“I don’t think it’s quite as bad with me as that,” said Timms, this time rubbing his shaggy eye-brows as if to ascertain whether or not he were dreaming, “though I must own I do not feel precisely as I did a month since. I wish you would see our client yourself, sir, and make her understand how important it is to her interest that we should know something of her past history.”
“Do you think her name is rightfully set forth in the indictment?”
“By no means—but, as she has called herself Mary Monson, she cannot avail herself of her own acts.”
“Certainly not—I asked merely as a matter of information. She must be made to feel the necessity of fortifying us on that particular point, else it will go far towards convicting her. Jurors do not like aliases.”
“She knows this already; for I have laid the matter before her, again and again. Nothing seems to move her, however; and as to apprehension, she appears to be above all fear.”
“This is most extraordinary!—Have you interrogated the maid?”
“How can I? She speaks no English; and I can’t utter a syllable in any foreign tongue.”
“Ha! Does she pretend to that much ignorance? Marie Moulin speaks very intelligible English, as I know from having conversed with her often. She is a clever, prudent Swiss, from one of the French cantons, and is known for her fidelity and trustworthiness. With me she will hardly venture to practise this deception. If she has feigned ignorance of English, it was in order to keep her secrets.”
Timms admitted the probability of its being so; then he entered into a longer and more minute detail of the state of the case. In the first place, he admitted that, in spite of all his own efforts to the contrary, the popular feeling was setting strong against their client. “Frank Williams,” as he called the saucy person who bore that name, had entered into the struggle might and main, and was making his customary impressions.
“His fees must be liberal,” continued Timms, “and I should think are in some way dependent on the result; for I never saw the fellow more engaged in my life.”