The Trial of Marie Montrecourt (29 page)

She turned to leave the witness box, but the judge stopped her. “Mr Redcar may have some questions for you, Mrs Minton.”

Redcar was on his feet. “Yes, thank you, my Lord.” Marie reluctantly turned back. “Mrs Minton, are you really trying to convince us that ill as your husband was, he still had the power to use violence against you?”

“Yes.”

“You pride yourself on your medical knowledge, I believe. Are you seriously telling us that you didn’t realise it was chloroform that killed your husband?”

“Dr McCullough had told Stanley he had an ulcer. Dr Hornby said it had reached a critical stage. Why should I doubt these men? As has been pointed out, I haven’t had medical training.”

“You were anxious for Dr Hornby to sign a death certificate before you notified his family. Isn’t that the case?”

“No. Dr Hornby himself was anxious to sign the death certificate, to save me distress. It was very kind of him.”

“Are you seriously telling us that it never entered your head that your husband died of chloroform? Having told us how frightened you were when you read in
Farnsworth’s Medical Dictionary
that the narcotic could kill if used improperly?”

“It crossed my mind, of course it did, but Dr Hornby was so certain it was the ulcer.” She looked at Sir Herbert, who smiled encouragingly.

“Wouldn’t any innocent person have raised the question with the doctor anyway? That it may have been chloroform?

“I have said that I wanted to protect my husband’s good name. I knew that mattered a great deal to him.” She saw a look pass between the jurors.

“Mrs Minton, on oath, did you kill your husband?”

Her head was pounding and her heart was beating so fast she could scarcely breathe. “No.”

“Thank you, Mrs Minton.”

She returned to the dock wearily. There was absolute silence in the courtroom as she did so. It felt like an anti-climax when Sir Herbert called on Gladys Crawford, the Minton’s housekeeper at The Laurels, to give evidence.

Gladys was extremely nervous, but she held her head up high and answered as clearly as she could. She had never, she said, seen anything in the behaviour of Mrs Minton that could have been called shocking or scandalous. She was a lady, and gentle and kind. It was true that she’d been friendly with Mr Peter Minton, but there was nothing surprising in that. They were of a similar age and the rest of the family had ignored her. She had no one else to turn to for companionship. “She was so young, a foreigner as well, but Mr Stanley Minton spent very little time with her.”

Sir Herbert then asked about Marie’s herbal remedies, to which Gladys replied that she considered Mrs Minton to have a great gift in such matters. She’d helped cure her boys on more than one occasion. No one had suffered any harm from them.

“Thank you, Mrs Crawford.”

Redcar asked only one question: “Did you ever see Stanley Minton raise his hand to his wife?” To which Gladys answered truthfully: “No.”

“No more questions,” said Redcar.

Gladys received a nod from the judge and she made her way out of the witness box.

Dr McCullough was called next and Marie looked up in surprise. He had never been a friend to her, so why would he agree to give evidence in her defence? However, Sir Herbert didn’t intend to detain him for long. His question was simple: “Had Stanley Minton suffered from ill health?” Dr McCullough confirmed that he had, continually. “And will you confirm that the deceased had an ulcer and that Mrs Minton knew of it?” Dr McCullough confirmed that Stanley Minton had had the beginnings of an ulcer, but he couldn’t confirm whether or not his wife knew of it.

Redcar rose to ask if Dr McCullough had any reason to suspect that the deceased had taken to chloroform.

“I most certainly did not.”

“Could he have concealed such an addiction from you?”

“If it’s been proved that he took chloroform, then he must have concealed it from me. I’ve never been aware that I’ve treated anyone with such an addiction.”

After a break for luncheon, Sir Herbert called his next witnesses: three doctors, all eminent practitioners in the field of medicine. One after the other, Sir Arthur Fortescue, Dr Joseph Millard and Dr Royston Fields attested that the chances of someone successfully pouring liquid down the throat of another, whether that other was insensible or not, was highly unlikely without some of the liquid entering the windpipe and leaving signs of irritation. Despite Redcar’s protests, Sir Herbert put the same point to all three.

“If Stanley Minton, distressed by his failure in business, with no prospect of recovering his former glory, his life ruined by a narcotic to which he had become addicted, if in this state, his senses dulled by alcohol, he took the chloroform himself, might he not have achieved the same results? That is, succeeded in swallowing it with no burning in the windpipe and no sign of vomiting? If he made himself partly insensible?”

All three reached the same conclusion. It was possible, but they would still have expected to see some irritation or burning in the mouth and windpipe, and signs of vomiting.

“So my suggestion as to how the chloroform got into the deceased’s stomach is equally as plausible, or equally as improbable, as the prosecution’s suggestion that Mrs Minton administered it herself,” suggested Sir Herbert, before resuming his seat. Redcar passed on asking any questions.

“That completes the evidence for the defence, my Lord,” said Sir Herbert.

The Prosecuting Counsel rose to make his closing speech. He believed, he said, that the testimony of the accused had been a series of lies from start to finish. She was no innocent convent girl, as the defence would have them believe. She’d had an intimate relationship with the brother of her husband, which was the cause of Peter Minton leaving in England.

“After Peter Minton left for America, she says that relations between herself and her husband were consummated and she had a baby – a baby that sadly died. Might this not have led to feelings of resentment towards her husband? He had made his wife wait for such a long time before the relationship was consummated and for that to end in the baby’s premature death, would she not feel bitter? In such a state of mind, might her bitterness not have increased over the months that followed? Might not that bitterness have increased following the loss of her husband’s business, which meant the loss of the money she had brought to the marriage? And, finally, there was the discovery that her husband was addicted to chloroform. Might she have seen in his addiction to chloroform a way to rid herself of the man she had grown to despise? Remember, on the day he died, she procured the chloroform that killed him.”

Turning to the jury, Redcar went on to say that the defence counsel had made much of the fact that the accused had known enough of medical matters to realise the risk of failure involved in administering chloroform through the mouth. “Might it not also have given her the skill to ensure that it was done effectively? The defence has worked hard to suggest that it would be equally possible that Stanley Minton took his own life, but no man would pour such a liquid down his throat of his own choosing. We have been told it is a painful death.”

She wanted to put her hands over her ears to shut out his voice – to shut out the image his words were creating. She closed her eyes, but the image wouldn’t go away.

Sir Herbert was on his feet now. “Mrs Minton is not the perpetrator of a crime; she is the victim of it. You only have to look at the facts to realise that. Trapped in a loveless marriage that she struggled to make work, this young girl, who had lived all her life behind convent walls, had to fight off the unwelcome attentions of the brother of the deceased – a practiced seducer. Gentlemen, Peter Minton wanted money for his passage to America and as a result of his story, Geoffrey Minton gave him it.

“Stanley Minton’s mother sadly died, but immediately after her death the relationship between husband and wife improved. They had a child, the sad outcome of which we have already mentioned, but through all that followed Marie Minton remained faithful to her husband. No one has suggested otherwise.”

Marie looked down at the floor. She thanked God that Evelyn’s name had never been mentioned.

Sir Herbert’s oratory had captured the court’s full attention. “Even when Marie Minton discovered her husband’s addiction – even then – she remained devoted to him. Dr Hornby has testified to that devotion. It’s that devotion that has placed her here under suspicion. Believing her husband’s name to be of so much importance to him and believing in Dr Hornby’s diagnosis that Stanley Minton had died of an ulcer, Mrs Minton took steps to conceal her husband’s disgusting habit from the world by getting rid of the bottle of chloroform.

“Let me ask you, what motive would my client have for killing her husband? No motive has been suggested by the counsel for the prosecution. It certainly was not money. Let me suggest an alternative to you. That Mrs Minton did not kill her husband. He killed himself. I have read that sometimes a drug begins to lose its effectiveness over a period of time. That the dose has to be increased, or a new way found to titivate a jaded palate. I have read that some addicts turn to drinking chloroform, no matter how painful, in the hope of a more intense sensation. He asked his wife to buy him chloroform and brandy. Brandy could perhaps help to alleviate the drugs taste and make it easier to swallow.”

He saw that the jurymen were exchanging glances. “You may doubt a man would do that to himself. It’s clear that you are men who have never sunk so low, never been dependent on such a foul habit. I am suggesting to you that my explanation is as likely to be true as the explanation put forward by the Prosecuting Counsel. They have to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Mrs Minton killed her husband. They have to prove how it is possible for a person to pour a painful and bitter liquid into the mouth of another, whether that person is insensible or not, without leaving any sign of burning or irritation in the windpipe, the throat or the mouth. No one for the defence or the prosecution has been able to show, without any doubt, how that can be done. How then can Mrs Minton be proved guilty of the crime?” After one last glance at the jury, he sat down amid silence.

The atmosphere in the courtroom was intense and Marie kept her head lowered. She was terrified to look into the faces surrounding her for fear of what she would see.

The judge began his instruction to the jury. “Gentlemen, this is a most difficult case, full of contradictions. The question is how the chloroform entered into the stomach of the deceased. The prosecution is of the opinion that it was introduced by the accused after making her husband partially insensible, then persuading him, or making him, swallow the chloroform.”

He looked down at his notes for a moment. “As we’ve heard, such an attempt is surrounded by so many difficulties, and open to so many chances of failure, that no skilled man would venture upon it unless he was a madman. Defence counsel has tried to persuade us that Mrs Minton had enough knowledge to be aware of those difficulties and so would not risk making such an attempt. But if she did succeed in that fashion, then it is not too much to say it was a cruel fortune, because the conditions and chances were all against it.

“One can speculate, as the defence counsel suggests, that Stanley Minton resorted to drinking chloroform to increase the effect on his jaded palate. A man who is a slave to narcotics is a man to be greatly pitied. His sufferings are greater than any person who has not gone through such an experience can imagine.”

Mr Justice Pollard then highlighted the points and contradictions put by both the defence and prosecution. “Gentlemen, if you have any doubts as to the role Mrs Minton played in her husband’s death, then it is your solemn duty to give the prisoner the full benefit of such considerations. If you concur with the emphatic appeal by the learned counsel for the defence and believe his client to be innocent or, if falling short of that, you are unable to come to a decision, and you remain in a state of honest and conscientious doubt, then the prisoner should be acquitted.

Gentlemen, my task is done. I now leave you to yours, be pleased to retire.”

The jury trailed out, throwing one last look toward the accused, as if trying to read in her face what their verdict should be.

*

Waiting in the holding cell underneath the courtroom, Marie sat on the bench with her head in her hands. How long would they take to decide her fate? One hour? Two hours? She rose shakily to her feet as she heard footsteps approaching. So soon? But it was only Sir Herbert, come to tell her that there was to be no decision today. The court would reconvene tomorrow.

“I don’t think I can bear it,” she whispered.

“You have no choice, Mrs Minton, and neither have I. It’s out of our hands now. I will see you tomorrow.”

She was returned to her cell in Armley Gaol and spent a sleepless night listening to the distant church clock chiming every quarter of the hour.

When morning finally arrived, she was taken to the side door of the Bridewell as usual, but today the street was full of people waiting to see her. Some jeered, some called her names and some just stood in silence staring at her. There was a small group of women, among them Daphne Senior. She tried to get close enough to Marie to say something to her, but she was stopped by a policeman this time. Marie tried to smile at her, but the muscles of her face were too taut and they wouldn’t move. She was quickly ushered inside.

*

Evelyn, standing in the shadow cast by the Town Hall, moved further back into the darkness. He didn’t want her to see him in case it unsettled her. He’d intended to stay away and he’d promised his mother he would stay away, but he couldn’t. He’d travelled to Harrogate to ask John Pickard to discover who had provided the counsel for Marie. When he’d told him it was the Women’s Social and Political Union and that Daphne Senior was an old friend of Marie’s, he felt reassured.

With that question answered, he should have returned to London immediately, but he couldn’t leave – not before the verdict was delivered. He had driven to Leeds and booked a room in the Metropole Hotel. He would stay there for as long as it took the jury to reach their verdict. He would be close by if she needed him.