The case for the prosecution was completed on the Saturday evening, Mrs Bunce having been examined as the last witness on that side. She was only called upon to say that her lodger had been in the habit of letting himself in and out of her house at all hours with a latch-key — but she insisted on saying more, and told the judge and the jury and the barristers that if they thought that Mr Finn had murdered anybody they didn’t know anything about the world in general. Whereupon Mr Chaffanbrass said that he would like to ask her a question or two, and with consummate flattery extracted from her her opinion of her lodger. She had known him for years, and thought that, of all the gentlemen that ever were born, he was the least likely to do such a bloody-minded action. Mr Chaffanbrass was, perhaps, right in thinking that her evidence might be as serviceable as that of the lords and countesses.
During the Sunday the trial was, as a matter of course, the talk of the town. Poor Lord Fawn shut himself up, and was seen by no one — but his conduct and evidence were discussed everywhere. At the clubs it was thought that he had escaped as well as could be expected; but he himself felt that he had been disgraced for ever. There was a very common opinion that Mr Chaffanbrass had admitted too much when he had declared that the man whom Lord Fawn had seen was doubtless the murderer. To the minds of men generally it seemed to be less evident that the man so seen should have done the deed, than that Phineas Finn should have been that man. Was it probable that there should be two men going about in grey coats, in exactly the same vicinity, and at exactly the same hour of the night? And then the evidence which Lord Fawn had given before the magistrates was to the world at large at any rate as convincing as that given in the Court. The jury would, of course, be instructed to regard only the latter; whereas the general public would naturally be guided by the two combined. At the club it was certainly believed that the case was going against the prisoner.
“You have read it all, of course,” said the Duchess of Omnium to her husband, as she sat with the Observer in her hand on that Sunday morning. The Sunday papers were full of the report, and were enjoying a very extended circulation.
“I wish you would not think so much about it,” said the Duke.
“That’s very easily said, but how is one to help thinking about it? Of course I am thinking about it. You know all about the coat. It belonged to the man where Mealyus was lodging.”
“I will not talk about the coat, Glencora. If Mr Finn did commit the murder it is right that he should be convicted.”
“But if he didn’t?”
“It would be doubly right that he should be acquitted. But the jury will have means of arriving at a conclusion without prejudice, which you and I cannot have; and therefore we should be prepared to take their verdict as correct.”
“If they find him guilty, their verdict will be damnable and false,” said the Duchess. Whereupon the Duke turned away in anger, and resolved that he would say nothing more about the trial — which resolution, however, he was compelled to break before the trial was over.
“What do you think about it, Mr Erle?” asked the other Duke.
“I don’t know what to think — I only hope.”
“That he may be acquitted?”
“Of course.”
“Whether guilty or innocent?”
“Well — yes. But if he is acquitted I shall believe him to have been innocent. Your Grace thinks —?”
“I am as unwilling to think as you are, Mr Erle.” It was thus that people spoke of it. With the exception of some very few, all those who had known Phineas were anxious for an acquittal, though they could not bring themselves to believe that an innocent man had been put in peril of his life.
On the Monday morning the trial was recommenced, and the whole day was taken up by the address which Mr Chaffanbrass made to the jury. He began by telling them the history of the coat which lay before them, promising to prove by evidence all the details which he stated. It was not his intention, he said, to accuse anyone of the murder. It was his business to defend the prisoner, not to accuse others. But, as he should prove to them, two persons had been arrested as soon as the murder had been discovered — two persons totally unknown to each other, and who were never for a moment supposed to have acted together — and the suspicion of the police had in the first instance pointed, not to his client, but to the other man. That other man had also quarrelled with Mr Bonteen, and that other man was now in custody on a charge of bigamy chiefly through the instrumentality of Mr Bonteen, who had been the friend of the victim of the supposed bigamist. With the accusation of bigamy they would have nothing to do, but he must ask them to take cognisance of that quarrel as well as of the quarrel at the club. He then named that formerly popular preacher, the Rev. Mr Emilius, and explained that he would prove that this man, who had incurred the suspicion of the police in the first instance, had during the night of the murder been so circumstanced as to have been able to use the coat produced. He would prove also that Mr Emilius was of precisely the same height as the man whom they had seen wearing the coat. God forbid that he should bring an accusation of murder against a man on such slight testimony. But if the evidence, as grounded on the coat, was slight against Emilius, how could it prevail at all against his client? The two coats were as different as chalk from cheese, the one being what would be called a gentleman’s fashionable walking coat, and the other the wrap-rascal of such a fellow as was Mr Meager. And yet Lord Fawn, who attempted to identify the prisoner only by his coat, could give them no opinion as to which was the coat he had seen! But Lord Fawn, who had found himself to be debarred by his conscience from repeating the opinion he had given before the magistrate as to the identity of Phineas Finn with the man he had seen, did tell them that the figure of that man was similar to the figure of him who had worn the coat on Saturday in presence of them all. This man in the street had therefore been like Mr Emilius, and could not in the least have resembled the prisoner. Mr Chaffanbrass would not tell the jury that this point bore strongly against Mr Emilius, but he took upon himself to assert that it was quite sufficient to snap asunder the thin thread of circumstantial evidence by which his client was connected with the murder. A great deal more was said about Lord Fawn, which was not complimentary to that nobleman. “His lordship is an honest, slow man, who has doubtless meant to tell you the truth, but who does not understand the meaning of what he himself says. When he swore before the magistrate that he thought he could identify my client with the man in the street, he really meant that he thought that there must be identity, because he believed from other reasons that Mr Finn was the man in the street. Mr Bonteen had been murdered — according to Lord Fawn’s thinking had probably been murdered by Mr Finn. And it was also probable to him that Mr Bonteen had been murdered by the man in the street. He came thus to the conclusion that the prisoner was the man in the street. In fact, as far as the process of identifying is concerned, his lordship’s evidence is altogether in favour of the prisoner. The figure seen by him we must suppose was the figure of a short man, and not of one tall and commanding in his presence, as is that of the prisoner.”
There were many other points on which Mr Chaffanbrass insisted at great length — but, chiefly, perhaps, on the improbability, he might say impossibility, that the plot for a murder so contrived should have entered into a man’s head, have been completed and executed, all within a few minutes. “But under no hypothesis compatible with the allegations of the prosecution can it be conceived that the murder should have been contemplated by my client before the quarrel at the club. No, gentlemen — the murderer had been at his work for days. He had examined the spot and measured the distances. He had dogged the steps of his victim on previous nights. In the shade of some dark doorway he had watched him from his club, and had hurried by his secret path to the spot which he had appointed for the deed. Can any man doubt that the murder has thus been committed, let who will have been the murderer? But, if so, then my client could not have done the deed.” Much had been made of the words spoken at the club door. Was it probable — was it possible — that a man intending to commit a murder should declare how easily he could do it, and display the weapon he intended to use? The evidence given as to that part of the night’s work was, he contended, altogether in the prisoner’s favour. Then he spoke of the life-preserver, and gave a rather long account of the manner in which Phineas Finn had once taken two garotters prisoner in the street. All this lasted till the great men on the benc............