Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (54 page)

As the circumstances of
the murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger possession of the
public mind, I kept them away from mine by knowing as little about them as was
possible in the midst of the universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of
Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and that he had been
committed to Newgate for trial. I also knew that his trial had been postponed
over one Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general
prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the defence. I may further
have known, but I believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which
his trial stood postponed would come on.

My sitting-room, bedroom,
and dressing-room, are all on one floor. With the last there is no
communication but through the bedroom. True, there is a door in it, once
communicating with the staircase; but a part of the fitting of my bath has
been—and had then been for some years—fixed across it. At the same period, and
as a part of the same arrangement, the door had been nailed up and canvased
over.

I was standing in my
bedroom late one night, giving some directions to my servant before he went to
bed. My face was towards the only available door of communication with the
dressing-room, and it was closed. My servant’s back was towards that door.
While I was speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who very
earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me. That man was the man who had gone
second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was the colour of impure
wax.

The figure, having
beckoned, drew back, and closed the door. With no longer pause than was made by
my crossing the bedroom, I opened the dressing-room door, and looked in. I had
a lighted candle already in my hand. I felt no inward expectation of seeing the
figure in the dressing-room, and I did not see it there.

Conscious that my servant
stood amazed, I turned round to him, and said: “Derrick, could you believe that
in my cool senses I fancied I saw a—” As I there laid my hand upon his breast,
with a sudden start he trembled violently, and said, “O Lord, yes, Sir! A dead
man beckoning!”

Now I do not believe that
this John Derrick, my trusty and attached servant for more than twenty years,
had any impression whatever of having seen any such figure, until I touched
him. The change in him was so startling, when I touched him, that I fully
believe he derived his impression in some occult manner from me at that
instant.

I bade John Derrick bring
some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and was glad to take one myself. Of what
had preceded that night’s phenomenon, I told him not a single word. Reflecting
on it, I was absolutely certain that I had never seen that face before, except
on the one occasion in Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when beckoning at
the door with its expression when it had stared up at me as I stood at my
window, I came to the conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to
fasten itself upon my memory, and that on the second occasion it had made sure
of being immediately remembered.

I was not very
comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty, difficult to explain, that
the figure would not return. At daylight I fell into a heavy sleep, from which
I was awakened by John Derrick’s coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.

This paper, it appeared,
had been the subject of an altercation at the door between its bearer and my
servant. It was a summons to me to serve upon a Jury at the forthcoming
Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey. I had never before
been summoned on such a Jury, as John Derrick well knew. He believed—I am not
certain at this hour whether with reason or otherwise—that that class of Jurors
were customarily chosen on a lower qualification than mine, and he had at first
refused to accept the summons. The man who served it had taken the matter very
coolly. He had said that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to him;
there the summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and not at
his.

For a day or two I was
undecided whether to respond to this call, or to take no notice of it. I was
not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one
way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I
make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I
would go.

The appointed morning was
a raw morning in the month of November. There was a dense brown fog in
Piccadilly, and it became positively black and in the last degree oppressive
East of Temple Bar. I found the passages and staircases of the Court-House
flaringly lighted with gas, and the Court itself similarly illuminated. I
think
that, until I was conducted by officers into the Old
Court and saw its crowded state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be
tried that day. I
think
that, until I was so helped into the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I
did not know into which of the two Courts sitting my summons would take me. But
this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not completely
satisfied in my mind on either point.

I took my seat in the
place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I looked about the Court as well
as I could through the cloud of fog and breath that was heavy in it. I noticed
the black vapour hanging like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I
noticed the stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in
the street; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle,
or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards,
the Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in the Court
was awfully hushed. The direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar. He
appeared there. And in that same instant I recognized in him the first of the
two men who had gone down Piccadilly.

If my name had been
called then, I doubt if I could have answered to it audibly. But it was called
about sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was by that time able to say “Here!”
Now, observe. As I stepped into the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on
attentively, but with no sign of concern, became violently agitated, and
beckoned to his attorney. The prisoner’s wish to challenge me was so manifest,
that it occasioned a pause, during which the attorney, with his hand upon the
dock, whispered with his client, and shook his head. I afterwards had it from
that gentleman, that the prisoner’s first affrighted words to him were, “
At
all hazards, challenge that man!”
But that, as he would
give no reason for it, and admitted that he had not even known my name until he
heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.

Both on the ground
already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving the unwholesome memory of that
Murderer, and also because a detailed account of his long trial is by no means
indispensable to my narrative, I shall confine myself closely to such incidents
in the ten days and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept together, as
directly bear on my own curious personal experience. It is in that, and not in
the Murderer, that I seek to interest my reader. It is to that, and not to a
page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention.

I was chosen Foreman of
the Jury. On the second morning of the trial, after evidence had been taken for
two hours (I heard the church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my
brother jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted
them several times, yet always with the same difficulty. In short, I made them
one too many.

I touched the brother
juryman whose place was next me, and I whispered to him, “Oblige me by counting
us.” He looked surprised by the request, but turned his head and counted. “Why,”
says he, suddenly, “we are Thirt—; but no, it’s not possible. No. We are twelve.”

According to my counting
that day, we were always right in detail, but in the gross we were always one
too many. There was no appearance—no figure—to account for it; but I had now an
inward foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming.

The Jury were housed at
the London Tavern. We all slept in one large room on separate tables, and we
were constantly in the charge and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us
in safe-keeping. I see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer.
He was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much
respected in the City. He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black
whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His name was Mr. Harker.

When we turned into our
twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker’s bed was drawn across the door. On the night
of the second day, not being disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker
sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of
snuff. As Mr. Harker’s hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar
shiver crossed him, and he said, “Who is this?”

Following Mr. Harker’s
eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again the figure I expected, —the
second of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly. I rose, and advanced a few
steps; then stopped, and looked round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned,
laughed, and said in a pleasant way, “I thought for a moment we had a
thirteenth juryman, without a bed. But I see it is the moonlight.”

Making no revelation to
Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk with me to the end of the room, I
watched what the figure did. It stood for a few moments by the bedside of each
of my eleven brother jurymen, close to the pillow. It always went to the
right-hand side of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next
bed. It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look down pensively at
each recumbent figure. It took no notice of me, or of my bed, which was that
nearest to Mr. Harker’s. It seemed to go out where the moonlight came in,
through a high window, as by an aerial flight of stairs.

Next morning at
breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had dreamed of the murdered man
last night, except myself, and Mr. Harker.

I now felt as convinced
that the second man who had gone down Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to
speak), as if it had been borne into my comprehension by his immediate
testimony. But even this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all
prepared.

On the fifth day of the
trial, when the case for the prosecution was drawing to a close, a miniature of
the murdered man, missing from his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and
afterwards found in a hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was
put in evidence. Having been identified by the witness under examination, it
was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be inspected by the Jury.
As an officer in a black gown was making his way with it across to me, the
figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly impetuously started from
the crowd, caught the miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his
own hands, at the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone, —before I saw the
miniature, which was in a locket, — “I
was younger then, and my face was not then drained of blood.”
It
also came between me and the brother juryman to whom I would have given the
miniature, and between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given
it, and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into my
possession. Not one of them, however, detected this.

At table, and generally
when we were shut up together in Mr. Harker’s custody, we had from the first
naturally discussed the day’s proceedings a good deal. On that fifth day, the
case for the prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question
in a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and serious.
Among our number was a vestryman, —the densest idiot I have ever seen at large,
—who met the plainest evidence with the most preposterous objections, and who
was sided with by two flabby parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from
a district so delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their
own trial for five hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads were at
their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us were already
preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man. He stood grimly behind them,
beckoning to me. On my going towards them and striking into the conversation,
he immediately retired. This was the beginning of a separate series of
appearances, confined to that long room in which
we
were confined. Whenever a knot of my brother jurymen laid their heads together,
I saw the head of the murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of
notes was going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.

It will be borne in mind
that down to the production of the miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I
had never seen the Appearance in Court. Three changes occurred now that we
entered on the case for the defence. Two of them I will mention together,
first. The figure was now in Court continually, and it never there addressed
itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking at the time. For
instance: the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the
opening speech for the defence, it was suggested that the deceased might have
cut his own throat. At that very moment, the figure, with its throat in the
dreadful condition referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the
speaker’s elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right
hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker himself the
impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted by either hand. For
another instance: a witness to character, a woman, deposed to the prisoner’s
being the most amiable of mankind. The figure at that instant stood on the
floor before her, looking her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner’s
evil countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.