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 point 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”