The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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СКАЧАТЬ son. He was kind and affectionate, and I believe it was his regret for the grief his dissipation had caused me that drove him away from his home.”

      “He was kind and affectionate. I am to understand, then, that his disposition was naturally good?”

      “Naturally he had a most excellent disposition. He was universally beloved as a boy; the servants were excessively attached to him; he had a great love of animals—dogs followed him instinctively, as I believe they always do follow people who like them.”

      “A very interesting trait, no doubt, in the prisoner’s disposition; but if we are to have so much charmingly minute description, I’m afraid we shall never conclude this trial,” said the opposite counsel. And a juryman, who had a ticket for a public dinner at four o’clock in his pocket, forgot himself so far that he applauded with the heels of his boots.

      The prisoner’s counsel, regardless of the observation of his “learned friend,” proceeded.

      “Madam,” he said, “had your son, before his departure from home, any serious illness?”

      “The question is irrelevant,” said the judge.

      “Pardon me, my lord. I shall not detain you long. I believe the question to be of importance. Permit me to proceed.”

      Mrs. Marwood looked surprised by the question, but it came from her son’s advocate, and she did her best to answer it.

      “My son had, shortly before his leaving home, a violent attack of brain-fever.”

      “During which he was delirious?”

      “Everybody is delirious in brain-fever,” said the judge. “This is trifling with the court, sir.”

      The judge was rather inclined to snub the prisoner’s counsel; first, because he was a young and struggling man, and therefore ought to be snubbed; and secondly, because he had in a manner inferred that his lordship was deaf.

      “Pardon me, my lord; you will see the drift of my question by-and-by.”

      “I hope so, sir,” said his lordship, very testily.

      “Was your son, madam, delirious during this fever?”

      “Throughout it, sir.”

      “And you attributed the fever——”

      “To his bad conduct having preyed upon his mind.”

      “Were you alarmed for his life during his illness?”

      “Much alarmed. But our greatest fear was for his reason.”

      “Did the faculty apprehend the loss of his reason?”

      “They did.”

      “The doctors who attended him were resident in Slopperton?”

      “They were, and are so still. He was attended by Dr. Morton and Mr. Lamb.”

      The prisoner’s counsel here beckoned to some officials near him—whispered some directions to them, and they immediately left the court.

      Resuming the examination of this witness, the counsel said:

      “You repeated just now the words your son made use of on the night of his departure from home. They were rather singular words—‘he had started on a dark road, and he must go on to the end of it.’ ”

      “Those were his exact words, sir.”

      “Was there any wildness in his manner in saying these words?” he asked.

      “His manner was always wild at this time—perhaps wilder that night than usual.”

      “His manner, you say, was always wild. He had acquired a reputation for a wild recklessness of disposition from an early age, had he not?”

      “He had, unfortunately—from the time of his going to school.”

      “And his companions, I believe, had given him some name expressive of this?”

      “They had.”

      “And that name was——”

      “Daredevil Dick.”

      Martha, the old servant, was next sworn. She described the finding of the body of Mr. Harding.

      The examination by the prisoner’s counsel of this witness elicited nothing but that—

      Master Dick had always been a wild boy, but a good boy at heart; that he had been never known to hurt so much as a worm; and that she, Martha, was sure he’d never done the murder. When asked if she had any suspicion as to who had done the deed, she became nebulous in her manner, and made some allusions to “the French”—having lived in the days of Waterloo, and being inclined to ascribe any deed of darkness, from the stealing of a leg of mutton to the exploding of an infernal machine, to the emissaries of Napoleon.

      Mr. Jinks, who was then examined, gave a minute and rather discursive account of the arrest of Richard, paying several artful compliments to his own dexterity as a detective officer.

      The man who met Richard on the platform at the railway station deposed to the prisoner’s evident wish to avoid a recognition; to his even crossing the line for that purpose.

      “There is one witness,” said the counsel for the crown, “I am sorry to say I shall be unable to produce. That witness is the half-caste servant of the murdered gentleman, who still lies in a precarious state at the county hospital, and whose recovery from the injuries inflicted on him by the murderer of his master is pronounced next to an impossibility.”

      The case for the prosecution closed; still a very clear case against Richard Marwood, and still the backers of the “Gallows” thought they had made a very good book.

      The deposition of the Lascar, the servant of the murdered man, had been taken through an interpreter, at the hospital. It threw little light on the case. The man said, that on the night of the murder he had been awoke by a sound in Mr. Harding’s room, and had spoken in Hindostanee, asking if his master required his assistance, when he received in the darkness a blow on the head, which immediately deprived him of his senses. He could tell nothing of the person who struck the blow, except that at the moment of striking it a hand passed across his face—a hand which was peculiarly soft and delicate, and the fingers of which were long and slender.

      As this passage in the deposition was read, every eye in court was turned to the prisoner, who at that moment happened to be leaning forward with his elbow on the ledge of the dock before him, and his hand shading his forehead—a very white hand, with long slender fingers. Poor Richard! In the good days gone by he had been rather proud of his delicate and somewhat feminine hand.

      The prisoner’s counsel rose and delivered his speech for the defence. A very elaborate defence. A defence which went to prove that the prisoner at the bar, though positively guilty, was not morally guilty, or legally guilty—“because, gentlemen of the jury, he is, and for some time has been, insane. Yes, mad, gentlemen of the jury. What has been every action of his life but the action of a madman? His wild boyhood; his reckless СКАЧАТЬ