Well, After All--

by Frank Frankfort Moore

She read with but the smallest amount of interest the newspaper articles that eulogised Claude Westwood and his achievements. She seemed to have but an impersonal connection with the discoveries that he had made—suggestions of their magnitude appeared almost daily in the newspapers; and the fact that an enterprising publishing firm in England had sent out a special emissary to meet him at Zanzibar with an offer of £25,000 for his book—it was taken as a matter of course that he would write a book—interested her no more than did the information that an American lecture bureau had cabled to their English agent to make arrangements with him for a series of lectures—it was assumed that he would give a course of lectures with limelight views—in the States, his remuneration to be on a scale such as only a prima donna had ever dreamt of, and that only in her most avaricious moments. She even remained unmoved by the philosophical reflection indulged in by several leader writers, to the effect that, after all, it would seem that the perils surrounding an ordinary English gentleman were greater than those encompassing the most intrepid of explorers in the most dangerous sphere of exploration in the world.

The foundation for this philosophy was, of course, the coincidence of the news being published confirmatory of the safety of one of the Westwoods on the same page that contained the melancholy story of what was soon termed the Brackenshire Tragedy.

And this melancholy story did not lose anything of its tragic aspect when it came to be investigated before the usual tribunals. But however interesting as well as profitable it might be to give at length an account of the questions put to the witnesses at the inquest, and the answers given by them to the solicitors engaged in the investigation, such interest and profit must be foregone in this place. A reader will have to be content with the information of the bare fact that the coroner's jury returned a verdict of “Wilful Murder” against the man who had, under the name of Carton Standish, lodged some hundreds of pounds the previous year in the Westwoods' bank, and who, according to the evidence of Cyril, corroborated by the footman, had threatened Mr. Westwood with a revolver.

Cyril described the incidents of the entire interview that Standish had with Mr. Westwood, up to the point of his throwing the revolver out of the window. He was not, of course, prepared to say that the revolver which was found at Mr. Westwood's hand (deposed to by the under-gardener) was the same weapon, but he said that it seemed to him to be the same. He had not seen the man pick up the revolver from the grass where it had fallen. The man had left the house, not by the window, by which he had entered, but by the hall door. In reply to a question put to him Cyril said that if the revolver had been left on the grass it might have been picked up by any one aware of the fact that it was there. Neither he nor Mr. Westwood had picked it up. They had not walked together in the direction of the Italian garden, but through the park, which was on the other side of the house. They had not discussed the incident of the man's entering the drawing-room, except for a few minutes, nor did it seem to occur to Mr. Westwood that he might be in jeopardy were he to walk through the grounds. He appeared to disregard the man's threats.

The surgeon who had examined the body gave a horribly technical description of the wound made by the bullet, and said he had no hesitation in swearing that the revolver was fired from a distance of at least twenty feet from the deceased. He had a wide experience of bullet wounds, but it did not need a wide experience to enable a surgeon to pronounce an opinion as to whether or not a wound had been produced by a point-blank discharge of a weapon, whether revolver or rifle.

Major Borrowdaile and the police sergeant gave some evidence regarding the arrest of Standish, and the butler, who was the first to enter the drawingroom in the morning, stated that he had found the French window open. He fancied that his master had gone out for a stroll before breakfast. He also said that he had heard in the early part of the night the sound of several shots; but he had taken it for granted that a party were shooting rabbits in the warren, In any case the sound of a shot at night in the park or the shrubberies would not cause alarm among the servants: they would take it for granted that a keeper had fired at one of the wild-cats or perhaps at a night-hawk, or some creature of the woods inimical to the young pheasants.

This was considered sufficient evidence by the coroner's jury, and the man was handed over, to be formally committed by the bench of magistrates.

The Summer Assizes were held within a fortnight, and then, in addition to the evidence previously given, a gunmaker from Midleigh swore that the revolver was purchased from him by the prisoner on the forenoon of the day when he had appeared at Westwood Court. Against such evidence the statement of the landlord of the Three Swans Inn at Brackenhurst, to the effect that he had admitted the prisoner to the inn at a few minutes past midnight—the only direct evidence brought forward for the defence—was of no avail. The landlord, on being cross-examined, admitted that his clock was not invariably to be depended on: on the night in question he took it for granted that it was a quarter of an hour fast. He would not swear that it was not customary to set it back on the very day of the week corresponding to that preceding the discovery of the dead body of Mr. Westwood. He also declined to swear that the next day the clock was not found to be accurate.

The judge upon this occasion was not the one whose anxiety to sentence men and women to be hanged is so great that he has now and again practically insisted on a jury returning a verdict of guilty against prisoners who, on being reprieved by the Home Secretary, were eventually found to be entirely innocent of the crime laid to their charge. Nor was he the one whose unfortunate infirmity of deafness prevents his hearing more than a word or two of the evidence. He was not even the one whose inability to perceive the difference between immorality and criminality is notorious. He was the one whose ingenuity is made apparent by his suggestion of certain possibilities which have never occurred to the counsel engaged in a case.

When it seemed to be quite certain that Standish would be found guilty, the judge began to perplex the minds of the jurymen by suggestions of his own. He pointed out that the prisoner had had but one object in threatening Mr. Westwood—namely, to recover the money that he had lodged in Westwoods' bank; and this being so, what motive would he have for murdering Mr. Westwood until he had applied to the bank and had had his money refused to him?