The Shrieking Pit

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The general opinion among the bunch of legal wigs which gathered
together at the barristers' table as Sir Herbert Templewood resumed his
seat was that the issue had been very closely fought on both sides, and
that the verdict would depend largely upon the way the judge summed up.

His lordship commenced his summing up by informing the jury that in the
first place they must be satisfied that the prisoner was the person who
killed Mr. Glenthorpe. He did not think they would have much difficulty
on that head, because, although the evidence was purely circumstantial,
it pointed strongly to the accused, and the defence had not seriously
contested the charge. Therefore, if they were satisfied that the accused
did, in fact, cause the death of Mr. Glenthorpe, the only question that
remained for them to decide was the state of the prisoner's mind at the
time. If they were satisfied that he was not insane at the time, they
must find him guilty of murder. If, however, they came to the conclusion
that he was insane at the time he committed the act, they would return
a verdict that he was guilty of the act charged against him, but that he
was insane at the time.

His lordship painstakingly defined the difference between sanity and
insanity in the eyes of the law, but though his precise and legal
definition called forth appreciative glances from the lawyers below him,
it is doubtful whether the jury were much wiser for the explanation.
After reviewing the evidence for the prosecution at considerable length,
his lordship then proceeded, with judicial impartiality, to state the
case for the defence. The case for the prisoner, he said, was that he
had been strange or eccentric ever since he returned from the front
suffering from shell-shock, that his eccentricity deepened into
homicidal insanity, and that he committed the act of which he stood
charged while suffering under an attack of epilepsy, which produced a
state of mind that led the sufferer to commit an act of violence without
understanding what he was doing. In view of the nature of this defence
the jury were bound to look into the prisoner's family and hereditary
history, and into his own acts before the murder, before coming to a
conclusion as to his state of mind.

The defence, he thought, had proved sufficient to enable the jury to
draw the conclusion that Lady Penreath, the mother of the prisoner, was
an epileptic. The assertion that the prisoner was an epileptic rested
upon the evidence of Sir Henry Durwood, for the evidence of Miss
Willoughby and the family doctor went no further than to suggest a
slight strangeness or departure from the prisoner's usual demeanour. Sir
Henry Durwood, by reason of his professional standing, was entitled to
be received with respect, but he had himself admitted that he had had no
previous opportunity of diagnosing the case of accused, and that it was
difficult to form an exact opinion in a disease like epilepsy. Dr.
Horbury, on the other hand, had declared that the prisoner showed
nothing symptomatic of epilepsy while awaiting remand. In Dr. Horbury's
opinion, he was not an epileptic. Therefore the case resolved itself
into a direct conflict of medical testimony, and it was for the jury to
decide, and form a conclusion as to the man's state of mind in
conjunction with the other evidence.

"The contention for the defence," continued his lordship, leaning
forward and punctuating his words with sharp taps of his fountain pen on
the desk in front of him, "is this: 'Look at this case fairly and
clearly, and you are bound to come to the conclusion that this man is
not in a sound frame of mind.' The prosecution, on the other hand, say,
'The facts of this case do not point to insanity at all, but to
deliberate murder for gain.' The defence urge further, 'You have got to
look at the probabilities. No man in prisoner's position, a gentleman by
birth and upbringing, the heir of an old and proud name, with a hitherto
unblemished reputation, and the prospects of a long and not
inconspicuous career in front of him, would in his senses have murdered
this old man.' That is a matter for you to consider, because we do know
that brutal crimes are committed by the most unlikely persons. But the
prosecution also allege motive, and you must consider the question of
motive. It is suggested, and it is for you to consider whether rightly
or wrongly suggested, that there was a motive in killing this man,
because the prisoner was absolutely penniless and wanted to get money."

"Gentlemen, you will first apply your minds to considering all the
evidence, and you will next consider whether you are satisfied that the
prisoner knew the difference between right and wrong so far as the act
with which he is charged is concerned. You must decide whether he knew
the nature and quality of the act, and whether he knew the difference
between that act being right, and that act being wrong. I have already
pointed out to you that the law presumes him to be of sane mind, and
able to distinguish between right and wrong, and it is for him to
satisfy you, if he is to escape responsibility for this act, that he
could not tell whether it was right or wrong. If you are satisfied of
that, you ought to say that he is guilty of the act alleged, but insane
at the time it was committed. If you are not satisfied on that point,
then it is your duty to find him guilty of murder. Gentlemen, you will
kindly retire and consider your verdict."

The jury retired, and there ensued a period of tension, which the
lawyers employed in discussing the technicalities of the case and the
probabilities of an acquittal. Mr. Oakham thought an acquittal was a
certainty, but Mr. Middleheath, with a deeper knowledge of the ways of
provincial juries, declared that the defence would have stood a better
chance of success before a London jury, because Londoners had more
imagination than other Englishmen.

"You never can tell how a d----d muddle-headed country jury will decide
a highly technical case like this," said the K.C. peevishly. "I've lost
stronger cases than this before a Norfolk jury. Norfolk men are
clannish, and Horbury's evidence carried weight. He is a Norfolk man,
though he has been in London. One never knows, of course. If the jury
remain out over an hour I think we will pull it off."

But the jury returned into court after an absence of forty minutes. The
judge, who was waiting in his private room, was informed, and he entered
the court and resumed his seat. The jury answered to their names, and
then the Clerk of Arraigns, in a sing-song voice, said:

"Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict? Do you find the prisoner
guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?"

"Guilty!" answered the foreman, in a loud, clear voice.

"You say that he is guilty of murder, and that is the verdict of you
all?"

"That is the verdict of us all," was the response.

"James Ronald Penreath," continued the clerk, turning to the accused
man, and speaking in the same sing-song tones of one who repeated a
formula by rote, "you stand convicted of the crime of wilful murder.
Have you anything to say for yourself why the Court should not give you
judgment of death according to law?"

The man in the dock, who had turned very pale, merely shook his head.

The judge, with expressionless face and in an expressionless voice,
pronounced sentence of death.

CHAPTER XVII

Colwyn returned to Durrington in a perplexed and dissatisfied frame of
mind. The trial, which he had attended and followed closely, had failed
to convince him that all the facts concerning the death of Roger
Glenthorpe had been brought to light. Really, the trial had not been a
trial at all, but merely a battle of lawyers about the state of
Penreath's mind.

If Penreath was really sane--and Colwyn, who had watched him closely
during the trial, believed that he was--the Crown theory of the murder
by no means accounted for all the amazing facts of the case.

Should he have done more? Colwyn asked himself this question again and
again. But that query always led to another one--_Could_ he have done
more? In his mental probings the detective could rarely get away from
the point--and when he did get away from it he always returned to
it--that Penreath, by his dogged silence, had been largely responsible
for his own conviction. If a man, charged with murder, refused to
account for actions which pointed to him as the murderer, how could
anybody help him? Silence, in certain circumstances, was the strongest
presumptive proof of guilt. A man was the best judge of his own actions
and, if he refused to speak when his own life might pay the forfeit for
silence, he must have the strongest possible reason for holding his
tongue. What other reason could Penreath have except the consciousness
of guilt, and the hope of escaping the consequences through a loop-hole
of the law?

Colwyn, however, was unable to accept this line of argument as
conclusive, so he tried to put the case out of his mind. But the
unsolved points of the mystery--the points that he himself had
discovered during his visit to the inn--kept returning to his mind at
all sorts of odd times, in the night, and during his walks. And each
recurrence was accompanied by the consciousness that he had not done his
best in the case, but had allowed the silence of the accused man to
influence his judgment and slacken his efforts to unravel the clues he
had originally discovered. Thus he travelled back to his starting-point,
that the conviction of Penreath had not solved the mystery of the murder
of Roger Glenthorpe.

The hotel and its guests bored him. The season was over, and the few
people who remained were elderly and commonplace, prone to overeating,
and to falling asleep round the lounge fire after dinner. The only
topics of conversation were the weather, the war, and food. Sometimes
the elderly clergyman, who still lingered, though the other golfers had
gone, sought to turn the conversation to golf, but nobody listened to
him except his wife, who sat opposite to him in the warmest part of the
lounge placidly knitting socks for the War Comforts Fund. The Flegne
murder and its result were not discussed; by tacit mutual understanding
the guests never referred to the unpleasant fact that they had lived for
some weeks under the same roof with a man who had since been declared a
murderer by the laws of his country.

Colwyn decided to return to London, although the month he had allowed
himself for a holiday was not completed. He was restless and uneasy and
bored, and he thought that immersion in work would help him to forget
the Glenthorpe case. He came to this decision at breakfast one morning.
Within an hour he had paid his bill, received the polite regrets of the
proprietor at his departure, and was motoring leisurely southward along
the cliff road towards its junction with the main London road.

Important consequences frequently spring from trifling incidents.
Colwyn, turning his car to the side of the road to avoid a flock of
sheep, punctured a tyre on a sharp jagged piece of rock concealed in the
loose sand at the side of the road. He had not a spare tyre on the car,
and the shepherd informed him that the nearest town where he could hope
to get the tyre replaced was Faircroft, but even that was doubtful,
because Faircroft was a small town without a garage, and the one
tradesman who did motor-car repairs was, just as likely as not, without
the right kind of tyres, or equally likely to have none at all. As he
had left Durrington barely three miles behind Colwyn decided to return
there, to have the car repaired, and defer his departure till the
following day.

He reached Durrington with a deflated tyre, took the car to the garage,
and then went back to the hotel. It wanted nearly an hour to lunch-time,
and on his way in he paused at the office window to inform the clerk
that he had returned, and would stay till the following day. The
proprietor was in the office, checking some figures. The latter looked
up as Colwyn informed the lady clerk of his altered plans, and informed
him that a young lady had been at the hotel inquiring for him shortly
after his departure.

"What was her name?" asked the detective, in some surprise.

"She didn't give her name. She seemed very disappointed when she learnt
that you had departed for London, and went away at once."

"What was she like?"

The proprietor and the lady clerk described her at the same time. In the
former's eyes the visitor had appeared pretty and young with golden hair
and a very clear complexion. The lady clerk, without the least departure
from the standard of courtesy imposed upon her by her position, managed
to indicate that the impression made upon her feminine mind was that of
a white-faced girl with red hair. From both descriptions Colwyn had no
difficulty in identifying the visitor as Peggy.

Why had she come to Durrington to see him? Obviously the visit was
connected with the murder at the inn. Colwyn recalled his last
conversation with her on the marshes the day after he had seen her come
out of the dead man's room.

He hurried out in the hope of finding her. She had probably come by
train from Leyland, and would go back the same way. Colwyn looked at his
watch. It was a quarter past twelve, and there was no train back to
Leyland till half-past one--so much Colwyn remembered from his study of
the local time-table. Therefore, unless she had walked back to Flegne
she should not be difficult to find--probably she was somewhere on the
cliffs, or near the sea. Somehow, Peggy seemed to belong to the sea and
Nature. It was difficult to picture her in a conventional setting.

It was by the sea that he found her, sitting in one of the shelters on
the parade, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking listlessly at a
fisher-boat putting out from the yellow sands below. She glanced round
at the sound of his footsteps, and, seeing who it was, came out from the
shelter and advanced to meet him.

"They told me at the hotel somebody had been asking for me, and I
guessed it was you. You wanted to see me?"

"Yes." She did not express any surprise at his return, as another girl
would, but stood with her hands still clasped in front of her, and a
look of entreaty in her eyes. Colwyn noticed that her face had grown
thinner, and that in the depths of her glance there lurked a troubled
shadow.

"Shall we walk a little and you can tell me what you wish to say?"

"It is very kind of you."

He turned away from the front and towards the cliffs, judging that the
girl would feel more disposed to talk freely away from human habitation
and people. They went on for some distance in silence, the girl walking
with a light quick step, looking straight in front of her, as though
immersed in thought.

They reached a part of the cliffs where a low wall divided the foreland
from an old churchyard which was fast crumbling into the sea. Peggy
paused with her hand on the wall, and looked seaward. The sun, piercing
a rift in the dark clouds, lighted the sullen grey waters with patches
of gold. Colwyn, in the hope of inducing his companion to talk, pointed
out the beautiful effect of the light and shadow on the sea.

"I hate the sea! I have never looked at it since the war started without
seeing the many, many dead sailor boys at the bottom, staring up with
their dead eyes through the weight of waters for a God of Justice in the
heavens, and looking in vain." She turned her eyes from the sea, and
looked at him passionately. "You do not care about the sea, either. You
are only trying to put me at my ease--to help me say what I want to
say. It is kind of you, but it is not necessary. I feel I can trust
you--I must trust you. I am only a girl and there is nobody else in the
world I dare trust. It is about--_him_. Have you seen him? Have you
spoken to him? Did he speak about me?"

"I saw him only at the trial," replied Colwyn, with his ready
comprehension. "I had no opportunity of speaking to him alone."

"I read about the trial in the paper," she went on. "They said that he
was mad in order to try and save him, but he is not mad--he was too good
and kind to be mad. Oh, why did he kill Mr. Glenthorpe? Will they kill
him for that? You are clever, can you not save him? I have come to beg
you to save him. Ever since they took him away I have seen his eyes
wherever I go, looking at me reproachfully, as though calling upon me to
save him. Last night, while I was in my grandmother's room, I thought I
saw him standing there, and heard his voice, just as he used to speak.
And in the night I woke up and thought I heard him whisper, 'Peggy, it
is better to tell the truth.' This morning I could endure it no longer,
and I came across to find you."

"You have known him before, then?"

"Yes." The girl met Colwyn's grave glance with clear, unafraid eyes. "I
did not tell you before, not because I was afraid to trust you, for I
liked you from the first, but I was afraid that if I told you all you
would think him guilty, and not try to help him. And when you spoke to
me on the marshes that day you believed he might be innocent."

"How do you know that?"

"I heard you say so to that police officer--Superintendent
Galloway--after dinner the first night you were at Flegne. I was passing
the bar parlour when you and he were talking about the murder, and I
heard you say that you thought somebody else might have done it. The day
after, when you saw me on the marshes, I was frightened to tell you the
truth, because I thought if you knew it you might go away and not try to
save him."

"You had better tell the whole truth to me now. Nothing you can now say
will make it worse for Penreath, and it may be possible to help him.
When did you first meet him?"

"Nearly three weeks before--it happened. I used to go out for long
walks, when I could get away from grandmother, and this day I walked
nearly as far as Leyland. He came walking along the sands a little while
afterwards, and he looked at me as he passed. Presently he came back
again, and stopped to ask me if there was a shorter way back to
Durrington than by the coast road. I told him I didn't know, and he
stopped to talk to me for a while. He told me he was in Norfolk for a
holiday, and was spending the time in country rambles.

"I will tell you the whole truth. I returned to the headland next day in
the hope that I might see him again. After I had been there a little
while I saw him walking along the sands. He waved his hand when he saw
me, as though we had been old friends, and that afternoon we stayed
talking much longer.

"I saw him nearly every afternoon after that--whenever I could get away
I walked down to the headland, and he was always there. The spot where
we used to meet was hidden from the road by some fir-trees, and I do not
think we were ever seen by anybody. He told me all about himself, but I
did not tell him anything about myself or my home. I knew he was a
gentleman, and I thought if I told him that my father kept an inn he
might not want to see me any more, and I could not bear that. I told
him my Christian name, and he liked it, and used to call me by it, but I
would not tell him my other name.

"The night that he came to the inn I met him in the afternoon at the
headland as usual, and we stayed talking until it was time for me to go
home. He was very troubled that day, and it grieved me to see him
looking so white and ill. When I questioned him he told me that he had
been slightly ill that morning, and that he was very much worried about
money matters. I felt very unhappy to think that he was troubled about
money, and when he saw that he said he was sorry he had told me.

"When I left him it was later than usual. I was supposed to look after
my grandmother every afternoon, and when I went to the headland I
usually got Ann to sit in her room until I returned. I was always
careful to get back before my father came in from fishing on the
marshes. He would have been very angry if he had returned and found me
absent, and I should not have been able to get out again. It was nearly
four that afternoon when I left the headland, and I walked very quick so
as to be back in time. It was getting on towards dusk when I reached
home.

"I went straight up to my grandmother's room, so that Ann could go down
and get dinner for Mr. Glenthorpe, who usually came in about dark. I sat
with grandmother till past six o'clock, and then, as Ann hadn't brought
grandmother's tea, I went down to the kitchen to get it myself. Ann was
very busy getting dinner, and she told me a young gentleman had arrived
at the inn half an hour before, and he was going to dine upstairs with
Mr. Glenthorpe, and stay for the night. I was surprised, for we rarely
had visitors at the inn. I asked Ann some questions about him, but she
could tell me very little. Charles, the waiter, came into the kitchen to
get the things ready to take upstairs, and he told me that the visitor
was young, good-looking, and seemed a gentleman.

"I got grandmother's tea ready, and was carrying it along the passage
from the kitchen when I fancied I heard Mr. Penreath's voice in the bar
parlour. I thought at first that I must be mistaken; then the door of
the parlour opened, and Mr. Glenthorpe and Mr. Penreath came out. I was
so surprised and frightened that I almost dropped the tray I was
carrying. If they had looked down the side passage they would have seen
me. But he and Mr. Glenthorpe turned the other way, and went upstairs.
Then Charles came along carrying a dinner tray, and went upstairs also.
I knew then that Mr. Penreath was the gentleman who was going to dine
with Mr. Glenthorpe, and stay the night.

"I did not know what to do. I took grandmother's tea upstairs, and crept
past the room where they were having dinner, because I did not want him
to see me till I had made up my mind what to do. The door was shut, and
they couldn't see me, though I could hear them talking inside. When I
got to my grandmother's room I tried to think what was best to do. My
first thought was that he had found out who I was. Then it seemed to me
that he might have come by accident, in some way that I didn't
understand, because why should he dine with Mr. Glenthorpe, and stay
with him, if he had come to see me? Then I wondered if it were possible
that he knew Mr. Glenthorpe, who was a gentleman like himself, and had
come to ask him to help him. I had never told him anything about Mr.
Glenthorpe or myself.

"I determined to try and see him that night to let him know that the inn
was my home. If he had come to the inn by accident it was better that he
should not meet me in front of my father, because in his surprise he
might say that he had met me before. My father would have been very
angry if he knew I had been meeting a stranger. So I went along the
passage several times in the hope of seeing him as he came from dinner.
But once my father was going into the room where they were having
dinner, and he nearly saw me, so I dared not go again.

"A little after ten o'clock my grandmother began to get restless, as she
always does when a storm is coming on, and I had to stay with her to
keep her quiet. I can do more with her than anybody else when she is
like that, and it is not safe to leave her. Sometimes my father goes and
sits with her a while before he goes to bed, but this night he did not.
She got very bad as the storm came on, and while it lasted I sat
alongside of her holding her hand and soothing her. After about half an
hour the rain ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and grandmother
fell asleep. I knew she was all right until the morning, so I left her
for the night.

"As I turned to go to my room, I thought I saw a light in the other
passage, and I went down to see what it was. I thought perhaps Mr.
Penreath might be waiting up reading before going to bed.

"I crept along to the bend of the passage, and looked down it, thinking
perhaps I might see him and speak to him. There was nobody in the
passage, but the door of Mr. Glenthorpe's room was half open and a light
was streaming through it.

"I do not know really what took me to Mr. Glenthorpe's room. I have
tried to think it out clearly since, but I cannot. I know I was
distressed and troubled about Mr. Penreath's presence at the inn, and I
was afraid he would be cross and angry with me for not having told him
the truth about myself. And before that, when I was walking home after
meeting him that afternoon, I had been unhappy about his wanting money,
and wished that I could do something to help him. These thoughts kept
going through my head as I sat with grandmother during the storm.

"When I saw the door of Mr. Glenthorpe's room open, and the light
burning, all these thoughts seemed to come back into my head together. I
remembered how good and kind Mr. Glenthorpe had always been to me. I had
heard my father tell Charles that morning that Mr. Glenthorpe had gone
to the bank at Heathfield that day to draw out a large sum of money to
buy Mr. Cranley's field.

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