The Attic Murder - S. Fowler Wright (ebook reader computer TXT) 📗

MR. DUNKOVER appeared again for the Crown. Mr. Huddleston, K.C., assisted by Mr. Augustus Pippin, represented the accused.

Mr. Garrison, observing the eminent counsel who were to defend the accused, understood that it was not to be a case in which he would reserve any defence which he might be able to make until he should appear before the higher tribunal. The battle was to be joined at once, and seeing this he made a quick mental revision of the time which he had calculated would be sufficient for dealing with it. Three days — possibly more. If both sides were prepared to go straight ahead, it meant a busy time for him during the coming week.

He glanced with professional interest at the second man whom the police had put into the dock to answer the present charge. No doubt the right one this time. Inspector Combridge didn’t often make a mistake. The man didn’t look like a murderer. But then, murderers seldom do.

He listened patiently to Mr. Dunkover’s opening statement, and to the routine preliminary evidence. It was as necessary as it was boring. But he could trust his clerk to see that no essential was overlooked: that the depositions would be all that would be required by the higher court. He only became more than outwardly alert when Sir Lionel Tipshift entered the box to describe the injury which had been inflicted on the deceased, and to theorize on how it could have been caused, as the expert is allowed to do.

It appeared that the razor which had been found lying by the body, and which was, by an almost certain presumption, the weapon with which the crime had been committed, had been used twice, and with such savage strength that the neck of William Rabone, which had been short and thick, had been more than half cut through. One of the cervical vertebrae had been actually grazed by the blade, though it had not been severed. Death must have been almost instantaneous.

He described, with sufficient technical detail, the evidence by which he confidently deduced that the first wound, which had commenced on the front and left side of the neck, had been inflicted by someone standing behind, and probably slightly to the left of his victim. Its direction, in view of William Rabone’s own height, indicated a rather tall man. If it were a woman, she must have been of unusual physique. The second wound had been inflicted, in his opinion, after the injured man had already fallen forward upon the floor.

“Would it have been possible,” Mr. Dunkover asked, “for a man so wounded to have uttered a cry which would have penetrated to a lower floor of the house?”

“It would have been possible after the infliction of the first wound, but not the second. The wounded man appears to have staggered forward two or three paces toward the door, possibly with a blind instinct of escape, before he fell. After he had done so, his assailant must have bent over him and inflicted the second wound.

“Such a cry would have been uttered, if at all, during the moment before he fell.”

“From the nature and direction of the wounds, can you say with certainty that they were not self-inflicted?”

“Yes. I have no doubt at all.”

“Can you assist the court with any further deduction as to the assailant, or the course of the crime?”

“Only that there is a strong presumption that it was the work of a left-handed man.”

“Thank you, Sir Lionel.”

Mr. Dunkover sat down, and Mr. Huddleston rose to cross-examine the witness.

“You have expressed the opinion, Sir Lionel, that this is a case of murder, not suicide?”

“Yes. There can, in my opinion, be no reasonable doubt.”

“Should you express that opinion with equal confidence, if it should appear that William Rabone may have had a very serious reason for self-destruction?”

“I should still hold that opinion.”

“But you would not say — as I understand you do not say even now — that it is definitely impossible that the wounds may have been self-inflicted?”

“Not impossible, perhaps. I should call it a fantastic rather than an impossible theory.”

“Do you base that opinion, partly at least, upon the extent of the wounds?”

Mr. Huddleston asked the question in a quiet and casual tone, knowing inwardly that it was the one hope that he had of shaking the effect of the witness’s evidence, if he should oblige him with an affirmative answer. But Sir Lionel was too wary, and too sound in his surgical knowledge, to fall into the trap.

“On the nature,” he answered, “not the extent.”

There followed a long discussion between the learned counsel and the expert surgeon upon the nature, position and extent of suicidal wounds, which need not be recorded in detail. Text-books on forensic surgery were passed to the witness, and passages debated as bearing upon the evidence already given. But Sir Lionel’s arguments remained unshaken.

Mr. Huddleston had not expected any other result. He knew that there was no reasonable doubt that it was a case of murder with which they dealt, though he had a very confident hope that he would be able to keep his client out of the legal net which was being spread for his destruction.

But he knew that, as he prolonged the discussion, and raised every side-issue the facts allowed, that there was a constant possibility that something of real or apparent inconsistency would be said, such as could be used at the subsequent trial to shake the jury’s confidence in the witness, or otherwise confuse their minds.

Sir Lionel, who understood the game perfectly well, fenced adroitly enough to foil Mr. Huddleston’s subtlest attempts, and, at the end of half an hour’s exchanges, counsel had done no more than to elicit that a man who has an inclination to cut his throat usually begins with two or three tentative superficial wounds, and then, as his frenzy of resolution grows, may strike with such savage force as to sever his neck, even from one side to the other. Not only so, but he may repeat the blows, time after time, either through a mechanical determination previously formed, or in a desperate effort to hasten the oblivion that delays to come. Counsel and surgeon agreed upon the authenticity of a recorded case in which a man had hacked at his own neck until the transverse process of the fifth cervical vertebra had been completely severed.

Sir Lionel admitted readily that the extent of the wounds was not in itself an argument against suicide. He even conceded, as an abstract proposition, that it might be considered an argument on the other side. But he held impregnable ground when he dwelt on their direction, from front to back; on the fact that, unlike those that are self-inflicted, the ends of them were deep and sharp; and on other features concerning which it was minute and lucid, in which they — and the second one in particular — differed from anything which would have been the work of the dead man’s hand.

When he was at last permitted to leave the box, there was probably no one in that crowded court who doubted that it was a savage murder which was in process of investigation.

Those who watched with sufficient closeness, may have observed that counsel had avoided cross-examination on the question of whether the murder had been the work of a left-handed man.

Mr. Huddleston sat down, looking content, but it was an expression without certain significance. It might mean no more than that he had had a fat fee to induce him to defend in a hopeless case, and that he was prolonging it in such ways as his brief required.

Peter Entwistle had also listened to the evidence with an easy interest, as though it were of no personal importance, but that also was without significance to those who were murderers who have gone to sleep in the dock.