World's End Part 17

There was not one man there who could remember a single word or deed by which the dead had injured any human being. Quiet, retired, benevolent, largely subscribing in an unostentatious manner to the village charities, ready always with a helping hand to the poor--surely he ought to have been secure? What motive could there be?

They returned to the Shepherd's Bush. The Coroner asked for the evidence of the person who had last seen the deceased alive. It was at once apparent that numbers had seen him.

Mr Merton, who attended, self-employed, to watch the case for Violet, and from attachment to his deceased friend--was selected as a representative of the many. He deposed that he had last seen the deceased alive at quarter to eleven on the marriage-day, at the moment that the bride took leave of her father, and received his blessing.

This simple statement produced a profound impression. The deceased, who little thought that that parting would last for ever, was then sitting as usual in his armchair, which he could wheel about as he chose, close to the open window--almost _in_ the window--and as witness escorted the bride to her carriage, he looked back and saw the deceased had partly turned round, so that the back of his head was towards the window. He had then his velvet skullcap off, and witness believed that he was engaged in silent prayer. This statement also naturally produced a profound effect. The deceased's head was partially bald, and the little hair he had was grey. The day was very warm and sultry.

Mr Merton paused, and the next witness was the first person who had seen the deceased after the fatal attack. This was the gardener. He appeared in court, visibly shaking, bearing the marks of recent excitement upon his countenance. He was an aged man, clad in corduroys and grey, much-worn coat--not the suit he had worn on the wedding-day.

His name was Edward Jenkins. His wife pressed hard to be admitted to the court, but was forbidden, and remained without, wringing her hands and sobbing. This witness was much confused, and his answers were difficult to get--not from reluctance to speak, but from excitement and fear. He produced an unfavourable impression upon the Coroner, which the medical man in court observing, remarked that he had recently attended the witness for heart disease at the request of the deceased, who took a great interest in his old servant. Even this, however, did not altogether succeed--there was an evident feeling against the man.

His evidence, when reduced to writing, was singularly simple, vague, and unsatisfactory. Why had he not gone to the church to see the wedding, as it appeared every single person had done, not even excepting the dog Dando? He had much desired to see the marriage of his young mistress; but being the only man-servant, it was his duty to see to the wines and to the table; and at the time when the carriage started he was in the garden cutting fresh flowers, for the purpose of strewing the lady's footpath when she returned and descended from the carriage, and also to decorate the breakfast table. How long was it after the carriage started that anything happened? It seemed barely a minute. He was in a remote part of the garden, hastily working, when--almost immediately after the carriage started--he happened to look up, and saw a stranger on the green in front of the house.

"Stay," said the Coroner. "Describe that person."

This he could not do. The glimpse he had caught was obtained through the boughs and branches of several trees and shrubs. He could not say whether the stranger was tall or short, dark or light, or what dress he wore; but he had a vague idea that he had a dirty, grey coat on.

This was an unfortunate remark, for the witness at that moment wore such a coat.

He could not say whether he had a hat or a cap on, nor what colour trousers he wore. The stranger appeared to cross the green diagonally towards the house.

"What did witness do?"

For a moment he did nothing--it did not strike him as anything extraordinary. That morning there had been scores of people about the house, and numbers of strangers whom he did not know. They were attracted by the talk about the wedding, and he thought no harm. He went on with his work as hastily as he could, for he still hoped to have finished in time to make a short cut across the fields, and see a part of the marriage ceremony.

He became so excited with the wish to see the ceremony that he left part of his work undone. As he went he had to pa.s.s the open window of the dining-room, where "master" was sitting. He was running, and actually pa.s.sed the window without noticing anything; but before he had got to the front door he heard a groan. He ran back, and found his master p.r.o.ne on the floor of the apartment, in a pool of blood. He had evidently fallen out of his armchair forwards--started up and fallen.

Witness, excessively frightened, lifted him up, and placed him in the chair, and it was in so doing that his shirt-front became saturated with the sanguinary stream, which also dyed his hands. He had on a shirt-front and a black suit, in order to wait at table at the wedding-breakfast. "Master" never spoke or groaned again. So soon as he was placed in the armchair his head dropped on one side as if quite dead, and witness then ran as fast as he could to the church, and crossed the fields by a short cut which brought him to the chancel-door.

The stranger, who had crossed, the narrow "green" or lawn before the house, had entirely disappeared, and he saw nothing of him in the house.

In his haste and confusion, he did not see with what the deed had been committed.

This was the substance of his evidence. Cross-examine him as they might, neither the Coroner nor the jury, nor Mr Merton, could get any further light. The witness was evidently much perturbed. There were those who thought his manner that of a guilty man--or, at least, of a man who knew more than he chose to tell. On the other hand, it might be the manner of an aged and weakly man, greatly upset in mind and body by the frightful discovery he had made. All the jury knew the relations between the witness and the deceased. Jenkins had lived in the service of the Waldrons all his life, as had his father before him, and the deceased had always exhibited the greatest interest in his welfare. He had good wages, an easy occupation, and was well cared for in every way.

The most suspicious could conceive of no ground of quarrel or ill-will.

The Coroner directed the witness to remain in attendance, and the first person who had seen the deceased after the alarm was given was called.

This was Phillip Lewis, a farmer's son (one of the stewards at World's End Races), who being swift of foot had outstripped the others in the run from the church to The Place.

Phillip Lewis found the deceased in his armchair, with his head drooping on one side--just as the gardener Jenkins described; only this witness at once caught sight of the weapon with which the fatal blow was given.

It was lying on the ground, just outside the open window, stained with blood, and was now produced by the constable who had taken charge of it.

It was a small bill-hook, not so large as would be used in cutting hedges, but much the same shape.

The edge of a bill-hook, as every one knows, curves inward like a sickle, and at the end the blade forms a sharp point, or spike. It is, therefore, a fearful instrument with which to deliver a blow upon a bare head.

Phillip Lewis said that the gardener Jenkins recognised this hook as his--the one he usually employed to lop the yew trees, and other favourite trees of the deceased, and for general work in the shrubberies.

This piece of evidence made the jury look very sternly upon Jenkins. He was asked if it was his, and at once admitted it. Where had he left it last? He would not be quite sure, but he believed in the tool-house, which was close to the gate in the garden wall, which led out into the fields. He had used it that morning.

There was a distinct movement among the jury. They evidently began to suspect Jenkins.

The medical man, Dr Parker, was the last witness. He had examined the wound the deceased had received. There was first an incised wound, three inches long, on the top of the skull, extending along the very crown of the head. This wound was not deep, and, though serious, might not have proved mortal. At the end of this wound there was a small s.p.a.ce not cut at all, but an inch farther, just at the top of the forehead, was a deep wound, which had penetrated to the brain, and must have caused almost instantaneous death.

These peculiar wounds were precisely such as would have been made if a person had approached the deceased from behind, and struck him on the bare head with the bill-hook produced. He did not think that there was more than one blow. He thought that the deceased when he received the blow must have started up mechanically, and, losing power, fell forward on to the floor. He did not think that the deceased had suffered much pain. There would not be time. The point or spike-like end of the hook had stuck deep into the brain. He had examined the hook, and found clotted gore and a few grey hairs upon the blade.

This concluded the evidence, and the court was cleared--after the Coroner had whispered a few words to the police, several members of which force were present.

The Coroner then summed up the evidence, and in a few brief but terribly powerful sentences pointed out that suspicion could only attach to one man. This man was left alone. He had every opportunity. The tale of the alleged stranger on the lawn bore every mark of being apocryphal.

It was obviously a clumsy invention. The witness, who at first could not give any idea whatever as to how the stranger was dressed, had, when pressed, in a manner identified himself as the stranger, by describing him as wearing a grey coat.

In conclusion, he would add that the country had been scoured by the police in the three days that had elapsed, and they had failed to find any trace of the supposed stranger. He then left the jury to deliberate, and going out into the air, met Mr Merton, who was more firmly convinced than the Coroner as to the guilt of Jenkins.

"There was no motive," he admitted, as they talked it over, walking slowly down the road; "but crimes were not always committed from apparent motives. On the contrary, out of ten such crimes seven would, if investigated, seem to be committed from very inadequate motives. How could they tell that Waldron had not called to the gardener _after_ the carriage had left, and that then a quarrel took place?" He was determined to see that justice was done to his dead friend.

But while the Coroner and Merton thus strolled along together a new complexion had been put upon affairs. The wretched wife of Jenkins, who had heard the muttered communications of the police, and saw that they kept a close look-out upon her husband, had listened as near the door as she could get, and so heard the summing-up of the Coroner. Distracted and out of her mind with terror, a resource occurred to her that would never have been thought of by one less excited. She rushed from the place like mad. "Poor old Sally has lost her head," said the hangers about. She ran across the fields, scrambled through the hedges, reached The Place, tore upstairs, and threw herself upon Violet, beseeching her for the love of G.o.d to save her poor husband.

Till that moment Violet had not the least idea that Jenkins, who had carried her in his arms many a time when she was a child, and was more like an old friend than a servant, was under any suspicion. She rose up at once and went downstairs, the first time since the wedding-day.

Aymer and Miss Merton tried to stay her.

"Hush!" she said; "it is my duty."

She was obliged to pa.s.s the fatal window; she burst into tears, but hurried on. Aymer went with her, and a.s.sisted her along the very same route that Sally had come--over ditches and through the gaps in the hedges. Violet reached the Shepherd's Bush bareheaded, panting.

Involuntarily, the crowd hanging about, one and all, boors that they were, took off their hats. She knocked at the door where the jury sat astounded, they admitted her. Strung up to the highest pitch she burst upon them, cowed them, overcame them.

"He is innocent!" she cried, in the full tones of her beautiful voice.

"He is innocent; let him go free! He served the dead for fifty years; they never quarrelled; they were, like old friends, not master and man.

I am the daughter of the dead. I tell you with my whole heart and soul that that man _must_ be innocent; if you injure him, it is you who are murderers!"

She turned and left the room; many started forward to help her, but she clung to Aymer's arm and he got her home as quickly as he might.

It was a n.o.ble thing. It was a truly great spectacle to see that young girl standing there and defending the poor fellow upon whom cruel suspicion had fallen, notwithstanding her own irreparable loss. Its effect upon the jury was immediate and irremovable. They were silent for a time. Then one after another found twenty loopholes of doubt where before they had been so positive. After all, why should not the gardener's story be true? It was a simple, artless tale; not one that would be concocted.

One juryman, who had served on the jury at the Quarter Sessions, remembered a great counsel in some important case laying it down as an axiom, that if a man made up a story to defend himself it was always too complete, too full of detail. Said the juryman: "If Jenkins had made up his story, he would have told us what the stranger wore, what colour hat, what sort of trousers, and every particular. There was a total absence of motive. Jenkins was a quiet, inoffensive man, whom they had all known for years and years. Very likely, indeed, for strangers to come to The Place on that day, the fame of which had been talked of everywhere. Perhaps the fellow wished to steal the plate on the breakfast table, and was surprised to find the invalid there. Hearing the gardener coming, he would make off at once, which accounted for the fact that not a single thing was stolen. Why should they condemn one of their own parish on such trivial evidence?" This was the right key, the _local_ one.

When the Coroner was at last called in, he was astounded at the verdict delivered to him by the foreman--"Wilful murder against a person, or persons, unknown." He argued with them, but in vain; the twelve had made up their minds and were firm as a rock. He had to submit with a bad grace!

Poor Sally had a moment of joy, and clasped her husband's neck, but it was of brief duration. A minute afterwards the police sergeant present tapped Jenkins on the shoulder, and took him in custody on a charge of murder.

This is the peculiarity of the law in such cases. A suspected person has to run the gauntlet of two bodies--first, the coroner's jury; next, the magistrates. Many a wretch who has escaped the one has been trapped by the other to his doom.

The handcuffs were slipped on the gardener's wrists and he was led away unresistingly, followed by his weeping wife and a crowd of the villagers.

As the jury emerged from the Shepherd's Bush, which was not till afternoon--for they had stayed to spend their ninepenny fees--there struck on their ears a mournful sound. It was the tolling of the village bell. The medical man had recommended immediate interment.

Only three days before those bells had merrily rung for the daughter's bridal; now they tolled for the father's burial. They hastened to the church and watched the solemn ceremony. The low broken voice of the vicar failed at the words, as they stood by the open vault--"He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow... In the midst of life we are in death;" and the rest of the service was nearly inaudible.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Every one knows what a dull monotony of sorrow succeeds to a great loss.

Perhaps it was fortunate for Violet that her mind was in some small measure withdrawn from too consuming grief by the unfortunate position of the poor old gardener. Over the very grave of the dead, as it were, she quarrelled--the word is hardly too strong--with Merton.

Mr Merton was bitter against Jenkins. His professional mind, always ready to put the worst aspect upon anything, quick to suspect and slow to relinquish an idea, was convinced of the gardener's guilt. In his zeal for the memory of his poor friend, he forgot that he might be injuring an innocent man. He even went so far as to speak strongly to Violet about her visit to the jury. Surely she should have been the last to protect the murderer. He said something like this in the heat of his temper, and regretted it afterwards. It was cruel, unjust, and inconsiderate. Violet simply left the room and refused to see him.