The Trial for Murder

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. The Trial for Murder by Charles Dickens.
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even

(00:22):
among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting
their own psychological experiences, when those have been of a
strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they
could relate in such wise would find no parallel or
response in a listener's internal life, and might be suspected
or laughed at. A truthful traveler who should have seen

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some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea serpent,
would have no fear of mentioning it. But the same traveler,
having had some singular presentiment impulse, vagary of thought, visions,
so called dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate
considerably before he would own to it. To this reticence

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I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects
are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of
these subjective things as we do our experiences of objective creation.
The consequence is that the general stock of experience in
this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect

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of being miserably imperfect. In what I am going to relate,
I have no intention of setting up, opposing, or supporting
any theory whatever I know the history of the bookseller
of Berlin. I have studied the case of the wife
of a late astronomer Royal, as related by Sir David Brewster,
and I have followed the minutest details of a much

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more remarkable case of spectral illusion occurring within my private
circle of friends. It may be necessary to state, as
to this last, that the sufferer, a lady, was in
no degree, however distant related to me. A mistaken assumption
on that head might suggest an explanation of a part
of my own case, but only a part which would

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be wholly without foundation. I cannot be referred to my
inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before
any at all similar experience, nor have I ever had
any at all similar experience. Since it does not signify
how many years ago or how few a certain murder

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was committed in England which attracted great attention, we hear
more than enough of murderers as they rise in succession
to their atrocious eminence. And I would bury the memory
of this particular brute if I could, as his body
was buried in Newgate Jail. I purposely abstain from giving
any direct clue to the criminal's individual. When the murder

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was first discovered, no suspicion fell, or I ought to say,
for I cannot be too precise in my facts. It
was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell on the
man who was afterwards brought to trial. As no reference
was at that time made to him in the newspapers.
It is obviously impossible that any description of him can

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at that time have been given in the newspapers. It
is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast
my morning paper containing the account of that first discovery,
I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read
it with close attention. I read it twice, if not
three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom,

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and when I laid down the paper, I was aware
of a flash rush flow. I do not know what
to call it. No word I can find is satisfactorily
descriptive in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing
through my room like a picture impossibly painted on a
running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was

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perfectly clear, so clear that I distinctly, and with a
sense of relief, observed the absence of the dead body
from the bed. It was in no romantic place that
I had this curious sensation, but in chambers in Piccadilly,
very near the corner of Saint James Street. It was
entirely new to me. I was in my easy chair

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at the moment, and the sensation was accompanied with a
peculiar shiver, which started the chair from its position. But
it is to be noted that the chair ran easily
on casters. I went to one of the windows there
are two in the room, and the room is on
the second floor, to refresh my eyes with the moving objects.
Down in Piccadilly, it was a bright autumn morning and

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the street was sparkling and cheerful. The wind was high.
As I looked out, it brought down from the park
a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took and
whirled into a spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and the
LEAs dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side
of the way, going from west to east. They were
one behind the other. The foremost man often looked back

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over his shoulder. The second man followed him at a
distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.
First the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in
so public a thoroughfare attracted my attention, and next the
more remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded

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their way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly
consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement,
and no single creature that I could see gave them place,
touched them, or looked after them. In passing before my window,
they both stared up at me. I saw their two
faces very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognize

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them anywhere, not that I had consciously noticed anything very
remarkable in either face, except that the man who went
first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face
of the man who followed him was of the color
of impure wax. I am a bachelor, and my valet
and his wife constitute my whole establishment. My occupation is

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in a certain branch bank and I wish that my
duties as head of a department were as light as
they are popularly supposed to be. They kept me in
town that autumn when I stood in need of change.
I was not ill, but I was not well. My
reader is to make the most that can be reasonably
made of my feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon

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me of a monotonous life, and being slightly dyspeptic. I
am assured by my renowned doctor that my real state
of health at that time justifies no stronger description, and
I quote his own from his written answer to my
request for it. As the circumstances of the murder gradually
unraveling took stronger and stronger possession of the public mind,

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I kept them away from mine by knowing as little
about them as was possible in the midst of the
universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of wilful
murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and that
he had been committed to Newgate for trial. I also
knew that his trial had been postponed over one sessions

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of the Central Criminal Court on the ground of general
prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the defense.
I may further have known, but I believe I did
not when or about when the sessions to which his
trial stood postponed would come on. My sitting room, bedroom
and dressing room are all on one floor. With the last.

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There is no communication but through the bedroom. True, there
is a door in it once communicating with the staircase.
But a part of the fitting of my bath has been,
and had been then for some years, fixed across it.
At the same period, and as a part of the
same arrangement, the door had been nailed up and canvassed over.

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I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving
some directions to my servant before he went to bed.
My face was towards the only available door of communication
with the dressing room, and it was closed. My servant's
back was towards that door while I was speaking to him.
I saw it open, and a man look in, who
very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me. The man was

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the man who had gone second from the two along Piccadilly,
and whose face was of the color of impure wax.
The figure, having beckoned, drew back and closed the door
with no longer pause. Than was made by my crossing
the bedroom. I opened the dressing room door and looked in.
I had a lighted candle already in my hand. I

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felt no inward expectation of seeing the figure in the
dressing room, and I did not see it there. Conscious
that my servants stood amazed, I turned round to him
and said, Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses,
I fancied I saw a as I there laid my
hand upon his breast with a sudden start. He trembled

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violently and said, O Lord, yes, sir, a dead man beckoning. Now.
I do not believe that this John Deryck, my trusty
and attached servant for more than twenty years, had any
impression whatever of having seen such a figure until I
touched him. The change in him was so startling when
I touched him that I fully believe he derived his

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impression in some occult manner from me. At that instant,
I bade John Deryck bring me some brandy, and I
gave him a dram and was glad to take one myself.
Of what had preceded the Knight's phenomenon. I told him
not a single word reflecting on it I was absolutely
certain that I had never seen that face before, except

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on the one occasion in Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when
beckoning at the door with its expression when it had
stared up at me as I stood at my window,
I came to the conclusion that on the first occasion
it had sought to fasten itself upon my memory, and
on the second occasion it had made sure of being

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immediately remembered. I was not very comfortable that night, though
I felt a certainty difficult to explain that the figure
would not return at daylight. I fell into a heavy sleep,
from which I was awakened by John Derrick's coming to
my bedside with a paper in his hand. This paper,
it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at

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the door between its bearer and my servant. It was
a summons to me to serve upon a jury at
the forthcoming sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the
Old Bailey. I had never before been summoned on such
a jury, As as John Derrick well knew, he believed,
I am not certain at this hour, whether with reason
or otherwise, that that class of jurors were customarily chosen

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on a lower qualification than mine, and he had at
first refused to accept the summons. The man who served
it had taken the matter very coolly. He said that
my attendants or non attendants was nothing to him. There
the summons was, and I should deal with it at
my own peril and not at his. For a day

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or two I was undecided whether to respond to this
call or take no notice of it. I was not
conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attention one
way or another. Of that I am as strictly sure
as of every other statement that I may here. Ultimately,
I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life,

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that I would go The appointed morning was a raw
morning in the month of November. There was a dense
brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively black and
in the last degree oppressive. East of Temple Bar, I
found the passages and staircases of the court house flaringly

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lighted with gas, and the court itself similarly illuminated. I
think that until I was conducted by officers into the
old Court and saw its crowded state, I did not
know that the murderer was to be tried that day.
I think that until I was so helped into the

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old Court with considerable difficulty, I did not know into
which of the two courts sitting my summons would take me.
But this must not be received as a positive assertion,
for I am not completely satisfied in my mind on
either point. I took my seat in the place appropriated

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to rors in waiting, and I looked about the court
as well as I could through the cloud of fog
and breath that was heavy in it. I noticed the
black vapor hanging like a murky curtain outside the great windows.
And I noticed the stifled sound of wheels on straw
or tan that was littered in the street. Also the

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hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle
or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced.
Soon afterwards, the judges, two in number, entered and took
their seats. The buzz in the court was awfully hushed.
The direction was given to put the murderer to the bar.

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He appeared there, and in that same instant I recognized
in him the first of the two men who had
gone down Piccadilly. If my name had been called. Then.
I doubt if I could have answered to it audibly,
but it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel,
and I was by that time able to say, here

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now observe. As I stepped into the box, the prisoner,
who had been looking on attentively but with no sign
of concern, became violently agitated and beckoned to his attorney.
The prisoner's wish to challenge me was so manifest that
it occasioned a pause, during which the attorney, with his
hand upon the dock, whispered with his client and shook

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his head. I afterwards had it from that gentleman that
the prisoner's first affrighted words to him were at all hazards.
Challenged that man, but that as he could give no
reason for it, and admitted that he had not even
known my name until he heard it called, and I
appeared it was not done. Both on the ground already

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explained that I wished to avoid reviving an unwholesome memory
of that murderer, and also because a detailed account of
his long trial is by no means indispensable to me
my narrative, I shall confine myself closely to such incidents
in the ten days and nights during which we the
jury were kept together as directly bare on my own

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curious personal experience. It is to that, and not to
a page of the Newgate calendar, that I beg attention.
I was chosen foreman of the jury. On the second
morning of the trial, after evidence had been taken for
two hours, I heard the church clock strike happening. To
cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I found an

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inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted them several times,
yet always with the same difficulty. In short, I made
them one too many. I touched the brother juryman whose
place was next me, and I whispered to him obliged
me by counting us. He looked surprised by the request,

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but turned his head and counted. Why, says he Suddenly,
we are there. But no, that is not possible. No,
we are twelve. According to my counting that day, we
were always right in detail, but in the gross we
were always one too many. There was no appearance, no
figure to account for it. But I had an inward

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foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming. The jury
were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in
one large room on separate tables, and we were constantly
in the charge and under the eye of the officer
sworn to hold us in safe keeping. I see no
reason for suppressing the real name of that officer. He

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was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and I was glad
to hear, much respected in the city. He had an
agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine,
sonorous voice. His name was mister Harker. When we turned
into our twelve beds at night, mister Harker's bed was
drawn across the door. On the night of the second day,

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Not being disposed to lie down, and seeing mister Harker
sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside him
and offered him a pinch of snuff. As mister Harker's
hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a
peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said, who is this?
Following mister Harker's eyes and looking along the room, I

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saw again the figure I expected, the second of the
two men who had gone down Piccadilly. I rose and
advanced a few steps, then stopped and looked round at
mister Harker. He was quite unconcerned, laughed and said in
a pleasant way. I thought for a moment we had
a thirteenth juryman without a bed. But I see it

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is the moonlight, making no revelation to mister Harker, but
inviting him to take a walk with me to the
end of the room. I watched what the figure did.
It stood for a few moments by the bedside of
each of my eleven brother jerrymen, close to the pillow.
It always went to the right hand side of the bed,

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and always passed out, crossing the foot of the next bed.
It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to
look down pensively at each recumbent figure. It took no
notice of me or of my bed, which was the
nearest to mister Harker's. It seemed to go out where
the moonlight came in through a high window, as by

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an aerial flight of stairs. Next morning, at breakfast, it
appeared that everybody present had dreamed of the murdered man
last night, except myself and mister Harker. I now felt
as convinced that the second man who had gone down
Piccadilly was the murdered man. So to speak, as if
it had been borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony.

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But even this took place, and in a manner for
which I was not at all prepared. On the fifth
day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution
was drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man,
missing from his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed,
and afterwards found in a hiding place where the murderer
had been seen digging, was put in evidence. Having been

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identified by the witness under examination. It was handed up
to the bench and thence handed down to be inspected
by the jury. As an officer in a black gown
was making his way with it across to me, the
figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly,
impetuously stared from the crowd, caught the miniature from the

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officer and gave it to me in his own hands,
at the same time saying in a low and hollow tone.
Before I saw the miniature, which was in a locket,
I was younger then, and my face was not then
drained of blood. It also came between me and the
brother juryman, to whom I would have given the miniature,

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and between him and the brother juryman, to whom he
would have given it. And so it passed on through
the whole of our number and back into my possession.
Not one of them, however, detected this at table, and generally,
when we were shut up together in mister Harker's custody,
we had from the first naturally discussed the day's proceedings

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a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for
the prosecution being closed, and we having that side of
the question in a completed shape before us, our discussion
was more animated and serious. Among our number was a vestryman,
the densest idiot I have ever seen at large, who
met the plainest evidence with the most preposterous objections, and

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who was sighted with by two flabby parochial parasites, all
three impaneled from a district so delivered over to fever
that they ought to have been upon their own trial
for five hundred murders. When these mischievous blockheads were at
their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us
were all ready preparing for bed, I again saw the

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murdered man. He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me
on my going towards them, and striking into the conversation.
He immediately retired. This was the beginning of a separate
series of appearances confined to that long room in which
we were confined. Whenever a knot of my brother jurymen

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laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was
going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
It will be borne in mind that down to the
production of the miniature on the fifth day of the trial,
I had never seen the appearance in court. Three changes

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occurred now as we entered on the case for the defense.
Two of them I will mention together. First, the figure
was now in court continually, and it never there addressed
itself to me, but always to the person who was
at the time. For instance, the throat of the murdered
man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech

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for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might
have cut his own throat at that very moment. The figure,
with its throat in the dreadful condition, referred to this
it had concealed before, stood at the speaker's elbow motioning
across its windpipe, now with the right hand, now with
the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker himself the impossibility

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of such a wound having been self inflicted by either hand.
For another instance, a witnessed character a woman deposed to
the prisoner's being the most amiable of mankind. The figure
at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking
her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner's

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evil countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.
The third change, now to be added, impressed me strongly
as the most most marked and striking of all. I
do not theorize upon it. I accurately state it, and
there leave it. Although the appearance was not itself perceived
by those whom it addressed, its coming close to such

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persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or disturbance on
their part. It seemed to me as if it were
prevented by laws to which I was not amenable from
fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it
could invisibly, dumbly and darkly overshadow their minds. When the

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leading council for the defense suggested that hypothesis of suicide,
and the figure stood at the learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully
sawing at its severed throat. It is undeniable that the
council faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds
the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with
his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale. When the witness to

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the character was confronted by the appearance, her eyes most
certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger, and
rest with great hesitation and trouble upon the prisoner's face.
Two additional illustrations will suffice. On the eighth day of
the trial, after the pause, which was every day made

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early in the afternoon for a few minutes rest and refreshment,
I came back into court with the rest of the
jury some little time before the return of the judges.
Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
thought the figure was not there, until chancing to raise
my eyes to the gallery, I saw it bending forward
and leaning over a very decent woman, as if to

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assure itself whether the judges had resumed their seats or not.
Immediately afterwards, the woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out,
so with the venerable, sagacious and patient judge who conducted
the trial. When the case was over, and he settled
himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man,

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entering by the judge's door, advanced to his lordship's desk
and looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of
his notes which he was turning. A change came over
his lordship's face. His hands stopped. The peculiar shiver that
I knew so well passed over him. He faltered, excuse me, gentlemen,
for a few minutes, I am somewhat oppressed by the

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vitiated air, and did not recover until he had drunk
a glass of water. Through all the monotony of six
of those interminable ten days, the same judges and others
on the bench, the same murderer in the dock, the
same lawyers at the table, the same tones of questions
and answers rising to the roof of the court, the

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same scratching of the judge's pen, the same ushers going
in and out, the same lights kindled at the same
hour when there had been any natural light of day,
the same foggy curtain outside the great windows when it
was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping when it
was rainy. The same footmarks of turnkeys and prisoners day

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after day on the same sawdust, the same keys locking
and unlocking, the same heavy doors. Through all the wearisome monotony,
which made me feel as if I had been foremen
of the jury for a fast period of time, and
Piccadilly had flourished coevally with Babylon. The murdered man never
lost one trace of his distinctness in my eyes, nor

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was he at any moment less distinct than anybody else.
I must not omit as a matter of fact that
I never once saw the appearance which I call by
the name of the murdered man. Look at the murderer
again and again, I wondered, why does he not? But
he never did, nor did he look at me. After

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the production of the miniature until the last closing minutes
of the tree, while arrived we retired to consider at
seven minutes before ten at night, the idiomatic vestryman and
his two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that
we twice returned into court to beg to have certain
extracts from the judge's notes re read. Nine of us

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had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither I
believe had any one in the court. The dunder headed triumvirate,
having no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very reason.
At length we prevailed, and finally the jury returned into
court at ten minutes past twelve. The murdered man at

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that time stood directly opposite the jury box on the
other side of the court. As I took my place,
his eyes rested on me with great attention. He seemed satisfied,
and slowly shook a great gray veil, which he carried
on his arm for the first time, over his head
and whole form. As I gave in our verdict guilty,

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the veil collapsed, All was gone, and his place was empty.
The murderer, being asked by the judge, according to usage,
whether he had anything to say before sentence of death
should be passed upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was
described in the leading newspapers the following day as a

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few rambling, incoherent and half audible words in which he
was understood to complain that he had not had a
fair trial because the foreman of the jury was prepossessed
against him. The remarkable declaration that he really made was this,
my Lord, I knew I was a doomed man when
the foreman of my jury came into the box. My Lord,

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I knew he would never let me off, because before
I was taken, he somehow got to my bedside in
the night, woke me and put a rope round my neck.
End of the trial for murder by Charles Dickens