The Queen Against Owen Part 5

In proceeding to Mynyddshire, however, a very invidious distinction was drawn between the gentlemen named in the Royal Commission. The two first named, simply because they were knights and judges, went down in state, were met at the station by the high-sheriff of the county, and escorted by twenty javelin-men in gay attire to the comfortable lodgings prepared for them. The other three, for no other earthly reason than because their position was less exalted, had to get down as best they might, scramble into cabs with their portmanteaus, and put up at a common hotel. How true is the venerable saying, 'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath'!

Having thus got an unfair start, the two judges preserved it to the end. They tried all the cases themselves, and their unfortunate colleagues had to be content with what crumbs they could pick up by appearing in court as common advocates.

The Southern Circuit has long been popular with judges. There is a great difference in circuits. The two northern ones, with their vast populations and immense amount of work, are the bugbear of the puisne judge. The scenery of some of the other circuits is flat, and there is not much amus.e.m.e.nt going on in the a.s.size towns. But the Southern combines several advantages. It is far from heavy as regards work, the country in many parts is beautiful, and the train-service between the county towns is fairly good.

For these reasons the old stagers on the Bench are in the habit of trying to get the Southern Circuit. On the present occasion they had been successful. Sir Daniel Buller and Sir John Wiseman may not have been extremely popular with the Bar, but they were very popular with each other. They came down to Abertaff feeling in good form, Sir John to preside over the civil court, and Sir Daniel to mete out justice to the inmates of the county gaol.

Not for many years had there been such excitement at a.s.size time in the city. This excitement was due to two causes--the javelin-men and the society murder.

Javelin-men are dying out. In former times, when the office of sheriff was a mark of high social dignity, and before the new-fangled post of lord-lieutenant had usurped so much of its splendour, the shrievalty was an epoch in a county gentleman's career. It was considered almost worth being ruined for. A heavy mortgage was not grudged as a consequence of the lavish splendour with which the office was surrounded. In those days javelin-men were a reality. Clad in semi-military uniforms modelled on the master's family livery, and armed with weapons of an extinct fashion, they simulated the state of vice-royalty. Many a German princelet has enjoyed a less imposing body-guard than an English sheriff of the olden time.

But the railways have killed all that. Everyone now seeks distinction in the Metropolis. County society has become a byword for the old-fashioned and the humdrum, for bad living, bad manners, and bad taste. No one would now dream of embarra.s.sing his estate to secure a merely local renown. Hence the decay of the shrievalty. The modern high-sheriff looks upon his obligatory office as a duty rather than an honour. He contents himself with the cheap services of the county police force for his retinue, and foregoes the expensive luxury of the javelin-men.

There are a few brilliant exceptions, however. The present sheriff of Mynyddshire was one. In the first place, he was master of what in the country is regarded as a colossal fortune. In the second place, he was the founder of his family. Money, therefore, was not an object to Mr. Simon Reynolds. Glory was. His office gave him just the chance he wanted, and he revived its mediaeval honours with a willing hand.

Two-and-twenty men, counting the buglers, in gorgeous clothing of pink and yellow hue, accordingly gladdened the eyes of the Abertaffians as they paraded the streets and hung about the court-house. Each man of the rank and file carried a weapon the like of which had not often been looked upon. It resembled an axe with an exaggerated handle, only the back of the blade was prolonged into a formidable spike, while the handle extended beyond into a species of spear-point. Armed with these truly terrific weapons, Mr. Reynolds's faithful henchmen might well strike awe into the heart of the boldest boy in Abertaff. It was felt that they were the princ.i.p.al feature of the a.s.size. The judges, by common consent, took a secondary place. Their robes were fine, no doubt, but their rather ill-fitting wigs formed a poor subst.i.tute for the gleaming steel of their rivals. The sober charms of justice cannot successfully compete with the dazzling splendour of arms.

As for the high-sheriff himself, in his black velvet coat and frilled shirt-front, he was a very inferior attraction, while his chaplain was simply nowhere. He had his innings for one brief hour in the cathedral, where the judges were compelled to sit as meekly as so many jurymen under a lengthy summing-up; but after that one bright flash he sank into insignificance, and dragged out the remainder of the a.s.size like the stick of a burnt-out rocket, unpitied by all.

Yet even the javelin-men were cast into the shade by the other great feature of the a.s.size week. The crime of murder remains, after all is said and done, the one thing which most fascinates the public mind.

And when to murder is added mystery, and when that mystery centres round the figure of a woman, and when that woman is young and beautiful, and in a social position which does away with the presence of squalid details or coa.r.s.e motives, the public may be pardoned if they take the very fullest interest in her fate.

Indeed, the case of 'The Queen against Owen,' to give it its legal designation, was of more than local interest. The whole kingdom was excited about the position of the unhappy girl who lay in one of the cells of Abertaff Gaol. Every eye was watching eagerly for the unfolding of the tragic drama in which she was about to play the leading part. All the great London dailies had their representatives down at the a.s.size town to gather every detail of the forthcoming trial. Already the names of the counsel on both sides were being wired from one end of the country to the other, while in Mynyddshire and in the county town itself the excitement was so great that not the smallest attention was bestowed on any other case that was to come before the courts.

Even the judges themselves were infected with the excitement all around them. Mr. Justice Buller had read the depositions taken before the magistrates prior to leaving town. He had discussed little else with his brother Wiseman in the train. In all their experience, they agreed, they had never met with a case so clear upon the evidence, and yet so unsatisfactory to the mind.

In the presence of the sheriff, of course, the subject was dropped.

Nor could it be resumed after dinner. Later on the judge of the criminal court sat down to make notes for his charge to the grand jury on the morrow. In this he dealt with several other serious cases that appeared in the calendar. But his gravest attention was devoted to the one that dwarfed all the others. This disposed of, he soon retired to rest.

The formal business of opening the a.s.sizes had been gone through on the afternoon the judges arrived. Sir Daniel Buller had been trumpeted off to the Court-house, and had sat with as much patience as he could command--and that was not a great deal--while a rather short-sighted and very fidgety clerk of arraigns, afflicted, moreover, with a severe cough, stumbled his way through the important doc.u.ments already described. This proceeding was necessary in order to inform the loyal inhabitants of Mynyddshire, chiefly represented by errand-boys and loafers from the neighbouring taps, who their red-robed visitors really were, and what they had come to do.

On the following morning, therefore, the judges were free to proceed to work. They drove down to the court at half-past ten, accompanied by the swelling Reynolds and the visibly crestfallen chaplain, and escorted by the inevitable javelin-men, who swarmed about the place all day under the pretext of keeping order.

Sir John Wiseman went quietly off to his own court, and began at once at the unexciting work of trying whether the drippings from a wholesale piano warehouseman's spout had or had not damaged the hats in a neighbouring hat store, and, if so, whether the wholesale piano warehouseman was to blame, and if to blame, how much he ought to pay to the aggrieved hatter. Two of the gentlemen so unfairly deprived of seats upon the bench were engaged in this important case, and it occupied more than half the day.

But it had a rather poor audience. The crowd had rushed into the other court, where the gentlemen of the grand jury were answering to their names as often as the infirmities of the clerk of arraigns would allow them to discover whom he was calling. As soon as the necessary twenty-three were sworn, Mr. Justice Buller began his charge.

After a few civil remarks on the state of the county as regarded crime generally, and brief references to some of the other cases, he came to the all-absorbing topic. And now the reporters, who had sat listlessly under the infliction of the previous remarks, woke to sudden life, and every word of his lordship was caught and taken down as eagerly as if it had dropped from the lips of Shakespeare.

And this is what he said:

'And now I come to what is by far the gravest case in the calendar--one of the gravest cases that has ever come before me in my judicial experience. The prisoner, Eleanor Owen, is accused of the most serious crime, short of treason, known to our law. Gentlemen, it is not for you to try whether she is guilty. You have to hear the witnesses who will be sent in before you on behalf of the Crown, and if you are satisfied that they are speaking the truth, and the effect of their evidence on your minds is such as, if uncontradicted, to raise a fair presumption of the prisoner's guilt, then it is your duty to find a true bill against her. From the depositions taken by the magistrates, which have been put before me, I do not antic.i.p.ate that you will have much hesitation in coming to your decision. The case is entirely one of what is called circ.u.mstantial evidence, as such cases most generally are, and must be from the nature of things. Doubtless there are difficulties in the case--many and grave difficulties--with which it will be the duty of this tribunal to deal when the prisoner comes, if she does come, before us. The fact that the prisoner is charged with the deliberate murder of her friend--I may almost say her benefactress--with whom she had been living on terms of intimacy for a considerable time, and for no motive that has yet been suggested except a low and mercenary one, is calculated to arouse a natural repulsion in the mind, and to indispose it to believe that the charge is well-founded. But, gentlemen, these things, as they come before you, are matters of evidence. If the witnesses you are about to hear satisfy you that there is a _prima facie_ case made out against Eleanor Owen, that there are grounds for suspicion which she ought fairly to be called upon to answer and explain away if she can, then it is your duty not to hesitate, but to bring in a true bill for murder. And I must tell you, gentlemen, that so far as my reading of the depositions has guided me, this is not a case in which the crime admits of being reduced to any lesser charge. There are none of the elements present which may, and often do, justify a jury in reducing the charge of murder to that of manslaughter. There is no question, so far as I have been able to discover, of sudden provocation, of accident, or anything of that sort. Whoever committed this crime must, if you believe the evidence, have done so knowingly, designedly, and with premeditation, and therefore your finding, if you find against the prisoner must be one of wilful murder. Gentlemen, I leave you to your deliberations.'

With these words his Lordship dismissed the grand jury; and the barristers, in their wigs and gowns, some of them with briefs and a good many with none, came streaming into the well of the court, filling up the seats specially reserved for them, and overflowing into those occupied by their colleagues of the 'lower branch.' It seems rather hard on the Bar that some mysterious rule of etiquette, which they themselves probably do not understand, should forbid them to enter the a.s.size court till this particular stage in the proceedings.

Or can it be that this rule had its origin in the wisdom of their remote predecessors, devising artful means to escape the infliction of a tedious charge without appearing disrespectful to the Bench?

A lull followed. The judge, accustomed to have the eyes of men upon him, calmly betook himself to letter-writing. The high-sheriff, not so accustomed, fidgeted in his seat, looked round and counted the javelin-men in court, wondered how long the grand jury would be, and remembered, let us hope with remorse, the time when he was a grand juryman himself and wasted the time of the county by unnecessary questions to the witnesses. The fact is that the grand jury is played out. Everything for which they originally existed is now done by somebody else. Every case that comes before them now has already been investigated once by the committing magistrates. Their duty is simply to accuse the prisoner, nothing more; and it would be quite sufficient if they would just read the depositions and sign the indictment. But man, brief man, placed on a grand jury, and shut into a room without the interference of a legal authority, delights to show himself off by vain and superfluous inquiry. And hence it was that more than half an hour elapsed before the foreman was seen returning into the court with a trumpery indictment for larceny.

The interval had been usefully employed by the clerk of arraigns in compiling a petty jury, something in this fashion:

The Clerk of Arraigns (_taking up a ticket, rather larger than a visiting-card, from a heap before him_): 'John Henry Mullerall!' (_To his clerk, a humble person in plebeian attire, who is popularly believed to know a great deal more about the procedure than the judge and the whole court put together_): 'Did he answer?' (_The clerk hasn't heard him._) 'John--Henry' (_very loudly_) 'Mull---- Oh! I see it's Muggle'--(_at the top of his voice_) 'Mugglewrath!' (_testily_) 'Are you there?'

John Henry Mugglewrath (_from a seat close by_): 'Here!'

The Clerk of Arraigns: 'Oh! there you are. Why _don't_ you gentlemen answer when you hear your names? Go into the box, please.'

After about ten minutes of this sort of thing, twelve respectable inhabitants of Mynyddshire were collected in the jury-box. Then they all had to stand up while their names were read over a second time.

Then the clerk of arraigns counted his tickets to make sure he had used up twelve, while his clerk counted the jurymen to see that they came to the same number. Then all was ready to begin.

Meanwhile, those gentlemen at the counsel's table who rejoiced in the possession of briefs made a great show of reading them, and making copious notes and interlineations with pencils of different colours--red, blue, and black. The public were greatly impressed as they watched these young giants of intellect at their work. There they were, mastering the most knotty points with ease, and constructing ingenious arguments, doubtless, as they went along. One gentleman excited the greatest interest, and quite threw his brethren into the shade, by pushing aside his brief and drawing towards him one of the loose sheets of foolscap which the kind forethought of the authorities had provided, and beginning to write on it in an abstracted manner. The onlookers deemed him to be wrestling with an opinion on some weighty question bristling with legal difficulties.

They little guessed that he was addressing congratulations to a maiden aunt on the occasion of her approaching birthday.

But what really occupied the minds of the spectators, and kept their lips moving in subdued conversation, was the ending of the judge's charge.

'He has made up his mind that she is guilty,' whispered Mr. Jenkins, the stationer from Queen Street, who had come to the court in the capacity of a common juryman, but had not been among the names first selected.

'And I don't wonder at it,' replied his neighbour, a farmer from near Porthstone, who had been summoned in the same way. 'A bad lot, I'll be bound. Wouldn't say nothing when her was before the magistrates. That looks bad, don't it?'

'Silence!' bawled a javelin-man just behind them, a rebuke which the worthy farmer at first thought was meant for himself. But the word was repeated instantly by other javelin-men, and then he perceived that the grand jury had at last achieved a stroke of work, and that the satellites of justice were merely drawing attention to that fact in their usual impressive manner.

The clerk of arraigns now received the doc.u.ment, and proceeded to expound its contents in this manner:

'Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, you find a'--here he stopped and turned it over to read what was on the back, a task which occupied several seconds; but he completed the sentence as if no break had occurred--'true bill against'--another pause, he was looking for the name concealed amid the mazes of technical phraseology. This time the foreman rashly attempted to help him out by murmuring, 'Joseph Hall.'

The clerk of arraigns turned round and glared at him, then resumed his investigation, and finally brought out the name in a tone of triumph, as of one who gloried in overcoming obstacles, and was not to be baffled by any indictment in the power of man to draw--'Joseph Hall, for stealing a coat of the value of thirty shillings; also for receiving the same, knowing it to be stolen.'

He then turned again, and bestowed an impatient nod on the waiting foreman, who withdrew, a crushed and miserable man.

'Put up Joseph Hall,' was the next command.

The governor of the gaol leant forward and repeated the order to a warder, who had already heard it perfectly and dived below, apparently through the solid floor of the court. The next moment Mr. Hall appeared, with easy nonchalance, and leant forward in a graceful att.i.tude on the bar of the dock, while the clerk of arraigns proceeded to acquaint him with the crime of which he was accused.

Exhibiting no surprise at this piece of information, which, considering he had been lying under the accusation for two months, was perhaps hardly to be wondered at, Mr. Hall in emphatic tones p.r.o.nounced himself innocent.

'What?' said the clerk of arraigns, stretching anxiously forward.

Mr. Hall repeated his sentiments.

'What does he say?' exclaimed the clerk of arraigns, appealing to the court generally for a.s.sistance.

The response was a loud but confused roar of voices from the Junior Bar, out of which the only clear sound that penetrated to the unfortunate man's brain was the word 'guilty.'

'He says he's guilty!' he remarked to his clerk, in what he intended for an aside, but which was perfectly audible over the whole building.

At this point the judge, becoming impatient, leant over and tapped the clerk of arraigns on the shoulder. He turned round.

'He pleads guilty, my lord,' he said, thinking that the judge wished for information.

'No, he doesn't, Mr. Hughes. He said "Not guilty,"' answered the judge.