by Ruth Rendell
You were employed at Devon Villa to clean the house, were you not?—And to cook and look after the baby.
But you were employed to clean the house?—Yes.
Yet you did not go above the first floor to clean anything for seven days?—I thought they had all gone to Cambridge.
There was some laughter in court but not enough for the languid Mr Justice Edmondson to call for order. Mr James Wood, a porter with the Great Eastern Railway, of Globe Road, Bow, came into the witness box. He said he was at Liverpool Street Station at about five minutes to five on the afternoon of Thursday, July 27th. A man he now knew to be the prisoner came up to him and asked him to take care of a boy aged about five or six and a quantity of luggage. He gave him sixpence. He said he had left something at home which he needed and would return when he had fetched it.
Mr de Filippis: Did he return?—Yes, he did. He was away about an hour or more. More like an hour and a half.
When you saw him again, how did he seem? He was a bit put out because he had missed the train. I would say he was agitated. He said he had had to walk a long way to find a cab. He had a bandage on his right hand.
A bandage or a handkerchief?—A white cloth of some sort.
What did you notice about his clothes?—To the best of my recollection his clothes were just as they had been when he asked me to look after the boy.
There were no stains or marks on his clothes?—There was nothing on his clothes that I can remember.
Cross-examining, Mr Tate-Memling asked: Did you not make an hour and a half a very long time for a man to go by cab from Liverpool Street to Hackney and back? Why, he could have walked it in the time—
My Lord, I must protest!
Mr de Filippis had sprung angrily to his feet. My Lord, what qualification or knowledge has Prosecuting Counsel for making such an assessment? Has he walked it? I doubt if he could even tell the jury the distance involved. What possible function is it of his to estimate the athletic feats of which Mr Roper may be capable?
Very well. That remark had better be expunged from the record. Go on, Mr Tate-Memling, if you have anything more to ask. And you may omit the ambulatory calculations, to use the sort of language you are fond of.
But Mr Tate-Memling had nothing more to ask the witness. No doubt he was confident that, for all the reproof he had received, he had made a strong and telling point in the matter of the distance from Navarino Road to Liverpool Street. He sat down well-satisfied as Alfred Roper himself entered the witness box.
15
THE TRIAL OF ALFRED ROPER (continued)
A JOURNALIST, ROBERT FITZROY, who attended the trial and was present throughout the whole proceedings, wrote his own account of it afterwards and included a meticulous description of Roper. ‘He was,’ he wrote, ‘a man who appeared far older than his actual years, his hair already sprinkled with grey and receding to show a huge wrinkled brow. Over-tall’—the inescapable conclusion here is that Mr Fitzroy himself was a short man ‘—and thin to the point of emaciation, he walked with a pronounced stoop, his shoulders bowed and his head hanging forward on his breast so that his chin pinned the lapels of his coat against him.
‘He was dressed in black, which seemed to increase the extreme pallor that made him appear a sick man. Dark rings encircled his eyes which themselves burned like coals. Under his high cheekbones were deep hollows of shadow. His mouth was wide but without firmness and his lips trembled so frequently that he needs must be constantly compressing them in a repeated nervous gesture.
‘His voice, as he came to answer the questions put to him by Mr Howard de Filippis, was a surprise, shrill and almost squeaky. From those tragic lips, gazing at that rugged countenance, we expected sonorous tones and elegant vowels but heard the accents of a rustic backwater uttered in an old woman’s squawk.’
It is easy to say now that Roper was his own worst enemy and that his appearance did not help his case. He never once addressed the judge by his title. Nor did he volunteer a particle of information apart from that which was specifically asked of him. It may have been that his life, his wife’s death and the circumstances of his arrest and trial had broken his spirit, but he gave the impression of invincible dullness. This was a man, the public may have decided, with whom no woman could have lived without going mad or else taking up with other men.
His Counsel asked him about his marriage and his manner of living and was answered in monosyllables. When he came to the matter of the hyoscin Roper was rather less taciturn. He was heard to give a heavy sigh.
You obtained hyoscin hydrobromide, did you not?—I bought it. I signed the poisons book.
Did you give hyoscin to your wife?—I mixed it with the sugar she took in her tea.
How much did you give her?—I was careful not to use too much. I mixed ten grains with a pound of sugar.
Will you tell his Lordship the purpose of administering hyoscin to your wife?—She had a disease called nymphomania. Hyoscin suppresses excessive sexual feeling.
Did you at any time intend to bring about your wife’s death?—No, I did not.
When Mr de Filippis took him through the events leading up to his departure from Devon Villa on July 27th, Roper again become monosyllabic. His chin sank upon his breast, he muttered with bowed head, and had to be asked to speak up.
When you returned to the house you did not ask the cab to wait?—No.
Why was that?—I thought I might be a long time.
Why did you think you might be a long time?—I could not recall where the sovereign case was.
This was better. He had uttered a sentence of nine words. Mr de Filippis asked: Will you tell his Lordship why you did not let yourself in with your own key?—I had no key. I had left it behind. I did not expect to return there.
You were leaving that part of your life behind you?—Yes.
You were admitted to the house by Miss Florence Fisher. What did you do?—I went upstairs.
Did you go straight upstairs?—No, I looked for the sovereign case in the hat-stand drawer first.
The hat-stand in the hall?—Yes.
That would have taken you a few seconds? Half a minute? —Yes.
Then you went upstairs?—Yes.
What did you do upstairs?
Here Roper seems to have recollected that he was on trial for his life. Convicted of this crime, he would certainly have been hanged and the execution carried out a bare three weeks from this day or the next. To use a current phrase, he pulled himself together.
What did you do upstairs?—I went up to the second floor and into my wife’s bedroom—the bedroom I shared with my wife, that is. My wife was there and her daughter Edith and her mother. My wife was in her night-clothes but not in bed. There was a meal on a tray and tea things.
Did you speak to them?—I asked my wife if she knew where my sovereign case was. She said that as far as she knew it was on my watch chain. Most of my clothes were in my luggage but there was a suit in the wardrobe that my wife meant to bring with her to Cambridge. I looked through the pockets of the suit but the sovereign case was not there.
Did you look elsewhere?—I looked through the drawers of a tallboy. I remember that my wife said I must have missed my train. I said goodbye to them once more and as I was leaving the room remembered that I had put the sovereign case on the dining-room mantelpiece that morning. I found it there and left the house.
How long were you in the house?—About fifteen minutes or rather more.
Did you go into the kitchen?—No, I did not.
You never went into the kitchen and took a bread knife out of the drawer?—Certainly not.
You proceeded to the cab rank in Kingsland High Street. What happened on the way?—I tripped over a loose stone at the kerb in Forest Road. I put out my hand to break my fall and grazed it. My hand was bleeding so I wrapped it in my handkerchief. I found a cab and was driven to Liverpool Street Station where my son was waiting for me.
Did you kill your wife?—Most certain
ly not.
You did not kill your wife by cutting her throat with a bread knife?—I did not.
The court adjourned and on the fourth day of the trial Mr Tate-Memling rose to cross-examine Roper. He too elicited mostly monosyllables from the accused man as he took him painstakingly through the early years of his marriage, his conviction that Edith was not his child and the confidences he made to John Smart. When he came to the purchase and administration of the hyoscin he asked Roper how he had come to know its properties and Roper told him without hesitation he had read about the substance while employed by the Supreme Remedy Company. Mr Tate-Memling placed great emphasis on the toxic properties of hyoscin.
Five grains is the lethal dose, is it not?—I believe so.
You have heard Dr Pond say so. I do not suppose you dispute his statement. You would agree with him that five grains is the lethal dose?—Yes.
You have told the court you placed ten grains in the sugar basin in the sugar that only your wife took?—Yes, but mixed in a pound of sugar.
Never mind the sugar. You placed twice the lethal dose of this toxic substance in a foodstuff that only your wife used?
Here Roper showed his first sign of indignation. He said: That is not the way I would put it.
You are saying then that you are a more accurate authority on the subject of toxic substances than Dr Pond?—No, but—
I think the point has been made. When you returned to Devon Villa at about five-thirty on July 27th, why did you not use your own front-door key?—I had not got it on me. It was in the house.
With the sovereign case perhaps?—I do not know where it was.
When she had let you in Miss Fisher went into the dining room?—I do not know where she went.
She went into the dining room and you went into the kitchen to find the bread knife?—I did not. I looked for my sovereign case in the hat-stand drawer. I could not find it so I went upstairs.
I put it to you that when you went into your bedroom you found your wife alone and asleep in bed.—She was not asleep.
I put it to you that she was asleep, as she often was at this time of day, as a result of the somniferous effects of hyoscin?—She was not asleep and she was not in bed.
Did you not find her a ready victim, deeply asleep, in a drugged sleep, alone and in bed?—No.
She was so deeply asleep that she did not stir or cry out when you cut her throat from ear to ear?—I did not.
Although you covered your body with the counterpane you could not keep the blood from your right hand and your coat sleeve?—The blood came from the graze on my hand.
Over and over Mr Tate-Memling took Roper through those fifteen minutes which passed while he was in the house but Roper did not weaken or alter his replies. Mr de Filippis blew his nose and drank some water. He had used up five of the clean handkerchiefs and only one remained. The final drama came when Counsel for the Prosecution asked the accused a question that was inevitably charged with emotion. A gasp went up from the public gallery, not at the question but at Roper’s reply.
Did you love your wife?—No, I no longer loved her.
Closing Speech for the Defence
Gentlemen of the jury, I thank you for the unbroken attention you have given to this case. I should just like to remind you that you must return your verdict—the responsibility of which is yours—not on the speeches of Counsel or the summing up of the learned judge, but on the evidence and the evidence alone.
The Crown has not yet set aside that presumption of innocence which is the groundwork of our criminal law. I had hoped that my friend at the close of the case for the Crown would have said he would carry the case no further, resting as it did solely on suspicion. But I do not know that I regret it, now that you have heard the defence. It is my submission that it will compel you to return a verdict of Not Guilty.
Is it possible that a man would carry out such a murder in broad daylight in a house also occupied by two other women and a child? Is it possible that he would have himself admitted to the house, though in possession of a key of his own? And having blood upon him, make no attempt to conceal it by washing his hand or his coat sleeve but merely cover his bloodstained hand with a handkerchief?
Is it possible that, having planned a murder, he would leave the obtaining of a weapon to the merest chance, so that securing it depended upon the unlikely absence from her usual place of duty of his domestic servant?
I have listened carefully to some sort of suggestion of motive. There are two kinds of murders: those which are motiveless and those which have a motive. A motiveless murder is that done by a practically insane person. I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, where is the motive for this murder?
Does a man murder his wife merely because he has ceased to love her? If that were the case, so sorry have certain aspects of our society become and so negligent of the old-fashioned virtues many of its members, that wife murder would become a commonplace. No, such a man settles down to a life of duty and obligation or else has recourse to the law which, in this case particularly, would have swiftly granted him his freedom. If, indeed, his misery grows insupportable, inflamed perhaps by jealousy and passion, there have been instances in which he makes a spontaneous attack of violence upon his wife and thereby brings about her death. He does not plan it, down to the deliberate mislaying of keys and sovereign cases, to the prearranged drugging of his victim and the assuring that all witnesses to his crime be occupied in other parts of the house.
Where is the evidence of a condition of mind that would account for the perpetration of this crime? Has the Prosecution called witnesses to testify that they overheard Roper make threats against the deceased? Have you heard evidence of quarrels between the accused and the deceased? Had there been a single act of violence perpetrated against the deceased by the accused prior to the act which brought about her death? No to all these. No, no and no again. We have solely Alfred Roper’s own statement which you as humane men, men experienced in life, may see as tragic, may even find yourselves moved near to tears by it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I no longer loved her.’ That has been his sole comment, gentlemen, on the years of suffering and upon his own state of mind: “I no longer loved her.’
Whether he, as a man who was not a medical man, should have taken it upon himself to treat his wife for what he diagnosed as an illness, is not for you or me to judge. But there is one thing we can say, one thing that all who heard his simple testimony might say. It was a better thing that he did, a kinder, more generous, more forbearing thing, than the action of a man who on less evidence than he had, would have dragged his wife into the divorce court or separated himself and his children from her.
I must strongly impress upon you, members of the jury, that you are trying the accused for murder, not for making unsound judgements or usurping the function of medical doctors. Remember that. Though there may be evidence of folly here and of imprudence, there is none of murder, and upon what the Crown has put forward I defy you to hang this man.
I must remind you that the precise time of the death of Mrs Roper is not known and now never will be known. It may have taken place on the evening of July 27th but on the other hand it may have taken place on the following day. There is no evidence, medical or circumstantial, to point either way. As far as I can see the only thing the Prosecution have against my client is his having a bandage upon his hand when he arrived for the second time at Liverpool Street Station. Not blood, gentlemen of the jury, mark that. Not blood. The man Mr Grantham took to Liverpool Street may have had blood upon his hand but you must remember that Mr Grantham could not identify his fare. Though he could say his fare had blood upon one of his hands, he did not know which one, he could not identify that fare. He could not pick him out in this court.
Mr Wood, the porter at Liverpool Street, saw a bandage upon Roper’s right hand. He saw no blood. You have no more reason to believe the man Mr Grantham saw with blood on his hand was Roper than that it was any other man he may have transported to Live
rpool Street on that evening.
Apart from this, all that the Prosecution has against the accused is that he was a husband and is now a widower. He was a husband whose wife was murdered—ergo, says the Prosecution, he must be guilty of that murder. Never mind those other men, very possibly those many other men, who had passed through this unfortunate woman’s life over the years both before and, alas, after her marriage to the accused. They have not been considered. They have not been found. At the very least, they have not been looked for.
If you are satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the man standing there, on the evening of July 27th, murdered Elizabeth Roper, although it breaks your hearts to do so, find him guilty and send him to the scaffold. But if, under the guidance of a greater Power than any earthly power, making up your minds for yourselves on the evidence, if you feel you cannot honestly and conscientiously say you are satisfied that the Prosecution has proved this man guilty, then I tell you it will be your duty as well as your pleasure to say, as you are bound to say, that Alfred Roper is not guilty of the murder of his wife.
Closing Speech for the Crown
I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, not to attach any importance to an apparent absence of motive. Evidence of motive is of great assistance to a jury in coming to a decision, but it is never absolutely necessary. There are some cynical men who would tell you that any married man has a motive for murdering his wife, though I would not be among them. I would, however, tell you that of all those persons surrounding Elizabeth Roper, no one had a stronger motive for wishing to disembarrass himself of her society than her husband.
Whatever she may truly have been, to him she appeared—and I am obliged to use strong language—a libidinous, licentious and immoral woman, a woman of voracious sexual appetites. Can we suppose that he thought it feasible to drug her for the rest of her natural life? Without doing so, could he contemplate living with her?
But proof of motive is not imperative, most particularly in a crime like this where the circumstances surrounding its commission are so singular. I would ask you, before we begin to look once more at those circumstances, if it is within the bounds of possibility, not to say the bounds of probability, that any other person, whatever his motive might be, would have had the means and the knowledge to commit this crime. Would some casual visitor to the house have known where the bread knife was kept? Would he have known that Mrs Roper frequently fell into a drugged sleep at this hour, that being the time after which she had drunk her afternoon tea, liberally laced with hyoscin? Would he have been able to count on finding her alone and asleep? Would he have been aware that at this precise time the deceased’s mother was in the habit of taking her granddaughter from the room so that the mother could rest undisturbed?
