'But it is her answer to Mr. Pollard, when he asked her as to the
second set of footsteps, that I wish to draw your attention to.
She said, as I took it, "I did not notice them"--that is, the
footsteps--"but I think they must have been Miss Owen's, or else I
should have noticed the difference." Now, I think you will see the
importance of that.' (The jury try to see it, and, failing in that,
try to look as if they saw it, and fail a second time.) 'Remember the
state of things is this: the witness is wide awake; she has just been
down to the front-door and up again, and ten minutes after, or three
minutes only according to Mr. Tressamer, she hears someone come in and
walk upstairs. Now, gentlemen, under those circumstances, one would
naturally expect the witness to be on the alert to distinguish any
difference, if difference there were, between the footsteps. And if
the person entering the second time were not the prisoner, to whose
tread she was accustomed, and which she was expecting to hear, but if
it were someone else--a man, let us say, with an entirely different
tread, and a tread to which she was wholly unaccustomed--I say one
would naturally expect the witness to note the difference instantly,
to wonder who it was that had entered, to feel alarm when she heard
the unknown stranger proceeding upstairs and into the bedroom; and, in
short, one would expect her to get up and rouse the whole household to
discover the robber, as she would naturally assume him to be.'
The jury were much impressed. A feeling of gravity spread all over the
court. In the prisoner's mind there was a sensation as if the sun had
retired behind a cloud, leaving a leaden atmosphere all round her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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