Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  ‘Am coming home as fast as steam will bring me. Bear up against this wicked and incomprehensible calumny. All will yet be cleared up. American friends have perfect confidence in your speedy acquittal.’

  Yet the mere accusation itself was enough to strike any woman dumb with horror; and oh! when Linda heard it detailed before the coroner, how incredibly conclusive the evidence seemed against her! Day after day the inquest was adjourned; and day after day, as fresh facts poured in, the case looked blacker and blacker. Sir Frederick and the other doctors, the analysts, the nurses, the detectives, the servants — all had but one consistent story to tell, that she had poisoned her husband, and that she had poisoned him to marry the man who had deceived her. She sat through it all like one dazed, and listened breathless to the overwhelming mass of hints and details that told all one way, without the power of making even a suggestion to herself as to who could be the real murderer. Bertie had been poisoned; of that she could feel no reasonable doubt; but who on earth had poisoned him? Till she found out that, her character would never be cleared before the eyes of the world — if, indeed, she could escape the final penalty of the criminal.

  Day after day the inquest dragged on; but at last those endless proceedings were over. The adjournments were finished; and the jury went out, pro forma, to consider their verdict. It was a foregone conclusion. Linda felt sure of that. With very languid interest she awaited their return. By-and-by they came back. Deep silence fell for a moment on the court.

  ‘We find that Adalbert Owen Trefaldwyn, Duke of Powysland, has died from the administration of morphia in his food and medicine,’ the foreman said impressively; ‘and we bring in a verdict of wilful murder against Linda, Duchess of Powysland.’

  Poor, weary soul! she thought she had sufficiently nerved herself up, in anticipation, for those terrible words, but when they actually came she almost fainted. She was standing to hear them, but as the foreman finished she sank back in her seat and closed her eyes swimmingly. All the room went round in a whirling maze. She hardly caught the terms in which, with grave decorum, the coroner handed over her grace the Duchess to the custody of the police on the jury’s finding of wilful murder.

  CHAPTER XLI.

  COUNSEL’S OPINION.

  Till the trial came on, Linda had to pass through another terrible ordeal of suspense and waiting. The solitude of the gaol alone to which she was consigned would have made it almost unbearable, even without the cloud of that unspeakable accusation always overhanging her. The authorities, to be sure, did everything in their power to lighten the burden of her life while awaiting trial; but it was with a heavy heart indeed, in spite of every indulgence, that she wore through each day of that awful interval.

  Outside, the question was only: When the Duchess is found guilty and sentenced to death, will they dare to hang her? Or dare, on the other hand, to commute her sentence? If she wasn’t a peeress, everybody said, of course she’d be hanged; and if they didn’t hang her, out of consideration for her rank, the democracy would be scandalized, and ask why a Duchess should have leave to commit murder more than her even Christians? Bets were freely offered and taken that, in the event of a hostile verdict, the Government wouldn’t venture to commute the sentence into one of penal servitude for life. Men made the unhappy woman’s fate a subject for gambling over, and watched with horrid interest the rumours of fresh evidence as it affected their own chance of losing or winning a few paltry sovereigns.

  Happily, however, within her four stone walls, Linda knew nothing of all this. She was busy a good part of each day with her lawyers or their clerks — the eminent firm of Walberswick and Garrod had acted as her solicitors ever since her return to England, and they were now engaged in collecting or arranging the evidence for the defence. Yet it was with difficulty she could bring herself to believe any defence necessary. Strong as she saw the case against herself to be, she could still hardly realize that anyone could seriously accuse her of having poisoned Bertie. The idea was so monstrous, so wicked, so cruel. But what terrified her most was the slow discovery, not only that the world at large distrusted her, but that even her own lawyers, who had charge of her case, obviously disbelieved in their client’s innocence. At first she refused to conceive this possible. Linda herself wished to repose especially upon some definite attempt to bring home the crime to its real perpetrators. Though she didn’t know whom to suspect — though she suspected nobody — she yet knew in her heart that someone unknown — either the nurse, or the doctor, or the servants, or somebody — must necessarily have administered the morphia to Bertie. To her, the real question at issue was simply that — who had poisoned her husband? She cared little comparatively for mere negative evidence tending to exculpate herself. She wished to clear her own character in the one true way — by putting the guilt of the murder on the shoulders of the actual criminal.

  But whenever she dwelt upon this aspect of the case to her urbane solicitor, it was only too painfully clear to her that that legal-minded gentleman, in spite of his courtly deference, totally disbelieved in the possibility of any such mode of conducting the defence.

  ‘What we need, your grace must observe,’ Mr. Walberswick would reply diplomatically, with a nod of that grave head, ’is rebutting evidence — rebutting evidence. Your grace’s plan of action would be an admirable one, indeed, if we had witnesses to call for repelling the charge by laying it boldly on other shoulders. I say if, but we have no such witnesses. You don’t even yourself venture to single out for attack any one particular individual. You don’t know, you say, who administered the morphia. The Crown says you did. Very well, then; we have to confine our defence to rebutting the allegation thus brought forward by the Crown; rebutting it — rebutting it. We have to seek to find out what evidence in the case the Crown has got, and to shake the credit of their witnesses in cross-examination or otherwise. We must confine ourselves to detail, and fight their case piecemeal.’

  ‘If you don’t believe what I say,’ Linda cried once impetuously, when the lawyer had smiled a more than usually cynical smile, ‘I wish you’d tell me so, and then we should understand one another.’

  Her solicitor looked grave.

  ‘Our duty is,’ he said, stroking his clean-shaven chin, ‘to do the best we can for our clients, no matter what we think, and to believe them innocent till they are proved guilty. That’s our duty as a profession. We must put the best interpretation upon everything, of course; but we must never for a moment under-estimate the strength of the evidence we’re invited to repel. To do so would be to act unjustly by your grace in the end, for we can’t conceal from ourselves the patent fact that the Crown has a very strong case indeed to go upon.’

  The tears came up fast into Linda’s eyes silently. This was hard — very hard. Even her own defenders didn’t believe her innocent.

  As the day for the trial approached, Mr. Walberswick advised her that it would be well for her to have a personal interview with the distinguished Q.C., Mr. Mitchell Hanbury, retained as senior for the defence in this memorable trial. Linda consented to see him, hoping she might impress the distinguished Q.C. with a deeper sense of her innocence than she had succeeded in conveying to the eminent solicitor. And Mr. Mitchell Hanbury paid her a visit in her room in gaol accordingly. He discussed with her the various witnesses called at the inquest, and the things they would most likely be asked to swear to at the actual trial. But through all he said Linda saw with alarm there ran the self-same vein of unacknowledged scepticism. It was clear to her that in his heart of hearts the distinguished Q.C. thought only of relying upon weakness of detail and legal quibbles as to circumstantial evidence. He was thinking of an acquittal, where she was thinking of a triumphant vindication.

  At the end of the interview, Linda nerved herself up for a very bold effort.

  ‘Mr. Hanbury,’ she said plainly, looking straight into his eyes, ‘you think I poisoned him?’

  ‘My dear madam,’ the barrister said, shuffling, and taken o
ff his guard by the suddenness and frankness of her full-fronted attack, ‘we lawyers think nothing on earth beyond our briefs. They limit our horizon. We are instructed by the solicitors in a case that such and such things happened thus or thus; that such and such witnesses will prove this or that; and we govern ourselves accordingly. We don’t allow ourselves in any way to go behind the statement of facts submitted for our guidance. We’ve no time to indulge in otiose speculation’ — he hugged his phrase— ‘no time to indulge in purely otiose speculation.’

  Linda rose from the bare table by which they sat, and stood facing him like a woman.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, with infinite dignity, ‘if that is how you feel about me, I’d rather not avail myself of your services. This is a case which can only be properly defended by a man who believes thoroughly in my innocence and purity. You don’t believe in them — that much I can see — and your advocacy, however skilful it may be, would be worth little. I am a woman in distress, and I want to ask a favour of you.’ Her eyes were full, and her voice trembled. ‘If I decline to accept you as my counsel, my solicitors will throw up the case, I suppose, and I don’t know how I can get anyone else in time to defend me. But this favour I ask you; I beg it, I implore it of you — arrange with Mr. Walberswick to withdraw by agreement, and leave the conduct of the case to another barrister whom I know, and in whom I repose implicit confidence.’

  Mr. Hanbury started. There was so much womanly force in her as she spoke those words that the great counsel himself hesitated at the faith that dictated them. She looked for all the world as if she believed herself innocent. Strange how wonderfully women can act, or how incredibly they can deceive themselves! It was as plain as a pikestaff to anyone with a head on his shoulders that that woman had given her husband the morphia; and yet here she was, all tears and blandishments, assuming to his face the airs and graces of injured innocence. Still, she was a Duchess, and a beautiful one at that. All men are made of like passions with ourselves, even at the Old Bailey. The eminent Q.C. paused and deliberated.

  ‘If I were to do so, madam,’ he answered at last in a dubious tone, ‘it would only prejudice your case in the end before the eyes of the jury. Everybody knows I’ve been retained for the defence; it’s in all the papers; it’s the fact of the moment. Should I withdraw now, without reason assigned, it’d raise a presumption that there’s something very irregular the matter. People will say you’ve insisted upon having the case conducted on some impossible basis that my professional honour wouldn’t allow me to accede to.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Linda answered firmly, gazing hard at him still. ‘It matters but little to me what people say.’ She shuddered slightly; then she added the very thought that was passing through her mind. ‘I’d rather be found guilty and suffer for it,’ she went on, ‘than owe my escape to any mere legal argument. I don’t want to be acquitted. I want it proved and shown that I’m entirely innocent.’ She looked at him steadily once more. ‘For a woman in distress,’ she said, with a tremor in her voice, ‘you will surely, surely grant this favour?’

  The eminent Q.C. couldn’t resist that look or that tremulous trill. She was the handsomest client he’d ever had to deal with.

  ‘Very well,’ he said slowly, turning over ways and means in his own mind. ‘It’s a difficult thing to arrange — unprofessional, very; but still, for your grace’s sake, I don’t mind arranging it ... though I’m afraid,’ he added, after an awkward pause, ‘you may see cause in the future to regret your precipitancy.’

  ‘I think not,’ Linda answered, with profound conviction. ‘I have good grounds for what I do. I don’t value life so much that I prefer it to honour. If I’m acquitted at all, I prefer to owe my acquittal to those who know me for what I am. And if I’m found guilty, I can die all the more easily for knowing myself innocent.’

  ‘By George, sir!’ the distinguished Q.C. said, an hour later, to his old friend Mr. Walberswick, the eminent solicitor, ‘that woman’s a wonder. I never saw her equal. She’d make her fortune on the stage if she could strike that attitude that she said it with over again. I’d marry her myself to-morrow — hang me, if I wouldn’t! — if I were a single man, and risk the morphia, supposing she was at large to marry, which she’ll never be again, poor soul! for all her beauty. But, for the life of me, Walberswick, when she stood up to me like that, and fixed me with her big black eyes, I couldn’t refuse to let her have her own foolish way about the matter.’

  And as soon as he had left her room, in fact, Linda sat down at the table by herself, and indited a letter from the very depths of her heart to the one best friend she had left in England:

  ‘Holloway Gaol, Tuesday morning.

  ‘Dear Mr. Harrison,

  ‘Do you remember, years ago, when you took me to hear that case where the burglar was involved, you said to me, as we were leaving the court: “How much harm a man can do by throwing dust in the eyes of a jury like that, and turning such wretches loose to prey upon humanity! When I think of it, I’m sorry I ever was called.” And I answered you back: “Yes; but how much good a man may do, on the other hand, in helping to save some innocent person from condemnation when all the world’s against him! Some day, perhaps, you’ll get such a chance; and then you’ll not be sorry you became a barrister.” Well, the chance has come now. Will you accept it, and save me? I can see Mr. Mitchell Hanbury, who was to have conducted my case, doesn’t believe in my innocence. I’ve asked him as a favour to give up his brief, and he’s very kindly consented to do so. Will you take it up instead? If you will, communicate at once with Walberswick and Garrod, and come at your earliest convenience to see me here.

  ‘Yours ever sincerely,

  ‘Linda Powysland.’

  As she laid down her pen and shut her eyes for a second, a thought suddenly struck her. It was a reminiscence of that trial, so long, long ago. Dreamily, dreamily, the scene recurred to her in a mental picture. She saw it all — judge, jury, and prisoner. But one face stood out from all the faces in the court, wan, frail, and interesting. With a flash of intuition she remembered now where she had seen her maid, Elizabeth Woodward, before — that mysterious maid who evaporated so mysteriously. Her face was the face of the girl called Pomeroy, who gave evidence at the trial in the burglar’s favour.

  Could the girl have anything to do, she wondered vaguely, with this awful episode of the morphia in Bertie’s barley-water?

  CHAPTER XLII.

  MR. ROPER AT HOME.

  On the self-same day when these things were happening in high aristocratic and legal circles, Mr. Arthur Roper, the head of another and opposed profession, sat in a familiar room, where he had often sat before, with Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy, and endeavoured to still that impressionable young lady’s excited nerves by his usual prescription of a thimbleful of brandy.

  ‘It won’t do, Bess, my girl,’ Mr. Roper was observing thoughtfully, as he poured out the thimbleful into a tall soda-glass; ‘it won’t do to go putting yourself into a tantrum like this, all about nothing, for I’m not going to let you go; that’s flat. Here I’ve got you, and here you shall stop. Vous y êtes: vous y resterez. Not for twenty thousand Duchesses, however injured and innocent, am I going to risk my precious neck, and my equally precious liberty, by allowing you to go out on such a wild-goose errand.’

  Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy looked up from the sofa, where she was lying at full length, with a fierce red spot in her pallid cheek, and cried out piteously:

  ‘Oh, Arthur, Arthur! I’ve always served you well, and treated you like a lady. If you’ll let me go this once, I’ll manage to save her without ever exposing you.’

  ‘No, my dear, I won’t let you go,’ Mr. Roper replied, pouring himself out a thimbleful in his turn (very imperial measure), and filling it up from the syphon by his side with a brimming dose of potash-water. ‘You’re safe where you are — extremely safe; and if once I let you well out of my sight, there’s no knowing what mischief you mayn’t be up to. You see, you’re so volati
le. It’s all very well your saying you’ll manage to save her without risk of exposing me,’ and Mr. Roper took a long and steady pull at the diluted thimbleful; ‘but when once you begin communicating with the police, or the injured innocents, who’s to tell where on earth the thing may lead you to? That’s what I look at. You mean well, of course. You always do mean well. I grant you that — and I’ve always given you credit for it. I’ve always said there isn’t one of ’em, all round, I can trust like you. But that’s no reason I should let you go and run both our heads against the stone wall of Scotland Yard. If once you start giving evidence in this case there’ll be no stopping it. It may run to anything — it may run to Marwood. You’re known to the police as an associate of common thieves and receivers. You’re known as one of the most expert confederates in London. You’re known as the companion of that distinguished criminal, the gentleman burglar.’ He drew himself up. ‘Very well, then; if once the police catch hold of you, they’ll mark us both down: and after that what’ll be the end of us?’

  ‘Oh, Arthur,’ the girl cried, trying to rise from the sofa, but evidently too weak to stir from her place, ‘I must go! You must let me. I can’t see that dear good woman hanged for a crime she’s as innocent of as an unborn baby.’