The Dean, then, took up seriatim the three charges, examining the evidence on each in detail, making on each the criticisms, already reported in the previous summary of the evidence, showing how the first charge had failed even in the opinion of the prosecutor: how doubtful, to say the least, it was that the interview on which the second charge was based had taken place, and the weakness of many of the proofs on which the charge of murder was rested. Passing, then, to the suggestion of suicide, he continued—
“I might stop here, for nothing could be more fallacious than the suggestion of the Lord Advocate, that it was necessary to explain how this man came by his death. His lordship will tell you that a defendant has no further duty than to repel the charge and stand on the defensive, and maintain that the case for the prosecution is not proved. No man probably can tell at the present moment—I believe no man on earth can tell—how L’Angelier met his death. Nor am I under the slightest obligation even to suggest to you a possible manner in which that death may have been compassed without the intervention of the prisoner. Yet it is but fair, when we are dealing with so many matters of conjecture and suspicion, that we should, for a moment, consider whether that supposition on which the charge is founded is preferable in itself, in respect to its higher probabilities, to other suppositions which may be fairly made. The character of this man, his origin, his early history, the nature of his conversation, the numerous occasions on which he spoke of suicide, naturally suggest that as one mode by which he may have departed this life. Understand me, I am not undertaking to prove that he died by his own hand—but I think there is more to be said for suicide than for the prisoner’s guilt. But I entreat you to remember that that is no necessary part of my defence. But of course I should be using you very ill—should be doing less than my duty to the prisoner—if I had not brought before you the whole of that evidence which suggests the extreme probability of that man dying by his own hand at one time or other. From the very first time at which we see him, even as a lad, in the year 1843, he talks in a manner to impress people with the notion that he had no moral principle to guide him. He speaks over and over again of suicide at Edinburgh, Dundee, and elsewhere—ay, the prisoners letters shew that he had made the same threat to her[120]—that he would put himself out of existence. And is it half as violent a supposition as the supposition of this foul murder, that upon this evening—the 22nd of March—a fit of that kind of madness which he himself described, came over him, when he met with disappointment—finding, it may be, that he could not procure access to an interview which he desired—assuming that he came to Glasgow for that purpose—assuming even that he mistook the evening of the meeting, and expected to see her on the Sunday—can anything be more probable than that, in the excited state in which he then was, he should have committed the rash act which put an end to his existence.”[121]
Again, in answer to the motive imputed by the prosecution; re-reading the letter of the 10th of February, in which on her bended knees Miss Smith besought him, “as he hoped for mercy at the judgment, not to inform on her—not to expose her;” asked him “to pardon her if he could; to pray for her as the most wretched, guilty, miserable creature on the earth;” told him “she could stand anything but her father’s hot temper;” when she wrote, “Emile, you will not cause my death. If he is to get your letters, I cannot see him any more; and my poor mother, I will never kiss her. It would be a shame to them all. Emile, will you not spare me? Hate me, despise me, but do not expose me.” The Dean said—
“Is that the language of deceit? Is that the mind of a murderess, or can any one affect that frame of mind? Can you for one moment listen to the suggestion that that letter covers a piece of deceit? No, no. The finest actress could not have written that to him, unless she had felt it; and is that the condition in which a woman goes about to compass the death of him whom she has loved? Is that the frame of mind?—shame for past sins, burning shame, dread of exposure, grief at the injury she had done her parents? Is that the frame of mind that would lead a woman—not to advance another step on the road to destruction, but to plunge at once into the depths of human wickedness? The thing is preposterous, and yet it is because of her despair, as my learned friend called it, exhibited in that and similar letters, that he says she had a motive to destroy this man. What does that mean? It may mean, in a certain improper sense of the term, that it would have been of advantage to her that he should cease to live. That is not a motive in any proper sense of the term. If some advantage resulting from the death of another be a motive to the commission of murder, a man’s eldest son must always have a motive to murder him that he may succeed to his estate; and I suppose the youngest officer in any regiment of Her Majesty’s army has a motive to murder all the officers in his regiment—the younger he is, and the further he has to ascend the scale, the more murders he has a motive to commit. Away with such nonsense! A motive to commit a crime must be something a great deal more than the mere fact that the result of that crime might be advantageous to the person committing it. You must see the motive in action—you must see it influencing the conduct—before you can deal with it as a motive; for this, and this only, is it a motive in the proper sense of the term—that is to say, it is moving to the perpetration of the deed. But let me ask you what possible motive there could be, even in the most improper and illegitimate sense of the term—I mean what possible advantage could she expect from L’Angelier’s death so long as the letters remained? Without the return of her letters she gained nothing. Her object, her greatest desire, that for which she was yearning with her whole soul, was to prevent the exposure of her shame. But the death of L’Angelier, with those letters in his possession, instead of insuring that object, would have been perfectly certain to lead to the immediate exposure of everything that passed between them. Shall I be told that she did not foresee that? I think my learned friend had been giving the prisoner credit for too much talent in the course of his observations on her conduct. But I should conceive her to be infinitely stupid if she could not foresee that the death of L’Angelier, with those documents in his possession, was the true and best means of frustrating the then great object of her life. Shall I be told that the motive might be revenge? Listen to the letter, Tell me if it is possible that in the same breast with these sentiments, there should link one feeling of revenge! No; the condition of mind in which the poor girl was throughout the months of February and March, is entirely inconsistent with any of the hypotheses that have been made on the other side—utterly incredible and wholly irreconcileable with the perpetration of such a crime as is here laid to her charge.”[122]
Passing on, then, to the incident of her sudden flight from her home, when she heard of L’Angelier’s death, the Dean repudiated the notion that she was absconding from justice. She had left Glasgow early in the morning, and at half-past three in the afternoon was found on board a steamer going from Greenock to Helensburgh. Any one going by rail could easily have overtaken her.
“If her flight means anything,” he said, “it means flying from what she could not bear—the wrath of her father, and the averted countenance of her mother. But she came back again without the slightest hesitation, and upon the Monday morning there occurred a scene as remarkable in the history of criminal jurisprudence as anything I ever heard of, by which that broken spirit was altogether changed. The moment she was met by a charge of being implicated in causing the death of L’Angelier, she at once assumed the courage of a heroine. She was bowed down, and she had fled, while the true charge of her unchastity and shame was all that was brought against her; but she stood erect and proudly conscious of her innocence when she was met with this astounding charge of murder. You heard the account that M. de Meau gave of that interview with her in her father’s house on the Monday. That was a most striking statement, and given with a truthfulness obviously that could not be surpassed. What was the import of that conversation? He advised her, as a friend, if L’Angelier was with her on that Sunday night, for God’s sake not to deny it. And why? Because, he said, it is certain to be proved. A servant, a policeman, a casual passenger, is certain to know the fact, and if you falsely deny it, what a fact that will be against you. What was the answer? In answer to five or six suggestions of M. de Meau, she said at length that she would swear that she had not seen him for three weeks. If she did not see him on the Sunday that was true.”
On the purchases of arsenic, the Dean called the attention of the jury to the improbability of her having purchased it at the time when she was urging L’Angelier not to go to the Bridge of Allan whilst she was there with her family, and to her throwing it away on the 17th of March, and then buying more on the 18th;—“throwing it away, it was said, when just coming within reach of her victim, and then buying more, with circumstances of openness and publicity inconsistent with the hypothesis of any legitimate object? Why expose herself to the necessity of a repeated purchase, when she had got enough to poison twenty or a hundred men.”
“But,” continued the Dean, “the possession of this arsenic is said to be unaccounted for, as far as the prisoner is concerned. It might be so; it may be so; and yet that would not make out the case for the prosecution. She says she used it as a cosmetic. This might be startling at first sight to many of us here, but after the evidence you have heard it will not amaze you. At school her story, which has so far been borne out by evidence, shows that she read of the Styrian peasants using it for strengthening their wind, improving their complexions. No doubt they used it internally, and not externally as she did, but in the imperfect state of her knowledge that was a fact of no significance. L’Angelier, too, was well aware of the same fact. He stated to more than one witness—and if he stated falsely, it is only one of a multitude of lies proved against him—that he used it himself. It is not surprising if L’Angelier knew of this custom that he should have communicated it to the prisoner, and that she should have used it externally, for an internal use is apparently a greater danger, which may have suggested to her to try it externally, and there is no reason to suppose, that if used as she used it, it would produce any injurious effects. No doubt we have medical men coming here and shaking their heads and looking wise, and saying that such a use of arsenic would be a dangerous procedure. That is not the question. The question is whether the prisoner could use it without injurious effects, and that she could do so is proved by the experiments of Dr. Laurie and Dr. Maclagan. The publication in Chambers’s, Blackwood’s Magazine, and Johnston’s “Chemistry of Common Life,” of information on the uses of arsenic, had reached not the prisoner alone, but a multitude of other ladies, and had incited them to the same kind of experiments. The two druggists—Robertson and Guthrie—spoke to the fact of ladies having come to their shops seeking arsenic for such purposes on the suggestion of these publications. It cannot, therefore, be surprising to you to learn that when the prisoner bought this arsenic, she intended to use it, and did actually, afterwards, use it for this purpose.”[123]