Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

After dismissing Corporal Tigger, Sir John summoned Richard Sperling as witness. The young private slumped pathetically as he walked up to take his place and looked quite like he had already been convicted and condemned. He managed, however, to pull himself erect in more soldierly fashion once he had arrived. He stated his name and rank and gave his age as nineteen.

“Private Sperling,” said Sir John, “I fear you must tell us how you spent the two hours, perhaps a little less, between leaving your brother and Corporal Tigger at the Cheshire Cheese and rejoining them at the Coach House Inn.’

“Yes, sir,” said he, his voice so strained that it was barely audible.

“Speak up, young man. Proceed.”

“Yes, sir, I shall.” He cleared his throat.

The members of the jury had now assumed those same attitudes of intense concentration they had adopted earlier in listening to Mr. Donnelly’s testimony.

“I left them there, as you say, and hied off swift to the streets surrounding Covent Garden,” said he. “Once there I did but wander, searching, putting myself in the way of temptation.”

“And what were you searching for?” put in Sir John. “How did you wish to be tempted?”

“I wished the temptation of the flesh. I was searching for a woman.”

“Well, there are a plenty of them hereabouts and a good many available for the purpose you seemed to have in mind.”

“I know that, sir, and that was the why of my coming here.” He looked down, but his voice held steady as he continued: “I… I had never been with a woman in that way, and I had come to be ashamed of it, thinking myself less than a man. I had made up my mind to change that, and I thought the time I had before the coach left would be enough to do what needed to be done. Yet once here in these streets, seeing the worn, hard look of those women who made themselves available; thinking of the possibility of disease, probability p’rhaps; remembering my Christian childhood — I found it hard to proceed with my plan. I went into a place and had an ale to steady myself.”

“What was the place?” asked Sir John.

“I do not remember, sir, I truly don’t, though perhaps I could find it if — ”

“Never mind. Continue.”

“Very well. But upon leaving the ale house, I was engaged in conversation by a woman. It may have been in Duke’s Court. If that woman there says so, I will accept that. In any case, she gave her name as Teresa, and … I liked her. She was a big woman, Irish, and she seemed to understand my problem. There was something motherly about her — not like my mother, you understand, but …”

“I do understand. Continue.”

“I… consented to go with her, and she took me to a place in Angel Court, right enough, a filthy place — a straw mattress, a chair, nothing more. My time there was short. I…” He hesitated, looking for the right words. “I failed in what I set out to do. She was understanding, though she would not give back my money.”

There and only then a few of the men on the jury began to snigger. They were hushed by their fellows. Sir John felt no need to call for order.

“And so I left. I left quickly, thinking I must be late — and of course I was. We had to catch the next coach to Hammersmith, which made us more than an hour late to the party for my brother. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I went with that woman. But please believe me, sir, for I swear by the Almighty and all that is holy, I did not kill her!’

He was near panting with emotion. His eyes glistened with tears.

“I have but one question for you — or perhaps two,” said Sir John. “Are you a surgeon’s helper in the Grenadier Guards?”

“No, sir, a simple foot soldier.”

“Were you ever apprenticed to a surgeon?”

“No, sir.”

“Well and good. You may return to your seat.”

And that he did, moving swifter and more confident than before, having now made his confession.

“Sergeant Tupper? If you will again stand and keep your place?”

The sergeant shot up to his feet, allowing his scabbard to clang against the chair. And, taken by surprise, he sang out the military “5a/i.’”

“I sent you on an errand earlier today to search through the personal effects of both brothers Sperling to see if either owned a knife. What did you find?”

“Nothing of the kind for either of them, sir.”

“I also asked that Private Sperling’s bayonet be taken along in evidence. Did you bring it?”

“I did, sir, and handed it over to the surgeon, as you asked.”

“Very good. You may sit down. Mr. Donnelly?”

He rose in a more leisurely manner. “Yes, Sir John?”

“You have had opportunity to examine Private Sperling’s bayonet?”

“I have, sir.”

“Were there any traces of blood upon it?”

“None, sir. It was glistening clean, as one might expect from a Grenadier Guard.”

“Well and good. In the absence of any sort of knife, could the bayonet have inflicted the wound you described in Teresa O’Reilly?”

“No, sir, it could not. Had it been pushed to the depth to do the damage I described, it would have left a wider, slightly crescent-shaped wound, and that was not the wound I found in her body. From what I found, the wound came from a long, flat, narrow blade — what might be described as a stiletto.”

“Thank you. That, I’m sure, will be all I need from you. But you. Mistress Pratt, will you stand at your place, please?”

She did, somewhat reluctantly, looking a bit put-upon.

“Sir?”

“You have, if you listened closely, become aware of the difficulty regarding time to which I referred. You said you saw the soldier, whom Private Sperling admits to have been himself, with the deceased ‘just before’ the body was found. And Mr. Donnelly, the surgeon, has told us that if the body was still warm at a bit after six, the earliest that Teresa O’Reilly might have been killed was half an hour before, let us place it at five thirty, at the very earliest. But even so, according to Corporal Tigger, Private Sperling arrived at the post-coach house at a quarter past five and thus could not have inflicted the mortal wound. And so, I must say to you I think you a good witness as to identification, for you have proved that. But I think you a poor witness as to time. Do you still insist you saw Private Sperling but a short time before the body was found?”

“I do,” she said most emphatic. “It were not far from that yard, if you go by the alley, which they was near. I saw him there plain, right in the daylight.”

“Did you say ‘in the daylight’?”

“I did, sir.”

Sir John leaned over and held a brief conference with Mr. Marsden, at the end of which he nodded and returned his attention to Mistress Pratt.

“In that case,” said he, “I must reject your testimony, for Mr. Marsden informs me that clear daylight lasts this time of year a bit past five. That from that time on it is well into the dusking hour. I can therefore only judge that you spent far longer in Shakespeare’s Head than you realized. You may be seated. Mistress Pratt.”

“But I — ”

“Be seated, please.”

Even more reluctantly than she had risen, did she sink back down in her chair.

“And now, you men of the jury,” said Sir John, turning and facing in their general direction, “will the one of your number who has been appointed foreman please identify himself?”

Then rose a tall man, a bit older than the rest. “Yes, sir,” said he to Sir John, “that would be me.”

“I fear you and your eleven fellows may be disappointed in your part in this, for I must now direct a verdict to you. There can be no doubt that murder was committed. Teresa O’Reilly did not die of natural causes — that much is obvious. Nor could she have committed suicide, removed the knife from her heart, disposed of it, then hidden herself where she was found. It was proved, even by the testimony of Mistress Pratt herself, that Private Sperling, whom she had seen in conversation with the deceased, could not have been involved in her demise. He accounted for his time.