Mr Randolph Fleming was a large, burly man with a stiff red moustache which forty years ago would have been remarkable even in the Guards. He had a bearing of the same sort, and was not abashed. With the darkening of the day, the concealed lights under the cornices of the oak panelling threw a theatrical glow up over its white dome. But, crawling in some minutes after proceedings had begun, I thought not so much of a theatre as a church.
Evelyn glowered at me, and then whispered excitedly: 'Sh'hl He's just confirmed all Dyer said about finding the body, up to the time Answell swore he had taken a drugged drink; and they found none of the whisky or the soda had been tapped. Sh-h! What was the blonde like?'
I shushed her in reply, for heads were turning towards us, and that mention of an ink-pad had caught me. Mr Randolph Fleming took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and looked round the court with interest. His enormous vitality seemed to enliven counsel. Fleming's large face was somewhat withered, with a pendulous jowl dominated by .the stiff red moustache; his eyelids were wrinkled, and the eyes very sharp. You felt that there should be a monocle in one of them, or some sort of helmet on his stiff brown hair. At intervals in the questioning - when there was a cessation of movement like the clogging of a motion-picture film - he would study the judge, study the barristers, and look up to study the people in the gallery. When he spoke, Fleming's jowl moved in and out like a bull-frog's.
Huntley Lawton was examining.
'Explain what you mean about the ink-pad, Mr Fleming.'
'Well, it was like this,' answered the witness, drawing in his jowl as though he were trying to smell the flower in the button-hole of his pepper-and-salt suit. 'When we had looked at the sideboard and seen that the decanter and the syphon were both full, I said to the prisoner, I said - pause, as though for consideration - ' 'Why don't you be a man and admit you did it? Look at that arrow over there,' I said. 'You can see there are finger-prints there; and they'll be yours, won't they?''
'What did he say to that?'
'Nothing. Ab-so-lutely nothing I Consequently, I thought of taking his finger-prints. I'm a practical man; always have been; that's how I came to think of it. I said to Dyer that if we had an ink-pad - you know the sort of thing: one of those little pads that you press rubber stamps on - we could get a good clear set. He said that Dr Hume had just recently bought some rubber stamps and an ink-pad, and that they were upstairs in one of the doctor's suits. He remembered because he had intended to take the stamps out in case they soiled the pocket, so he offered to go upstairs and fetch -'
‘We quite understand, Mr Fleming. Did you get the ink-pad and take the prisoner's finger-prints?'
The witness, who had been thrusting out his neck with earnestness, seemed ruffled at the interruption.
'No, sir, we did not. That is, not that particular ink-pad. Dyer couldn't find the suit, it seems, or it wasn't there. But he did manage to fish up an ofd one from the desk, in violet ink, and we got a set of the prisoner's finger-prints on a piece of paper.'
'This piece of paper? Show it to the witness, please.'
'Yes, that's the one.'
'Did the prisoner make any objections to this?'
'Yes, a bit.' 'What did he do?' 'Nothing much.'
'I repeat, Mr Fleming, what did he do?'
'Nothing much,' said the witness in a heavy growl. 'He caught me off balance. He gave me a sort of shove with his open hand. My feet were off balance, and I went over against the wall and fell down a bit.'
'A sort of shove. I see. What was his manner when he did this: angry?'
'Yes, he was in a devil of a rage all of a sudden. We were trying to hold his arms down so we could get his prints.'
'He gave you a 'sort of shove' and you 'fell down a bit'. In other words, he struck hard and quickly?'
'He caught me off balance.'
'Just answer the question, please. All of a sudden he struck hard and quickly. Is that so?'
'Yes, or he wouldn't have caught me off balance.'
'Very well. Now, Mr Fleming, did you examine the place on the wall of the room, shown in photograph 8, from which the arrow had been taken down?'
'Yes, I went all over it.'
'Did the small staples - the staples that held the arrow to the wall - show signs of having been wrenched out violently, as though the arrow had been suddenly jerked down?'
'Yes, they were all over the floor.'
Counsel consulted his brief. After this little brush, Fleming squared his shoulders, lifted his elbow, and put one fist on the rail of the witness-box. He took a good survey of the court, as though challenging anyone to question his answers; but his forehead was ruffled with small wrinkles. Once, I remember, he happened to look straight into my eyes from across the room. And I wondered, as you always do on these occasions, 'What's that fellow really thinking?'
Or, for that matter, you might wonder what the prisoner was really thinking. He was much more restless this afternoon than he had been this morning. Whenever a man in the dock moves in his chair, you are conscious of it; like a movement on an empty dance-floor such as the dock resembled. A shifting, an unquiet stealing of the hands, seems to come close to you. Often he would glance towards the solicitors' table - in the direction, it seemed, of the grave and cynically preoccupied Reginald Answell. The prisoner's eyes looked rather wild and worried; his big shoulders were stooped. Lollypop, H.M.'s secretary, was now at the solicitors' table, wearing her paper cuffs and poring over a typewritten sheet.
Counsel cleared his throat to resume.
'You have told us, Mr Fleming, that you are a member of several archery societies, and have been an archer for many years?'
'That's so.'
'So that you could describe yourself as something of an authority on the subject?'
'Yes, I think I could safely say that,' returned the witness, with a grave nod and a bull-frog swell of the throat.
'I want you to look at this arrow and describe it.'
Fleming seemed puzzled. 'I don't know what you want me to say, exactly. It's the standard type of men's arrow: red pinewood, twenty-eight inches long, quarter of an inch thick, iron pile or point footed with bullet-tree wood, nock made of horn -' He turned it over in his hands.
'The nock, yes. Will you explain what the nock is?'
'The nock is this little wedge-shaped piece of horn at the end of the arrow. There's a notch in it - here. That's how you fit the arrow to the bow-string. Like this.'
He illustrated with a backward gesture, and banged his hand against the post supporting the roof of the witness-box: to his evident surprise and annoyance.
'Could that arrow have been fired?'
'It could not. Out of the question.'
'You would call it definitely impossible?'
'Of course it's impossible. Besides, the fellow's fingerprints were the only marks on -'
'I must ask you not to anticipate the evidence, Mr Fleming. Why is it impossible that the arrow could have been fired?'
'Look at the nockl It's been bent over and twisted so much that you couldn't possibly fit it to a string.'
'Was the nock in this condition when you first saw it in the deceased's body?'
'Yes, it was.'
'Will you just pass that along for the inspection of the jury? Thank you. Having established that the arrow could not have been fired: in the coating of dust you tell us you observed on the arrow, did you observe anywhere -
'I did not.'
'That is all.'
