Sir Herbert commenced by describing the case as a straightforward one
which would offer no difficulty to an intelligent jury. It was true that
it rested on circumstantial evidence, but that evidence was of the
strongest nature, and pointed so clearly in the one direction, that the
jury could come to no other conclusion than that the prisoner at the bar
had committed the murder with which he stood charged.
With this preamble, the Crown Prosecutor proceeded to put together the
chain of circumstantial evidence against the accused with the deliberate
logic of the legal brain, piecing together incidents, interpreting
clues, probing motives, and fashioning together the whole tremendous
apparatus of circumstantial evidence with the intent air of a man
building an unbreakable cage for a wild beast. As Colwyn had
anticipated, the incident at the Durrington hotel had been dropped from
the Crown case. That part of the presentment was confined to the
statement that Penreath had registered at the hotel under a wrong name,
and had left without paying his bill. The first fact suggested that the
accused had something to hide, the second established a motive for the
subsequent murder.
Sir Herbert Templewood concluded his address in less than an hour, and
proceeded to call evidence for the prosecution. There were nine
witnesses: that strangely assorted pair, the innkeeper and Charles, the
deaf waiter, Ann, the servant, the two men who had recovered Mr.
Glenthorpe's body from the pit, the Heathfield doctor, who testified as
to the cause of death, Superintendent Galloway, who gave the court the
result of the joint investigations of the chief constable and himself at
the inn, Police-Constable Queensmead, who described the arrest and
Inspector Fredericks, of Norwich, who was in charge of the Norwich
station when the accused was taken there from Flegne. In order to save
another witness being called, Counsel for the defence admitted that
accused had registered at the Grand Hotel, Durrington, under a wrong
name, and left without paying his bill.
Mr. Middleheath cross-examined none of the witnesses for the prosecution
except the last one, and his forensic restraint was placed on record by
the depositions clerk in the exact words of the unvarying formula
between bench and bar. "Do you ask anything, Mr. Middleheath?" Mr.
Justice Redington would ask, with punctilious politeness, when the Crown
Prosecutor sat down after examining a witness. To which Mr. Middleheath
would reply, in tones of equal courtesy: "I ask nothing, my lord."
Counsel's cross-examination of Inspector Fredericks consisted of two
questions, intended to throw light on the accused's state of mind after
his arrest. Inspector Fredericks declared that he was, in his opinion,
quite calm and rational.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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