The day fixed for the trial of Frederick Birchill was wet, dismal, and
dreary. The rain pelted intermittently through a hazy, chilly atmosphere,
filling the gutters and splashing heavily on the slippery pavements. But
in spite of the rain a long queue, principally of women, assembled
outside the portals of the Old Bailey long before the time fixed for the
opening of the court. At the private entrance to the courthouse arrived
fashionably-dressed ladies accompanied by well-groomed men. They had
received cards of admission and had seats reserved for them in the body
of the court. Many of them had personally known the late Sir Horace
Fewbanks, and their interest in the trial of the man accused of his
murder was intensified by the rumours afloat that there were to be some
spicy revelations concerning the dead judge's private life.
The arrival of Mr. Justice Hodson, who was to preside at the trial,
caused a stir among some of the spectators, many of whom belonged to the
criminal class. Sir Henry Hodson had presided at so many murder trials
that he was known among them as "the Hanging Judge." Among the spectators
were some whom Sir Henry had put into mourning at one time or another;
there were others whom he had deprived of their bread-winners for
specified periods. These spectators looked at him with curiosity, fear,
and hatred. Mr. Holymead, K.C., drove up in a taxi-cab a few minutes
later, and his arrival created an impression akin to admiration. In the
eyes of the criminal class he was an heroic figure who had assumed the
responsibility of saving the life of one of their fraternity. The eminent
counsel's success in the few criminal cases in which he had consented to
appear had gained him the respectful esteem of those who considered
themselves oppressed by the law, and the spectators on the pavement might
have raised a cheer for him if their exuberance had not been restrained
by the proximity of the policeman guarding the entrance.
When the court was opened Inspector Chippenfield took a seat in the body
of the court behind the barrister's bench. He ranged his eye over the
closely-packed spectators in the gallery, and shook his head with
manifest disapproval. It seemed to him that the worst criminals in London
had managed to elude the vigilance of the sergeant outside in order to
see the trial of their notorious colleague, Fred Birchill. He pointed out
their presence to Rolfe, who was seated alongside him.
"There's that scoundrel Bob Rogers, who slipped through our hands over
the Ealing case, and his pal, Breaker Jim, who's just done seven years,
looking down and grinning at us," he angrily whispered. "I'll give them
something to grin about before they're much older. You'd think Breaker
would have had enough of the Old Bailey to last him a lifetime. And look
at that row alongside of them--there's Morris, Hart, Harry the Hooker,
and that chap Willis who murdered the pawnbroker in Commercial Road last
year, only we could never sheet it home to him. And two rows behind them
is old Charlie, the Covent Garden 'drop,' with Holder Jack and Kemp,
Birchill's mate. Why, they're everywhere. The inquest was nothing to
this, Rolfe."
"Kemp must be thanking his lucky stars he wasn't in that Riversbrook job
with Fred Birchill," said Rolfe, "for they usually work together. And
there's Crewe, up in the gallery."
"Where?" exclaimed Inspector Chippenfield, with an indignant start.
"Up there behind that pillar there--no, the next one. See, he's looking
down at you."
Crewe caught the inspector's eye, and nodded and smiled in a friendly
fashion, but Inspector Chippenfield returned the salutation with a
haughty glare.
"The impudence of that chap is beyond belief," he said to his
subordinate. "One would have thought he'd have kept away from court after
his wild-goose chase to Scotland and piling up expenses, but not him!
Brazen impudence is the stock-in-trade of the private detective. If
Scotland Yard had a little more of the impudence of the private
detective, Rolfe, we should be better appreciated."
"I suppose he's come in the hopes of seeing the jury acquit Birchill,"
said Rolfe.
"No doubt," replied Inspector Chippenfield. "But he's come to the wrong
shop. A good jury should convict without leaving the box if the case is
properly put before them by the prosecution. Crewe would like to triumph
over us, but it is our turn to win."
But Inspector Chippenfield was wrong in thinking that Crewe's presence
in court was due to a desire for the humiliation of his rivals. Crewe
had spent most of the previous night reading and revising his summaries
and notes of the Riversbrook case, and in minutely reviewing his
investigations of it. Over several pipes in the early morning hours he
pondered long and deeply on the secret of Sir Horace Fewbanks's murder,
without finding a solution which satisfactorily accounted for all the
strange features of the case. But one thing he felt sure of was that
Birchill had not committed the murder. He based that belief partly on
the butler's confession, and partly on his own discoveries. He believed
Hill to be a cunning scoundrel who had overreached the police for some
purpose of his own by accusing Birchill, and who, to make his story more
probable, had even implicated himself in the supposed burglary as a
terrorised accomplice. And Crewe had been unable to test the butler's
story, or find out what game he was playing, because of the assiduity
with which the principal witness for the prosecution had been "nursed"
by the police from the moment he made his confession. Crewe bit hard
into his amber mouthpiece in vexation as he recalled the ostrich-like
tactics of Inspector Chippenfield, who, having accepted Hill's story as
genuine, had officially baulked all his efforts to see the man and
question him about it.
He had come to court with the object of witnessing Birchill's behaviour
in the dock and the efforts of any of his criminal friends to communicate
with him. As a man who had had considerable experience in criminal trials
he knew the irresistible desire of the criminal in the gallery of the
court to encourage the man in the dock to keep up his courage.
Communications of the kind had to be made by signs. It was Crewe's
impression that by watching Birchill in the dock and Birchill's friends
in the gallery he might pick up a valuable hint or two. It was also his
intention to study closely the defence which Counsel for the prisoner
intended to put forward.
It was therefore with a feeling of mingled annoyance and surprise that
Crewe, looking down from his point of vantage at the bevy of
fashionably-dressed ladies in the body of the court, recognised Mrs.
Holymead, Mademoiselle Chiron and Miss Fewbanks seated side by side,
engaged in earnest conversation. Before he could withdraw from their view
behind the pillar in front of him, Miss Fewbanks looked up and saw him.
She bowed to him in friendly recognition, and Crewe saw her whisper to
Mrs. Holymead, who glanced quickly in his direction and then as quickly
averted her gaze. But in that fleeting glance of her beautiful dark eyes
Crewe detected an expression of fear, as though she dreaded his presence,
and he noticed that she shivered slightly as she turned to resume her
conversation with Miss Fewbanks.
His Honour Mr. Justice Hodson entered, and the persons in the court
scrambled hurriedly to their feet to pay their tribute of respect to
British law, as exemplified in the person of a stout red-faced old
gentleman wearing a scarlet gown and black sash, and attended by four of
the Sheriffs of London in their fur-trimmed robes. The judge bowed in
response and took his seat. The spectators resumed theirs, craning their
necks eagerly to look at the accused man, Birchill, who was brought into
the dock by two warders. The work of empanelling a jury commenced, and
when it was completed Mr. Walters, K.C., opened the case for the
prosecution.
Mr. Walters was a long-winded Counsel who had detested the late Mr.
Justice Fewbanks because of the latter's habit of interrupting the
addresses of Counsel with the object of inducing them to curtail their
remarks. This practice was not only annoying to Counsel, who necessarily
knew better than the judge what the jury ought to be told, but it also
tended to hold Counsel up to ridicule in the eyes of ignorant jurymen as
a man who could not do his work properly without the watchful correction
of the judge. But Mr. Walters, whose legal training had imbued in him a
respect for Latin tags, subscribed to the adage, _de mortuis nil nisi
bonum_. Therefore he began his address to the jury with a glowing
reference to the loss, he might almost say the irreparable loss, which
the judiciary had sustained, he would go so far as to say the loss which
the nation had sustained by the death, the violent death, in short, the
murder, of an eminent judge of the High Court Bench, whose clear and
vigorous intellect, whose marvellous mastery of the legal principles laid
down by the judicial giants of the past, whose inexhaustible knowledge
drawn from the storehouses of British law, whose virile interpretations
of the principles of British justice, whose unfailing courtesy and
consideration to Counsel, the memory of which would long be cherished by
those who had had the privilege of pleading before him, had made him an
acquisition and an ornament to a Bench which in the eyes of the nation
had always represented, and at no time more than the present--at this
point Mr. Walters bowed to the presiding judge--the embodiment of legal
knowledge, legal experience, and legal wisdom.
After this tribute to the murdered man and the presiding judge, Mr.
Walters proceeded to lay the facts of the crime before the jury, who had
read all about them in the newspapers.
With methodical care he built up the case against the accused man,
classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for
the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution
was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's
employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some
aspects unfortunate, for himself, and no doubt counsel for the defense
would endeavour to discredit his evidence on that account, but the jury,
when they heard the butler tell his story in the witness box, would have
little difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the man Hill was the
victim of circumstances and his own weakness of temperament. However much
they might be disposed to blame him for the course he had pursued, he was
innocent of all complicity in his master's death, and had done his best
to help the ends of justice by coming forward with a voluntary confession
to the police.
Mr. Walters made no attempt to conceal or extenuate the black page in
Hill's past, but he asked the jury to believe that Hill had bitterly
repented of his former crime, and would have continued to lead an honest
life as Sir Horace Fewbanks's butler, if ill fate had not forged a cruel
chain of circumstances to link him to his past life and drag him down by
bringing him in contact with the accused man Birchill, whom he had met in
prison. Sir Horace Fewbanks was the self-appointed guardian of a young
woman named Doris Fanning, the daughter of a former employee on his
country estate, who had died leaving her penniless. Sir Horace had deemed
it his duty to bring up the girl and give her a start in life. After
educating her in a style suitable to her station, he sent her to London
and paid for music lessons for her in order to fit her for a musical
career, for which she showed some aptitude. Unfortunately the young woman
had a self-willed and unbalanced temperament, and she gave her benefactor
much trouble. Sir Horace bore patiently with her until she made the
chance acquaintance of Birchill, and became instantly fascinated by him.
The acquaintance speedily drifted into intimacy, and the girl became the
pliant tool of Birchill, who acquired an almost magnetic influence over
her. As the intimacy progressed she seemed to have become a willing
partner in his criminal schemes.
When Sir Horace Fewbanks heard that the girl had drifted into an
association with a criminal like Birchill he endeavoured to save her from
her folly by remonstrating with her, and the girl promised to give up
Birchill, but did not do so. When Sir Horace found out that he was being
deceived he was compelled to renounce her. Birchill, who had been living
on the girl, was furious with anger when he learnt that Sir Horace had
cut off the monetary allowance he had been making her, and, on
discovering by some means that his former prison associate Hill was now
the butler at Sir Horace Fewbanks's house, he planned his revenge. He
sent the girl Fanning to Riversbrook with a message to Hill, directing
him, under threat of exposure, to see him at the Westminster flat.
Hill, who dreaded nothing so much as an exposure of that past life of his
which he hoped was a secret between his master and himself, kept the
appointment. Birchill told him he intended to rob the judge's house in
order to revenge himself on Sir Horace for cutting off the girl's
allowance, and he asked Hill to assist him in carrying out the burglary.
Hill strenuously demurred at first, but weakly allowed himself to be
terrorised into compliance under Birchill's threats of exposure. Hill's
participation in the crime was to be confined to preparing a plan of
Riversbrook as a guide for Birchill. Birchill said nothing about murder
at this time, but there is no doubt he contemplated violence when he
first spoke to Hill. When Hill, alarmed by his master's return on the
actual night for which the burglary had been arranged, hurried across to
the flat to urge Birchill to abandon the contemplated burglary, Birchill
obstinately decided to carry out the crime, and left the flat with a
revolver in his hand, threatening to murder Sir Horace if he found him,
because of his harsh treatment--as he termed it--of the girl Fanning.
"Birchill left the flat at nine o'clock," continued Mr. Walters, who had
now reached the vital facts of the night of the murder. "I ask the jury
to take careful note of the time and the subsequent times mentioned, for
they have an important bearing on the circumstantial evidence against the
accused man. He returned, according to Hill's evidence, shortly after
midnight. Evidence will be called to show that Birchill, or a man
answering his description, boarded a tramcar at Euston Road at 9.30 p.m.,
and journeyed in it to Hampstead. He was observed both at Euston Road and
the Hampstead terminus by the conductor, because of his obvious desire to
avoid attention. There were only two other passengers on the top of the
car when it left Euston Road. The conductor directed the attention of the
driver to his movements, and they both watched him till he disappeared in
the direction of the Heath. In fairness to the prisoner, it was necessary
to point out, however, that neither the conductor nor the driver can
identify him positively as the man they had seen on their car that night,
but both will swear that to the best of their belief Birchill is the man.
Assuming that it was the prisoner who travelled to Hampstead by the
Euston Road tram--a route he would probably prefer because it took him to
Hampstead by the most unfrequented way--he would have a distance of
nearly a mile to walk across Hampstead Heath to Tanton Gardens, where
Sir Horace Fewbanks's house was situated. The evidence of the tram-men is
that he set off across the Heath at a very rapid rate. The tram reached
Hampstead at four minutes past ten, so that, by walking fast, it would be
possible for a young energetic man to reach Riversbrook before a quarter
to eleven. Another five minutes would see an experienced housebreaker
like Birchill inside the house. At twenty minutes past eleven a young man
named Ryder, who had wandered into Tanton Gardens while endeavouring to
take a short cut home, heard the sound of a report, which at the time he
took to be the noise of a door violently slammed, coming from the
direction of Riversbrook. A few moments afterwards he saw a man climb
over the front fence of Riversbrook to the street. He drew back
cautiously into the shade of one of the chestnut trees of the street
avenue, and saw the man plainly as he ran past him. Ryder will swear that
the man he saw was Birchill."
"It's a lie! It's a lie! You're trying to hang him, you wicked man. Oh,
Fred, Fred!"
The cry proceeded from the girl Doris Fanning. Her unbalanced temperament
had been unable to bear the strain of sitting there and listening to Mr.
Walters' cold inexorable construction of a legal chain of evidence
against her lover. She rose to her feet, shrieking wildly, and
gesticulating menacingly at Mr. Walters. The Society ladies turned
eagerly in their seats to take in through their _lorgnons_ every detail
of the interruption.
"Remove that woman," the judge sternly commanded.
Several policemen hastened to her, and the girl was partly hustled and
partly carried out of court, shrieking as she went. When the commotion
caused by the scene subsided, the judge irritably requested to be
informed who the woman was.
"I don't know, my lord," replied Mr. Walters. "Perhaps--" He stopped and
bent over to Detective Rolfe, who was pulling at his gown. "Er--yes, I'm
informed by Detective Rolfe of Scotland Yard, my lord, that the young
woman is a witness in the case."
"Then why was she permitted to remain in court?" asked Sir Henry Hodson
angrily. "It is a piece of gross carelessness."
"I do not know, my lord. I was unaware she was a witness until this
moment," returned Mr. Walters, with a discreet glance in the direction of
Detective Rolfe, as an indication to His Honour that the judicial storm
might safely veer in that direction. Sir Henry took the hint and
administered such a stinging rebuke to Detective Rolfe that that
officer's face took on a much redder tint before it was concluded. Then
the judge motioned to Mr. Walters to resume the case.
Counsel, with his index finger still in the place in his brief where he
had been interrupted, rose to his feet again and turned to the jury.
"Birchill returned to the flat at Westminster shortly after midnight," he
continued. "Hill had been compelled by Birchill's threats to remain at the
flat with the girl while Birchill visited Riversbrook, and the first
thing Birchill told him on his return was that he had found Sir Horace
Fewbanks dead in his house when he entered it. On his way back from
committing the crime belated caution had probably dictated to Birchill
the wisdom of endeavouring to counteract his previous threat to murder
Sir Horace Fewbanks. He probably remembered that Hill, who had heard the
threat, was an unwilling participator in the plan for the burglary, and
might therefore denounce him to the police for the greater crime if he
(Birchill) admitted that he had committed it. In order to guard against
this contingency still further Birchill forced Hill to join in writing a
letter to Scotland Yard, acquainting them with the murder, and the fact
that the body was lying in the empty house. Birchill's object in acting
thus was a twofold one. He dared not trust Hill to pretend to discover
the body the next day and give information to the police, for fear he
should not be able to retain sufficient control of himself to convince
the detectives that he was wholly ignorant of the crime, and he also
thought that if Hill had a share in writing the letter he would feel an
additional complicity in the crime, and keep silence for his own sake.
Birchill was right in his calculations--up to a point. Hill was at first
too frightened to disclose what he knew, but as time went on his
affection for his murdered master, and his desire to bring the murderer
to justice, overcame his feelings of fear for his own share in bringing
about the crime, and he went and confessed everything to the police,
regardless of the consequences that might recoil upon his own head. The
case against Birchill depends largely on Hill's evidence, and the jury,
when they have heard his story in the witness-box, and bearing in mind
the extenuating circumstances of his connection with the crime, will have
little hesitation in coming to the conclusion that the prisoner in the
dock murdered Sir Horace Fewbanks."
The first witness called was Inspector Seldon, who gave evidence as to
his visit to Riversbrook shortly before 1 p. m. on the 19th of August as
the result of information received, and his discovery of the dead body of
Sir Horace Fewbanks. He described the room in which the body was found;
the position of the body; and he identified the blood-stained clothes
produced by the prosecution as being those in which the dead man was
dressed when the body was discovered. In cross-examination by Holymead he
stated that Sir Horace Fewbanks was fully dressed when the body was
found. The witness also stated in cross-examination that none of the
electric lights in the house were burning when the body was discovered.
The next witness was Dr. Slingsby, the pathological expert from the Home
Office who had made the post mortem examination, and who was much too
great a man to be kept waiting while other witnesses of more importance
to the case but of less personal consequence went into the box. Dr.
Slingsby stated that his examinations had revealed that death had been
caused by a bullet wound which had penetrated the left lung, causing
internal hemorrhage.
Mr. Finnis, the junior counsel for the defence, suggested to the witness
that the wound might have been self-inflicted, but Dr. Slingsby permitted
himself to be positive that such was not the case. With professional
caution he assured Mr. Finnis, who briefly cross-examined him, that it
was impossible for him to state how long Sir Horace Fewbanks had been
dead. _Rigor mortis_, in the case of the human body, set in from eight to
ten hours after death, and it was between three and four o'clock in the
afternoon of the day the crime was discovered that he first saw the
corpse. The body was quite stiff and cold then.
"Is it not possible for death to have taken place nineteen or twenty
hours before you saw the body?" asked Mr. Finnis, eagerly.
"Quite possible," replied Dr. Slingsby.
"Is it not also possible, from the state of the body when you examined
it, that death took place within sixteen hours of your examination of the
body?" asked Mr. Walters, as Mr. Finnis sat down with the air of a man
who had elicited an important point.
"Quite possible," replied Dr. Slingsby, with the prim air of a
professional man who valued his reputation too highly to risk it by
committing himself to anything definite.
Dr. Slingsby was allowed to leave the box, and Inspector Chippenfield
took his place. Inspector Chippenfield did not display any professional
reticence about giving his evidence--at least, not on the surface, though
he by no means took the court completely into his confidence as to all
that had passed between him and Hill. On the other hand he told the judge
and jury everything that his professional experience prompted him as
necessary and proper for them to know in order to bring about a
conviction. In the course of his evidence he made several attempts to
introduce damaging facts as to Birchill's past, but Mr. Holymead
protested to the judge. Counsel for the defence protested that he had
allowed his learned friend in opening the case a great deal of latitude
as to the relations which had previously existed between the witness Hill
and the prisoner, because the defence did not intend to attempt to hide
the fact that the prisoner had a criminal record, but he had no intention
of allowing a police witness to introduce irrelevant matter in order to
prejudice the jury against the prisoner. His Honour told the witness to
confine himself to answering the questions put to him, and not to
volunteer information.
After this rebuke Inspector Chippenfield resumed giving evidence. He
related what Birchill had said when arrested, and declared that he was
positive that the footprints found outside the kitchen window were made
by the boots produced in court which Birchill had been wearing at the
time he was arrested. He produced a jemmy which he had found at Fanning's
flat, and said that it fitted the marks on the window at Riversbrook
which had been forced on the night of the 18th of August.
Inspector Chippenfield's evidence was followed by that of the two tramway
employees, who declared that to the best of their belief Birchill was the
man who boarded their tram at half-past nine on the night of the 18th of
August, and rode to the terminus at Hampstead, which they reached at 10.4
p. m. Both the witnesses showed a very proper respect for the law, and
were obviously relieved when the brief cross-examination was over and
they were free to go back to their tram-car.