4:55 P.M.—5:20 P.M.
From the Summing-Up, by Mr. Justice Bodkin.
“...and as you know, members of the jury, we have here a case of circumstantial evidence. Now the real test of the value of circumstantial evidence is this: Does it exclude every reasonable possibility? I can even put it higher: Does it exclude all other theories or possibilities? If you cannot put the evidence against the accused man beyond a probability and nothing more, then it is impossible for you to say you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the charge is established. There is no muddledom about that; the law there is as plain as a pikestaff. A man cannot be convicted of any crime, least of all murder, merely on probabilities: unless they are so strong as to amount to a reasonable certainty. If you have other possibilities, you cannot come to the decision that the charge is made out.
“The question is not: Who did this crime? The question is: Did the prisoner do it? You have heard at some length the evidence in this case, you have heard the speeches of counsel, and it is now my task to make some survey of the evidence. You will remember that you are the judges of the facts; I am not the judge of the facts at all; and you must bear this in mind if I seem to omit or overstress any matter contrary to your view.
“Let us take what may be called the relevant facts from the beginning. Much has been said at the beginning concerning the demeanor of the accused man. As you know, testimony about the look of a man—whether he seemed happy, whether he seemed agitated—is permitted here. You must therefore give it due consideration. But I must tell you that I think it unwise to put too high a value on such statements. You have probably found that it is not always reliable in the affairs of ordinary life. In judging the demeanor of a person, you must suppose that his reactions to a given happening—tragic, peculiar, or even commonplace—will invariably be the same as your own; and I do not need to tell you of the dangers attending that. Taking the facts that have been outlined to you, then...
“...I think, therefore, that this case boils down not to a question of fact alone, but to the interpretation of fact. An arithmetic book cannot consist of all answers and no sums. A case of this sort cannot consist of all effects and no causes: it is the causes that are under debate. The two original matters you must decide are: First, had Avory Hume formed any plot to drug Captain Answell, arrange the false trappings to suggest a felonious attack on him by Captain Answell, and put Captain Answell under detention as a madman? Second, was the prisoner mistaken for Captain Answell?
“I have just indicated to you my reasons for thinking that there is good evidence in favor of both these things. You have heard Dr. Peter Quigley, an agent of the International Medical Council, as to words he states he heard the deceased speak. The deceased is quoted as saying that he meant to get possession of Captain Answell’s pistol: that he meant to invite Captain Answell to his home: that he meant to administer brudine in a drink of whisky and soda: that he meant to get rid of such evidence afterwards: that he meant to create the signs of an apparent struggle: that he meant Captain Answell’s fingerprints to be found on an arrow, and the pistol to be found in Captain Answell’s pocket. I have quoted to you supplementary evidence which seems to me to make this a reasonable possibility. Do you believe that this happened? If you do not, you will decide accordingly; it is a matter entirely for you. But if you do believe it, you will only be led into a muddle by any talk of ‘facts.’
“Did the deceased mean that a pistol should be found in the pocket of the man he was entertaining? If he did, I think we cannot hold against the prisoner the ‘fact’ that it was actually found there. If he meant to administer drugged whisky, getting rid of the evidence later, and if he succeeded in doing this, I think we cannot hold it against the prisoner that the plan actually succeeded. If he meant fingerprints to be found on the arrow—and if you believe he succeeded in implanting them there—then fingerprints are only what we should expect to find. If (to give you an example) A is accused of stealing B’s wallet, and the wallet is found in A’s pocket, the fact itself would not weigh with you if you were convinced that C put it there.
“In this reading of the evidence, I confess I can see no motive for murder on the part of the prisoner. Indeed, none is suggested except the fact of Mr. Hume’s antagonism towards him; and, if you believe this reading, the antagonism did not exist. Without motive or weapon, the prisoner arrives at the house. You have heard evidence which has been construed as the sign of a quarrel in the study, and which you must consider carefully. But if every matter relied on as circumstantial is equally consistent both with the guilt and the innocence of the prisoner, the multiplication of those instances may not take you any further in coming to a conclusion of guilt.
“Taking first the testimony of the individual witnesses...
“Finally, members of the jury, there is the question whose determining must be the crux of your decision: Was the deceased man killed by an arrow held in the hand of the prisoner?
“If the prisoner took the arrow and willfully stabbed the deceased man with it, he is guilty of murder. On the one hand, you have his fingerprints on the arrow, and the circumstance that door and windows were bolted on the inside. On the other hand, you have the indications with which I have already dealt, and you have an alternative explanation with whose evidence I can deal now. We have heard that, when the prisoner was left alone in the study with Mr. Hume, the guide feather on the shaft of the arrow was intact. You have heard that, when a search of the room was made immediately after the discovery of the crime, a piece of feather some inch and a quarter long by an inch square was missing. Neither Mr. Fleming nor Dyer found it. It was not found by Inspector Mottram. The suggestion made by the prosecution is that it had lodged in the prisoner’s clothing.
“The question now before us is not so much: What happened to the missing piece of feather? The question before us may be put more accurately: Do the two pieces of feather produced by the defense—one from a crossbow, the other from an opening supporting the spindle in the door—constitute what we want? Do they belong to the feather on the arrow used to commit this crime? Are they one feather? If you decide that they are not—or, more properly, that neither of the two pieces belongs to the original—then they do not concern us. The circumstances in which they were found are curious, no doubt; but that is none of our business. On the other hand, if you are satisfied that either or both of them belonged to the original feather, it is difficult not to think that this in itself constitutes a reasonable doubt of the case for the prosecution.
“I confess I do not altogether understand the suggestion of the prosecution here. In my notes I find the suggestion that the first piece of feather, that in the crossbow, was not a part of the original one; but I have had no further illumination as regards this. Let us take the evidence as it has been presented, and see whether it may not lead irresistibly to the conclusion that—”
5:20 P.M.—5:26 P.M.
From the Record of the Shorthand Writer, by Mr. John Keyes.
The jury, after six minutes’ retirement, returned into court.
The Clerk of Arraigns: Gentlemen of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?
The Foreman of the Jury: We are.
The Clerk of Arraigns: Do you find the prisoner guilty, or not guilty of murder?
The Foreman of the Jury: Not guilty.
The Clerk of Arraigns: You say he is not guilty, and that is the verdict of you all?
The Foreman of the Jury: It is.
Mr. Justice Bodkin: James Caplon Answell, the jury, after considering the evidence, have found you not guilty of murder. It is a verdict in which I thoroughly concur. It remains only for me to tell you that you are a free man, and to wish you Godspeed.—The prisoner is discharged.
Notes: Broad grin on Attorney-General’s face; he seemed to want this. Old Merrivale standing up and raving and cursing like blazes: can’t imagine why: his man’s free. Prisoner being handed his hat; can’t seem to find his way out. People pressing up to h
im: including that girl. (???) Gallery wild with delight. “And e’en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer!”
5:45 P.M.
From the History of the Old Bailey.
In Courtroom Number One they were turning out the lights. Two warders, looking very unlike policemen without their helmets, seemed to be alone in a deserted schoolroom. The noise of a vast shuffling was dying away outside the doors; a few echoes came back, as though the echoes moved slowly and hung there. Up on the glass roof the rain was pattering steadily, and you could now hear it with great distinctness. There was a click: one cornice-row of lights vanished, so that the oak panels and the white stone above took duller colors. Two more clicks, and the room was nearly dark. The noise of the rain seemed louder; so did the noise of the warders’ footsteps on uncertain hardwood; and their heads moved like high shadows. You could barely see the high, pointed backs of the judges’ chairs, and the dull gold of the Sword of State. The vestibule-door creaked in the gloom as one of the warders pushed it open.
“‘Ere, stop a bit,” said the other suddenly. His voice also had an echo.
“Don’t close it. There’s somebody left behind.”
“You seeing ghosts?”
“No, I mean it. Sitting over there—end of that bench—behind the dock. Here, there! Hoy!”
He might have been seeing ghosts in a house built on the bones of Newgate. Under the grayish-black light, a figure was sitting alone and hunched up at the end of the bench. It did not move, even at the startling echo of the warder’s hail. The warder clumped over towards that figure.
“Now, then!” he said, with a sort of tolerant impatience. “You’ll ‘ave to—”
The hunched figure did not look up, but it spoke. “I—don’t know if I can. I’ve just drunk something.”
“Drunk something?”
“Some kind of disinfectant. I thought I could face it, but I can’t. I—I feel horrible. Can I get to a hospital?”
“Joe!” said the warder sharply. “‘Ere you go, and lend a hand!”
“You see, I killed him. That was why I drank the stuff.”
“Killed who, ma’am?”
“I killed poor Avory. But I’m sorry I killed him; I’ve always been sorry. I wanted to die, if it didn’t hurt so much. My name is Amelia Jordan.”
EPILOGUE—What Really Happened
“ALL I’m saying,” observed Evelyn, “is that I thought the Attorney-General made the strongest speech of all of you. Even at the last minute I was afraid he might swing it. That man impressed me enormously: I don’t care who knows it: and—”
“Ho ho,” said H.M. “So that’s what you thought, hey? No, my wench. Walt Storm’s a much better lawyer than that. I won’t say he did it deliberately, but he put it all up so the judge could knock it down. It was as neat a trick of feedin’ lines, or arrangin’ your chin for the punch, as I’ve ever seen. He tumbled too late to the fact that the chap wasn’t guilty. He might ‘a’ thrown up his brief; but I wanted the business carried on so it could be proved up to the hilt—with the full story of the crime. So you saw the spectacle of an intelligent man tryin’ to make brickbats without straw. It sounded awful impressive; but it didn’t mean a curse.”
We were sitting, on a boisterous March night, in H.M.’s office up all the flights of stairs of the building overlooking the Embankment. H.M., after having been engaged in brewing whisky punch (in commemoration, he said, of the Answell case), sat with his feet on the desk and the gooseneck lamp pushed down. There was a good fire, and Lollypop sat by the table in the window corner, evidently making up some accounts. H.M., with the smoke of a cigar getting into his eye and the steam of whisky punch getting into his nose, was alternately chuckling and strangling.
“Not,” declared H.M., “that there was ever any doubt about the verdict—”
“You thought not?” said Evelyn. “Have you any recollection of what you did? When they brought back that verdict, and the court adjourned, someone came to congratulate you, and accidentally knocked a book off your desk. You stood there and you cursed and swore and gibbered for two minutes by the clock—”
“Well, it’s always more comfortin’ when you get that kind of case off your mind,” growled H.M. “I had a few shots still in the locker; but, somewhat to mix the metaphors, you’re nervous about a race even if you’re dead certain the favorite’s comin’ in. Y’see, I had to fight it through. I had to get it on so I could make my closin’ speech, and I thought a few hints in that speech would have a salutary effect on the real murderer—”
“Amelia Jordan,” I said. We were silent for a short time, while H.M. contemplated the end of his cigar, growled, and ended by taking a gulp of whisky punch. “So you knew she was guilty all the time?”
“Sure, son. And if necessary I could ‘a’ proved it. But I had to get the feller in the dock acquitted first. I couldn’t say she was guilty in court. I wrote on that little time schedule I gave you that there was only one person who could ‘a’ committed the murder.”
“Well?”
“I’ll talk about it,” said H.M., shifting in his chair, “because it’s such a bleedin’ relief not to be governed by any rules in my talk.
“Now, I don’t have to retrace the course entirely. You know just about everything up to the time Jim Answell drinks his drugged whisky and tumbles over in Hume’s study. You know everything, in fact, except what seem to me pretty solid reasons for believin’ a certain person was guilty.
“Back at the beginnin’ of the case I had the lunacy plot part of it worked out straightaway, as I told you. How the murder was done, if Answell didn’t do it, beat me to blazes. Then Mary Hume made that suggestion—that the thing her feller hated most in prison was the Judas window—and I woke up to the startlin’ possibility of a Judas window in every door. I walked up and down, like Satan. I looked at it all round. Then I sat down and made out that timetable; and the whole thing began to unroll.
“As I first saw the business, there were only two persons concerned in the scheme to nobble Reginald Answell: Avory and Spencer. I still think that. It was pretty evident, though, that someone had found out about that scheme, and insisted on cornin’ into it at the last moment.
“Why? Looky here! If the Judas window was used to do the murder, the murderer must have been workin’ with Avory Hume. The murderer must ‘a’ been at least close enough to know what was going on in the study. It must have been the murderer who carried away an extra decanter—I’ve made a query about that decanter in my timetable—so that it shouldn’t be found by the police. All that implies cooperation with Avory. Someone was in on the plot: someone carried it just so far: and then someone used it neatly to kill the old man.
“Who? Of course, first of all you’d have plumped for Uncle Spencer, since he undoubtedly was a confederate in the plot. But that won’t do; at least, as regards Uncle Spencer’s committin’ the murder with his own hand. He’s got a really remarkable alibi, vouched for by half the staff of a hospital.
“Who else, then? It’s a remarkable thing, y’know, how the mere certainty of another confederate in the business narrows down the field. Avory Hume was a man with few friends and no intimates, except his own family. He was a great family man. If he went to the extent of confidin’ that scheme to someone not necessary to it—even confidin’ it under pressure—it must be someone very close to him.
“You understand, at this point I was just sittin’ and thinkin’; I’d got no more than an idea to roll about. Someone close to him, says I. Now, while it was theoretically possible for an outsider to have sneaked in and done it (like Fleming, to take an example), still this looked very doubtful. Fleming wasn’t an intimate; he wasn’t even a close friend, as you can easily tell from the way they speak of each other. Furthermore, an outsider would have had to sneak past a battery of watchful eyes composed of Dyer and Amelia Jordan, one of whom was in the house all the time. Still grantin’ that it’s possible, take the other theory and see where it leads
.
“It leads to the belief that the other confederate must ‘a’ been either Amelia Jordan or Dyer. That’s so simple that it takes a long time before it can fully penetrate. But it pretty certainly wasn’t Dyer. I’ll say nothin’ of my own belief that the painfully respectable Dyer was the last person that the painfully respectable Mr. Hume would admit to a peep at any family skeletons from inside the cupboard. As a witness to Captain Reginald’s gibberin’ lunacy, yes. As a colleague, no. And that it couldn’t have been Dyer is quite clear from the timetable.
“Like this. I’d already come to the conclusion, from reasons you know, that Hume was murdered with that arrow fired from a crossbow. Somebody had to wait until Jim Answell was under the influence of the drug. Somebody had then to go into the study with Hume, assist in pourin’ mint-extract down an unconscious man’s throat, and get the other decanter and siphon out. Somebody had to make a pretext for takin’ the arrow out of the room. Somebody had to get Hume to bolt the door: how Hume was to be persuaded to do this, with the arrow still outside the door, I didn’t know. Somebody had to work the mechanism of the Judas window. Somebody had to kill Hume, close up the window, dispose of the crossbow and the decanter, and generally tidy up. You follow that?
“Well, Dyer let Jim Answell into the house at 6:10. (Established.) It was three minutes at least before Answell took that drugged drink in the study, and longer than that before it hit him over the brain. (Established by Answell himself.) Dyer left the house at 6:15. (Established by me; I put into the right-hand column of my timetable, where I’ve put only absolutely unquestionable facts, that he got to the garage at 6:18; and, as he himself correctly said at the trial, the garage is a three-or four-minute walk away.) Is it possible to think that in the space of a minute and a half he went through all the hocus-pocus necessitated by Avory Hume’s murder? It is not. The time-element makes it impossible.
The Judas Window Page 23
