The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

12

IT WAS A MORNING in November. The light of dawn filtered through an opening in the shutters, and I could discern the outlines of my shirt and jacket that Fred had folded; in the half-light they looked curiously alive, as if they had been waiting expectantly for me to awake. I slumbered again for a few minutes, in a blissful state of non-consciousness, before being aroused by the sound of horses in the street outside. I rose from my bed, and threw open the shutters. That is when I saw him, standing on the corner and looking fixedly up at my window. Yet at first I did not see him. He seemed to be part of a wooden porch there, wood upon wood, until he stepped forward. He was wearing my cloak, and my broad-brimmed hat, but I could not mistake him for a moment; the face was white, seemingly curved and crumpled like a sheet of paper, with the same blank eyes that had stared at me from the table in my workshop. He must have taken my address from the bills of exchange he had purloined, and now he had tracked me down. He stood quite still, and made no attempt to claim my attention. He simply looked up without expression. And then, very suddenly, he turned and walked away.

I was in a state of astonishment and fearfulness not to be expressed. I ran into the kitchen, where Fred was frying a veal chop for my breakfast. “Stop what you are doing,” I said, “and leave.”

He looked at me in disbelief.

“You have done nothing wrong, Fred. Here is money to keep you. I must go. I must go at once.”

“You are still dreaming, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“This is no dream, Fred. This is reality. I must leave the house as soon as possible. A terrible fate hangs over it.”

My impatience and anxiety seemed then to infect him. He ran into the bedroom, and began to pack my portmanteau, even though I did not have the slightest notion of my destination.

Within a very short time I was ready to depart. I gave Fred a set of the keys, with strict instructions to lock every door and window. “If I am not the guard-dog here I will be with my mother,” he said. “In Short’s Rents.”

“I have given you enough money to support yourself?”

“You have been very generous, sir. When will you be back?”

“I am not sure. I do not know.”

When I came out into the street I looked fearfully from side to side, in case he had returned; but there was no sign. I still had no notion of where I might travel, but then Bysshe’s recent journey came into my head. He had told me that the coach for the north left from the Angel at Islington, and on a sudden and peremptory instinct it was there I travelled. By great good fortune the coach had been delayed by a collision blocking the Essex Road, and I managed to purchase a ticket that would take me-if I wished-as far as Carlisle. I was delighted to put as many miles as possible between myself and London.

I must have seemed a strange fellow traveller, for I remained in silence and in a kind of stupor throughout the whole journey; we rested and changed horses at Matlock, and I tried to sleep in a box-seat in the parlour of the inn there. But I could find no rest. In my mind was always his image, wrapped in my dark cloak, his blank eyes staring up at my window. I alighted at Kendal and caught a local post-chaise to Keswick, to which Bysshe had once referred; during my ride the landscape did indeed seem delightful, although I was scarcely in a frame of mind to entertain its beauties. The great lake reminded me of Lake Geneva, and the mountains around it were like a smaller relic of the mountains around my native city. I was half-expecting the bell of the great cathedral to sound across the waters. I took in all this at a glance, while my anxious thoughts remained elsewhere. How could I ever be able to shake off this demon, this incubus, that haunted me?

I was directed to a small inn that lodged travellers, where I lay that night. I slept only fitfully, woken by a storm that had rolled down over the mountains and by the stirrings of my own unquiet mind, but I spent my first day attempting to tire myself by walking over the steepest ground. To be free-to live among the mountains-now seemed to me the height of my endeavours. I contemplated removing myself to my native land, and there leading a life of blissful withdrawal from the world.

I returned to the inn that evening weary and in need of sleep. I ate the meal that the landlord’s wife put in front of me, and drank copious quantities of Cumberland ale seasoned with port and pepper. But still I could not rest. I slumbered only fitfully, my rest interrupted as it were by flashes of lightning in which I glimpsed the form and figure of the creature. I rose at dawn, and walked to the side of the lake; the garden of the inn sloped downward until it reached the bank, where I stood and surveyed a scene of stillness and silence. There was an island near the middle of the lake, already partly illuminated by the rays of the rising sun, while the landscape of hills and mountains behind it was still in shadow. There was a mist coming off the water that swirled across its surface; curiously, too, there were congregations of wispy vapours that seemed to hover above the water in the pattern of a vortex or whirlpool.

A small boat emerged from the other side of the island, a speck in the mist around me, but steadily it grew larger. The fishermen rose early here. As the craft came nearer to the shore I could discern a man standing upright at the prow, a dark figure silhouetted against the water and the vapour. As he came closer still I could see that his arms were raised above his head, and that he seemed to be waving at me. It was possible that he was in distress, and I waved back in reassurance. Then to my utter horror and amazement I realised who it was that stood in the boat and hailed me. The creature came steadily closer, and I could see the lurid yellow hair and the blank grey eyes. Now he held out his arms: his hands were covered in blood.

I turned back and ran towards the inn, in my haste stumbling over the root of a tree; as I rose from the ground I looked back fearfully over my shoulder. The boat, and its occupant, had gone. They must have been swallowed up in the mist which now crept over the further shore. Still I hastened back to the inn and, although I knew that nothing could hold him at bay, instinctively I locked the door of my chamber. This visitation was evidence of some terrible event. I was sure of it. His bloody hands were the token of some crime perpetrated in vengeance. I went to my window, overlooking the garden and the lake, but he was no more to be seen. My first impulse was to flee, but then I checked myself. I could not spend the rest of my life in headlong flight from my persecutor; even the fate of Cain was less terrible than that.

I decided to return to London, and there verify any deeds he might have committed. I was in a sense curious about the nature of his exploits, since he may thus have displayed something of his debased temperament. I might discover at first hand the nature of that which I had created. But these were fugitive thoughts, not to be expressed even to myself in a definite form. I was still too much in a whirlwind of fearfulness and foreboding.

I discovered that the next carriage to London left from Kendal on the following morning; so for the rest of that day I stayed in my room, looking steadfastly at the lake for any further sight of him. There was none. I suspected-I knew-that he would follow me back to London, just as he had traced me to this secluded place. How he travelled I had not the faintest idea, but I believed that he was still possessed of some preternatural strength. My apprehension rose as, on the following morning, I boarded the coach and began the journey southwards.

WHEN EVENTUALLY I BEGAN to smell London, among the fields and market gardens of its periphery, my fear increased to an alarming degree. It was as if I had smelled him. We came by way of Highgate, and from the hill I could see the great immensity boiling and smoking ahead of me. If I went down once more into its streets, its entrails, would I ever be free again? The encroaching sound was like that of a vast herd of beasts; among them, too, I knew that he would soon be dwelling.

From the Angel I took a carriage to Jermyn Street. I approached the house with some trepidation, since in my imagination I had seen him putting it to the torch or inflicting some harm upon it. But it stood as chastely as before, shuttered and locked in the quiet street. I took my keys, and entered. As I climbed the stairs, I heard a faint sound. Then, as I climbed higher, I realised that there was someone talking in a low voice in my rooms above. I could hear a voice, quiet, thoughtful. There was then a sudden movement, alarming me for that instant, and then at the head of the stairs appeared Bysshe and Fred.

“Thank God you are here, Victor!” Bysshe’s troubled voice aroused all my own fears.

“What is it? Whatever is the matter?”

“Harriet has been killed.”

I swayed upon the stairs, and clutched the banister for support. “I don’t…”

“She was found in the Serpentine. Foully strangled.”

“I met him in the street, sir,” Fred was telling me. “He begged a place of privacy.”

I was scarcely listening to him. “When did this thing happen?”

“Four nights ago.” So I had seen the creature, standing by the corner, on the morning after his crime. “And there is worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“Her necklace, the instrument that killed her, was found in Daniel Westbrook’s pocket.”

“Her brother Daniel? No, that is not possible. That is beyond reckoning. He adored her. He protected her.” I climbed the stairs slowly, my hand over my eyes; at that moment, I did not wish to see anything of the world.

“He has been locked away in Clerkenwell,” Fred said.

“It cannot be so.” I had a sudden vision of the creature, waving at me from the lake with bloodstained hands; I ran up the stairs, and rushed over to the basin in my bedroom where I retched violently.

Bysshe followed me in. “Ianthe has gone to Harriet’s sisters. It is her best possible home. After the funeral, I do not know.”

“And you?”

“Fred kindly agreed that I might stay here. Until your return, of course.”

“No. It is not safe for you here, Bysshe.”

“Not safe?”

“I think, Bysshe, that you must leave London. Until your grief is allayed. There are too many memories for you here. What have you done with Harriet’s clothes?”

“Her clothes? They are hanging still in our lodgings.”

“Fred will collect them. He will give them away on the streets. It is the only course, Bysshe.”

I must have been talking wildly, because he laid his hand upon my arm. “That will not lessen my grief, Victor. How could it? She is absent from me every waking moment. I saw her body on the bank by the water.”

“It is a beginning. I will accompany you now to the coaching office. I will purchase a ticket. I have heard you speak of Marlow, by the Thames. Did you not stay there for a boating holiday?”

“Yes. In my school days.”

“There you must go. Do you have money for your journey?”

He shook his head. “I have exhausted my allowance.”

I took out my purse of sovereigns, and gave it to him. “That will suffice.”

Before he had time for reflection or for argument, I accompanied him to the office on Snow Hill and persuaded him to board a post-chaise. I knew that he must leave the city. As my friend and companion, he was not safe from the vengeance that had been wreaked upon Harriet.

I DID NOT WISH TO RETURN to Jermyn Street. Not yet. Instead I made my way to the Serpentine in Hyde Park; it is a modest stretch of water, longer than it is broad, populated by wildfowl of every description. I walked along its length, hoping to locate that spot where Harriet had been strangled and thrown into the water; I wished to see if I could find any traces of the creature. I had no doubt that he had followed Harriet and had murdered her: I knew it as soberly and as exactly as if I had witnessed the deed. He was the murderer. I could not doubt it. Yet in that sense I was also the murderer. I had fashioned the instrument that had killed Harriet, just as surely as if I had put my own hands around her neck. What was I to do? I could proclaim my guilt, but I would be deemed a madman in thrall to all the ravings of insanity. I would not save Daniel Westbrook.

There was a dark stretch of the bank, beneath a foot-tunnel, to which I made my way. There was a slight movement among the trees and bushes that bordered the water here, and a barely perceptible sweeping sound suggested that something was walking there with slow and steady step. Something was keeping pace with me. Then I glimpsed him, in hat and cloak, his white furrowed face turned towards me for a moment before he bounded away. No other proof was required. He wished to see my tears, and perhaps to exult over them. Yet he also had some facility to anticipate my thoughts. Why else had he waited for me to come to the scene of his crime?

Once more the utter impossibility of revealing this to any living being left me feeling bewildered and abased. I would be locked away in Bedlam, where in the end I might even seek for madness as a relief from my sufferings. In my wretchedness, however, I began to sense within myself an unexpected purpose and a fresh courage. I would return to the workshop along the river, and wait for his appearance. I would question him. I might even implore him to leave for ever the scene of his desperate crime. I did not for one moment think him capable of argument, but he might be open to command. If I were his creator, he might learn obedience.

YET IT WAS MY DUTY first to visit Daniel Westbrook in his prison cell, and offer him what comfort I might provide. On the next morning I made my way to the New Prison at Clerkenwell, furnished with payment for his gaolers as well as books and wholesome food for Daniel himself. He had been placed in a cell below ground, and I was led down a gloomy passage way; it was lit by torches, and smelled of urine and fetid air. “More fierce than Newgate,” the gaoler whispered to me.

Daniel was in a small cell at the end of the row; he jumped up from his plank-bed when I entered, and embraced me. “It is so good of you, Victor, so good of you.”

“It is not good. I am not good.” I scarcely knew what I was saying, faced as I was with the unwitting and innocent victim of my own crime.

“You know what I am accused of?”

“Take your time. I fervently believe in your innocence, and will essay every means in my power to free you.”

“They say that I murdered Harriet, Victor!”

“Tell me what occurred.”

“I had gone to the Serpentine to meet her. We often walked there together in the evening. She was not at our usual meeting place. I was fatigued after my day’s work; I slept beneath a tree-lulled to rest by the sound of the water-but then I was roughly shaken awake. It was a party of the watch. To my horror I saw that my hands were smeared with blood. When they searched me at their office, they found a necklace in my pocket. It was her necklace, Victor. How could it have been in my pocket? At first they considered me no more than a thief or footpad. But then her body was found in the water. She had been strangled with the necklace, and had bled copiously from the nose. Who could think it, Victor? Who could accuse me of murdering her?”

“There has been some terrible miscarriage here, Daniel. Some wilful perversion of facts. Do you have a solicitor?”

“I have no funds-”

“Leave that to me. What are your circumstances here?”

“Look around. My only comfort is that the gaol is used for democrats and revolutionaries. But they have no fellow feeling for me. They look upon me with horror. As the murderer of my sister.”

As I stood in the wretched cell, with its floor of beaten earth, I resolved to use any and every means to save Daniel from the executioner. I believed that I understood the sequence of events. The creature, having committed the crime, had decided in his malevolence to throw the suspicion upon someone else. Or perhaps in some primitive sense he believed that he might avoid the guilt by placing it upon someone other. Who could fathom his reasons? Had he known that Daniel was Harriet’s brother, or had he come by chance upon his sleeping form?

When I took my leave of Daniel I glanced back at his dimly lit cell, where he seemed to be the most isolated and wretched being on the earth. And I had placed him there! It was my crime for which he was to be judged, and my doom to which he had been assigned. If I could have changed places with him, I would have done so without hesitation.

AS SOON AS I HAD LEFT Clerkenwell I made my way to Bartholomew Close, where my lawyer kept his chambers. Mr. Garnett had assisted me over the purchase of the workshop in Lambeth, but I knew from his own account that he also dealt in criminal matters. He was a man of sanguine complexion, full of pleasantries, and he listened attentively as I laid out the facts of the matter.

“Your friend,” he said, “is in a deal of trouble. I have read of the case, Mr. Frankenstein, in the Chronicle.”

“Is opinion against him?”

“Decidedly. But that is no bar to justice.”

He possessed a reassuring manner, which I caught at eagerly. “Can Daniel be saved then?”

“If it is within the bounds of possibility, then it will be done. Where are the husband and child of the unfortunate lady?”

“The child is with her sisters in Whitechapel. The husband-has retired to the country for some rest.”

“He is the son of a baronet, is he not? According to the Chronicle.”

“That is so.”

“Your friend’s position is all the more difficult. Will you join me in a glass of sherry? Cold weather, is it not?” He rose from his desk and, after pouring out two glasses, he went over to the window. “I get a very good view of the churchyard, Mr. Frankenstein. It is an interesting speculation how many lie buried there. Over the centuries, it amounts to a fair number. If they were all to rise again, I feel sure that the neighbourhood would be crowded.”

It was not a speculation that I cared to pursue. “Is there any chance that Daniel might be released before his trial?”

He laughed, in the politest manner. “Not the slightest possibility, I am afraid. Unthinkable. If he is innocent, of course, then the murderer is still walking on the streets of London. It is to be hoped that he kills again, in exactly the same circumstances.”

“So Daniel might then be cleared?”

“A case could be made. Do you have any doubts about your friend’s innocence?”

“No. None whatever.”

“What makes you so certain?”

I hesitated for a moment. “I know him very well. Violence is utterly foreign to his nature. Especially against his beloved sister.”

“But people are not always what they seem, Mr. Frankenstein. They harbour secrets. They work in the dark.”

“Not Daniel.”

“Very well. I will visit the police office this afternoon, and acquaint myself with the evidence in this case. Do not attempt to see the prisoner, if you please. You should not be implicated in this matter. I will be your messenger. The authorities know me well enough. In the meantime I suggest that you leave London for the cleaner air. The fogs are almost upon us.”

“But Daniel-”

“Nothing can be done before the trial. Leave me an address where I can find you.”

MY EXPERIENCES OF THAT DAY, and my encounter with Daniel in his prison cell, had left me exhausted. I returned to Jermyn Street where Fred had prepared me a dish of eggs and butter. “Have you seen the fiend in human form?” he asked me.

“What? What are you saying to me?”

I must have looked fiercely at him, because he recoiled from my glance. “The brother, sir.”

“The brother?” I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. “Yes. I have seen him. He is not a fiend. He is as innocent of this crime as you are, Fred.” At this moment, I sank my head and wept.

Fred became agitated, hopping from one leg to the other. “Would you care for more butter, sir?” He rushed out of the room, and came back with a handkerchief that he placed delicately beside my chair. I cried for myself-I cried for Daniel-I cried for Harriet-the whole storm of tears all the darker for the absence of any possible relief. Mr. Garnett had advised me to leave London, and for an instant I thought of travelling to Marlow to be with Bysshe, but a moment’s consideration dissuaded me. I still wished to encounter the creature: if I could not placate him, or persuade him to retire to some solitary place, I would somehow have to end the life that I had created. There was no other course. He had overturned my electrical machines in the Limehouse workshop, but might there be some way of harnessing the batteries and of destroying him?

IN MY EAGERNESS to hear news of Daniel I went back to Bartholomew Close the next day, where Mr. Garnett welcomed me with a grave countenance. “I can offer you very little hope,” he said. “The evidence is very powerful. It seems that your friend-that Mr. Westbrook-has almost confessed to the crime.”

“How could he confess to that which he did not commit?”

“When he was apprehended at the Serpentine, he was confused and scarcely intelligible.”

“He had just been rudely awaken from sleep.”

“He muttered that something dreadful had happened to his sister.”

“A premonition. A vision.”

“The law places no trust in visions, Mr. Frankenstein.” He went over to the window, and once more looked over the churchyard of St. Bartholomew’s. “Will you be staying in London, after all?”

“I must remain for a few days.”

“Of course. The funeral of Mrs. Shelley is to be conducted on Friday. Would you wish me to accompany you?”

“No. That is kind of you. But I will go with Bysshe.”

“At the church of St. Barnabas. In Whitechapel.” He wrote down the locality, and the time, upon a card. “Please pay my compliments to Mr. Shelley.”

AS SOON AS I RETURNED to Jermyn Street I summoned Fred, and asked him to travel with all possible speed to Marlow. “Change coaches if you must,” I told him. “Fly like the wind. Take this note with you.” I scribbled a message begging him to abandon his isolation and return for Harriet’s funeral. “Do not rest,” I said as I pressed the note into his hand.

“I am here,” he said. “But I am gone already.”

“Mr. Shelley will not be difficult to find.”

“Odd cove, I shall say. Dressed in blue. Cravat untied.”

I awaited their return with eagerness. Mr. Garnett was a good prognosticator: the fogs did arrive, early that afternoon, and I could see nothing from my window but the curling grey and green vapours stirred by a fitful wind. I could make out the figures in the street only vaguely, just as dark shapes against the shifting miasma. There were occasions when a figure taller, or faster, than others arrested my attention. Could it be the creature pacing up and down beside my door? In my restless state of mind I could almost have welcomed the confrontation-I was resolute in my intention to tame him.

On the following afternoon I heard the step of Fred upon the stairs. He came into the room alone. “Where is Mr. Shelley?”

“He sends his regrets, sir. He was ever so tearful.”

Fred then handed me a letter, addressed to me in Bysshe’s characteristic large and sprawling hand. He apologised for remaining in Marlow, but blamed his wretched and enfeebled state; he did not have the strength to attend Harriet’s funeral, which would only add another burden of woe to the sorrow he now felt. Although he bitterly remonstrated with himself for his incapacity, he knew that it would be a blow to shatter him:

I cannot as yet comprehend Harriet’s death, and to see her lowered in a few feet of churchyard earth, and to hear the nonsense of the parson, would diminish the significance of her loss to me.

He then went on to inform me that the Godwins had taken a house at Marlow to be near him:

I have spoken before of Mr. Godwin, the social philosopher. He is a great exponent of Progress, and offers me much comfort. He is accompanied by his daughter, Mary, who is the child of the revered Mary Wollstonecraft. Mr. Godwin tells me that she has all of her mother’s fire and intelligence. I can quite believe it. Pray kiss the Westbrook sisters for me. I will be writing to them. Your ever devoted Bysshe.

I was surprised by the brevity of the letter, and by Bysshe’s reluctance to be present at the funeral, but I ascribed both to his overwhelming grief.

I ATTENDED THE FUNERAL on that Friday morning, in the little church of St. Barnabas just beyond the Whitechapel High Road. Harriet’s sisters were blank with grief. Emily was carrying the infant, Ianthe, who remained quite silent throughout the ceremony. Once I had looked upon Emily with affection, but the faint stirrings of that emotion had long since left me. Their father seemed more robust and, if I may say it, more cheerful than on the occasion when I had last encountered him. It was snowing thickly when we stepped into the churchyard, and the open grave was already fringed with white when poor Harriet’s coffin was laid into the soil. Just as it reached the level earth there was a sudden rustling in the bank of trees behind us, as if someone or something was thrashing in the branches. I am convinced that all of us at that moment experienced a sudden horror-for me it was evidence of the creature, as I thought, but for the others the object of some unknown fear.

“A fox,” Mr. Westbrook said in a loud voice. “The little foxes that spoil the vines.”

Emily came up to me afterwards, still holding Ianthe in her arms. “Daniel’s trial is set for Monday morning,” she said. “Will you come?”

“Of course.”

“Is there hope?”

“I cannot pretend to you, Emily, that I harbour any.”

“I thought not. But you will be there?” I promised once more to attend. “Mr. Shelley has written to us about Ianthe.”

“He told me so.”

“He strongly desires that we should continue to be her guardians. It is what we wish to do.”

“She could have no better care.”

“We will teach her to respect her father and to venerate the memory of her mother.” I was struck, as I had been on first meeting her, by Emily’s strength of purpose.

I WENT TO THE COURT OF JUSTICE at the Old Bailey on that Monday morning; the Sessions House, where the trial was to be held, looked to me more like a cardboard puppet theatre than a place of justice. The judge was adorned with scarlet and white, and he held a linen handkerchief up to his nose to ward off the lingering putrescence of gaol fever. The jurors sat on two rows of benches on the left-hand side of the court; they were London rate-payers, of course, with all the smugness and self-sufficiency of their type. There was a large crowd in the body of the courtroom itself, made up of shopmen and apprentices, of vagrant boys and ballad singers, of anyone who had no other pastime or occupation that afternoon. There were reporters and sketch-makers there, too, all of them causing an incessant bustle and noise. It was very like watching the activity of a London street. On the right-hand side of the court was a small wooden witness box into which, much to the excitement of the spectators, Daniel was now led. His wrists were bound with manacles, and he was wearing the same clothes that I had seen on him in the cell at Clerkenwell. The judge then called all those present to be silent, as a prayer was intoned by the clerk of the court to the Divine Judge who-it must be presumed-would watch over these proceedings. Daniel did not join in the prayer, but stood calmly looking down at his manacled hands. Then, in a round and portentous voice, one of the attorneys sitting at a table immediately beneath the judge began to read out the charges. Daniel stood almost at attention, without any perceptible movement; he was intent upon every word, as if it were a story of someone else’s crime. When the attorney had finished his account, Daniel looked around at the court with an expression of impatience.

He was asked if he wished to enter any plea, and he replied with an earnest “Not guilty!” The officers of the watch were then called to a witness box, directly opposite that in which Daniel stood. The first of them, Stephen Martin, explained the circumstances of finding “the accused” sleeping beneath a tree by the Serpentine. “That is a lake,” the judge told the jurors, “to be found in the Hyde Park.” The jurors, who must have known this very well already, received the information with great seriousness. Martin then went on to explain how the hands and cheeks of the accused were bloodied. When the accused was thereupon taken into custody, at the watch-house on the corner of Queen’s Gate, a necklace was found in the pocket of his breeches. Martin spoke rapidly, much to the dismay of the penny-a-liners, and in a high voice that caused amusement among the more vulgar spectators.

It seems that in English law the accused is able to question and to challenge witnesses, in a way that would seem unfitting on the Continent, and Daniel at once asked Martin if he, Daniel, had seemed surprised by the discovery of the necklace.

“Yes. Oh, yes,” he replied in his rapid way. “You seemed to be much taken aback. But that was because you was play-acting. Lawks.”

“You found me sleeping beneath a tree?”

“Of course I did.”

“Why should a murderer and a thief fall asleep at the scene of his own crime?”

“For why? For the reason that the person accused, being yourself, is touched.” Martin tapped his forehead, much to the delight of the spectators.

“Well, Mr. Martin, am I a lunatic or an actor? I really do not think I can be both.”

“Whatever you wish, Mr. Westbrook. I am not particular.” Martin laughed quite gaily.

The second and third members of the watch described, in identical terms, the discovery of Harriet’s body. She had been found by two children, in the shadow of a bridge that crossed over the middle point of the Serpentine. Daniel listened to the testimony of the witnesses with great attention, his manacled hands stretched out before him, and at the end he merely bowed his head. He did not wish to question them. The account of the discovery of his sister seemed to have left him momentarily without the power of speech.

But then, when asked by the judge if he wished to make any final statement, he raised his head and looked steadily at the jurors. “I do not expect justice in this place,” he said. “I have long since concluded that the judicial system of our country is a tissue of corruption.”

At which point the judge interrupted him. “You are here to defend yourself, sir. You are not here to deliver your opinion of English law.”

“But that is the point, is it not? That justice is not to be found in the well of an English court?”

“That is not the point. You have no point.” The judge was growing angry. “The point is worthless. I throw it out.”

“I defend myself then with a simple phrase. I am innocent. I had no part in my sister’s death. I abhor the notion of violence. But to direct it against a member of my own family-it is unthinkable to me. Surely you cannot accuse a brother of such a crime? A loving brother who helped to raise her from her infant days? No, no. Never can it be.” He paused, to regain control of his feelings. “I have no conception of how she met her end. I do not know how my face and hands were bloody. I do not know how her necklace was found in my pocket. I can only guess at some malign conspiracy. At some infernal evil. Yet I know this. I am not the man.” His words of evident sincerity received the murmured approval of many spectators, who were then quickly silenced by the judge. Daniel was led away, and the jurors retired to another room.

I stayed in the court, not trusting myself to be alone. I knew Daniel to be entirely blameless, and yet here he was obliged to defend his life while I sat idly watching him. I knew, too, what the verdict would be. The law is a net, a snare, which binds its victims even as they struggle to be free. After no more than an hour the jurors returned, and Daniel was again led out in manacles. His face was flushed red, and he stumbled as he mounted the stairs of the witness box. Someone shouted out, “Not guilty,” and there was scattered applause in the courtroom. Daniel shook his head, frowning slightly, and strained forward to listen to the jurors’ verdict. It came without ceremony. Guilty of unlawful killing. There was silence after that, a silence in which the darkness of his fate was absorbed.

Then with a barely perceptible expression of disquiet Daniel turned towards the judge, who made a great ceremony out of placing the black cloth upon his wig. He recited the circumstances of Daniel’s supposed murder of his sister, dwelling with evident relish on the details of the discovery of the body, before pronouncing sentence on what he called “the heinous slaughter” and the “barely conceivable evil” of the crime. I agreed with him upon that point, although I knew that the perpetrator was elsewhere. Daniel no doubt received the sentence of death with remarkable calm; I could not see him, since his back was turned to the court while he faced the judge. He carried himself erect, as he left the courtroom, and did not look in my direction.