THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2712, 18 December 1882, Page 4

THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS

BY B. L. FARJEON. Author of “ Blades-o’-Grass,” “ Joshua Marvel,” “ Bread and Cheese and Kisses,” “ Grif,” “ London’s Heart,” &c., &c.

(Continued.) Chapter IX. THE advocate’s DEFENCE —THE VERDICT. He spoke in a calm passionless voice, the clear tones of which had an effect resembling that of a current of cold air through an over heated atmosphere. His first words were a panegyric of justice, the right of dispensing which had been placed in mortal hands by a supreme power which watched its dispensation with a jealous eye. He claimed for himself that the leading principle, he might almost say the passion of his life, was a desire for justice, in small matters as well as great, for the lowliest equally with the loftiest of beings. Before the bar of justice, the prince and the peasant, the most ignorant and the most highly cultured, the'meanest and the most noble in form and features were equal. Thatis whyjustice was represented with a bandage round her eyes, so that she should not be misled

by external influences. The counsel for the I Srosecution had told them that justice was I emanded from them by law and by society. I He would supply a strange omission in this ' direction, and he would tell them, primarily and before every other consideration, that it was the prisoner who demanded justice from them. It was the prisoner who was on his trial, who was to be judged, who was to be condemned or acquitted. A life was in their hands, and they must deal with it according to the evidence. “ I impress upon you,” said the Advocate, “ the fact that in this case the evidence supplied to you is entirely circumstantial. That a beautiful and engaging girl has been sacrificed, and that a brutal, a barbarous murder has been committed, are undoubtedly and most unfortunately true. The girl was beautiful, the man accused of her murder is hideous. Does that weigh with you ? If it does, pause and reflect, and remember that justice is blind, and that these outward circumstances —proved to you in the person of the murdered girl, and visible to you in the person of the prisoner—should have no more effect upon you than if it were Gautran who was murdered, and the young and beautiful girl who stood accused of his murder. Think of this calmly, and if in your minds exists a prejudice to the detriment of the prisoner, a prejudice which is widely current outside the walls of this hall of justice, _ I charge you to dismiss it. Reason with yourselves, and let your consciences tell you whether, if a young and beautiful woman were in the place of Gautran, charged with his murder, and if there were a doubt in your minds —ask your consciences, I say, whether you would not give the bright creature the benefit of the doubt. Then, if there be a doubt in your minds at the conclusion of this case, shall Gautran be deprived of the benefit of it because ho is hideous and degraded ? Where, in that event, are the sightless eyes of Justice ? Are they suddenly endowed with light, to be beguiled by beauty of feature and fatally prejudiced by its reverse? If you allow these external impressions to influence you, you will be false to the solemn oath you have taken. A murder has been committed —no person saw it committed. The last person seen in the murdered girl’s company was Gautran, her lover —the girl had other lovers, who followed her, who attempted to embrace her, who were passionately enamoured of her. She was left to herself, deprived of the protection and counsel of a devoted woman, who, unhappily, was absent from her side. She was easily persuaded, and easily led. Who can divine the influences which surrounded her, the temptations which beset her —the influences and temptations which may have been the direct cause of her untimely death ? Gautran was heard to say, “ I will kill you —I will kill you !” He had threatened her before, and she still lived, and allowed him to associate with her. What more probable than that this was one of his usual threats, in a moment of passion, when he believed it likely a rival was supplanting him in her affections ? The handkerchief found round her neck belonged to Gautran. The gift of a handkerchief among the lower classes is not uncommon, and it is frequently worn round the neck. Easy, then, for any murderer, not necessarily the giver of the handkerchief, to pull it tight during the commission of his crime. But apart from this, the handkerchief does not fix the crime of murder upon Gautran or any other man, for you have had it proved that the girl did not die of strangulation, but of drowning. These are bare facts, and I present them to you in a bare form, without needless comment. I do not base my defence upon them, but upon what I am now about to say. If, in a case of circumstantial evidence, there is reasonal lo cause to believe that the evidence furnished is of insufficient weight to convict; and if, on the other side, on the side of the accused, evidence is adduced which directly proves, aeccording to the best judgment we are enabled to form of human action in supreme and terrible moments —as to the course it would take, and as to the manner in which it would be displayed—that it is almost, if not quite, beyond the bounds of possibility that the person accused can have committed the deed, you are bound to acquit that person, however vile that person may be, and however degraded his career and antecedents. It is evidence of this description I intend to submit to you at the conclusion of my remarks. The character of Gautran has been exposed and laid bare in all its vileness. The minuteness of the evidence is surprising; not the smallest detail has been overlooked or omitted to complete the picture of a ferocious, ignorant, brutal creature. He stands before you stamped with degradation. How he grew into what he is matters not; whether he him self is or is not directly accountable for his ignorance, for his ferocity, for his brutality, will not and should not affect the verdict you will pronounce. Guilty, he deserves no mercy; innocent, he is not to be condemned because he is vile. This single accusation of the murder of Madeline, the flower girl, is the point to be determined. It has been proved that the prisoner is possessed of great strength, that he is violent in his actions, uncontrollable in his passions, and fond of inflicting pain_ and prolonging it. He has not a redeeming feature in his coarse nature. Thwarted, he makes the person who thwarts him suffer without mercy. There is nothing gentle in him; an appeal to his humanity would be useless, for he has no humanity ; when crossed he has been seen to behave like a wild beast. All this is in evidence, and has been strongly dealt upon as proof by counsel for the proseeption. Most important is this evidence, and I charge you not for one moment to lose sight of it. I come now to the depiction of the murdered girl, as she has been presented to you. Pretty, admired, with lovers pursuing her, gentle in her manners, and poor. Although the proof of a person being poor is no guarantee of morality, we may accept it in this instance as a proof of the girl’s virtue. She was fond of life ; her disposition was a happy one; she was in the habit of singing to herself. All this has been adduced in evidence, and we have before us the presentment of a young girl whose nature was joyous, and to whom life was very sweet. Another important piece of evidence must be borne in mind. She possessed strength, greater strength than would have been supposed in a form so slight. This strength she would use to to protect herself from injury; it has been proved that she used it successfully to protect herself from insult. These points are important, but one of greater importance than any I have mentioned remains for me to speak of. I do not need to impress it upon you, it has already been sufficiently dwelt upon by the prosecution. The murdered girl did not meet her fate with gentleness or willingness. In the whole of this case nothing has been more clearly proved than that she resisted her murderer, and that on her part there was a long struggle for life—a long and horrible struggle, in which she received minor injuries, wounds, and bruises and scratches, and in which her clothes were rent and torn. This struggle, in the natural order of things, could not have been a silent one ; accompanying the conflict there must have been outcries, frenzied {appeals for mercy from the weaker to the stronger of those engaged in the terrible fight for life. No witness has been called who heard such cries, and, therefore, it must be the fact that the murder was committed some time after Gautran’s threat, “ I will kill you—l will kill you!” was heard by men who passed along the bank of the river in the darkness of that fatal night. Time enough for Gautran to have left her; time enough for another —lover or stranger—to meet her; time enough for murder by another hand than that of the prisoner who stands charged with the commission of the crime. I assert, with all the force of my experience of human nature, that it is impossible Gautran could have committed the deed. And for this reason, which logic cannot dispose of. There was a long and terrible struggle—a struggle with hands, and arms, and limbs—a struggle in which the girl’s clothes were torn, in which her face, her arms, her hands, her neck, her sides, her bosom, were bruised and wouneed in a hundred different ways. On the very day after the murder, within four hours of the body being found in the river, Gautran was arrested. He wore the same clothes he had worn on the night of the murder, the clothes he had worn for months past, the only clothes he possessed. In these clothes there was not a rent or a tear, there was no indication of a recent rent or tear having been mended. How, then, could this man have been engaged in a prolonged and violent hand-to-hand conflict? It is manifestly impossible, opposed to all reasonable conjecture, that his clothes could have escaped from some injury, however slight, at the hands of a girl to whom life was very sweet, who was strong and capable of resistance, and who saw before her the shadow of an awful fate. Picture to yourself this struggle so vividly painted, so graphically portrayed, by counsel in summing up the evidence against the accused. The unhappy girl clung to her destroyer, she clutched his dress, his hands, hia body, in her wild despair—a despair which gave her strength beyond her ordinary capacity. And further still, and of greater weight; upon Gautran’s face, upon his hands and arms, upon his neck, upon no part of his body, was there a scratch, a wound, a bruise. What, then, becomes of the evidence of a terrible life and death

struggle in which it is said he was engaged? Upon this point alone the entire theory of the prosecution breaks down; not for one moment will reason entertain it. The absence from his clothes and person of any mark or indication of physical contest is the strongest testimony sf Gautran’s innocence of the wicked, ruthless, and diabolical crime; and wretched and degraded as is the spectacle he presents, justice demands from you bis acquittal. Still one other proof of innocence remains to be spoken of; I will touch upon it lightly, hut it bears a very strange aspect, as though the prosecution were afraid that its introduction would fatally weaken their case. When Gautran was searched a knife was found upon him —the knife, without doubt, with which he inflicted a wound upon the face of a comrade, which he will bear to the grave. Throughout the whole of the evidence for the prosecution I waited for the production of that knife ; I expected to see upon it a blood-proof of guilt. But it was not produced; no mention has been made of it. Why ? Because there is upon its blade no mark of blood. Do you for one moment suppose a ruffian like Gautran would have refrained from using bis knife upon the body of bis victim, to shorten the terrible struggle ? It is contrary to reason, and I leave you to form your own conclusions upon it. You are hero to try, not the prisoner’s general character, not his repulsive appearance, not his brutish nature, but a charge of murder of which he stands accused, and of which, in the clear light of human movement and action, it is impossible he can he guilty.” The Advocate’s speech, of which this is but a brief and imperfect precis, occupied seven hours, and was delivered throughout with an absence of passion, and with a cold impressive earnestness, which gradually and effectually turned the current which had set so fatally against the prisoner. The disgust and abhorrence he inspired was in no wise mitigated, but the Advocate had instilled into the minds of those who heard him the strongest doubts of Gautran’s guilt. Two witnesses were called, one a surgeon of eminence, the other a nurse in a hospital. They deposed that there were no marks of an encounter upon the prisoner’s person, that upon his skin there was no abrasion, that his clothes exhibited no traces of recent tear or repair, and that it was scarcely possible he could have been engaged in a violent personal struggle. Upon the conclusion of .itheir evidence, which the cross-examination of the prosecution did not shake, the jury asked that Gautran should he examined by independent experts. This was done by thoroughly qualified men, whose evidence strengthened that of the witnesses for the defence. The jury also asked that the knife found upon Gautran should he produced. It was brought into Court and carefully examined; its blade was entirely free from blood stain. Astounded at the turn of affairs, the jury listened in silence to the elaborate summing up of the Judge, who dwelt minutely upon every feature and detail in the case. The Court sat late to give its decision, and when it was pronounced, Gautran was a free man. Free to enjoy the sunlight and the seasons as they passed. Free to continue his life of crime and shame. Free to murder again! (To he continued on Thursday.)