WE looked at one another in silence. Both alike, we were obliged to wait
a little and recover ourselves.
I may occupy the interval by answering two questions which will arise in
your minds in this place. How did Dubourg come to be tried for his life?
And what was the connection between this serious matter and the false
testimony of a clock?
The reply to both these inquiries is to be found in the story which I
call the Perjury of the Clock.
In briefly relating this curious incidental narrative (which I take from
a statement of the circumstances placed in my possession) I shall speak
of our new acquaintance at Browndown--and shall continue to speak of him
throughout these pages--by his assumed name. In the first place, it was
the maiden name of his mother, and he had a right to take it if he
pleased. In the second place, the date of our domestic drama at Dimchurch
goes back as far as the years 'fifty-eight and 'fifty-nine; and real
names are (now that it is all over) of no consequence to anybody. With
"Dubourg" we have begun. With "Dubourg" let us go on to the end.
On a summer evening, some years ago, a man was found murdered in a field
near a certain town in the West of England. The name of the field was,
"Pardon's Piece."
The man was a small carpenter and builder in the town, who bore an
indifferent character. On the evening in question, a distant relative of
his, employed as farm-bailiff by a gentleman in the neighborhood,
happened to be passing a stile which led from the field into a road, and
saw a gentleman leaving the field by way of this stile, rather in a
hurry. He recognized the gentleman as Mr. Dubourg.
The two passed each other on the road in opposite directions. After a
certain lapse of time--estimated as being half an hour--the farm-bailiff
had occasion to pass back along the same road. On reaching the stile, he
heard an alarm raised, and entered the field to see what was the matter.
He found several persons running from the farther side of Pardon's Piece
towards a boy who was standing at the back of a cattle-shed, in a remote
part of the enclosure, screaming with terror. At the boy's feet lay, face
downwards, the dead body of a man, with his head horribly beaten in. His
watch was under him, hanging out of his pocket by the chain. It had
stopped--evidently in consequence of the concussion of its owner's fall
on it--at half-past eight. The body was still warm. All the other
valuables, like the watch, were left on it. The farm-bailiff instantly
recognized the man as the carpenter and builder mentioned above.
At the preliminary inquiry, the stoppage of the watch at half-past eight,
was taken as offering good circumstantial evidence that the blow which
had killed the man had been struck at that time.
The next question was--if any one had been seen near the body at
half-past eight? The farm-bailiff declared that he had met Mr. Dubourg
hastily leaving the field by the stile at that very time. Asked if he had
looked at his watch, he owned that he had not done so. Certain previous
circumstances which he mentioned as having impressed themselves on his
memory, enabled him to feel sure of the truth of his assertion, without
having consulted his watch. He was pressed on this important point; but
he held to his declaration. At half-past eight he had seen Mr. Dubourg
hurriedly leave the field. At half-past eight the watch of the murdered
man had stopped.
Had any other person been observed in or near the field at that time?
No witness could be discovered who had seen anybody else near the place.
Had the weapon turned up, with which the blow had been struck? It had not
been found. Was anyone known (robbery having plainly not been the motive
of the crime) to have entertained a grudge against the murdered man? It
was no secret that he associated with doubtful characters, male and
female; but suspicion failed to point to any one of them in particular.
In this state of things, there was no alternative but to request Mr.
Dubourg--well known in, and out of the town, as a young gentleman of
independent fortune; bearing an excellent character--to give some account
of himself.
He immediately admitted that he had passed through the field. But in
contradiction to the farm-bailiff, he declared that _he_ had looked at
his watch at the moment before he crossed the stile, and that the time by
it was exactly a quarter past eight. Five minutes later--that is to say
ten minutes before the murder had been committed, on the evidence of the
dead man's watch--he had paid a visit to a lady living near Pardon's
Piece; and had remained with her, until his watch, consulted once more on
leaving the lady's house, informed him that it was a quarter to nine.
Here was the defense called an "alibi." It entirely satisfied Mr.
Dubourg's friends. To satisfy justice also, it was necessary to call the
lady as a witness. In the meantime, another purely formal question was
put to Mr. Dubourg. Did he know anything of the murdered man?
With some appearance of confusion, Mr. Dubourg admitted that he had been
induced (by a friend) to employ the man on some work. Further
interrogation extracted from him the following statement of facts.
That the work had been very badly done--that an exorbitant price had been
charged for it--that the man, on being remonstrated with, had behaved in
a grossly impertinent manner--that an altercation had taken place between
them--that Mr. Dubourg had seized the man by the collar of his coat, and
had turned him out of the house--that he had called the man an infernal
scoundrel (being in a passion at the time), and had threatened to "thrash
him within an inch of his life" (or words to that effect) if he ever
presumed to come near the house again; that he had sincerely regretted
his own violence the moment he recovered his self-possession; and,
lastly, that, on his oath (the altercation having occurred six weeks
ago), he had never spoken to the man, or set eyes on the man since.
As the matter then stood, these circumstances were considered as being
unfortunate circumstances for Mr. Dubourg--nothing more. He had his
"alibi" to appeal to, and his character to appeal to; and nobody doubted
the result.
The lady appeared as witness.
Confronted with Mr. Dubourg on the question of time, and forced to
answer, she absolutely contradicted him, on the testimony of the clock on
her own mantelpiece. In substance, her evidence was simply this. She had
looked at her clock, when Mr. Dubourg entered the room; thinking it
rather a late hour for a visitor to call on her. The clock (regulated by
the maker, only the day before) pointed to twenty-five minutes to nine.
Practical experiment showed that the time required to walk the distance,
at a rapid pace, from the stile to the lady's house, was just five
minutes. Here then was the statement of the farm-bailiff (himself a
respectable witness) corroborated by another witness of excellent
position and character. The clock, on being examined next, was found to
be right. The evidence of the clock-maker proved that he kept the key,
and that there had been no necessity to set the clock and wind it up
again, since he had performed both those acts on the day preceding Mr.
Dubourg's visit. The accuracy of the clock thus vouched for, the
conclusion on the evidence was irresistible. Mr. Dubourg stood convicted
of having been in the field at the time when the murder was committed; of
having, by his own admission, had a quarrel with the murdered man, not
long before, terminating in an assault and a threat on his side; and,
lastly, of having attempted to set up an alibi by a false statement of
the question of time. There was no alternative but to commit him to take
his trial at the Assizes, charged with the murder of the builder in
Pardon's Piece.
The trial occupied two days.
No new facts of importance were discovered in the interval. The evidence
followed the course which it had taken at the preliminary
examinations--with this difference only, that it was more carefully
sifted. Mr. Dubourg had the double advantage of securing the services of
the leading barrister on the circuit, and of moving the irrepressible
sympathies of the jury, shocked at his position and eager for proof of
his innocence. By the end of the first day, the evidence had told against
him with such irresistible force, that his own counsel despaired of the
result. When the prisoner took his place in the dock on the second day,
there was but one conviction in the minds of the people in
court--everybody said, "The clock will hang him."
It was nearly two in the afternoon; and the proceedings were on the point
of being adjourned for half an hour, when the attorney for the prisoner
was seen to hand a paper to the counsel for the defense.
The counsel rose, showing signs of agitation which roused the curiosity
of the audience. He demanded the immediate hearing of a new witness;
whose evidence in the prisoner's favor he declared to be too important to
be delayed for a single moment. After a short colloquy between the judge
and the banisters on either side, the court decided to continue the
sitting.
The witness, appearing in the box, proved to be a young woman, in
delicate health. On the evening when the prisoner had paid his visit to
the lady, she was in that lady's service as housemaid. The day after, she
had been permitted (by previous arrangement with her mistress) to take a
week's holiday, and to go on a visit to her parents, in the west of
Cornwall. While there, she had fallen ill, and had not been strong enough
since to return to her employment. Having given this preliminary account
of herself, the housemaid then stated the following extraordinary
particulars in relation to her mistress's clock.
On the morning of the day when Mr. Dubourg had called at the house, she
had been cleaning the mantelpiece. She had rubbed the part of it which
was under the clock with her duster, had accidentally struck the
pendulum, and had stopped it. Having once before done this, she had been
severely reproved. Fearing that a repetition of the offense, only the day
after the clock had been regulated by the maker, might lead perhaps to
the withdrawal of her leave of absence, she had determined to put matters
right again, if possible, by herself.
After poking under the clock in the dark, and failing to set the pendulum
going again properly in that way, she next attempted to lift the clock,
and give it a shake. It was set in a marble case, with a bronze figure on
the top; and it was so heavy that she was obliged to hunt for something
which she could use as a lever. The thing proved to be not easy to find
on the spur of the moment. Having at last laid her hand on what she
wanted, she contrived so to lift the clock a few inches and drop it again
on the mantelpiece, as to set it going once more.
The next necessity was of course to move the hands on. Here again she was
met by an obstacle. There was a difficulty in opening the glass-case
which protected the dial. After uselessly searching for some instrument
to help her, she got from the footman (without telling him what she
wanted it for) a small chisel. With this, she opened the case--after
accidentally scratching the brass frame of it--and set the hands of the
clock by guess. She was flurried at the time; fearing that her mistress
would discover her. Later in the day, she found that she had
over-estimated the interval of time that had passed while she was trying
to put the clock right. She had, in fact, set it exactly _a quarter of an
hour too fast._
No safe opportunity of secretly putting the clock right again had
occurred, until the last thing at night. She had then moved the hands
back to the right time. At the hour of the evening when Mr. Dubourg had
called on her mistress, she positively swore that the clock was a quarter
of an hour too fast. It had pointed, as her mistress had declared, to
twenty-five minutes to nine--the right time then being, as Mr. Dubourg
had asserted, twenty minutes past eight.
Questioned why she had refrained from giving this extraordinary evidence
at the inquiry before the magistrate, she declared that in the remote
Cornish village to which she had gone the next day, and in which her
illness had detained her from that time, nobody had heard of the inquiry
or the trial. She would not have been then present to state the vitally
important circumstances to which she had just sworn, if the prisoner's
twin-brother had not found her out on the previous day--had not
questioned her if she knew anything about the clock--and had not (hearing
what she had to tell) insisted on her taking the journey with him to the
court the next morning.
This evidence virtually decided the trial. There was a great burst of
relief in the crowded assembly when the woman's statement had come to an
end.
She was closely cross-examined as a matter of course. Her character was
inquired into; corroborative evidence (relating to the chisel and the
scratches on the frame) was sought for and was obtained. The end of it
was that, at a late hour on the second evening, the jury acquitted the
prisoner, without leaving their box. It was not too much to say that his
life had been saved by his brother. His brother alone had persisted, from
first to last, in obstinately disbelieving the clock--for no better
reason than that the clock was the witness which asserted the prisoner's
guilt! He had worried everybody with incessant inquiries--he had
discovered the absence of the housemaid, after the trial had begun--and
he had started off to interrogate the girl, knowing nothing, and
suspecting nothing; simply determined to persist in the one everlasting
question with which he persecuted everybody belonging to the house: "The
clock is going to hang my brother; can you tell me anything about the
clock?"
Four months later, the mystery of the crime was cleared up. One of the
disreputable companions of the murdered man confessed on his death-bed
that he had done the deed. There was nothing interesting or remarkable in
the circumstances. Chance which had put innocence in peril, had offered
impunity to guilt. An infamous woman; a jealous quarrel; and an absence
at the moment of witnesses on the spot--these were really the commonplace
materials which had composed the tragedy of Pardon's Piece.