It was not until Stowell had stepped on to the bench that he had
realized what he had done for himself.
When he had asked for the prisoners to be brought in, and Bessie had
come at the end of the short line and taken her place in the dock
with the constable behind her, he had been seized with a feeling of
choking shame.
That woman, looking so much older, with pallid cheeks sucked in by
suffering, could she be the same? All the barrage he had built up
for the protection of his position as Judge seemed to have gone down
at the first sight of the girl's face. What a scoundrel he had been!
From that moment a whirl of confused emotions had held possession of
him. When the time came to charge the prisoner he had felt as if he
were reading out his own indictment. And when she had looked up
fearlessly into his face and pleaded Not Guilty it was the same as if
she were accusing himself.
After that he had a sense of acting as a detached person. In a
strange voice, which did not seem to be his own, he heard himself
asking the Attorney-General which case he wished to take first. The
Attorney answered, "The murder case," and after the Clerk of the
Rolls had read out the names of the jurymen, and they had taken their
places in the jury-box, he heard himself, in the same strange voice,
swearing them on the holy evangelists to "a true verdict give,
according to the evidence and the laws of this isle."
When he turned his eyes back, Bessie was alone in the dock, save for
the woman warder (with blue lips and a look of suffering) who sat at
the farther end of it. She was still looking fearlessly up at him,
and in front of her sat two others whose eyes were also fixed on his
face--Alick Gell and Fenella. At that sight a terrible feeling took
hold of him--that these three were the real judges in this trial and
he was the prisoner at the bar.
He did not recover from the shock of this feeling until the
Attorney-General began on the prosecution.
The Attorney, usually so kindly, was bitterly severe. The time had
gone by when it could be said with truth that crime was practically
unknown in the Isle of Man. Here, as elsewhere, crimes of all kinds
were only too common, and not least common was the crime of
infanticide.
The present case was one of peculiar atrocity. The prisoner was a
young woman who might be said, not uncharitably, to have inherited a
lawless disposition. After a reckless girlhood she had disappeared
from her home, for no apparent reason, rather less than a year ago
and remained away (nobody knew where or in what company) until a few
weeks ago. She had then been ill and was put to bed in a condition
which gave only too much reason for the belief that she was about to
become a mother. That was on the fifth of April and two days later
the body of a new-born infant had been found in a remote place,
wrapped up and hidden away.
It would be established by witnesses that the infant had been born
alive, that it had died by suffocation, and that the prisoner
(incredible as it might appear) had been seen to bury it.
"Such," said the Attorney-General, "are the facts of this most
unhappy case, and though the prisoner pleads Not Guilty, the evidence
which I shall now call will leave no doubt that the child was her
child and that it died by her hands. Therefore I ask (as well for
the sake of humanity as for the good name of this island) that the
Jury shall give such a verdict against the prisoner as will act as a
deterrent on the heartless women, unworthy of the name of mothers,
who, to save themselves from the just consequences of their evil
conduct, are taking the innocent lives which under God they gave."
There had been a tense atmosphere in the Court-house during the
Attorney-General's speech, and when it was over there were
half-suppressed murmurs, hostile to the prisoner.
Looking towards the dock Stowell saw that Bessie was quite unmoved,
but that Fenella, in front of her, was flushed and hot, and Gell's
lower lip was trembling. Stowell was conscious of a complicated
struggle going on within him and then of a blind and headlong
resolution. He was going to save that girl--he was going to save her
at all costs!
The first witness was the constable, a middle-aged man with a sour
expression. After he had been sworn by the Deemster, the
Attorney-General examined him.
His name was Cain and he was constable for the parish in which the
crime had been committed. On the morning of April the seventh he
received an information from Old Will Skillicorne of Baldromma-beg
that something had been seen under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. He had
gone there and found the body of a new-born child, and had taken it
to Dr. Clucas, who had made an examination. Later the same day he
had taken statements from Old Will and his wife, relating to the
prisoner, and had sent them up to the Chief Constable of the island
at Douglas. The Chief Constable had ordered him to make a
house-to-house visitation through the parish to see if any other
woman might have been the mother of the child. He had done so with
the result that the prisoner was the only person who had come under
suspicion. She was then ill in bed, but in due course he had
arrested her, and charged her before the High Bailiff, who had
committed her for trial at that court--sending her to the hospital in
the meantime.
With obvious nervousness Gell rose to cross-examine the witness.
"How far is it from the prisoner's home to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_?"
"Half a mile, maybe."
"What kind of road would you call it?"
"Rough and thorny, most of it."
Gell sat with a look of satisfaction, and the Deemster leaned forward.
"Constable," he said, "when you made your house-to-house visitation
did you go beyond the boundary of your parish?"
"No, your Honour."
"Where is the boundary?"
"The glen is the boundary--the western side of it, Sir."
"How near to the western boundary are the nearest houses in the next
parish?"
"Four hundred yards, perhaps."
"How many of them are there?"
"Fifteen or twenty, your Honour."
"Yet, though you visited the prisoner's home, which was half-a-mile
from the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_, you did not visit--you were not told to
visit--the fifteen or twenty houses which were only four hundred
yards away?"
"They were not in my parish, your Honour."
There was audible drawing of breath in court. Fenella, who had been
reaching forward, dropped back, and Gell's pale face was smiling.
The next to be called was Dr. Clucas. His hands were twitching and
his rubicund face was moist with perspiration--he was obviously an
unwilling witness.
Yes, when the constable brought the body of the child he made a
post-mortem examination. Applying the usual medical tests he came to
the conclusion that the child had been born alive and had died of
suffocation. On the morning of the following day he had been called
in to see the prisoner. She was suffering from extreme exhaustion--a
condition not inconsistent with the idea of recent confinement.
Gell, gathering strength but still agitated, rose again.
"How long had the child lived?"
"An hour or two, probably."
"And how long had it been dead?"
"Twenty-four to thirty hours at the outside."
"Is it your experience that within twenty-four to thirty hours after
confinement a woman can walk half-a-mile along a rough and thorny
road and carry a burden?"
"It certainly is not, Sir."
Gell sat with a piteous smile of triumph on his pale face, and the
Deemster leaned forward again.
"Doctor," he said, "you speak of applying the usual medical
tests--are they entirely reliable?"
"They are not infallible, your Honour. They have been known to fail."
"Then this child may have breathed and yet not had a separate
existence?"
"It may--it is just possible, Sir."
"And the unhappy mother, whoever she may be, though obviously guilty
of concealing its birth, may not have been guilty of the much greater
crime of killing it?"
"That's so .... she may not, your Honour."
There was a still more audible drawing of breath in court when the
doctor stood down. Fenella's eyes were shining and Gell's were
sparkling with excitement.
The next witness was Bridget Skillicorne. She wore a big poke bonnet
and a Paisley shawl which smelt strongly of lavender. She was very
voluble (provoking ripples of laughter by her broad Manx tongue) and
the Attorney-General had more than he could do to restrain her.
Aw, 'deed yes, she remembered the night of the sixth-seventh April,
for wasn't it the night she had a cow down with the gripes? Colic
they were calling it, but wutching it was, and she believed in her
heart she knew who had wutched the craythur. So she sent her ould
man over to the Ballawhaine for a taste of something to take off the
evil eye. And while she was sitting in the cowhouse itself, waiting
for the man to come home (it was terr'ble slow the men were, both in
their heads and their legs), she saw the light of a fire that had
blown up on the mountains. "Will it reach the hay in my haggard?"
she thought, and out she went to look. And, behold ye, what did she
see but the glen as light as day and a woman on her knees putting
something under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. Who was she? The Collister
girl of course. Sure? Sarten sure! And as soon as it was day she
went down to the stone to see what the girl had left there. What was
it? A baby--what else? Lying there in a scarf, poor bogh, like a
little white mollag.
"What's mollag?" (Bridget's Manx had gone beyond the Attorney, but
the jurymen were smiling.) "Ask them ones--_they_ know."
Gell, with a newspaper-cutting in his hand, rose to cross-examine the
old woman.
"You and your husband are sub-tenants of the prisoner's step-father,
isn't that so?"
"Certainly we are--you ought to know that much yourself, Sir."
"I see you told the High Bailiff you were on bad terms with your
landlord."
"Bad terms, is it? I wouldn't bemane myself with being on any terms
at all with the like."
"He threatened to turn you out of your croft at Hollantide, didn't
he?"
"He did, the dirt!"
"And you said you'd see him thrown out before you?"
"It's like I did, and it's like I will, too, for if your father, the
Spaker...."
The Attorney-General rose in alarm. "Is it suggested by these
questions that the witness has an animus against the prisoner's
family and is conspiring to convict her?"
"That," said Gell, in a ringing voice, "is precisely what is
suggested."
"What?" cried Bridget, bobbing her poke bonnet across at Gell. "Is
it a liar you're making me out? Me, that has known you since you
were a loblolly-boy in a jacket?"
The Deemster intervened to pacify the old woman, and then took her in
hand himself.
"Bridget," he said, "how far is it from your house on the brews down
to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_? Is it three or four hundred yards, think
you?"
"Maybe it is. But it's yourself knows as well as I do, your Honour."
"Is your sight still so good that you can see a woman to know her at
that distance?"
"Aw, well, not so bad anyway. And then wasn't it as bright as day,
Sir?"
"Listen. This court-house is not more than fifteen yards across, and
less than ten to any point from the box in which you stand. Do you
think you could recognise anybody you know in this audience?"
"Anybody I know? Recognise? Why not, your Honour?"
"You know Cain the constable?"
"'Deed I do, and his mother before him. A dacent man enough, but
stupid for all...."
"Well, he is one of the three constables who are now standing at this
end of the jury-box--which of them is he?"
"Which? Do you say which, your Honour?" said Bridget, screwing up
her wrinkled face. "Why, the off-one, surely."
There was a burst of irrepressible laughter in court--Bridget had
chosen wrongly.
The next witness was old Will Skillicorne. He was wearing his chapel
clothes, with black kid gloves, large and baggy, and was carrying a
silk hat that was as straight and long and almost as brown as a
length of stove-pipe. When called upon to swear he said he believed
the old Book said "Swear not at all," and when asked what he was he
answered that he believed he was "a man of God."
Aw, yes, he believed he remembered the night of the six-seventh of
April, and he was returning home from an errand into Andreas when the
prisoner passed him coming down the glen.
"At what time would that be?" asked Gell.
"Two or three in the morning, I belave."
"Then it would be still quite dark?"
"I was carrying my lantern, I belave."
"What was the prisoner doing when she passed you?"
"Covering her eyes with shame, I belave, as well she might be."
"Then you did not see her face?"
"I belave I did, though."
"Believe! Believe! Did you or did you not--yes or no?"
"I belave I did, Sir."
"Mr. Skillicorne," said the Deemster, "you attach importance to your
belief, I see."
The old man drew himself up, and answered in his preaching tone,
"It's the rock of my salvation, Sir."
"Your wife told us that your errand into Andreas was to see the
Ballawhaine about your sick cow. Is that the well-known
witch-doctor?"
"I .... I .... I belave it is, Sir."
"And what did he give you?"
"A .... a wisp of straw and a few good words, Sir."
"Then you believe in that too--that a wisp of straw and a few good
words...."
But the Deemster could not finish--a ripple of laughter that had been
running through the Court having risen to a roar which he did not
attempt to repress. "He has made up his mind about this case," said
someone.
The Attorney-General, who was looking hot and embarrassed, called the
last of his witnesses. This was the house-doctor at the hospital,
the young man with the thin hair and pugnacious mouth.
Asked if he remembered the prisoner being brought into hospital he
said "Perfectly." Had he formed any opinion of her condition? He
had. What was it? That she had been confined less than five days
before. What made him think so? First her unwillingness to be
examined and then....
"She refused?"
"She did, your Honour, and threatened violence, but she became
unconscious soon afterwards and then...."
"Stop!" said the Deemster, and looking down at the Attorney he asked
if the High Bailiff, in committing the prisoner, had ordered that she
should be examined.
The Attorney-General shook his head helplessly, whereupon the
Deemster, with a severe face, turned back to the witness.
"You are a qualified medical practitioner?"
"I am," said the witness, straightening himself.
"Then of course you know that for a doctor to examine a woman against
her will and without a magistrate's order is to commit an offence for
which he may be severely punished?"
The pugnacious mouth opened like a dying oyster.
"Y-es, your Honour."
"Therefore you did not examine her?"
"N-o, your Honour."
"And you know nothing of her condition?"
"No----"
"Stand down, Sir."
There was a commotion in the court-house. The prisoner's face was
still calm, but Fenella's was aglow and Gell's was ablaze.
"Mr. Attorney," said the Deemster quietly, "have you any further
evidence?"
The Attorney, who had been whispering hotly to Hudgeon, said,
"No, there was a nurse who might have given conclusive evidence, but,
thinking the doctor's would be sufficient, my colleague has allowed
her to leave the island. No, that is my case, your Honour."
Stowell, secretly glad at the turn things had taken, was about to put
an end to the trial, when Gell, intoxicated by his success, leapt up
and said,
"I might ask the Court to dismiss this case immediately on the ground
that there is nothing to put before the jury. But the wicked and
cruel charge may follow the accused all her life, therefore I
propose, with the Court's permission, to waive my right of reply and
call such positive evidence of her innocence as will enable her to
leave this court without a stain on her character."
"The fool!" thought Stowell. But just at that moment the clock of
the Castle struck one, and the Governor said,
"The Court will adjourn for luncheon and resume at two."
As Stowell stepped off the bench his eye caught a glimpse of the
inscription on a brass plate which had lately been affixed to the
wall under his father's portrait--
"_Justice is the most sacred thing on earth._"
His head dropped; he felt like a traitor.