“Didn’t that strike you as rather strange?”
“Oh, no, sir. We didn’t know he had been out all night. It was only after he’d gone that we heard what happened. Dr Ingelow—that’s the rector o’ Wandsborough—he came over to ‘The Silver Fleece’ in the afternoon, and was in a great state because the gentleman had gone.”
“That’ll do, Grainger. You may stand down.”
Very black for the prisoner were things looking now. The jury wore an unusually grave expression of countenance, and even among the audience all levity was hushed in the intense anxiety attendant on the dread issue.
“Unless Windgate can prove an alibi, he’s done,” whispered a sporting junior to another. “Take you two to one on it in sovs if you like, Rogers.”
“Dunno. Think I won’t. Isn’t it rather queer form to bet on a fellow’s life,” was the reply.
Although the remark was unheard by him, it exactly rendered Mr Windgate’s reflections. That damning recognition—or half-recognition—of Grainger’s had simply lost the case, and he would have given much had it never been made. For he was on his mettle now. The case was a highly sensational one—just the thing to put a crowning point on his reputation if he had come out of it successfully, but now ‘that infernal Benham’ had been too sharp for him. Just one of his ferrety ideas, that about the clock being tampered with—and in this instance Windgate was shrewd enough to see that it had told with fatal effect. He wished again and again he had not been fool enough to undertake the defence of a man who would give him simply nothing to go upon. And he could not even prove an alibi.
The next witness was Brown, the verger of Wandsborough church. His evidence was short and straightforward. He had a recollection of a stranger coming into church on the evening in question, towards the middle of the service. He certainly never thought of recognising Mr Dorrien in him, nor had he since. He knew Mr Dorrien well, too—he often attended Wandsborough church. It must have been considerably earlier than half-past eight when the stranger came in, because the service on ordinary Sunday evenings was nearly always over by that time. As to distances and times, he, Brown, could not speak. He was an old man now, and never had been much of a walker. The only thing he could be positive about was that the stranger had left the church a little before half-past eight, and he certainly had no suspicion that it was Mr Dorrien, either at the time, or since.
Him the prosecution declined to cross-examine.
“I shall call the Rev. Laurence Turner,” said Mr Windgate.