by Greg Pyers
Smyth held out his arms to the jury as if to say ‘Is my point not proven?’
He sat down, to nods of approbation from his associates, Aspinall and Gurner.
Sarah Spinks was clearly frustrated that Smyth should use her words as his playthings. Thompson stood and gave her the opportunity to respond. She did so in full measure.
‘It must be a mistake if it is down in the coroner’s deposition that I swore to the man. I did say in that deposition that I could not swear to him. There was no moon that night. It got dark quickly, and I didn’t turn around to look at the man. When I saw the prisoner in the dock, I said he appeared stouter than the man I saw that night. Looking at the prisoner now, I can’t say that he is the man I saw that night. I could only notice the figure, not the face. All I can say is that the hat and the coat worn by that man were like those worn by the man I saw with my children.’
Smyth was to his feet. ‘The prisoner being that man?’
‘Yes —’
‘Thank you, Mrs Spinks. That is all.’
PENELOPE TELFORD HAD NOTICED Serafino Bonetti delivering bread to the Albert Hotel on several occasions these past few months. She saw him there now, from her veranda: that beautiful young man. He really had been such a dear, gallant fool to keep their secret safe for two whole weeks in that ghastly lock-up, and how unappreciated he may have felt that since the end of his imprisonment she should neglect to express her gratitude. Now, she thought, on this dreary day, with Lawrence away for the week in Castlemaine, was the opportune time to make amends.
She hurried down past the Court House and onto Camp Street, shopping basket in hand, to contrive a chance meeting as Serafino exited the building. The door opened, and there he was in the shadows of the hotel interior. She quickened her step. He was on the threshold, and then she saw him turn, and steal a surreptitious kiss and a fleeting caress from the pretty young barmaid there.
Penelope looked away and hurried on downhill, the dread feeling of advancing age rising within her.
IT STRUCK TOM JUST how much he was drawn to strong women. There was Sarah Spinks, for one, and Adeline, of course: women who knew their own minds and weren’t afraid to express them. Here was another, Jane Cheesbrough. Yes, she told Smyth, the prisoner did ask about the dog, but she heard no barking that night, as she would had a stranger been about — or, Tom guessed, at whatever time David Rose was supposed to have returned from butchering Maggie Stuart. And neither did she notice anything strange about the prisoner’s behaviour the morning after the murder. She remarked that he was a good deal dirtier then than now — an observation that drew a few indiscreet chuckles.
Detective Williams described how Tommy, one of the black trackers, discovered the blue shirt in the paddock adjacent to Cheesbrough’s. He explained that as there were stains on the shirt, he took it to Melbourne on the 13th April and gave it to John Kruse, a chemist, for analysis.
After lunch, Kruse himself was in the box. Smyth asked him whether the stains on the shirt were of human blood. Kruse seemed much accustomed to giving evidence, and, for Tom, his German accent lent him an air of authority and great credibility in these matters of science.
Smyth smiled at his witness, and it seemed that much was expected by the prosecution of this testimony.
‘You analysed the stains?’ Smyth said.
‘Yes, and I found that the spot on the shoulder was blood.’
‘Human blood?’
‘The corpuscles of this blood were similar to those of human blood, yes.’
Thompson was slow to his feet. Whether this was due to his age, or because he was unsure of his line of questioning, or even for deliberate effect, Tom couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it didn’t matter, though the barrister’s unhurried state did contrast with the crisp, certain movements of the prosecutor, if that made a difference in the minds of the jurors. At last, Thompson put his first question, which Kruse answered with no hint of taking affront.
‘I am not a duly qualified medical man, Sir, but an analytical chemist. Here, my diploma from Hanover.’ He handed Watkins a sheet of paper, who passed it to Thompson, thence to Judge Barry.
‘Does this qualify you to give an opinion on blood stains?’ Thompson said.
‘I am aware that in certain cases no one but a competent medical man should be allowed to give an opinion upon blood stains, and also that there is no direct medical process by which blood can be identified as human blood.’
‘Can you positively identify the blood stain you examined as human blood?’
‘No, I cannot swear that the stains I examined are not of the blood of an ox or a dog, as the corpuscles of these animals present the same appearance as those found in human blood.’
Smyth next called Sydney Gibbons, a man as slender as his namesake, but not remotely so lithe. He spoke assuredly, in a monotone — as if, like Kruse, he had given forensic testimony before.
‘I am an analyst, chemist, and microscopist. On 2nd January I received a parcel from Constable Irwin containing two fragments of hairs from the hand of the deceased, and a parcel of hair from her head …’
He continued to list a total of five samples of hair he had been given for analysis; from the sheets, the blue shirt found hidden in the log, and from the head and whiskers of David Rose. The results of his microscopic analysis were inconclusive. Some hairs from the sheets were male; some, female; some, of indeterminate origin. One curly hair from the bed sheets could have been from the husband or the prisoner, but he couldn’t be certain which.
Gibbons delivered his findings with such clinical detachment that he might have been reading a shopping list. For Tom, there was no separating the items from the scene, images of which were sickeningly vivid — none more so than the image he himself had captured for all to see.
‘I also received from Constable Irwin two preparations of matter taken from the body of Mrs Stuart. From examining them, I judge coition had taken place by more than usual force shortly before death.’
This was an image that Smyth was happy to leave for the minds of the jury. He sat down as Pearson Thompson rose.
‘Mr Gibbons, this forceful coition you mention shortly before death. Just how long before death, in your opinion, might this have occurred?’
‘It may have been up to eight or ten hours.’
‘Eight or ten hours? I put it to you that this is hardly “shortly before death”. Before you examined the vaginal matter on the glass slides, had you heard that George Stuart has attested that coition had occurred between him and his wife in the early afternoon on the day of her death, some eight to ten hours before her death?’
‘I had heard that, yes.’
Thompson looked at the witness with exaggerated incredulity. ‘Are you a qualified physician, Mr Gibbons?’
‘No.’
Thompson raised an eyebrow and held it there for effect, before continuing.
‘Would you say that connection with the deceased was forced?’
‘I will not say the woman was raped, no.’
Thompson nodded, his expression serious, though he was surely very pleased with Gibbons’ inept performance.
‘Regarding the hairs you examined, you don’t seem confident in being able to identify each of these.’
‘If I were to shake the hairs together, I don’t pretend to say I could identify every one. In some cases I may be able tell the male from the female hairs. There is one hair I speak to with certainty: a perfectly straight hair twelve inches long, very coarse. It was found on the sheet. Another, very fine and eleven inches long, taken from the pillow, resembles that taken from the deceased’s grasp.’
‘Could that hair have come from the head of George Stuart?’’
‘I couldn’t swear to that. I have not examined his hair.’
A murmur rolled through the courtroom. Surely this was a significant omission. A mo
numental dereliction, even. Thompson feigned astonishment, but was no doubt delighted that a body of evidence had proved so inconclusive as to lend no weight to the prosecution’s case. He certainly seemed delighted as he exchanged a word with Geake.
‘No further questions,’ he said.
The bandy-legged livery stable keeper, Thomas Hathaway, took the stand next, to repeat the testimony he’d given at the committal hearing back in February. David Rose listened this time without protest as Hathaway swore again that the pipe presented was the pipe David Rose was smoking the day he nearly set fire to the hay.
He glanced at Rose as he completed his account, remembering the protest from the dock the last time he gave it.
‘What did you do with the pipe?’ Smyth said.
‘I dipped it in a bucket of water. And I had to turn out three trusses of hay into the yard.
‘You could recognise the pipe?’
‘I had that pipe in my hand for a quarter-hour, so I had good knowledge of it.’
A pipe was handed to the witness.
‘This is the pipe I saw the prisoner smoking,’ he said.
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I gave the pipe to the prisoner, and told him not to smoke about the stable.’
‘Quite so.’ Smyth nodded in a manner, Tom considered, meant to convey that a witness so responsible would have to be commensurately trustworthy. Hathaway beamed, as if unaccustomed to such reverence.
‘One last question, Mr Hathaway,’ Smyth said. ‘Did the prisoner have a knife?’
‘Yes. He had two or three. One was a tobacco knife and a clasp knife with a broken point. It would close up, the blade folding to the handle.’
And so the second day concluded, with Hathaway leaving the box, blushing at Smyth’s nodding to him for a job well done.
23
FRIDAY 28th JULY
THE THIRD AND FINAL DAY OF THE TRIAL
IF DAVID ROSE WERE to be hanged, so it seemed to Tom, it would be for a pipe. Every witness who testified to have seen the prisoner smoking was asked to identify a pipe from a selection offered. And so the theme continued on this, the third day. Trooper Brady, Sergeant Telford, and Constables Mansell and Dawson each declared — some for the second time — that the pipe identified was not his and that it wasn’t he who had placed it on the meat safe. Nor had any of them seen it on the meat safe — a point Tom still found curious. Only Detective Walker had noticed it there, at least until Detective Williams took possession of it a week after the murder.
The outstanding matter of the identification of the hairs on the marital sheets was clarified mid-morning when Sydney Gibbons, the analytical chemist, and Detective Walker were recalled.
Walker informed the court that at ten past eight o’clock the night before he had taken four hairs from George Stuart’s head and four from his beard. With Stuart in Daylesford, this had necessitated considerable travel, and trouble in finding the man.
‘Yes,’ Gibbons said in reply to Smyth, ‘I received the hairs from Detective Walker.’
‘And on examining them, what could you conclude?’
‘Only that the curly hair found on the sheets might be the husband’s, or the prisoner’s.’
The anti-climax was farcical, and Pearson Thompson, with a broad, incredulous grin and much head-shaking, indicated that he had no questions for the witness.
Tom could understand why the prosecution should posit the pipe as the key link between David Rose and the murder scene, but the stowed shirt? What did it matter if it was Rose’s, and if he chose to hide it? The bloodstains on it were mere specks, and could not even be verified as human. Still, the prosecution called two further witnesses to describe in detail the attire they had seen the prisoner wear in the time they had associated with him in various employments. But now the prosecution unwrapped something bigger: the foreshadowed testimony of Mr Michael Wolf, the man with whom Rose had worked at Dr Coates’s farm after he left Cheesbrough’s. There was glee in Smyth’s demeanour now, like that of a poker player about to lay before all a winning hand. Tom recalled Smyth’s preview of Wolf’s testimony in his opening remarks, and how the gallery had been horrified by a mere taster of what might come.
Tom watched this witness settle himself in the box, legs slightly apart, his hands before him holding a peaked cap. If there was anything lupine about him, it wasn’t apparent; the man was slender, with darting eyes and a wary manner. Fox would be apt, Tom thought. The man even had red hair.
‘On Sunday, we were together in the hut,’ Wolf began in answer to Smyth. ‘I was lying on the top bunk. The prisoner asked me to hold a neck-tie — a black silk one.’
‘What time was this?’ Smyth said, as much to raise the suspense as for clarity.
‘This was eleven o’clock. I was stretched in the bunk, reading a newspaper. He wanted me to hold the tie so he could sharpen a razor. I did so, lying on my bunk. He commenced sharpening and I said, “It is a good razor.” He said, “Yes, it is a good razor, that it cut a person’s throat.”’
It was the second time the jury had heard this, but there was no diminution of the horror of it. Tom wondered whether Wolf’s testimony was being rendered all the more believable because it was familiar. Was this a clever ploy by Smyth? He looked at the jurors, and wondered just how wise this assembly of country shopkeepers could be to the wiles of a sharp lawyer.
‘How did you react to this horrifying revelation?’ Smyth said.
‘I said, “Whose throat did it cut?” And he said, “It would not be right for you to know everything.” I told Rose I would break it into pieces sooner than use such a razor!’ Wolf thumped the railing. Smyth let a moment pass, before proceeding.
‘What did you do?’
‘I continued lying in my bunk.’
At this, Tom’s eyebrows rose; it seemed that Wolf’s indignation had escalated considerably over the intervening months.
‘Did you have other conversations with the prisoner?’ Smyth said.
‘I did. The morning before, on the Saturday, he asked me if I knew anything of the Daylesford murder. I said no, and he said, “A person came down the chimney and cut the deceased’s throat when her husband was on night-shift.” He said that her throat was cut, and “he likely got his will of her”, and that it was “just the price of her or of any other person who served a man as she did.”’
The court was suddenly alive with the sounds of sudden inhalations, of groans, of mumblings and whispers. Jurors shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and all — Tom included — cast looks to the man in the dock. It seemed necessary to put a face to the crime, as if doing so would make it comprehensible.
Smyth pressed on.
‘Tell us, Mr Wolf, did the prisoner speak about this most grave matter on other occasions?’
‘He did, several times over a few days. He seemed very excited about it. When he spoke to me, he asked what I thought of it. He asked me, “Supposing a man done it by himself, could they bring any evidence against him, or he be found guilty of it?” I said I knew nothing at all about that.’
‘And how long was the prisoner at Coates’?’
‘Eight days. He left on Sunday afternoon, the 8th of January, after an altercation with Doctor Coates.’
Pearson Thompson had been busy taking notes throughout this testimony, and was quickly to his feet when Smyth resumed his seat. Wolf seemed immediately on his guard, as if steeling himself for questions he would rather not answer. Thompson offered no reassuring smile; instead, a disbelieving smirk.
‘Mr Wolf, tell the court a little about yourself — what work you do, how long you’ve been in this colony …’
‘I’m a labouring man, from Limerick, Ireland. I’ve been a year in this colony. I was in the constabulary, but left of my own free will.’
‘Well, a policeman’s salary is not all that
grand, is it?’
‘I was paid two pound thirteen shillings a month. It was sufficient.’
‘You would have heard of the £200 reward posted for the apprehension of Mrs Stuart’s killer, no doubt?’
‘I did. Though I don’t expect to get any of it.’
‘Really? After that testimony you just gave to my learned friend? Was there a witness to the conversation you had with the prisoner?’
‘No.’
‘When did you hear about the murder?’
‘People were talking of it on Saturday.’
‘And when did you read about the murder?’
‘I read it in the paper on Sunday, and the conversation was on Saturday.’
‘Saturday the 31st December?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which paper?’
‘The Argus, but an account of the murder wasn’t in Saturday’s Argus. That was the paper I was reading, and the paper the prisoner saw. I saw the account of the murder on Sunday, and the conversation with the prisoner about the murder was on Saturday.’
‘But people were talking about the murder on the Saturday.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t get to hear of it. I had heard nothing of the murder on Saturday, when the prisoner was speaking to me at work. He told me he had come from Daylesford.’
‘Maybe the prisoner read about the murder in the paper, or heard about it from someone.’
‘He didn’t say he’d read the paper or heard any rumours. He had not been in Kingston, and the hotels were closed.’
Tom was confused. Wolf seemed to be making suppositions he was not entitled to make. Surely the jury would see that. Or were they less concerned with examining precisely what Wolf had said than impressed by the sense he conveyed of something being not quite right? Any juror not paying full attention — and there seemed to be a few, if vacant looks could be so interpreted — might simply defer to others when considering testimony. They didn’t want to have to think; they wanted to be told, to be reassured, that their verdict was the right verdict. If this were the case, the prosecution would win the day, for Smyth’s performance was polished and assured. Thompson’s, though it had its lucid moments and minor victories, was patchy, and at times bewildering with opportunities not taken to ask important questions. Nevertheless, weren’t the facts on the side of acquittal, Tom wondered? If only Otto could be here to offer an expert assessment.
