Next morning, Saturday, after breakfast, a very subdued Jimmy and Mollie broke the news of their formal engagement. To both of them the events of overnight, remembered in the prosaic day, seemed curiously out of perspective. They had, they decided, "gone off the deep end"; and, being rather casual young people, left it at that, content to enjoy the happiness which their emotional plunge had brought them.
Jimmy, of course, changed his original plan of returning to town by the evening train. The usual notice for the "Daily Telegraph" was drafted, Clyst Fullerford and the baronet communicated with in two conventional letters, and the inevitable bottle of champagne broached for luncheon.
Though Julia did not share that bottle, the engagement was like a draft of wine to her mentality. She felt that the alliance of the Wilberforces with the Fullerfords could only benefit her secret schemes; and, strong in that feeling, put all cerebral turmoils away. On Saturday afternoon, quite undisturbed by the swish and pat from the tennis-court, she worked two hours, and on Sunday morning, three.
Aliette, delighted though she was at her sister's obvious happiness (for some time past she had guessed that only her own peculiar position could be hindering Mollie's chance of matrimony), found it hard to restrain a vague jealousy, a trace of petty resentment. Soon Mollie would be a married woman. Whereas she----
And in Aliette's lover the resentment was tenfold stronger. The utter legality and social correctness of the whole procedure infuriated him. It took all his self-control to make semblance of congratulating the "lucky couple." His overnight absorption in a "vulgar murder-case" seemed absurd. Every time he looked at Aliette, graceful on the tennis-court or dignified across the dinner-table, he said to himself: "If only we could be 'engaged,' if only we could be legally married."
But Monday morning--the two men traveled to London together, leaving Julia at her anvil and the sisters surreptitiously planning trousseaux--brought back the nervous excitement of Friday night with a rush. No sooner had Ronnie arrived at Pump Court than Benjamin Bunce--a little soured by the setback suffered in the civil courts, yet tolerably optimistic about the new criminal work--informed him that Mr. John Cartwright had been on the telephone twice before ten o'clock and would be glad of a conference as soon as possible.
"It's about this shooting case at Brixton. Perhaps you've read about it, sir," confided Benjamin; and Ronnie's heart leaped at the confidence.
At twelve o'clock precisely the clerk announced the solicitor, who came in clutching an armful of the Sunday papers, which he flung down on the barrister's table with a curt "Here you are. Here's your murder at last."
For John Cartwright, John Cartwright was phenomenally moved. A man of five-and-fifty, domed of forehead, bald of pate, his black pupils--which possessed the inclination to squint--prominent under rimless eye-glasses of peculiar magnification, he had those thin, unemotional lips, those bony, unemotional hands, which are so often found in the legal profession. But to-day the unemotional lips twitched, and the bony hands were almost feverish in their excitement as they drew a battered pocket-book from the tail of a battered black coat, fumbled for an envelope, and handed it over.
"Read what's in that," said John Cartwright, "and see if it isn't a plum."
"That" turned out to be a letter from the millionaire editor of the "Democratic News," a new Sunday illustrated paper devoted almost exclusively to those readers whom unkind journalists describe, when they foregather with one another, as "the father-of-the-family public."
Bertram Standon--he had so far refused two titles and owned one Derby winner--was apparently much exercised over "this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Towers." "I feel convinced," he wrote to his friend, Sir Peter Wilberforce, Bart., who had turned the letter over to his partner, "that she is more sinned against than sinning; and in the cause of honest justice, no less than in the cause of honest journalism, I have decided that--should the coroner's court bring in a verdict of wilful murder against her or the ex-sailor, Fielding--I will put all my personal resources, and all the resources of my paper, at their disposal. Will you therefore have the case watched on my behalf, and, should the verdict go as I am afraid it will, take any steps you consider necessary."
"A stunt, I should imagine," decided Cartwright, "and not a very new stunt at that. Bottomley, you may remember, once did the same thing. Still, it may not be a stunt. Standon's a curious fellow. Sometimes his heart gets away with his brain. It certainly has in this case."
"You think Lucy Towers and Fielding guilty then?"
"Not a doubt, I should say. Still, that's not our affair. Our job is to give Standon as good a run as we can for his money. The inquest, I see, has been adjourned for a week. When it comes on again you'll have to go down."
"Can't I see the prisoners beforehand?"
"Better not, as I take our instructions."
"But we might get them off at the inquest."
"Where would Bertram Standon's stunt come in if we did?" said John Cartwright satirically, and so closed the interview.
During the week which preceded the adjourned inquest on William Towers, Bertram Standon held his journalistic hand; and--Fleet Street being momentarily occupied with the controversy of "Submarinesv.Battleships"--no further details of the tragedy became available.
Reperusing the week-end papers of an evening, it seemed to Ronnie that the case against the woman--whose likeness to Aliette waned and waned the more one scrutinized her photograph--looked black enough. Apparently she had shot her husband during an altercation in another man's room. The other man, a sailor who had lost both his arms in the war, was her cousin, and--the reports suggested--her lover.
All the same, the "vulgar murder-case" continued to excite both his personalities: the magisterial Cavendish because of a curious inward conviction--the conviction he had voiced to Wilberforce--that "the woman was no murderess": and the imaginative Wixton because if the coroner's jury found her guilty he might at last get his chance--slim though that chance appeared--of a big forensic victory.
Night after night, therefore, Caroline Staley, who, in the absence of her mistress, had relapsed into the perfect bachelor housekeeper, completely idle from ten to four, and completely assiduous for the rest of the time, left her master at work in the little sitting-room of the "ridiculous flat," studying--with his mother's own concentration--first in his red "Gibson and Weldon," and thereafter at length, the reports of Rexv.Lesbini, of Rexv.Simpson, of Rexv.Greening (in which it is definitely held that, though the sight of adultery committed with his wife gives sufficient provocation for a husband to plead manslaughter, the major accusation must hold good if the woman be only mistress of the accused), and of any other case that might, by the vaguest possibility, have some bearing on the problematic defense of Lucy Towers.
On the Saturday, Ronnie, as usual, went down to Daffadillies. Mollie had returned to Clyst Fullerford. Julia and Aliette, informed of the new work, were enthusiastic.
"It'll be a public prosecution, I suppose?" asked Julia.
"Of course. All murder cases are conducted by the director of public prosecutions. But I haven't got the brief yet."
"Not even a watching brief?" put in Aliette.
Ronnie laughed. "Where did you pick up that phrase?"
"In the newspapers, I suppose." Aliette, remembering from whose lips she had last heard the expression, blushed faintly. And next morning, Sunday, the front page of the "Democratic News" again reminded her of Hector.
Standon, nervous lest some of his titled brethren in Fleet Street should appropriate the stunt, devoted his Napoleonic leader-page to "The Quality of Mercy."
Standon dared not, of course, comment on a case which was still "sub judice," but Standon could and did dare to comment at great length on "one-sided justice," on the delays demanded by the police at inquests, on the hardships suffered by those who could not afford "our overpaid silks," and on the crying need of a "public defender."
"Our 'hanging prosecutor,'" howled Standon, "is paid by the state. Who pays for the defense of his victims? Why, even as I write, there lie in Brixton Prison a man and a woman who--for all we know--may be as innocent of the charge brought against them as I am. Next week they will be haled before the coroner. The police will have sifted every vestige of evidence against them. But who will have sifted the evidence in their defense? No one! I ask the great-hearted British people, whose generosity to the weak and unhappy never fails, whether this is justice or a travesty of justice; whether, in any properly constituted community, the very finest legal brains obtainable would not have been placed immediately and without any fee whatsoever entirely at the service of these two unfortunates, who now lie in a felon's cell, hoping against hope, if they are innocent, as I believe them to be innocent, that some public-spirited person will come forward and give them, out of mere charity, money. Money! The shame of it!! The shame of it!!!"
The "silly season," when newsprint gasps for "copy" as a drowning man for air, was already on Fleet Street; and Standon's article, duly garnished with photographs of Lucy Towers, of Bob Fielding, the ex-sailor, and of "Big Bill" Towers, started a controversy which relegated both submarines and battleships to the editorial scrap-heap.
"Mark my words," said John Cartwright, calling for Ronnie on the Tuesday morning, "the Cairns case will be nothing to this one. If by any chance you were to get Lucy Towers off, you'd be a made man."
"But surely,"--for a moment the wild idea that by some amazing piece of fortune Hector Brunton might be briefed for the prosecution crossed Ronnie's mind--"surely, if Standon's out for publicity, he'll never let you briefmefor the actual trial? He'll have one of the big guns, Marshall Hall or somebody like that."
"No, he won't." John Cartwright chuckled slyly. "Oh no, he won't. He'll make a discovery."
"A discovery?"
"Yes, a young man. 'A new light in the legal firmament--a David to slay Goliath.' That'd look well in the Democratic News.' Besides," Cartwright chuckled again, "Marshall Hall would cost them a week's advertising revenue, and you're Julia Cavendish's son."
"I've no wish to trade on my mother's reputation," said Ronnie stiffly. But, as Cartwright's car came nearer and nearer to the coroner's court, he realized that if by any possible miracle Hector Bruntonwerebriefed for the prosecution, he, Ronald Cavendish, would trade on any one's reputation rather than not be entrusted with the defense.
By the peculiar processes of the English legal machine, a man or woman on trial for murder may be required to undergo no less than three ordeals: at the coroner's court, before the magistrate, and finally at the assizes.
Even before Cartwright's car came to a standstill outside the modest building of the coroner's court at Brixton, Ronald Cavendish could see tangible effects of Bertram Standon's publicity. The two bemedaled constables at the door were surrounded by a knot of people, well-dressed for the most part, all equally anxious for admittance to the first ordeal of Lucy Towers, and all equally ready to pay modest baksheesh for the privilege. Various alert youngsters, whose living depended on the news-pictures which their wits and their hand-cameras could snap, hovered--eager for the face of a celebrity--on the pavement. A touch of the theatrical was added to this scene by two sandwich-men, parading boards with the latest slogan of the "Democratic News": "Why not a Public Defender?"
Ronald and Cartwright pushed their way to the door; and--Cartwright having shown his card--were conducted down a long passage into the exiguous court-room. The jury, all males, had already taken their chairs. The coroner, a meek, tubby mid-Victorian fellow with a rosy bald head and a hint of port wine in his rosy cheeks--was just about to sit down.
One of Cartwright's henchmen, sent on in advance, came up, whispering that he had kept them seats at the back of the room. These, unobtrusively, they took.
So far, apparently, the state--to use Standon's phraseology--had not thought it worth while to brief counsel. At the table reserved for the prosecution Ronnie saw only a black-mustached uninterested solicitor and his clerk. The solicitor for the defense, a weak-kneed, unimposing little man, sat at the table opposite, looking even more bored. Only the reporters, bent over their note-books, and the few members of the public who had by now bribed themselves into the room, seemed in any way alive to the enacting of a human tragedy.
Then the coroner whispered something to his clerk, and the prisoners were brought in.
In that moment--despite the photographs--Ronnie thought himself the victim of hallucinations. "It's a dream," he thought; "a crazy nightmare." For the accused woman, accompanied on the one side by a hatchet-faced constable, and on the other by a tall prison-wardress in the blue cloak and cap of her order, might--had it not been for the work-reddened hands, the over-feathered hat and the rusty black coat and skirt--have been Aliette's self. Complexion, figure, carriage, personality, the very voice that answered to her name, showed Lucy Towers the living, breathing double of Hector Brunton's wife. She had the same auburn hair, the same vivid eyes, the identical nose, the identical mouth. There was about her, even, that same shy dignity which, in Ronnie's eyes, distinguished the woman he loved from all other women in the world.
"Not a bad-looking wench," whispered Cartwright.
But the barrister could not answer. Sheer amazement held him speechless. He had no eyes for the other guarded figure, for the pale unshaven young man whose two coat-sleeves hung empty from his broad shoulders. As it was to be throughout the case, so now at the very first glimpse of his client, every instinct urged him to her defense. He forgot Standon, Cartwright, his own career, everything. Seeing, not a woman of the lower orders, presumably the mistress of a common sailor, but his own woman, his Aliette, Aliette on trial for her life, lone save for his aid against a hostile world, he no longer wanted even the coroner's jury to convict her. He wanted her to be free. Free!
And suddenly, he hated the law. The law--policemen, wardress, coroner, jury, the little black-haired Treasury solicitor--wanted to hang this woman, to put a greasy rope round her throat, to let her body drop with one jerk into eternity. Against her, even as against Aliette, the law was hostile. And "They sha'n't hang her," swore Ronnie. "By God, they sha'n't."
With a great effort he pulled his legal wits together and began to follow the evidence. Deadly, damning evidence it was, too. The woman, according to the police, had already confessed.
"Bob didn't do it. I did it," began the confession which a sergeant, thumbing over his note-book, read out in a toneless voice. "Bob is my cousin. He lived in the same house as me and my husband, Bill. Every afternoon I used to go and clean Bob's room for him, because he couldn't do it himself, having no arms. Bill, my husband, didn't like me going to Bob's room. He was jealous of Bob. He didn't like me giving Bob money. This morning Bill told me that if I went to Bob's room again, he would do us both in. I told him I must go and help Bob, because he couldn't feed himself proper. I went to Bob's room about half-past four. I told Bob what my husband had said, and Bob laughed about it. He told me there was an old pistol in the cupboard and that if my husband came, I could pretend to shoot him. Of course Bob was joking. I got him a cup of tea. I was helping him drink the tea when my husband came in. Bill was very angry. He said he was going to thrash Bob, and then thrash me. I got very frightened, and thought of the pistol. Bill had his stick in his hand. I thought he was going to hit Bob with the stick, so I ran to the cupboard. I found the pistol and pointed it at Bill. I told him not to touch Bob. He said, 'That pistol's not loaded. You can't frighten me.' Bob said, 'Don't be a fool, Bill; it is loaded.' I thought Bill was going to strike Bob, so I pulled the trigger. I'm not sorry I killed Bill because I thought he was going to do Bob in. I love Bob very much."
"I love Bob very much." As those last words fell, heavy for all their tonelessness, on the hot hush of the crowded room, Ronald Cavendish knew--with the instinct of the born criminal lawyer--that coroner, jury, and public had already decided on their verdict. He could read condemnation, abhorrence, fear, in every eye that stared and stared at the pale forlorn creature seated motionless between her jailors. "The sailor was her lover," said those condemning eyes. "That was why she killed her rightly jealous husband." But for the armless man whose lips, as he listened, writhed in pain, those eyes held only pity.
Cartwright's voice whispered to his clerk, "You'll get a copy of that, of course," and the inquiry went on.
The police produced Bob Fielding's revolver, the blood-stained bullet, the empty cartridge-case, a plan of the room where the crime had been committed, Bob Fielding's navy record. The black-mustached solicitor called witnesses who had heard the shot, witnesses who had seen the body, one witness, even, who was prepared to swear the crime premeditated.
"More than once I've heard her say," swore Maggie Peterson, a frowzy, blowzy creature whose hands showed like collops of raw meat against her blowzy skirt, "that she wished Bill was dead. And there's others as heard her besides me."
In the case of Lucy Towers, the weak-kneed unimposing solicitor for the defense reserved his cross-examination, but for Fielding, to Ronnie's surprise, he put up a most spirited fight; and despite the prosecution's every effort to implicate the sailor as accessory to the shooting, the jury refused to give a verdict against him. "As if," decided the unimaginative jury, "armless men could fire pistols."
But Lucy Towers they found guilty of murder. "And quite rightly," said John Cartwright, as the woman--with a faint smile in the direction of her released cousin--was led from the room.
"All the same, mater, I'll swear that--in intention--Lucy Towers is innocent."
It was Sunday afternoon at Daffadillies, and ever since his arrival Ronnie had been harping on the same topic. But Ronnie found his womenfolk hard to convince. In their eyes, as in the eyes of the public, Fleet Street's report of the inquest, and more particularly Maggie Peterson's evidence, branded Lucy Towers irrevocably murderess.
"Rubbish!" said Julia--it was one of her "good" days--"Rubbish! She's guilty, and she'll either hang or go to jail for life."
"That would be an outrage," answered Ronnie gravely.
"Why?" The novelist laughed. "Lucy Towers shot her husband. She'll never get over that point. Not in England, anyway. In France it's just possible that a sentimental jury would give her their verdict. We, thank heaven, do not indulge in that sort of perverted justice."
Aliette reluctantly sided with Julia.
"But, of course, man," said Aliette, "of course, I'm sorry for the poor creature. Still, whatever her husband did, she had no right to shoot him."
"Not even in self-defense?"
"No, not even in self-defense."
"In defense of an armless man, then?" countered Ronnie; and, so countering, saw in one vivid flash of insight his one and only chance of victory should Cartwright give him the brief.
"There is always," says Bertram Standon in his book "How I Fought Fleet Street," "a psychological news-moment. To be premature with news is even worse than to be dilatory with it. The editor who knows whennotto publish is worth his weight in gold."
In the Towers-public defender stunt, the proprietor of the "Democratic News" backed his maxim to the limit. Clean through a newsless August, and well into a newsless September, he stirred the pool of the controversy he had started; whipped up every ripple of public interest to a wave of excitement over the guilt or innocence of Lucy Towers; but gave no hint of the rope he, Standon the Magnificent, intended to pull when finally the last act of the great drama should be launched upon London.
Even Ronnie, chafing for his chance, could ascertain no detail of the magnate's intention. Cartwright, pumped whenever etiquette allowed it, only beamed, "Wait and see!" Jimmy, who must have known something, had disappeared into Devonshire. At her second ordeal, the trial before the magistrate, Lucy Towers--still represented by the same unimposing solicitor--reserved her defense and was formally committed for trial at the Old Bailey.
Meanwhile Julia Cavendish worked on.
Physically and mentally, as day followed September day, Ronnie's mother felt well--better, indeed, than at any other period of her illness. The weapon of her forging grew sharp and sharper under her hand.
Despite the realization, every time she set pencil to paper, that the candle of her life was burning remorselessly to its socket, that her mind and her body must alike expire at task's completion, she experienced no fear. Her brain, rapt in the creative ecstasy of Julia Cavendish, living novelist, regarded Julia Cavendish, dying woman, from a point of view of the coolest detachment.
Outwardly, to her watchers, to Ronnie, nurse, Aliette, and Mrs. Sanderson, she played a part; the part of the convalescent. That they, in their ignorance, should believe the part she played to be real, gave to her detachment a whimsical and peculiar happiness.
And always in those days the illusion of immortality sustained her. She used to think, lying weary of work on her great bed: "Like Horace, I shall not utterly die. Dying, I shall leave my Ronnie this sword of the written word. What greater proof of love and service could any son or any god require?"
For now, almost at the end of her race with death, Julia Cavendish knew the conviction of Godhead. The priest-hoisted sectarian idol of her middle years lay shattered into a thousand fragments. In its stead was a spiritual Presence, all-pervading, all-comprehending, all-pardoning: an Individual of Individuals, to whom, freed from the slave-allegiance of the formal churches, each unhampered soul must fight its own unhampered way: a Soul of Souls who--despising no man-made creed--yet demanded more than any creed made of man, even the courage to look on life and death and Himself alike fearlessly.
But to that Godhead the soul of Aliette Brunton had not yet come. Her second honeymoon-time was over; Daffadillies no longer "Joyous Gard"; Ronnie no more the single-minded lover of July. Between them, like a wraith, hovered a man's ambition.
And, "If only--if only I could be with child," thought Aliette. "If only there could be given me one tiny mite of love--one human atom to be wholly mine." For always now--as it seemed--Ronnie and Ronnie's mother grew less and less dependent on her affection. To each was their work: to her only the waiting.
Ronnie's nerves, Ronnie's chafing after success, reminded her of Hector, of the Hector she had married. Every Monday morning, as she drove with him down the odorous country roads to West Water, his talk would be of Lucy Towers: "She's innocent, Alie. I'll swear she's innocent"; "If only I can get that brief, I'll be a made man"; "A made man, I tell you; Cartwright said so."
Rushing back to Daffadillies she used to think: "I'm selfish, selfish. I mustn't stand between him and his career. I must help him--help both of them." But at Daffadillies, demanding no help, resolute over her desk, sat Julia; and Aliette, looking up at the magnolia-sheathed window, would feel lonely; lonelier than ever before; so lonely that not even Ronnie's letters could console her through the desert week.
Yes! even his letters seemed less loving. Through every line of them she could feel the pulse and surge of a new desire--of the desire for success--which, if gratified, must leave her lonelier yet. Once she had cherished his letters at her breasts. But now her very breasts were a reproach; a reproach of childlessness. Once, laying her head among the pillows, she had dreamed of him beside her. But now, every night, her pillows were wet; wet with tears. Strange terrors tore her in the nighttime. She dreamed herself utterly outcast--the woman reproached of her own children--mother indeed, but mother-in-shame.
And then suddenly, a bare fortnight before the reopening of the Central Criminal Courts, Ronnie's dreams came true. John Cartwright himself brought round the brief, the long taped document marked on the outside:
Central Criminal Court.Session October.Rexv.Towers. Brief for the Defense.Mr. Ronald Cavendish.50 gns. Conference 5 gns.Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, Norfolk Street.
Central Criminal Court.Session October.
Rexv.Towers. Brief for the Defense.
Mr. Ronald Cavendish.50 gns. Conference 5 gns.
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, Norfolk Street.
"Standon jibbed a bit at that fifty," chuckled John. "He said you ought to take the case for nothing, considering the publicity he's going to give you."
"Oh, did he?" Ronnie laughed; but his nerves were quivering. "My whole career," he thought. "Riches--success--fame. It's all in my own hands now. Standon thinks he's overpaid me, does he? Perhaps he has. But I'll give him a run for his money. Fight! By Jove, I'll fight every foot, every inch of the way."
"I shall want an order to see the prisoner," he went on. "And, look here, if Standon's people can find out----" The cautious voice dropped; so that Benjamin Bunce, in the outer office, heard only a vague drone of talk.
"That'll be all right," answered the solicitor; and two days later a very different Ronnie caught the Saturday afternoon train to West Water.
"I'll get her off," he told Julia and Aliette, seated at tea under the cedar. "I'll get her off--or die in the attempt. This is my chance, I tell you. My big chance at last!"
"Optimist!" Julia laughed, a little wearily. "How can you 'get her off'? As far as I can see there's nothing in the woman's favor except that she's a little like our Aliette."
"A little like her! Mater, it's amazing. When I saw her yesterday, in that wretched place at Brixton, I could have sworn itwasAlie." And he went on talking, talking, talking of "his chance" till the sun sank behind the cedar-tree; till--Julia, utterly tired out, having been carried into the house--Aliette interrupted him with, "I've been rather worried about her this week. Don't you think we might have Sir Heron down again?"
"We might see what she's got to say about it in the morning," answered Ronnie; but next morning, Sunday, the "Democratic News" drove all thoughts save one from his mind.
At long last, Bertram Standon had launched his journalistic thunderbolt. "Shall Lucy Towers hang?" howled Bertram Standon. "Never--if she be innocent--while we can prevent it. Never--if she be innocent--while there's a dollar in our purse or a sense of pity in our hearts. Let the state pour out the taxpayers' money like water--let the bureaucrats brief their 'hanging prosecutor' if they will. We, so far failing in our efforts to secure the appointment of a public defender, have briefed--out of our own pocket--a defender for Lucy Towers, a young man, an untried man, but a man in whom both we and the unfortunate woman in whose defense he will rise at the Old Bailey have the most unbounded confidence. And who is this young man? He is Ronald Cavendish--son of a woman who is known wherever the English language is spoken, of Julia Cavendish, our greatest woman novelist."
And squeezed away in the "stop press," so inconspicuous that Julia, who did not see the papers till tea-time, was the first of the three to notice it, stood the news: "Brixton Murder. Saturday night. The Crown has briefed Mr. Hector Brunton, K.C., for the prosecution of Lucy Towers."
Hector Brunton sat alone in his chambers at King's Bench Walk. Within the dusty book-littered room brooded silence. From without, from under trees already browning for a hint of autumn, sounded the occasional tup-tup of feet on the flagstones, the occasional staccato of a raised voice. The noises fretted Brunton, distracting his attention from the multitudinous papers prepared by the director of public prosecutions in the case of Rexv.Towers, which stood piled on his ink-stained desk. "I'm getting jumpy," he thought, turning from the signed and sealed findings of the coroner's jury, through the verbatim reports of the proceedings before the magistrate, to the actual indictment.
Concentrating, the K.C. reread the words of that indictment.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURTThe Kingv.Lucy Towers
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT
The Kingv.Lucy Towers
Lucy Towers is charged with the following offense:
Statement of Offense: Homicide.
Particulars of Offence: Lucy Towers on the fifth day of July, in the County of Middlesex, murdered her husband, William Towers, by shooting him with a revolver.
Reading, an expression almost of mania flickered across Brunton's face. Behind the words of the indictment, his mind visualized the actual crime: the woman, some blowzy Messalina of the slums lusting horribly for a mutilated lover: the lover, a puppet in her adulterous arms: the husband, shot down in cold blood because he dared to come between the woman and her desires.
A fitting client--thought Brunton--for this other adulterer, this Ronald Cavendish with his gutter-press backing, to defend. But he would defend her in vain!
The K.C.'s long fingers prodded among the papers. Ever since the Cairns case, he had derived--subconsciously--a satisfaction, a secret chop-licking satisfaction, from his title of "hanging prosecutor." It was as though, harrying Mrs. Cairns to her death, he had taken his revenge on all women. And he thought: "Hilda Cairns escaped my rope. Lucy Towers shall not escape it."
Concentrating again, he reread the entire evidence. Outside it grew darker--silent. He switched on the opal-shaded reading-lamp; and sent David Patterson home. It was good--good to be alone with this chess-game of death: Messalina for its queen, his brain the mover of those pawns which would sweep her from the board.
Brunton's gray pupils shrank to pin-points. There were flaws, flaws in the evidence. The chess-board, as prepared by the solicitors for the Crown, lacked one pawn; the pawn of premeditation. Given himself, with his gift of oratory, to defend her, Lucy Towers might escape the black-cap sentence of the murderess.
Now the K. C.'s brain took the other side of the chess-board. He played the queen against himself; played her to the stalemate of "manslaughter." That would be Cavendish's gambit; a reduction of the charge.
But could Cavendish succeed?
For a long time Hector Brunton sat motionless, brooding; a cruel figure in the green glare of the desk-light. Then he drew the proof of Maggie Peterson's evidence from the paper pile; and, recasting it word by word, saw the rope tighten, tighten round his victim's neck, saw her drop feet first through the sliding floor.
God! but it would be good--good to know Cavendish beaten; to know him as incapable of defending this woman as of defending that other.
And at that, abruptly, the K.C.'s concentration snapped. The Furies were on him again, lashing at his loins, lashing him to blood-frenzy. He sprang to his feet; and his chair crashed backward as he sprang. This woman, this Lucy Towers, must hang. Hang! Between him and his enemy, between him and the man whose body possessed Aliette, she, the Messalina of the slums, stood for a symbol. Destroying the one, he would destroy all three. This was his chance; his chance for revenge.
Vengeance at last! Too long Aliette and Cavendish had eluded him--eluded the torturer.
God! If only he could torture Aliette; torture her, not as he would torture this other woman when she stood before him in the witness-box, but physically. Of what avail was the law--the law that had reprieved Hilda Cairns from the rope, that left Aliette to revel unpunished in the arms of her paramour--the law that gave him, the wronged husband, no remedy for his wrongs save to set the woman who had wronged him free--free to marry her paramour, to flaunt herself as her paramour's wife before an uncensorious world?
The Furies were howling at him: "Don't set her free, Hector Brunton. Don't set her free! Get her back, Hector Brunton! Make her come back to you! Make her submit--submit her cold unyielding body to your hot desires. Make her your slave, your puppet--as the armless man was puppet of the woman you have sworn to hang."
With a great shock of self-disgust, of self-realization, Aliette's husband controlled his distraught brain. But his loins still quivered to memory of the lash; sweat beaded his forehead; his hands, as he lifted the overset chair, felt hot and clammy on the polished rail. For months he had succeeded in forgetfulness; in chasing the Furies from his mind. Work had helped him to forget--and Renée, Renée with her red and riotous hair, her facile, faithless sensuality. Other women too--facile, unfastidious.
Christ! but he was tired of it all. Tired! Work and women, women and work--month after month, the same eternal treadmill! Now he was weary; wearied alike of his work and his women. Remained in him only the one desire; the desire for vengeance. That desire he would satisfy. And after that?
What did it matter? He, Hector Brunton, knew the hollowness of all desires. Even in success, even in hatred, even in vengeance, could be no enduring satisfaction.
A great mood of self-pity submerged his mind. Fame, riches, every fruit of his up-reaching--he had won. And the choicest fruits left only a bitterness in his mouth. How could a man enjoy those fruits in loneliness?
Christ! but he was lonely--lonely. He hadn't even a friend. Not one single friend with whom to take counsel! Not one solitary being in all the world who would listen--as a friend listens--to---to the still, small scarce-articulate voice which had begun to whisper in Hector Brunton's soul.
That voice, the still small voice of conscience, was whispering now. "Cruel," it whispered; "cruel. Set her free. Set her free!"
Heavily Hector Brunton sat him down at his desk. His gray pupils stared vacantly at the light. He saw two faces in the light: his wife's face, torture-pale; and the face he imagined Lucy's, heavy-jowled, animal, yet with a hint of soul behind the animal eyes.
The two faces seemed to be pleading with him, pleading for pity. "We have known love," they pleaded, "but you--how should you understand?"
The faces vanished; and in their stead he saw Renée--insatiate, submissive, her mouth still upcurled for his. "Iam love," said the mouth of Renée.
But always the still small voice of conscience whispered in Hector's soul. "Between love and lust," whispered the voice, "between the good and the bad that is in you, between the cruelty that cries for vengeance and the understanding which is pity--choose!"
For Ronald Cavendish, the fortnight which intervened between his briefing and the Monday of the trial passed like an hour. All that he had ever hoped for seemed at last within reach: and his mind, concentrating, could spare no minute for introspection. Even the personal factor, that Brunton would be his opponent, dwindled into insignificance when compared with the supreme issue of winning; even his belief in his client's spiritual guiltlessness seemed paltry before the difficulties of proving her technically innocent. Yet the belief was there, keying him to effort, making him utterly oblivious of his every-day surroundings.
But all that fortnight Aliette scarcely slept. Dozing or waking, two figures--the figures of Ronnie and of Hector--haunted her thoughts: she saw them, gowned and wigged, fiercely terrible, at death-grips for the soul of a woman--a woman whose face showed white and tormented in the dock--a woman who was no longer Lucy Towers, but herself. Sometimes, too, behind the woman in the dock, she saw Dennis--her dream-son--Dennis whose eyes, Ronnie's own blue eyes, stared accusingly at the mother who had born him to shame.
And all that fortnight, fearful only of interruption, Julia Cavendish worked on. The leather manuscript-box was nearly full. Almost, the weapon of her mind's conceiving had been forged sharp to the point. The watchers at her bedside--even her own son--were no longer quite real. She saw them as dream-folk; queer dear people who ministered to her comforts in the hours when her brain, weary of word-fashioning, rested awhile. Those dream-folk--she knew--all except Ronnie, were growing anxious, doubtful of the part she played to them. They wanted her to send for the "medicine-man." But the "medicine-man" could not help. His part was done. Only courage could help her now--courage and the certainty of that all-pervading Presence, of the Godhead who, watching her as she ran her painful race with physical death, understood.
Vaguely--when her son came to bid her au revoir--Julia Cavendish realized the Presence hovering about the familiar room. Distant church-bells told her that it was a Sunday, that Ronnie must catch the afternoon train for London within the hour.
"Just looked in to see if you were all right, before I toddled off, mater," he said; and hearing his voice she yearned, with a foreknowledged longing acuter than any physical pain, to abandon the part she played for him, to tell him--for his own sake--the truth. But the Presence sustained her; so that she fought back the betraying truth; so that she answered him, gaily, casually, "I'm feeling like a two-year-old, son"; so that she sat upright in her bed--oh, for the comfort to have felt his arms about her shoulders!--and listened for twenty agonized minutes to his talk of "the case."
"You must wish me luck, mater," he said, as he rose to go. "It'll be a terrific fight; but I feel, somehow, that I'm going to win."
"Youwillwin," she answered. "Don't worry about me. I'll be all right. And remember--if by any chance the verdict goes against you--that no man can do more than his best."
Yet after he had kissed her good-by, after the door had closed gently behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the slanting sun-rays of that quiet room, even the knowledge thatshehad done her best, even the conviction of Godhead, failed to comfort Julia Cavendish, mother.
The Central Criminal Court of London, though still known as the "Old" Bailey, is the modernest of modern edifices; domed stone without, polished marble within. Were it not for the uniformed police on guard at its narrow portal, and for the particular legal atmosphere which pervades it even out of session-time, you might at first glance take the place for a club-house or a bank building. From the tessellated spaciousness of its ground floor, a central staircase, broad between marble balusters, up-sweeps to an immense landing where witnesses, constables, and barristers foregather outside the various oaken doors which lead into the oak-paneled court-rooms. Below are the cells.
There is nothing theatrical about the Old Bailey. To the highly sensitized mind its aura is the aura of a museum. The very statues which garnish it seem aloof from actual life. Yes here London stages her tensest human dramas; here England dispenses her ultimate justice.
But there was no sense of justice in the mind of Hector Brunton, K.C., as, scornful alike of the crowd and the cameramen, he strode bullheaded through that narrow portal; acknowledged with perfunctory hand the salutes of the constables; and pushed his way up the stairs, diagonally across the landing to the robing-room.
Deliberately the man had made his choice. For the sake of his vengeance on Cavendish, Lucy Towers must die the death. Righteous or unrighteous, he, the "hanging prosecutor" whom no prisoner had yet eluded, meant to secure his verdict. His mind, as he adjusted his robe, his wig and tapes, was the actor's mind, resolute in illusion. Actor-like, his thoughts discarded all truth that might tell in the victim's favor. Actor-like, his thoughts clung to their part; the part which should prove conclusively that this woman, this Lucy Towers, had shot her husband of malice aforethought and for love of another man.
And yet, making his early way through the crowd towards the door of the court--he had no wish to meet with Cavendish face to face in the robing-rooms,--a vision of his wife flashed for one vivid instant through the K.C.'s mind. In that vivid instant, conscience troubled him again. "Was he being cruel to Aliette?" asked conscience. "Was he planning yet another cruelty toward this woman he had never seen, this Lucy Towers?"
"Cavendish defends them both," he thought; and stifled the voice of conscience.
Ronald, when Caroline Staley woke him on that first morning of the trial, thought neither of Hector nor of Aliette. Hardly, he thought to himself. To win--and, now that the contest so long anticipated was actually at hand, he felt that not to win outright would be disaster--seemed almost impossible, the forlornest of hopes.
Dressing, breakfasting, making his way to Putney Bridge Station, his mind held only the picture of his client. Visited overnight, the woman--whose likeness to his own woman never failed to strike a responsive chord in Ronnie's heart--had afforded no help. Curiously resigned to an adverse verdict, curiously incurious as to whether that verdict should be murder or manslaughter, the tense clamor of the newspapers and the tense pleading of her counsel left her alike unmoved.
"I'll go into the witness-box if you like, sir," she had consented. "But I don't see what good it'll do. I can only tell them the truth. And I told them that at the police-station. I never was a liar, sir. I did it to save Bob."
"I did it to save Bob!" Those words still echoed in the barrister's ears as he emerged from the gloom of Temple station into sunlight, and turned down the Embankment toward his chambers, where--Bunce, brief and witnesses for the defense being already on their way to the court--John Cartwright alone awaited him.
The solicitor was in his gloomiest mood, thoroughly convinced of Lucy's guilt.
"Unless Brunton fails on the issue of premeditation," he said, "we haven't got a dog's chance. Even if he does fail on that point, she'll get seven years."
At that, poignantly, the human element of the case came home to Ronnie. It seemed to him as though he saw Aliette's self imprisoned, beating out her heart--day after day, month after month, year after year--against the cold walls and the cold bars of a prison-house.
"Not if I can help it," he said hotly.
"Have you decided to put her in the box? H. B.'s a holy terror for cross-examination."
"Of course I shall put her in the box. I'm not afraid of H. B.! Let's be off."
John Cartwright--thinking the tactics hopeless--would have protested; but, realizing from the other's demeanor how much this case meant to him, realizing (Ronnie's matrimonial position was common gossip in the offices of Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright) more than a little of the secret drama which underlay the public, he kept his own counsel all the way to the Old Bailey. "At any rate," thought John Cartwright, "Standon will get the show he's paying for."
It was fifteen minutes to ten by the time their car made Holborn; ten to when it drew up at the door of the court. Already they could see the forerunners of a crowd. Public sympathy, astutely roused by Standon, had enlisted itself on the side of the accused and of her counsel. In any other country, the little knot of people would have cheered. As it was, they only stared sympathetically while the cameras clicked and the two men disappeared from view.
"I'll see to the witnesses," said Cartwright, as the lift jerked them to the first floor. "You go and get dressed."
In the robing-room Ronnie found Hugh Spillcroft.
"I'm at a loose end," said that genial youth, "so I've come to watch the show. Going to win?"
"If I can," retorted Ronald grimly. "But it's going to be a devil of a job."
They passed out of the robing-room, and threaded their way across the crowded landing toward No. 2 court. By the outer door, its oak and glass guarded by two enormous constables, stood Bob Fielding and various other witnesses. The young sailor's face was gray. His whole body, even the two empty sleeves of the shabby coat, twitched.
"You'll do your best for her, sir?" he stammered. "You'll do your best for Lucy?"
"I'll do my utmost, Fielding," answered the tall, dignified man in the wig and gown, the man who was no longer either Aliette Brunton's lover or Julia Cavendish's son, but only an advocate whose brain, keyed to contest-pitch, resented any and every unnecessary strain on its concentration.
With the various other people who tried to detain him, more especially with Benjamin Bunce and Bertram Standon's secretary, Ronnie's manner was abrupt, irritable to the point of discourtesy. Knowing that he would need it all, he husbanded his self-control against the inevitable face-to-face meeting with Brunton.
"Time to toddle in," reminded Spillcroft.
One of the constables opened for them. Halting just inside the outer door, Ronnie could see, through the glass panels of the inner, the back of the great dock, light oak below, glass-and-iron paneled above; and beyond the dock, on the left of it, the already-occupied jury-box and the projecting canopy of the judge's dais. Then the outer door closed, the inner door opened, and they made their way in.
The domed court was a sight, every seat taken. There were ten tiers of curious heads behind the dock. On the low benches between dock and witness-box; in the high gallery opposite; and even below the gallery, among the bewigged counsel who crowded the benches reserved for the bar, lay spectators packed and packed. At the press table, the reporters sat so close to one another that their right arms could scarcely reach their note-books. But Ronnie had no eyes for the crowd; his eyes were all for his enemy.
Brunton sat very still, like a mastiff on watch, in the far corner of the front bench just below the three unoccupied thrones of the judge's dais. The gray eyes under the gray horsehair, fixed on the jury as though to hypnotize them, did not deign to notice the entrance of counsel for the defense. Nevertheless, Ronnie, taking his seat below the dock at the opposite end of the bench, knew instinctively that Brunton was aware of him.
Sitting, the barrister could no longer see his enemy. Henry Smith-Assher's vast Pickwickian back blocked his view. But the mental vision still remained; and with it, strengthening the will to win, came the first fierce gush of personal hatred.
"His lordship's late," whispered Spillcroft.
Ronnie, controlling himself, settled his back comfortably against the oak; glanced through his brief; and glanced up covertly from his brief at the jury. There were nine men and three women in the box. The men looked to be ordinary orderly citizens, apparently of the shop-keeping class, their faces bovine, their eyes unimaginative. Of the women, two were hard-featured, sour-faced spinsters whom he felt instinctively would be difficult to convince, and the third a fat, good-natured matron of five-and-forty, with a string of false pearls round her ample neck and a feathered hat on her jaunty head. He decided not to challenge any of them.
The click of an opening door disturbed further scrutiny; and a moment later there appeared, on the right of the judge's dais, a man's figure in full court dress--silk stockings on his legs, lace ruffle at his throat, and sword at his side--who ushered in his lordship, robed in the scarlet and ermine of full ceremonial, and, following his lordship, two portly creatures in aldermanic robes, chains of office round their necks.
"Silence!" called the crier of the court.
Rising to his feet, Ronnie felt the tense pull of the crowd. The crowd expected him to speak; expected oratory of him. Supposing he were to fail them! The tongue felt like leather in his mouth. His mind blurred. He forgot every detail of the case. To sit down again, to fumble among the papers on the desk in front of him, was positive relief.
The crier of the court began swearing in the jury. One by one the nine men and the three women rose from their places, answering to their names and to the quaint old formula: "You shall well and truly try, and true deliverance make, between our sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence." Last of all, from the back of the box, answered the fat and friendly matron.
"Quel chapeau!" whispered Hugh Spillcroft from behind; and a second later, as it seemed to Ronnie, he heard the sound of feet moving up the steps below the dock; and caught sight of Lucy's face pale above the pale oak.
Her gaze sought his trustfully; and at that precise moment Ronnie's ears, nervously attuned, were aware of the faintest gasp behind him, of the whistling breath-intake of a man shocked beyond self-control. Turning his head, he saw Brunton; Brunton---gray eyes staring, jowl a-twitch, teeth bit to the underlip.
To Brunton, startled almost out of his wits by the unexpected apparition; to Brunton with his preconceived idea of the blowzy slum-woman, it was as though Aliette herself stood before him; as though the wraith of her had materialized, Banquo-like, to fight for Cavendish. Then, as Lucy Towers, upright between wardress and constable, proud, dignified, aloof with Aliette's own aloofness, her brown head bare, her brown eyes unflinching, her hands--small as Aliette's own--gripping the edge of the dock, smiled down at Ronnie, the last least whisper of conscience was still in the K.C.'s soul; and he swore to himself that the very likeness of this woman to the wife who had deserted him should be her doom. "Vengeance," he thought. "Vengeance indeed!"
The crier of the court was reading the indictment. "Murdered her husband--William Towers--by shooting him," read the crier; and Brunton, watching his victim as a snake watches the bird, saw that her eyes, Aliette's own vivid eyes, were still on Cavendish.
"Prisoner at the bar, do you plead guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty, my lord," came Aliette's own shy voice.
And a moment afterwards, cool, self-controlled, pitiless, deadly sure of every deadly word, the "hanging prosecutor" rose to speak.
"My lord and members of the jury"--the man was all actor now, an actor keyed to cold genius by the hot urge of suppressed rage,--"you have already heard the indictment against this woman. It is an indictment on the charge of murder, the penalty for which is death. The actual facts of the case will not, I fancy, be disputed. Let me give them to you as briefly as I can. At about six o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth of July last, a police-constable on duty in Brixton heard the noise of a revolver-shot from No. 25 Laburnum Grove, a block of working-class flats.
"Entering these flats, the constable--as he will tell you in his evidence--found, in a room on the third floor, the prisoner and a man, a certain Robert Fielding, of whom the less said the better. At their feet, a bullet-wound through his heart, lay the dead body of the prisoner's husband, William Towers. In the woman's hand was a smoking revolver, one cartridge of which--and one only--had been fired.
"The constable arrested both the man and the woman. He took them to Brixton police-station. There, Lucy Towers, entirely on her own initiative, made a clean breast of the whole business. Her confession, which you will hear, is--I shall submit--even without the other evidence in possession of the Crown, sufficient to merit the rope."
Now, pausing, Brunton grew aware of his enemy. His enemy was eying him, quietly, dispassionately. For a second his concentration failed. Then, pitiless, the deadly speech flowed on.
"Such, members of the jury, are the actual undeniable facts. The defense has entered a plea of not guilty. After you have heard my evidence--evidence which in my contention proves conclusively not only the commission of this dreadful crime, but its dreadful motive--it will be for you to decide, subject to his lordship's direction, the issue between us.
"And at this point, before I go into the question of motive, I purpose, with his lordship's permission, to give you a brief, a very brief summary of the legal definition of homicide. Our English law divides the crime of homicide into three classes: justifiable or excusable homicide, manslaughter, and murder. It is of this last that I shall ask you, after duly weighing my evidence, to convict Lucy Towers.
"Murder, let me tell you, has been very aptly defined in the few words, 'Murder is unlawful homicide with malice aforethought.' It is the existence of malice which distinguishes this crime from justifiable or excusable homicide and from manslaughter. In order, therefore, to prove to you that this woman murdered her husband, I must demonstrate, as I shall demonstrate, not only that she shot him down with a revolver--a fact which I again remind you is not in dispute--but that she shot him down in cold blood and with malice aforethought. That is to say, that she had actually planned to kill him before--long before--the fifth of July. On this point, quite apart from the point of motive, we have incontrovertible evidence."
Again Brunton paused, conscious of his opponent; again, actor-like, Brunton's part went on.
"Malice aforethought, as his lordship will direct you, entails motive. Now, what was this woman's motive? Why did she kill her husband? Had she, in killing him, some ulterior object? It is my contention," the voice rose, "that she had such an object; that this woman," one gentlemanly finger pointed accusingly at the dock, "when she killed William Towers, her wedded husband, had one object, and one object only in her mind--to free herself from him, to free herself at all and any cost. Why?
"Members of the jury, it will be my duty, my very painful duty, to answer that question by proving that this woman, this Lucy Towers, is not only a murderess but an adulteress; that she had a lover, an illicit lover--none other than Robert Fielding, the very man in whose room this crime, this atrocious crime, was committed. I think"--Brunton's eyes dropped to the brief in front of him, and he began turning over the pages of it--"that after I have read to you the confession, the voluntary confession of the prisoner, you will admit that not only the crime but its motive stands proved, and proved up to the hilt, out of her own mouth."
So far, Ronnie--chin propped on one hand, the other busy with his notes--had listened, unmoved, to his enemy's opening. But now, suddenly, as Brunton read out, emphasizing every word that might tell against her, his client's confession; as he guessed from the very looks of the jury, from the very way in which they craned forward from their box, how deep an impression those words were creating in their minds; his heart misgave him, and he glanced up, as though for confirmation of her innocence, at Lucy.
Lucy Towers was eying Brunton, not as the fascinated bird eyes the snake, but as the slandered eyes the slanderer. In the white of her cheeks, color came and went by fitful flashes. Her mouth kept opening and closing, as though to give Brunton the lie. Once, when the harsh voice mouthed the end of her confession, "I love Bob very much," she would have started to her feet had not the wardress placed a restraining hand on her arm.
But in all that crowded court only Lucy's advocate and the wardress noticed Lucy. Judge, jury, spectators--all watched the "hanging prosecutor." He, and he alone, dominated the court by the sheer amazing flow of his oratory. For now Brunton had thrown aside the legal mask; now his every word came hot from his heart, from that heart which had made its choice between mercy and vengeance.
"My lord," rang the harsh voice, "my lord, members of the jury, can any statement be more damnable, more damning that those words which I have just read to you? What need have I for eloquence, when this adulteress, this fallen woman," again his hand shot out, pointing to the prisoner in the dock, "whom my learned friend for the defense would have you find not guilty, has proved herself, out of her own mouth, Robert Fielding's strumpet? What need have I of witnesses to prove the malice, the lecherous malice which inspired this crime? What mitigation can any counsel put before you?
"Will he say that this crime was an accident? That it was an act of self-defense? Accident! This was no accident. Self-defense! This was no act of self-defense. It was murder, members of the jury, deliberate, cold-blooded murder.
"What need have I of witnesses? Yet I have witnesses--not one witness, but many witnesses--a witness who will prove to you that for weeks, for months, nay, for years before the perpetration of this crime, Robert Fielding had been amorous of his cousin--witnesses who will testify that this woman, almost since the day of her marriage, had been on the worst possible terms with her murdered husband--witnesses, unimpeachable, independent witnesses to whom she has admitted, not once but a dozen times, that she wished her husband dead.
"Members of the jury, we do not live in an age of miracles. When you know, as you already do know, that those wishes came true, and came true by her own hand--when you hear, as you will hear, of her clandestine visits, at dead of night to her lover's room--you will say to yourself, as I say to you now, 'This was no accident; no act of self-defense: this was murder, murder premotived and premeditated, the murder which our justice punishes with death.'
"A life for a life, your lordship. A life for a life, members of the jury. That is the penalty which, on behalf of the Crown, I shall demand against this woman whom counsel for the defense would have you find not guilty of any crime whatsoever."
Slowly Hector Brunton's eyes turned from the woman in the dock toward his enemy; till even Ronnie shrank before the vindictive fury in those gray and glimmering pupils.
"This is the man," muttered the voiceless soul behind those grayly glimmering eyes, "this is the man who stole your woman; the man who dares defend this other adulteress against you." But the words, the words planned overnight, never faltered on Brunton's lips. For all his fury, his legal mind, functioning automatically, missed never a point.
The clock-hands crept on and on. In the packed courtroom was no sound save the scratch of the shorthand-writers' fountain pens, the tap-tap of the gentlemanly fingers on the oak, the harsh interminable harangue. Till at last the harangue slowed to its peroration; and passion ebbed from Brunton's voice, leaving it once more cool, deadly, pitiless.
"If I," rang the cool, deadly voice, "if I, the paid advocate of the Crown, have spoken in anger, rarely it is just anger. Surely, in this England of ours, adultery which leads to murder--as this woman's adultery has led to murder--will find none to excuse, none to condone it. Surely, the quality of mercy was overstrained when another court let this woman's paramour go free.
"Members of the jury, that woman in the dock, that adulteress, shot her husband. She shot him down in cold blood, of malice aforethought and after due deliberation. It is for you, as just citizens, to see that she does not escape the uttermost penalty of her guilt."
The harsh voice ceased.
Brunton, with one last glance at the woman in the dock, a glance commingled of fear and triumph--for now, once again, he saw her as Aliette, a ghost siding with the man who had betrayed him--sat down; and Henry Smith-Assher, rising, began to call the stereotyped, commonplace evidence entrusted to a junior counsel.
Ronnie hardly listened. The production of the revolver, the testimony of the constable who had made the arrest, the plan of the room--none of these mattered. Mattered only Brunton--Brunton whose eyes never left the jury--Brunton whose deadly oratory had closed every loophole of escape save one.
But just before the luncheon interval, when the sergeant who had taken down Lucy's statement kissed the book and began his tale in the usual toneless voice of the police, Cartwright--watching counsel for the defense--saw his hands busy with the pencil; and knew that--luncheon interval over--the real fight would begin.
Usually barristers at the Old Bailey lunch communally in the mess-room; sometimes in private, with the judge. But to-day no invitation came from his tactful lordship; and, since Brunton might be in the mess-room, Ronnie elected for the near-by "George."
Emerging disrobed from the court, Hugh Spillcroft on his one side and Cartwright on his other, he was again aware of the crowd. The little knot of idlers had increased. On the opposite side of the road, newspaper placards--black on red of the "Evening Standard," black on white of the "Evening News," black on green of the "Westminster Gazette," already flaunted their slogans: "Towers Case: Speech for the Crown." "Hanging Prosecutor Opens Towers Case." "Trial of Lucy Towers Begun."
The placards worried Ronnie; they seemed to accentuate the forlornness of his cause. All through their hasty meal, snatched at a corner-table of the crowded chop-house, he felt himself growing more and more nervous, less and less confident of success. Spillcroft's conversation and Cartwright's irritated him.Theirinterest was so coldly legal. They spoke of Lucy Towers, of himself and Brunton, as men who have betted well within their means speak of race-horses.
"H. B.'ll have you on toast if he proves adultery," decided Spillcroft.
"Do as you like, of course; but I shouldn't risk putting the woman in the box," urged Cartwright. "I should plead 'manslaughter' and have done with it."
"Thanks for the suggestion," fumed Ronnie. "I thought I was being paid tofight."
"Good for you! Try one of these." Cartwright, laughing, offered him a small cigar: "Nothing like tobacco for a fighting man."
Smoking, Ronnie visualized Brunton, gray eyes staring, jowl a-twitch, teeth bit to the under lip; Brunton as he had seen him when Lucy Towers first entered the dock. And visualizing, realizing the shock that amazing likeness must have been, he could not help admiring the man. Brunton, startled at the very moment of tensest concentration, had yet managed to make the speech of his life, missing never a legal point in two hours of impassioned argument. How could he, the poor orator, compete with such a man; how prove any flaw in the "hanging prosecutor's" thesis that Lucy Towers, adulteress, shot her husband so that she might marry her paramour?
"Ten minutes to two," said Cartwright, paying the bill.