"James Hill!" called the court crier.
The butler stepped forward, mounted the witness-stand, and bowed his head
deferentially towards the judge. He was neatly dressed in black, and his
sandy-grey hair was carefully brushed. His face was as expressionless as
ever, but a slight oscillation of the Court Bible in his right hand as he
was sworn indicated that his nerves were not so calm as he strove to
appear. He looked neither to the right nor left, but kept his glance
downcast. Only once, as he stood there waiting to be questioned, did he
cast a furtive look towards the man whose life hung on his evidence, but
the malevolent vindictive gaze Birchill shot back at him caused him to
lower his eyelids instantly.
Hill commenced his evidence in a voice so low that Mr. Walters stopped
him at the outset and asked him to speak in a louder tone. It soon became
apparent that his evidence was making a deep impression on the court. Sir
Henry Hodson listened to him intently, and watched him keenly, as Hill,
with impassive countenance and smooth even tones, told his strange story
of the night of the murder. When he had drawn to a conclusion he gave
another furtive glance at the dock, but Birchill was seated with his head
bowed down, as though tired, and with one hand supporting his face.
Mr. Walters methodically folded up his brief and sat down, with a
sidelong glance in the direction of Mr. Holymead as he did so. Every eye
in court was turned on Holymead as the great K.C. settled his gown on his
shoulders and got up to cross-examine the principal Crown witness.
His cross-examination was the admiration of those spectators whose
sympathies were on the side of the man in the dock as one of themselves.
Hill was cross-examined as to the lapse from honesty which had sent him
to gaol, and he was reluctantly forced to admit, that so far from the
theft being the result of an impulse to save his wife and child from
starvation, as the Counsel for the prosecution had indicated, it was the
result of the impulse of cupidity. He had robbed a master who had trusted
him and had treated him with kindness. Having extracted this fact, in
spite of Hill's evasions and twistings, Holymead straightened himself to
his full height, and, shaking a warning finger at the witness, said:
"I put it to you, witness, that the reason Sir Horace Fewbanks engaged
you as butler in his household at Riversbrook was because he knew you to
be a man of few scruples, who would be willing to do things that a more
upright honest man would have objected to?"
"That is not true," replied Hill.
"Is it not true that your late master frequently entertained women of
doubtful character at Riversbrook?" thundered the K.C.
Hill gasped at the question. When he had first heard that his late
master's old friend, Mr. Holymead, was to appear for Birchill, he had
immediately come to the conclusion that Mr. Holymead was taking up the
case in order to save Sir Horace's name from exposure by dealing
carefully with his private life at Riversbrook. But here he was
ruthlessly tearing aside the veil of secrecy. Hill hesitated. He glanced
round the curious crowded court and saw the eager glances of the women as
they impatiently awaited his reply. He hesitated so long that Holymead
repeated the question.
"Women of doubtful character?" faltered the witness. "I do not
understand you."
"You understand me perfectly well, Hill. I do not mean women off the
streets, but women who have no moral reputation to maintain--women who do
not mind letting confidential servants see that they have no regard for
the conventional standards of life. I mean, witness, that your late
master frequently entertained at Riversbrook, women--I will not call them
ladies--who were not particular at what hour they went home. Sometimes
one or more of them stayed all night, and you were entrusted with the
confidential task of smuggling them out of the house without other
servants knowing of their presence. Is not that so?"
"I--I--"
"Answer the question without equivocation, witness."
"Y-es, sir."
There was a slight stir in the body of the court due to the fact that
Miss Fewbanks and Mrs. Holymead had risen and were making their way to
the door. The fashionably-dressed women in the court stared with much
interest at the daughter of the murdered man, whom most of them knew, in
order to see how she was taking the disclosures about her dead father's
private life.
"And sometimes there were quarrels between your late master and these
visitors, were there not?" continued Holymead.
"Quarrels, sir?"
"Surely you know that under the influence of wine some people become
quarrelsome?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, did your late master's nocturnal visitors ever become
quarrelsome?"
"Sometimes, sir."
"In the exercise of your confidential duties did you sometimes see
quarrelsome ladies off the premises?"
"Sometimes, sir."
"And it was no uncommon thing for them to say things to you about your
master, eh?"
"Sometimes they didn't care what they said."
"Quite so," commented Counsel drily. "They indulged in threats?"
"Not all of them," replied Hill, who at length saw where the
cross-examination was tending.
"I do not suggest that all of them did--only that the more violent of
them did so."
"Quite so, sir."
"So we may take it that the quarrel between your late master and
Miss Fanning was not the only quarrel of the kind which came under
your notice?"
"There were not many others," said Hill.
"It was not the only one?" persisted Counsel.
"No, sir."
"In your evidence-in-chief you said nothing about Miss Fanning using
threats against your master when you were showing her out?"
"No, sir."
"She did not use any?"
"Not in my hearing, sir."
There was a pause at this stage while Mr. Holymead consulted the notes he
had made of Mr. Walters's cross-examination of the witness.
"What o'clock was it when you left Riversbrook on the 18th of August
after your master's return from Scotland?"
"About half-past seven, sir."
"And what time did Sir Horace arrive home?"
"About seven o'clock, sir."
"What were you doing between seven and seven-thirty?"
"I unpacked his bags and got his bedroom ready. I took him some
refreshment up to the library."
"And he told you he wouldn't want you again until the following night
about eight o'clock?"
"Yes, sir. He said he thought he would be going back to Scotland by the
night express, and I was to get his bag packed and lock up the house."
"You told Counsel for the prosecution in the course of your evidence
that you were afraid of Birchill," continued Holymead.
"Yes, sir."
"Were you afraid of physical violence from him, or only that he would
expose your past to the other servants?"
"I was afraid of him both ways," said Hill.
"Was it because of this fear that you made out for him a plan of
Riversbrook to assist him in the burglary?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did you make out this plan?"
"The day after Sir Horace left for Scotland."
"Was that on your first visit to Miss Fanning's flat in Westminster
after the prisoner had sent her to Riversbrook to tell you he wanted
to see you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did Birchill stand over you while you made out this plan?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you know the plan again if you saw it?"
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Finnis, who had been hiding the plan under the papers before him,
handed a document up to his chief.
Mr. Holymead unfolded it, and with a brief glance at it handed it up to
the witness.
"Is that the plan?" he asked.
Hill was somewhat taken aback at the production of the plan. It was drawn
in ink on a white sheet of paper of foolscap size, with a slightly bluish
tint. The paper was by no means clean, for Birchill had carried it about
in his pocket. The witness reluctantly admitted that the plan was the one
he had given to Birchill. To his manifest relief Counsel asked no further
questions about it. In a low tone Mr. Holymead formally expressed his
intention to put the plan in as evidence. He handed it to Mr. Walters,
who, after a close inspection of it, passed it along to the judge's
Associate for His Honour's inspection.
The rest of Hill's cross-examination concerned what happened at the flat
on the night of the burglary. He adhered to the story he had told, and
could not be shaken in the main points of it. But Mr. Holymead made some
effective use of the discrepancy between the witness's evidence at the
inquest as to his movements on the night of the murder and his evidence
in court. He elicited the fact that the police had discovered his
evidence at the inquest was false and had forced him to make a confession
by threatening to arrest him for the murder.
Mr. Holymead signified that he had nothing further to ask the witness,
and Mr. Walters called his last witness, a young man named Charles Ryder,
a resident of Liverpool, who had spent a week's holiday in London from
the 14th to the 21st of August. Ryder had stayed with some friends at
Hampstead, and when making his way home on the night of the 18th of
August had walked down Tanton Gardens in the belief that he was taking a
short cut. The time was about 11.20. He saw a man running towards him
along the footpath from the direction of Riversbrook. He caught a good
glimpse of the man, who seemed to be very excited. He was sure the
prisoner was the man he had seen. In cross-examination by Mr. Holymead he
was far less positive in his identification of the prisoner, and finally
admitted that the man he saw that night might be somebody else who
resembled the prisoner in build.