LITMIR.BIZ

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and spoke of him as being able to make her do things against her will, having a sort of clairvoyance [sic] over her, or mesmeric influence. There is nothing that I know of to incriminate her in this charge beyond intimacy with Bertrand.

      He did the best he could for the accused woman, but the fact of the confessed relationship between her and Bertrand deprived his testimony of weight. A jury was not likely to be much impressed by his picture of practical Ellen Kinder as the helpless victim of a mesmerist, even though this theory found corroboration in the recollections of the witness who followed him.

      So much for Jackson. Mrs. Robertson, on whose account Bertrand was undergoing imprisonment, spoke of Bertrand’s mesmeric influence, which she had felt upon more than one occasion.

      When I felt a dizziness in my eyes I ran out of the room. I know he has tried to mesmerize me by following me about the house, and looking at me. He compelled me that night to kiss him in the presence of Mrs. Kinder, and made me feel very unwell. Since then I have kissed him to save his wife from violence. He said: “Do you intend to do as I bid you?” I said no. He then called his wife so that he might flog her unless I kissed him, and to save her from violence I did so.

      Mrs. Robertson too had been obliged to listen to threats against Kinder, and to confidences concerning the murder. Bertrand had been at her house on Thursday, the night before Kinder died; he fell on the floor there in a kind of fit, calling: “Bring the milk and mix the poison.” He declared that he must go next day and confess that it was he who fired the shot. He told a fantastic story of having bought pistols at Kinder’s request, that he might fight a duel with Jackson. He maintained that it was Mrs. Kinder’s suggestion that her husband should be shot while Jackson was in the house, in order that the blame might fall on him.

      A chemist was recalled, there was a question or two concerning the poisons generally used in the practice of dentistry, and the case for the Crown, at this first hearing before the magistrates, closed. The magistrates refused to dismiss Mrs. Bertrand, refused bail all round, and committed all three prisoners for trial at the next sitting of the Criminal Court, to be held on Monday, December 18th.

      IX

      Before the prisoners came to trial, Jane Bertrand was set free. There was no evidence that she knew anything of Bertrand’s preparations, and although she was, by her own confession, in the room at the time when the murder was committed, nobody could suppose that she had had any hand in it. Motive lacked wholly. She was aware of the relationship between her husband and Kinder’s wife; it was not to be credited that she should connive at a crime whose sole object was to bring them together, or that she should not do all in her power to hinder a death by which, as she might have suspected, her own was foreshadowed.

      Nor could a sufficient case be made out against Mrs. Kinder. Her letters, though they showed her to be infatuated with Bertrand, nowhere gave any least hint that she shared his guilt as a murderer. Bertrand’s accusations against her, made to Mrs. Robertson, were unsupported; and though she showed some callousness (if Jane’s account is to be believed), walking up and down with Bertrand’s arm round her waist while her husband lay bleeding, and also, according to Mrs. Robertson, driving with Bertrand in a ‘patent safety’ hansom on the Friday that he died, there was no actual proof of her complicity. Jackson’s statement—“there is nothing that I know of to incriminate her in this charge beyond intimacy with Bertrand”—eventually was echoed by the Crown.

      Thus, Bertrand went into the dock of the Central Criminal Court alone.

      Two new facts were brought forward at the trial, and Bert-rand’s counsel, Mr. Dalley, made the very most of both. It was proved that Bertrand, in the three hours which elapsed before a doctor could be found and brought to the wounded man, had staunched the bleeding and bound up Kinder’s head skilfully and carefully; also that Kinder, during the days before his death, asked constantly for Bertrand, saying that he would rather have his services than those of any doctor. It was revealed, also, that Kinder supposed his wife to have shot him. Not for a moment did he behave like a suicide who has been baulked of his purpose, or like a man who knows himself to be the victim of accident; which theory the defence continued to put forward.

      The Lord Chief Justice dealt with these points in his summing up. He warned the jury; told them that there could not be conceived a case which demanded a more entire absence of prejudice, if justice were to be done. After the manner of judges, even those most nearly in touch with common life, he bade the jurymen expunge from their minds all recollection of anything they might have read or heard concerning the prisoner, other than such written or spoken statements as had been offered in evidence in that court. This evidence itself, said he, they must weigh; certain parts of it, such as those which “exhibited a state of almost unparalleled wickedness”, must not be allowed undue importance. Unless they vigorously strove against preconceptions, the prisoner might be deprived of that justice to which as a citizen he was entitled. He then proceeded in these words:

      Regarding him [the prisoner] as the author of the diary, and if you believe this contains the outpourings of his mind, you must not take the picture of this man’s mental state as portrayed by the counsel for the defence; for there is before you, not a man, but a fiend, a monster in human shape. Against this conception you will have to struggle; for though steeped in wickedness and malignity scarcely equalled by the Tempter of mankind, the question to be decided by the evidence is, Did he murder Kinder?

      Having thus made clear his own opinion of the prisoner, the Lord Chief Justice went on to consider, and dispose of, the accident theory. Supposing, said he, that Kinder did himself press the trigger of the pistol at Bertrand’s suggestion; could it be denied that the object and the criminality were the same—the compassing of Kinder’s death? Too many circumstances led to the belief that Bertrand wished him to die; it was difficult to assume, in face of these circumstances, that the result of Kinder pulling the trigger was both unexpected and undesired.

      The staunching of the blood might be allowed to throw a favourable light upon the prisoner; on the other hand, “had he allowed the man who so wounded himself in his presence to bleed to death, he, as a dentist acquainted with the means to stop haemorrhage, might conceive that he ran some risk.” The staunching of the blood, therefore, though inconsistent with the idea of guilt, was not conclusive of innocence.

      The defence pleaded that only an innocent man could have prosecuted Jackson for threats which it was in Jackson’s power to execute. His Honour disagreed; a man not in full possession of his senses equally might do so, or a man to whom the gratification of revenge meant more than his own safety might do so. “This point, like that of the staunching of the blood, rests on the threshold of your deliberations, and you must get rid of it before proceeding to other matters.”

      After dealing with the evidence of Jackson, His Honour delivered a further expression of opinion. “There is perhaps nothing so revolting in this case as the fact that this woman [Mrs. Kinder], whilst living with her husband, should be challenged to express her preference for one of two paramours in their presence.”

      He then passed to the diary, from which he read extracts. “Those passages in which he speaks of what the power of love can perform are pure nonsense, befitting only a madman.” His Honour, in fact, laid no great stress upon the evidence offered by the diary, except in so far as it clearly depicted the state of mind of the writer, which was not that of a normal person.

      In conclusion, he urged the jury to decide whether Bertrand’s own confession (alleged to have been made to his sister) was to be believed, and warned them that confessions were rarely to be relied on. They must set this confession beside other circumstances offered in evidence; and only if they found that these circumstances corroborated the confession, should they allow it any weight. With the usual adjuration to allow the prisoner the benefit of any doubts they might have, His Honour dismissed the jury at one o’clock.

      At two o’clock the foreman reappeared, to announce that there was no likelihood of any agreement being reached. His Honour adjourned the court for three hours. At five, and again at six, they were still undecided. An hour later they were locked up for the night. At ten next morning, after a night of argument, the position of the two opposing parties was unchanged. His Honour had no alternative; he dismissed

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