Asta's Book (29 page)

And what did he say to that?—That it would not be necessary. He said I must have work of my own to do and I said, yes, I had the linen to collect for the wash. You had better do it then, he said, and he opened the dining-room door for me.

The long pause Mr Tate-Memling then left was undoubtedly for this significant statement to register with the jury. He cleared his throat after a full half-minute and continued.

Miss Fisher, do you take sugar in your tea?—I beg pardon, sir?

I will repeat the question. I assure you it is seriously meant. Do you or do you not take sugar in your tea?—No, I do not.

Did the other members of the household at Devon Villa take sugar in their tea?—Only Mrs Roper took sugar. Mr Roper did not take it and nor did Mrs Hyde. Edward did not drink tea.

But the deceased, Mrs Roper, always took sugar?—Oh, yes, my Lord, I have seen her take three heaped teaspoonfuls.

Very well, Miss Fisher, you do not take sugar in your tea. Does your encratism extend also to the eschewing of bread and butter?

Mr Tate-Memling, in being clever, in hoping to bring a smile to the lips of the better educated among the jurymen at this humble housemaid’s expense, defeated his own object. She had not the faintest idea what he was talking about and turned on him a look of total blankness. Rousing himself from his lethargy, the judge was moved to a rare intervention.

You had better put it in plain English, Mr Tate-Memling. I for one have no idea what encratism may be and have not a dictionary about me.

Mr de Filippis here made a sound like a bray, which may have been laughter, but which he turned into a loud sneeze that occasioned the handing over of yet another handkerchief. He picked the air cushion off the tray and began to blow it up, doing so in utter silence.

I beg your Lordship’s pardon (Mr Tate-Memling was very stiff). Miss Fisher, let me put it another way. It was five o’clock in the afternoon when you handed the tray with the bread and butter and other foodstuffs on it to Mrs Hyde. No doubt you did not go to bed for some hours. Did you eat nothing yourself during the evening?—I ate some bread and butter. I cut bread and butter for myself while I was cutting it for Mrs Hyde. Then I washed and wiped the knife and put it away.

Did you eat bread in the morning for your breakfast?—No.

Did you give the child bread?—No, she had porridge.

Did you open the drawer where the bread knife was?—Not then.

When did you next open it?—I do not know. I cannot say. Not that day.

Not July 28th?—No, I am sure of that. I was not well. I did not eat anything. I came back from the shops and I was ill. It was a hot day. There was no one in the house, or so I thought then. I went to bed.

Eccentric as it may seem to you, the court is indifferent to your somnific arrangements, Miss Fisher …

Mr Tate-Memling! the judge said—sharply for him.

I am sorry, my Lord. Miss Fisher, when did you see the bread knife again?—I never saw it again, my Lord. The police found it. I think it was out in the garden.

Here Mr de Filippis placed the air cushion on the seat behind him and sat upon it, heaving an audible sigh. Mr Tate-Memling looked at him before continuing.

When did you find the bread knife to be missing?—I do not know. I looked for it on the Sunday, that would be Sunday the 30th, and it was not there.

But you had not looked for it before, had you? You had not looked for it since five o’clock on July 27th?—No, I had not looked for it.

Bread, as we all know, gentlemen of the jury, is man’s staple diet. The Scriptures tell us that man cannot live by bread alone but by the spirit, thus implying that whatever sustenance his soul may crave, the only food required for his material needs is bread. You, members of the jury, might, most likely would, confess that you had never so long as you can remember gone
one
day without it. Yet Miss Fisher is asking you to believe that she passed three days without bread, that she went for three days from the evening of July 27th until July 30th without a morsel of bread passing her lips. Is that what you are saying, Miss Fisher?—I was not well. I was not hungry.

Mr Tate-Memling paused significantly. He then said: While you were in the dining room, fetching the linen for the wash, where was the prisoner?—In the hall, I suppose.

You suppose. You could not see him, of course.—I heard him go upstairs.

How much time elapsed—er, passed between the time you went into the dining room and the time you heard him go upstairs?—A very short while.

How short a while, Miss Fisher? A minute? Half a minute? Fifteen seconds?—I cannot say.

May I crave your Lordship’s indulgence and request that we all observe one minute’s silence for Miss Fisher—and the jury—to make an assessment of how long that period is?

If you must.

I thank your Lordship.

The minute’s silence was observed. Florence Fisher said that had been a longer time than that which passed between her entering the dining room and hearing Roper go upstairs.

Was it more than half that time?—I think it was less than that time but more than half that time.

It was not until Friday, August 4th that you went upstairs to the second floor of Devon Villa, was it, Miss Fisher?—No, not until the Friday.

You were employed at Devon Villa to clean the house, were you not?—And to cook and look after the baby.

But you were employed to clean the house?—Yes.

Yet you did not go above the first floor to clean anything for seven days?—I thought they had all gone to Cambridge.

There was some laughter in court but not enough for the languid Mr Justice Edmondson to call for order. Mr James Wood, a porter with the Great Eastern Railway, of Globe Road, Bow, came into the witness box. He said he was at Liverpool Street Station at about five minutes to five on the afternoon of Thursday, July 27th. A man he now knew to be the prisoner came up to him and asked him to take care of a boy aged about five or six and a quantity of luggage. He gave him sixpence. He said he had left something at home which he needed and would return when he had fetched it.

Mr de Filippis: Did he return?—Yes, he did. He was away about an hour or more. More like an hour and a half.

When you saw him again, how did he seem? He was a bit put out because he had missed the train. I would say he was agitated. He said he had had to walk a long way to find a cab. He had a bandage on his right hand.

A bandage or a handkerchief?—A white cloth of some sort.

What did you notice about his clothes?—To the best of my recollection his clothes were just as they had been when he asked me to look after the boy.

There were no stains or marks on his clothes?—There was nothing on his clothes that I can remember.

Cross-examining, Mr Tate-Memling asked: Did you not make an hour and a half a very long time for a man to go by cab from Liverpool Street to Hackney and back? Why, he could have walked it in the time—

My Lord, I must protest!

Mr de Filippis had sprung angrily to his feet. My Lord, what qualification or knowledge has Prosecuting Counsel for making such an assessment? Has
he
walked it? I doubt if he could even tell the jury the distance involved. What possible function is it of his to estimate the athletic feats of which Mr Roper may be capable?

Very well. That remark had better be expunged from the record. Go on, Mr Tate-Memling, if you have anything more to ask. And you may omit the ambulatory calculations, to use the sort of language you are fond of.

But Mr Tate-Memling had nothing more to ask the witness. No doubt he was confident that, for all the reproof he had received, he had made a strong and telling point in the matter of the distance from Navarino Road to Liverpool Street. He sat down well-satisfied as Alfred Roper himself entered the witness box.

15

THE TRIAL OF ALFRED ROPER
(continued)

A JOURNALIST, ROBERT FITZROY
, who attended the trial and was present throughout the whole proceedings, wrote his own account of it afterwards and included a meticulous description of Roper. ‘He was,’ he wrote, ‘a man who appeared far older than his actual years, his hair already sprinkled with grey and receding to show a huge wrinkled brow. Over-tall’—the inescapable conclusion here is that Mr Fitzroy himself was a short man ‘—and thin to the point of emaciation, he walked with a pronounced stoop, his shoulders bowed and his head hanging forward on his breast so that his chin pinned the lapels of his coat against him.

‘He was dressed in black, which seemed to increase the extreme pallor that made him appear a sick man. Dark rings encircled his eyes which themselves burned like coals. Under his high cheekbones were deep hollows of shadow. His mouth was wide but without firmness and his lips trembled so frequently that he needs must be constantly compressing them in a repeated nervous gesture.

‘His voice, as he came to answer the questions put to him by Mr Howard de Filippis, was a surprise, shrill and almost squeaky. From those tragic lips, gazing at that rugged countenance, we expected sonorous tones and elegant vowels but heard the accents of a rustic backwater uttered in an old woman’s squawk.’

It is easy to say now that Roper was his own worst enemy and that his appearance did not help his case. He never once addressed the judge by his title. Nor did he volunteer a particle of information apart from that which was specifically asked of him. It may have been that his life, his wife’s death and the circumstances of his arrest and trial had broken his spirit, but he gave the impression of invincible dullness. This was a man, the public may have decided, with whom no woman could have lived without going mad or else taking up with other men.

His Counsel asked him about his marriage and his manner of living and was answered in monosyllables. When he came to the matter of the hyoscin Roper was rather less taciturn. He was heard to give a heavy sigh.

You obtained hyoscin hydrobromide, did you not?—I bought it. I signed the poisons book.

Did you give hyoscin to your wife?—I mixed it with the sugar she took in her tea.

How much did you give her?—I was careful not to use too much. I mixed ten grains with a pound of sugar.

Will you tell his Lordship the purpose of administering hyoscin to your wife?—She had a disease called nymphomania. Hyoscin suppresses excessive sexual feeling.

Did you at any time intend to bring about your wife’s death?—No, I did not.

When Mr de Filippis took him through the events leading up to his departure from Devon Villa on July 27th, Roper again become monosyllabic. His chin sank upon his breast, he muttered with bowed head, and had to be asked to speak up.

When you returned to the house you did not ask the cab to wait?—No.

Why was that?—I thought I might be a long time.

Why did you think you might be a long time?—I could not recall where the sovereign case was.

This was better. He had uttered a sentence of nine words. Mr de Filippis asked: Will you tell his Lordship why you did not let yourself in with your own key?—I had no key. I had left it behind. I did not expect to return there.

You were leaving that part of your life behind you?—Yes.

You were admitted to the house by Miss Florence Fisher. What did you do?—I went upstairs.

Did you go straight upstairs?—No, I looked for the sovereign case in the hat-stand drawer first.

The hat-stand in the hall?—Yes.

That would have taken you a few seconds? Half a minute? —Yes.

Then you went upstairs?—Yes.

What did you do upstairs?

Here Roper seems to have recollected that he was on trial for his life. Convicted of this crime, he would certainly have been hanged and the execution carried out a bare three weeks from this day or the next. To use a current phrase, he pulled himself together.

What did you do upstairs?—I went up to the second floor and into my wife’s bedroom—the bedroom I shared with my wife, that is. My wife was there and her daughter Edith and her mother. My wife was in her night-clothes but not in bed. There was a meal on a tray and tea things.

Did you speak to them?—I asked my wife if she knew where my sovereign case was. She said that as far as she knew it was on my watch chain. Most of my clothes were in my luggage but there was a suit in the wardrobe that my wife meant to bring with her to Cambridge. I looked through the pockets of the suit but the sovereign case was not there.

Did you look elsewhere?—I looked through the drawers of a tallboy. I remember that my wife said I must have missed my train. I said goodbye to them once more and as I was leaving the room remembered that I had put the sovereign case on the dining-room mantelpiece that morning. I found it there and left the house.

How long were you in the house?—About fifteen minutes or rather more.

Did you go into the kitchen?—No, I did not.

You never went into the kitchen and took a bread knife out of the drawer?—Certainly not.

You proceeded to the cab rank in Kingsland High Street. What happened on the way?—I tripped over a loose stone at the kerb in Forest Road. I put out my hand to break my fall and grazed it. My hand was bleeding so I wrapped it in my handkerchief. I found a cab and was driven to Liverpool Street Station where my son was waiting for me.

Did you kill your wife?—Most certainly not.

You did not kill your wife by cutting her throat with a bread knife?—I did not.

The court adjourned and on the fourth day of the trial Mr Tate-Memling rose to cross-examine Roper. He too elicited mostly monosyllables from the accused man as he took him painstakingly through the early years of his marriage, his conviction that Edith was not his child and the confidences he made to John Smart. When he came to the purchase and administration of the hyoscin he asked Roper how he had come to know its properties and Roper told him without hesitation he had read about the substance while employed by the Supreme Remedy Company. Mr Tate-Memling placed great emphasis on the toxic properties of hyoscin.

Five grains is the lethal dose, is it not?—I believe so.

You have heard Dr Pond say so. I do not suppose you dispute his statement. You would agree with him that five grains is the lethal dose?—Yes.