CHAPTER XV.
To say that you could have heard a pin drop in the crowded court at Stroan, when the doctor announced that he had found a bullet in the brain of poor Jem Stickels, is to understate the deathlike silence which fell upon the dense mass of listeners.
Not one man in twenty among the crowd had been prepared for this sensational disclosure, which had, indeed, been communicated to no one but the police. This new fact threw such a sudden light upon the case, thrusting out, as it did, all possibility of his having come by his death through accident, that every man and woman present needed a moment’s breathing space to grasp the new view of the situation thus abruptly presented.
In the meantime the doctor went quietly on with his evidence, much of which was technical and uninteresting to the majority. But the crowd was able to fasten on to the important facts; that the shot had been fired from behind the man, and from the right side of the road, supposing the victim to have been coming toward Stroan; that the injury could not have been self-inflicted; and the crime had been committed within a very short time of the discovery of the body.
“Can you give us any opinion, doctor, as to the length of time which must have elapsed between the firing of the shot and your inspection of the body?”
“My opinion is that death had taken place within an hour, certainly, and probably within a much shorter period.”
“Can you give us your reasons for this opinion?”
“The body was still quite warm. As it was a cold night, and the body was lying in a very open situation, the cooling process would be very rapid.”
“Can you tell us the time exactly when you made this first examination of the body, and came to this opinion?”
“It was sixteen minutes past eight when I was sent for, and I arrived at the spot where the body lay at between twenty and five-and-twenty minutes past.”
“And the body had, in your opinion, been lying there about an hour?”
“Or considerably less.”
“You would suppose, then, that death had taken place at about what time? Or is it impossible to get a closer estimate than that?”
“It is difficult to say exactly, of course. But I should be strongly inclined to put the time of death at eight o’clock, or even later.”
“At, in fact, a few minutes before the body was first discovered by the boy?”
“A very few minutes.”
There was another sensation among the listening throng.
“I should even have expected,” went on the doctor, “to hear that the boy had heard the report of a firearm.”
Every one looked towards the unhappy boy, Charles Wallett, who, having given his evidence, was now sitting in court. On the suggestion of one of the jurymen, he was called and questioned again. But he maintained, with hot blushes of confusion at the notice thus directed to him, that he had noticed no noise; that he had seen or heard nothing to attract his attention until he came upon the man lying on his face at the side of the road.
“At least—” He stopped short, and from crimson became very pale.
Then he heard a murmur in the court behind, and he began to look scared and to tremble.
“That’s right, my boy,” said the coroner, encouragingly, “think well before you answer; and then tell us everything, even the slightest thing that came under your notice.”
“Sir,” said the boy, turning red and white alternately, “I did hear something. It was just before I turned the bend and saw the man; but I never thought of it before this minute.”
“And what was that?”
“It was what I took for Mr. Wells shooting at the birds, sir. He’s always about there with his gun, and so I never give it a thought.”
There was truth on the face of this statement, drawn forth so tardily and so unwillingly. Hearing, as he said, the firing at the birds so often, the sound had no significance for him, and it had not even struck him as singular that the farmer should have been out shooting so late.
There was a shade of disappointment in the court at the idea that Jem Stickels might have been shot by accident, after all, in mistake for a sparrow. But this notion was quickly put to flight by the calling of Mr. Wells himself, who was in court, as a witness. He was never out shooting after dark, and on the previous day he had been at Canterbury, and had not returned home until past nine o’clock.
This new link in the chain of evidence, forming as it did an important clue to the exact time of Jem’s death, resulted in a little conversation between the coroner and the superintendent of police, and in the calling of Mrs. Mann as a witness.
“Your husband has told us, Mrs. Mann, that the deceased passed you on his way to the back door. And we have heard that he said he was going to have his pipe and his glass of beer. Now did you notice in which direction he went?”
“Yes, sir, I did,” answered Mrs. Mann, a nervous woman, who could not be persuaded to give her evidence except in a whisper.
“And did he go in the direction of the Blue Lion?”
“No, sir.”
There was another murmur, quickly suppressed.
“Which way did he go, then?”
“He went into the wash-house and had a wash, and then he went up to his room, which he went up by the wooden steps as is in the wash-house. And I watched him for fear he should leave his candle a-burnin’. Which he did, and so I goes up and puts it out, so as it shouldn’t burn to waste like.”
“And how long was he there?”
But to this the witness could not undertake to give a straight answer. “She couldn’t ’ardly say;” “she didn’t rightly know.” “It might be a ’alf-hour;” it might be more. She eventually admitted that it could scarcely be less.
So that it seemed now possible to fix the time of Jem’s death at a time between ten minutes to eight, which was about the earliest moment by which he could have reached the spot where he was found, and ten minutes past, which was the time at which the boy, Charles Wallett, had discovered the body.
There was an adjournment for luncheon at this point, and afterward came the supreme sensation of the day—the appearance of Nell Claris as a witness.
Tongues had been busy with her name since the crowd filed out of the court. No one could doubt the import of the questions the coroner had put to Miss Bostal. It was plain that Nell, the only person, except Clifford, who was known to have had any cause of ill-will toward the deceased man, now lay under the suspicion of being concerned in his death.
Perhaps the girl herself, when she came from the magistrate’s room into the court, was the only person present who did not realize the position in which she stood. For she alone had been absent when the searching questions were being put to her friend.
Nell made a bad impression from the very first. She was wrapped up to the eyes in a long, squirrel-lined cloak and a boa of brown fur, and she wore a large hat, which helped to hide even the outline of her face from the crowd in the court behind her. But from the glimpse which could be caught of her features as she moved hurriedly into the place pointed out to her, it was evident that her far-famed beauty was for a time under eclipse, for her complexion was blurred with crying and her blue eyes looked sunken and colorless.
All that seemed to concern her was to hide as much of her face as she could, and to give her answers so that they should be heard by as few persons as possible. Throughout the whole of her evidence she had to be admonished to “speak up,” and to answer at once and straightforwardly, instead of taking time to think out her replies, as she showed a strong disposition to do.
Altogether she was a bad witness, decidedly the worst of them all. Not even nervous Mrs. Mann gave so much trouble. If there had been no breath of suspicion of the girl before she stood in the witness’s place, her manner and her answers would have been sufficient to arouse the feeling in all those who heard and saw her give her evidence.
“You are the niece of Mr. George Claris, I believe? And you were present when the quarrel took place between the deceased and Mr. Clifford King?”
“There was no quarrel. Jem Stickels attacked him. He struck Mr. King with his knife through the window. He stabbed him.”
“And Mr. King struck him back?”
“No. Yes. At least he caught hold of him and flung him away.”
“Flung him to the ground, in fact?”
“I don’t know whether he meant to do that.”
“But, as a matter of fact, the deceased did fall to the ground, and lay there, stunned.”
“He struck his head against the ledge of the window.”
“Yes. Do you know the reason why the deceased attacked Mr. King?”
Nell made no answer.
“I am sorry to have to press for an answer. Remember, there is nothing whatever discreditable to a lady in being the object of jealousy between two hot-blooded young men. I believe it is an undoubted fact that Jem Stickels, the deceased, was jealous of Mr. King, and that it was the sight of Mr. King and you together which provoked him to attack a rival whom he regarded, rightly or wrongly, as more favored than himself.”
Nell blundered into a hasty, incoherent answer:
“No. It was not that. He didn’t. He couldn’t. It was not that he was jealous. He had no right to be jealous. I always hated Jem Stickels, and he knew it. How could he be jealous when I detested him?”
And for the first and last time in the course of her evidence Nell’s voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the court, as she uttered this terribly damaging speech.
When she had spoken, and stood staring at the coroner with wide-open blue eyes, a great wave of horror passed over the court, and the jury to a man felt sorry for her. They had all known this dissipated fisherman, they all felt the gulf of repugnance that must have existed between this refined young girl and him. And, while the conclusion was forced in upon their minds that she had taken violent means to rid herself of him and his persecution, they felt that they would have given a great deal to have been able to hush the matter up.
For while the loathing she so frankly expressed gave a reason and almost an excuse for her crime, on the other hand her fearless avowal of feeling now, when it was so greatly to her interest to hide it, seemed to show that she was in a state of mind in which she could hardly be considered responsible for her actions.
Meanwhile, however, the inquiry had to go on.
“Well, then,” pursued the coroner, getting away from the fatal subject and speaking with extra dryness to hide his own sympathy, “you went to Colonel Bostal’s house, and you and Miss Bostal went together to see Jem Stickels at his lodging to ask how he was?”
But here again Nell blundered past the opportunity thus given her for clearing her own character.
“I didn’t want to go. Miss Theodora made me go,” said she.
“Well, you went, at any rate, and you saw him, and spoke to him.”
“No; I didn’t speak to him.”
“Well, you saw him, didn’t you?”
“No; I wouldn’t look at him. I heard him; that was all.”
“You heard him tell Miss Bostal that he was going to Stroan?”
Here a frightened look passed suddenly across the girl’s face, causing the jurymen, one and all, to look at her more attentively than before.
“Yes.”
The answer was a whisper.
“And, of course, you didn’t notice whether he seemed in his usual health or not?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Of course not. Then you went back to Colonel Bostal’s house with Miss Bostal?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice the time at all? Can you tell us what time it was when you reached the house?”
“No.”
“You can’t give any idea?”
“No.”
“Not even within an hour?”
“No.”
“And when you got to the house what did you do?”
“I cried.”
“Where? In the kitchen?”
“Yes. I think so. I hardly remember.”
“Miss Bostal left you to go upstairs and mend her dress. Do you remember that?”
“No. Oh, yes, I think I do.”
“Now I don’t want to worry you, but I want you to think before you answer me. When Miss Bostal left you to go upstairs, what did you do?”
“I—I—I went into the kitchen.”
“And you cried there?”
“Yes.”
“And can you tell us about how long you sat there crying?”
“No.”
“Presently you made the tea, didn’t you?”
A pause.
The coroner went on:
“Try to recollect. It only happened last night, you know. Miss Bostal says you brought in the tea, brought it into the dining-room. Don’t you remember doing that?”
“Oh, oh, yes!”
“And did you then look at the clock? Do you remember?”
“No, I don’t remember.”
“You found Miss Bostal in the dining-room. What was she doing?”
“She was lighting the fire.”
“Yes. And you—had you been in the kitchen all the time after she left you, until you took the tea into the dining-room?”
“Yes.”
“You had not been outside the house for a moment?”
This question Nell answered promptly:
“Oh, no!”
“You are sure of that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Have you, gentlemen, any questions to ask this witness?” went on the coroner, turning to the jury.
A stout man with gray whiskers leaned forward in his seat.
“I should just like to ask Miss Claris,” he said, “whether the deceased had not used certain threats towards her? He is known to have said that he had used threats.”
The coroner looked as if he was uncertain whether he should allow this question; but Nell answered by a movement of her head in assent.
“He did use threats to you?” persisted the juryman.
“Yes, but—”
“He threatened to tell the police who it was that committed the robberies at your uncle’s house?”
Nell turned very white, and threw up at the persistent juryman a frightened glance.
“Yes. He did say that he knew.”
“And he threatened to give information?”
“I don’t think,” interrupted the coroner, “that you ought to put it like that. Threaten is hardly the word. He said he would give information, did he not?”
“Yes,” said Nell, almost inaudibly.
The juryman, offended at what he considered a snub, sat back and looked at the ceiling. Another of the jury leaned forward:
“Are you engaged to Mr. King?” asked he.
“Really, gentlemen, we must keep to the point,” protested the coroner. But Nell answered this question in a louder voice.
“I am not engaged to him,” she said, firmly.
“That will do, I think,” said the coroner, who saw that there was a strong tendency on the part of the jury to satisfy their curiosity on points quite outside the subject of inquiry.
And Nell was allowed to retire from her prominent position. Miss Bostal was waiting for her, and, with a gentle hand, she dragged the girl into a seat beside her, where little could be seen of her now flushed and frightened face.
“There is now only one more witness,” went on the coroner, addressing the jury. “It is the second medical man who helped at the post-mortem.”
“Is not Mr. King to be called?” asked one of the jurymen.
“He is unable to attend. I have a doctor’s certificate to that effect. But after the evidence which has been given, I think his presence was hardly material.”
“Now, I think it very material,” objected a juryman. “He was known to have quarreled with the deceased—”
“It can be proved that he was in bed at the time of his death,” answered the coroner. “He was so much injured that he was watched from the moment he fell down, fainting, after flinging the deceased off.”
“Well, but I submit that we ought to have proof of this in evidence. When a man is found dead, with a bullet in his head—”
He stopped short, his attention arrested, like that of every other person in the court, by a cry, a movement, on the part of Nell Claris. Springing upon her feet she gave a moan, a gasp, and then looking round her with one quick, frightened stare, sank down into her seat.
There was a buzz of whispering, which was checked by the loud cry of “Silence!” as the second doctor was called and sworn. His evidence was only an echo of that of his colleague, and was hardly listened to by the crowd in the court, who were occupied with a stronger situation.
The coroner’s address to the jury was a very short one, and indicated more doubt in the mind of the coroner than existed in the minds of his hearers.
When the jury had retired, the murmurs rose higher and higher, and the excited discussion of the probable verdict, although repressed a little by the presence of Nell, who sat like a statue by Miss Bostal’s side, had grown into a loud roar long before the jury returned into court.
When they took their seats, the roar of the crowd had suddenly given place to a hush, in which the voice of the coroner asking if they had agreed upon a verdict was distinctly heard.
In a few minutes the news had spread from the court to the crowd in the market-place outside, that the verdict was: “Willful murder by some person or persons unknown.”