jumped up and made his own way out: the black curtain flapped in his mouth.
But he was
too late: the man had gone and there were three turnings to choose from. He chose
instead a telephone box and dialled, wit an odd sense for him of sanity and decision, 999.
It didn't take two minutes to get the right department. They were interested and
very kind. Yes, there had been a murder in a mews, Cullen Mews. A man's neck ha been
cut from ear to ear with a bread knife--a horrid crime. He began to tell them how he had
sat next the murderer in a cinema: it couldn't be anyone else: there was blood now on his
hands--and he remembered with repulsion as he spoke the damp beard. There must have
been a terrible lot of blood. But the voice from the Yar interrupted him. "Oh, no," it was
saying, "we have the murderer-no doubt of it at all. It's the body that's disappeared."
Craven put down the receiver. He said to himself aloud, "Why should this happen
to me? Why to me?" He was back in the horror of his dream--the squalid darkering street
outside was only one of the innumerable tunnels connecting grave to grave where the
imperishable bodies lay. He said, "It was a dream, a dream," and leaning forward he saw
in the mirror above the telephone his own face sprinkled by tiny drops of blood like dew
from a scent-spray. He began to scream, "I won't go mad. won't go mad. I'm sane. I won't
go mad." Presently a little crowd began to collect, and soon a policeman came.
1939
The Case for the Defence
It was the strangest murder trial I ever attended. They named it the Peckham murder in
the headlines, though Northwood Street, where the old woman was found battered to
death, was not strictly speaking in Peckham. This was not one of those cases of
circumstantial evidence, in which you feel the jurymen's anxiety--because mistakes have
been made--like domes of silence muting the court. No, this murderer was all but found
with the body; no one present when the Crown counsel outlined his case believed that the
man in the dock stood any chance at all.
He was a heavy stout man with bulging bloodshot eyes. All his muscles seemed to
be in his thighs. Yes, an ugly customer, one you wouldn't forget in a hurry--and that was
an important point because the Crown proposed to call four witnesses who hadn't
forgotten him, who had seen him hurrying away from the little red villa in Northwood
Street. The clock had just struck two in the morning.
Mrs. Salmon in 15 Northwood Street had been unable to sleep; she heard a door
click shut and thought it was her own gate. So she went to the window and saw Adams
(that was his name) on the steps of Mrs. Parker's house. He had just come out and he was
wearing gloves. He had a hammer in his hand and she saw him drop it into the laurel
bushes by the front gate. But before he moved away, he had looked up--at her window.
The fatal instinct that tells a man when he is watched exposed him in the light of a street-
lamp to her gaze--his eyes suffused with horrifying and brutal fear, like an animal's when
you raise a whip. I talked afterwards to Mrs. Salmon, who naturally after the astonishing
verdict went in fear herself. As I imagine did all the witnesses--Henry MacDougall, who
had been driving home from Benfleet late and nearly ran Adams down at the corner of
Northwood Street. Adams was walking in the middle of the road looking dazed. And old
Mr. Wheeler, who lived next door to Mrs. Parker, at No .12, and was wakened by a
noise--like a chair falling--through the thin-as-paper villa wall, and got up and looked out
of the window, just as Mrs. Salmon had done, saw Adams's back and, as he turned, those
bulging eyes. In Laurel Avenue he had been seen by yet another witness--his luck was
badly out; he might as well have committed the crime in broad daylight.
"I understand," counsel said, "that the defence proposes to plead mistaken
identity. Adams's wife will tell you that he was with her at two in the morning on
February 14, but after you have heard the witnesses for the Crown and examined
carefully the features of the prisoner, I do not think you will be prepared to admit the
possibility of a mistake."
It was all over, you would have said, but the hanging.
After the formal evidence had been given by the policeman who had found the
body and the surgeon who examined it, Mrs. Salmon was called. She was the ideal
witness, with her slight Scotch accent and her expression of honesty, care and kindness.
The counsel for the Crown brought the story gently out. She spoke very firmly.
There was no malice in her, and no sense of importance at standing there in the Central
Criminal Court with a judge in scarlet hanging on her words and the reporters writing
them down. Yes, she said, and then she had gone downstairs and rung up the police
station.
"And do you see the man here in court?"
She looked straight across at the big man in the dock, who stared hard at her with
his Pekingese eyes without emotion.
"Yes," she said, "there he is."
"You are quite certain?"
She said simply, "I couldn't be mistaken, sir."
It was all as easy as that.
"Thank you, Mrs. Salmon."
Counsel for the defence rose to cross-examine. If you had reported as many
murder trials as I have, you would have known beforehand what line he would take. And
I was right, up to a point.
"Now, Mrs. Salmon, you must remember that a man's life may depend on your
evidence."
"I do remember it, sir."
"Is your eyesight good?"
"I have never had to wear spectacles, sir."
"You are a woman of fifty-five?"
"Fifty-six, sir."
"And the man you saw was on the other side of the road?"
"Yes, sir."
"And it was two o'clock in the morning. You must have remarkable eyes, Mrs.
Salmon?"
"No, sir. There was moonlight, and when the man looked up, he had the lamplight
on his face."
"And you have no doubt whatever that the man you saw is the prisoner?"
I couldn't make out what he was at. He couldn't have expected any other answer
than the one he got.
"None whatever, sir. It isn't a face one forgets."
Counsel took a look round the court for a moment. Then he said, "Do you mind,
Mrs. Salmon, examining again the people in court? No, not the prisoner. Stand up, please,
Mr. Adams," and there at the back of the court, with thick stout body and muscular legs
and a pair of bulging eyes, was the exact image of the man in the dock. He was even
dressed the same--tight blue suit and striped tie.
"Now think very carefully, Mrs. Salmon. Can you still swear that the man you
saw drop the hammer in Mrs. Parker's garden was the prisoner--and not this man, who is
his twin brother?"
Of course she couldn't. She looked from one to the other and didn't say a word.
There the big brute sat in the dock with his legs crossed and there he stood too at
the back of the court and they both stared at Mrs. Salmon. She shook her head.
What we saw then was the end of the case. There wasn't a witness prepared to
swear that it was the prisoner he'd seen. And the brother? He had his alibi too; he was
with his wife.
And so the man was acquitted for lack of evidence. But whether--if he did the
murder and not his brother -he was punished or not, I don't know. That extraordinary day
had an extraordinary end. I followed Mrs. Salmon out of court and we got wedged in the
crowd who were waiting, of course, for the twins. The police tried to drive the crowd
away, but all they could do was keep the roadway clear for traffic. I learned later that
they tried to get the twins to leave by a back way, but they wouldn't. One of them--no one
knew which--said, "I've been acquitted, haven't I?" and they walked bang out of the front
entrance. Then it happened. I don't know how, though I was only six feet away. The
crowd moved and somehow one of the twins got pushed on to the road right in front of a
bus.
He gave a squeal like a rabbit and that was all; he was dead, his skull smashed just
as Mrs. Parker's had been. Divine vengeance? I wish I knew. There was the other Adams
getting on his feet from beside the body and looking straight over at Mrs. Salmon. He
was crying, but whether he was the murderer or the innocent man, nobody will ever be
able to tell. But if you were Mrs. Salmon, could you sleep at night?
1939
When Greek Meets Greek
