“Gentlemen,” he said, “it occurred within my father's memory; but my own is good enough to reproduce it literally. It made a rare stir in the Norwich of his day, and quite fluttered, I assure you, the dovecots of the profession.
“The parties chiefly concerned in it were three: old Nicholas Browbody, his ward Ellen, and Mr. George Hussey, who was put on his trial for burglary and murder. Mr. George was quite a notable cracksman in his day, which was one pretty remote from ours in everything but the conservatism of the law. He was ‘housebreaker’ in the indictment; he was arrested by the Tombland patrol; and he was carried to court in a ‘chair,’ attended by a party of the City Guard.
“George, says the story, was an elegant figure of a man, and not at all regardless of the modes. Dark blue coat with brass buttons, fancy vest, black satin breeches, white silk stockings, hair full dressed and a brooch in his bosom—that was how he appeared before his judges.
“The facts were simple enough. On a night of November, a shot and a screech had been heard in Mr. Browbody’s house in Unthank, a ward of the city; an entrance had been made through a window, opportunely open, by the Watch as opportunely handy, and the housebreaker had been discovered, a warm pistol in his hand, standing over the body of old Nicholas, who lay dead on the floor with his head blown in.
“The burglar was found standing, I say, like as in a stupor; the room was old Browbody’s study; the door from it into the passage was open, and outside was discovered the body of a girl, Miss Ellen, lying, as it were, in a dead faint. There you have the situation dashed in broad; and pretty complete, you’ll agree, for circumstantial evidence.”
“Wait, my friend,” began Brindley, putting up a fat pompous hand. “Circumstantial, I think you said?”
“Yes, I said it,” answered the Deputy Clerk coolly; “and if you’ll listen, you’ll understand—perhaps. I said the girl was in a faint, as it were, for, as a matter of fact, she never came out of it for seven months.”
He leant back, thumbing the ashes into his pipe, and took no heed while the murmurs of incredulity buzzed and died down.
“Not for seven months,” he repeated, then. “They called it a cataleptic trance, induced by fright and shock upon witnessing the deed; and they postponed the trial, waiting for this material witness to recover. But when at last the doctors certified that they could put no period to a condition which might, after all, end fatally without real consciousness ever returning, they decided to try Mr. Hussey; and he was tried and condemned to be hanged.”
“What! he made no defence?” said a junior contemptuously.