|
|
The
Trial for Murder, continued. .
Charles Dickens
I was chosen Foreman of the Jury.
On the second morning of the
trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the
church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother
jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I
counted them several times, yet always with the same difficulty. In
short, I made them one too many.
I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I
whispered to him, "Oblige me by counting us." He looked surprised
by the request, but turned his head and counted. "Why," says he,
suddenly, "we are Thirt-; but no, it's not possible. No. We are
twelve."
According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail,
but in the gross we were always one too many. There was no
appearance--no figure--to account for it; but I had now an inward
foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming.
The Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in one
large room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge
and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping.
I see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer. He
was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to
hear) much respected in the City. He had an agreeable presence,
good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His
name was Mr. Harker.
When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker's bed was
drawn across the door. On the night of the second day, not being
disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I
went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr.
Harker's hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar
shiver crossed him, and he said, "Who is this?"
Following Mr. Harker's eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again
the figure I expected,--the second of the two men who had gone down
Piccadilly. I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and
looked round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and
said in a pleasant way, "I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth
juryman, without a bed. But I see it is the moonlight."
Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk
with me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did. It
stood for a few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother
jurymen, close to the pillow. It always went to the right-hand side
of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next bed.
It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look down
pensively at each recumbent figure. It took no notice of me, or of
my bed, which was that nearest to Mr. Harker's. It seemed to go out
where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by an aerial
flight of stairs.
Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had
dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr.
Harker.
I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down
Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been
borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony. But even
this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all
prepared.
On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was
drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from
his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in
a hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in
evidence. Having been identified by the witness under examination,
it was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be
inspected by the Jury. As an officer in a black gown was making his
way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had gone
down Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the
miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at
the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone,--before I saw the
miniature, which was in a locket,--"I WAS YOUNGER THEN, AND MY FACE
WAS NOT THEN DRAINED OF BLOOD." It also came between me and the
brother juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and
between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given it,
and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into
my possession. Not one of them, however, detected this.
At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr.
Harker's custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the
day's proceedings a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the
prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question in
a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and
serious. Among our number was a vestryman,--the densest idiot I
have ever seen at large,--who met the plainest evidence with the
most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so
delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own
trial for five hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads
were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us
were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man. He
stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me. On my going towards
them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired.
This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined
to that long room in which we were confined. Whenever a knot of my
brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was
going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the
miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the
Appearance in Court. Three changes occurred now that we entered on
the case for the defence. Two of them I will mention together,
first. The figure was now in Court continually, and it never there
addressed itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking at
the time. For instance: the throat of the murdered man had been
cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defence, it was
suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat. At that
very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful condition
referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker's
elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right
hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker
himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted
by either hand. For another instance: a witness to character, a
woman, deposed to the prisoner's being the most amiable of mankind.
The figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking
her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner's evil
countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.
The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most
marked and striking of all. I do not theorise upon it; I accurately
state it, and there leave it. Although the Appearance was not
itself perceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to
such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or
disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented,
by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to
others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly
overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for the defence
suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the
learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat,
it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a
few seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale. When the
witness to character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most
certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest
in great hesitation and trouble upon the prisoner's face. Two
additional illustrations will suffice. On the eighth day of the
trial, after the pause which was every day made early in the
afternoon for a few minutes' rest and refreshment, I came back into
Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before the return
of the Judges. Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes
to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very
decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed
their seats or not. Immediately afterwards that woman screamed,
fainted, and was carried out. So with the venerable, sagacious, and
patient Judge who conducted the trial. When the case was over, and
he settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man,
entering by the Judges' door, advanced to his Lordship's desk, and
looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which he
was turning. A change came over his Lordship's face; his hand
stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him;
he faltered, "Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments. I am
somewhat oppressed by the vitiated air;" and did not recover until
he had drunk a glass of water.
Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,--the
same Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock,
the same lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer
rising to the roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge's
pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at
the same hour when there had been any natural light of day, the same
foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same
rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks of
turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same
keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors,--through all the
wearisome monotony which made me feel as if I had been Foreman of
the Jury for a vast cried of time, and Piccadilly had flourished
coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one trace of his
distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less distinct than
anybody else. I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I never
once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered man
look at the Murderer. Again and again I wondered, "Why does he
not?" But he never did.
Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until
the last closing minutes of the trial arrived. We retired to
consider, at seven minutes before ten at night. The idiotic
vestryman and his two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble
that we twice returned into Court to beg to have certain extracts
from the Judge's notes re-read. Nine of us had not the smallest
doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in the
Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having no idea but
obstruction, disputed them for that very reason. At length we
prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes
past twelve.
The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box,
on the other side of the Court. As I took my place, his eyes rested
on me with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a
great gray veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time,
over his head and whole form. As I gave in our verdict, "Guilty,"
the veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty.
The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether
he had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed
upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was described in the
leading newspapers of the following day as "a few rambling,
incoherent, and half-audible words, in which he was understood to
complain that he had not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of
the Jury was prepossessed against him." The remarkable declaration
that he really made was this: "MY LORD, I KNEW I WAS A DOOMED MAN,
WHEN THE FOREMAN OF MY JURY CAME INTO THE BOX. MY LORD, I KNEW HE
WOULD NEVER LET ME OFF, BECAUSE, BEFORE I WAS TAKEN, HE SOMEHOW
GOT TO MY BEDSIDE IN THE NIGHT, WOKE ME, AND PUT A ROPE ROUND MY NECK."
End
Bonnie
Mercure, your Fiction
Guide at the dowse Fiction
Hub, is a dark fantasy author.
Visit her website
|
Antiques
Archaeology
Architecture
Art
Autos
Books
Computing
& Internet
Cryptozoology
Dowsing
Dreams
Education
Entertainment
Fantasy art
Fiction
Free Stuff
Games
Gardening
Geography
Geology
History
Landscapes
Movies
Music
Mysteries
Myths & Legends
Paranormal
People
Philosophy
Photography
Poetry
Religions/Beliefs
Science Fiction
Sciences
Security online
Shamans
Theatre
Travel
TV
Web Makers Tools
Writing
& Publishing
. How
to make
dowse
your
start page
. Your free email:
you@dowse.com
. Message
boards
& communities
. Suggest
links
. Link
to us
. About
dowse
. Search
the web
. dowse
home
|
