It is dark in the bush

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 148, 24 April 1942, Page 24

It is dark in the bush

SYNOPSIS Three students discover the body ot James Collins on a tree in backblocks bush. The inquest reveals that Collins died of luminal poisoning, and the body was atterwards hanged. Graham is arrested, evidence against him being that as Charles Preston he suffered a heavy jail sentence in Australia for a crime for which his secretary, Peter Langley, alias Collins, was responsible, and that he is known to have bought luminal soon after reaching New Zealand. Mrs. Marsden confesses to Judith that she saw Preston in the clearing on the afternoon of the murder. Preston tells his lawyer that a week before the murder, Langley came to Murray’s house, Te Rata, and meeting Preston, attempted to blackmail him. Preston, after several days’ hesitation, goes up to Langley’s shack with the money and finds him already dead. There is an empty bottle ot luminal on the table. Realising he will be suspected of murder, he drags the body into the bush and hangs it, hoping that in the event of its discovery, Langley will be presumed to have killed himself, Preston begs David to recover from the shanty Langley’s papers, giving the full history of his blackmail victims, one of whom is probably the murderer. He reaches the shanty too late-the papers are gone. But there is someone else in the shanty. David is sure it is George Murray, and immediately suspects him of the murder, a suspicion which is reinforced by Judith’s hasty marriage to John Murray. ‘ The trial opens inauspiciously for the defence. Now Preston himself is in the wit-ness-box. He admits that his first reaction to the sight of Langley’s body was one of relief. CHAPTER XXVI.-Cont'd. S the prisoner uttered these words in a matter-of-fact voice, there was a distinct sensation in Court, and David looked uneasily at Ashton; from the barrister’s anxious frown it was impossible to decide whether he approved or not of that honest admission. He, better than David, knew the material with which they were dealing; had the jury the brains to see that Preston’s very sincerity was a proof of innocence? Preston was speaking. "I thought that my enemy had been removed by natural causes or by death. I was just going away when I noticed the label on ‘the bottle; it was luminal." "Why did that make so much difference?" * Because I remembered my own purchase of it, because I saw that this, like the luminal I had bought, was not in the usual tabloid form but in powder and had probably also been made up in twograin doses." "You say that you bought the drug in this form. Why?" "Because I have always found pills difficult to swallow and because the tabloids are not readily dissolved in water. It is always simpler to take in powder form but I knew that it was unusual, for I remembered that the chemist had remarked on it when I bought it." "And you saw that this bottle had contained luminal in the same form?" "Yes, for there were a few grains at the bottom of the bottle. I knew that Langley had poisoned himself with luminal, but I saw at once how black the evidence would look against me. No one would ever believe it was suicide." "So what did you do?" "First I destroyed the bottle-ground it between two stones and then scattered the fragments in the bush. Then I saw that that too was useless. If the body _was left there someone would certainly find it, there would be a post-mortem

and the.tause of death would be immediately apparent. The next step would be to inquire into his past history and immediately they would come upon me." Very briefly, but with intense dramatic effect, the prisoner went on to describe his mental anguish, his uncertainty, his resolve somehow to dispose of the body and so escape the consequences of this fresh disaster. He told of his vain search for a spade, his desperate resolve to try and make the death obviously suicide. "Tt was no‘ use dragging it into the bush and leaving it there. Of course there was a good chance that the body might not be found; I know there have been cases where a body had been undiscovered for months in the bush. But that wasn’t certain enough-and I had no means of burying it. Then as I had one last look for a spade, I came across that rope and then the idea came to me that, if I hanged the body from a tree in the bush, and if no one found it for a while they would simply cut it down and take for granted that the man had killed himself, Preston continued doggedly, "No one would suspect murder from a hangingit’s practically always suicide. Besides, there was always the chance of its remaining undisturbed until the body was too far gone for a post-mortem to reveal anything." It, had sounded possible, though pitifully inadequate, as told to the Court as a result of Ashton’s skilful questioning. But when the Crown Prosecutor got to work on the same story it became not merely lame, but entirely ridiculous. "Did it not occur to you that, when a body already dead is hanged. it shows none of the symptoms of death by hanging? The features, for example, show no sign of strangulation if the body has been dead for even an hour." "No, I don’t /think I thought about that at all. I was mad with fear and not thinking coherently. I suppose, if it crossed my mind at all, I consoled myself with the thought that probably the body would not be found till it was too late to distinguish anything in the features." "And you ask us to believe that you disposed of the body of the unfortunate man and left his dog to pr master’s absence to the " The world was not The nearest house was Mr. Murray’ ~ and that is miles away." "Tf you really did all you say, why did you not kill the dog?" "T had no means of doing so. I meant to borrow Mr. Murray’s gun next day on the pretext of shooting rabbits and come up and ‘shoot it then,"

"But it is not such a very difficult matter to kill a dog. You had already, by your own admission, had no scruple in hanging the dead body of a human body." : "That was different. Langley was dead. It could not hurt him what I did to his body." "But you had only to knock the dog over the head." The prisoner gave a movement of distaste and frowned. "I did not wish to batter a harmless and defenceless animal to death." Quick as lightning Ashton leant forward, his triumphant eyes fixed om the jury. He said no word, but his manner spoke clearly. Here was a man incapable of killing a dog. Were they really going to imagine that he had committed a cold-blooded murder? The shot went home and the Crown Prosecutor bit his lip. CHAPTER XXVII. But if the Crown Prosecutor was unable to shake the prisoner’s narrative, he was able to pour ridicule on the idea that any sane man would dream of hanging a dead body. "Possibly I was not sane. I certainly felt almost mad with fear. In any case, once I had the idea I did not wait to consider and analyse. One doesn’t when one is in the grip of fear." "Tf you were innocent, why go to all this trouble?" * "TI have told you — because I was afraid." " Afraid of what?" "Of precisely what has happenedthat I should stand in this dock on a charge of murder which is bolstered up by apparently overwhelming evidence, but which is nevertheless entirely untrue." Certainly Preston acquitted himself well. He put up a gallant fight and showed no trace of the craven now. The cross-examination continued until midday of the fifth day. The speech for the defence was a masterly piece of work. Ashton . based his plea on two main arguments. First he poured ridicule on the idea that any crime could be so foolishly advertised | beforehand, committed with such childish blunders. "T ask you, Gentlemen of the Jury, if the man you see before you is of unsound mind? If he is not, and I think you will agree that saner replies were never given under cross-examination, would he be likely to behave like this, to go openly and buy luminal, at any time a rare drug, in a still rarer form when he could far more easily have borrowed Mr, Murray’s gun, as indeed he

appears to have borrowed it more than once to shoot rabbits, have lured his victim into the bush and there shot him in a place where the body was well out of the way of a chance passer? Instead of this, the Crown Prosecutor would have you believe that the prisoner provided himself openly and casually with luminal, made his way up to the farm on a day when the chance was that there would be drovers or neighbours about, poisoned his victim in his own cottage where anybody might discover the body, and then made assurance doubly sure by hanging a dead body. My learned friend has seen fit to ridicule by implication the idea that the distracted prisoner would act so foolishly as to hang a dead body; I tell you that nothing in that story is so fantastic, nothing so wildly incredible as to suggest that a sane man bent on revenge would go about the crime in ‘this way, would deliberately do all in his power to court suspicion, No, gentlemen, this man’s whole conduct exhibits folly, but no folly as mad as this; his is the pathetic and distracted action of an innocent but a hunted man." And so on. All the powers of rhetoric were employed to paint the chaotic misery of Preston’s mind when he found his enemy dead in circumstances certain to fix the blame on himself; all the dramatic brilliance of the born orator told of the wretched man’s fear, his hunted terror, his,wild and foolish plan, his ruthless execution of it. Then Counsel’s voice changed and softly, insidiously, he pictured the indecision, the fatal softness of heart that prevented this man, even under fear of death, from brutally slaughtering a harmless dog. "But for that kindness, that fatal humanity, gentlemen, this unfortunate man would not now be standing in the dock on a charge of murder." From this Ashton swept on to his second point. He told the jury, in a voice that did not falter with shame over the utterance of so time-worn a platitude, that fact was notoriously stranger than fiction, that no one would invent a story so unlikely as Preston’s. (Continued on next page)

IT 1S DARK IN THE BUSH (Continued trom previous page) "He need have said no word about the hanging of the body; he might have contented himself with a reiterated denial of any share in the actual killing, but the man was too honest, gentlemen, too simple to hide the dreadful truth." David looked at the barrister in admiration. No one would imagine from the man’s glowing face how bitterly he had expressed himself over the pitiful tissue of lies with which Preston had at first attempted to deny his presence anywhere near the cottage on the day of the murder. It was nothing short of sublime the way that he ignored all the admissions of that untruth that the Prosecution had forced from the prisoner only a few hours before. Nevertheless, ffom Morgan’s expression and from the triumphant note that the Prosecuting Counsel passed to his junior, David was inclined to think that at this moment Ashton’s brilliance was estimating the intelligence of the jurors at somewhat too low a value. "Think for yourselves, gentlemen — if you had wanted to lie, couldn’t you have made a better job of it than that? I know I could." He leant forward, his deep-set Celtic eyes scanning the faces below him, at

one moment moving them almost~ to mirth and in the next daring them to smile. Almost a ripple passed over the Court and the Judge looked up reprovingly. But Ashton gave a satisfied glance at the little group of witnesses for the defence. Had he at last succeeded in rousing a spark of imagination in those dull clods of jurymen? He was inclined to think so. Scathingly he went on to deal with circumstantial evidence, devastatingly he pictured the acute and life-long remorse of a jury who has convicted a man on circumstantial evidence which has later been proved to be false. He spoke of the witnesses for the defence, "You saw them for yourselves, gentlemen, you heard them for yourselves-the salt of the earth, every one of them, the salt of the earth-and every man and every woman entirely convinced of the innocence of the prisoner. Can you, dare you, disregard the honest convictions of these worthy and honourable people?" When at last the wonderful voice was silent, when the Counsel for the Defence had resumed his seat and mopped a face grown almost livid from the passion of his last appeal, David emerged slowly and with wonder from what had seemed almost a trance, or the cloying effects of an anzesthetic. So this was oratory. No wonder that men told stories of this

man swaying crowds to alternate tears and laughter, to cheers that died away into curses, cajoling them from their right judgment and their sane wits by the magic of his"power...,. . But had he cajoled those twelve stolid jurymen? Certainly they had listened spell-bound, and the foreman’s mouth had opened wider and wider as the speech progressed. But had they been merely under a spell from which they were already recovering? Would a coldly calm and reasoned address not have served their purpose better? David paused here and sighed wearily. How be calm and reasoned when the whole story upon which Preston’s defence rested seemed born of madness and sheer fantasy? Ashton had made a magnificent best of a very bad job. How bad it was the Prosecuting Counsel made abundantly clear next day. His speech lasted only two hours and was in contrast, deliberate contrast it seemed, to the brilliant rhetoric that had held them all spell-bound the afternoon before. Mercilessly he tore the defence to shreds and scattered those shreds on the cold wind of common sense. Nor did he at any time make the mistake of being too aggressive; he merely contented himself with showing that both counsel and witnesses had been called upon to bolster up a case so

nebulous as searcely te demand the serious attention of the Court. Ann was white as a sheet at the luncheon adjournment and David did his best to persuade her not to return to the Court. "TI must hear the Judge’s summingup," she said obstinately. "When it’s over I'll go straight back to the hotel." The whole party was now showing painful signs of strain. Judith played with her food and her pallor was as marked as Ann’s. David could not bring himself to attempt ordinary conversation, and John’s occasional and spasmodic efforts were not seconded by any of the rest of the party of heavy-eyed people who sat at the private table in the hotel diningroom. George Murray was silent and anxious, and even Mrs. Marsden’s magnificent placidity was disturbed. (To be continued next week)