The Queen Against Owen

Tressamer listened in silence, and let a moment or two go by before he gave his decision.

‘I would rather you kept your brief. I would rather you did it. After all, you have merely a mechanical part to perform; it is only routine. Suppose I were to have a limb amputated, I should like it to be done by a man I knew. And this is something of the same sort. The evidence is there, and you will not make it any worse – or better.’

The other was shocked at the gloomy, resigned way in which he spoke.

‘Good heavens! you don’t mean that you too believe – ’

‘No, Charles. I believe she is innocent. But I do not expect her innocence will ever be proved in this world.’

‘Oh, come, you mustn’t give up now! All sorts of things may happen. The trial may go differently to what you expect. Half the time these witnesses don’t swear up to their proofs.’

‘They have given their evidence twice already – at the inquest and before the magistrates.’

‘Yes; but then they weren’t cross-examined. It is very different when they have a man like you to turn them inside out. You’re not nervous about it, are you?’

‘Nervous!’ He smiled grimly. ‘No; it was at my own request I received this brief. A breach of etiquette, you see’ – with another heavy smile. ‘If she can be saved, I shall save her. Shall I tell you my defence?’

‘No, don’t; I would rather be taken by surprise. I don’t want to shine in this case, Heaven knows! Take every advantage I can fairly give you. I know you don’t expect more.’

‘Thank you,’ was the answer.

There was a little pause, during which neither spoke. At last, returning to the only topic in either mind, Tressamer observed:

‘I have been deep in this ever since it occurred. I have been running up and down to Porthstone. I was at the inquest and in the police-court, but I thought it best to do nothing, and let the public think she was undefended. It may soften their feeling towards her. All these little things have to be thought of.’

‘Yes; don’t you remember that famous Shepherdsbury case? The man who acted for the prisoner – the solicitor, I think it was – made such a brilliant fight in the police-court that the magistrates hesitated to commit; but the result was that the Crown knew all about the defence, and when the real trial came, the man hadn’t a chance. Always reserve your defence.’

‘Yes; but you forget, the solicitor has got a splendid practice through it,’ was the bitter answer. ‘Few men in the West of England are doing better in that class of business. Did you know – but of course you didn’t – that I was down at Porthstone only two days before the thing happened?’

‘No; were you?’

‘Yes; and I was staying in Abertaff that very night. I intended coming up to town the first thing in the morning, but something detained me, and in a few hours the news arrived. So I went down at once, saw Eleanor at the police-station, and advised her what to do before any of those meddling Pollards got at her.’

‘Pollards? Why, they are briefing me for the prosecution!’

‘Yes, I know. Pollard conducted it in the police-court. At the inquest he represented that man Lewis, the nephew, and very bitter he was, too. But I made Eleanor choke him off before that. Wouldn’t have him at any price. I have got a quiet old chap in Abertaff now who won’t interfere – old Morgan.’

‘Do you know, I thought he was trying to press the case rather in my brief. This accounts for it. But what sort of a man is this Lewis?’

‘Oh, a big, coarse-looking fellow. Came back from Australia just before it happened. A brute! He’s egging on the Crown. She left him all her money – about twenty thousand – but the jewels are supposed to be worth nearly as much more, and he’s lost them, and so he’s savage.’

‘I say, George, I don’t know that I ought to say it, but has it occurred to you as at all curious that he should have returned the very night it was done?’

A gleam of furtive joy crossed the other’s face, and instantly vanished again.

‘Has that struck you?’ he said, and seemed about to add something more. But he restrained himself, and merely added: ‘The less you and I talk about it the better, perhaps. Coming out?’

And they left the chambers together.

But though Tressamer ceased to discuss the subject with his friend, he could not dismiss it from his mind. The sparkling wit, the wild, extravagant humour, for which he had been famous, seemed to have withered up in the furnace of his terrible grief. He lunched with Prescott in almost dead silence, and as soon as it was over got up hurriedly and disappeared.

He had truthfully described himself as having been deep in the case from its commencement. When the news of what had happened at Porthstone reached the town of Abertaff he was walking in the High Street alone. He saw the unusual excitement, and meeting an acquaintance, learned from him that Miss Lewis had been murdered.

‘And they say it was done by her companion, a girl named Owen,’ added the man.

Tressamer turned white, gasped for breath, and cried out loudly:

‘It’s a lie! I swear she is innocent!’

In another moment he had darted off to a cab-stand, and was on his way to the station.

There he had one of those sickening waits for a train which are inevitable on such occasions. Twice he was on the point of ordering a special, but each time he restrained himself by the thought that by the time it was ready the ordinary train would be nearly due. He shunned the gloomy waiting-room, and strode up and down the narrow platform with swift, excited strides.

The porters and newspaper-boys stared as he rushed to and fro, hardly heeding the piles of luggage with which railway servants seek to break the dull monotony of a platform promenade. There was French blood in Tressamer: short, dark, thick-necked, yet far from stout in figure, he possessed the strain of sombre passion which runs through the blood of the Celtic races. He could no more control himself in deference to the officials of Abertaff Station than a madman when his frenzy is on him can conceal it from his keepers.

At last the train drew up. He sprang into a carriage, and impatiently endured the journey down to the seaside. Arrived there, he proceeded instantly to the police-station and demanded an interview with Miss Owen.

At first there was some difficulty, but Tressamer was not to be checked.

‘I am her legal adviser,’ he announced. ‘I am a member of the Bar, and I consider it of vital importance that I should see the prisoner at once. If you refuse, I shall wire straight to the Home Office.’

This threat produced its natural effect. The police, in doubt as to their powers, gave way, and he was taken into the cell where Eleanor had been secured.

If Eleanor had not wept when she was accused of the terrible crime, neither was she weeping now. She was sitting in a dull, stony apathy, from which she was hardly aroused by the sound of the barrister’s familiar name. She looked up, it is true, and gazed at him with lack-lustre eyes. But she uttered no word.

He, on his part, waited till the constable had withdrawn. Then he advanced a step from the door, and said:

‘Eleanor, you are innocent. Will you let me save you?’

Then at last the light came into her eyes. Then at last the unnatural stiffness faded out of her frame. Then at last the awful coldness loosed its hold of her heart, and answering, ‘George, I do not deserve your help,’ she gave way to a tempest of tears.

He waited till the storm had spent its first fury. Every shade of anguish passed across his face meanwhile. But he strove to master his feelings, and to put a commonplace expression into his voice, as he said at length:

‘I have been in Abertaff the last two days – since I left you.’ His voice trembled an instant, but he went on: ‘I heard the news this morning, and came down at once. I want to defend you. I want you to accept my services as a token that you still look on me as a friend, in spite of all that has happened.’

‘I don’t know how to answer you,’ she murmured. ‘The more generous you are, the more ashamed I feel. I ought not to take your help. And yet you are the only creature in the world who has not forsaken me.’

‘Don’t say that, Eleanor. No one else knows you as I do. No one else feels to you – but I won’t say anything about that. One stipulation I must make. You are not to thank me – not one word.’

And with a stern gesture he waved her off, as she made a movement as if to throw herself at his feet.

‘But you must forgive me,’ she said. ‘Whether I am as wicked as you told me I was when we parted or not, you must tell me that you take me for what I am, that you expect no change in me.’ She paused a moment, and then cried out with sudden vehemence: ‘Oh, I have done you injustice! I didn’t know how noble you could be! But it is too late; I cannot alter now.’

An angry throb convulsed the man during her first words. At the end he ground his teeth and clenched his hands together.

‘Silence, Eleanor! If you speak to me like that again, I shall go. There are to be no thanks, no praises. Never refer to the past. I know you and understand. If I cannot tear all hope out of my heart, what is that to you? I ask nothing, and will take nothing unless it is freely given.’

He ceased, and she looked at him with a mixture of gratitude and fear.

Then he referred to her dreadful situation.

‘I needn’t tell you, Eleanor, that as your counsel you must confide in me fully. I have heard the story so far as it is public, and up to now I may tell you that, as a matter of law, you are in no real danger.’

Eleanor stared at him.

‘In no danger? What do you mean? Is the murderer discovered?’

‘No, and never may be. But neither is the body.’

‘Why, what difference does that make?’

‘Don’t you know?’ answered the barrister. ‘I thought most people knew that till the body was discovered no one could be convicted of murder.’

A ray of hope shone out in the prisoner’s face.

‘Then do you mean that Miss Lewis may be alive still?’ she asked quickly.

‘No, no. Nobody doubts that she is dead, nor that someone has killed her. But the point is this, that you cannot be legally tried and convicted. The body has disappeared.’

The heavy shade of despair settled down once more.

‘What good is that?’ she answered reproachfully. ‘If they believe me guilty it makes it worse for me, because I can never be acquitted. I shall be suspected till I die. Oh, I would rather suffer death, I think.’

‘Hush, hush!’ he exclaimed, shocked and agitated. ‘Listen to me, and try to bear it as best you can. The evidence against you is simply overwhelming. Probably I am the only man in the world who believes in your innocence.’

‘Except the murderer,’ she interrupted.

‘Except the murderer, of course. But what I want to say is this – as things stand now no jury that ever breathed would acquit you. Only a miracle can reveal the truth. But what I can do, and mean to do, for you is to save you on the ground I have told you of. You must expect nothing more.’

‘George, it will kill me! Alone, hated, abhorred, what use would my life be to me when the whole world believed me guilty? No, I will pray for a miracle; but if not – ’ She stopped and panted in anguish of soul.

Her suffering was reflected on the man’s face.

‘Don’t – don’t talk like that!’ he cried. ‘Remember, there will be always one who trusts you, one who reveres you, loves you! I don’t mean to ask anything. I would not speak to you like this if I could help it; but remember, if the worst comes to the worst, you have always one friend to turn to, one man who asks no higher joy than to pass his life with you, whether here or in some far-off country, and devote himself to soothing your distress.’

While he was unfolding these views a sudden misgiving entered Eleanor’s mind. Rising up, she crossed the cell to where he sat, and, laying her hands on his shoulders, she gazed full into his eyes.

‘George,’ she uttered in solemn tones, ‘I adjure you to tell me the truth. Do you really believe me innocent?’

‘Before God, I do!’ burst out his answer, as he looked her in the face.

She was satisfied, and returned to her seat.

‘And now,’ said Tressamer, assuming a more lawyer-like tone, ‘tell me all that occurred that night.’

A long conversation followed, of which the barrister took copious notes in his pocket-book. It was late in the afternoon when he came out of the cell and went to secure accommodation in Porthstone for the night.

His step was slow, his head drooping, as he came along the esplanade. Suddenly he saw in front of him a concourse of people following a policeman, who held something in his hand, and a gentleman dressed in the unmistakable garb which proclaims the seaside visitor.

As the crowd came on, Tressamer noticed that this gentleman appeared much agitated. Even the constable’s face betrayed an excitement unusual among his kind. But it never occurred to the barrister that this excitement could be connected in any way with the case in which he was so deeply concerned. He took a closer glance at what the policeman was carrying, and then, to his horror, perceived that it was a human hand, the fingers still gay with precious rings. The next moment they all came up to where he was, and he heard someone in the crowd saying:

‘That’s the hand of the woman that was murdered. A gentleman has just found it in Newton Bay.’

The fearful truth burst on him like a thunder-clap. The blood forsook his veins; he staggered helplessly to the nearest seat and sank down upon it, moaning to himself: ‘Lost! She is lost!’

The firm ground on which he had been standing had crumbled all at once. The law point on which he had relied to save Eleanor’s life, in spite of the crushing weight of evidence against her, was robbed by this accidental discovery of more than half its strength. Who could any longer pretend to doubt whether a murder had been committed? Hence Tressamer’s despair. Coupled with what Eleanor had said to him in their interview, however, it drove him to seek more earnestly than he would otherwise have done for some theory of defence upon the facts, some means whereby, if possible, to force a doubt into the minds of the jury, and wring from them a verdict of acquittal.

To this task he now devoted himself. He assumed the part of a detective rather than a barrister. In the case of an ordinary client conduct such as this would not have been tolerated for a moment by the rigid etiquette of the Bar; but where a case is of such a nature that the barrister is personally concerned, and where he acts as a private individual pursuing his own interests, etiquette has nothing to say. In joining the Bar a man does not cease to be a citizen and to enjoy the rights and privileges of ordinary mortals. It is only in his professional character that his acts come under that rigid supervision which is at once the dread and envy of inferior professions.

But, in any event, George Tressamer’s present mood would not have let him give much weight to considerations of such a character. Too much was at stake. He had to keep in constant communication with Eleanor, to encourage her in face of the ordeals of the coroner and the magistrates, and to protect her from the zeal of the various graduates of the Incorporated Law Society who were thirsting to win glory in her defence.

As a blind to the public, he caused the rumour to be spread that she was without professional advice. This idea was confirmed when it got to be known that she had refused the services of Messrs. Pollard and other gentlemen of the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile Tressamer was enabled to go about with less publicity and to pursue his inquiries. Eleanor was disposed to wonder at him for not employing a detective. But he soon explained that.

‘I know detectives,’ he said to her. ‘I have seen them in the witness-box and out of it. They are admirable men in their own groove. Give them an ordinary crime – a robbery or a forgery – and they can grapple with it. They will track the defaulting cashier to America for you, or run down the absconding broker in the depths of the Australian Bush. But there their usefulness ends. They are no good in the face of a real mystery like this. This is not a question of clever detection; it is a case of reading the human heart and penetrating its motives. A genius could help us, but I know of no genius in Scotland Yard. No, I will do what I can; and if I come to anything in the way of ordinary detective work I will send for Sergeant Wright.’

So he continued to work alone. He had by this time seen and talked with every witness whose name appeared in the brief for the Crown. He had been present, with the air of a casual spectator, at the inquest, and afterwards at the inquiry before the magistrates, which ended in the committal of Eleanor to the assizes to take her trial for wilful murder.

He did not tell Eleanor much as to the results of his inquiries. He would simply mention that he had been talking to Simons, or that he had had a game of billiards with John Lewis, and she had to form her own idea of what had passed between them.

Finally, he went up to London and plunged into that minute study of Hale and Hawkins which had awakened the surprise of his friend Prescott. He was thus kept occupied till both he and his friend were summoned down from town by the approach of the assizes.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ASSIZES

On a certain day in the month of July our lady the Queen, probably clad in ermine, and wearing on her head that gorgeous specimen of the jeweller’s art which, when not in use, may be viewed at the Tower of London for the absurdly moderate sum of sixpence – our lady the Queen, I say, was reminded by her faithful Chancellor that various prisoners were awaiting trial in different parts of England and Wales, and among other places in Mynyddshire.

Whereupon her Majesty, with that constant attention to the welfare of her people which befits a sovereign, at once sat down and wrote, or possibly only signed, a stately document requiring and empowering Sir Daniel Buller, Knight, one of the judges of her High Court; Sir John Wiseman, Knight, another of the aforesaid judges; Walter Reynold Davies, Esquire, one of her counsel learned in the law; Joseph Robert Pollington, Esquire, another of her counsel learned in the law; and Henry Jones, Esquire, yet a further specimen of her counsel learned in the law, to proceed to Mynyddshire, and there and then open the gaols and try such prisoners as were inside them.

In a similar and not less elaborate document she thoughtfully went on to provide for their hearing and deciding, at the same time, any disputes over civil matters which might possibly have arisen among the population of that remote locality since it was last honoured by the presence of such bright visitants. This considerate act on her Majesty’s part was, of course, intended to save her emissaries a second journey. Even a monarch, in the administration of justice, need not be above killing two birds with one stone.

In proceeding to Mynyddshire, however, a very invidious distinction was drawn between the gentlemen named in the Royal Commission. The two first named, simply because they were knights and judges, went down in state, were met at the station by the high-sheriff of the county, and escorted by twenty javelin-men in gay attire to the comfortable lodgings prepared for them. The other three, for no other earthly reason than because their position was less exalted, had to get down as best they might, scramble into cabs with their portmanteaus, and put up at a common hotel. How true is the venerable saying, ‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’!

Having thus got an unfair start, the two judges preserved it to the end. They tried all the cases themselves, and their unfortunate colleagues had to be content with what crumbs they could pick up by appearing in court as common advocates.

The Southern Circuit has long been popular with judges. There is a great difference in circuits. The two northern ones, with their vast populations and immense amount of work, are the bugbear of the puisne judge. The scenery of some of the other circuits is flat, and there is not much amusement going on in the assize towns. But the Southern combines several advantages. It is far from heavy as regards work, the country in many parts is beautiful, and the train-service between the county towns is fairly good.

For these reasons the old stagers on the Bench are in the habit of trying to get the Southern Circuit. On the present occasion they had been successful. Sir Daniel Buller and Sir John Wiseman may not have been extremely popular with the Bar, but they were very popular with each other. They came down to Abertaff feeling in good form, Sir John to preside over the civil court, and Sir Daniel to mete out justice to the inmates of the county gaol.

Not for many years had there been such excitement at assize time in the city. This excitement was due to two causes – the javelin-men and the society murder.

Javelin-men are dying out. In former times, when the office of sheriff was a mark of high social dignity, and before the new-fangled post of lord-lieutenant had usurped so much of its splendour, the shrievalty was an epoch in a county gentleman’s career. It was considered almost worth being ruined for. A heavy mortgage was not grudged as a consequence of the lavish splendour with which the office was surrounded. In those days javelin-men were a reality. Clad in semi-military uniforms modelled on the master’s family livery, and armed with weapons of an extinct fashion, they simulated the state of vice-royalty. Many a German princelet has enjoyed a less imposing body-guard than an English sheriff of the olden time.

But the railways have killed all that. Everyone now seeks distinction in the Metropolis. County society has become a byword for the old-fashioned and the humdrum, for bad living, bad manners, and bad taste. No one would now dream of embarrassing his estate to secure a merely local renown. Hence the decay of the shrievalty. The modern high-sheriff looks upon his obligatory office as a duty rather than an honour. He contents himself with the cheap services of the county police force for his retinue, and foregoes the expensive luxury of the javelin-men.

There are a few brilliant exceptions, however. The present sheriff of Mynyddshire was one. In the first place, he was master of what in the country is regarded as a colossal fortune. In the second place, he was the founder of his family. Money, therefore, was not an object to Mr. Simon Reynolds. Glory was. His office gave him just the chance he wanted, and he revived its mediæval honours with a willing hand.

Two-and-twenty men, counting the buglers, in gorgeous clothing of pink and yellow hue, accordingly gladdened the eyes of the Abertaffians as they paraded the streets and hung about the court-house. Each man of the rank and file carried a weapon the like of which had not often been looked upon. It resembled an axe with an exaggerated handle, only the back of the blade was prolonged into a formidable spike, while the handle extended beyond into a species of spear-point. Armed with these truly terrific weapons, Mr. Reynolds’s faithful henchmen might well strike awe into the heart of the boldest boy in Abertaff. It was felt that they were the principal feature of the assize. The judges, by common consent, took a secondary place. Their robes were fine, no doubt, but their rather ill-fitting wigs formed a poor substitute for the gleaming steel of their rivals. The sober charms of justice cannot successfully compete with the dazzling splendour of arms.

As for the high-sheriff himself, in his black velvet coat and frilled shirt-front, he was a very inferior attraction, while his chaplain was simply nowhere. He had his innings for one brief hour in the cathedral, where the judges were compelled to sit as meekly as so many jurymen under a lengthy summing-up; but after that one bright flash he sank into insignificance, and dragged out the remainder of the assize like the stick of a burnt-out rocket, unpitied by all.

Yet even the javelin-men were cast into the shade by the other great feature of the assize week. The crime of murder remains, after all is said and done, the one thing which most fascinates the public mind. And when to murder is added mystery, and when that mystery centres round the figure of a woman, and when that woman is young and beautiful, and in a social position which does away with the presence of squalid details or coarse motives, the public may be pardoned if they take the very fullest interest in her fate.