‘For some time before the day of the murder she had been unwell. She came to me and asked me to give her something to make her sleep at night. I persuaded her to do without anything, and to take a walk before going to bed instead.’
‘Yes, and what else?’
‘The last night but one before the murder she came to me complaining of nervous headache. I gave her something for it and advised her to go for long walks, two or three miles or more, so as to tire herself out before going to bed. She said she had mislaid her latchkey lately, but would ask Miss Lewis to let her have another, as she thought Miss Lewis had a spare one.’
This statement caused the jury to prick up their ears. Even they had realized by this time that something in the case turned upon a latchkey.
No further questions were put to the witness by Tressamer, and Pollard saw no opening for cross-examination. The former, therefore, at once began his speech.
‘May it please your lordship: Gentlemen of the jury——’
The counsel paused a moment, shook his robe out of his way, clenched his fists upon the table in front of him, and bent forward towards the jury with stern and solemn brow.
‘I shall not weary you with the platitudes usual on occasions like this. I shall say nothing to you about banishing from your minds all you may have heard or read in the newspapers about this case, for I am sure it is unnecessary.
‘Nor shall I say anything about the weight of responsibility which rests upon my shoulders, because, after all, what is my responsibility to yours? If I make any mistake, if I fail after doing my best, I shall have the consolation of knowing that I am in no way to blame, I have not to answer for the result.
‘But you have! In your hands are life and death! The hangman is your instrument; the judge upon the bench is but your assistant. Seek not to shirk your liability; do not trust to others to shield you. On the way in which you discharge your duty to-day depends the most solemn and awful of all considerations—a human life. If you by any prejudice, by any weakness, by any deference to superstition or authority, give an innocent fellow-creature to the tomb, it had been better for you that you had never been born!’