The Shrieking Pit

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"Your aunt took action to allay your anxiety, I understand?" said Mr.
Heathfield, whose watchful eye had noted the unfavourable effect of this
statement on the jury.

The witness bowed.

"Yes," she replied. "I was terribly anxious, as I had not heard from Mr.
Penreath since he went away. Anything was better than the suspense."

"You say accused was moody and depressed when you saw him?" asked Sir
Herbert Templewood.

"Yes."

"May I take it that there was nothing terrifying in his
behaviour--nothing to indicate that he was not in his right mind?"

"No," replied the witness slowly. "He did not frighten me, but I was
concerned about him. He certainly looked ill, and I thought he seemed a
little strange."

"As though he had something on his mind?" suggested Sir Herbert.

"Yes," assented the witness.

"Were you aware that the accused, when he went to see you at your aunt's
home before he departed for Norfolk, was very short of money?"

"I was not. If I had known----"

"You would have helped him--is that what you were going to say?" asked
Mr. Middleheath, as Sir Herbert resumed his seat without pursuing the
point.

"My aunt would have helped Mr. Penreath if she had known he was in
monetary difficulties."

"Thank you." Mr. Middleheath sat down, pulling his gown over his
shoulders.

The witness was leaving the stand when the sharp authoritative voice of
the judge stopped her.

"Wait a minute, please, I want to get this a little clearer. You said
you were aware that the accused was discharged from the Army suffering
from shell-shock. Did he tell you so himself?"

"No, my lord. I was informed so."

"Really, Mr. Middleheath----"

The judge's glance at Counsel for the Defence was so judicial that it
brought Mr. Middleheath hurriedly to his feet again.

"My lord," he explained, "I intend to prove in due course that the
prisoner was invalided out of the Army suffering from shell-shock."

"Very well." The judge motioned to the witness that she was at liberty
to leave the box.

The appearance of Sir Henry Durwood in the box as the next witness
indicated to Crown Counsel that the principal card for the defence was
about to be played. Lawyers conduct defences as some people play
bridge--they keep the biggest trump to the last. Sir Henry represented
the highest trump in Mr. Middleheath's hand, and if he could not score
with him the game was lost.

Sir Henry seemed not unconscious of his importance to the case as he
stepped into the stand and bowed to the judge with bland professional
equality. His evidence-in-chief was short, but to the point, and
amounted to a recapitulation of the statement he had made to Colwyn in
Penreath's bedroom on the morning of the episode in the breakfast-room
of the Grand Hotel, Durrington. Sir Henry related the events of that
morning for the benefit of the jury, and in sonorous tones expressed his
professional opinion that the accused's strange behaviour on that
occasion was the result of an attack of epilepsy--petit mal, combined
with _furor epilepticus_.

The witness defined epilepsy as a disease of the nervous system, marked
by attacks of unconsciousness, with or without convulsions. The loss of
consciousness with severe convulsive seizures was known as grand mal,
the transient loss of consciousness without convulsive seizures was
called petit mal. Attacks of petit mal might come on at any time, and
were usually accompanied by a feeling of faintness and vertigo. The
general symptoms were sudden jerkings of the limbs, sudden tremors,
giddiness and unconsciousness. The eyes became fixed, the face slightly
pale, sometimes very red, and there was frequently some almost automatic
action. In grand mal there was always warning of an attack, in petit mal
there was no warning as a rule, but sometimes there was premonitory
giddiness and restlessness. _Furor epilepticus_ was a medical term
applied to the violence displayed during attacks of petit mal, a
violence which was much greater than extreme anger, and under its
influence the subject was capable of committing the most violent
outrages, even murder, without being conscious of the act.

"There is no doubt in your mind that the accused man had an attack of
petit mal in the breakfast-room of the Durrington hotel the morning
before the murder?" asked Mr. Middleheath.

"None whatever. All the symptoms pointed to it. He was sitting at the
breakfast table when he suddenly ceased eating, and his eyes grew
fixed. The knife which he held in his hand was dropped, but as the
attack increased he picked it up again and thrust it into the table in
front of him--a purely automatic action, in my opinion. When he sprang
up from the table a little while afterwards he was under the influence
of the epileptic fury, and would have made a violent attack on the
people sitting at the next table if I had not seized him.
Unconsciousness then supervened, and, with the aid of another of the
hotel guests, I carried him to his room. It was there I noticed foam on
his lips. When he returned to consciousness he had no recollection of
what had occurred, which is consistent with an epileptic seizure. I saw
that his condition was dangerous, and urged him to send for his friends,
but he refused to do so."

"It would have been better if he had followed your advice. You say it is
consistent with epilepsy for him to have no recollection of what
occurred during this seizure in the hotel breakfast room. What would a
man's condition of mind be if, during an attack of petit mal, he
committed an act of violence, say murder, for example?"

"The mind is generally a complete blank. Sometimes there is a confused
sense of something, but the patient has no recollection of what has
occurred, in my experience."

"In this case the prisoner is charged with murder. Could he have
committed this offence during another attack of _furor epilepticus_ and
recollect nothing about it afterwards? Is that consistent?"

"Yes, quite consistent," replied the witness.

"Is epilepsy an hereditary disease?"

"Yes."

"And if both parents, or one of them, suffered from epilepsy, would
there be a great risk of the children suffering from it?"

"Every risk in the case of both persons being affected; some probability
in the case of one."

"What do you think would be the effect of shell-shock on a person born
of one epileptic parent?"

"It would probably aggravate a tendency to epilepsy, by lowering the
general health."

"Thank you, Sir Henry."

Mr. Middleheath resumed his seat, and Sir Herbert Templewood got up to
cross-examine.

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."

"In that case, will you kindly explain how the prisoner came to leave
the inn hurriedly, before anybody was up, the morning after the murder
was committed? Why should he run away if he had no recollection of his
act?"

"I must object to my learned friend describing the accused's departure
from the inn as 'running away,'" said Mr. Middleheath, with a bland
smile of protest. "It is highly improper, as nobody knows better than
the Crown Prosecutor, and calculated to convey an altogether erroneous
impression on the minds of the jury. There is not the slightest evidence
to support such a statement. The evidence is that he saw the servant and
paid his bill before departure. That is not running away."

"Very well, I will say hastened away," replied Sir Herbert impatiently.
"Why should the accused hasten away from the inn if he retained no
recollection of the events of the night?"

"He may have had a hazy recollection," replied Sir Henry. "Not of the
act itself, but of strange events happening to him in the
night--something like a bad dream, but more vivid. He may have found
something unusual--such as wet clothes or muddy boots--for which he
could not account. Then he would begin to wonder, and then perhaps there
would come a hazy recollection of some trivial detail. Then, as he came
to himself, he would begin to grow alarmed, and his impulse, as his
normal mind returned to him, would be to leave the place where he was as
soon as he could. This restlessness is a characteristic of epilepsy. In
my opinion, it was this vague alarm, on finding himself in a position
for which he could not account, which was the cause of the accused
leaving the Durrington hotel. His last recollection, as he told me at
the time, was entering the breakfast-room; he came to his senses in his
bedroom, with strangers in the room."

"Does not recollection return completely in attacks of petit mal?"

"Sometimes it does; sometimes not. I remember a case in my student days
where an epileptic violently assaulted a man in the street--almost
murdered him in fact--then assaulted a man who tried to detain him, ran
away, and remembered nothing about it afterwards."

"Is it consistent with petit mal, combined with _furor epilepticus_, for
a man to commit murder, conceal the body of his victim, and remember
nothing about it afterwards?"

"Quite consistent, though the probability is, as I said before, for him
to have some hazy recollection when he came to his senses, which would
lead to his leaving that place as quickly as he could."

"Would it be consistent with petit mal for a man to take a weapon away
beforehand, and then, during a sudden fit of petit mal, use it upon the
unfortunate victim?"

"If he took the weapon for another purpose, it is quite possible that he
might use it afterwards."

"I should like to have that a little clearer," said the judge,
interposing. "Do you mean to get the weapon for another, possibly quite
innocent purpose, and then use it for an act of violence?"

"Yes, my lord," replied Sir Henry. "That is quite consistent with an
attack of petit mal."

"When a man has periodical attacks of petit mal, would it not be
possible, by observation of him between the attacks, or when he was
suffering from the attacks, to tell whether he had a tendency to them?"

"No, only in a very few and exceptional cases."

"In your opinion epilepsy is an hereditary disease?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Are you aware that certain eminent French specialists, including Marie,
are of the opinion that hereditary influences play a very small part in
epilepsy?"

"That may be." Sir Henry dismissed the views of the French specialists
with a condescending wave of his fat white hand.

"That does not alter your own opinion?"

"Certainly not."

"And do you say that because this man's mother suffered from epilepsy
the chances are that he is suffering from it?"

"Pardon me, I said nothing of the kind. I think the chances are that he
would have a highly organised nervous system, and would probably suffer
from some nervous disease. In the case of the prisoner, I should say
that shell-shock increased his predisposition to epilepsy."

"Do you suggest that shell-shock leads to epilepsy?"

"In general, no; in this particular case, possibly. A man may have
shell-shock, and injury to the brain, which is not necessarily
epileptic."

"It is possible for shell-shock alone to lead to a subsequent attack of
insanity?" asked the judge.

"It is possible--certainly."

"How often do these attacks of petit mal occur?" asked Sir Herbert.

"They vary considerably according to the patient--sometimes once a week,
sometimes monthly, and there have been cases in which the attacks are
separated by months."

"Are not two attacks in twenty-four hours unprecedented?"

"Unusual, but not unprecedented. The excitement of going from one place
to another, and walking miles to get there, would be a predisposing
factor. Prisoner would have been suffering from the effects of the first
attack when he left the Durrington hotel, and the excitement of the
change and the fatigue of walking all day would have been very
prejudicial to him, and account for the second and more violent attack."

"How long do the after effects last--of an attack of petit mal, I mean."

"It depends on the violence of the attack. Sometimes as long as five or
six hours. The recovery is generally attended with general lassitude."

"There is no evidence to show that the prisoner displayed any symptoms
of epilepsy before the attack which you witnessed at the Durrington
hotel. Is it not unusual for a person to reach the age of twenty-eight
or thereabouts without showing any previous signs of a disease like
epilepsy?"

"There must be a first attack--that goes without saying," interposed the
judge testily.

That concluded the cross-examination. Mr. Middleheath, in
re-examination, asked Sir Henry whether foam at the lips was a
distinguishing mark of epilepsy.

"It generally indicates an epileptic tendency," replied Sir Henry
Durwood.

At the conclusion of Sir Henry Durwood's evidence Mr. Middleheath called
an official from the War Office to prove formally that Lieutenant James
Penreath had been discharged from His Majesty's forces suffering from
shell-shock.

"I understand that, prior to the illness which terminated his military
career, Lieutenant Penreath had won a reputation as an exceedingly
gallant soldier, and had been awarded the D.S.O," said Mr. Middleheath.

"That is so," replied the witness.

"Is that the case?" asked the judge.

"That, my lord, is the case," replied Mr. Middleheath.

Sir Herbert Templewood, on behalf of the Crown, proceeded to call
rebutting medical evidence to support the Crown contention that the
accused was sane and aware of the nature of his acts. The first witness
was Dr. Henry Manton, of Heathfield, who said he saw the accused when he
was brought into the station from Flegne by Police Constable Queensmead.
He seemed perfectly rational, though disinclined to talk.

"Did you find any symptom upon him which pointed to his having recently
suffered from epilepsy of any kind?" asked Sir Herbert.

"No."

"Do you agree with Sir Henry Durwood that between attacks of epilepsy
the patient would exhibit no signs of the disease?" asked Mr.
Middleheath.

"What do you mean by between the attacks?"

"I mean when he had completely recovered from one fit and before the
next came on," explained counsel.

"I quite agree with that," replied the witness.

"How long does it usually take for a man to recover from an attack of
epilepsy?"

"It depends on the severity of the attack."

"Well, take an attack serious enough to cause a man to commit murder."

"It may take hours--five or six hours. He would certainly be drowsy and
heavy for three or four hours afterwards."

"But not longer--he would not show symptoms for thirty-six hours?"

"Certainly not."

"Then, may I take it from you, doctor, that after the five or six hours
recovery after a bad attack an epileptic might show no signs of the
disease--not even to medical eyes--till the next attack?"

"I should say so," replied the witness. "But I am not an authority on
mental diseases."

"Thank you."

The next witness was Dr. Gilbert Horbury, who described himself as
medical officer of His Majesty's prison, Norwich, and formerly medical
officer of the London detention prison. In reply to Sir Herbert
Templewood, he said he had had much experience in cases of insanity and
alleged insanity. He had had the accused in the present case under
observation since the time he had been brought to the gaol. He was very
taciturn, but he was quiet and gentlemanly in his behaviour. His
temperature and pulse were normal, but he slept badly, and twice he
complained of pains in the head. Witness attributed the pains in the
head to the effect of shell-shock. He had seen no signs which suggested,
to his mind, that prisoner was an epileptic. In reply to a direct
question by Sir Herbert Templewood, he expressed his deliberate
professional opinion that the accused was not suffering from epilepsy in
any form. Epilepsy did not start off with a bad attack ending in
violence--or murder. There were premonitory symptoms and slight attacks
extending over a considerable period, which must have manifested
themselves, particularly in the case of a man who had been through an
arduous military campaign. His illness might have had a bad effect on
the brain, but if it had led to mental disease he would have expected it
to show itself before.

From this point of view the witness, a dour, grey figure of a man,
refused to be driven by cross-examination. His many professional years
within the sordid atmosphere of gaol walls had taught him that most
criminals were malingerers by instinct, and that pretended insanity was
the commonest form of their imposition to evade the consequence of
their misdeeds. The number of false cases which had passed through his
hands had led him to the very human conclusion that all such defences
were merely efforts to defraud the law, and, as a zealous officer of the
law, he took a righteous satisfaction in discomfiting them, particularly
when--as in the present instance--the defence was used to shield an
accused of some social standing. For Dr. Horbury's political tendencies
were levelling and iconoclastic, and he had a deep contempt for caste,
titles, and monarchs.

He was too sophisticated as a witness to walk into Mr. Middleheath's
trap and contradict Sir Henry's evidence directly, but he contrived to
convey the impression that his own observation of accused, covering a
period of nine days, was a better guide for the jury in arriving at a
conclusion as to the accused's state of mind than Sir Henry's opinion,
formed after a single and limited opportunity of diagnosing the case. He
also managed to infer, in a gentlemanly professional way, that Sir Henry
Durwood was deservedly eminent in the medical world as a nerve
specialist, rather than as a mental specialist, whereas witness's own
experience in mental cases had been very wide. He talked learnedly of
the difficulty of diagnosing epilepsy except after prolonged
observation, and cited lengthily from big books, which a court constable
brought into court one by one, on symptoms, reflex causes, auras, grand
mal, petit mal, Jacksonian epilepsy, and the like.

The only admission of any value that Mr. Middleheath could extract from
Dr. Horbury was a statement that while he had seen no symptoms in the
prisoner to suggest that he was an epileptic, epileptics did not, as a
rule, show symptoms of the disease between the attack.

"Therefore, assuming the fact that Penreath is subject to epilepsy, you
would not necessarily expect to find any symptoms of the disease during
the time he was awaiting trial?" asked Mr. Middleheath, eagerly
following up the opening.

"Possibly nothing that one could swear to," rejoined the witness, in an
exceedingly dry tone.

Mr. Middleheath essayed no more questions, but got the witness out of
the box as quickly as possible, trusting to his own address to remove
the effect of the evidence on the mind of the jury. At the outset of
that address he pointed out that the case for the Crown rested upon
purely circumstantial evidence, and that nobody had seen the prisoner
commit the murder with which he was charged. The main portion of his
remarks was directed to convincing the jury that the prisoner was the
unhappy victim of epileptic attacks, in which he was not responsible for
his actions. He scouted the theory of motive, as put forward by the
Crown. It was not fair to suggest that the Treasury note which the
accused paid to the servant at the inn was necessarily part of the dead
man's money which had disappeared on the night of the murder and had not
since been recovered. The fact that the accused had been turned out of
the Grand Hotel, for not paying his hotel bill, was put forward by the
Crown to show that he was in a penniless condition, but that assumption
went too far. It might well be that a man in the accused's social
standing would have a pound or two in his pocket, although he might not
be able to meet an hotel bill of L30.

"Can you conceive this young man, this gallant soldier, this heir to an
old and honourable name, with everything in life to look forward to,
committing an atrocious murder for L300?" continued Mr. Middleheath.
"The traditions of his name and race, his upbringing, his recent gallant
career as a soldier, alike forbid the sordid possibility. Moreover, he
had no need to commit a crime to obtain money. His father, his friends,
or the woman who was to be his wife, would have instantly supplied him
with the money he needed, if they had known he was in want. To a young
man in his station of life L300 is a comparatively small sum. Is it
likely that he would have committed murder to obtain it?"

"On the other hand, the prisoner's actions, since returning to England,
strongly suggest that his mind has been giving way for some time past.
He was invalided from the Army suffering from shell-shock, with the
result that his constitution became weakened, and the fatal taint of
inherited epilepsy, which was in his blood, began to manifest itself.
His family doctor and his fiancee have told you that his behaviour was
strange before he left for Norfolk; since coming to Norfolk it has been
unmistakably that of a man who is no longer sane. Was it the conduct of
a sane man to conceal his whereabouts from his friends, and stay at an
hotel without money till he was turned out, when he might have had
plenty of money, or at all events saved himself the humiliation of being
turned out of the hotel, at the cost of a telegram? And why did he
subsequently go miles across country to a remote and wretched inn, where
he had never been before, and beg for a bed for the night? Were these
the acts of a sane man?"

In his peroration Mr. Middleheath laid particular emphasis on the
evidence of Sir Henry Durwood, whose name was known throughout England
as one of the most eminent specialists of his day. Sir Henry Durwood,
Mr. Middleheath pointed out, had seen the prisoner in a fit at the
Durrington hotel, and he emphatically declared that the accused was an
epileptic, with homicidal tendencies. Such an opinion, coming from such
a quarter, was, to Mr. Middleheath's mind, incontrovertible proof of
the prisoner's insanity, and he did not see how the jury could go behind
it in coming to a decision.

Sir Herbert Templewood's address consisted of a dry marshalling of the
facts for and against the theory of insanity. Sir Herbert contended that
the defence had failed to establish their contention that the accused
man was not in his right mind. He impressed upon the jury the decided
opinion of Dr. Horbury, who, as doctor of the metropolitan receiving
gaol, had probably a wider experience of epilepsy and insanity than any
specialist in the world. Dr. Horbury, after nine days close observation
of the accused, had come to the conclusion that he was perfectly sane
and responsible for his actions.

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