Conan Doyle for the Defense by Margalit Fox

Author:Margalit Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

What astounded Conan Doyle, who had trained as an ophthalmologist, was that Edalji’s lawyers had not brought this defect to light. “So bad was this defence that in the whole trial no mention, so far as I could ascertain, was ever made of the fact that the man was practically blind, save in a good light, while between his house and the place where the mutilation was committed lay the full breadth of the London and North-Western Railway, an expanse of rails, wires and other obstacles, with hedges to be forced on either side, so that I, a strong and active man, in broad daylight found it a hard matter to pass.”

To drive home the point empirically, Conan Doyle had a pair of glasses made up that would replicate Edalji’s eyesight in a wearer with unimpaired vision. “My own sight is normal,” he wrote, “and I can answer for the feeling of helplessness which such a glass produces. I tried it upon a Press man, and defied him to reach the lawn-tennis ground in front of the house. He failed….To my mind it was as physically impossible for Mr. Edalji to have committed the crime as it would have been if his legs, instead of his eyes, were crippled.”

Combing the trial transcript, Conan Doyle pinpointed the ambiguous nature of the stains that the police found on Edalji’s coat:

Now the police try to make two points here: that the coat was damp, and that there were stains which might have been traces of the crime upon it. Each point is good in itself; but, unfortunately, they are incompatible and mutually destructive. If the coat were damp, and if those marks were blood-stains contracted during the night, then those stains were damp also, and the inspector had only to touch them and then to raise his crimson finger in the air to silence all criticism. But since he could not do so it is clear that the stains were not fresh….How these small stains came there it is difficult to trace—as difficult as to trace a stain which I see now upon the sleeve of my own house-jacket as I look down. A splash from the gravy of underdone meat might well produce it. At any rate, it may most safely be said that the most adept operator who ever lived would not rip up a horse with a razor upon a dark night and have only two threepenny-bit spots of blood to show for it. The idea is beyond argument.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.