The Law and the Lady

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With this the answer to the third question raised by the
Trial--the question of the prisoner's motive for poisoning his
wife--came to an end.

The story for the prosecution was now a story told. The
staunchest friends of the prisoner in Court were compelled to
acknowledge that the evidence thus far pointed clearly and
conclusively against him. He seemed to feel this himself. When he
withdrew at the close of the third day of the Trial he was so
depressed and exhausted that he was obliged to lean on the arm of
the governor of the jail.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENSE.

THE feeling of interest excited by the Trial was prodigiously
increased on the fourth day. The witnesses for the defense were
now to be heard, and first and foremost among them appeared the
prisoner's mother. She looked at her son as she lifted her veil
to take the oath. He burst into tears. At that moment the
sympathy felt for the mother was generally extended to the
unhappy son.

Examined by the Dean of Faculty, Mrs. Macallan the elder gave her
answers with remarkable dignity and self-control.

Questioned as to certain private conversations which had passed
between her late daughter-in-law and herself, she declared that
Mrs. Eustace Macallan was morbidly sensitive on the subject of
her personal appearance. She was devotedly attached to her
husband; the great anxiety of her life was to make herself as
attractive to him as possible. The imperfections in her personal
appearance--and especially in her complexion--were subjects to
her of the bitterest regret. The witness had heard her say, over
and over again (referring to her complexion), that there was no
risk she would not run, and no pain she would not suffer, to
improve it. "Men" (she had said) "are all caught by outward
appearances: my husband might love me better if I had a better
color."

Being asked next if the passages from her son's Diary were to be
depended on as evidence--that is to say, if they fairly
represented the peculiarities in his character, and his true
sentiments toward his wife--Mrs. Macallan denied it in the
plainest and strongest terms.

"The extracts from my son's Diary are a libel on his character,"
she said. "And not the less a libel because they happen to be
written by himself. Speaking from a mother's experience of him, I
know that he must have written the passages produced in moments
of uncontrollable depression and despair. No just person judges
hastily of a man by the rash words which may escape him in his
moody and miserable moments. Is my son to be so judged because he
happens to have written _his_ rash words, instead of speaking
them? His pen has been his most deadly enemy, in this case--it
has presented him at his very worst. He was not happy in his
marriage--I admit that. But I say at the same time that he was
invariably considerate toward his wife. I was implicitly trusted
by both of them; I saw them in their most private moments. I
declare--in the face of what she appears to have written to her
friends and correspondents--that my son never gave his wife any
just cause to assert that he treated her with cruelty or
neglect."

The words, firmly and clearly spoken, produced a strong
impression. The Lord Advocate--evidently perceiving that any
attempt to weaken that impression would not be likely to
succeed--confined himself, in cross-examination, to two
significant questions.

"In speaking to you of the defects in her complexion," he said,
"did your daughter-in-law refer in any way to the use of arsenic
as a remedy?"

The answer to this was, "No."

The Lord Advocate proceeded:

"Did you yourself ever recommend arsenic, or mention it casually,
in the course of the private conversations which you have
described?"

The answer to this was, "Never."

The Lord Advocate resumed his seat. Mrs. Macallan the elder
withdrew.

An interest of a new kind was excited by the appearance of the
next witness. This was no less a person than Mrs. Beauly herself.
The Report describes her as a remarkably attractive person;
modest and lady-like in her manner, and, to all appearance,
feeling sensitively the public position in which she was placed.

The first portion of her evidence was almost a recapitulation of
the evidence given by the prisoner's mother--with this
difference, that Mrs. Beauly had been actually questioned by the
deceased lady on the subject of cosmetic applications to the
complexion. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had complimented her on the
beauty of her complexion, and had asked what artificial means she
used to keep it in such good order. Using no artificial means,
and knowing nothing whatever of cosmetics, Mrs. Beauly had
resented the question, and a temporary coolness between the two
ladies had been the result.

Interrogated as to her relations with the prisoner, Mrs. Beauly
indignantly denied that she or Mr. Macallan had ever given the
deceased lady the slightest cause for jealousy. It was impossible
for Mrs. Beauly to leave Scotland, after visiting at the houses
of her cousin's neighbors, without also visiting at her cousin's
house. To take any other course would have been an act of
downright rudeness, and would have excited remark. She did not
deny that Mr. Macallan had admired her in the days when they were
both single people. But there was no further expression of that
feeling when she had married another man, and when he had married
another woman. From that time their intercourse was the innocent
intercourse of a brother and sister. Mr. Macallan was a
gentleman: he knew what was due to his wife and to Mrs.
Beauly--she would not have entered the house if experience had
not satisfied her of that. As for the evidence of the
under-gardener, it was little better than pure invention. The
greater part of the conversation which he had described himself
as overhearing had never taken place. The little that was really
said (as the man reported it) was said jestingly; and she had
checked it immediately--as the witness had himself confessed. For
the rest, Mr. Macallan's behavior toward his wife was invariably
kind and considerate. He was constantly devising means to
alleviate her sufferings from the rheumatic affection which
confined her to her bed; he had spoken of her, not once but many
times, in terms of the sincerest sympathy. When she ordered her
husband and witness to leave the room, on the day of her death,
Mr. Macallan said to witness afterward, "We must bear with her
jealousy, poor soul: we know that we don't deserve it." In that
patient manner he submitted to her infirmities of temper from
first to last.

The main interest in the cross-examination of Mrs. Beauly
centered in a question which was put at the end. After reminding
her that she had given her name, on being sworn, as "Helena
Beauly," the Lord Advocate said:

"A letter addressed to the prisoner, and signed 'Helena,' has
been read in Court. Look at it, if you please. Are you the writer
of that letter?"

Before the witness could reply the Dean of Faculty protested
against the question. The Judges allowed the protest, and refused
to permit the question to be put. Mrs. Beauly thereupon withdrew.
She had betrayed a very perceptible agitation on hearing the
letter referred to, and on having it placed in her hands. This
exhibition of feeling was variously interpreted among the
audience. Upon the whole, however, Mrs. Beauly's evidence was
considered to have aided the impression which the mother's
evidence had produced in the prisoner's favor.

The next witnesses--both ladies, and both school friends of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan--created a new feeling of interest in Court.
They supplied the missing link in the evidence for the defense.

The first of the ladies declared that she had mentioned arsenic
as a means of improving the complexion in conversation with Mrs.
Eustace Macallan. She had never used it herself, but she had read
of the practice of eating arsenic among the Styrian peasantry for
the purpose of clearing the color, and of producing a general
appearance of plumpness and good health. She positively swore
that she had related this result of her reading to the deceased
lady exactly as she now related it in Court.

The second witness, present at the conversation already
mentioned, corroborated the first witness in every particular;
and added that she had procured the book relating to the
arsenic-eating practices of the Styrian peasantry, and their
results, at Mrs. Eustace Macallan's own request. This book she
had herself dispatched by post to Mrs. Eustace Macallan at
Gleninch.

There was but one assailable p oint in this otherwise conclusive
evidence. The cross-examination discovered it.

Both the ladies were asked, in turn, if Mrs. Eustace Macallan had
expressed to them, directly or indirectly, any intention of
obtaining arsenic, with a view to the improvement of her
complexion. In each case the answer to that all-important
question was, No. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had heard of the remedy,
and had received the book. But of her own intentions in the
future she had not said one word. She had begged both the ladies
to consider the conversation as strictly private--and there it
had ended.

It required no lawyer's eye to discern the fatal defect which was
now revealed in the evidence for the defense. Every intelligent
person present could see that the prisoner's chance of an
honorable acquittal depended on tracing the poison to the
possession of his wife--or at least on proving her expressed
intention to obtain it. In either of these cases the prisoner's
Declaration of his innocence would claim the support of
testimony, which, however indirect it might be, no honest and
intelligent men would be likely to resist. Was that testimony
forthcoming? Was the counsel for the defense not at the end of
his resources yet?

The crowded audience waited in breathless expectation for the
appearance of the next witness. A whisper went round among
certain well-instructed persons that the Court was now to see and
hear the prisoner's old friend--already often referred to in the
course of the Trial as "Mr. Dexter."

After a brief interval of delay there was a sudden commotion
among the audience, accompanied by suppressed exclamations of
curiosity and surprise. At the same moment the crier summoned the
new witness by the extraordinary name of

"MISERRIMUS DEXTER"

CHAPTER XX.

THE END OF THE TRIAL.

THE calling of the new witness provoked a burst of laughter
among the audience due partly, no doubt, to the strange name by
which he had been summoned; partly, also, to the instinctive
desire of all crowded assemblies, when their interest is
painfully excited, to seize on any relief in the shape of the
first subject of merriment which may present itself. A severe
rebuke from the Bench restored order among the audience. The Lord
Justice Clerk declared that he would "clear the Court" if the
interruption to the proceedings were renewed.

During the silence which followed this announcement the new
witness appeared.

Gliding, self-propelled in his chair on wheels, through the
opening made for him among the crowd, a strange and startling
creature--literally the half of a man--revealed himself to the
general view. A coverlet which had been thrown over his chair had
fallen off during his progress through the throng. The loss of it
exposed to the public curiosity the head, the arms, and the trunk
of a living human being: absolutely deprived of the lower limbs.
To make this deformity all the more striking and all the more
terrible, the victim of it was--as to his face and his body--an
unusually handsome and an unusually well-made man. His long silky
hair, of a bright and beautiful chestnut color, fell over
shoulders that were the perfection of strength and grace. His
face was bright with vivacity and intelligence. His large clear
blue eyes and his long delicate white hands were like the eyes
and hands of a beautiful woman. He would have looked effeminate
but for the manly proportions of his throat and chest, aided in
their effect by his flowing beard and long mustache, of a lighter
chestnut shade than the color of his hair. Never had a
magnificent head and body been more hopelessly ill-bestowed than
in this instance! Never had Nature committed a more careless or a
more cruel mistake than in the making of this man!

He was sworn, seated, of course, in his chair. Having given his
name, he bowed to the Judges and requested their permission to
preface his evidence with a word of explanation.

"People generally laugh when they first hear my strange Christian
name," he said, in a low, clear, resonant voice which penetrated
to the remotest corners of the Court. "I may inform the good
people here that many names, still common among us, have their
significations, and that mine is one of them. 'Alexander,' for
instance, means, in the Greek, 'a helper of men.' 'David' means,
in Hebrew, 'well-beloved.' 'Francis' means, in German, 'free.' My
name, 'Miserrimus,' means, in Latin, 'most unhappy.' It was given
to me by my father, in allusion to the deformity which you all
see--the deformity with which it was my misfortune to be born.
You won't laugh at 'Miserrimus' again, will you?" He turned to
the Dean of Faculty, waiting to examine him for the defense. "Mr.
Dean. I am at your service. I apologize for delaying, even for a
moment, the proceedings of the Court."

He delivered his little address with perfect grace and
good-humor. Examined by the Dean, he gave his evidence clearly,
without the slightest appearance of hesitation or reserve.

"I was staying at Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of
Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death," he began. "Doctor Jerome and Mr.
Gale desired to see me at a private interview--the prisoner being
then in a state of prostration which made it impossible for him
to attend to his duties as master of the house. At this interview
the two doctors astonished and horrified me by declaring that
Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died poisoned. They left it to me to
communicate the dreadful news to her husband, and they warned me
that a post-mortem examination must be held on the body.

"If the Fiscal had seen my old friend when I communicated the
doctors' message, I doubt if he would have ventured to charge the
prisoner with the murder of his wife. To my mind the charge was
nothing less than an outrage. I resisted the seizure of the
prisoner's Diary and letters, animated by that feeling. Now that
the Diary has been produced, I agree with the prisoner's mother
in denying that it is fair evidence to bring against him. A Diary
(when it extends beyond a bare record of facts and dates) is
nothing but an expression of the poorest and weakest side in the
character of the person who keeps it. It is, in nine cases out of
ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and
conceit which the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but
himself. I am the prisoner's oldest friend. I solemnly declare
that I never knew he could write downright nonsense until I heard
his Diary read in this Court!

"_He_ kill his wife! _He_ treat his wife with neglect and
cruelty! I venture to say, from twenty years' experience of him,
that there is no man in this assembly who is constitutionally
more incapable of crime and more incapable of cruelty than the
man who stands at the Bar. While I am about it, I go further
still. I even doubt whether a man capable of crime and capable of
cruelty could have found it in his heart to do evil to the woman
whose untimely death is the subject of this inquiry.

"I have heard what the ignorant and prejudiced nurse, Christina
Ormsay, has said of the deceased lady. From my own personal
observation, I contradict every word of it. Mrs. Eustace
Macallan--granting her personal defects--was nevertheless one of
the most charming women I ever met with. She was highly bred, in
the best sense of the word. I never saw in any other person so
sweet a smile as hers, or such grace and beauty of movement as
hers. If you liked music, she sang beautifully; and few professed
musicians had such a touch on the piano as hers. If you preferred
talking, I never yet met with the man (or even the woman, which
is saying a great deal more) whom her conversation could not
charm. To say that such a wife as this could be first cruelly
neglected, and then barbarously murdered, by the man--no! by the
martyr--who stands there, is to tell me that the sun never shines
at noonday, or that the heaven is not above the earth.

"Oh yes! I know that the letters of her friends show that she
wrote to them in bitter complaint of her husband's conduct to
her. But remember what one of those friends (the wisest and the
best of them) says in reply. 'I own to thinking,' she writes,
'that your sensitive nature exaggerates
or misinterprets the neglect that you experience at the hands of
your husband.' There, in that one sentence, is the whole truth!
Mrs. Eustace Macallan's nature was the imaginative,
self-tormenting nature of a poet. No mortal love could ever have
been refined enough for _her._ Trifles which women of a coarser
moral fiber would have passed over without notice, were causes of
downright agony to that exquisitely sensitive temperament. There
are persons born to be unhappy. That poor lady was one of them.
When I have said this, I have said all.

"No! There is one word more still to be added.

"It may be as well to remind the prosecution that Mrs. Eustace
Macallan's death was in the pecuniary sense a serious loss to her
husband. He had insisted on having the whole of her fortune
settled on herself, and on her relatives after her, when he
married. Her income from that fortune helped to keep in splendor
the house and grounds at Gleninch. The prisoner's own resources
(aided even by his mother's jointure) were quite inadequate fitly
to defray the expenses of living at his splendid country-seat.
Knowing all the circumstances, I can positively assert that the
wife's death has deprived the husband of two-thirds of his
income. And the prosecution, viewing him as the basest and
cruelest of men, declares that he deliberately killed her--with
all his pecuniary interests pointing to the preservation of her
life!

"It is useless to ask me whether I noticed anything in the
conduct of the prisoner and Mrs. Beauly which might justify a
wife's jealousy. I never observed Mrs. Beauly with any attention,
and I never encouraged the prisoner in talking to me about her.
He was a general admirer of pretty women--so far as I know, in a
perfectly innocent way. That he could prefer Mrs. Beauly to his
wife is inconceivable to me, unless he were out of his senses. I
never had any reason to believe that he was out of his senses.

"As to the question of the arsenic--I mean the question of
tracing that poison to the possession of Mrs. Eustace Macallan--I
am able to give evidence which may, perhaps, be worthy of the
attention of the Court.

"I was present in the Fiscal's office during the examination of
the papers, and of the other objects discovered at Gleninch. The
dressing-case belonging to the deceased lady was shown to me
after its contents had been officially investigated by the Fiscal
himself. I happen to have a very sensitive sense of touch. In
handling the lid of the dressing-case, on the inner side I felt
something at a certain place which induced me to examine the
whole structure of the lid very carefully. The result was the
discovery of a private repository concealed in the space between
the outer wood and the lining. In that repository I found the
bottle which I now produce."

The further examination of the witness was suspended while the
hidden bottle was compared with the bottles properly belonging to
the dressing-case.

These last were of the finest cut glass, and of a very elegant
form--entirely unlike the bottle found in the private repository,
which was of the commonest manufacture, and of the shape
ordinarily in use among chemists. Not a drop of liquid, not the
smallest atom of any solid substance, remained in it. No smell
exhaled from it--and, more unfortunately still for the interests
of the defense, no label was found attached to the bottle when it
had been discovered.

The chemist who had sold the second supply of arsenic to the
prisoner was recalled and examined. He declared that the bottle
was exactly like the bottle in which he had placed the arsenic.
It was, however, equally like hundreds of other bottles in his
shop. In the absence of the label (on which he had himself
written the word "Poison"), it was impossible for him to identify
the bottle. The dressing-case and the deceased lady's bedroom had
been vainly searched for the chemist's missing label--on the
chance that it might have become accidentally detached from the
mysterious empty bottle. In both instances the search had been
without result. Morally, it was a fair conclusion that this might
be really the bottle which had contained the poison. Legally,
there was not the slightest proof of it.

Thus ended the last effort of the defense to trace the arsenic
purchased by the prisoner to the possession of his wife. The book
relating the practices of the Styrian peasantry (found in the
deceased lady's room) had been produced But could the book prove
that she had asked her husband to buy arsenic for her? The
crumpled paper, with the grains of powder left in it, had been
identified by the chemist, and had been declared to contain
grains of arsenic. But where was the proof that Mrs. Eustace
Macallan's hand had placed the packet in the cabinet, and had
emptied it of its contents? No direct evidence anywhere! Nothing
but conjecture!

The renewed examination of Miserrimus Dexter touched on matters
of no general interest. The cross-examination resolved itself, in
substance, into a mental trial of strength between the witness
and the Lord Advocate; the struggle terminating (according to the
general opinion) in favor of the witness. One question and one
answer only I will repeat here. They appeared to me to be of
serious importance to the object that I had in view in reading
the Trial.

"I believe, Mr. Dexter," the Lord Advocate remarked, in his most
ironical manner, "that you have a theory of your own, which makes
the death of Mrs. Eustace Macallan no mystery to _you?_"

"I may have my own ideas on that subject, as on other subjects,"
the witness replied. "But let me ask their lordships, the Judges:
Am I here to declare theories or to state facts?"

I made a note of that answer. Mr. Dexter's "ideas" were the ideas
of a true friend to my husband, and of a man of far more than
average ability. They might be of inestimable value to me in the
coming time--if I could prevail on him to communicate them.

I may mention, while I am writing on the subject, that I added to
this first note a second, containing an observation of my own. In
alluding to Mrs. Beauly, while he was giving his evidence, Mr.
Dexter had spoken of her so slightingly--so rudely, I might
almost say--as to suggest he had some strong private reasons for
disliking (perhaps for distrusting) this lady. Here, again, it
might be of vital importance to me to see Mr. Dexter, and to
clear up, if I could, what the dignity of the Court had passed
over without notice.

The last witness had been now examined. The chair on wheels
glided away with the half-man in it, and was lost in a distant
corner of the Court. The Lord Advocate rose to address the Jury
for the prosecution.

I do not scruple to say that I never read anything so infamous as
this great lawyer's speech. He was not ashamed to declare, at
starting, that he firmly believed the prisoner to be guilty. What
right had he to say anything of the sort? Was it for _him_ to
decide? Was he the Judge and Jury both, I should like to know?
Having begun by condemning the prisoner on his own authority, the
Lord Advocate proceeded to pervert the most innocent actions of
that unhappy man so as to give them as vile an aspect as
possible. Thus: When Eustace kissed his poor wife's forehead on
her death-bed, he did it to create a favorable impression in the
minds of the doctor and the nurse! Again, when his grief under
his bereavement completely overwhelmed him, he was triumphing in
secret, and acting a part! If you looked into his heart, you
would see there a diabolical hatred for his wife and an
infatuated passion for Mrs. Beauly! In everything he had said he
had lied; in everything he had done he had acted like a crafty
and heartless wretch! So the chief counsel for the prosecution
spoke of the prisoner, standing helpless before him at the Bar.
In my husband's place, if I could have done nothing more, I would
have thrown something at his head. As it was, I tore the pages
which contained the speech for the prosecution out of the Report
and trampled them under my feet--and felt all the better too for
having done it. At the same time I feel a little ashamed of
having revenged myself on the harmless printed leaves n ow.

The fifth day of the Trial opened with the speech for the
defense. Ah, what a contrast to the infamies uttered by the Lord
Advocate was the grand burst of eloquence by the Dean of Faculty,
speaking on my husband's side!

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