The Anatomy of Murder, page 30
Counsel for the defence came perhaps nearer the mark than counsel for the prosecution when he spoke of Mrs. Rattenbury as a woman “who, by her own acts and folly, had erected in the boy a Frankenstein of jealousy which she could not control”. Disregarding the incorrectness of the literary allusion, this is more like the truth than that the key to the solution of the problem was Mrs. Rattenbury’s domination of Stoner. One does not dominate what one cannot control, and there is plenty of indication in the evidence that Mrs. Rattenbury could not by any means control Stoner. A woman of that type, too, revels in being dominated.
Mr. O’Connor made this handsome reference to Stoner:
Stoner has played a gentleman’s part. You may possibly think that he has atoned for a great deal by refusing to commit the supreme crime of seeing his mistress go to her doom for a crime which he knows he committed.
It may, indeed, have been this plea, even more than anything Stoner’s own counsel said, which influenced the jury’s verdict.
With the end of Mr. O’Connor’s speech the proceedings of the fourth day concluded.
On the Friday morning Mr. Justice Humphreys began his summing-up.
Beginning in the usual way by explaining the law as it bears upon two persons agreeing together to commit a felony, the judge remarked that his five days’ experience of the case had satisfied him that he had been right in deciding that the two defendants should be tried together. Then, having dealt with such facts as were common to both prisoners, he proceeded to consider the case of Mrs. Rattenbury.
In view of the fact that upon many important matters Mrs. Rattenbury was the only person to have given evidence (said the judge), it was essential for the jury to make up their minds whether they believed her evidence or not; and that would depend to some extent on the kind of woman they considered her to be. This is much the same as Mr. Justice Shearman said in his summing-up in the Thompson case, and is a proper use of evidence concerning character. But whereas the judge in the Thompson-Bywaters case allowed the jury to gather that in his opinion a woman who could be guilty of adultery could just as well be guilty of murder—that the step, in fact, from adultery to murder was only a small one—Mr. Justice Humphreys was evidently not going to have any share for his own part in yet another British condemnation for adultery on a charge of murder. Let us salute the first British judge who has definitely warned a jury against our own particular national injustice (does it arise out of priggishness, sadism, or womanly influence?) in these plain words:
Having heard your own counsel with regard to the facts of this case, it may be you will say that you cannot possibly feel any sympathy with this woman. You cannot possibly have any feeling except of disgust for her. But let me say this: that should not make you more ready to convict her of this crime. It should, if anything, make you less ready to accept evidence against her, if you think there can be any explanation consistent with her innocence. But I know you will not let it prejudice you against her. So far as it is material evidence in this case, you must use it. If you think it shows the sort of woman who might have the motive to do this thing, then you must use it because it is admissible evidence. But beware that you do not convict her of this crime because she is an adulteress—and an adulteress, you may think, of the most unpleasant type.
This is very fair; very fair indeed. One may, perhaps, have all sorts of feelings for Mrs. Rattenbury besides disgust, but still—Mrs. Maybrick had been convicted of murder upon a single instance of adultery and a suspicion; Mrs. Thompson had been executed for adultery. Mr. Justice Humphreys, at any rate, did not intend to add to the list of these victims of the British Courts of Morals.
This was an innovation indeed. So far from safeguarding justice as the written law defines it, most judges in the past have gone out of the way to inflame the jury to condemn on the moral issue instead of the legal one. Contrast, for instance, the more reasonable of Mr. Justice Humphreys’ words with a passage from the summing-up against Mrs. Thompson (the preposition is used advisedly):
Just at the end of a letter I shall have to allude to again, comes this: “He has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love.” Gentlemen, if that nonsense means anything it means that the love of a husband for his wife is something improper because marriage is acknowledged by the law, and that the love of a woman for her lover, illicit and clandestine, is something great and noble. I am certain that you, like any other right-minded persons, will be filled with disgust at such a notion.
Alas, that is more like the attitude of our national judiciary which, set to try human beings who have lived and loved as their natures dictated and not with their noses in the statute-books, are either utterly ignorant of human nature or else deliberately disregard it. Could not every judge, before he is allowed to take his seat on the bench, be put through a short course, followed by an examination in psychology, love and plain ordinary cussed human nature? Then, perhaps, they might not make such egregious observations.
Although he was careful to add the rider of warning, Mr. Justice Humphreys showed that he fully shared this conventional legal attitude both in his unchristian reference to disgust for the woman caught out in adultery, and in pronouncing that adulterous relations “lack the one thing that makes for ordinary peaceable happiness between married couples, and that is respect”. To say that respect cannot exist between a man and woman whose relations are legally improper is just as silly as to say that respect invariably exists between married couples. Marriage does not make for the one nor adultery for the other, which may be legally and even socially regrettable, but is true.
As to Stoner, the judge pointed out that the jury
had no more right to give effect to evidence in his case from motives of pity than you have the right to refuse to give effect to evidence in her case which may be in her favour, because you thoroughly despise her. It is a pitiable thing that you should have been brought to this pass, and I do not think I am putting it unfairly even against her when I say that, whatever your verdict may be in the case, his position is due to the domination of this woman.
This, whether fair or not, is certainly arguable.
The judge then tried hard to persuade the jury that counsel for Stoner had not said what he did say, or, if he had said it, had not meant it.
A little mistake was made by those who thought that Mr. Casswell intended to say that his client admitted striking the blow. It would have been quite improper for counsel who was not going to call evidence, to say anything of the sort, and it is not what Mr. Casswell meant at all. All he meant was that its being the case of the prosecution that they had to prove that it was Stoner who struck the blow, he was in the position, or at all events did not intend, to call evidence to contradict, and therefore did not propose to address you on that part of the case. He had therefore to leave it there. That is all he meant.
As I rather expected, I noticed those newspapers which seem to regard this sort of terrible tragedy as a godsend to them, have found one thing and one thing only to put on their posters, and that was “Stoner’s counsel said he committed the crime.”
As, however, Mr. Casswell’s exact words, as reported, were “Stoner does not deny—in fact, admits—that his hand struck the blow,” the newspapers apparently were right and the learned judge wrong. The parenthesis may have been unfortunate, but there it was; and a million British homes were quite rightly relieved to know the truth.
Mr. Justice Humphreys was on more fertile ground when he passed on to Stoner’s alleged drug-taking. Without precisely ridiculing it, and indeed treating it quite fairly, he gave the jury plainly to understand his opinion that this was all bunkum. He pointed out the absence in prison of all the symptoms usual to drug-addicts; he made a very reasonable point in reminding the jury that Mrs. Rattenbury had said nothing of Stoner appearing abnormal or under the influence of a drug when he told her in bed what he had done, and he put forward for their consideration this significant suggestion:
Now here I am bound to point out to you something which you may think is the most important fact about this matter, and perhaps is conclusive. There is one human being who knows whether Stoner was in the habit of taking cocaine or whether he was not, or whether he took it that afternoon. That person is Stoner himself. He is an admissible and available witness, and if he wishes, or those who defend him wish, to prove that he is or was addicted to drugs, had taken cocaine or was under the influence of cocaine, is there any witness on earth who could do it as well as Stoner? It seems to me, in the circumstances of this case, a fact of most profound significance that Stoner prefers not to give evidence.
This was a legitimate comment on the part of the judge, and is true enough, though it might be that Stoner, who, if he went into the witness-box to prove himself a cocaine-addict, would lay himself open to all sorts of other questions too, had further awkward secrets to keep hidden.
As to the plea of guilty but insane, the judge would have none of it; there was no evidence to justify it, and without such evidence the issue could not be left to the jury at all.
Lastly, Mr. Justice Humphreys commented on the ‘statement’ made by Mrs. Rattenbury in the morning, while she was still muddled by morphia. Saying that he had no power to withdraw this statement from the evidence, the judge hinted very strongly to the jury to take no notice of it. “It seems to me to be … not quite acting with the fairness which, I suppose, one may say is characteristic of our criminal courts,” he remarked, with a kind of suave bluntness.
The judge then went through certain portions of the evidence in detail, and concluded after speaking for three and a half hours. His summing-up was not only absolutely fair throughout, but in places masterly; and one hopes that other judges will profit by it.
The jury were absent for about an hour. The verdicts were: Mrs. Rattenbury not guilty, Stoner guilty, with a recommendation to mercy. The recommendation in Stoner’s case was presumably due to his youth and to the jury’s belief, following the expressed opinions of the judge and counsel for the prosecution that he had been under the domination of Mrs. Rattenbury.
When asked if he had anything to say before sentence of death was passed, Stoner stood firmly erect and replied, in a low but steady voice: “Nothing at all.”
Mr. Justice Humphreys then passed sentence, saying that the jury’s recommendation would be forwarded to the proper quarter, and Stoner was taken back to prison.
Mrs. Rattenbury, who had been waiting, still in custody, in the corridor below while Stoner was being sentenced, was then called back to the court. As the wardress was helping her towards the short flight of stone stairs which leads to the dock, she met Stoner face to face as he was hurried past. They exchanged a silent look. Did each of them know it was the last?
Mrs. Rattenbury was kept standing in the dock for a few minutes while the officials discussed whether or not to proceed with a second indictment charging her with being an accessory after the fact, knowing that Stoner “had wounded with intent to murder”. Mrs Rattenbury now looked tired and worn. Finally, it was announced that the prosecution would offer no evidence, and Mrs. Rattenbury was formally discharged.
The trial had been followed with great interest by the population as a whole, and the verdicts were received with relief. In the minds of most citizens the injustice done to Mrs. Thompson remained as a little lump of uneasiness, and there was a general feeling, which the judge and counsel for the prosecution interpreted, that a similar injustice must not be allowed to occur in the case of Mrs. Rattenbury.
It was this feeling which added the extra sharpness to the popular interest in the trial, but even without it there was plenty of reason for interest. Superior persons deprecate this interest in murder trials as morbid, or sensation-seeking; judges openly resent it; yet if one faces the corollary, it is difficult to see how any normal person can remain indifferent to a trial such as this, and its result. One might go so far as to throw the challenge to the superior persons that actually it is the interest which is normal and indifference abnormal.
For quite apart from the responsibility which, in a take-it-for-granted, undefined, perhaps unrecognized way, we, the people, feel as any democracy should feel concerning those who are being tried in our name and by our chosen representatives (so that any mishap to justice is not a thing apart from us, but brings shame on each individual man or woman among us), there is the common humanity which draws each of us towards another human being in prolonged peril of life. Here the popular interest in a murder trial is akin to that with which the account is followed of a disabled ship floundering in a distant sea. Will it keep afloat till the rescuers reach it, or will it sink? We know nothing of the men on board; we do not even know their names; but—will they live or die? This, too, explains why the interest aroused by a trial for murder is so much greater than that aroused by the most notorious of crooked financiers; and not only greater, but different, for it exists on a higher plane in the human mentality.
That it can exist simultaneously on a lower plane is not to be disputed, for we must admit that, spicing this interest in a rescue at sea no less than in a trial for murder, there is a minute pinch of sadism: nothing abnormal and only in proportion to the minute pinch of sadism which is common to nearly all of us, but there it is. It is, however, only when this pinch becomes a handful, so that there is positive gloating over the agonies which the accused must be enduring, that interest in a murder trial can be called morbid, which means diseased, or even sensation-mongering; and that surely can only happen in very few instances.
Then there is what, for want of a more precise term, may be called ‘scientific’ interest. This is the appeal exercised by the detective-story, in distinction to the thriller, the appeal of the puzzle, the wish to know the truth.
“Why,” I asked myself when I began to write this account, “does this case interest you so much? Why do so many murder-cases interest you so much? Why do others not interest you at all? Are you morbid?”
“No,” I replied indignantly to myself, “I am not morbid, and if you’ll let me think a minute I’ll answer you. Yes, I am interested on two main counts; as a student of character I am interested in the minds which, whether through attributes or deficiencies as the case may show, can first envisage murder as a practical solution of their difficulties and then, which is much rarer, turn this vision into action—in other words, I suppose, since most interests have an egotistical basis, as a psychological mechanic, if I may so describe myself to you, I am interested to compare these engines of the human chassis with my own, so like and yet, I sincerely hope, so unlike; and secondly, I have a sneaking passion for the truth, and when A says one thing and B another and the fact that C seems to prove both of them wrong, I will hunt the real truth through acres of examination, cross-examination, advocacy, summing-up, and other rough country, till I can feel satisfied that I have made my kill. Those are my two chief reasons, and as a minor one I can cite the interest I feel in the lives of other people and how they are lived, and nothing outside fiction so effectually knocks down the front wall of a house and exposes its occupants in the details of their strange lives as does a trial for murder.”
Those who, as spectators, follow a murder trial, not in the newspapers but in court, have recorded not without surprise that they found themselves paying very little attention to the prisoners in the dock. The fact that a life is dependent on the way the game is played, and the winning of it, is lost in the game itself. The efforts to dig out the truth, the efforts sometimes to conceal it, the vast attention paid to the rules under which the truth is to be sought as if the rules were more important than the truth itself, the manœuvring and counter-manœuvring inside those rules, the bull-fighters with their red flags and their higher intelligences cajoling, goading, or tricking the unwitting bulls of witnesses into the required position until zip! goes the sword, and the witness is pinned to the arena with an admission or a contradiction; these things hold the attention of the onlooker. Is it the interest of technique, and in court it seems to be paramount.
Political responsibility, common humanity, a pinch of sadism, desire to know the truth, psychology, life as it is lived by others, the technique of justice, and lastly, the determination of organized society to exact retribution for wrong-doing, these are the seven chief heads of the complicated, instinctive, popular interest in a trial for murder, and not one of them is abnormal. With the possible exception of the third, not one of them is even morbid.
Stoner had passed through his ordeal apparently unmoved. Through the whole five days of the trial he had shown no emotion, just as he had shown none after the murder. His face a little pale, his manner stolid, with a faintly sullen set to his mouth, he allowed no one to guess whether it was indifference, courage, resignation, or sheer inability to feel as other people do, that was holding him up. Mrs. Rattenbury had been slowly disintegrating under the eyes of the jury. During the long summing-up she had sat for the most part without moving a muscle; when she took up a glass of water it was with the mechanical action of a marionette.
Mrs. Rattenbury was not to profit by having been tried by a sensible judge and an intelligent jury. The ordeal had been too much for her certainly unbalanced temperament. On the third day after the acquittal she entered a London nursing-home for rest and treatment. At about 3.30 the next afternoon, of Tuesday June 4th, she borrowed £2 from one of the officials of the home and went out, after telling the matron that she would be back by nine o’clock. She appeared to the matron to be in a normal state of bodily health, and since the doctor had said she could go out neither the matron nor anyone else had the power to detain her.
From 3.30 p.m. there is a five-hours’ blank. Then, at 8.30 p.m. on the same day a labourer, walking through a meadow near Christchurch, Bournemouth, saw a woman sitting on the opposite bank of a stream, a backwater of the Avon, near the place where a railway arch passed over it. She was alone, and was smoking a cigarette. The labourer noticed next, as he walked on, that there was a knife in the woman’s hand, and as he looked at her he saw her tumble forward into the water. The man had to run up the bank on his own side of the stream, over the bridge, and down the other side. When he reached her, the woman was lying face upwards in the water a few feet from the bank. The labourer, who could not swim, waded out as far as he dared, but could not reach her, so snatched up her fur coat, which was lying on the bank and threw the end of it towards her, but the woman made no attempt to catch it. The man then saw that there was blood in the water, and as he could do no more for her he ran to a cottage near by for help. It was now about 8.40 p.m.
