Speedy Death (30 page)

‘Perhaps not! I suggest, though, that on one occasion Miss Bing told you she hated you?’

‘Yes.’ Very low came this admission.

‘And that on another occasion she flung a clock belonging to you heavily upon the floor in a fit of passion?’

‘Yes. She might have dropped it by accident, though. I don’t think she meant to throw it down and smash it.’

‘Mrs Bing’—Ferdinand’s beautiful voice became husky with well-simulated admiration—‘you are
that wonderful and tender thing—a good woman. You have a power of forgiveness that I wish could be extended to us all. For this woman, whose passion you are trying to conceal from us, did worse than break your property. She made an attempt upon your very life!’

The witness grew deadly white and swayed dizzily on her feet, but remorselessly the counsel pressed his point home.

‘Can you deny it, Mrs Bing? Did she not creep into your room in the early hours of the morning——’

But the witness could bear no more.

‘Oh, don’t! Please don’t!’ she cried. ‘She did do that! But please don’t talk about it!’

The next witness was Garde, who looked exceptionally big and tall in his plus-fours. He grinned engagingly at Ferdinand and stood at ease, waiting to be questioned.

‘How did you get on with your sister, Mr Bing?’ The counsel shot a keen glance at him.

‘Not at all!’

If Dorothy’s low voice had been difficult to hear, this young man’s trumpet-call was even more discomforting. It had a kind of prairie note about it which made smaller people feel ineffective and effete. It rang through the over-heated court like a clarion.

Ferdinand glanced at the jury out of the corner of his eye. They appeared to observe the damaging nature of this admission, so he carried on briskly.

‘Do I understand that you actively disliked your sister, Mr Bing?’

(With a witness as sure of himself as this one, it was possible to introduce a note of pained surprise into the voice, reflected Ferdinand. It did not do to let the jury think that you were coercing your witnesses, and this young ox of a fellow was apparently non-suggestible.)

‘Disliked her?’ Garde’s voice was almost a snort. ‘Hated her would be nearer the mark!’

‘When you say “hated her,” Mr Bing’—counsel’s voice was almost deprecating now—‘you mean——?’

‘I mean exactly what I say!’ Garde’s open-air tones boomed out again. ‘I knew she meant to do in—that is, to kill Dorothy—that’s my wife—and any chap here will know what I felt like. I could tell you——’

Counsel held up a silencing hand.

‘I am sure you could, Mr Bing,’ he agreed gravely, and, amid the laughter of those in court, Garde stood down. There were many present who felt that Mrs Bradley’s counsel had only just prevented him from confessing to the murder itself.

The prisoner next went into the witness-box. The exquisite courtesy of Ferdinand to the accused made its impression on the jury, although they themselves were unaware of the fact.

‘I am not going to defend myself,’ said Mrs Bradley, as much at her ease as though she were addressing a mothers’ meeting on the subject of birth control, in the arguments for which she was
extraordinarily well-versed. ‘I am just going to tell you what happened that night—the eighteenth of August, wasn’t it?—yes, the eighteenth.’

Hereupon she gave a concise statement of the events of the night—a story which everybody in court knew by heart by this time, and the prosecuting counsel rose to cross-examine.

‘How do you answer the statement of the police that the dirty coffee cup had contained poison?’ he asked.

Mrs Bradley considered him gravely for a moment, and then replied:

‘Honi soit qui mal y pense, monsieur!
’ (Evil be to him who evil thinks).

The court howled delightedly, and there was some commotion at the back caused by a person in the preliminary stages of intoxication who expressed a desire to shake Mrs Bradley by the hand. When order was restored, the learned counsel was heard to demand that Mrs Bradley should answer the question. She smiled serenely.

‘Account for the statement? Oh, I can’t!’ she replied. ‘Why should I? I cannot undertake to read the minds of the police, and I’m glad of it.’

She was then put through a searching cross-examination as to her knowledge of mental healing and her acquaintance with American institutions where the drug hyoscin was used, and was compelled to make several damaging admissions.

‘The witness,’ said the papers next day, ‘then returned to her former position in the dock, and sat quietly through the rest of the proceedings.’

These proceedings consisted partly of the formal evidence of two doctors, who agreed with the pronouncement of the other medical witnesses that the poison recovered from the body was hyoscin in a sufficient quantity to cause death, but, examined by the defence, admitted that there was no more reason for supposing murder than for supposing that the drug had been self-administered. Cross-examined by the prosecution, the second of these medical witnesses agreed that hyoscin was not the easiest drug to obtain in a quantity sufficient to cause death, but, re-examined by the defence, he admitted that the painless action of the drug would be a great incentive for suicides to obtain it in preference to other, painfully acting poisons. He admitted, under examination, that hyoscin was used in ophthalmic clinics.

The next witness was an oculist, who stated that Eleanor Bing had suffered from eye-weakness, and had habitually worn spectacles.

With the stage-sense of the born actor, Ferdinand Lestrange had kept his most impressive piece of evidence until last. He astonished the whole court by calling Ellison Rallery, the Home Office analyst, into the witness-box.

In reply to Ferdinand’s suave questions, the expert informed the court of the medicine-glass discovered by Carstairs and sent to him for analysis of its contents. Feeling ran high, and the air was electric with excitement as he testified that the residue in the medicine-glass was that of a solution of hyoscin-hydrobromide. Even greater excitement followed
the statement of the next witness, Boring’s stolid sergeant, who was compelled to admit that fingerprints on the glass corresponded exactly with those he had previously taken from the dead woman herself.

‘Of course it doesn’t prove anything, really,’ thought Carstairs, ‘but it may make just all the difference to the jury’s verdict.’

This completed the evidence for the defence, and Ferdinand Lestrange rose leisurely to make his closing speech.

He based his remarks, he said, on two main premises. First, it must have struck the jury, as intelligent men, that there had been no more real evidence brought against the prisoner than could have been brought against nearly everyone else who was living at Chaynings on the night of Eleanor Bing’s death. What proof had the jury received that Mrs Bradley had committed a crime? He ventured to say that they had received no proof at all. A wineglass had been mentioned. Well, the expert’s report on the analysis of the contents of that wineglass was entirely in the prisoner’s favour. The prisoner had voluntarily confessed that she administered a cup of coffee to the deceased. It was the theory of the prosecution that the coffee had contained poison. Had they brought forward any proof of what he was compelled to consider a mischievous assumption unsupported by the smallest particle of fact? Against that, they had just been given strong presumptive evidence that the deceased had poisoned herself. If that
medicine-glass had been discovered sooner, and the residue of its contents had been analysed sooner, he dared to suggest, gentlemen, that the prisoner would never have been arrested. He would not labour the point. It was sufficiently clear that the police had acted with more haste than discretion.

That brought him to another point, gentlemen. Where, he would like to ask the prosecution, was the man who should have been one of their most important witnesses? He referred, of course, to the dead woman’s father, Mr Alastair Bing. Where was he? Why had he absented himself from the trial? It was not for the defence to suggest that Bing had reason for believing that his daughter had not been murdered at all, but had died by her own hand. It was certainly not for the defence to suggest a still more terrible possibility, but there it was! This man, this father, was in Tibet! He was not present at the trial!

This point, gentlemen, brought up another. In the opinion of the defence, the theory of suicide had never been properly investigated. There had been the unfortunate death of the deceased’s friend, Miss Mountjoy. It was possible that such an occurrence had induced deep depression of spirit in Eleanor Bing. There was a suggestion that the deceased had killed this friend. He suggested that in a fit of remorse, following such a deed, the deceased might well have made away with herself. It was known to the court that the deceased had made a violent attempt on the life of one of the witnesses they had listened to that day, Mrs Garde Bing. Surely that
fact alone must predispose the court to regard the woman Eleanor Bing as, to say the least, abnormal and mentally ill-balanced! But—here the learned counsel paused that the full purport of his next words might be understood—the jury were not in this court to hear him theorize about suicide. They were there to find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of murder. And in considering this question they must ask themselves what evidence they had heard which would cause them to agree upon their verdict. Had they been shown any reason—any adequate reason, that was to say—why the prisoner should have murdered Eleanor Bing? Had she any more motive for doing so than, say, the witness whose life had been attempted by the deceased? Or more motive than the husband of that witness, who had confessed before them all how great was his dislike for this dead sister? Had they, in fact, heard anything at all which caused them to feel certain that the prisoner was a murderess? He would willingly leave twelve such intelligent men to answer these questions, and to find a true verdict.

The formal recalling of the prisoner, and the closing speech for the prosecution followed in due course, but were not accorded the same amount of close attention as that given by the crowded court to the closing speech for the defence.

Mrs Bradley, too, was beginning to find the proceedings a little wearisome, although she automatically followed the fat little counsel’s points in his closing speech. He was certainly making the best of a bad job, she decided, for the analyst’s
report on the contents of the fateful medicine-glass had certainly ‘knocked the guts out of the prosecution,’ as a young reporter told Carstairs subsequently.

The judge summed up in the usual admirable manner of the bench, and addressed the jury gravely and courteously. He defined murder as ‘causing the death of another intentionally and by your wilful act,’ cautioned them, and finally dismissed them to consider their verdict.

They were absent for twenty-two minutes by Carstairs’ watch. Dorothy and Garde stood beside him, and Bertie Philipson, unusually nervous and fidgety, was at Garde’s side. They talked but little, and every three minutes, or less, Carstairs dragged out his watch and consulted it anxiously.

At last the twelve men filed in again.

The verdict was received with unrestrained cheering.

Dorothy wept without shame on Carstairs’ shoulder, and Garde and Bertie thumped each other on the back with idiotic heartiness.

The discharged prisoner seemed the least concerned of any person present.

‘THANK GOODNESS THAT’S
over!’

Garde started up the car as he spoke, and his face was set in the habitual scowl he wore when driving in traffic.

Dorothy laughed.

‘Anybody would think you had had your doubts about the verdict,’ she teased him.

‘Don’t know about doubts,’ her husband grunted. (‘Oh, go
on
, you fool!’ he apostrophized an elderly lady who seemed uncertain whether to cross the road in front of him or wait in the middle until he had driven by.) ‘I should think anybody might be forgiven—(Damn that fool of a Robert! He’s going to hold us up! No, he isn’t! Good egg!)—for being a trifle windy when they’ve got a friend in the dock.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Dorothy drew the rug a little farther over her knees, for the autumn weather was chilly. ‘She was in the dock, of course, and that is
very dreadful, but, still, there wasn’t a shadow of evidence against her, was there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Garde’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead, and this gave his conversation a detached air, as though he were a broadcasting announcer or a dictaphone. ‘After all, when a woman is guilty of murder, there must be
some
evidence of it somewhere, if people take the trouble to ferret it out, you know.’

‘Guilty!’ Dorothy echoed the word in accents of sheer horror.

Garde laughed aloud.

‘You poor innocent!’ he said. ‘(Damn these gears!) Who the hell do you think did it, then, if she didn’t?’

‘But—but——’ wailed Dorothy. ‘Oh, I can’t believe it! She didn’t do it! How could she? Besides—the verdict!’

‘Well, what about the verdict, sweet chuck?’ Garde blew his horn with savage gusto.