LITMIR.BIZ

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Even in gaping he would imitate the roar of a tiger and had done it in the street.… Bertrand often told me, at that time, that he had a great mind to murder Mrs. Bertrand and say I had done it.

      VII

      This evidence concerning poison was something quite unexpected by the public. The verdict at the inquest had been death by shooting, and the possibility that Kinder might have died from any other cause had not been considered. The Crown witnesses were elusive on this point. A chemist who had analysed the contents of the stomach found no traces of poison, but stated that, since certain vegetable poisons rapidly decomposed in the stomach, this analysis did not rule out the possibility that they had been employed. He was asked if aconite or belladonna came within this category of untraceable substances. (Aconite and belladonna were found in Bertrand’s surgery.) He replied that they did; that one or the other might have been administered, as was asserted, on October 6th; but that now, two months later, it was a matter impossible to be proved.

      The Crown accordingly let this point go, and called up the surgeons who had performed the post-mortem. They agreed as to the nature and direction of the wound. The shot had blown off the ear and broken the lower jaw; the brain itself was not touched. In short, of such a wound a man in good health and of temperate habits need not have died. But Kinder was not in good health, and he had been drinking heavily for months. He had lost a good deal of blood, and to this haemorrhage, with the shock and subsequent exhaustion, all three doctors attributed his death.

      On one matter they disagreed, and here was a point eagerly caught at by the defence, since it seemed to square with what Bertrand had told Burne on the evening of the murder. Bertrand’s story then was, that the whole affair was an accident, and that the pistol had been charged with powder and a wad only. No bullet had, in fact, been found in the skull by the doctors who conducted the post-mortem examination. Was it possible, asked Mr. Robberds, for the defence, that Kinder might have done as was suggested, pulled the trigger of a pistol charged but not loaded, and that the wound, which extended from the top of the ear to the lower angle of the jaw, could have been caused by gunpowder and wadding only?

      Dr. Alloway, who had served in the Crimea, and had seen many gunshot wounds during his service in India as an army surgeon, gave it as his opinion that such a thing was not possible. He maintained that the external condyle of the lower jaw showed marks of having been struck by some hard substance at the point of fracture; and that wadding from a pistol could never have broken so thick a bone, no matter how great the charge of powder behind it.

      Dr. Allayne did not see “anything to indicate that the injury was caused by a round substance such as a bullet”. The force of the explosion alone, he declared, was sufficient to cause such a wound—that is, if the pistol were held close to the head.

      Dr. Eichler came to the conclusion that the wound had been self-inflicted, but would not give an opinion as to whether or no it was a bullet that had caused the damage to the jawbone.

      If the description of the direction of the wound is correct, it is difficult to see how it could have been self-inflicted. The bullet, or wad, whichever caused the damage, had entered behind the right ear, detaching the ear itself from the scalp, and continued its course forward and downward to break the jawbone on the right side. It is quite extraordinarily difficult for a man to hold a pistol so as to inflict such a wound upon himself; the trigger must be pulled with the thumb, and the head must be turned down and to the left at a painful angle. On the other hand, if the shot were fired by a right-handed man standing behind a seated man, the direction of the wound is easily accounted for. (According to Jane Bertrand’s story, Kinder was seated, and Bertrand standing or strolling, at the time when she heard the shot fired.) There is the possibility that a suicide might point the barrel of his weapon at his jaw; but the doctors were agreed, from the evidences of powder blackening, that the missile, whatever it may have been, entered behind the ear.

      It might be supposed that the case for the Crown was by this time strong enough; but there were two more witnesses to come. Francis Arthur Jackson was brought to Sydney from Parramatta Gaol to give evidence concerning the triangular relationship between Kinder, his wife, and Bertrand. Agnes Mary Robertson, whose charge of using threatening language had brought Bertrand to Darlinghurst, appeared to testify to the dentist’s frantic and unreasonable rages.

      VIII

      Jackson had an unsavoury story to tell. He had known the Kinders in New Zealand, where he had been intimate with the woman; this intimacy was resumed when, six months before the date of Kinder’s death, he came to live in their house on the North Shore. Bertrand was a frequent and difficult visitor, who showed his feeling for Ellen Kinder very plainly, and made it clear to Jackson that he would not tolerate a rival.

      During a conversation with Mrs. Kinder, as she saw Bertrand coming in she said I had better go. I said no, I thought not. I asked her when Bertrand was there which of the two men she preferred. Bertrand would not speak to me at first.… He asked Mrs. Kinder if she cared for him, and she bowed her head. He said he wished to remove any thought from my mind that Mrs. Kinder had cared for me from the moment she saw him.

      On another occasion while I was lying in bed and he was standing at the foot of it he reiterated how very fond he was of Mrs. Kinder, that he would do anything for her, and I must not be surprised at anything I might hear after I went away. He had given me some money to go away, and said: “You would not like to be implicated in a charge for the murder of Kinder?” I said: “No, I should think it impossible.” He said if I stayed in Sydney I might be implicated. I said it was impossible, and he said there were many stranger things in the country than that. He said in a year of two he would marry Mrs. Kinder. I said it was impossible, her husband being alive. He said: “All things are possible, and time will show.”

      Bertrand offered to pay my passage to Melbourne, and held the threat over me that if I did not go I might be implicated in Kinder’s death, and remarked about the Devil having a strong will.

      Jackson went to West Maitland, apparently moved by this threat. It is odd to see with what assurance Bertrand shifted about the pieces in his lunatic game, and difficult to account for their docility. Jane’s submissiveness came from terror, or possibly from the administration of drugs; her stupors and dozings, which were observed not only by her sister-in-law but by visitors to the house, seem to lend colour to this explanation. She was wholly in Bertrand’s power, and so maintained by his occasional and mysterious threats against the children. Not so Burne, an employee, who could leave his service when he chose; a young man with his wits about him, and over whose head Bertrand held no threat, so far as the evidence goes. And not so Jackson, another free agent.

      Yet Burne did errands which he must have known were dangerous, and escorted his employer on expeditions whose confessed object was murder. Jackson, who was in a strong position to defy him, established as he was in the Kinder’s house, and the lover of Mrs. Kinder; Jackson who had only to report these threats to the police to be rid of his rival; Jackson took himself out of the way obediently, and for a time held his tongue. True, he wrote a blackmailing letter later, when he learned of the coroner’s verdict on Kinder; but he was not a subtle man, and there is no reason to suppose that he took himself off in order to leave Bertrand free to commit a murder from which he thus might draw some profit. Nor was it a fact that he was tired of Mrs. Kinder. He was still intent upon her, and took such steps as he might to see her alone.

      After my intimacy with Mrs. Kinder commenced I had an object in getting him [Kinder] to drink to excess. That was, to get him stupid so as to afford me opportunities for interviews or intimacy with Mrs. Kinder. The human mind is very base. I was base enough for that. By constant drinking with him I thought it would shorten his days. It would shorten anybody’s days.

      That Mrs. Kinder had anything to do with the murder he refused to believe. She had constantly tried to prevent Kinder from drinking in New Zealand and after they came to Sydney. She was not present at any of the conversations when Bertrand hinted that Kinder might die. She had tried to do her duty as a wife.

      I remember her saying that she would rather not have anything to do with either of us, that she intended to do her duty as a wife. At that time she requested me to leave her, and never to come near her again. Any interviews I had with her were of my own

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