“This: You are asked to believe that this girl—many of you have daughters older than Susan Ives—that this girl, gently born, gently bred and gentle-hearted, upon receiving information from a half-intoxicated and infatuated suitor of Mimi Bellamy’s that Mimi was carrying on an affair with her husband, Patrick Ives, dined peacefully at home, rose from the table, summoned Mrs. Bellamy’s adoring husband to meet her down a back lane, procured a knife from a table in her husband’s study and straightway sallied forth to remove the encumbrance that she had discovered in her smooth path by the simple and straightforward process of murdering her—murder, you note, premeditated, preconceived, and prearranged. Roughly, an hour and a half elapsed between the time that Susan Ives set out and the moment that the scream fixes as that of the murder.
“Presumably some of that time was occupied in convincing Mr. Bellamy of the excellence of her scheme and some of it in idle conversation—the time must have been occupied somehow; the actual rise and fall of a knife is no lengthy matter. Mr. Bellamy, we gather, was so entertained by the death of his idolized wife that he yielded to hearty laughter—Mr. Thorne has told you of that laugh, I believe.
“The lamp has gone out, so in total darkness they proceed to collect the jewels and wait peacefully until Mr. Thorne has put his keys under the doormat—the door is locked; they have thought of everything, you see—when once more they venture forth, enter an automobile that has the convenient quality of becoming either visible or invisible as serves them best, and return promptly and speedily to the house of Mr. Stephen Bellamy.
“Possibly you wonder why they do that. It is barely ten, and almost anyone might see them, thereby destroying their carefully concocted movie alibi, but possibly they thought that the Bellamy house would be a nice place to hide the pearls and talk things over. We are left a trifle in the dark as to their motives here, but undoubtedly the prosecutor will clear all that up perfectly. Ten minutes later they come out, and still together start off once more, presumably in the direction of Mrs. Ives’s home so that everyone there can get a good look at them together, while Mrs. Ives still has the knife and the bloodstained coat in her possession. There they part, Mrs. Ives to straighten up a little before she takes some fruit up to Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Bellamy presumably to return to his own home and a night of well-earned repose.
“In the morning Mrs. Ives rises sufficiently early to pack up the blood drenched garments in a large box for the Salvation Army; she turns them over to a maid to turn over to a chauffeur, requests a fresh pair of gloves and sets forth to early church—the service which she has attended every Sunday of her life since she was a mite of six, with eyes too big for her face, hair to her waist, skirts to her knees and little white cotton gloves that would fit a doll if it weren’t too big. The prosecutor leaves her there telling her God that last night she had had to kill a girl who was liable to make a nuisance of herself before she got through by cutting down Sue Ives’s monthly income considerably. Of course it all may seem a trifle incomprehensible to us, but it’s undoubtedly perfectly clear to God and the prosecutor.
“I think that that is a fair and accurate statement of the state’s case, though Mr. Farr undoubtedly can—and will—make it sound a great deal more plausible when he gets at it. But that’s what it boils down to, and all the specious reasoning and forensic and histrionic ability in the world won’t make it one atom less preposterous. That’s their case.
“And on what evidence are we asked to believe this incredible farrago? I’ll tell you. We have the word of a hysterical and morbidly sensitive girl with a supposed grievance that she overheard a telephone conversation; we have the word of a vindictive young vixen who is leading nothing more nor less than a life of sin that she planted a note and failed to find it again; we have the disjointed narrative of an unfortunate fellow so far gone in drink, and love that he was half out of his senses at the time that he is supposed to be reporting these crucial events and has since blown his brains out; we have the word of an ex-jailbird who might well have more reasons than one for directing the finger of suspicion at a convenient victim; we have a trooper, eager for credit and prominence, swearing to you that he can as clearly recognize and identify a scrap of earth bearing the imprint of a bit of tire as though it were the upturned countenance of his favourite child—a bit of tire, gentlemen, which undoubtedly has some hundreds of millions of twins in this capacious country of ours.
“It is on this evidence, fantastic though it may sound, that my distinguished adversary is asking you to condemn to death a gentle lady and an honest gentleman. On the testimony of a neurotic, a love thief, a jailbird, and a drunkard! These are plain words to describe plain truths. I propose to produce witnesses of unimpeachable record to substantiate every one of them.
“It is, frankly, a great temptation to me to rest the case for the defense here and now; because in all honesty I cannot see how it would take any twelve sane men in this country five consecutive minutes to reach and
