LITMIR.BIZ

      Mace said he had never seen Steward intoxicated; he was a temperate man. The most he had ever seen him drink was two stengahs (whisky and soda) a day.

      For the first time since the trial began, Mrs Proudlock now took the stand in her own defence. Speaking in a weak voice, she said she had known Steward for two years, during which time he had dined at her home on many occasions.

      A day later, she seemed more in charge of herself, answering questions in a voice that no longer wavered. When she rose to fetch The Agnostic’s Apology, she told the court, Steward grabbed her and said, ‘Never mind the book. You look bonnie. I love you.’

      Mrs Proudlock now broke down and, hiding her face in her hands, ‘wept bitterly’. She said it had been her intention to fire over Steward’s head. (Later she would say she didn’t know the gun was loaded.) She had not wanted to hurt Steward; her intention was only to frighten him.

      ‘Do you remember’, she was asked by Hastings Rhodes, the public prosecutor, ‘standing over the body of Mr Steward some seconds before firing?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I suggest you fired three shots into Mr Steward’s body while he lay on the ground. You must have stood over the body anything from three to ten seconds before making up your mind to fire.’

      Mrs Proudlock said she had no memory of standing anywhere. After firing that first shot on the verandah, she became oblivious.

      Asked by Rhodes if she had visited Salak South when her husband was in Hong Kong for three weeks in 1909, she said she had not.

      ‘Do you remember spending a night at Salak South and having breakfast there in the morning?’

      ‘No.’

      She did admit, however, that during her husband’s absence, Steward once visited her. But on that occasion, she said, there were several other people present. And, she added, the evening had been miserable. She denied that she and Steward had spent part of that evening alone together in a car. She said she and her guests had gone for a drive in the Lake Gardens, but she had been in one car and Steward in another.

      The suggestion that she and Steward had been lovers seems to have upset Mrs Proudlock far more than the altogether more serious charge that she had killed him. Speaking through her counsel, she told the judge she would much rather be convicted of capital murder than leave the court bearing the taint of adultery.

      Sercombe Smith, who during this trial seems to have thought of little but Mrs Proudlock’s low-cut gown, now intervened to ask if she were wearing ‘any underthing’ the night Steward died.

      Mrs Proudlock answered that she was wearing a chemise and stockings.

      ‘Was it your custom to do so?’

      ‘Yes, whenever I wore an evening tea gown.’

      Then she wasn’t wearing drawers?

      ‘It is my habit not to wear drawers when I wear a frock with thick lining.’

      On 15 June, Dr McGregor took the stand again and testified that when he examined Mrs Proudlock on 24 April, her expression had been one of restrained terror. When he asked her how she felt, she said, ‘This is a horrible incident, and it’s not yet finished. It seems as if someone is gripping my brain. If it does not stop, I shall go mad.’

      The last person to give evidence was Thomas Cooper, the doctor who performed Steward’s post-mortem. He found ‘no signs of recent sexual connection’, he said; ‘there were smegma on Steward’s prepuce, but no spermatozoa on the body.’ Cooper then undermined his value as a witness by claiming that, to rape a woman, a man would first have to render her unconscious. ‘Even though a man may overpower a woman and put her on the ground and be within an inch of accomplishing his purpose, the slightest movements of a woman’s buttocks would prevent his purpose being carried out.’

      Summing up for the defence, J. G. T. Pooley described the Proudlocks as living ‘on the most harmonious terms’. The prosecutor, he said, claimed that Steward’s visit had been arranged. But where was the proof? It was possible, he conceded, that when Steward arrived at the bungalow that night, ‘some little smile’ on Mrs Proudlock’s part may have led him to believe ‘he was being graciously received’. It was not unknown, he added, for men to make this kind of mistake.

      Killing Steward was the least of her intentions, he said. She wished only to be rid of him. An emotional, hysterical woman, she became mad with terror and lost all sense of what she was doing. The person in the dock was but a young girl, he went on. A young girl with a baby face. Did she look like someone who would commit a deliberate, atrocious murder? Of course not. Such a thing was impossible to imagine for the very good reason that she had absolutely no motive. When she fired, she had no idea what she was doing. Steward’s attack on her modesty had deprived her of judgement and reason.

      ‘I submit to you, gentlemen,’ Pooley went on, ‘that in this country where there are few white ladies and many men,’ there are times when a woman must act to protect herself. ‘And I ask you to say that a man who made such an attack on a virtuous woman is a brute, a beast; nay lower than a beast. He is a snake, and I ask you to say that one should no more hesitate to kill such a noxious animal than one should a snake. I ask you in the name of all that is manly, all that is straightforward, if you believe the deceased did commit that abominable outrage on the accused to say she was justified in brushing it away, crushing and absolutely extinguishing it.’

      It was a good speech, though not good enough to convince the judge. At 4.47 on 16 June, Sercombe Smith, having finished reviewing the evidence, turned to his assessors, P. F. Wise and R. C. M. Kindersley.

      ‘Mr Wise,’ he asked, his voice barely audible in the packed courtroom, ‘have you considered your verdict on the charge of murder?’

      Wise answered that he had. ‘My verdict says she is guilty.’

      The judge now addressed Kindersley. ‘Mr Kindersley, have you considered your verdict on the charge of murder?’