Below Suspicion Read Online Free PDF Page A

the public gallery the spectators sat motionless, like dingy dummies; none would leave lest he lose his place. A verdict of Guilty, of course, would provide them the greatest lip-licking thrill as they watched the prisoner. A verdict of Not Guilty held less drama.
    Below the public gallery, in the long tier of benches reserAcd for counsel, Patrick Butler also sat motionless towards the left-hand side of the front bench.
    He was alone there. His grey-white wig, with its couple of precise curls at the sides, framed an expressionless face. His shoulders did not move under the black silk gown. He looked steadily at the wrist-watch on the desk-ledge in front of him.
    Why didn't that jury come back? Why didn't that jury come hack?
    He wasn't going to lose the case, of course. That would be unthinkable. Besides, he had wiped the floor with poor old Tuff\' Lowdnes— that is, Mr. Theodore Lowdnes, K.C., who had been instructed bv the Department of Public Prosecutions and led for the Crown. All the same. . . .
    Why was he so concerned about the infernal case, anyway?
    Patrick Butler glanced towards his left: towards the enormous dock, now empt}', whose waist-high ledge was enclosed with glass walls on every side except that facing the judge. Two matrons, who guarded Joyce Ellis there, had taken her below to the cells while awaiting the verdict.
    Well, it was certain now she was in love with him. For some reason this infuriated him. He could not understand her strange attitude, her strange replies to his questions, during the past two weeks.
    And Butler's mind moved back to yesterday moming at ten o'clock— the opening of the trial which had now concluded. Again he heard the whispers, the rustlings, as benches of barristers' wigs nodded towards each other like grotesque flowers. Again he saw the 'red' judge on the bench, in the tall chair just to the left under the gold-gleaming Sword of State.
    And again the chant of an usher:
    ''li anyone can inform my Lords the King's Justices, or the King's Attorney-General, ere this inquest he taken between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, of any treasons, murders, ielonies, or misdemeanours done or committed by the prisoner at the bar, let them come forth and they shall he heard; for the prisoner now stands at the bar upon her deliverance. And all persons who are bound by recognizance to prosecute or give evidence against the prisoner at the bar, let them come forth, prosecute, and give evidence, or they shall iorieit their recognizance. God save the King/"
    The Clerk of the Court rose to his cadaverous height below the judge's bench. He faced the dock across the long, crowded solicitors' table in the well of the court.
    "Joyce Leslie Ellis, you are charged with the murder of Mildred Hoffman Taylor on the night of February 22nd last. Joyce Leslie Ellis, are you guilty or not guilty?"
    Joyce, standing up in the dock between the two matrons, was a surprisingly vivid figure in her 'best' clothes of a brown tailored suit and yellow knitted sweater. But she did not lift her eyes.
    "I—I plead not guilty" she answered.
    "You may sit down," said the judge, indicating tlie chair behind her.
    Mr. Justice Stoneman, whose wig might have been real hair for his wrinkled old face, seemed a small and remote figure under the scarlet robe. The jury, eleven men and one woman, were quickly sworn without a challenge from either side. Mr. Theodore Lowdnes, a short and stout man with a pontifical cough, arose to open the case for the Crown.
    "May it please your lordship; members of the jury."
    Mr. Lowdnes's opening speech was studiously fair, studiously moderate, as all such speeches must be. But he was knowTi as a bustler, a pusher. For all his quiet-voiced "We shall attempt to show—" and "I suggest—" he drew the picture of a woman, furiously angry and fearful of losing a bequest of five hundred pounds, who had poisoned her benefactor and then had listened without emotion to peals of