THE CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
Grahame Greene
It was the strangest murder trial I
ever attended. They named it the Peckham
murder in the headlines, though
Northwood Street, where the old woman was found
battered to death, was not strictly
speaking in Peckham. This was not one of those cases of circumstantial evidence
in which you feel the jurymen's anxiety because mistakes have
been made - like domes of silence
muting the court. No, this murderer was all but found
with the body: no one present when the
Crown counsel outlined his case believed that the
man in the dock stood any chance at
all.
He was a heavy stout man with
bulging bloodshot eyes. All his muscles seemed to
be in his thighs. Yes, an ugly
customer, one you wouldn't forget in a hurry - and that was
an important point because the Crown
proposed to call four witnesses who hadn't forgotten him, who had seen him
hurrying away from the little red villa in Northwood Street.
The clock had just struck two in the
morning. Mrs Salmon in 15 Northwood Street had been unable to sleep: she heard
a door click shut and thought it was her own gate. So she went to the window
and saw Adams (that was his name) on the steps of Mrs Parker's house. He had
just come out and he was wearing gloves. He had a hammer in his hand and she
saw him drop it into the laurel bushes by the front gate. But before he moved
away, he had looked up - at her window.
The fatal instinct that tells a man
when he is watched exposed him in the light of a streetlamp to her gaze - his
eyes suffused with horrifying and brutal fear, like an animal's when you raise
a whip. I talked afterwards to Mrs Salmon, who naturally after the astonishing
verdict went in fear herself. As I imagine did all the witnesses. Henry
MacDougall, who had been driving home from Benfleet late and nearly ran Adams
down at the corner of Northwood Street. Adams was walking in the middle of the
road looking dazed. And old Mr Wheeler, who lived next door to Mrs Parker, at
No. 12, and was wakened by a noise – like a chair falling - through the
thin-as-paper villa wall, and got up and looked out of the window, just as Mrs
Salmon had done, saw Adams's back and, as he turned, those bulging eyes. In
Laurel Avenue he had been seen by yet another witness - his luck was badly out;
he might as well have committed the crime in broad daylight.
`I understand,' counsel said, `that
the defence proposes to plead mistaken
identity. Adams's wife will tell you
that he was with her at two in the morning on February
14, but after you have heard the
witnesses for the Crown and examined carefully the
features of the prisoner, I do not
think you will be prepared to admit the possibility of a
mistake.'
It was all over, you would have
said, but the hanging.
After the formal evidence had been
given by the policeman who had found the body
and the surgeon who examined it, Mrs
Salmon was called. She was the ideal witness, with
her slight Scotch accent and her
expression of honesty, care and kindness.
The counsel for the Crown brought
the story gently out. She spoke very firmly.
There was no malice in
her, and no sense of importance at standing there in the Central
Criminal Court with a judge in
scarlet hanging on her words and the reporters writing them
down. Yes, she said, and then she
had gone downstairs and rung up the police station.
`And do you see the man here in
court?'
She looked straight at the big man
in the dock, who stared hard at her with his
Pekingese eyes without emotion.
`Yes,' she said, `there he is.'
`You are quite certain?'
She said simply, `I couldn't be
mistaken, sir.'
It was all as easy as that.
`Thank you, Mrs Salmon.'
Counsel for the defence rose to
cross-examine. If you had reported as many
murder trials as I have, you would
have known beforehand what line he would take. And I
was right, up to a point.
`Now, Mrs Salmon, you must remember
that a man's life may depend on your
evidence.'
`I do remember it, sir.'
`Is your eyesight good?'
`I have never had to wear spectacles,
sir.'
`You are a woman of fifty-five?'
`Fifty-six, sir.'
`And the man you saw was on the
other side of the road?'
`Yes, sir.'
`And it was two o'clock in the
morning. You must have remarkable eyes, Mrs
Salmon?'
`No, sir. There was moonlight, and
when the man looked up, he had the lamplight
on his face.'
`And you have no doubt whatever that
the man you saw is the prisoner?'
I couldn't make out what he was at.
He couldn't have expected any other answer
than the one he got.
`None whatever, sir. It isn't a face
one forgets.'
Counsel took a look round the court
for a moment. Then he said, `Do you mind, Mrs Salmon, examining again the
people in court? No, not the prisoner. Stand up, please,
Mr Adams,' and there at the back of
the court with thick stout body and muscular legs and
a pair of bulging eyes, was the
exact image of the man in the dock. He was even dressed
the same - tight blue suit and
striped tie.
`Now think very carefully, Mrs
Salmon. Can you still swear that the man you saw
drop the hammer in Mrs Parker's
garden was the prisoner - and not this man, who is his
twin brother?'
Of course she couldn't. She looked
from one to the other and didn't say a word.
There the big brute sat in the dock
with his legs crossed, and there he stood too at
the back of the court and they both
stared at Mrs Salmon. She shook her head.
What we saw then was
the end of the case. There wasn't a witness prepared to
swear that it was the prisoner he'd
seen. And the brother? He had his alibi, too; he was
with his wife.
And so the man was acquitted for
lack of evidence. But whether - if he did the
murder and not his brother - he was
punished or not, I don't know. That extraordinary day
had an extraordinary end. I followed
Mrs Salmon out of court and we got wedged in the
crowd who were waiting, of course,
for the twins. The police tried to drive the crowd away,
but all they could do was keep the
road-way clear for traffic. I learned later that they tried
to get the twins to leave by a back
way, but they wouldn't. One of them - no one knew
which - said, `I've been acquitted,
haven't I?' and they walked bang out of the front
entrance. Then it happened. I don't
know how, though I was only six feet away. The crowd
moved and somehow one of the twins
got pushed on to the road right in front of a bus.
He gave a squeal like a rabbit and
that was all; he was dead, his skull smashed just
as Mrs Parker's had been. Divine
vengeance? I wish I knew. There was the other Adams
getting on his feet from beside the
body and looking straight over at Mrs Salmon. He was
crying, but whether he was the
murderer or the innocent man nobody will ever be able to
tell. But if you were
Mrs Salmon, could you sleep at night?
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