Mr. Ratler, and Laurence Fitzgibbon, and Mr. Monk, and Mr. Bouncer were examined about the quarrel at the club, and proved that the quarrel had been a very bitter quarrel. They all agreed that Mr. Bonteen had been wrong, and that the prisoner had had cause for anger. Of the three distinguished legislators and statesmen above named Mr. Chaffanbrass refused to take the slightest notice. “I have no question to put to you,” he said to Mr. Ratler. “Of course there was a quarrel. We all know that.” But he did ask a question or two of Mr. Bouncer. “You write books, I think, Mr. Bouncer?”
“I do,” said Mr. Bouncer, with dignity. Now there was no peculiarity in a witness to which Mr. Chaffanbrass was so much opposed as an assumption of dignity.
“What sort of books, Mr. Bouncer?”
“I write novels,” said Mr. Bouncer, feeling that Mr. Chaffanbrass must have been ignorant indeed of the polite literature of the day to make such a question necessary.
“You mean fiction.”
“Well, yes; fiction—if you like that word better.”
“I don’t like either, particularly. You have to find plots, haven’t you?”
Mr. Bouncer paused a moment. “Yes; yes,” he said. “In writing a novel it is necessary to construct a plot.”
“Where do you get ’em from?”
“Where do I get ’em from?”
“Yes—where do you find them? You take them from the French mostly;—don’t you?” Mr. Bouncer became very red. “Isn’t that the way our English writers get their plots?”
“Sometimes—perhaps.”
“Your’s ain’t French then?”
“Well;—no;—that is—I won’t undertake to say that—that—”
“You won’t undertake to say that they’re not French.”
“Is this relevant to the case before us, Mr. Chaffanbrass?” asked the judge.
“Quite so, my lud. We have a highly-distinguished novelist before us, my lud, who, as I have reason to believe, is intimately acquainted with the French system of the construction of plots. It is a business which the French carry to perfection. The plot of a novel should, I imagine, be constructed in accordance with human nature?”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Bouncer.
“You have murders in novels?”
“Sometimes,” said Mr. Bouncer, who had himself done many murders in his time.
“Did you ever know a French novelist have a premeditated murder committed by a man who could not possibly have conceived the murder ten minutes before he committed it;—with whom the cause of the murder anteceded the murder no more than ten minutes?” Mr. Bouncer stood thinking for a while. “We will give you your time, because an answer to the question from you will be important testimony.”
“I don’t think I do,” said Mr. Bouncer, who in his confusion had been quite unable to think of the plot of a single novel.
“And if there were such a French plot that would not be the plot that you would borrow?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Bouncer.
“Did you ever read poetry, Mr. Bouncer?”
“Oh yes;—I read a great deal of poetry.”
“Shakespeare, perhaps?” Mr. Bouncer did not condescend to do more than nod his head. “There is a murder described in Hamlet. Was that supposed by the poet to have been devised suddenly?”
“I should say not.”
“So should I, Mr. Bouncer. Do you remember the arrangements for the murder in Macbeth? That took a little time in concocting;—didn’t it?”
“No doubt it did.”
“And when Othello murdered Desdemona, creeping up to her in her sleep, he had been thinking of it for some time?”
“I suppose he had.”
“Do you ever read English novels as well as French, Mr. Bouncer?” The unfortunate author again nodded his head. “When Amy Robsart was lured to her death, there was some time given to the preparation—eh?”
“Of course there was.”
“Of course there was. And Eugene Aram, when he murdered a man in Bulwer’s novel, turned the matter over in his mind before he did it?”
“He was thinking a long time about it, I believe.”
“Thinking about it a long time! I rather think he was. Those great masters of human nature, those men who knew the human heart, did not venture to describe a secret murder as coming from a man’s brain without premeditation?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“Such also is my impression. But now, I bethink me of a murder that was almost as sudden as this is supposed to have been. Didn’t a Dutch smuggler murder a Scotch lawyer, all in a moment as it were?”
“Dirk Hatteraick did murder Glossop in The Antiquary very suddenly;—but he did it from passion.”
“Just so, Mr. Bouncer. There was no plot there, was there? No arrangement; no secret creeping up to his victim; no escape even?”
“He was chained.”
“So he was; chained like a dog;—and like a dog he flew at his enemy. If I understand you, then, Mr. Bouncer, you would not dare so to violate probability in a novel, as to produce a murderer to the public who should contrive a secret hidden murder—contrive it and execute it, all within a quarter of an hour?”
Mr. Bouncer, after another minute’s consideration, said that he thought he would not do so. “Mr. Bouncer,” said Mr. Chaffanbrass, “I am uncommonly obliged to our excellent friend, Sir Gregory, for having given us the advantage of your evidence.”
LXII
Lord Fawn’s Evidence
A crowd of witnesses were heard on the second day after Mr. Chaffanbrass had done with Mr. Bouncer, but none of them were of much interest to the public. The three doctors were examined as to the state of the dead man’s head when he was picked up, and as to the nature of the instrument with which he had probably been killed; and the fact of Phineas Finn’s life-preserver was proved—in the middle of which he begged that the Court would save itself some little trouble, as he was quite ready to acknowledge
