The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (91 page)

They met several times during the ensuing week and each time Wood reminded Ruby of her promise. She was by now getting thoroughly irritated as well as worried and she repeated that she would keep her word. “But don’t keep bothering me. It’s getting on my nerves.”

Ruby Young was a most unsuitable ally in a cloak and dagger plan of this sort, for she could not keep a secret. She confided her worries to a girl friend. The friend repeated the story in confidence to a reporter on the
Weekly Dispatch
. The newspaper informed Scotland Yard and Inspector Neill, who was in charge of the case, was sent to interview Ruby Young. The outcome was that she went to meet Robert Wood with the Inspector in attendance and as she shook hands with her former lover he was taken into custody. After an identification parade on 5 October, when he was identified by a number of people as having been seen in the Eagle on the night of the murder in Emily Dimmock’s company, he was formally charged with her murder.

From the time of his first talk with Arthur Newton after delivery of the brief, Marshall Hall was convinced of Robert Wood’s innocence. But the task of formulating a defence in the face of Wood’s tissue of lies about his whereabouts on the night of the crime needed all his ingenuity and the painstaking assistance of his colleague Wellesley Orr.

Marshall was well aware that a great deal hung upon the outcome of this case not only for his client but for himself. It was the most important criminal trial that had come his way since his fortunes began to mend. He needed to test his newly restored confidence in an arena lit by the full glare of publicity and he was determined to make the utmost of this opportunity.

Not least among the many difficulties with which he had to contend was Wood’s peculiar behaviour. Marshall formed the opinion that he had a dual personality. He was certainly abnormal in one respect for he seemed unable to comprehend the appalling situation he was in. Wellesley Orr considered that the evidence of the ship’s cook was of great importance. He also felt that Wood must be called in his own defence. Marshall Hall opposed this, believing that because of his obvious abnormality he would make an unreliable witness. But Orr insisted that if Wood were not called he would certainly hang. Marshall had still some lingering doubt as to whether he could, or should, trust his own judgment and allowed himself to be overruled. Accordingly the form of declaration he customarily used in such eventualities was sent to Wood who signed it, thereby giving his consent to be called.

The trial opened at the rebuilt Central Criminal Court on Thursday, 12 December, before Mr Justice Grantham. Sir Charles Mathews, K.C. appeared for the prosecution assisted by Archibald Bodkin and L. A. Symmons. Marshall Hall led for the defence with Herman Cohen, Huntly Jenkins and J. R. Lort-Williams.

Marshall had had few cases which looked more hopeless at the start. He had also had few which offered more scope for his particular brand of shrewd, lucid and hard-hitting advocacy. He did not make the mistake which a lesser man might have done. He did not say, “Wood must be innocent because X is guilty.” He maintained throughout the trial that there was insufficient evidence to convict
anyone
. He was thus absolved from defending one man by accusing another and in consequence had a freer hand.

Mathews opened quietly and reasonably, making the most of Wood’s futile efforts to cover up his association with the dead woman. The main point he brought out was the similarity of the handwriting on the Rising Sun postcard and the charred letter found in Dimmock’s room. If the evidence of Roberts was to be believed Wood had arranged to meet Emily at the Eagle on the night she was murdered. The curling pins seen in her hair on the Wednesday night were still there when her body was found. The inference was that Wood intended to kill her either on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning and arranged to meet her at a place where he was unlikely to be recognized. The hair curlers indicated that she was going to meet someone she knew very well. The Crown also relied on the evidence of another witness, McCowan, who said he had seen Wood in the area of St Paul’s Road at the time when, according to the medical evidence, the crime had been committed. Mathews stressed the importance of this evidence. At the identity parade the witness had unhesitatingly picked out Wood by his walk. Corroboration of the fact that Wood walked with a nervous jerk or twitch of the shoulder came from Ruby Young.

Mathews gradually built up his case into a formidable indictment against Robert Wood. The state of the apartment, he said, when the murder was discovered showed that Wood had gone to considerable lengths to find and destroy the Rising Sun postcard. The shutters had been half opened to admit light. Why had the murderer wasted valuable time looking through the postcard album unless it contained something of an incriminating nature? The articles which were missing had obviously been taken to provide a robbery motive for the crime; but if robbery was indeed the motive why had more valuable articles been left behind?

The case against Wood, although circumstantial, was strong. Great care in the handling of the defence was needed. Marshall Hall scored his first point when dealing with the street plan prepared by Sergeant Grosse. The inference to be drawn from this plan was that St Paul’s Road was in a brilliantly lit area. Under cross-examination the sergeant admitted that the street lights were extinguished at four thirty-seven a.m. Marshall saw the opportunity he needed and asked:

“If that is so, they would be useless for lighting purposes at five minutes to five?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think this is a fair plan?”

“I do.”

“I put it to you, have you ever seen a more misleading plan in your life?” No answer.

“Would not anybody, looking at this plan, come to the conclusion that the light was reflected upon the front of 29 St Paul’s Road?”

“Not on the front of the house, but in the neighbourhood.”

“You
know
the electric standard lights were extinguished at four thirty-seven on the morning of 12 September?”

“Yes.”

“You know it was a dark, muggy morning. If the electric standards were extinguished at that time they would be useless for any purpose of light at five to five?”

“Yes.”

“Is it not the case that, this being so, you have been specially asked to prepare a map that would show, as your evidence suggests, a sufficiency of light coming from the railway cutting forty feet below the road?” No reply.

“If it was a drizzly, thick, muggy morning, the refracting and reflecting power of the arc lights would be at a minimum, would they not?”

“Yes.”

“Is there, at the railway bridge, a wall nine feet high? High enough to prevent me, for instance, from seeing over?”

“Yes.”

“Is that wall shown on the map?”

“No, it was not necessary.”

By this forceful questioning Marshall Hall was able to cast doubt on the veracity of the police in relation to the street lighting at the time Wood was said to have been seen in St Paul’s Road. His purpose was to challenge the identification of Wood by other witnesses, and it was a move both shrewd and subtle.

Much has been written about Marshall’s talent as an orator. But less attention has been paid to his ability to elicit by clever questioning the priorities in a line of reasoning. He was faced with the fact that no other suspect in the case had both the means and the opportunity to commit the crime. He had to break one by one the links in the chain of evidence against his client.

Roberts, the ship’s cook, was the next witness. In his cross-examination it is fascinating to see how the man is manoeuvred into a difficult position and forced to admit that he might have invented his story.

“Do you know a woman named May Campbell?”

“By sight, yes.”

“Have you ever spoken to her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk about the case?”

“It was talked of all over the place.”

“Did May Campbell give you a description of someone who, she said, was known as a friend of Dimmock?”

“Yes.”

“And did that description correspond very much with the description of the accused?”

“It tallied very much.”

“So you could have picked him out from May Campbell’s description?”

“Not unless I knew him.”

“Was the description, published in the newspapers on 22 September of the man who was wanted, and which was described as official, very like the description Campbell gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Was the description: ‘Age twenty-eight to thirty. Height five feet seven inches. Sallow complexion. Dark hair. Clean shaven. Peculiar difference about eyes’?”

“Something like it.”

“Almost word for word, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Did she add: ‘Pimples on lower part of face and neck’?”

“She said something about pimples. Pimples do not always stay there.”

“Do not argue. Were you not in a great fright when you heard of the murder?”

“No, I was not in any fright.”

“When you heard of the murder did you realize that except for the murderer—”

“That I was next to him.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I realized that. That is why I stopped at the Rising Sun when I heard of the murder. I said I would stop all night until the police came.”

Having strengthened his attack on the question of identification by suggesting that Roberts and May Campbell had acted in collusion Marshall turned to the charred letter Roberts claimed to have read.

“How could anybody writing that on the Tuesday write ‘tonight’ for Wednesday?”

“You generally write that way to let a person know.”

“Do you usually, when writing on a Tuesday to make an appointment for a Wednesday, write ‘Meet me tonight’?”

“I do not.”

“I put it to you that that piece of burned paper is a fragment which might have come from anywhere and which never came through the post.”

“It did.”

“Where did the name ‘Bert’ come from?”

“I tell you it was written.”

“If the object had been to put suspicion on Shaw, the suggestion would have been very useful?” No answer.

At this point Sir Charles Mathews interrupted to ask if Marshall Hall were accusing Roberts of the murder.

“Most certainly I am not,” said Marshall.

The second day of the trial produced further proof that Marshall had fully regained his skill in cross-examination. Confidently and ruthlessly he discredited three of the Crown’s witnesses by making them so confused that the evidence they gave was worthless. One of these was the man McCowan, on whose statement that he had seen Wood coming out of 29 St Paul’s Road on the morning of the murder the prosecution placed great reliance.

With Ruby Young Marshall dealt more gently. She had incurred general resentment by her betrayal of Wood for, it was alleged, the reward offered by the
News of the World
.

“Have you ever thought that, having regard to the evidence of Doctor Thompson who places the time of the murder at three or four in the morning, the alibi arranged with you from six-thirty to ten-thirty on the evening previous to the murder would be a useless alibi for the murder but a perfect one for the meeting of the girl?”

“It did not strike me then that it was a useless alibi.”

“But it does now, does it not?”

“Yes, it does now.”

Some accounts of the trial pinpoint this question as the foundation of Marshall Hall’s defence, on the grounds that the ineffectual alibi proved Wood’s ignorance of the time the girl had been murdered. But it proved nothing of the kind. Medical evidence as to the time of death is not completely reliable even today with all the advances in forensic science. In 1907 methods were far more haphazard and less account was paid to the factors governing the onset of rigor mortis and blood coagulation. It should be borne in mind that the crime was committed during one of the hottest weeks of the year. The heat in Dimmock’s bedroom was attested by the fact that all the bedclothes save the sheets had been pushed on to the floor. It is by no means impossible that she had been killed much earlier than the time estimated.

It seems to us that the real foundation of the case for the defence was Marshall’s destruction of the evidence of identification. Without positive identification of Wood as the man seen leaving the house in St Paul’s Road early in the morning after the crime was committed, the Crown’s case was purely circumstantial. He had gone to enormous trouble to challenge Sergeant Grosse in the matter of street lighting, had walked the whole area himself and had studied the properties of light in relation to atmospheric conditions.

The intention of the Crown was to prove, if possible, that Wood and Dimmock were acquainted before 6 September when Wood claimed they had first met. To this end a number of witnesses were called to show that the two had been on close terms for some eighteen months before this date. They were respectively a man named Crabtree, a brothel keeper, who said that Wood visited the girl when she lived at his house; another man, named Lyneham, who had seen them regularly in the Rising Sun; a woman, Mrs Lawrence, who had seen them together in another public house, The Pindar of Wakefield; and a second woman, Gladys Warren, who had not only seen them together on many occasions but could give specific dates. Marshall Hall weakened the value of their evidence by exposing their bad characters. But the character of these witnesses was not important. Their statements were; and since they were unknown to each other they could not have acted in collusion.