The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy (28 page)

Mrs Bowles said in an interview to the
Reynolds’ News
that she had not instigated her action as an act of revenge upon the three men. Not having been in their skins, she could not find it in herself to condemn them. They had been cast into a situation not of their making. She just wanted to preserve the memory of her son, who she knew was not a coward.

Lord Coleridge, however, took a stern view of the matter. He prefaced his opinion by suggesting that according to him a situation of necessity had not truly existed. ‘The accused might possibly have been picked up the next day by a passing ship,’ he opined. Or they might possibly not have been picked up at all. In either case it is obvious that the killing of Bowles would have been an unnecessary and profitless act. ‘Even if the necessity existed,’ he went on, ‘that could never justify the killing of another human being. Self-preservation is no justification.’

‘To preserve one’s life is generally speaking a duty,’ he granted, ‘but it may be the plainest and the highest duty to sacrifice it. War is full of instances in which it is a man’s duty not to live, but to die. The duty in case of shipwreck, of a captain to his crew, of the crew to the passengers, of soldiers to women and children in war—these duties impose on men the moral necessity, not of preservation, but of their sacrifice of their lives for others. It is not correct, therefore, to say there is any absolute or unqualified necessity to preserve one’s life.’

He ended his summing up by pronouncing the three men guilty of wilful murder and passed the death sentence. The public outside the court showed their outrage by reacting angrily, clamouring and chanting and had to be dispersed by strong armed tactics by the police. But it was not the end of the matter. Shortly after, as we had hoped, the Home Secretary commuted the penalty to long-term imprisonment and when everybody seemed to have forgotten the sad episode the three men were quietly released for good conduct.

Cadan had become very unpopular for having brought the men to book and I felt that it was my duty to encourage my dear twin sister to go to Falmouth to comfort him.