He recounted the story. He observed that it did not appear to be disputed that the prisoner had travelled in the same compartment with the woman who was dead. He did not know what the defence would be. But if it was intended to suggest that death had been the result of accident, he asked the attention of the jury to the medical evidence. It was shown by that that death had not been caused by falling from the train. The woman had been strangled--strangled by a man's two hands. The degree of violence which had been used not only inevitably suggested premeditation, but also great resolution in carrying out what had been premeditated. The murderer had resolved to kill, and he did kill.
They could not say with certainty what happened after the train left Brighton. A feature of the case was that the efforts of the police had failed in establishing the dead woman's identity. So far as they could discover she was nameless. No one had come forward to claim her--to say who she was. She seemed to have come from nowhere. No one seemed to have missed her now that she had gone. It was a mystery. He could not say if the prisoner had it in his power to supply them with the key to that mystery. Men live double lives. The witness Taunton had told them that what he had heard had caused him to conclude that the man and woman in the next compartment were acquaintances. That might have been the case. In that connection he would merely remark--that the prisoner was a married man; that the woman was young and pretty; that she was far advanced in pregnancy; that she wore no wedding-ring.
In these facts they might, possibly, find a motive for the crime.
A great crime had been committed. A young woman, scarcely more than a girl, who would shortly have become a mother, had been done to death. So far as one could perceive, there were no palliating circumstances. It was the other way. The crime was the act of a coward, as well as of a criminal. He did not desire to press the case unduly against the prisoner. It was his duty to ask them, as jurymen, if the facts which had been presented were not adequate to bring the crime home to him. If they deemed them inadequate, then, without showing fear or favour, it was their duty to say so.
Sir Haselton Jardine sat down.
And Mr. Bates got up.
Mr. Bates began by remarking that he did not propose to call any witnesses for the defence.
Then, in that case, in view of the body of evidence which had been called for the other side, Tommy's goose was cooked, and he was done for. Mr. Bates might have as well kept still. A general movement which took place in the court seemed to be a voiceless expression of this consensus of opinion.
Mr. Bates said that, in taking this course, he was almost overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility. That was chiefly owing to the fact that the law of England was still in such a state that the prisoner could not go into the box and testify. He was exceedingly anxious to give his testimony, but it could not be received as evidence. If he had spoken out at first he might not, and probably would not, have been in the position which he was occupying now. But he had shrunk from the course which a wiser man would have pursued--shrunk from it for reasons which were natural enough, but which still, he was bound to say, were insufficient. Now it was too late. His voice could not be heard.
It was his duty, as the prisoner's advocate, to lay before the jury the prisoner's story.