We have had the Inquiry. I was judge. I started with Denys and Joan in
the dock, as I thought we must have somebody there and it would look
better if it was somebody in the family. The first witness was Mrs.
Barker. Her evidence was so unsatisfactory that I had to have her put
in the dock too. So was Mr. Barker’s. I was sorry to put him in the
dock, as he still had rheumatics. But he had to go.
So did Mr. Winthrop. I had no qualms about him. For a man of his age to
do a thing like that seems to me really deplorable. And the barefaced
evasiveness of his evidence! He simply could not account for his
movements during the evening at all. When I asked him what he had been
doing at 9.21, and where, he actually said he _didn’t know_.
Rather curious--very few people _can_ account for their movements, or
anyone else’s. In most criminal trials the witnesses remember to a
minute, years after the event, exactly what time they went upstairs
and when they passed the prisoner in the lounge, but nobody seems to
remember anything in this affair. No doubt it will come in time.
The trial was very realistic. I was able to make one or two excellent
judicial jokes. Right at the beginning I said to the prosecuting
counsel, “What _is_ an apple-pie bed?” and when he had explained I
said with a meaning look, “You mean that the bed was not in _apple-pie
order_?” Ha, ha! Everybody laughed heartily....