“Charles,” said Wimsey, “you ought not to be allowed out without me. You’ve made a mistake, old man.”
“Made a mistake?”
“She didn’t do it.”
“Oh, come!”
“She did not do it. It’s very convincing and watertight, but it’s all wrong.”
“You don’t really think that.”
“I do.”
Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey’s judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken.
“My dear man, where’s the flaw in it?”
“There isn’t one. It’s damnably knife-proof. There’s nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl’s innocent.”
“You’re turning into a common or garden psychologist,” said Parker, with an uneasy laugh, “isn’t he, Duchess?”
“I wish I had known that girl,” replied the Dowager, in her usual indirect manner, “so interesting and a really remarkable face, though perhaps not strictly good looking, and all the more interesting for that, because good looking people are so often cows. I have been reading one of her books, really quite good and so well written, and I didn’t guess the murderer till page 200, rather clever, because I usually do it about page 15. So very curious to write books about crimes and then be accused of a crime one’s self, some people might say it was a judgment. I wonder whether, if she didn’t do it, she has spotted the murderer herself? I don’t suppose detective writers detect much in real life, do they, except Edgar Wallace of course, who always seems to be everywhere and dear Conan Doyle and the black man what was his name and of course the Slater person, such a scandal, though now I come to think of it that was in Scotland where they have such very odd laws about everything particularly getting married. Well, I suppose we shall soon know now, not the truth, necessarily, but what the jury have made of it.”
“Yes; they are being rather longer than I expected. But, I say, Wimsey, I wish you’d tell me—”
“Too late, too late, you cannot enter now. I have locked my heart in a silver box and pinned it wi’ a golden pin. Nobody’s opinion matters now, except the jury’s. I expect Miss Climpson is telling ’em all about it. When once she starts she doesn’t stop for an hour or two.”
“Well, they’ve been half an hour now,” said Parker.
“Still waiting?” said Salcombe Hardy, returning to the press table.
“Yes—so this is what you call twenty minutes! Three quarters of an hour, I make it.”
“They’ve been out an hour and a half,” said a girl to her fiancé, just behind Wimsey. “What can they be discussing?”
“Perhaps they don’t think she did it after all.”
“What nonsense! Of course she did it. You could see it by her face. Hard, that’s what I call it, and she never once cried or anything.”
“Oh, I dunno,” said the young man.
“You don’t mean to say you admired her, Frank?”
“Oh, well, I dunno. But she didn’t look to me like a murderess.”
“And how do you know what a murderess looks like? Have you ever met one?”
“Well, I’ve seen them at Madame Tussaud’s.”
“Oh, waxworks. Everybody looks like a murderer in a waxworks.”
“Well, p’raps they do. Have a choc.”
“Two hours and a quarter,” said Waffles Newton, impatiently. “They must have gone to sleep. Have to be a special edition. What happens if they are all night about it?”
“We sit here all night, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s my turn for a drink. Let me know, will you?”
“Right-ho!”
“I’ve been talking to one of the ushers,” said the Man Who Knows the Ropes, importantly, to a friend. “The judge has just sent round to the jury to ask if he can help them in any way.”
“Has he? And what did they say?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’ve been out three hours and a half now,” whispered the girl behind Wimsey. “I’m getting fearfully hungry.”
“Are you, darling? Shall we go?”
“No—I want to hear the verdict. We’ve waited so long now, we may as well stop on.”
“Well, I’ll go out and get some sandwiches.”
“Oh, that would be nice. But don’t be long, because I’m sure I shall get hysterics when I hear the sentence.”
“I’ll be as quick as ever I can. Be glad you’re not the jury—they’re not allowed anything at all.”
“What, nothing to eat or drink?”
“Not a thing. I don’t think they’re supposed to have light or fire either.”
“Poor things! But it’s central heated, isn’t it?”
“It’s hot enough here, anyway. I’ll be glad of a breath of fresh air.”
Five hours.
“There’s a terrific crowd in the street,” said the Man Who Knows the Ropes, returning from a reconnaissance. “Some people started booing the prisoner and a bunch of men attacked them, and one fellow has been carried off in an ambulance.”
“Really, how amusing! Look! There’s Mr. Urquhart; he’s come back. I’m so sorry for him, aren’t you? It must be horrid having somebody die in your house.”
“He’s talking to the Attorney General. They’ve all had a proper dinner, of course.”
“The Attorney General isn’t as handsome as Sir Impey Biggs. Is it true he keeps canaries?”
“The Attorney General?”
“No, Sir Impey.”
“Yes, quite true. He takes prizes with them.”
“What a funny idea!”
“Bear up, Freddy,” said Lord Peter Wimsey. “I perceive movements. They are coming, my own, my sweet, were it never so airy a tread.”
The court rose to its feet. The judge took his seat. The prisoner, very white in the electricity, reappeared in the dock. The door leading to the jury room opened.
“Look at their faces,” said the fiancée, “they say if it’s going to be Guilty they never look at the prisoner. Oh, Archie, hold my hand!”
The Clerk of Assizes addressed the jury in tones in which formality struggled with reproach.
“Members of the jury, have you all agreed upon your verdict?”
The foreman rose with an injured and irritable countenance.
“I am sorry to say that we find it impossible to come to an agreement.”
A prolonged gasp and murmur
