What's Bred in the Bone

by Grant Allen

The opening formalities were soon got over, and then, amid a deep hush of breathless lips, Guy Waring, of Staple Inn, Holborn, gentleman, was put upon his trial for the wilful murder of Montague Nevitt, eighteen months before, at Mambury in Devon.

Guy, standing in the dock, looked puzzled and distracted rather than alarmed or terrified. His cheek was pale, to be sure, and his eyes were weary; but as Elma glanced from him hastily to the judge on the bench she had no hesitation in settling in her own mind which of the two looked most at that moment like a detected murderer before the faces of his accusers. Guy was calm and self-contained. Sir Gilbert’s mute agony was terrible to behold. Yet, strange to say, no one else in court save Elma seemed to note it as she did. People saw the judge was ill, but that was all. Perhaps his wig and robes helped to hide the effect of conscious guilt—nobody suspects a judge of murder; perhaps all eyes were more intent on the prisoner.

Be that as it might, counsel for the Crown opened with a statement of what they meant to prove, set forth in the familiar forensic fashion. They didn’t pretend the evidence against the accused was absolutely conclusive or overwhelming in character. It was inferential only, but not circumstantial—inferential in such a cumulative and convincing way as could leave no moral doubt on any intelligent mind as to the guilt of the prisoner. They would show that a close intimacy had long existed between the prisoner Waring and the deceased gentleman, Mr. Montague Nevitt. Witnesses would be called who would prove to the court that just before the murder this intimacy, owing to circumstances which could not fully be cleared up, had passed suddenly into intense enmity and open hatred. The landlord of the inn at Mambury, and other persons to be called, would speak to the fact that prisoner had followed his victim in hot blood into Devonshire, and had tracked him to the retreat where he was passing his holiday alone and incognito—had tracked him with every expression of indignant anger, and had uttered plain threats of personal violence towards him.

Nor was that all. It would be shown that on the afternoon of Waring’s visit to Mambury, Mr. Nevitt, who possessed an intense love of nature in her wildest and most romantic moods—it’s always counsel’s cue, for the prosecution, to set the victim’s character in the most amiable light, and so win the sympathy of the jury as against the accused—Mr. Nevitt, that close student of natural beauty, had strolled by himself down a certain woodland path, known as The Tangle, which led through the loneliest and leafiest quarter of Mambury Chase, along the tumbling stream described as the Mam-water. Ten minutes after he had passed the gate, a material witness would show them, the prisoner Waring presented himself, and pointedly asked whether his victim had already gone down the path before him. He was told that that was so. Thereupon the prisoner opened the gate, and followed excitedly. What happened next no living eye but the prisoner’s ever saw. Montague Nevitt was not destined to issue from that wood alive. Two days later his breathless body was found, all stiff and stark, hidden among the brown bracken at the bottom of the dell, where the murderer no doubt had thrust it away out of his sight on that fatal afternoon in fear and trembling.

Half-way through the opening speech Sir Gilbert’s heart beat fast and hard. He had never heard Forbes-Ewing open a case so well. The man would be hanged! He felt sure of it! He could see it! For a while the judge almost gloated over that prospect of release. What was Guy’s life to him now, by the side of his wife’s and Gwendoline’s happiness? But as counsel uttered the words, “What happened next no living eye but the prisoner’s ever saw,” he looked hard at Guy. Not a quiver of remorse or of guilty knowledge passed over the young man’s face. But Elma Clifford, for her part, looked at the judge on the bench. Their eyes met once more. Again Sir Gilbert’s fell. Oh, heavens! how terrible! Even for Gwendoline’s sake he could never stand this appalling suspense. But perhaps after all the prosecution might fail. There was still a chance left that the jury might acquit him.

So, torn by conflicting emotions, he sat there still, stiff and motionless in his seat as an Egyptian statue.

Then counsel went on to deal in greater detail with the question of motive. There were two motives the prosecution proposed to allege: first, the known enmity of recent date between the two parties, believed to have reference to some business dispute; and, secondly—here counsel dropped his voice to a very low key—he was sorry to suggest it; but the evidence bore it out—mere vulgar love of gain—the commonplace thirst after filthy lucre. They would bring witnesses to show that when Mr. Montague Nevitt was last seen alive, he was in possession of a pocket-book containing a very large large sum in Bank of England notes of high value; from the moment of his death that pocket-book had disappeared, and nobody knew what had since become of it. It was not upon the body when the body was found. And all their efforts to trace the missing notes, whose numbers were not known, had been unhappily unsuccessful.

Guy listened to all this impeachment in a dazed, dreamy way. He hardly knew what it meant. It appalled and chilled him. The web of circumstances was too thick for him to break. He couldn’t understand it himself. And what was far worse, he could give no active assistance to his own lawyers on the question of the notes—which might be very important evidence against him—without further prejudicing his case by confessing the forgery. At all hazards, he was determined to keep that quiet now. Cyril had never spoken to a soul of that episode, and to speak of it, as things stood, would have been certain death to him. I would be to supply the one missing link of motive which the prosecution needed to complete their chain of cumulative evidence.

It was some comfort to him to think, however, that the secret was safe in Cyril’s keeping. Cyril had all the remaining notes, still unchanged, in his possession; and the prosecution, knowing nothing of the forgery, or its sequel, had no clue at all as to where they came from.

But as for Sir Gilbert, he listened still with ever-deepening horror. His mind swayed to and fro between hope and remorse. They were making the man guilty, and Gwendoline would be saved! They were making the man guilty, and a gross wrong would be perpetrated! Great drops of sweat stood colder than ever on his burning brow. He couldn’t have believed Forbes-Ewing could have done it so well. He was weaving a close web round an innocent man with consummate forensic skill and cunning.