When Colwyn went in to lunch the following day after a walk on the
front, he found Sir Henry awaiting him in the lounge with a visitor
whose identity the detective guessed before Sir Henry introduced him.
"This is Mr. Oakham," said Sir Henry. "I have told him of your
investigation into this painful case which has brought him to Norfolk."
"An investigation in which you helped," said Colwyn, with a smile.
"I am afraid it would be stretching the fable of the mouse and the lion
to suggest that I was able to help such a renowned criminal investigator
as yourself," returned Sir Henry waggishly. "When Mr. Oakham learnt that
you had been investigating this case he expressed a strong desire to see
you."
"I am returning to London by the afternoon express, Mr. Colwyn," said
the solicitor. "I should be glad if you could spare me a little of your
time before I go."
"Certainly," replied Colwyn, courteously. "It had better be at once, had
it not? You have not very much time at your disposal."
"If it does not inconvenience you," replied Mr. Oakham politely. "But
your lunch----"
"That can wait," said the detective. "I feel deeply interested in this
case of young Penreath."
"Mr. Oakham saw him this morning before coming over," said Sir Henry.
"He is quite mad, and refuses to say anything. Therefore, we have come
to the conclusion----"
"Really, Sir Henry, you shouldn't have said that." Mr. Oakham's tone was
both shocked and expostulatory.
"Why not?" retorted Sir Henry innocently. "Mr. Colwyn knows all about
it--I told him myself. I thought you wanted him to help you?"
"I am aware of that, but, my dear sir, this is an extremely delicate and
difficult business. As Mr. Penreath's professional adviser, I must beg
of you to exercise more reticence."
"Then I had better go and have my lunch while you two have a chat," said
Sir Henry urbanely, "or I shall only be putting my foot in it again. Mr.
Oakham, I shall see you before you go." Sir Henry moved off in the
direction of the luncheon room.
"Perhaps you will come to my sitting-room," said Colwyn to Mr. Oakham.
"We can talk quietly there."
"Thank you," responded Mr. Oakham, and he went with the detective
upstairs.
Mr. Oakham, of Oakham and Pendules, Temple Gardens, was a little
white-haired man of seventy, attired in the sombre black of the
Victorian era, with a polished reticent manner befitting the senior
partner of a firm of solicitors owning the most aristocratic practice in
England; a firm so eminently respectable that they never rendered a bill
of costs to a client until he was dead, when the amount of legal
expenses incurred during his lifetime was treated as a charge upon the
family estate, and deducted from the moneys accruing to the next heir,
who, in his turn, was allowed to run his allotted course without a bill
from Oakham and Pendules. They were a discreet and dignified firm, as
ancient as some of the names whose family secrets were locked away in
their office deed boxes, and were reputed to know more of the inner
history of the gentry in Burke's Peerage than all the rest of the legal
profession put together.
The arrest of the only son of Sir James Penreath, of Twelvetrees, Berks,
on a charge of murder, had shocked Mr. Oakham deeply. Divorces had come
his way in plenty, though he remembered the day when they were
considered scandalous in good families. But the modern generation had
changed all that, and Mr. Oakham had since listened to so many stories
of marital wrongs, and had assisted in obtaining so many orders for
restitution of conjugal rights, that he had come to regard divorce as
fashionable enough to be respectable. He was intimately versed in most
human failings and follies, and a past master in preventing their
consequences coming to light. Financial embarrassments he was well used
to--they might almost be said to be his forte--for many of his clients
had more lineage than money, but the crime of murder was a thing outside
his professional experience.
The upper classes of the present generation had, in this respect at
least, improved on the morals of their freebooting ancestors, and murder
had gone so completely out of fashion among the aristocracy that Mr.
Oakham had never been called upon to prepare the defence of a client
charged with killing a fellow creature. Mr. Oakham regarded murder as an
ungentlemanly crime. He believed that no gentleman would commit murder
unless he were mad. Since his arrival in Norfolk he had come to the
conclusion that young Penreath was not only mad, but that he had
committed the murder with which he stood charged. Sir Henry Durwood had
been responsible for the first opinion, and the police had helped him to
form the second. Two interviews he had had with his client since his
arrest had strengthened and deepened both convictions.
It was in this frame of mind that Mr. Oakham seated himself in the
detective's sitting room. He accepted a cigar from Colwyn's case, and
looked amiably at his companion, who waited for him to speak. The
interview had been of the solicitor's seeking, and it was for him to
disclose his object in doing so.
"This is a very unfortunate case, Mr. Colwyn," the solicitor remarked.
"Yes; it seems so," replied Colwyn.
"I am afraid there is not the slightest doubt that this unhappy young
man has committed this murder."
"You have arrived at that conclusion?"
"It is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion, in view of the
evidence."
"It is purely circumstantial. I thought that perhaps Penreath would have
some statement to make which would throw a different light on the case."
"I will be frank with you, Mr. Colwyn," said the solicitor. "You are
acquainted with all the facts of the case, and I hope you will be able
to help us. Penreath's attitude is a very strange one. Apparently he
does not apprehend the grave position in which he stands. I am forced to
the conclusion that he is suffering from an unhappy aberration of the
intellect, which has led to his committing this crime. His conduct since
coming to Norfolk has not been that of a sane man. He has hidden himself
away from his friends, and stayed here under a false name. I understand
that he behaved in an eccentric and violent way in the breakfast room of
this hotel on the morning of the day he left for the place where the
murder was subsequently committed."
"You have learnt this from Sir Henry, I presume?"
"Yes. Sir Henry has conveyed to me his opinion, based on his observation
of Mr. Penreath's eccentricity at the breakfast table the last morning
of his stay here, that Mr. Penreath is an epileptic, liable to attacks
of _furor epilepticus_--a phase of the disease which sometimes leads to
outbreaks of terrible violence. He thought it advisable that I should
know this at once, in view of what has happened since. Sir Henry
informed me that he confided a similar opinion to you, as you were
present at the time, and assisted him to convey Penreath upstairs. May I
ask what opinion you formed of his behaviour at the breakfast table, Mr.
Colwyn?"
"I thought he was excited--nothing more."
"But the violence, Mr. Colwyn! Sir Henry Durwood says Penreath was about
to commit a violent assault on the people at the next table when he
interfered."
"The violence was not apparent--to me," returned the detective, who did
not feel called upon to disclose his secret belief that Sir Henry had
acted hastily. "Apart from the excitement he displayed on this
particular morning, Penreath seemed to me a normal and average young
Englishman of his class. I certainly saw no signs of insanity about him.
It occurred to me at the time that his excitement might be the outcome
of shell-shock. We had had an air raid two nights before, and some
shell-shock cases are badly affected by air raids. I have since been
informed that Penreath was invalided out of the Army recently, suffering
from shell-shock."
"In Sir Henry's opinion the shell-shock has aggravated a tendency to the
disease."
"Has Penreath ever shown any previous signs of epilepsy?"
"Not so far as I am aware, but his mother developed the disease in later
years, and ultimately died from it. Her illness was a source of great
worry and anxiety to Sir James. And epilepsy is hereditary."
"Pathologists differ on that point. I know something of the disease, and
I doubt whether Penreath is an epileptic. He showed none of the symptoms
which I have always associated with epilepsy."
"An eminent specialist like Sir Henry is hardly likely to be mistaken.
The fact that Penreath seemed a sane and collected individual to your
eye proves nothing. Epileptic attacks are intermittent, and the sufferer
may appear quite sane between the attacks. Epilepsy is a remarkable
disease. A latent tendency to it may exist for years without those
nearest and dearest to the sufferer suspecting it, so Sir Henry says.
Penreath's case is a very strange and sad one."
"It is a strange case in very way," said Colwyn earnestly. "Why should a
young man like Penreath go over to this remote Norfolk village, where he
had not been before, and murder an old man whom he had never seen
previously? The police theory that this murder was committed for the
sake of £300 which the victim had drawn out of the bank that day seems
incredible to me, in the case of a young man like Penreath."
"The only way of accounting for the whole unhappy business is on Sir
Henry's hypothesis that Penreath is mad. In acute epileptic mania there
are cases in which there is a seeming calmness of conduct, and these are
the most dangerous of all. The patient walks about like a man in a
dream, impelled by a force which he cannot resist, and does all sorts of
things without conscious purpose. He will take long walks to places he
has never been, will steal money or valuables, and commit murder or
suicide with apparent coolness and cunning. Sir Henry describes this as
automatic action, and he says that it is a notable characteristic of
the form of epileptic mania from which Penreath is suffering. You will
observe that these symptoms fit in with all the facts of the case
against Penreath. The facts, unfortunately, are so clear that there is
no gainsaying them."
"It seems so now," said Colwyn thoughtfully. "Yet, when I was
investigating the facts at the time, I came across several points which
seemed to suggest the possibility of an alternative theory to the police
theory."
"I should like to know what those points are."
"I will tell you."
The detective proceeded to set forth the result of his visit to the inn,
and the solicitor listened to him with close attention. When he had
finished Mr. Oakham remarked:
"I am afraid there is not much in these points, Mr. Colwyn. Your
suggestion that there were two persons in the murdered man's room is
interesting, but you have no evidence to support it. The girl's
explanation of her visit to the room is probably the true one. Far be it
from me, as Penreath's legal adviser, to throw away the slightest straw
of hope, but your conjectures--for, to my mind, they are nothing
more--are nothing against the array of facts and suspicious
circumstances which have been collected by the police. And even if the
police case were less strong, there is another grave fact which we
cannot overlook."
"You mean that Penreath refuses to say anything?" said Colwyn.
"He appears to be somewhat indifferent to the outcome," returned the
lawyer guardedly.
"It is his silence which baffles me," said Colwyn. "I saw him alone
after his arrest, and told him I was willing to help him if he could
tell me anything which would assist me to establish his innocence--if
he were innocent. He replied that he had nothing to say."
"What you tell me deepens my conviction that Penreath does not realise
the position in which he is placed, and cannot be held accountable for
his actions."
"Is it your intention to plead mental incapacity at the trial?"
"Sir Henry Durwood has offered to give evidence that, in his opinion,
Penreath is not responsible for his actions. The Penreath family is
under a debt of gratitude to Sir Henry. I consider it little short of
providential that Sir Henry was staying here at the time." Like most
lawyers, Mr. Oakham had a firm belief in the interposition of
Providence--particularly in the affairs of the families of the great.
"And that is the reason for my coming over here to see you this morning,
Mr. Colwyn. You were present at the breakfast table scene--you witnessed
this young man's eccentricity and violence. The Penreath family is
already under a debt of gratitude to you--will you increase the
obligation? In other words, will you give evidence in support of the
defence at the trial?"
"You want me to assist you in convincing the jury that Penreath is a
criminal lunatic," said Colwyn. "That is what your defence amounts to.
It is a grave responsibility. Doctors and specialists are sometimes
mistaken, you know."
"I am afraid there is very little doubt in this case. Here is a young
man of birth and breeding, who hides from his friends under an assumed
name, behaves in public in an eccentric manner, is turned out of his
hotel, goes to a remote inn, and disappears before anybody is up. The
body of a gentleman who occupied the room next to him is subsequently
discovered in a pit close by, and the footprints leading to the pit are
those of our young friend. The young man is subsequently arrested close
to the place where the body was thrown, and not then, or since, has he
offered his friends any explanation of his actions. In the
circumstances, therefore, I shall avail myself of Sir Henry's evidence.
In my own mind--from my own observation and conversation with
Penreath--I am convinced that he cannot be held responsible for his
actions. In view of the tremendously strong case against him, in view of
his peculiar attitude to you--and others--in the face of accusation, and
in view of his previous eccentric behaviour, I shall take the only
possible course to save the son of Penreath of Twelvetrees from the
gallows. I had hoped, Mr. Colwyn, that you, who witnessed the scene at
this hotel, and subsequently helped Sir Henry Durwood convey this
unhappy young man upstairs, would see your way clear to support Sir
Henry's expert opinion that this young man is insane. Your reputation
and renown would carry weight with the jury."
"I am sorry, but I am afraid you must do without me," replied Colwyn.
"In view of Penreath's silence I can come to no other conclusion, though
against my better judgment, than that he is guilty, but I cannot take
upon myself the responsibility of declaring that he is insane. In spite
of Sir Henry Durwood's opinion, I cannot believe that he is, or was. It
will be a difficult defence to establish in the case of Penreath. If you
wish the jury to say that Penreath is the victim of what French writers
call _epilepsie larvée_, in which an outbreak of brutal or homicidal
violence takes the place of an epileptic fit, with a similar break in
the continuity of consciousness, you will first have to convince the
judge that Penreath's preceding fits were so slight as to permit the
possibility of their being overlooked, and you will also have to
establish beyond doubt that the break in his consciousness existed from
the time of the scene in the hotel breakfast-room until the time the
murder was committed. The test of that state is the unintelligent
character of some of the acts of the sufferer. In my opinion, a defence
of insanity is not likely to be successful. Personally, I shall go no
further in the case, but I cannot give up my original opinion that the
whole of the facts in this case have not been brought to light. Probably
they never will be--now."