John Carr - The Judas Window

The Foreman of the Jury: It is.

Mr Justice Rankin: James Caplon Answell, the jury, after considering the evidence, have found you not guilty of murder. It is a verdict in which I thoroughly concur. It remains only for me to tell you that you are a free man, and to wish you Godspeed. - The prisoner is discharged.

Notes: Broad grin on Attorney-General's face; he seemed to want this. Old Merrivale standing up and raving and cursing like blazes: can't imagine why: his man's free. Prisoner being handed his hat; can't seem to find his way out. People pressing up to him: including that girl. (???) Gallery wild with delight. 'And e'en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer!'

5-45pm - From the History of the Old Bailey

In Court-room Number One they were turning out the lights. Two warders, looking very unlike policemen without their helmets, seemed to be alone in a deserted schoolroom. The noise of a vast shuffling was dying away outside the doors; a few echoes came back, as though the echoes moved slowly and hung there. Up on the glass roof the rain was pattering steadily, and you could now hear it with great distinctness. There was a click: one cornice-row of lights vanished, so that the oak panels and the white stone above took duller colours. Two more clicks, and the room was nearly dark. The noise of the rain seemed louder; so did the noise of the warders' footsteps on uncertain hardwood; and their heads moved like high shadows. You could barely see the high, pointed backs of the judges' chairs, and the dull gold of the Sword of State. The vestibule door creaked in the gloom as one of the warders pushed it open.

"Ere, stop a bit,' said the other suddenly. His voice also had an echo. 'Don't close it. There's somebody left behind.'

'You seeing ghosts?'

'No. I mean it. Sitting over there - end of that bench -behind the dock. Here Hoy'

He might have been seeing ghosts in a house built on the bones of Newgate. Under the greyish-black light, a figure was sitting alone and hunched up at the end of the bench. It did not move, even at the startling echo of the warder's hail. The warder clumped over towards that figure.

'Now then I' he said, with a sort of tolerant impatience. 'You'll 'ave to -'

The hunched figure did not look up, but it spoke. 'I -don't know if I can. I've just drunk something.' 'Drunk something?'

'Some kind of disinfectant. I thought I could face it, but I can't. I - I feel horrible. Can I get to a hospital?'

'Joe!' said the warder sharply. 'Come here and lend a hand!'

'You see, I killed him. That was why I drank the stuff.' 'Killed who, ma'am?'

'I killed poor Avory. But I'm sorry I killed him; I've always been sorry. I wanted to die, if it didn't hurt so much. My name is Amelia Jordan.'

EPILOGUE

What Really Happened

'ALL I'm saying,' observed Evelyn, 'is that I thought the Attorney-General made the strongest speech of all of you. Even at the last minute 1 was afraid he might swing it. That man impressed me enormously: I don't care who knows it: and -'

'Ho, ho,' said H.M. 'So that's what you thought, hey? No, my wench. Walt Storm's a much better lawyer than that. I won't say he did it deliberately, but he put it all up so the judge could knock it down. It was as neat a trick of feedin' lines, or arrangin' your chin for the punch, as I've ever seen. He tumbled too late to the fact that the chap wasn't guilty. He might 'a' thrown up his brief; but I wanted the business carried on so it could be proved up to the hilt - with the full story of the crime. So you saw the spectacle of an intelligent man tryin' to make brickbats without straw. It sounded awful impressive, but it didn't mean a curse.'

We were sitting, on a boisterous March night, in H.M.'s office up all the flights of stairs of the building overlooking the Embankment, H.M., after having been engaged in brewing whisky-punch (in commemoration, he said, of the Answell case), sat with his feet on the desk and the gooseneck lamp pushed down. There was a good fire, and Lolly pop sat by the table in the window corner, evidently making up some accounts. H.M., with the smoke of a cigar getting into his eye and the steam of whisky-punch getting into his nose, was alternately chuckling and strangling.

'Not,' declared H.M., 'that there was ever any doubt about the verdict -'

'You thought not?' said Evelyn. 'Have you any recollection of what you did? When they brought back that verdict, and the court adjourned, someone came to congratulate you, and accidentally knocked a book off your desk. You stood there and you cursed and swore and gibbered for two minutes by the clock -'

'Well, it's always more comfortin' when you get that kind of case off your mind,' growled H.M. 'I had a few shots still in the locker; but, somewhat to mix the metaphors, you're nervous about a race even if you're dead certain the favourite's comin' in. Y'see, I had to fight it through. I had to get it on so I could make my closin' speech, and I thought a few hints in that speech would have a salutary effect on the real murderer -'

'Amelia Jordan!' I said. We were silent for a short time, while H.M. contemplated the end of his cigar, growled, and ended by taking a gulp of whisky-punch. 'So you knew she was guilty all the time?'

'Sure, son. And if necessary I could 'a' proved it. But I had to get the feller in the dock acquitted first. I couldn't say she was guilty in court. I wrote on that little time-schedule I gave you that there was only one person who could 'a' committed the murder.'

'Well?'

'I'll talk about it,' said H.M., shifting in his chair, 'because it's such a bleedin' relief not to be governed by any rules in my talk.

'Now, I don't have to retrace the course entirely. You know just about everything up to the time Jim Answell drinks his drugged whisky and tumbles over in Hume's study. You know everything, in fact, except what seem to me pretty solid reasons for believin' a certain person was guilty.

'Back at the beginnin' of the case I had the lunacy-plot part of it worked out straightaway, as I told you. How the murder was done, if Answell didn't do it, beat me to blazes. Then Mary Hume made that suggestion - that the thing her feller hated most in prison was the Judas window - and I woke up to the startlin' possibility of a Judas window in every door. I walked up and down, like Satan. I looked at it all round. Then I sat down and made out that time-table; and the whole thing began to unroll.

'As I first saw the business, there were only two persons concerned in the scheme to nobble Reginald Answell: Avory and Spencer. I still think that. It was pretty evident, though, that someone had found out about that scheme, and insisted on comin' into it at the last moment.

'Why? Looky here! If the Judas window was used to do the murder, the murderer must have been workin' with Avory Hume. The murderer must 'a' been at least close enough to know what was going on in the study. It must have been the murderer who carried away an extra decanter - I've made a query about that decanter in my time-table - so that it shouldn't be found by the police. All that implies co-operation with Avory. Someone was in on the plot: someone carried it just so far:, and then someone used it neatly to kill the old man.

'Who? Of course, first of all you'd have plumped for Uncle Spencer, since he undoubtedly was a confederate in the plot. But that won't do; at least, as regards Uncle Spencer's committin' the murder with his own hand. He's got a really remarkable alibi, vouched for by half the staff of a hospital.

'Who else, then? It's a remarkable thing, y'know, how the mere certainty of another confederate in the business narrows down the field. Avory Hume was a man with few friends and no intimates, except his own family. He was a great family man. If he went to the extent of confidin' that scheme to someone not necessary to it - even confidin' it under pressure - it must be someone very close to him.