witnesses and the police officers. What explanation can be made for these extraordinary statements, what interpretation will be placed on them by the prisoner or by my learned friend, it is not within my province to say. The contention of the Crown is that this man, finding in Avory Hume an angry, unexpected, and determined opposition to a cherished project, quarrelled with him and brutally killed an old man who had done him no harm.
'In conclusion, I need remind you only of this: The matter before you is to determine whether or not the evidence which the Crown will lay before you supports the charge of murder. That is your painful task, and your only task. If you think that the Crown have not proved their case beyond any reasonable doubt, you will have no hesitation in doing your duty. I tell you quite frankly that the Crown can supply no reason for the victim's sudden antagonism towards the prisoner. But that, I shall submit, is not the point at issue: The point at issue is what effect this antagonism had on the prisoner. The antagonism itself is a fact, and you may think a starting-point in the chain of facts we shall lay before you. If, therefore, you think that the case for the Crown has been fairly proved, you will not allow a weakness of character on the part of the prisoner to be turned into a strange link for his defence; and you must have no hesitation in condemning him to the extreme penalty of the law.'
THE Attorney-General sat down with some rustling, and a glass of water was handed up to him from the solicitors' table below. An officer of the court, who had been tiptoeing past the jury-box with his back bent down so as not to obscure the jury's view of counsel, straightened up. Mr Huntley Lawton, Sir Walter's junior, rose to his feet to examine the first witnesses.
The first two were official, and were speedily out of the box. Harry Martin Coombe, an official photographer, testified to certain photographs taken in connection with the crime. Lester George Franklin, surveyor to the Borough of Westminster, gave evidence as to his survey of the house, is Grosvenor Street, and produced plans of the house. Copies of all these were given to each member of the jury. Mr Huntley Lawton, whose manner had an innocent pomposity which seemed to go out into a beak of a nose, detained the latter witness.
'I believe that on January 5th, last, at the request of Detective-Inspector Mottram, you made an examination of the room called the study at Number is Grosvenor Street?’
‘I did.'
'Did you find any means of entrance or exit in that room except the door and the windows? That is to say, was there anything in the nature of a hidden entrance?'
'There was not.'
The walls were, in fact, homogeneous?' Silence.
The little judge looked round slightly. 'Counsel asks you,' said Mr Justice Rankin, 'whether there were any holes in the walls.' It was a soft, even voice: and you awoke to several things. You suddenly became aware of a sort of concentrated common sense, whittling down all things to their real values. You also became aware of absolute mastery, which the whole court felt. The judge, sitting perched out on the edge of his tall chair, kept his head round until the witness said: 'Holes, my lord? No holes'; then he blinked at Mr Lawton with some curiosity; and then the pen in his plump hand continued to travel steadily over his notebook.
'There was not,' pursued counsel, murmuring a formula, 'even a crevice large enough to admit the shaft of an arrow?'
'No, sir. Nothing of the kind.'
'Thank you.'
There was no cross-examination; H.M. only shook his head and humped the shoulders of his gown. He was sitting down there in the same immobile fashion, and you might hope that he was not glaring in his usual malevolent way at the jury.
'Call Amelia Jordan.'
They brought Miss Jordan into the witness-box, that narrow roofed-over cubicle which stands in the right angle between the jury-box and the judge's bench. Ordinarily she must have been a calm and competent woman. But she stumbled in going up the steps to the box, and was on the edge of a bad state of nerves when she took the oath. Whether nerves caused this stumble, or the stumble itself caused the nerves, we could not tell: but she flushed a dull colour. Also, she had manifestly been ill. Amelia Jordan was in her early or middle forties. She had the remains of solid, easy good looks shrivelled a little from their pleasantness by illness, but not detracted from by those stream-lined chromium spectacles which contrive to suggest that no spectacles are there at all. She had no- nonsense brown hair and no-nonsense blue eyes. Her clothes caused favourable comment from the two women behind us. She was wearing black, I remember, with a black hat whose brim had a peak like a cap.
'Your name is Flora Amelia Jordan?' ‘Yes.'
The reply came out in a quick throat-clearing, of her voice trying to find its proper level. Without looking at the judge or the jury on either side of her, she fixed her eyes on the soothing figure of Mr Huntley Lawton, who was putting forth his fullest personality.
'You were Mr Hume's confidential secretary?'
'Yes. That is - no, I have not been his secretary for a long time. I mean, he had no use for a secretary after he left - That is, I kept house for him. It was better than having a paid housekeeper.'
'My lord and the jury quite understand,' said counsel, with a gentle heartiness. Her last words had come out in a rush, and he was even more soothing. 'You were a sort of relation, I take it?'
'No, no, we were not related. We -'
'We quite understand, Miss Jordan. How long had you been with him?'
'Fourteen years.'
'You knew him intimately?'
'Oh, yes, very.'
The first part of Miss Jordan's examination was taken up with producing and proving two letters dealing with Mary Hume's engagement, one from the girl to her father, and one from her father to her. The first of these Miss Jordan had seen; the second, she explained, she had helped to write. Characters emerged. To judge by her letter, Mary Hume was impulsive, flighty, and a little incoherent, just as you would have imagined from the photograph of the blonde with wide-set eyes which had adorned the
(At this moment the man in the dock went as white as a ghost.)
'- and I am so certain of this, my dear daughter, that I mean to leave everything I have in trust for the son I know you will have; and .1 am certain that I can look forward to many years of a happy life in the company of all of you.'
There was some uneasy coughing. Answell in the dock sat with his head inclined a little forward, regarding his hands on his knees. Mr Huntley Lawton continued the examination of Amelia Jordan.
'Do you recall any particular comments Mr Hume made on the engagement in general?'
'Yes, he kept saying: 'This is a very satisfactory business, I could not wish for anything better.' I always said: 'But do you know anything about Mr Answell?' He said: 'Yes, he is a fine young man; I knew his mother, and she was very sound.' Or words to that effect.'
'In other words, he regarded the prospect of the marriage as definitely settled?'
'Well, we thought so.'
'We?'
'The doctor and I. Dr Spencer Hume. At least I thought so; I can't speak for anyone else.'
'Now, Miss Jordan,' said counsel, and paused. 'Between December 31st and January 4th, did you observe any change in Mr Hume's attitude?'
'Yes, I did.'
'When did you first observe a change?'
'On that Saturday morning, the Saturday he died.'
'Will you tell us what you observed?'
She was calm enough now, under Mr Lawton's hypnotic manner. She spoke in a low but quite audible voice. At first she did not know what to do with her hands: putting them on and off the rail of the dock, and finally clasping
