“Not at all,” Mason said. “I think it’s a very wise question. I think it’s a perfectly proper way of getting at the ultimate facts of the case.”
Sergeant Holcomb shifted himself to an easier position in the witness chair, gazed impressively at the jury, and said, “Helen Monteith killed Fremont C. Sabin. There are dozens of things which would be sufficient to establish an absolutely ironclad case against her, before any jury. First, she had motive. Sabin had married her under an assumed name; he had placed her in the position of being a bigamous wife. He had lied to her, tricked her, and deceived her. When she found out that the man she had married was Fremont C. Sabin, and that Sabin had a wife very much alive at the moment, she shot him. She probably didn’t intend to shoot him when she went to the cabin. Our experience has been that, in emotional murders of this nature, a woman frequently takes a gun for the purpose of threatening a man, for the purpose of frightening him, or for the purpose of making him believe that she isn’t to be trifled with; then, having pointed the gun at him, it’s a simple matter to pull the trigger, an almost unconscious reflex, a momentary surrender to emotion. The effects, of course, are disastrous.
“Second, Helen Monteith had the murder weapon in her possession. Her statement that she gave it to her husband is, of course, absurd on the face of it. The crime could not have been suicide. The man didn’t move from the time he fell to the floor. The gun was found some distance away, and was wiped clean of fingerprints.
“Third, she admits having been present at the cabin at the exact moment Sabin was murdered. She, therefore, combines motive, means and opportunity.”
“How do you fix that exact moment of the murder?” the coroner asked.
“It’s a matter of making correct deductions from circumstantial evidence,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
“Just a minute,” Mason interrupted. “Wouldn’t it be better to let the sergeant tell the jury the various factors which control the time element in this case, and let the jurors judge for themselves?”
“I don’t know,” the coroner admitted. “I’m trying to expedite matters as much as possible.”
Sergeant Holcomb said, “It would be absolutely foolish to resort to any such procedure. The interpretation of circumstantial evidence is something which calls for a highly specialized training. There are some things from which even the layman can make logical deductions, but on a complicated matter it requires years of experience. I have had that experience, and I am properly qualified to interpret the evidence for the jury. Therefore, I say that Fremont C. Sabin met his death sometime between ten o’clock in the morning and around noon, on Tuesday, the sixth day of September.”
“Now, just explain to the jury how you interpret the evidence so as to fix the time,” the coroner said.