“Gathered about in little groups are the George Dallases, Elliot Farwell, and Richard Burgoyne, the man with whom he keeps bachelor hall in a small bungalow near the village; the Ned Conroys and Sue Ives, whose husband has been cheated out of golf by a business engagement in the city, in spite of the fact that it is Saturday afternoon. She has, however, found another cavalier. Seated on the club steps, a little apart from the others, she is deep in conversation with Elliot Farwell, who is consuming his third highball in rapid succession. Gentlemen, if I could let you eavesdrop on the seemingly casual and actually momentous discussion that is going on behind those amiable masks, much that is dark to you now would be clear as day. I ask your patient and intelligent interest until that moment arrives. It will arrive, I promise you.
“For here, on this sunlit lawn, I propose to leave them for the present. Others will tell you what happened from that sunlit moment until the dark and dreadful one in the gardener’s little cottage, when a knife rose and fell. I have not gone thus exhaustively into the shadowy past from which these figures sprang in order to retail to you the careless chatter of a country club and a country village. I have gone into it because I have felt it entirely imperative that you should know the essential facts in the light of which you will be able to read more clearly the evidence that I am about to submit to you. It is inevitable that each one of you must say to himself as you sit there: ‘How is it possible that this young woman seated before our eyes, charming, well bred, sheltered, controlled, intelligent—how is it possible that this woman can have wilfully, brutally, and deliberately murdered another woman? How is it possible that the man seated beside her, a gentleman born and bred, irreproachable in every phase of his past life, can have aided and abetted her in her project?’
“How are these things possible, you ask? Gentleman, I say to you that we expect to prove that these things are not possible—we expect to prove that these things are certain. I am speaking neither rashly nor lightly when I assure you that the state believes that it can demonstrate their certainty beyond the shadow of a possible doubt. I am not seeking a conviction; I am no bloodhound baying for a victim. If you can find it in your hearts when I have done with this case to hold these two guiltless, you will, indeed, be fortunate—and I can find in my heart no desire to deprive you of that good fortune. It is my most painful duty, however, to place the facts before you and to let them speak for themselves.
“I ask you, gentlemen, to bear these things in mind. Susan Ives is a woman accustomed to luxury and security; she has once before been roughly deprived of it. What dreadful scars those three years in New York left on the gallant and spirited girl who went so recklessly to face them we can only surmise. But perhaps it is sufficient to say that the scars seared so deep that they sealed her lips forever. I have not been able to discover that she has mentioned them to one solitary soul, and I have questioned many. She was threatened with a hideous repetition of this nightmare. Her religious principles, as you will learn, prevented her from ever accepting or seeking a divorce, and she was too intelligent not to be fully aware that if Patrick Ives ran away with Mimi Bellamy, he would inevitably have lost his position in the ultraconservative house in which he was partner, and thus be absolutely precluded from providing for her or her children, even if he had so desired.
“The position of a young woman thrown entirely on her own resources, with two small children on her hands, is a desperate one, and it is our contention that Susan Ives turned to desperate remedies. Added to this terror was what must have been a truly appalling hatred for the girl who was about to turn her sunny and sheltered existence into a nightmare. Cupidity, love, revenge—every murder in this world that is not the result of a drunken blow springs from one of these motives. Gentlemen, the state contends that Susan Ives was moved by all three.
“As for Stephen Bellamy, his idolatry of his young and beautiful wife was his life—a drab and colourless life save for the light and colour that she brought to it. When he discovered that she had turned that idolatry to mockery, madness descended on him—the madness that sent Othello staggering to his wife’s bed with death in his hands; the madness that has caused that wretched catchphrase ‘the unwritten law’ to become almost as potent as our written code—to our shame, be it said. Do not be deceived by the memory of that phrase, gentlemen. There was another law, written centuries ago in
