Then Mr. Bates told what had really happened, and told it very well indeed. His story was literally accurate. I did not detect a single discrepancy. I think I should have done! He was frank almost to a fault. He nothing extenuated, nothing set down in malice. Nothing was omitted--even the dotting of the i's.
And yet I doubt if a soul in court, with the exception, perhaps, of Tommy's wife, believed a word he said.
To me, listening up there, the thing was inconceivably funny.
The chief difficulty which Mr. Bates had to contend with, as he owned, and as one perceived without his owning it, was the medical evidence. He admitted that it was difficult to reconcile it with the prisoner's story. The prisoner declared that he did not understand it; that it had come upon him with the force of a surprise.
His theory was that the woman had been stunned by her fall from the train. As she was unconscious, or before she had recovered, some straggling vagabond had found her lying on the bank. He had robbed her. To effect his purpose he had had to add murder to robbery. The prosecution had not laid stress upon the point, but she evidently had been robbed. There was not the slightest tittle of evidence to connect the prisoner with the robbery, so counsel for the Crown had been wise not to dwell upon it. On the other hand there was complete absence of motive, and the fact that nothing of any sort could have belonged to the dead woman had been found in the possession of the prisoner.
He admitted that the suggestion that murder had been committed after the fall from the carriage was well worthy the attention of the jury.
The prisoner made a mistake--which however, he submitted, was the mistake which we might naturally have expected from a constitutionally nervous man--in not giving the alarm immediately the accident took place. He ought to have spoken when they reached Victoria. He ought not to have allowed himself to be frightened by the blackmailing Taunton. But, after all, these were all mistakes which a perfectly innocent man, of his constitution, in his position, might have made. We none of us could absolutely rely upon having our wits about us when we most wanted them.
The prisoner had made mistakes. He owned it. But he begged the jury to consider that the law did not permit him to put the prisoner into the witness-box, and that the prisoner was convinced that, if he only might be suffered to tell his tale his innocence would be established. Above all, he entreated them not to send a fellow-creature to an ignominious death because he had yielded to the promptings of a timorous constitution and had not played the man.
When Mr. Bates sat down the judge summed up.
And he did it very briefly.