Parker was immediately arrested, but being able to prove his innocence was
soon set free, and suspicion then fell upon Brinkley who, after the
coroner's inquest, was committed for trial on the charge of murdering the
Becks, the law being that if you deliberately intend to kill one person
and unintentionally kill another you are none the less guilty of murder.
On the way to the police station, after his arrest, Brinkley made the
significant statement: "If anyone says I put poison in stout, he's got to
prove it." Up to that moment there had been no mention of poisoned stout.
At the police court proceedings it was proved that the Becks had died from
the effects of prussic acid, that Brinkley had bought that poison, that he
had bought a bottle of stout in West Croydon, and that he had been seen on
the platform at Wandsworth waiting for the West Croydon train.
The motive of the crime was an important link in the chain of evidence,
but Brinkley held stoutly to his story that the will was signed by both
witnesses in the presence of Mrs. Blume.
Parker's version of his signature, the authenticity of which he did not
dispute, was that while he was out with Brinkley one evening the latter
asked him to sign his name upon a paper petitioning for an outing, and
that they had thereupon turned into a public-house, where he, Parker, had
written his name upon a sheet of paper, the upper part of which was folded
over.
In order to test the truth of Parker's statement the bottle of ink was
obtained from that public-house, and he was told to write his name upon a
sheet of paper in that ink, and this paper and the original will were
submitted to the present writer for examination.
By the aid of the methods described in the preceding pages it was found
that the ink of Parker's signature upon the will and that of the writing
upon the piece of paper were of the same kind--an ink readily recognisable
from its particularly brilliant blue pigment. In addition to this, three
distinct kinds of ink were present upon the will, the body of the
document and the signature of one witness being in one kind of ink, the
signature of the testatrix in another, and the signature of the other
witness in a third.
When the case came on at the Assizes at Guildford Mr. R. D. Muir appeared
for the prosecution, while the prisoner was very ably defended by Mr.
Frampton. Every day the judge, counsel on both sides, the prisoner, and
many of the witnesses went down to Guildford by a train in the morning and
returned to London again in the evening.
Each morning the prisoner when he entered the court appeared quite
unconcerned, and chatted with the warders. As is so often the case, he did
not seem to realise the gravity of his position.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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