V
And now opens the second day of the trial of Henry Garlett on the charge of having murdered his wife. The crowds round the doors of the Assize Court are almost as large as ever, and yet there is not the same feeling of excitement that there was on the first day.
For one thing, all the most important witnesses have already been in the box. For another, the trial, though the verdict is regarded as a foregone conclusion, is not expected to conclude till to-morrow. A good many unimportant witnesses have still to be examined, among them a number of well-known men, each of whom, when the issue of the trial appeared far more uncertain than it does now, had expressed themselves willing to tender evidence as to “character.” These gentlemen will testify that is, that they have always regarded Henry Garlett as a high-minded man, the best of good fellows, and so on.
After all these minor witnesses have been called, examined, cross-examined, and re-examined, then Sir Almeric Post will begin his address to the jurymen. Though it is known that Sir Almeric never cuts a speech short, it is thought he will finish in time to allow Sir Harold to make a start to-day. Sir Harold’s speeches to a jury are a delight to listen to, but there seems some doubt as to whether the famous advocate, who is known not to like interrupting a great oration in the middle, may not so manoeuvre matters, with the kindly connivance of his brother in the law, Sir Almeric, as to put off the beginning of his speech till to-morrow morning.
Yes, to-morrow is likely to be a very exciting day! There will be Sir Harold’s pathetic powerful plea for the murderer; the clear summing-up by the judge, who, although an old man, has his wits keenly about him; and then the jury’s retirement, maybe for quite a short time, maybe for a long time—one can never tell which, even when the verdict is a foregone conclusion.
However, as was said a great, great many times—perhaps a million times by various men and women all over the kingdom that same evening and the next morning—it is the unexpected in life that very often happens, and makes the best-laid plans go wrong.
Behold the Court assembled, the galleries full to bursting, but the ladies in the reserved seats are not all of them quite so distinguished-looking as those who graced the first day of the trial. On the other hand, two noted novelists—one a man the other a woman—have come down from London to be present at the closing scenes.
The judge has just taken his seat, but the prisoner has not yet been brought up from below into the dock, when Sir Harold Anstey rises and asks to be heard.
“I have received, my lord, a very important communication,” he says, in a tone of such marked gravity that every one stiffens into attention.
And then—was it by some mistake, or in the natural course of events?—the prisoner is brought up between two warders to take his usual place.
He looks tired, dispirited, and for the first time his eyes seem to seek out hungrily, thirstily, the figure of Jean Bower, sitting below him on the witnesses’ bench. As if drawn by some magnetic influence, she turns her head round at last, and they exchange a long, piteous look.
In answer to Sir Harold, the judge observes in a slow, unimpassioned tone:
“I, too, have received what is no doubt a copy of what you term an important communication, Sir Harold. I am exceedingly surprised that the parties in question should have waited till this morning—in fact, till just half an hour ago—to put this communication before me. I have already taken certain steps, and I have no doubt you have done the same, to test, shall we say, the value? of this communication. I understand that both the solicitors for the Crown and Mr. Toogood, the prisoner’s solicitor, are even now in telephonic communication with London.”
The judge’s words are listened to in absolute silence, and no one can make head or tail of what they mean. But it is plain that both Mr. Justice Freshwater and those two great protagonists, Sir Almeric Post and Sir Harold Anstey, are very much disturbed.
All kinds of wild rumours are current, but the low murmur of conversation is stilled by the loud voices of the ushers ordering “Silence, silence in Court!”
Every ear is strained to miss not a word as Sir Almeric takes up the ball in this mysterious legal game. He says in a very low voice:
“In all the circumstances, my lord, I have arranged with Sir Harold Anstey that he shall call Mrs. Cheale, formerly Lucy Warren, as his witness, not mine. He proposes, with your leave, to put her at once into the box.”
A feeling of intense relief sweeps through the Court. Then everything is going on according to plan? True, those with sharper ears than the others had caught the name of Mrs. Cheale. But most of the eager listeners suppose that it is Miss Agatha Cheale who is going to be re-examined. Into just a few minds there darts a sudden, lightning suspicion. Agatha Cheale had always been something of a dark horse; has she any revelation to make which she studiously concealed while in the witness-box yesterday?
Here and there some expert in criminology asked himself or herself whether, after all, Agatha Cheale was not in some way “in it,” an accomplice, maybe, of Henry Garlett?
But curiosity will have to wait; for all at once, and strange to say without her name being called out in the usual way, a tall young woman is seen almost running up the steps of the witness-box.
She wears what, to the expert feminine eyes now insistently fastened on her, are obviously cheap, ready-made, badly cut mourning clothes; a rusty black serge coat and skirt, and a curious-looking little black bonnet of the kind which some of the older people in Court can remember having been worn when they were young—a princess bonnet it used to be called. This particular princess bonnet has a queer wispy veil hanging down behind. In fact the young woman—she is not only a young but a very good-looking woman, so all the men in Court notice—looks like a widow of the humblest working class.
Instead of being ordered to stand down, in order that Agatha Cheale may be called, to the general surprise the stranger is sworn.
With this witness the taking of the oath is not a perfunctory formality, as it seemed to be with so many of the witnesses, but a very solemn act. And, while she is being sworn, she looks at the judge as if he were the only person in that crowded Court.
Sir Harold rises to his feet, and then the witness suddenly cries out: “May I speak now?”
The judge leans forward.
“No, madam, you may not speak now. You are here to answer questions put to you by counsel.”
She is obviously cowed by those quiet firm cold tones, and clasps her hands nervously together on the ledge of the witness-box as she stares distrustfully at the tall, stout gentleman who is now going to put to her those questions to which alone she may make answer.
“Your name,” begins Sir Harold in a very kindly, conversational voice, “is Lucy Cheale?”
Most of the general public in Court are surprised. What an odd mistake for the great advocate to have made! But of course he is tired—tired and worried no doubt by that important communication concerning which he and the judge have just had that curious little mysterious interchange of words.
He goes on quickly: “You were Lucy Warren?”
Now he has corrected himself—so think all those who have not noted that little word “were.”
“Yes, sir, and I——”
“Stop! Allow me to put my question—it will be far quicker in the end. I mean by that, Mrs. Cheale——”
Hullo! Mrs. Cheale? What is happening to Sir Harold—the quick, the bold, the resourceful, the man whose astonishing memory is almost proverbial? Another thing happens which is extraordinarily unusual with him—that is a piece of paper is handed to him by his junior, and from it he reads the following questions, and in each case without waiting for an answer.
“You are the daughter of Mrs. Warren of the Thatched Farm? Your age is now twenty-four? Till ten days ago you were in the employment of Miss Prince at the Thatched Cottage? Before that you were for a considerable time head parlour-maid at the Thatched House?”
He reads over these questions, or rather assertions, very rapidly, and each time the woman witness nods her head.
“And now I ask you to recall what happened nine—or was it ten—days ago?”
Nine or ten days ago? Sir Harold surely means nine months ago?
Again the witness nods, this time eagerly.
“You received the following telegram?”
Again Sir Harold turns round, and again a piece of paper is handed up to him.
The witness holds out her hand.
“No, the jury must hear the telegram, so I will read it out.”
In clear tones Sir Harold, turning to face the jury, reads out slowly the address, “Miss Lucy Warren, The Thatched Cottage, Terriford.” Then he pauses dramatically, and goes on:
This conveys an offer of marriage from one who is your devout lover. I am dying, and I want you. Lose not an hour. Come at once to 106, Coburg Square, London.—Guy Cheale.
Guy Cheale? Who on earth is he?
There is great excitement in Court, and again the ushers have to command “Silence!”
Here is a rare slice of human nature with a vengeance! Though what all this can have to do with Henry Garlett is a complete mystery. Many of the spectators in their eagerness rise from their seats in order to get a better view of the young woman who has inspired so strange, so pathetic, so desperate an offer of marriage.
One or two stupid people ask themselves whether, when a witness has married in the interval between the commission of a crime and the trial of the criminal, he or she has to explain how and why the marriage came about.
Sir Harold looks at his witness with his kindest, most benignant expression, as he asks in a soft tone, and yet one which is heard throughout all the Court:
“I take it that you were deeply attached to this man Guy Cheale—that you and he had some kind of an understanding?”
Her head drops, she whispers inaudibly: “Yes, I loved him dearly.”
The great advocate repeats, for the benefit of those who had not heard, the whispered words, “You loved him dearly. And so, without even waiting to ask your mistress’s permission, you left a note on the kitchen table, went to the village post office and drew out some money from the Savings Bank, and went straight off to London?”
Again there comes an almost inaudible “Yes.”
“And now, Mrs. Cheale, we come to a very important part of your evidence. You realize that you are on oath?”
This time she answers quite loud, “I do, sir.”
“I pass over quickly the fact that within twenty-four hours of your arrival you were married to this man, Guy Cheale, on what was practically his death bed. But even before the marriage he made to you a certain communication?”
She bends her head.
“Now tell his lordship and the jury in your own words what that communication was?”
The witness straightens herself, and the judge, leaning forward, looks at her keenly.
“I must ask you,” he says, but in no unkind tone, “to speak up, madam. Otherwise the jury will not hear you.” He might have added, “And I myself am a little hard of hearing.”
The witness begins in a loud voice:
“Mr. Cheale told me that before we were married he had something to tell me about himself——”
She stops short. Every one is staring at her. What is all this about? Who is Mr. Cheale? By this time every one in Court realizes that he must be related to Agatha Cheale, as Cheale is such an odd name. Also, a good many people know that Agatha Cheale has a brother. Is it conceivable that he gave his sister away? Can it be that Agatha Cheale committed the murder?
Almost alone of all those present, the man in the dock looks uninterested in what is going on. He has become so tired, so utterly weary.
But there is one person in Court—nobody is looking at her—who is almost fainting with excitement and suspense. That person is Jean Bower. Her head is thrown back. She is gazing up into the troubled face of the woman who is in the box just above her.
“He asked me,” goes on the witness, her voice gathering strength, “if I would mind marrying a murderer.”
There is an extraordinary stir, by far the greatest stir there has yet been in that Court.
“I answered him prompt—‘No, not if he was the murderer.’”
One or two women giggle hysterically, and there comes a stern “Silence!” from the judge himself.
“He then went on to tell me that it was he who had poisoned Mrs. Garlett.”
A strange sound, a kind of strangled half-sigh, half-groan, issues from the man in the dock. He slips down, and is seen through the railings of the dock lying in a heap on the floor.
One of the warders, after stooping down, stands up and says stolidly:
“The prisoner has fainted, my lord. Shall we take him below?”
“Yes, and do not bring him back till I direct you to do so.”
But this occurrence, which would have made such an impression at any other time, is scarcely noticed.
Sir Harold addresses the witness encouragingly:
“I understand you to say that Guy Cheale, your late husband, confessed to you before the marriage took place that he had poisoned Mrs. Garlett. Did he tell you what motive inspired him to commit this crime?”
For the first time the witness falters. She turns to the judge.
“Have I got to answer that, your worship?”
The judge hesitates.
“No,” he says at last. “I do not direct you to answer that question.”
Sir Harold, now frowning a little, turns again to his witness, “What happened after this conversation with Guy Cheale?”
“I got him to let me send for the doctor, because I thought he was going to die right then.”
“But to the best of your belief—this is a very important point, Mrs. Cheale—he was absolutely in his right mind when he made this strange communication to you?”
“Yes, absolutely in his right mind, sir. In fact, he wanted me to have in somebody to take down the statement he had just made to me. But I was frightened—I thought he would be taken to prison. Cruel things are done, sir, sometimes, to us poor folk, even when we’re dying.”
Sir Harold in a moved tone says:
“I fear that is so, though I would fain hope not, Mrs. Cheale.”
He waits a moment. He is so obviously, so genuinely moved, that every one in Court feels a sudden wave of liking for him.
“Very well,” he says, recovering himself. “Now tell me what happened next.”
“We was married then, sir. He’d fixed it all up before I came.”
Her face suddenly relaxes; it becomes almost cheerful as she adds:
“Of course he’d known all along that nothing he’d done would make any difference to me.”
Sir Harold goes on in a matter-of-fact tone:
“The moment the marriage had been solemnized, he insisted, I understand, on your sending for what I may call an unofficial witness?”
“Yes, sir. The minute the clergyman and all that was gone, he made me call the landlady of the place where he was living—Mrs. Lightfoot’s her name. She had got quite fond of him before I came. She was the marriage witness—leastways one of them. He says to her: ‘Mrs. Lightfoot, I’ve something to tell you. It’s very grave—you’ve got to remember it. Maybe you’ll be sworn and asked about it.’ Then he told her what he had told me.”
“You mean he repeated to her the statement that he had poisoned Mrs. Emily Garlett?”
The witness again became almost inaudible, but it was evident that she had answered, “Yes, sir.”
“I understand, Mrs. Cheale, that it was not till the day before his death that he succeeded in persuading you to send for a commissioner for oaths?”
She answers in a low, halting voice:
“When the doctor told me he couldn’t last out the night, I didn’t think it mattered what happened. Besides, I knew they couldn’t do much till the next day, and I believed that the next day he would be dead—and so he was.”
“The commissioner for oaths,” Sir Harold looked at one of the papers in his hand, “is Mr. Theophilus Jones——”
There runs a nervous laugh through the Court. The judge looks very stern.
Sir Harold goes on—“of 15, London Wall. That gentleman, or so I understand, has influenza. That is why he is not here to-day.”
The witness answers, “Yes, sir—I’m afraid he caught cold coming out to see my husband at night time.”
There is another titter, which is quickly suppressed.
“You see, sir, I didn’t know what to do! And then Mrs. Lightfoot, she says to me, ‘There’s a gentleman as is a commissioner for oaths living in this very square. It was him as had to do with the lease of this house.’ So I went round to his home, sir, and I just told him the truth—that my dear husband was dying and wanted to make a confession to him. He’s an old gentleman, and he was very kind to me. He said it wasn’t in order, but that he’d come. And he did, sir. My husband had made me put down—he was too weak to write himself—what he wanted said, and the old gentleman, Mr. Jones, he read it over to him, and then my husband swore it was all true.”
At this point Mr. Toogood is seen entering the Court, and a memorandum is handed up to the judge.
Meanwhile the witness remains standing quite still in the box staring before her as if hardly knowing where she is.
Sir Harold reads a note from the judge, and then he goes on with his examination of the witness.
“Your husband, I understand, died within five hours of making this statement?”
“That is so, sir.”
“That was early yesterday morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you started at once, Mrs. Cheale, for Grendon? I understand you did this in obedience to a desire expressed by him?”
“Yes, sir. He made a joke like; he says to me: ‘You won’t have many opportunities of keeping your marriage vow—to obey me, Lucy—but I do give you an opportunity now. The minute the breath’s out of my body,’ he says, ‘you’re to go straight off with that paper of which you’ve got a copy. You’re to go to the office of that—’” she hesitates—“‘that rascally lawyer, Toogood,’ he called him, but then, sir, he always said all lawyers were rascals, and he often would have his joke. ‘There,’ he says, ‘you’re to find Toogood, and you’re to put this before him. No good telegraphing,’ he said, ‘to judge or counsel. Lawyers are dull, hide-bound villains, they’d take no notice of a telegram, they’d think it was a hoax.’”
The audience in Court turned amused eyes on the gentlemen who are hearing themselves so candidly described. But if they expect to see any signs of self-conscious confusion, they are disappointed. All the lawyers remain perfectly calm, and the witness goes on:
“He says to me, ‘Have you enough money for a motor, Lucy? That would perhaps be quickest of all. Then, on the other hand,’ he says, ‘you might be killed in the motor. So best go by train,’ he said. So I did what he wished. The moment he was dead I left him alone with that kind soul, Mrs. Lightfoot, and I only stopped long enough on the way to the station to get the black clothes I’m now wearing——”
And now the judge leans forward.
“I regret,” he said somewhat severely, “that this statement of yours was not put in yesterday.”
“I never had no chance, sir—your worship. I did try to be heard.”
Sir Harold interposes:
“May I ask your lordship to allow me to read the sworn statement made by Guy Cheale?”
Then Sir Almeric jumps up. He looks ruffled and disturbed, as he intimates:
“I do not oppose my learned friend’s application, my lord.”
The next thing to do is to release the witness.
“That will do, Mrs. Cheale,” says Sir Harold in a courteous tone. “We thank you very much for the clear way in which you have given your evidence. I understand that you wish to go back to London as soon as possible. If so, I hope you will use my motor car.”
A murmur of admiration for Sir Harold’s thoughtful kindness runs through the Court. But to the judge Sir Harold’s public announcement of his kindness seems highly irregular, and his lordship hastens to create a diversion.
“Sir Almeric Post,” he observes in his frigid tones, “in view of what is contained in that sworn statement, it is for you to read it to the jury, and not Sir Harold Anstey.”
“Very good, my lord,” says Sir Almeric, and then, in his passionless, clear tones he reads out the following words:
“I, Guy Cheale, in full possession of all my faculties though a dying man, wish to put it on record that I administered the arsenic to Mrs. Emily Garlett for reasons best known to myself, and which from my point of view were sufficiently good and conclusive at the time, though I do not expect any one else in the present state of our peculiar, complex civilization, built as it is on a pyramid of lies, to agree with me.
“My sister, Agatha Cheale, then lady housekeeper at the Thatched House, asked me three days before Mrs. Emily Garlett’s death to take a note for her to Miss Prince’s house, the Thatched Cottage. She informed me I could get straight into the house through a garden door.
“I followed her directions and found myself in the empty house. I laid the letter on the hall table. I then bethought myself that I would go upstairs, as I’d heard Miss Prince had a curious collection of medicaments, and I have always been much interested in drugs.
“I found the room in which they were kept with no difficulty. The cupboard door was open, and I noticed the stoppered bottle of arsenic. I took out about an ounce of the white powder and put it in an envelope which I had in my pocket. I then walked back to the Thatched Farm. There I transferred the arsenic to a large empty pill-box. To the best of my belief the pill-box, with some of the arsenic still in it, will be found behind the fourth row of books in the small glazed bookcase in the parlour there.
“I ought here to add that when in the medicine room of Miss Prince’s house I turned up the entry ‘Arsenic’ in a medical work on her table. I thus discovered the right dose for an adult. On the afternoon which preceded Mrs. Garlett’s death I was one of two or three people who went and sat with her for a time. In a sense I may say I acted on a sudden impulse, for when I saw the small plateful of strawberries outside her door with the sugar sifter close to it I thought it an ideal opportunity for the accomplishment of my purpose.
“I asked her whether she would care to have the strawberries, and she said yes, that she had not known there were strawberries there. I went out of the room and mixed the arsenic with the sugar, then I brought the plate into her room. After she had eaten the strawberries I bade her good-bye and removed the plate—she thought outside the door—as a matter of fact I took it away with me, and threw it under a bush in the little wood, where it doubtless still is.
“I left the house as far as I know without having been seen, though Lucy Warren had admitted me, and we had had a short talk. Lucy was on the point of leaving the house owing to our having been found together—I may add not in any compromising sense—in the drawing room the night before by my sister and Mrs. Garlett. Mrs. Garlett, of course, had not recognized me. My sister, who is a generous woman, handed over to me practically the whole of her legacy—her unexpected legacy of a thousand pounds, which Mrs. Garlett left her in her will.”
Suddenly there breaks across the level, passionless tones of Sir Almeric’s voice a loud groan, and for the second time that day a man faints in Court. He is hastily taken below, but not before the Grendon folk present recognize him as Enoch Bent, Lucy Cheale’s uncle and Mr. Toogood’s highly respected head clerk. Few, however, of those who recognize him ask themselves why Guy Cheale’s reference in his statement to Mrs. Garlett’s will and the legacy to Guy Cheale’s sister should have had such an effect on the worthy Bent.
Fortunately for Bent, there is no need for him to be put in the witness-box, there to have drawn from him, by the persuasive arts of Sir Harold Anstey, an account—nay, a confession—of certain highly reprehensible and most unprofessional confidences concerning Mrs. Garlett’s will, made before that lady’s tragic death. That other and greater confession—the confession of Guy Cheale on his death-bed—has shed an amply sufficient light on the Terriford Mystery.
After the slight interruption caused by Bent’s collapse and removal, Sir Almeric goes on reading Guy Cheale’s statement from the exact place where he broke off:
“With this money I went abroad, and I was still abroad when the exhumation of Mrs. Garlett took place, and when Mr. Garlett was committed for trial. While abroad—in Spain, as a matter of fact—I became exceedingly ill. I therefore made for home. My sister unwillingly consented to hire a room in the house in which she was then living, namely the house in which I am now.
“In a sense it has been a race between my life and that of Henry Garlett. I hope—I try to persuade myself—that I should, in any case, have made this confession even had I not been a dying man. Had I done so I should of course have put myself first out of the power of English law, which would not have been difficult, as I have always been a rolling stone, as the silly saying is.
“I hope it will not be considered egotistic on my part to put on record my high appreciation of my wife’s fine nature. She is a thoroughly good woman, and I hope that in time she will forgive me, and that some man—a thousand-fold better man than I can claim to be—will make her yet a happy woman.”
And what is happening meantime in the cold, rather dark cell, where so many unhappy prisoners have sat, waiting to be taken upstairs to hear the verdict?
By special leave of the judge, Jean Bower has been allowed to go below and join her lover, who will not now be a prisoner for long.
Together again at last, Harry Garlett and Jean Bower are sitting on a hard wooden bench, hand in hand. They are not alone. Two warders are watching them with stolid faces, and they are still feeling bewildered, oppressed, by this wonderful thing that has happened to them.
Harry Garlett is saying to himself, “Guy Cheale? Guy Cheale! Why, Emily liked him—she liked him.”
The door opens. “Mr. Garlett,” says a kind voice—the voice of the Governor of Grendon Gaol. “Will you and Miss Bower come upstairs to hear the verdict?”
They get up. Still hand in hand they mount the dark stairs. Then the prisoner—he is still a prisoner—raises Jean’s hand and kisses it.
They emerge into the crowded Court, all eyes upon them, and he goes on up into the dock for the last time, while she walks round to the witness bench, where Dr. Maclean has preceded her.
The jury are all in their places. They have evidently had no difficulty in arriving at their verdict.
Then the clerk of the Court calls out:
“How say you, gentlemen—guilty or not guilty?”
The foreman of the jury, looking very pale, answers in a firm voice:
“Not Guilty.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.