The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J. Rees

Author:Arthur J. Rees [Rees, Arthur J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780984385799
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Resurrected Press
Published: 2010-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

Sir Herbert Templewood did not believe the evidence of the specialist, and he did not think the witness believed it himself. Sir Herbert did not think any the worse of the witness on that account. It was one of the recognised rules of the game to allow witnesses to stretch a point or two in favour of the defence where the social honour of highly respectable families was involved.

Sir Herbert saw in the present defence the fact that the hand of his venerable friend, Mr. Oakham, had not lost its cunning. Mr. Oakham was a very respectable solicitor, acting for a very respectable client, and he had called a very respectable Harley Street specialist–who, by a most fortuitous circumstance, had been staying at the same hotel as the accused shortly before the murder was committed–to convince the jury that the young man was insane, and that his form of insanity was epilepsy, a disease which had prolonged lucid intervals.

A truly ingenious and eminently respectable defence, and one which, in his heart of hearts, perhaps, Sir Herbert might not have been sorry to see succeed, for he knew Sir James Penreath of Twelvetrees, and was sorry to see his son in such a position. But he had his duty to perform, and that duty was to discredit in the eyes of the jury the evidence of the witness in the box, because juries were prone to look upon specialists as men to whom all things had been revealed, and return a verdict accordingly.

Sir Herbert made one mistake in his analysis of the defence. Sir Henry, at least, believed in his own evidence and took himself very seriously as a specialist. Like most stupid men who have got somewhere in life, Sir Henry became self-assertive under the least semblance of contradiction, and he grew violent and red-faced under cross-examination. He would not hear of the possibility of a mistake in his diagnosis of the accused’s symptoms, but insisted that the accused, when he saw him at the Durrington hotel, was suffering from an epileptic seizure, combined with furor epilepticus, and was in a state of mind which made him a menace to his fellow creatures. It was true he qualified his statements with the words “so far as my observation goes,” but the qualification was given in a manner which suggested to the jury that five minutes of Sir Henry Durwood’s observation were worth a month’s of a dozen ordinary medical men.

Sir Henry’s vehement insistence on his infallibility struck Sir Herbert as a flagrant violation of the rules of the game. He did not accept the protestations as genuine; he thought Sir Henry was overdoing his part, and playing to the gallery. He grew nettled in his turn, and, with a sudden access of vigour in his tone, said:

“You told my learned friend that it is quite consistent with the prisoner’s malady that he could have committed the crime with which he stands charged, and remember nothing about it afterwards. Is that a fact?”

“Certainly.

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