The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton

"Such, members of the jury, are the actual undeniable facts. The defense has entered a plea of not guilty. After you have heard my evidence--evidence which in my contention proves conclusively not only the commission of this dreadful crime, but its dreadful motive--it will be for you to decide, subject to his lordship's direction, the issue between us. "And at this point, before I go into the question of motive, I purpose, with his lordship's permission, to give you a brief, a very brief summary of the legal definition of homicide. Our English law divides the crime of homicide into three classes: justifiable or excusable homicide, manslaughter, and murder. It is of this last that I shall ask you, after duly weighing my evidence, to convict Lucy Towers. "Murder, let me tell you, has been very aptly defined in the few words, 'Murder is unlawful homicide with malice aforethought.' It is the existence of malice which distinguishes this crime from justifiable or excusable homicide and from manslaughter. In order, therefore, to prove to you that this woman murdered her husband, I must demonstrate, as I shall demonstrate, not only that she shot him down with a revolver--a fact which I again remind you is not in dispute--but that she shot him down in cold blood and with malice aforethought. That is to say, that she had actually planned to kill him before--long before--the fifth of July. On this point, quite apart from the point of motive, we have incontrovertible evidence." Again Brunton paused, conscious of his opponent; again, actor-like, Brunton's part went on. "Malice aforethought, as his lordship will direct you, entails motive. Now, what was this woman's motive? Why did she kill her husband? Had she, in killing him, some ulterior object? It is my contention," the voice rose, "that she had such an object; that this woman," one gentlemanly finger pointed accusingly at the dock, "when she killed William Towers, her wedded husband, had one object, and one object only in her mind--to free herself from him, to free herself at all and any cost. Why? "Members of the jury, it will be my duty, my very painful duty, to answer that question by proving that this woman, this Lucy Towers, is not only a murderess but an adulteress; that she had a lover, an illicit lover--none other than Robert Fielding, the very man in whose room this crime, this atrocious crime, was committed. I think"--Brunton's eyes dropped to the brief in front of him, and he began turning over the pages of it--"that after I have read to you the confession, the voluntary confession of the prisoner, you will admit that not only the crime but its motive stands proved, and proved up to the hilt, out of her own mouth." So far, Ronnie--chin propped on one hand, the other busy with his notes--had listened, unmoved, to his enemy's opening. But now, suddenly, as Brunton read out, emphasizing every word that might tell against her, his client's confession; as he guessed from the very looks of the jury, from the very way in which they craned forward from their box, how deep an impression those words were creating in their minds; his heart misgave him, and he glanced up, as though for confirmation of her innocence, at Lucy. Lucy Towers was eying Brunton, not as the fascinated bird eyes the snake, but as the slandered eyes the slanderer. In the white of her cheeks, color came and went by fitful flashes. Her mouth kept opening and closing, as though to give Brunton the lie. Once, when the harsh voice mouthed the end of her confession, "I love Bob very much," she would have started to her feet had not the wardress placed a restraining hand on her arm. But in all that crowded court only Lucy's advocate and the wardress noticed Lucy. Judge, jury, spectators--all watched the "hanging prosecutor." He, and he alone, dominated the court by the sheer amazing flow of his oratory. For now Brunton had thrown aside the legal mask; now his every word came hot from his heart, from that heart which had made its choice between mercy and vengeance. "My lord," rang the harsh voice, "my lord, members of the jury, can any statement be more damnable, more damning that those words which I have just read to you? What need have I for eloquence, when this adulteress, this fallen woman," again his hand shot out, pointing to the prisoner in the dock, "whom my learned friend for the defense would have you find not guilty, has proved herself, out of her own mouth, Robert Fielding's strumpet? What need have I of witnesses to prove the malice, the lecherous malice which inspired this crime? What mitigation can any counsel put before you? "Will he say that this crime was an accident? That it was an act of self-defense? Accident! This was no accident. Self-defense! This was no act of self-defense. It was murder, members of the jury, deliberate, cold-blooded murder. "What need have I of witnesses? Yet I have witnesses--not one witness, but many witnesses--a witness who will prove to you that for weeks, for months, nay, for years before the perpetration of this crime, Robert Fielding had been amorous of his cousin--witnesses who will testify that this woman, almost since the day of her marriage, had been on the worst possible terms with her murdered husband--witnesses, unimpeachable, independent witnesses to whom she has admitted, not once but a dozen times, that she wished her husband dead. "Members of the jury, we do not live in an age of miracles. When you know, as you already do know, that those wishes came true, and came true by her own hand--when you hear, as you will hear, of her clandestine visits, at dead of night to her lover's room--you will say to yourself, as I say to you now, 'This was no accident; no act of self-defense: this was murder, murder premotived and premeditated, the murder which our justice punishes with death.' "A life for a life, your lordship. A life for a life, members of the jury. That is the penalty which, on behalf of the Crown, I shall demand against this woman whom counsel for the defense would have you find not guilty of any crime whatsoever." Slowly Hector Brunton's eyes turned from the woman in the dock toward his enemy; till even Ronnie shrank before the vindictive fury in those gray and glimmering pupils. "This is the man," muttered the voiceless soul behind those grayly glimmering eyes, "this is the man who stole your woman; the man who dares defend this other adulteress against you." But the words, the words planned overnight, never faltered on Brunton's lips. For all his fury, his legal mind, functioning automatically, missed never a point. The clock-hands crept on and on. In the packed courtroom was no sound save the scratch of the shorthand-writers' fountain pens, the tap-tap of the gentlemanly fingers on the oak, the harsh interminable harangue. Till at last the harangue slowed to its peroration; and passion ebbed from Brunton's voice, leaving it once more cool, deadly, pitiless. "If I," rang the cool, deadly voice, "if I, the paid advocate of the Crown, have spoken in anger, rarely it is just anger. Surely, in this England of ours, adultery which leads to murder--as this woman's adultery has led to murder--will find none to excuse, none to condone it. Surely, the quality of mercy was overstrained when another court let this woman's paramour go free. "Members of the jury, that woman in the dock, that adulteress, shot her husband. She shot him down in cold blood, of malice aforethought and after due deliberation. It is for you, as just citizens, to see that she does not escape the uttermost penalty of her guilt." The harsh voice ceased. Brunton, with one last glance at the woman in the dock, a glance commingled of fear and triumph--for now, once again, he saw her as Aliette, a ghost siding with the man who had betrayed him--sat down; and Henry Smith-Assher, rising, began to call the stereotyped, commonplace evidence entrusted to a junior counsel. Ronnie hardly listened. The production of the revolver, the testimony of the constable who had made the arrest, the plan of the room--none of these mattered. Mattered only Brunton--Brunton whose eyes never left the jury--Brunton whose deadly oratory had closed every loophole of escape save one. But just before the luncheon interval, when the sergeant who had taken down Lucy's statement kissed the book and began his tale in the usual toneless voice of the police, Cartwright--watching counsel for the defense--saw his hands busy with the pencil; and knew that--luncheon interval over--the real fight would begin. 4 Usually barristers at the Old Bailey lunch communally in the mess-room; sometimes in private, with the judge. But to-day no invitation came from his tactful lordship; and, since Brunton might be in the mess-room, Ronnie elected for the near-by "George." Emerging disrobed from the court, Hugh Spillcroft on his one side and Cartwright on his other, he was again aware of the crowd. The little knot of idlers had increased. On the opposite side of the road, newspaper placards--black on red of the "Evening Standard," black on white of the "Evening News," black on green of the "Westminster Gazette," already flaunted their slogans: "TOWERS CASE: SPEECH FOR THE CROWN." "HANGING PROSECUTOR OPENS TOWERS CASE." "TRIAL OF LUCY TOWERS BEGUN." The placards worried Ronnie; they seemed to accentuate the forlornness of his cause. All through their hasty meal, snatched at a corner-table of the crowded chop-house, he felt himself growing more and more nervous, less and less confident of success. Spillcroft's conversation and Cartwright's irritated him. _Their_ interest was so coldly legal. They spoke of Lucy Towers, of himself and Brunton, as men who have betted well within their means speak of race-horses. "H. B.'ll have you on toast if he proves adultery," decided Spillcroft. "Do as you like, of course; but I shouldn't risk putting the woman in the box," urged Cartwright. "I should plead 'manslaughter' and have done with it." "Thanks for the suggestion," fumed Ronnie. "I thought I was being paid to _fight_." "Good for you! Try one of these." Cartwright, laughing, offered him a small cigar: "Nothing like tobacco for a fighting man." Smoking, Ronnie visualized Brunton, gray eyes staring, jowl a-twitch, teeth bit to the under lip; Brunton as he had seen him when Lucy Towers first entered the dock. And visualizing, realizing the shock that amazing likeness must have been, he could not help admiring the man. Brunton, startled at the very moment of tensest concentration, had yet managed to make the speech of his life, missing never a legal point in two hours of impassioned argument. How could he, the poor orator, compete with such a man; how prove any flaw in the "hanging prosecutor's" thesis that Lucy Towers, adulteress, shot her husband so that she might marry her paramour? "Ten minutes to two," said Cartwright, paying the bill. 5 Reëntering the crowded court, Ronnie saw that Brunton was already seated. The K.C., turning from conference with his junior, darted one look at his opponent; that same look, compound of fear and obstinacy, of injured pride and determination for revenge, of the weak man who knows himself in the wrong and means to persist in his wrong-doing, which Ronnie had noted on the day when he pleaded for Aliette's freedom. Forcibly the personal issue obtruded on Ronnie's mind; and he could not help speculating, as Mr. Justice Heber took his seat, whether that ermined figure, whose gleaming spectacles turned this way and that, to the police-sergeant reëntering the box, to the jury, to Henry