Martin’s evidence was concise. He happened to be in the “Black Lion” yard with other children at a quarter past ten on Monday night. He heard a woman’s scream, followed by a man’s loud cry of pain, and both sounds seemed to come from the extreme end of the garden.
Kitty Thwaites ran toward the hotel shrieking, “Oh, Betsy, Betsy, you’ve killed him!” She screamed “Murder” and called for someone to come, “for God’s sake!” She fell exactly opposite the place where he was standing. Then he saw Betsy Thwaites—he identified her now as Mrs. Pickering—running after her sister and brandishing a knife. She appeared to be very excited, and cried out, “I’ll swing for him. May the Lord deal wi’ him as he dealt wi’ me!” She called her sister a “strumpet,” and said it would “serve her right to stick her with the same knife.” He was quite sure those were the exact words. He was not alarmed in any way, only surprised by the sudden uproar, and he saw the two women and the knife as plainly as if it were broad daylight.
Mr. Dane concluded the examination-in-chief, which he punctuated with expressive glances at the jury, by touching on a point which he expected his acute rival to raise.
“What were you doing in the ‘Black Lion’ yard at that hour, Bolland?”
“I was having a dispute with Master Frank Beckett-Smythe.”
“What sort of a dispute?”
“Well, we were fighting.”
A grin ran through the court.
“He is an intelligent boy and older than you. Can you suggest any reason why he should have failed to see and hear all that you saw and heard?”