The Trail of the Serpent (Detective Mystery). Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
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“To his bad conduct having preyed upon his mind.”
“Were you alarmed for his life during his illness?”
“Much alarmed. But our greatest fear was for his reason.”
“Did the faculty apprehend the loss of his reason?”
“They did.”
“The doctors who attended him were resident in Slopperton?”
“They were, and are so still. He was attended by Dr. Morton and Mr. Lamb.”
The prisoner’s counsel here beckoned to some officials near him—whispered some directions to them, and they immediately left the court.
Resuming the examination of this witness, the counsel said:
“You repeated just now the words your son made use of on the night of his departure from home. They were rather singular words—‘he had started on a dark road, and he must go on to the end of it.’ ”
“Those were his exact words, sir.”
“Was there any wildness in his manner in saying these words?” he asked.
“His manner was always wild at this time—perhaps wilder that night than usual.”
“His manner, you say, was always wild. He had acquired a reputation for a wild recklessness of disposition from an early age, had he not?”
“He had, unfortunately—from the time of his going to school.”
“And his companions, I believe, had given him some name expressive of this?”
“They had.”
“And that name was——”
“Daredevil Dick.”
Martha, the old servant, was next sworn. She described the finding of the body of Mr. Harding.
The examination by the prisoner’s counsel of this witness elicited nothing but that—
Master Dick had always been a wild boy, but a good boy at heart; that he had been never known to hurt so much as a worm; and that she, Martha, was sure he’d never done the murder. When asked if she had any suspicion as to who had done the deed, she became nebulous in her manner, and made some allusions to “the French”—having lived in the days of Waterloo, and being inclined to ascribe any deed of darkness, from the stealing of a leg of mutton to the exploding of an infernal machine, to the emissaries of Napoleon.
Mr. Jinks, who was then examined, gave a minute and rather discursive account of the arrest of Richard, paying several artful compliments to his own dexterity as a detective officer.
The man who met Richard on the platform at the railway station deposed to the prisoner’s evident wish to avoid a recognition; to his even crossing the line for that purpose.
“There is one witness,” said the counsel for the crown, “I am sorry to say I shall be unable to produce. That witness is the half-caste servant of the murdered gentleman, who still lies in a precarious state at the county hospital, and whose recovery from the injuries inflicted on him by the murderer of his master is pronounced next to an impossibility.”
The case for the prosecution closed; still a very clear case against Richard Marwood, and still the backers of the “Gallows” thought they had made a very good book.
The deposition of the Lascar, the servant of the murdered man, had been taken through an interpreter, at the hospital. It threw little light on the case. The man said, that on the night of the murder he had been awoke by a sound in Mr. Harding’s room, and had spoken in Hindostanee, asking if his master required his assistance, when he received in the darkness a blow on the head, which immediately deprived him of his senses. He could tell nothing of the person who struck the blow, except that at the moment of striking it a hand passed across his face—a hand which was peculiarly soft and delicate, and the fingers of which were long and slender.
As this passage in the deposition was read, every eye in court was turned to the prisoner, who at that moment happened to be leaning forward with his elbow on the ledge of the dock before him, and his hand shading his forehead—a very white hand, with long slender fingers. Poor Richard! In the good days gone by he had been rather proud of his delicate and somewhat feminine hand.
The prisoner’s counsel rose and delivered his speech for the defence. A very elaborate defence. A defence which went to prove that the prisoner at the bar, though positively guilty, was not morally guilty, or legally guilty—“because, gentlemen of the jury, he is, and for some time has been, insane. Yes, mad, gentlemen of the jury. What has been every action of his life but the action of a madman? His wild boyhood; his reckless extravagant youth; his dissipated and wasted manhood, spent among drunken and dangerous companions. What was his return? Premeditated during the sufferings of delirium tremens, and premeditated long before the arrival of his rich uncle at Slopperton, as I shall presently prove to you. What was this, but the sudden repentance of a madman? Scarcely recovered from this frightful disease—a disease during which men have been known frequently to injure themselves, and those very dear to them, in the most terrible manner—scarcely recovered from this disease, he starts on foot, penniless, for a journey of upwards of two hundred miles. He accomplishes that journey—how, gentlemen, in that dreary November weather, I tremble even to think—he accomplishes that long and painful journey; and on the evening of the eighth day from that on which he left London he falls fainting at his mother’s feet. I shall prove to you, gentlemen, that the prisoner left London on the very day on which his uncle arrived in Slopperton; it is therefore impossible he could have had any knowledge of that arrival when he started. Well, gentlemen, the prisoner, after the fatigue, the extreme privation, he has suffered, has yet another trial to undergo—the terrible agitation caused by a reconciliation with his beloved mother. He has eaten scarcely anything for two days, and is injudiciously allowed to drink nearly a bottle of old madeira. That night, gentlemen of the jury, a cruel murder is perpetrated; a murder as certain of immediate discovery, as clumsy in execution, as it is frightful in detail. Can there be any doubt that if it was committed by my unhappy client, the prisoner at the bar, it was perpetrated by him while labouring under an access of delirium, or insanity—temporary, if you will, but unmitigated insanity—aggravated by excessive fatigue, unprecedented mental excitement, and the bad effects of the wine he had been drinking? It has been proved that the cabinet was rifled, and that the pocket-book stolen therefrom was found in the prisoner’s possession. This may have been one of those strange flashes of method which are the distinguishing features of madness. In his horror at the crime he had in his delirium committed, the prisoner’s endeavour was to escape. For this escape he required money—hence the plunder of the cabinet. The manner of his attempting to escape again proclaims the madman. Instead of flying to Liverpool, which is only thirty miles from this town—whence he could have sailed for any part of the globe, and thus defied pursuit—he starts without any attempt at disguise for a small inland town, whence escape is next to an impossibility, and is captured a few hours after the crime has been committed, with the blood of his unhappy victim upon the sleeve of his coat. Would a man in his senses, gentlemen, not have removed, at any rate, this fatal evidence of his guilt? Would a man in his senses not have endeavoured to disguise himself, and to conceal the money he had stolen? Gentlemen of the jury, I have perfect confidence in your coming to a just decision respecting this most unhappy affair. Weighing well the antecedents of the prisoner, and the circumstances of the crime, I can have not one shadow of a doubt that your verdict will be to the effect that the wretched man before you is, alas! too certainly his uncle’s murderer, but that he is as certainly irresponsible for a deed committed during an aberration of intellect.”
Strange to say, the counsel did not once draw attention to the singular conduct of the prisoner while in court; but this conduct had not been the less remarked by the jury, and did not the less weigh with them.
The witnesses for the defence were few in number. The first who mounted the witness-box was rather peculiar in his appearance. If you include amongst his personal attractions a red nose (which shone like the