‘Yes; and if I had been there the first night, I might have prevented this murder.’
‘Silence, sir!’ said the Judge.
And now Tressamer brought out the question for which he had been preparing the way all along:
‘When this arrangement was made about your living in the house, did your aunt (remember you are on your oath, sir!)—did she happen—to—furnish—you—with—a—LATCHKEY?’
The effect was electrical. He had brought out the last words of the question slowly one by one, and then he suddenly hurled the final word at the witness like a weapon.
John Lewis instantly realized the situation. The question was tantamount to an accusation. The whole court took it in that sense, and gazed at him in deadly earnestness. He turned livid. For a moment he could hardly bring his lips to frame a syllable. At length he recovered his self-command, and thundered out:
‘No, sir. May God strike me dead if she did!’
The fierce earnestness of his denial produced a revulsion of feeling in the court. The jury felt that the counsel had been guilty of unfairness in making such a charge so suddenly, and, as it seemed, with such absence of grounds. The Judge was annoyed, too. Sir Daniel Buller hated sensationalism. In fact, he did not like anything which threw his own dignity into the shade. He liked to feel that he was in the star part, and that everybody else in court was merely playing up to his grand effects. He therefore refrained from rebuking the witness, and from this stage he showed himself less favourable to the counsel for the defence.
But Tressamer had anticipated something of this sort, and he had a card in reserve. He went on with his cross-examination as if nothing had happened.