The Shadow of the Rope Read online

  CHAPTER II

  THE CASE FOR THE CROWN

  It was years since there had been a promise of such sensation at the OldBailey, and never, perhaps, was competition keener for the very fewseats available in that antique theatre of justice. Nor, indeed, couldthe most enterprising of modern managers, with the star of all thestages at his beck for the shortest of seasons, have done more to spreadthe lady's fame, or to excite a passionate curiosity in the public mind,than was done for Rachel Minchin by her official enemies of theMetropolitan Police.

  Whether these gentry had their case even more complete than theypretended, when the prisoner was finally committed for trial, or whetherthe last discoveries were really made in the ensuing fortnight, is nowof small account--though the point provided more than one excuse foracrimony on the part of defending counsel during the hearing of thecase. It is certain, however, that shortly after the committal it becameknown that much new evidence was to be forthcoming at the trial; thatthe case against the prisoner would be found even blacker than before;and that the witnesses were so many in number, and their testimony soentirely circumstantial, that the proceedings were expected to occupy aweek.

  Sure enough, the case was accorded first place in the November Sessions,with a fair start on a Monday morning toward the latter end of themonth. In the purlieus of the mean, historic court, it was a morning notto be forgotten, and only to be compared with those which followedthroughout the week. The prisoner's sex, her youth, her high bearing,and the peculiar isolation of her position, without a friend to stand byher in her need, all appealed to the popular imagination, and produced afascination which was only intensified by the equally general feelingthat no one else could have committed the crime. From the judgedownward, all connected with the case were pestered for days beforehandwith more or less unwarrantable applications for admission. And when thetime came, the successful suppliant had to elbow every yard of his wayfrom Newgate Street or Ludgate Hill; to pass three separate barriersheld by a suspicious constabulary; to obtain the good offices of theUnder Sheriff, through those of his liveried lackeys; and finally tooccupy the least space, on the narrowest of seats, in a varnished stallfilled with curiously familiar faces, within a few feet of the heavilyveiled prisoner in the dock, and not many more from the red-robed judgeupon the bench.

  The first to take all this trouble on the Monday morning, and the lastto escape from the foul air (shot by biting draughts) when the courtadjourned, was a white-headed gentleman of striking appearance andstamina to match; for, undeterred by the experience, he was in likemanner first and last upon each subsequent day. Behind him came and wentthe well-known faces, the authors and the actors with asemi-professional interest in the case; but they were not well known tothe gentleman with the white head. He heard no more than he could helpof their constant whisperings, and, if he knew not at whom he more thanonce had occasion to turn and frown, he certainly did not look the manto care. He had a well-preserved reddish face, with a small mouth ofextraordinary strength, a canine jaw, and singularly noble forehead; buthis most obvious distinction was his full head of snowy hair. The onlyhair upon his face, a pair of bushy eyebrows, was so much darker as tosuggest a dye; but the eyes themselves were black as midnight, with aglint of midnight stars, and of such a subtle inscrutability that acertain sweetness of expression came only as the last surprise in a facefull of contrast and contradiction.

  No one in court had ever seen this man before; no one but the UnderSheriff learnt his name during the week; but by the third day hisidentity was a subject of discussion, both by the professional studentsof the human countenance, who sat behind him (balked of their study bythe prisoner's veil), and among the various functionaries who hadalready found him as free with a sovereign as most gentlemen are with apiece of silver. So every day he was ushered with ceremony to the sameplace, at the inner end of the lowest row; there he would sit watchingthe prisoner, a trifle nearer her than those beside or behind him; andonly once was his attentive serenity broken for an instant by a changeof expression due to any development of the case.

  It was not when the prisoner pleaded clearly through her veil, in thefirst breathless minutes of all; it was not a little later, when theurbane counsel for the prosecution, wagging his pince-nez at the jury,thrilled every other hearer with a mellifluous forecast of the newevidence to be laid before them. The missing watch and chain had beenfound; they would presently be produced, and the jury would have anopportunity of examining them, together with a plan of the chimney ofthe room in which the murder had been committed; for it was there thatthey had been discovered upon a second search instituted since theproceedings before the magistrates. The effect of this announcement maybe conceived; it was the sensation of the opening day. The whole case ofthe prosecution rested on the assumption that there had been, on thepart of some inmate of the house, who alone (it was held) could havecommitted the murder, a deliberate attempt to give it the appearance ofthe work of thieves. Thus far this theory rested on the bare facts thatthe glass of the broken window had been found outside, instead ofwithin; that no other mark of foot or hand had been made or left by thesupposititious burglars; whereas a brace of revolvers had beendiscovered in the dead man's bureau, both loaded with such bullets asthe one which had caused his death, while one of them had clearly beendischarged since the last cleaning. The discovery of the missing watchand chain, in the very chimney of the same room, was a piece of idealevidence of the confirmatory kind. But it was not the point that made animpression on the man with the white hair; it did not increase hisattention, for that would have been impossible; he was perhaps the onespectator who was not, if only for the moment, perceptibly thrilled.

  Thrilling also was the earlier evidence, furnished by maid-servants andpolice constables in pairs; but here there was no surprise. The maidswere examined not only as to what they had seen and heard on the nightof the murder--and they seemed to have heard everything except the fatalshot--but upon the previous relations of their master and mistress--ofwhich they showed an equally extensive knowledge. The constables wereperforce confined to their own discoveries and observations when themaids had called them in. But all four witnesses spoke to the prisoner'sbehavior when shown the dead body of her husband, and there was theutmost unanimity in their several tales. The prisoner had exhibitedlittle or no surprise; it was several minutes before she had uttered asyllable; and then her first words had been to point out that burglarsalone could have committed the murder.

  In cross-examination the senior counsel for the defence thus earlyshowed his hand; and it was not a strong one to those who knew the game.A Queen's Counsel, like the leader for the Crown, this was analtogether different type of lawyer; a younger man, with a more engagingmanner; a more brilliant man, who sought with doubtful wisdom to blindthe jury with his brilliance. His method was no innovation at the OldBailey; it was to hold up every witness in turn to the derision andcontempt of the jury and the court. So both the maids were reduced totears, and each policeman cleverly insulted as such. But the testimonyof all four remained unshaken; and the judge himself soothed the youngwomen's feelings with a fatherly word, while wigs were shaken in thewell of the court. That was no road to the soft side of a decent,conscientious, hard-headed jury, of much the same class as thesewitnesses themselves; even the actors and authors had a sound opinion onthe point, without waiting to hear one from the professional gentlemenin the well. But the man in front with the very white hair--the man whowas always watching the prisoner at the bar--there was about as muchexpression of opinion upon his firm, bare face as might be seen throughthe sable thickness of her widow's veil.

  It was the same next day, when, for some five hours out of a possiblefive and a half, the attention of the court was concentrated upon apoint of obviously secondary significance. It was suggested by thedefence that the watch and chain found up the study chimney were notthose worn by the deceased at the time he met his death. The contentionwas supported by photographs of Alexander Minchin wearing a watch-c
hainthat might or might not be of another pattern altogether; expertopinions were divided on the point; and experts in chains as well as inphotography were eventually called by both sides. Interesting in thebeginning, the point was raised and raised again, and on subsequentdays, until all were weary of the sight of the huge photographicenlargements, which were handed about the court upon each occasion. Eventhe prisoner would droop in her chair when the "chain photograph" wasdemanded for the twentieth time by her own unflagging counsel; even thejudge became all but inattentive on the point, before it was finallydropped on an intimation from the jury that they had made up their mindsabout the chains; but no trace of boredom had crossed the keen, alertface of the unknown gentleman with the snowy hair.

  So the case was fought for Mrs. Minchin, tooth and nail indeed, yetperhaps with more asperity than conviction, and certainly at times uponpoints which were hardly worth the fighting. Yet, on the Fridayafternoon, when her counsel at last played his masterstroke, and,taking advantage of the then new Act, put the prisoner herself in thewitness-box, it was done with the air of a man who is throwing up hiscase. The truth could be seen at a glance at the clean-cut, handsome,but too expressive profile of the crushing cross-examiner of femalewitnesses and insolent foe to the police. As it had been possible topredict, from the mere look with which he had risen to his feet, thekind of cross-examination in store for each witness called by theprosecution, so it was obvious now that his own witness had come forwardfrom her own wilful perversity and in direct defiance of his advice.

  It was a dismal afternoon, and the witness-box at the Old Bailey is sosituated that evidence is given with the back to the light; thus, thoughher heavy veil was raised at last, and it could be seen that she wasvery pale, it was not yet that Rachel Minchin afforded a chance to thelightning artists of the half-penny press, or even to the students ofphysiognomy behind the man with the white hair. This listener did notlean forward an inch; the questions were answered in so clear a voice asto render it unnecessary. Yet it was one of these questions, put by herown counsel, which caused the white-headed man to clap a sudden hand tohis ear, and to incline that ear as though the answer could not comewithout some momentary hesitation or some change of tone. Rachel hadtold sadly but firmly of her final quarrel with her husband,incidentally, but without embarrassment, revealing its cause. A neighborwas dangerously ill, whom she had been going to nurse that night, whenher husband met her at the door and forbade her to do so.

  "Was this neighbor a young man?"

  "Hardly more than a boy," said Rachel, "and as friendless as ourselves."

  "Was your husband jealous of him?"

  "I had no idea of it until that night."

  "Did you find it out then?"

  "I did, indeed!"

  "And where had your husband been spending the evening?"

  "I had no idea of that either--until he told me he had been watching thehouse--and why!"

  Though the man was dead, she could not rid her voice of its scorn; andpresently, with bowed head, she was repeating his last words to her. Acold thrill ran through the court.

  "And was that the last time you saw him alive?" inquired counsel, hisface lightening in ready apprehension of the thrill, and his assurancecoming back to him on the spot, as though it were he who had insistedon putting his client in the box.

  But to this there was no immediate answer; for it was here that thewhite-haired man raised his hand to his ear; and the event was exactlyas he seemed to have anticipated.

  "Was that the last time you saw your husband alive?" repeated Rachel'scounsel, in the winning accents and with the reassuring face that hecould assume without an effort at his will.

  "It was," said Rachel, after yet another moment's thought.

  It was then that the white-headed man dropped his eyes for once; and foronce the thin, hard lines of his mouth relaxed in a smile that seemed toepitomize all the evil that was in his face, and to give it forth in onesudden sour quintessence.