘They was always quarrelling,’ she told a rapt court. ‘Night after night I’d hear high words between them.’
Counsel for the prosecution rose. ‘And what was the attitude of the accused during these nightly quarrels? You say that the professor appeared to have much to grumble at. He accused her of having no knowledge of household economy, told her that she was a worthless wife. Did not the accused make some reply to these charges?’
‘Oh, she never said anything,’ Vera exclaimed contemptuously. ‘She just looked at him with those eyes of hers. I think that made it worse. Dumb insolence, he used to call it.’
‘Indeed,’ counsel said dryly. ‘Did she never make any sound?’
‘Sometimes she used to scream,’ Vera supplied dramatically.
David Greatorex rose at once. ‘I am glad the witness has said that,’ he put in, with the scornful smile quirking at his lips. ‘It is a point that I wish to emphasise. I shall show that the deceased used actual physical cruelty towards his wife, and that she bore, all this for two years with wonderful patience and endurance.’
Vera continued her story of what had happened that night. With considerable dramatic force she told now the smashing of the vase had awakened her from sleep; how the cries and groans of the dying man had brought her hastening to the study, to find her mistress in dressing-gown and slippers, standing by the table that bore the decanters, and staring with affrighted eyes at her husband.
Then came the damning conclusion, the story of how Eleanor had dropped the decanter, smashing it on the bare boards round the fringe of the carpet.
It was obvious that her dramatically told story could not fail to have its profound effect upon the jury. Vera preened herself in conscious triumph. She was in the limelight once more—the limelight that she loved. The hushed and strained attention of the court had been given to her in full. But now David Greatorex was rising to cross-examine her.
‘You say that you were awakened by a thud—a crash as of something breaking?’
‘Yes.’
‘But only half an hour before you had admitted Mr Derek Capel as a visitor to the Lodge. Did you hear him go?’
Vera, rather hesitatantly: ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Oh, but then, according to witnesses’ accounts, only ten minutes elapsed after the departure of Mr Capel before the crash was heard in the study. Do you say that time was longer, or do you still say that you went to sleep and were awakened by the crash?’
‘I went to sleep,’ Vera persisted sullenly.
‘And then you heard a crash and groans. And you came hastily into the study. You were the second to arrive, and you found Mrs Appleby clinging to the curtains and staring at her husband?’
‘Yes,’ said Vera in a low voice now. She sensed a trap.
‘Other maidservants arrived after you. They also were in dressing-gowns and night attire. Am I correct in saying, however, that you were fully dressed, even to your maid’s cap and apron?’
The woman bit her lips. She had been easily lured into it. The judge was looking up and across at her, as if waiting critically for her answer to this question. And Vera, the house parlourmaid, sought desperately for a shot in her locker with which to riposte to this dangerous cross-examiner.
‘I went to sleep on the bed in my clothes,’ she flamed at him. ‘I had a feeling that something was going to happen that night.’
‘Oh, indeed?’—gravely. ‘We will leave that point for a moment, though it is of great interest. Now, since you were in your clothes, you could have got down to the study as quickly as anyone else. Yet not quickly enough to see the vase break, I presume?’
His raised eyebrows as he asked this question stung her. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked passionately. ‘Do you suggest that I was there? That I saw anything that happened beforehand?’
David Greatorex, K.C.: ‘Rather the reverse. I suggest that you could not have known what had crashed in pieces and aroused you. I suggest that it might have been the decanter itself falling from Professor Appleby’s hands as he collapsed in an apoplectic fit.’
‘Rubbish,’ Vera sneered, looking over at the jury. ‘I saw her with the decanter in her hands, and I saw her break it.’
‘The inference you wish to convey to his Lordship and the jury,’ said David Greatorex smoothly, ‘is that Mrs Appleby had guilty knowledge of the contents of the port decanter, and that she broke it, wishing to destroy what might prove to be strong evidence for the prosecution?’
‘Yes,’ Vera said doggedly, and set her bag on the edge of the witness-box with a little toss of her head.
‘Then, can you suggest why the accused should wait until you and others had arrived upon the scene before doing so?’ asked the great K.C. with a deprecating smile. ‘If Mrs Appleby smashed the decanter of deliberate intent—and it is strongly denied that she did so—she would surely not wait to do it before two maids.’
There was a titter in the court at this. Vera, with eyes stabbing spite, flung up her head.
‘She didn’t think of it before,’ she averred dogmatically.
‘Unlike you she did not appear to think of everything,’ counsel for the defence said gently. ‘You even thought there might possibly be a tragedy that night, so you went to bed in your clothes. It suggests uncanny foresight to me. Let us examine this remarkable omniscience of yours more closely. You appeared to know everything that went on between your master and your mistress.’
‘It is a wicked innuendo,’ the maid said hotly. ‘It is not true.’
Opposing counsel had primed her to make this reply to any charge of eavesdropping or spying. But David Greatorex only shook his head slightly, as a duck might shake off water. ‘You were interested,’ he insisted. ‘Come now, admit that you were intensely interested in everything that went on between them.’
‘I deny it,’ the maid answered loudly. ‘It is a lie.’
‘You have told the court that they slept in separate bedrooms, that they never cohabited as far as you knew. You have shown us that Professor Appleby exercised a subtle and malignant cruelty towards his wife. Yet you deny all interest in these proceedings. Has Mrs Appleby ever been unkind to you?’
‘No.’
‘But you will not deny that you were and have been antagonistic towards her?’
The woman’s voice throbbed out passionately: ‘I can’t help what I say. I’m here on oath to speak the truth. I’m only one of those that’s brought in to give evidence and help justice to be done.’
‘A very good answer too,’ said the noted K.C. dryly. ‘Let us have some more of the truth then. Can you explain your feeling that something was going to happen on the night of the twenty-sixth?’
‘I just had the feeling,’ she answered. ‘It was intuition. I was all keyed up with a sort of feverish excitement.’
‘Indeed! Nothing else conduced towards that feeling? You cannot tell us whether you had any little disturbing adventure of your own during the evening?’
His keen eyes seemed to pierce her, and she paled with agitation all at once.
‘What do you mean?’ she almost gasped.
‘I want the truth about your interest in the Applebys,’ he rapped out sternly. ‘You say you had no peculiar interest in them. You have no antagonism towards the accused, but wish merely to see justice done. Do you still say that, when I put it t
o you that for half an hour on the night of the twenty-sixth—and only two hours preceding the tragedy—you were alone with Professor Appleby in his study?’
She reeled backwards, as if struck a sudden violent blow, and in such deadly manner had counsel delivered it that it was obvious the witness was badly ‘floored.’
All the court saw her demeanour, and a buzz of horrified amaze ran through its ranks. This woman had been alone with the professor on the night of his death. This was a fact of the most vital significance that she had not divulged, otherwise it would have been in the depositions. The thought inevitably occurred to every man in the jury box that if the professor had been poisoned here was one person at least who had had an opportunity to do it. And she might also have had a motive. Vera, the house parlourmaid, was what the newspapers delight to call in such cases ‘a mystery woman.’
David Greatorex rolled his brief in his white tapering hands. His eyes were sparkling with a cold, merciless light, and his voice was keen, incisive, sounding audibly in every part of the court
‘Come, now, will you please tell the court whether what I suggested is true?’
The witness made a desperate effort to rally. ‘It is not true!’ she said hoarsely. ‘Not true.’
There was a significant pause. Counsel for the defence turned with that ruthless, derisive smile of his to the witness-box. Vera was staring in front of her as if she saw her own grave being dug.
‘Not true?’ repeated David Greatorex in gentle surprise as he turned again to her. ‘Will you persist in that when I tell you that the accused will go into the witness-box, and part of her statement will be that she saw you alone with Professor Appleby in the study that night?’
‘She lies!’ Vera cried wildly and desperately. ‘She’s lying for some purpose of her own. It’s all a tissue of lies.’
‘I put it to the court that the witness who has just said that lies herself most foully,’ cried counsel for the defence very sternly. ‘I propose to examine her more particularly on this matter.
You had no association with Professor Appleby beyond that of master and servant?’
‘No! No! Never!’ Vera cried, entirely unnerved now.
‘I suggest that you were his mistress,’ counsel declared with sudden deadly intentness; ‘that he had grown tired of you, and cast you off, and that for half an hour or more on the night of the twenty-sixth you were arguing with the deceased, pleading with him to do something for you.’
‘It is all untrue,’ she said hoarsely, like one dazed and sick. ‘I never—he didn’t—’ She broke off to point a finger dramatically and passionately at Eleanor in the dock: ‘This is what she has said about me!’ she declared violently. ‘It is a pack of dreadful lies!’
Eleanor, all in black, and almost calm, looked straight at the virago. And never had the accused woman looked quite so beautiful as in that moment. Her brown eyes, so large and compassionate, were fixed earnestly on the other, and in them glistened the tear-drops of utter pity. Her lips were tremulous. She was shedding real tears for this woman who had fallen, and whose soul was now being laid bare in the witness-box.
So the two women looked at one another, and then the maid herself at last burst into stormy tears. But if anything, she hated Eleanor Appleby more than ever at that moment.
David Greatorex, allowing a moment or two for this tableau to register itself on the minds of the court, resumed his attack. He was the consummate master of cross-examination. Every question probed like a keen and merciless scalpel now. She was a trapped creature in the box, and the whole court knew it.
‘Come, let us have the truth of which you make such a proud boast. You admit you were his mistress?’
She roused, to turn on him like a tigress. ‘It’s a cruel and wicked lie!’ she declared fiercely. ‘Only she says that. She says she saw me in the study’—scornfully. ‘No one else. No one can prove it.’
‘Oh, indeed?’ Counsel for the defence took up a piece of paper and unfolded it. ‘I have here,’ he said very slowly, ‘a note in the deceased’s handwriting. It was discovered in a certain part of the house, and was obviously addressed to you. For it commences “My darling Vera”. I wonder whether you would care for me to read the rest aloud to the court,’ he added, looking up.
Her breath came in strangled gasps. The famous K.C. turned where he stood and caused the note to be handed up to the judge by an usher. His lordship read it, and in a low voice declared that it must be read aloud, and then handed it to the jury. Witnesses must be called to substantiate the statement that it was in the deceased’s handwriting.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ said counsel with a bow, and proceeded to read the letter to a stupefied court.
‘My darling Vera,—I will come to you tonight. Do not be frightened, little one. She will never know. And, besides, what does it matter?’
‘Will you now say that you were not the mistress of the deceased?’ asked David Greatorex quietly. ‘Do you still affirm that you had no interest—beyond that of a servant towards her employers—in the Applebys? In Professor Appleby in particular? Do you still swear that you did not spy on your mistress, that you did not hate her for being the rightful husband of the accused?’
Only wild sobs answered him from the box.
The remorseless voice went on: ‘You were in the study that night with Professor Appleby? Come, now, were you, or were you not?’
‘If she says so,’ answered the woman, looking at him like a ghost.
‘We may take it that the answer is in the affirmative,’ said counsel suavely. He paused a moment to allow her sobs to abate. No one, however stern or strongly committed to the ideals of justice, could fail to feel a passing compassion for Vera Cummings then. She was a woman found out, deeply shamed and humiliated. She stood there as a liar and a perjurer, a woman of illicit loves—but now, suddenly, by the ruthless art of David Greatorex, K.C., she was to be cast into the rôle of suspect.
‘Inspector Brent has told us that his attention was directed to the poison cabinet by your own glances, and in particular to “exhibit 19”, the little blue-black bottle marked poison. Now, did anything transpire between you and the professor in connection with that bottle while you were in the study?’
Vera Cummings lost her nerve completely. She clutched the edge of the box. ‘No! No—not that!’ she cried, and her voice rose to a scream. ‘You’re trying to trap me. The poison bottle!… Oh, my God!’
The court was glad that her screaming voice stopped. It was a sound that tore at the nerves. She was sobbing again now, very near hysterics.
‘You did not go to bed that night,’ the voice went on. ‘You did not go to sleep. You say yourself that you were expecting something to happen. What was it?’
The witness stopped sobbing all at once, as if arrested by some dread thought that had strayed out of the limbo of the forgotten past. White-faced, she stared unseeingly ahead of her, and her lips moved voicelessly. Then slowly she turned and looked queerly at counsel. Her lips moved again, and she repeated his own question in a voice little above a whisper.
‘What was it? It came—and killed him! What was it?’
The spell was broken in the court as she threw up her hands with a shriek. Two wardresses carried her out of the witness-box in a state of collapse. There was a great rustling of papers in the court, and one or two women in the public gallery, unable to bear the nervous strain of listening to the trial any longer, made hastily for the exits.
David Greatorex was satisfied with his work. He turned and intimated to the judge that he had no further questions to ask the witness. Nor did the prosecution wish to examine her. They were dumbfounded, cast into consternation, and they wanted time to consider their position.
The case was adjourned until the following day. But it was thought it might conclude on the morrow, save perhaps, for counsel’s concluding speeches and the judge’s summing up. The trial had become a subject that was in everybody’s mouth. Would Mrs Appleby get off? That
was the burning question.
The public were not concerned with the question of her guilt or innocence. As usual, they were swayed by emotion. They were filled by pity and compassion for the tragic and beautiful figure in the box. She was a butterfly broken on the wheel. Married as a girl to a fiendishly cruel husband—why, she must have been through Hell! So the great British public argued. She had suffered enough. She deserved to get off. Poor woman!
Public feeling is curiously intangible, yet it travels far and carries enormous power and weight. It has crushed kings and lifted peasants to power, and those who are wise, who are publicists and statesmen, listen to its voice and obey its dictates.
The knowledgable ones amongst the public winked and said: ‘Oh, yes; she did it all right. Wouldn’t you? Fancy being tied to a mad genius! Take the business of the parlourmaid. Carrying on under the same roof. That was part of what she had to bear. But isn’t Greatorex putting up a marvellous fight for her life? A brilliant lawyer, that chap!’
So the talk went round in public-houses and other places where people foregather. It so happened, not entirely by chance, that Dick Capel dropped into one such public-house on the evening of the first adjournment of the case. The public-house was in the vicinity of the Old Bailey, from which Derek could not tear himself away.
Capel Manor had not sheltered its owner for many a day. The whole place—the village itself!—seemed to fill him with dread. He must go where there was life, people—anything to distract his thoughts from Eleanor.
He loved her now more passionately than ever—worshipped her, indeed, as if she were a goddess. The mental torture and agony of suspense she was enduring were his to a far greater degree. There was scarcely a moment of his life that was not filled with bitter anguish. He was a man on the rack, tormented by his own thoughts.
