Many a woman there told herself that the witness now in the box had once loved the prisoner in the dock, even though she had not known it then, and though she would deny it, no doubt, even to herself, now.
At last came the moment which Ivy had visualised hundreds of times in the last few days—the moment, that is, when Sir Joseph Molloy rose to begin his cross-examination of the chief witness for the Crown.
The silence that there had been before was as a loud noise to the silence there was now. But, as always happens, three or four people coughed nervously, and were angrily hushed by those about them.
What was Sir Joseph going to do? One thing certainly. It would be nothing less than his bare duty to try to prove to the jury that, because she had taken everything, and given nothing, the beautiful wife of Jervis Lexton had goaded this young man, Roger Gretorex, to the frenzy which leads to crime.
Not long ago Sir Joseph had caused two juries to disagree over what, to the plain man, had been a clear case of murder. That simply because he had been able to prove that the prisoner in the dock, who was a far from prepossessing type of bucolic lover, had been rendered jealous to madness by the foolish girl whom he had killed, and this though his act had been clearly premeditated. That had been a very different case from the Lexton case, and one not nearly so exciting to those in Court. Still, there were many present today who remembered the terrible cross-examination of the poor dead girl’s mother. It had been the way Sir Joseph had dealt with the trembling woman, the admissions he had forced out of her, which had saved his client’s life.
XVI
But even in a court of law, where everything, in spite of what the more ignorant section of the public may think, is arranged and prearranged, the unexpected sometimes does happen.
To the amazement of everybody present, Sir Joseph Molloy was almost as kindly, as courteous, as careful of hurting her feelings, in his cross-examination of Ivy Lexton, as his good friend Sir Jonathan Wright had been during the examination-in-chief. Indeed Sir Joseph, as a famous descriptive writer declared the next morning, was positively dove-like in his gentleness. When cross-examining Mrs. Jervis Lexton, his object seemed to be simply that of proving that Roger Gretorex, in everyday life, had been a considerate, chivalrous, and extremely unselfish friend. And that had already been freely admitted by the leading counsel for the Crown.
True, there came a moment when Sir Joseph, who found it painfully difficult to play the role he had faithfully promised Roger Gretorex to play, pressed Ivy just a little hard as to what form of words the prisoner had used on the last occasion he had made love to her.
The witness broke down, for the first time, over that probing question, and it was sobbing that she asked: “Must I answer that?”
The Judge explained to her, kindly enough, “Yes, prisoner’s counsel is entitled to an answer to that question. But if you cannot remember the exact form of words which were used on that occasion, you are entitled to say so.”
And then she replied, uttering the words very clearly this time: “I can only remember that he said he loved me, and that were I free he hoped I would become his wife.”
Now those were the last words Sir Joseph had intended Ivy Lexton to utter in answer to his question. And the knowledge that this was so caused a murmur of—was it amusement?—to run through the Court. The public much enjoy hearing a witness score off counsel.
“And what did you answer to that?” he asked sharply.
And then, as Ivy again began sobbing, shrugging his great shoulders he signified that his cross-examination of the principal witness for the Crown was over.
Some of those present in Court were cruel enough to regret that Sir Joseph had not been up to his usual form. What would not such people have given to have heard what had passed at an interview the great advocate had had, only yesterday, with the man now standing rigid in the dock!
Sir Joseph Molloy always insisted on seeing any man or woman whom he was about to defend on a charge of murder and, at his final interview with Gretorex, the prisoner had begun by begging him most earnestly to refrain from cross-examining Ivy Lexton.
But as to that, his counsel had refused to be guided by the accused man’s wishes.
“Do you expect me to put the hangman’s rope round your neck?” he had asked harshly.
Even so, he had promised that he would be very gentle with her. And gentle he had been, all the more gentle, perhaps, because, at the very end of that painful, curious interview, Gretorex had said to him, gazing right into his eyes:
“Treat Mrs. Lexton as you yourself would treat the woman you love, or your own cherished sister, were she in the witness-box and you her cross-examiner.”
So it was that, to his bitter regret, Sir Joseph Molloy had behaved, with regard to Ivy, in a way quite foreign to his nature. What he had longed to do was to turn this lovely little creature inside out, and to apply to her, in his own inimitable, almost affectionately feline, manner, that awful Third Degree before which even the innocent trembled.
After a great deal of anxious thought, he had made up his mind to plead, on his client’s behalf, a fit of temporary insanity. He hoped, that is, to persuade the jury that, by some extraordinary combination of circumstances, Jervis Lexton had been suffering in very truth from some commonplace digestive disorder up to that last day when Gretorex, driven mad by jealousy and love, had done the awful deed. Not,
