Mr. Dyson continued to advance, and before he had got out of the passage, Peace, who was on the road, again faced round and fired his revolver, and Mrs. Dyson saw her husband instantly fall.
She shrieked out, and was heard by a young man named Whitting to say, “Murder! You villain; you have shot my husband.”
The learned counsel then proceeded further to describe how Peace escaped from Bannercross after the murder, and showed that Mr. Dyson died two hours after the bullet entered his temple.
He laid much stress on the fact that in a field which the prisoner had crossed over on his way from Mr. Dyson’s house, a packet of letters was found.
In this packet was the very card which Mr. Dyson had sent to the prisoner requesting him not to annoy his family.
There could, therefore, he said, be no doubt that the man who dropped the papers was Peace—the man in whose mind the card had produced so much ill-will and ill-feeling, and who had dogged the footsteps of the Dysons in the way he had described.
Mr. Foster next proceeded to show that after the murder Peace made his escape, and was not discovered until he was apprehended in the commission of a burglary at Blackheath.
He next showed what took place after his apprehension, and was proceeding to refer to the attempts made by Peace to escape on his way to Sheffield, when Mr. Lockwood objected to the matter being gone into. He said it would of course be affectation on his part to object to its being mentioned, because it was notorious to everybody, but he certainly strongly protested against the course his learned friend was pursuing.
His Lordship said he considered the reference that Mr. Foster was making was quite unnecessary.
Mr. Foster said he was quite content to leave the matter as it was.