Asta's Book

by Ruth Rendell

  The prisoner, gentlemen of the jury, knew all these things. Knowing too exactly where the bread knife was kept, he calculated that to fetch it would be the work not of a minute or half a minute but a mere fifteen seconds. In order to accomplish that he took care, you will have noted, to send his servant into the dining room where she could not be a witness to his securing the bread knife. With a courtesy that we have no reason to suppose habitual with him, he opened the dining-room door for her to pass into the room.

  The Defence has made much play with the word ‘suspicion’. There has been an attempt which I can only call absurd to persuade you, members of the jury, that there is no case to go before you. It was not an attempt which succeeded with the learned judge.

  Could any honest man looking at the facts before you dispute the seriousness of the evidence of the blood on the prisoner’s hand and his deliberate sending of Miss Fisher out of the way in his ruthless quest for the knife with which to commit this deed? Could any man of perspicacity view the facts of the prisoner’s long administration of a toxic substance to his wife and place upon it no more sinister interpretation than that of a desire to calm the unfortunate woman’s passions?

  Are these suspicions? One of the definitions of the word ‘suspicion’, gentlemen of the jury, is the imagination or conjecture of the existence of something evil or wrong without proof. It does not apply here. This is not suspicion. There is suspicion in this case, suspicion of the prisoner’s contriving of a plot, suspicion of his hoping for his wife’s death from poison, suspicion that he deliberately left his sovereign case behind when he travelled that first time to Liverpool Street Station.

  But there is no suspicion that he administered a toxic substance to his wife over many months, that he drugged his wife on the afternoon of July 27th, that he sent Miss Fisher out of his way so that he might secure unobserved the weapon with which to kill his wife. All this is evidence.

  I ask you to act not upon suspicion but upon evidence, the evidence which is before you now.

  The Charge to the Jury

  A change generally came over the demeanour of Mr Justice Edmondson when the time came for him to sum up. His lethargy was shed and those who suspected he had not been attending, or that he was indifferent to the proceedings, understood that their suspicions were unfounded. It was not that he suddenly became alert. It was not that he began to speak in circumlocutory or mellifluous phrases, but rather that he showed a grasp of what had gone before and a mastery of the facts, an absolute ability to distinguish between the subtle hints of the Defence and the Prosecution and the true hard evidence.

  He embarked slowly and with gravity upon his Charge to the jury.

  I am exceedingly glad that I am at last able to congratulate you, gentlemen of the jury, on the fact that your labours are approaching an end. I cannot say that it will be any reward to you, but it may be some satisfaction to know that you have been engaged in one of the most remarkable trials that are to be found in the annals of the Criminal Courts of England for many years. That the unfortunate woman had been done to death there is no doubt. She was murdered in a most remarkable way. There is no doubt that the murder was committed by someone who knew well how to put a person quickly to death.

  I have tried a great many murder cases but I have never before tried one in which a woman was apparently murdered in her sleep by a single blow delivered with great force and apparently without a struggle. This poor woman was murdered in her sleep, without ever waking again in this world, by one blow inflicted with great force and skill, with great coolness and determination.

  A great deal has been said about the absence of any clear motive and no motive has been shown by the Prosecution. It is my duty to tell you that in these cases it is not a safe test to ask what was the motive that induced a person to commit such an act as this. We none of us can control, we are not able to control, human thought or feeling or fathom the workings of the human heart. You know from the records in the past that many of the most brutal murders have been committed without any apparent motive which would be appreciated by or have any effect upon the mind of an ordinary individual. Therefore, it must not be assumed that, because no motive has been shown on the part of the accused, he is not guilty.

  It is your task to determine this case on the evidence and if the evidence be sufficiently strong to convince you that the accused did the deed, you must convict him. This case has been conducted on both sides in the best possible manner, in a way that is worthy of the best traditions of the English Bar. Mr de Filippis has set forth his Defence in the most able and masterly manner. He maintains that the accused is not only entitled to a verdict of Not Guilty but that there is no evidence against him. And if you believe implicitly the story told by the accused and on his behalf, then he did not commit the murder. There is not an atom of direct evidence against him, for we do not know and can never know when this murder was committed. You must keep in mind that it may have been committed at any time between half-past five on the evening of Thursday, July 27th and the hour of twelve noon or thereabouts on July 28th.

  The great difficulty of the Prosecution in this case is the question of time. Looking at the evidence, I must say that we have no more reason to believe Elizabeth Roper died on the evening of the 27th of July than that she died during that night or on the following morning. We have no more reason to believe that the prisoner secured the weapon from the kitchen on the evening of the 27th than that someone else did so on the morning of the 28th. On the question of time again, you may discount the time the accused took travelling from Devon Villa to Liverpool Street Station a second time. He tripped on a kerbstone and fell. He bound up his hand. He was delayed. You have no reason to dispute any of this.

  The main evidence against the accused is his undoubted administration to his unfortunate wife of a toxic substance. He may or may not have intended by the means of this substance to bring about her death. He may or may not have intended it for a less sinister purpose, the suppression of her libidinous needs. The point is not what he intended but what he achieved, and Mrs Roper did not die of hyoscin poisoning but of having her throat cut. It is important that you remember this when you are considering your verdict.

  Much play has been made by both sides on this question of the administration of hyoscin by an unqualified person. You must disregard the fact that ten grains is a fatal dose and that the prisoner on his own admission made an admixture for his wife’s consumption of ten grains to a pound of sugar. He knew, as we know, that she would not consume something over a pound of sugar in one, I think I may say ‘fell swoop’, but gradually, over many days, at perhaps the rate of an ounce per day.

  Although undoubtedly it is my duty to do all I can to further the interests of justice so that criminals are brought to justice and properly convicted, it is also my duty to inform you, and to tell any jury, that however strongly animosity is felt against him, you must not find a verdict of Guilty against the accused unless no loophole is left by which he can escape. In my judgement, strong though suspicion is, I do not think the Prosecution has brought the case home near enough to the accused.

  As it is, I do not think the evidence is sufficient to justify you in bringing in the accused man Guilty. Unless you place more weight than I think the facts warrant on Miss Fisher’s statement about the opening of the dining-room door, unless you see this as a purposeful diverting of Miss Fisher’s attention from the kitchen, you have no evidence at all on which to connect the accused with the weapon that was undoubtedly used. Here too you must take account of the time involved and ask yourselves if a man in his position, intent upon the terrible deed he is alleged to have been intent on, would have taken the risk of emerging with the knife from the kitchen and meeting Miss Fisher in the passage. You must ask yourselves also if a man who had blood on his hand and his coat sleeve from so terrible an act would have bound up his hand to cover it rather than have washed it off.

  In dealing with circumstantial evidence it behoves
judges and juries to be most careful before they convict a man. It is therefore my duty to point out that unless the effect of the evidence is so conclusive that there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind, you should give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is Not Guilty. You are not bound to act on my views at all, but it behoves us to be most careful before we find a man guilty of such a charge. It is, of course, a matter for you and you alone, gentlemen.

  I am now going to ask you to retire to consider your verdict. Weigh carefully in your minds the evidence heard from both sides. If you think the Prosecution has proved the case against the accused your verdict will be one of Guilty; if, on the other hand, it has not done so, if there is any loophole, however small, your verdict must be one of Not Guilty.

  Two officers were sworn to take charge of the members of the jury and they retired at 2.35 p.m. They were absent for two hours and a half. It was not easily nor without dispute that they had come to their decision.

  Clerk of Arraigns: Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?

  The Foreman: We have.

  Clerk of Arraigns: Do you find the prisoner at the bar Guilty or Not Guilty of the wilful murder of Elizabeth Louisa Roper?

  The Foreman: We find him Not Guilty.

  Clerk: Is that the verdict of you all?

  The Foreman: It is.

  Mr de Filippis: I have to ask your Lordship that the accused may be discharged.

  The judge: Yes, certainly.

  Gentlemen of the jury, you have been put to great inconvenience by being kept here so long. I am extremely obliged to you for the great care you have taken throughout the case. In recognition of the time and labour you have devoted to this case, I shall make an order exempting you from further service on juries for a period of ten years.

  16

  THE TRIAL OF ALFRED ROPER (conclusion)

  ROPER WAS FREE TO return to Cambridge or, if he chose, to Devon Villa. Because the law says that when two people die in circumstances where there is no ‘witness or other confirmation of time of death, the younger shall be supposed to have survived the elder, Roper as his wife’s natural heir inherited from her the house in Navarino Road. Without gainful employment, he attempted to live there with his son and to let out rooms as a means of livelihood. However, no lodgers came and he soon suffered from the active hostility of his neighbours.

  Everyone knew who he was. Most believed he was guilty. His windows were repeatedly broken. One summer evening a man fired a shot at him from an air rifle while he was in his front garden. Children called out after him in the street and the best he could expect from their parents was to be pointedly ignored by them. He became a clerk with a firm in Shacklewell, but when his employers found out who he was he lost his job.

  Eventually he moved to Cambridge with his son. His sister’s husband, Thomas Leeming, took pity on him and offered him a storekeeper’s job. This position Roper held until his death fifteen years later.

  Edward enlisted in 1915, advancing his age, actually sixteen, by two years, but he did not meet his death until the last days of the Great War, dying in action in the autumn of 1918 at Argonne. After his son’s death Roper gave up the little house he was renting and went to live with his sister and her husband outside the city in the village of Fen Ditton. There he died seven years later of malignant kidney disease.

  In the twenty years after his wife’s murder he is said never to have inquired after the child who bore his name but whom he refused to acknowledge as his daughter. He knew, of course, that she was missing and that in those early days after the discovery of Lizzie’s body a massive search had been mounted for her. The police subjected him to intensive questioning about the child, which he called harassment, and this continued sporadically even after he had gone to Cambridge.

  He never once gave the slightest indication that he knew what her fate might have been. Perhaps, indeed, he was as ignorant as the rest of them.

  She was a baby, fourteen months old, healthy and strong, not only able to walk but able to climb up and down stairs unaided. According to the Metropolitan Police records, she had fifteen teeth. Her hair was flaxen, her eyes blue. She had no scars but she did have the distinguishing mark of a rather large mole on the cheekbone under her left eye. In height she measured two feet three inches; her weight was twenty-six pounds, nine ounces.

  No photograph of her exists or probably ever existed. She is described as plump and fair with a full face so the chances of her actually bearing the resemblance to Alfred Roper John Smart said she did seem remote. Florence Fisher said she could not speak but it seems she could utter a few words, such as ‘Mama’, ‘Eddy’ and ‘Fo’ (for Florence). On the day she disappeared for ever, July 28th, 1905, she was dressed in a blue-and-white-striped pinafore over a blue flannel dress or petticoat and had a red ribbon in her hair. Florence Fisher was the last person to see her or the last person to remain alive after seeing her. So far as is known. So very little is known.

  Florence Fisher was her last link with the world. It was Florence, as we know, who gave her her breakfast that morning when Edith came downstairs on her own some time around eight o’clock. That breakfast consisted of porridge but no bread was eaten, if Florence is to be believed. Mothers were nervous of milk in the early part of the century. They knew it might carry tuberculosis, also called ‘consumption’, though that was fast going out. Cocoa was popular, so perhaps that is what Edith had.

  It is unlikely she could feed herself adequately. Remember that her age was only one year and two months. But she was almost certainly able to drink from a cup. Florence would have had to feed her, wash her face and hands, take her to the privy (there was one outside) or set her on the chamber pot. It was she who dressed Edith in the blue flannel petticoat and striped pinafore. All the while she had her own work to do. Poor Florence!

  She sent Edith back upstairs to her mother. Who can blame her? It was hot and she was unwell. Nevertheless, she had the rooms to clean and shopping to do. No refrigerators in those days and no icebox at Devon Villa, so in warm weather food supplies had to be renewed almost each day. Probably she stood in the hall at the foot of the stairs and watched the child go up. If she took a certain grim pleasure in imagining Edith waking her mother and perhaps her grandmother too, again who can blame her?

  At ten she went out shopping. A local grocer delivered daily and it is not clear why Florence went to the shops. Perhaps she longed sometimes to be out of that house and this was the only way to make an occasional escape. It may have been to the Broadway market just south of London Fields that she went or to the market in Wells Street or the one in Mare Street where there were also food shops and department stores. In Kingsland High Street was a branch of Sainsbury’s. Where she went we have no way of knowing but she was out for two hours.

  What happened in her absence?

  Lizzie and Maria were almost certainly already dead before Edith appeared that morning, the child’s mother lying stiff and cold in her bed, her grandmother not in bed but prone on the floor where she had fallen when her heart stopped. There was no one else in the house. Roper, beyond a doubt, as a score of witnesses could testify, was in Cambridge. When Florence departed for the shops, the child Edith was the only living human being in Devon Villa.

  We may picture her clambering up those stairs, a baby, a tiny child not much more than a year old, perhaps calling her mother, ‘Mama, Mama,’ though knowing from past experience where to find her. A hard passage, those two long flights of stairs, when one is only twenty-seven inches tall and the riser of each stair eight inches deep. If an adult man were to undertake a climb of comparable arduousness, each stair would have to be two feet high. He would have to use his hands as she must have done, climbing, pulling, pausing, climbing again. Before she reached the top it is probable she was crying because the expected assistance was not forthcoming.

  Did she find the bodies in that room? And if she did and they were cold, did she understand this was not sleep, this w
as something other than sleep, and was she afraid? Did she observe that blood splashed everywhere? Did she approach that dreadful bed and see the gaping wound where her mother’s throat had been? No one knows.

  Suppose she made her way downstairs again in search of Florence. By this time Florence had gone out but no doubt, believing Lizzie Roper and Maria Hyde to be in the house, she left the front door ajar as they often left it these hot days. Suppose Edith wandered out into the street in search of Florence and there met her death under the wheels of a cart. Suppose the carter, in terror of what he had done, an unwitnessed act, picked up the tiny body and disposed of it far away. Or imagine some madman or madwoman snatching her up, a child molester searching for prey.

  But always we return to the question of what became of her body. It was a very small body, less than twenty-seven pounds in weight, and therefore far easier to dispose of than that of a woman weighing ten or eleven stone. Still, it had to be disposed of. The weather was too hot for domestic fires, furnaces and boilers to be lit. There was a good deal of industry in the district and factories have furnaces, but this solution presupposes Edith’s killer having access to one of them.

  He could have buried her. If he did so it was not in the garden of Devon Villa, for the police dug that down to a depth of four feet during the second week of August. But they could see there had been no recent interment; the ground was hard and dry. They searched the local parks and open spaces for signs of freshly turned earth and found nothing. Nothing suspicious was seen. No one living in the vicinity of Navarino Road, Richmond Road and Mare Street admitted to having seen Edith Roper on July 28th or ever afterwards. The mystery of her total disappearance remains and now, very likely, always will remain.