“The story that you have heard from the lips of Mrs. Ives and Mr. Bellamy is a refutation of every charge that has been brought against them. It is a fearless, straightforward, circumstantial and coherent account of their every action on the evening of that terrible and momentous night. Granted that every witness produced by the state here in order to confound and confuse them has spoken the absolute and exact truth—a somewhat extravagant claim, some of you may feel—granted even that, however, still you will find not one word of their testimony that is not perfectly consistent with the explanation of their actions that evening offered you by the defendants.
“Not only does the state’s testimony not conflict with ours—it corroborates it. The overheard telephone conversation, the knife from the study, the stained flannel coat, the visit to Stephen Bellamy’s house, the tire tracks in the mud outside the cottage, the fingerprints on the lamp within—there is the state’s case, and there also, gentlemen, is ours. These sinister facts, impressive and terrible weapons in the state’s hands, under the clear white light of truth become a very simple, reasonable and inevitable set of circumstances, fully explained and fully accounted for. The more squarely you look at them, the more harmless they become. I ask you to subject them to the most careful and severe scrutiny, entirely confident as to the result.
“The state will tell you, undoubtedly, that in spite of what you have heard, the fact remains that Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit this crime. It is our contention that they had nothing of the kind. No weapon has been traced to either of them; it would have been to all intents and purposes physically impossible for them to reach the gardener’s cottage, execute this murder and return to Stephen Bellamy’s house between the time that the gasoline vender saw them leave Lakedale and the time that Orsini saw them arrive at Mr. Bellamy’s home—a scant forty minutes, according to the outside figures of their own witnesses; not quite twenty-five according to ours.
“But take the absolute substantiated forty-minute limit—from 9:15 to 9:55. You are asked to believe that in that time they hurled themselves in a small rickety car over ten miles, possibly more, of unfamiliar roads in total darkness, took a rough dirt cutoff, groped their way through the back gates of the Thorne place to the little road that led to the cottage, got out, entered the cottage, became involved in a bitter and violent scene with Mimi Bellamy which culminated in her death by murder; remained there long enough to map out a campaign which involved removing her jewels from her dead body, while fabricating an elaborate alibi—and also long enough to permit Mr. Thorne, who has arrived on the piazza, ample time to get well on his way; came out, got back into the invisible automobile and arrived at Mr. Bellamy’s house, three miles away, at five minutes to ten. Gentlemen, does this seem to you credible? I confess that it seems to me so incredible—so fantastically, so grotesquely incredible—that I am greatly inclined to offer you an apology for going into it at such length. So much for the means, so much for the opportunity; now for the motive.
“There, I think, we touch the weakest point in the state’s case against these two. That the state itself fully grasps its weakness, I submit, is adduced from the fact that not one witness they have put on the stand has been asked a single question that would tend to establish either of the motives ascribed to them by the state—widely differing motives, alike only in their monstrous absurdity. It is the state’s contention, if it still cleaves to the theory originally advanced, that Madeleine Bellamy was murdered by Susan Ives because she feared poverty, and that she was aided and abetted by Stephen Bellamy in this bloody business because he was crazed by jealousy.
“I ask you to consider these two propositions with more gravity and concentration than they actually merit, because on your acceptance or rejection of them depends your acceptance or rejection of the guilt of these two. You cannot dismiss them as too absurd for any earthly consideration. You cannot say, ‘Oh, of course that wasn’t the reason they killed her, but that’s not our concern; there may have been another reason that we don’t know anything about.’ No, fortunately for us, you cannot do that.
“These, preposterous as they are, are the only motives suggested; they are the least preposterous ones that the state could find to submit to you. If you are not able to accept them the state’s case crumbles to pieces before your eyes. If you look at it attentively for as much as thirty seconds, I believe that you will see it crumbling. What you are asked to believe is this: That for the most sordid, base, mercenary and calculating motives—the desire to protect her financial future from possible hazard—Susan Ives committed a cruel, wicked, and bloody murder.
“For two hours you listened to Susan Ives speaking to you from that witness box. If you can believe that she is sordid, base, calculating, mercenary, cruel, and bloody, I congratulate you. Such power of credulity emerges from the ranks of mere talent into those of sheer genius.
“Stephen Bellamy, you are told, was her accomplice—driven stark, staring, raving mad by the most bestial, despicable,
