On the fourth day the district attorney opened the case with an address to the jury which was a masterpiece of temperate statement and damning suggestion. He dwelt long upon the remarkable points of the case: the youth and beauty and intelligence and social position of the defendant, the distinguished family which had been plunged into sorrow and disgrace by her crime, the extraordinary interest the crime had excited throughout the civilised world. He then gave a running account, clear and straightforward and decisive, of what the prosecution would prove, and concluded with a cold, terse, but reiterated warning that the prisoner at the bar was entitled to no sympathy because of her sex and position; that he and the jury were there for one purpose only: to consider the facts of the case and to do their plain duty, utterly regardless of consequences to the individual. Every word was chosen and weighed, and told like the ring of a steel hammer on a steel plate.
Dr. Lewis was then called to prove the fact of Beverly Peele’s death, and his vigorous story weighed heavily in the scales against the defence. The moment the district attorney sat down Bourke was on his feet. For a moment he stood lifting and shaking the loose cloth of the table beside him; then asked one or two random questions which put the witness for the prosecution quite at his ease. In the course of a moment the witness began to writhe, and at the end of five minutes manifested his consciousness of the fact that he was a small country practitioner, to be regarded by any intelligent jury with contempt. Nevertheless, it was impossible to shake his testimony.
He was followed by the New York physician, a man of eminence, who had assisted at the death-bed, then by the coroner. The fact of young Peele’s death being firmly established in the jury box, a chemist was put upon the stand to testify that he had found morphine in the stomach of the deceased. He was worried and badgered and ridiculed and derided by Bourke, who temporarily infected everybody in the court room with his scorn of the exercise of chemistry as applied to morphine in the stomach of a dead man, but held his ground, having been maltreated in a like manner many times before. Following, came a civil engineer, who described the grounds and general position of Peele Manor to the jury; and the testimony for the day was over.
The next morning the prosecution passed on to the motive. Honora was the first witness called. She wore a black frock and hat, and looked dignified and sad. In her clear childlike voice she described to the jury her moment of confusion and horror when awakened from a profound sleep by the prisoner; told the mournful story of the unavailing attempts at resuscitation; and hesitatingly admitted, in full detail, the unmistakable indifference of the wife. To the latter testimony Mr. Bourke “objected,” as he had done to similar testimony by the doctors, but the objection was over-ruled by the judge. She also admitted having seen from her window the defendant returning from town after her early visit on the morning of the “Eye” story, inappropriately attired in grey and pink, and having discovered the newspapers in confusion on the library floor before any other member of the household except the prisoner had arisen. She related Patience’s previous complaint that her husband always waited until she was in her first heavy sleep before demanding the morphine, and her fear lest she should some night give him an overdose. The jury must have been small headed indeed, to fail to understand the district attorney’s insinuations regarding the prisoner’s deep-laid scheme to avert suspicion.
As Honora gave her testimony Patience saw Mr. Bourke’s eyes sparkle. She knew that some pregnant idea had flashed into that lightning-like brain. As the district attorney took his seat he rose slowly and smiled sociably at Honora. She bent her head slightly; she had always liked him.
“Miss Mairs,” he said haltingly, his eyes wandering to the judge, as if in search of inspiration, his hand flirting the loose cloth of the table, “you are sure that Mrs. Peele wore a gray gown to New York that morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the condition of the newspapers seemed to you to indicate great agitation of mind?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, yes. And she returned in an hour or two, you say?”