The Dawn of Reckoning (22 page)

“This election,” he wrote, “is proving an excellent stroke of business for
Chassingford. Not only are all the hotels full to the last billiard-table,
but local tradesmen have got rid of all their remaining stocks of last year’s
fireworks at famine prices. To-day, the great day, has of necessity been
something of an anti-climax. The slight drizzle of rain that has fallen most
of the time has not, however, damped the enthusiasm, much less the fireworks
of the protagonists. Indeed, the enthusiasm has increased, largely as a
result of the substitution of Mrs. Monsell’s charming irrelevance for Mr.
Monsell’s gloomy intensity. ‘What is your attitude on the mines question?
asked a member of the audience at an eve-of-poll meeting, and Mrs. Monsell
replied: I am afraid I don’t know very much about the matter at all, but I
can assure you, sir, that my husband will take the right line on that as on
all other questions.’ Well might a supporter at the back of the hall exclaim
fervently: That’s the stuff to give ‘em!”

“The poll has been very heavy and not without its minor excitements.
Before the counting began, however, most people were quite certain that Mr.
Monsell was in. Estimates of his majority varied from 500 to 2,000, and the
narrow margin of 89 came as a great surprise…Owing to ill-health the
successful candidate was not present at the declaration, but his wife
charmingly deputised for him…When the crowd had shouted itself hoarse (for
one side was pleased by the victory, and the other by the smallness of the
majority), she made a pretty little speech in which she said that as soon as
she learned the result in the counting-room she rang through to her husband
at home to tell him the good news, but could not get an answer. ‘I expect the
member for Chassingford has gone to sleep in front of the fire,’ she said,
laughing. He
will
do it when I leave him alone in the evenings. But
wait till I get home—I’ll soon waken him.’

“Upon this pleasant note of domesticity the incident of the Chassingford
bye-election has closed.”

She disengaged herself from her too enthusiastic supporters
and commissioned a taxi to drive her up to the Hall. She had to beg some of
the party stalwarts not to come with her. “My husband is ill after the
strain,” she told them, “and he simply musn’t get excited. When he has learnt
the result I shall make him go straight to bed.” All of which the half-dozen
or so attendant reporters diligently took down in their note-books.

The gates at the entrance to the drive were closed, so she walked up the
drive alone, after paying and dismissing the taxi-man. Not a light was
visible in the Hall. It was very late—past midnight—and the night
was pitch dark. Far in the distance she could hear the faint sound of
cheering, and the muffled reports of fireworks. Chassingford was still
revelling.

She let herself in by her own private key. Nobody was in sight. Fear and
excitement waged war within her for mastery. “Venner!” she called, going to
the further end of the entrance-hall and shouting down. No answer. But he was
very,
very
deaf. “Venner!” she called again, more shrilly.

Still no sound. The echoes of her own voice were frightening. Still, she
could do without Venner. She only wanted to ask him where Philip was. She
hated to search dark rooms at night. And Philip might be anywhere.

She opened the door of the library. Nobody was there. The empty silence
cooled her excitement and sent a little shiver of apprehension through
her—but a cold calm apprehension that made her walk very quietly to the
door of Philip’s study and tap on the panel. No answer. She opened the outer
door, and a long slit of light at the foot of the inner door showed her that
the room was illuminated. Philip, therefore, was working, or reading, or
perhaps he had gone to sleep, or perhaps—perhaps he was waiting for
her.

The thought of his possible occupations behind the closed door would have
driven her to panic had she persisted in it. She turned the handle hastily
and entered.

Yes, he was there, and she was relieved to see that he was sitting quietly
by the fire-side, leaning across the arm of his chair as if he had fallen
asleep through sheer weariness. She felt sorry for him then, and was glad
that she had brought him the news that the great dream of his life had at
last come true.

“Philip!” she cried, thinking to rouse him.

She went nearer to him and called his name again, but his slumbers were
seemingly too deep. Then she stooped down to shake him to wakefulness, and at
last, when she saw the front of him, a strange agonised shriek went up that
filled the whole house with echoes, and stirred even Venner, slumbering in
his pantry near by.

“Tragic Death of New M.P.”—“Chassingford Victor Found
Shot”—“Sensational End to Bye-Election”—were among the
announcements that embellished the newspaper-shops on the following morning.
Many who did not see the placards bought their morning journals to learn who
had topped the poll at the Chassingford election; they read, to their immense
astonishment, that Philip Monsell had not only been elected by a small
majority, but that he had been found shot dead in his study shortly after
midnight. Which of the two events had taken place first was not clear, but
the
Daily Wire
, taking unique advantage of the uncertainty, issued the
bold and challenging news-bill: “Dead Man Elected to Parliament.” Whereat at
least a dozen habitual newspaper correspondents dived into Erskine May to see
whether such a happening was even theoretically possible.

All over the country the strange affair was eagerly discussed, for men’s
minds were already attuned to Chassingford, and it was not difficult to
interest them in a far greater sensation than any conceivable election
result. In the little Essex market-town there was none of the half-drugged
somnolence that usually follows on the morning after the declaration of the
poll. On the contrary, the town was livelier than ever; small groups of
people gossiped together at street-corners; newspaper reporters who were’
lucky enough not to have returned to town immediately after the result,
stayed on and despatched frantic wires to their editors. The lane to the Hall
was dotted from an early hour with curious, eager, and undoubtedly morbid
pilgrims. At the Lodge gates two policemen were stationed, with orders to let
nobody pass without proper authority.

Amidst the heavy clouds of rumours that rolled to and fro, nothing was
very clear except the bald facts as stated in the morning papers. Mrs.
Monsell, according to more than one report of the scene at the declaration of
poll, had stated that she had rung up her husband to tell him the news of his
victory, but had been unable to get any reply. When she reached home, she
found him dead in his private study, shot through the chest. The window was
open wide, and outside in the shrubbery a revolver had been found. Venner,
the aged and very deaf butler, had not heard any shot, but it was understood
that he had been able to help the police with certain information. Scotland
Yard had been summoned, and was credited with already possessing important
clues. Beyond these facts, all was as yet surmise.

The evening papers, although they had nothing new to report, fanned the
flame of popular excitement by every means at their disposal. They examined
the political aspect of the affair, searched the past for precedents,
disinterred a certain Joshua Bone, M.P. for somewhere-or-other in 1765, who
had died from shock at finding himself elected; they printed photographs of
the Hall and of the town of Chassingford, and dived into Chassingford’s
history to relate how Samuel Pepys once dined there with the rector. The one
thing which everybody wanted to know was the one thing that they could not
tell, and that was any further fact concerning the crime itself. They hinted,
however, that the inquest might reveal much that was startling and
sensational.

The inquest was held on the Friday morning in the drawing-
room at the Hall. The room was uncomfortably crowded, and very hot for early
March. Many of the reporters noted that it was “richly’ though not
extravagantly furnished,” and Mr. Milner-White, transferred by editorial
telegram to another field of enterprise, remarked superiorly that the room
“possessed the typically Victorian layout of so many of our ancient
houses.”

Purely formal evidence of identification was given, and the inquiry was
adjourned unto March 17th. “The room emptied amidst an atmosphere of
foreboding,” wrote Mr. Milner White. “The stage was being set for a grander
and more terrible drama, and we of the coroner’s inquest were being ordered
curtly to get on with our little piece and then step back to the wings…We
trooped out into the fresh March air for all the world like a crowd of scared
school-children.”

The opening of the inquest, little as it had disclosed, was yet reported
fully in most of the papers. But a far more sensational event filled their
headlines on the day following. This was the arrest of Aubrey Ward, the hero
of the South Pole expedition, at Bergen, Norway, in connection with the
Chassingford affair. He had been detained by the Bergen police as a result of
a wireless message, and English detectives had arrived by the next boat.
Within a couple of days he was back in England again, and was brought up
before the Chassingford magistrates and charged with the wilful murder of
Philip Monsell upon the night of February 27th. The police gave formal
evidence of arrest and asked for eight days’ remand.

The public was entirely staggered by the affair. No arrest could have
caused a deeper and more immediate sensation, and the newspapers, realising
the popular clamour for information, were compelled to disinter the whole of
the South Pole episode. It read uncommonly well; indeed, as a famous London
wit remarked, the effect of its publication could only be “to create a most
unfortunate public prejudice in favour of the prisoner.”

When the case came up on remand, a second remand was granted, and a day or
two after that the adjourned inquest was resumed. Highly sensational evidence
was given, and after a two hours’ deliberation, the jury returned a verdict
of Wilful Murder against Aubrey Ward.

The next stage was the examination before the Chassingford magistrates.
The town was packed with visitors, and the tiny court-house could hardly
contain a hundredth part of the crowd that had begun to form a queue in the
High Street as early as seven o’clock in the morning. Those who gained
admission were richly rewarded, however, for the evidence and depositions
were again “highly sensational.” The prisoner’s bearing, according to one
report, was “calm and unmoved, and the way in which he pleaded Not Guilty
seemed to indicate his complete confidence that he would be able to establish
his innocence.” The examination lasted four days, and by that time sufficient
evidence had been brought forward to justify a committal for trial to the
Colford Assizes. A feature of the examination had been the reading of written
depositions by Mrs. Monsell, widow of the deceased, under Section 17 of the
Indictable Offences Act. It was understood that Mrs. Monsell was seriously
ill in a nursing home.

Public opinion veered round considerably after the committal. There was
still, no doubt, the “unfortunate prejudice in favour of the prisoner,” but
the strength of the police case was impressive as well as surprising. On
weight of evidence alone it seemed that Ward was guilty, although many people
believed that the defence was keeping back its trump cards until the trial,
when they might produce a more powerful effect. At any rate, the proceedings
before the Chassingford magistrates did nothing to lessen popular interest in
the case, and the opening of the Assizes at Colford in June was keenly
anticipated. It was expected that by then Mrs. Monsell might have recovered
sufficiently to give evidence in person.

The months passed quickly; the public half forgot the case, but were very
ready and eager to be reminded of it. Meanwhile the authorities took all
precautions necessary for a
cause célèbre
. A few rickety benches in
the Colford Assize Court were repaired and strengthened, and the Post Office
arranged for an extra staff of telegraphists to be on duty during the trial.
Colford as a whole was delighted at the prospect; the hotels expected a
bumper week, as least as profitable as the annual show of the County
Agricultural Society.

The day of the opening of the Assizes dawned bright and clear, and Mr.
Jefferson Milner-White, eating his ham and eggs in the breakfast-room of the
“White Lion,” scanned the pages of the
Daily Wire
and mused upon the
ineffable superiority of Manchester over London journalism. Meanwhile,
Colford, the first town on the circuit, was preparing for the reception of
the judge. Later in the day, Mr. Milner-White went out and described what he
saw with that mingling of loftiness and curiosity that a secularist might
affect in describing a revivalist meeting. He described the arrival of the
judge at the railway-station, his solemn meeting with the High Sheriff of the
county, the latter’s frantic efforts not to fall over his sword, the
posse
comitatus
of county police, the ear-splitting fanfare of the trumpeters,
the ride through the sunlit town, with the judge in his state carriage and
his escort of “javelin” men with halberds, the extremely boring sermon
preached by the sheriff’s chaplain in the parish church, and, in conclusion,
the bucolic somnolence of rural country towns even when they had everything
to make them excited. All this Mr. Milner-White most graphically described,
and it was perhaps a pity that the
Sentinel
was not able to find room
for all of it.

The ensuing account of the trial is taken mainly from the columns of that
journal.