The Jury (28 page)

I have warned you, and I warn you again, that you must be very much on your guard against allowing moral considerations to affect your judgement on points of fact. I do not mean, however, that the behaviour of the prisoner, in respect of his wife and in respect of the other woman in the case, is not to be taken into consideration in arriving at your verdict. I have no doubt that some of you, perhaps all of you, feel very strongly indeed about those matters; it may be that I feel very strongly about them; but it is your duty, as it is mine, to put such feelings on one side. The prisoner is a confessed adulterer, and you may think that there was something uncommonly casual in his manner of confessing to that wickedness and in the manner in which the woman who was his paramour confessed to it. But adultery is not murder, and many a man has committed the one who would never dream of committing the other. Sexual licence, unfortunately, is no rare thing in our modern world; and a cynical disregard of sexual morality does not by any means involve a disregard of the sanctity of human life, still less a disposition to murder. On the other hand there is no doubt that a guilty sexual passion has time and again furnished a motive for murder, and it is for you to consider, quietly and dispassionately, as reasonable men and women, whether the prisoner's behaviour in respect of this woman does or does not suggest that he had a powerful interest in wishing his wife out of the way. If you decide that he had, if you decide in your own minds that he wished for his wife's death, that will not of course be the same as deciding that he actually encompassed his wish: nothing of the kind. But, for what it is worth, there it is.

I have no doubt that you will carefully consider the prisoner's behaviour on October the 31st, his going to Southampton and his evident intention of sailing to America by the night boat. I won't go into that again beyond directing your earnest attention to it. On the one hand you have the view of the Prosecution, that the prisoner was fleeing from justice; and to set against that you have the prisoner's story, that he was going to America with his mistress with the full knowledge and consent of his wife. As to the flight-from-justice
theory, you may think it odd that the prisoner, if indeed he was flying from justice, wasted so much time about it, first spending a night with his mistress at her London flat, and then, at his leisure, making for a boat that was not due to sail till five minutes before midnight of the following day. On the other hand, you will remember that criminals, even the cleverest among them, often do very foolish things, especially if they are in a state of amorous infatuation. As to the prisoner's story, you alone have the right to judge whether or not he was speaking the truth: it is not for me to instruct you on that point. You have seen and heard him giving evidence in his defence, and you will form your own conclusions of his veracity. You may think that in general he answered the questions put to him in a straightforward and candid manner, and you may nevertheless think that on one or two points he was a little evasive, or at least not quite convincing. You may think he is speaking the truth but not the whole truth, and of course it is open to you to think he is lying. You may find it impossible to believe, for example, that his wife's attitude to his adulterous way of life miraculously changed from one of anger and reprobation, with which all must sympathize, to one of complaisance and condonation—and all within the space of a few hours. In the morning, when he leaves her for his office, she is still angry and disapproving, as any woman might be reasonably supposed to be in the unhappy circumstances. In the evening, when he returns, she was (in the prisoner's own words) “very generous about it, she urged me to go”—that is, to go to America with his mistress. You are, most of you, men and women with some experience of life, and your knowledge of human nature, and of your own natures in particular, will help you to decide whether or not such a story is the kind of story you feel justified in believing.

Now if the prisoner is lying, on that or on any other point, it is because he has something to hide, but can you be sure that what he has to hide—if there is any such thing—amounts to murder? I do not say that you can or that you cannot: I leave the question with you. You may think murder has been done; you may think the prisoner had both motive and opportunity. It is not necessary for the Prosecution to prove
his manual possession of the poison, but it is necessary, before you can be justified in convicting, that you should be convinced beyond reasonable doubt both that he administered the poison and administered it feloniously; that is, with murderous intent. That means you must be convinced that he gave it knowing that another dose had been, or was about to be, given. The prisoner denies both the one and the other; he denies giving the poison, he denies having heard Mrs Tucker say that a sleeping-draught had been supplied by the doctor, and he denies that he was aware that his wife had at any time been prescribed oscitalin. You may think it unlikely that the prisoner would know that the sleeping-draught prescribed on that previous occasion was oscitalin, or that he was familiar with the formula of that drug; but oscitalin, as we have heard, is a fashionable prescription, and in any case if you are convinced, on the evidence, that he gave his wife chloral, knowing that the other draught had been or would be given, you will be justified in presuming a murderous intention. It is not necessary that he should have known precisely what he was giving or precisely what else was being given, if you are satisfied that he believed both to be a fatal dose when taken in conjunction or in rapid succession. That two draughts were given, there can be no doubt; for the post-mortem examination revealed the presence of three substances— bromide, hyoscyamus, and cannabis indica—which are not accounted for by Dr Cartwright's prescription; and, as you will remember, the amount of chloral found in the body exceeded the amount given on Dr Cartwright's instructions.

I went over that ground very carefully at the beginning of this summing-up: I needn't go over it again. You have heard the prisoner's evidence, and you have heard the evidence of the woman who was with him at the hotel in Southampton on the evening of October the 31st. Her evidence is in direct conflict with that of the barman, House; and the conflict concerns a crucial point, whether or not the prisoner was within hearing of a wireless receiving-set when the appeal to him to return to his wife was broadcast over the ether. It is for you to decide which of the two is speaking the truth. The woman may be lying; the man House may be mistaken; that is a question for you. You have seen them both and you must
judge for yourselves without further help from me. But you must allow no consideration whatever, no prejudice or haste or impatience, to persuade you to return a verdict of guilty unless you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it is a true verdict. If you are not so satisfied, if the charge is not proved, then whatever your surmises or suspicions may be, whatever your mere feelings may be, it will be your duty to find the prisoner not guilty. You will now consider your verdict and say whether you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty.

To Charles Underhay, who had never seen the inside of a criminal court before, the place was agreeable, almost academic in atmosphere, eminently safe. Here reason and law held absolute sway. Here the established order was quietly and elegantly sustained. A number of cultivated gentlemen were met together to discuss whether a man should live or die, and it was all very reassuring to Mr Underhay. In his hot youth he had gone through a period of Dissent, and the varnished oak in which the walls were half-panelled, and of which dock and bench and jury-box were constructed, reminded him—though he did not consciously entertain the memory—of the Wesleyan Chapel where his ecclesiastical wild oats had been sown. He was not a religious man; of the supernatural he was mildly and politely sceptical; but as a good citizen, as a conscientious Second Division clerk, he had a veneration, almost religious in temper, for all national institutions. The court ceremonial profoundly impressed and satisfied him: the entry of the Judge, the bowing, the archaic language of the usher's exhortation and of the oath administered to every several member of the jury. “I swear by Almighty God that I will well and truly try and true deliverance make between our Sovereign Lord the King and the Prisoner at the Bar whom I shall have in charge, and a true verdict give, according to the evidence.” He did not know nor care whether that was good prose or bad: enough for him that it was archaic, traditional. It sounded a trifle odd on the lips of some of his fellow-jurors, Mr Bayfield for example; but he was quick to rebuke himself for the observation. It was a solemn moment, and the solemnity was very congenial to him: it touched a responsive chord. If he himself
had had the misfortune to be sentenced to death, it would have greatly comforted him to have that sentence pronounced in cultured accents and by an elderly gentleman in grey wig and scarlet gown; and so long as the sentence was carried out in due form, with all the traditional routine, he would have died almost happy.

But though Nature might seem to have designed Charles Underhay to be a foreman of juries, she had spoiled her work at the last moment by endowing him with an uncommon degree of shyness. When, time and again during the summing-up, he met the patient fatherly gaze of Mr Justice Sarum, he was fluttered by a sense of the responsibility that rested on him; for he imagined that when the time came for the jury to retire and consider their verdict, he, the foreman, would be expected to guide their deliberations. Being a man of sedentary and unsociable habit, a stranger to every kind of boardroom and committee-meeting, he had never been in such a position before and he wished himself well out of it. Why his name had been called first, whether by accident or design, he did not know; but he felt, especially during that summing-up, that the judge was relying on him, on him rather than the others, to search out and deliver the truth of this matter. With the words “you will now consider your verdict”, the old gentleman had looked straight into his eyes, into his mind, as if to say: “We understand each other, you and I. We know that society must be protected from such passions as these.”

Charles had welcomed this chance of sitting on a jury: it would provide distraction at a time when he badly needed it. For the great decision had been taken, and six-year-old Betty was now at school. At school and away from home. Her aunt, his late wife's eldest sister, had persuaded him that the child needed the companionship of other children and a well-planned mental dietary such as school would provide. The thing had been put to Betty in terms cunningly designed to excite her curiosity; for though Charles was unconscious of entertaining modern ideas about the relations between parents and children, and would have vigorously repudiated any such suggestion, he had always treated the child with a certain courteous consideration, and it was out of the question, for him, that she should be bundled out of the house without her
own consent. So, with Aunt Ann as author and stage-manager, a drama was enacted in which Mrs Fairfax, who had a nursery school six miles away, played a decisive part. Invited to tea by Aunt Ann, she let fall, in Betty's presence, stray references to a family of white rabbits that lived with her, and to a tortoise that had the run of her large garden, and finally, as an afterthought, to sundry girls and boys with whom she passed her days. Each child, it appeared, had a tiny green-glazed toilet-set, a bedspread of its own choice, a book to read in and a book to write in, besides the use of other conveniences—such as swings and rocking-horses—which they held in common. The trouble was that they were all so busy learning things, and making things, and enjoying themselves, that they sometimes forgot to feed the rabbits; and Mrs Fairfax did so wish she could find a little girl who would come and stay with her and put that matter right, for if something of the sort didn't happen soon the rabbits would grow thin enough to escape through the bars of their hutch, when no one was looking, and then perhaps the cat would get them. Betty was sympathetic but cautious. She committed herself no further, at that interview, than to say that she wished she could see the rabbits. But very soon those celestial creatures, with the tortoise aiding, and the unknown children adding relish to the glittering prospect, took possession of her heart. “I wonder what the rabbits are doing?” she asked Aunt Ann. Aunt Ann, seldom at a loss, replied that they were doing this or that. And, five minutes later: “What are they doing
now,
Auntie, those rabbits?” Whereat Aunt Ann gave expression to her secret anxiety that they were very likely waiting to be fed.

Before breakfast was over, next morning, the die was cast and the day appointed. Betty was going to school, school being, in her mind, a place where, between intervals of washing oneself in a tiny green basin and drawing pictures and being read to, one indulged, with motherly solicitude, the voracity of white rabbits. Charles, during these delicate negotiations, had been racked with anxiety, a torture which he strove to hide under a demeanour laboriously normal. If these arts and devices of Ann's should fail, what then? They did not fail: Betty was going to school. It was arranged and she was
happy in the arrangement. Then, just as in a dream one sees one's hopes and fears magically transformed into fact in the very moment of conceiving them, so poor Charles's bogey, that Betty might change her mind, took shape and substance before his eyes. In the morning it was agreed that she should go tomorrow, and throughout the morning all the talk was of rabbits. But during the afternoon she became significantly quiet, and in the early evening, when Charles arrived home, she had reached the point of confessing that she was undecided whether to go or not. “Sometimes I think I will,” she remarked, her features screwed into that ultra-thoughtful frown which generally boded tears, “and sometimes I think I'll stay with you and Charlie.” And, having felt her way cautiously, she announced a moment later that she would certainly stay. A silent frenzy raged in Charles's heart: it was wretched enough to have to part with Betty, but if she too was going to feel the parting, it would be intolerable. How to persuade and not coerce: that was the problem.