“I was staying at Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death,” he began. “Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale desired to see me at a private interview—the prisoner being then in a state of prostration which made it impossible for him to attend to his duties as master of the house. At this interview the two doctors astonished and horrified me by declaring that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died poisoned. They left it to me to communicate the dreadful news to her husband, and they warned me that a post-mortem examination must be held on the body.
“If the Fiscal had seen my old friend when I communicated the doctors’ message, I doubt if he would have ventured to charge the prisoner with the murder of his wife. To my mind the charge was nothing less than an outrage. I resisted the seizure of the prisoner’s Diary and letters, animated by that feeling. Now that the Diary has been produced, I agree with the prisoner’s mother in denying that it is fair evidence to bring against him. A Diary (when it extends beyond a bare record of facts and dates) is nothing but an expression of the poorest and weakest side in the character of the person who keeps it. It is, in nine cases out of ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and conceit which the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but himself. I am the prisoner’s oldest friend. I solemnly declare that I never knew he could write downright nonsense until I heard his Diary read in this Court!
“He kill his wife! He treat his wife with neglect and cruelty! I venture to say, from twenty years’ experience of him, that there is no man in this assembly who is constitutionally more incapable of crime and more incapable of cruelty than the man who stands at the Bar. While I am about it, I go further still. I even doubt whether a man capable of crime and capable of cruelty could have found it in his heart to do evil to the woman whose untimely death is the subject of this inquiry.
“I have heard what the ignorant and prejudiced nurse, Christina Ormsay, has said of the deceased lady. From my own personal observation, I contradict every word of it. Mrs. Eustace Macallan—granting her personal defects—was nevertheless one of the most charming women I ever met with. She was highly bred, in the best sense of the word. I never saw in any other person so sweet a smile as hers, or such grace and beauty of movement as hers. If you liked music, she sang beautifully; and few professed musicians had such a touch on the piano as hers. If you preferred talking, I never yet met with the man (or even the woman, which is saying a great deal more) whom her conversation could not charm. To say that such a wife as this could be first cruelly neglected, and then barbarously murdered, by the man—no! by the martyr—who stands there, is to tell me that the sun never shines at noonday, or that the heaven is not above the earth.
“Oh yes! I know that the letters of her friends show that she wrote to them in bitter complaint of her husband’s conduct to her. But remember what one of those friends (the wisest and the best of them) says in reply. ‘I own to thinking,’ she writes, ‘that your sensitive nature exaggerates or misinterprets the neglect that you experience at the hands of your husband.’ There, in that one sentence, is the whole truth! Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s nature was the imaginative, self-tormenting nature of a poet. No mortal love could ever have been refined enough for her. Trifles which women of a coarser moral fiber would have passed over without notice, were causes of downright agony to that exquisitely sensitive temperament. There are persons born to be unhappy. That poor lady was one of them. When I have said this, I have said all.
“No! There is one word more still to be added.
“It may be as well to remind the prosecution that Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death was in the pecuniary sense a serious loss to her husband. He had insisted on having the whole of her fortune settled on herself, and on her relatives after her, when he married. Her income from that fortune helped to keep in splendor the house and grounds at Gleninch. The prisoner’s own resources (aided even by his mother’s jointure) were quite inadequate fitly to defray the expenses of living at his splendid country-seat. Knowing all the circumstances, I can positively assert that the wife’s death has deprived the husband of two-thirds of his income. And the prosecution, viewing him as the basest and cruelest of men, declares that he deliberately killed her—with all his pecuniary interests pointing to the preservation of her life!
“It is useless to ask me whether I noticed anything in the conduct of the prisoner and Mrs. Beauly which might justify a wife’s jealousy. I never observed Mrs. Beauly with any attention, and I never encouraged the prisoner in talking to me about her. He was a general admirer of pretty women—so far as I know, in a perfectly innocent way. That he could prefer Mrs. Beauly to his wife is inconceivable to me, unless he were out of his senses. I never had any reason to believe that he was out of his senses.
“As to the question of the arsenic—I mean the question of tracing that poison to the possession of Mrs. Eustace Macallan—I am able to give evidence which may, perhaps, be worthy of the attention of the Court.
“I was present in the Fiscal’s office during the examination of the papers, and of the other objects discovered at Gleninch. The dressing-case belonging to the deceased lady was shown to me after its contents had been officially investigated by the Fiscal himself. I happen to have a very sensitive sense of touch. In handling the lid of the dressing-case, on the inner side I felt something at a certain place which induced me to examine the whole structure of the lid very carefully. The result was the discovery of a private repository concealed in the space between the outer wood and the lining. In that repository I found the bottle which I now produce.”