To-night we are going to have a Court of Inquiry....
VII
We have had the Inquiry. I was judge. I started with Denys and Joan in the dock, as I thought we must have somebody there and it would look better if it was somebody in the family. The first witness was Mrs. Barker. Her evidence was so unsatisfactory that I had to have her put in the dock too. So was Mr. Barker’s. I was sorry to put him in the dock, as he still had rheumatics. But he had to go.
So did Mr. Winthrop. I had no qualms about him. For a man of his age to do a thing like that seems to me really deplorable. And the barefaced evasiveness of his evidence! He simply could not account for his movements during the evening at all. When I asked him what he had been doing at 9.21, and where, he actually said he didn’t know.
Rather curious—very few people can account for their movements, or anyone else’s. In most criminal trials the witnesses remember to a minute, years after the event, exactly what time they went upstairs and when they passed the prisoner in the lounge, but nobody seems to remember anything in this affair. No doubt it will come in time.
The trial was very realistic. I was able to make one or two excellent judicial jokes. Right at the beginning I said to the prosecuting counsel, “What is an apple-pie bed?” and when he had explained I said with a meaning look, “You mean that the bed was not in apple-pie order?” Ha, ha! Everybody laughed heartily....
VIII
In my address to the jury of matrons I was able to show pretty clearly that the crime was the work of a gang. I proved that Denys and Joan must have done the bulk of the dirty work, under the tactical direction of the Barkers, who did the rest; while in the background was the sinister figure of Mr. Winthrop, the strategical genius, the lurking Macchiavelli of the gang.
The jury were not long in considering their verdict. They said: “We find, your Lordship, that you did it yourself, with some lady or ladies unknown.”
That comes of being a professional humorist....