Phineas Redux Part 78

"You mean fiction."

"Well, yes; fiction,--if you like that word better."

"I don't like either, particularly. You have to find plots, haven't you?"

Mr. Bouncer paused a moment. "Yes; yes," he said. "In writing a novel it is necessary to construct a plot."

"Where do you get 'em from?"

"Where do I get 'em from?"

"Yes,--where do you find them? You take them from the French mostly;--don't you?" Mr. Bouncer became very red. "Isn't that the way our English writers get their plots?"

"Sometimes,--perhaps."

"Your's ain't French then?"

"Well;--no;--that is--I won't undertake to say that--that--"

"You won't undertake to say that they're not French."

"Is this relevant to the case before us, Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s?" asked the judge.

"Quite so, my lud. We have a highly-distinguished novelist before us, my lud, who, as I have reason to believe, is intimately acquainted with the French system of the construction of plots. It is a business which the French carry to perfection. The plot of a novel should, I imagine, be constructed in accordance with human nature?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Bouncer.

"You have murders in novels?"

"Sometimes," said Mr. Bouncer, who had himself done many murders in his time.

"Did you ever know a French novelist have a premeditated murder committed by a man who could not possibly have conceived the murder ten minutes before he committed it;--with whom the cause of the murder anteceded the murder no more than ten minutes?" Mr. Bouncer stood thinking for a while. "We will give you your time, because an answer to the question from you will be important testimony."

"I don't think I do," said Mr. Bouncer, who in his confusion had been quite unable to think of the plot of a single novel.

"And if there were such a French plot that would not be the plot that you would borrow?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Bouncer.

"Did you ever read poetry, Mr. Bouncer?"

"Oh yes;--I read a great deal of poetry."

"Shakespeare, perhaps?" Mr. Bouncer did not condescend to do more than nod his head. "There is a murder described in _Hamlet_. Was that supposed by the poet to have been devised suddenly?"

"I should say not."

"So should I, Mr. Bouncer. Do you remember the arrangements for the murder in _Macbeth_? That took a little time in concocting;--didn't it?"

"No doubt it did."

"And when Oth.e.l.lo murdered Desdemona, creeping up to her in her sleep, he had been thinking of it for some time?"

"I suppose he had."

"Do you ever read English novels as well as French, Mr. Bouncer?" The unfortunate author again nodded his head. "When Amy Robsart was lured to her death, there was some time given to the preparation,--eh?"

"Of course there was."

"Of course there was. And Eugene Aram, when he murdered a man in Bulwer's novel, turned the matter over in his mind before he did it?"

"He was thinking a long time about it, I believe."

"Thinking about it a long time! I rather think he was. Those great masters of human nature, those men who knew the human heart, did not venture to describe a secret murder as coming from a man's brain without premeditation?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Such also is my impression. But now, I bethink me of a murder that was almost as sudden as this is supposed to have been. Didn't a Dutch smuggler murder a Scotch lawyer, all in a moment as it were?"

"Dirk Hatteraick did murder Glossop in _The Antiquary_ very suddenly;--but he did it from pa.s.sion."

"Just so, Mr. Bouncer. There was no plot there, was there? No arrangement; no secret creeping up to his victim; no escape even?"

"He was chained."

"So he was; chained like a dog;--and like a dog he flew at his enemy.

If I understand you, then, Mr. Bouncer, you would not dare so to violate probability in a novel, as to produce a murderer to the public who should contrive a secret hidden murder,--contrive it and execute it, all within a quarter of an hour?"

Mr. Bouncer, after another minute's consideration, said that he thought he would not do so. "Mr. Bouncer," said Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s, "I am uncommonly obliged to our excellent friend, Sir Gregory, for having given us the advantage of your evidence."

CHAPTER LXII

Lord Fawn's Evidence

A crowd of witnesses were heard on the second day after Mr.

Chaffanbra.s.s had done with Mr. Bouncer, but none of them were of much interest to the public. The three doctors were examined as to the state of the dead man's head when he was picked up, and as to the nature of the instrument with which he had probably been killed; and the fact of Phineas Finn's life-preserver was proved,--in the middle of which he begged that the Court would save itself some little trouble, as he was quite ready to acknowledge that he had walked home with the short bludgeon, which was then produced, in his pocket.

"We would acknowledge a great deal if they would let us," said Mr.

Chaffanbra.s.s. "We acknowledge the quarrel, we acknowledge the walk home at night, we acknowledge the bludgeon, and we acknowledge a grey coat." But that happened towards the close of the second day, and they had not then reached the grey coat. The question of the grey coat was commenced on the third morning,--on the Sat.u.r.day,--which day, as was well known, would be opened with the examination of Lord Fawn. The anxiety to hear Lord Fawn undergo his penance was intense, and had been greatly increased by the conviction that Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s would resent upon him the charge made by the Attorney-General as to tampering with a witness. "I'll tamper with him by-and-bye," Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s had whispered to Mr. Wickerby, and the whispered threat had been spread abroad. On the table before Mr.

Chaffanbra.s.s, when he took his place in the Court on the Sat.u.r.day, was laid a heavy grey coat, and on the opposite side of the table, just before the Solicitor-General, was laid another grey coat, of much lighter material. When Lord Fawn saw the two coats as he took his seat on the bench his heart failed him.

He was hardly allowed to seat himself before he was called upon to be sworn. Sir Simon Slope, who was to examine him, took it for granted that his lords.h.i.+p could give his evidence from his place on the bench, but to this Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s objected. He was very well aware, he said, that such a practice was usual. He did not doubt but that in his time he had examined some hundreds of witnesses from the bench.

In nineteen cases out of twenty there could be no objection to such a practice. But in this case the n.o.ble lord would have to give evidence not only as to what he had seen, but as to what he then saw. It would be expedient that he should see colours as nearly as possible in the same light as the jury, which he would do if he stood in the witness-box. And there might arise questions of ident.i.ty, in speaking of which it would be well that the n.o.ble lord should be as near as possible to the thing or person to be identified. He was afraid that he must trouble the n.o.ble lord to come down from the Elysium of the bench. Whereupon Lord Fawn descended, and was sworn in at the witness-box.

His treatment from Sir Simon Slope was all that was due from a Solicitor-General to a distinguished peer who was a member of the same Government as himself. Sir Simon put his questions so as almost to rea.s.sure the witness and very quickly,--only too quickly,--obtained from him all the information that was needed on the side of the prosecution. Lord Fawn, when he had left the club, had seen both Mr. Bonteen and Mr. Finn preparing to follow him, but he had gone alone, and had never seen Mr. Bonteen since. He walked very slowly down into Curzon Street and Bolton Row, and when there, as he was about to cross the road at the top of Clarges Street,--as he believed, just as he was crossing the street,--he saw a man come at a very fast pace out of the mews which runs into Bolton Row, opposite to Clarges Street, and from thence hurry very quickly towards the pa.s.sage which separates the gardens of Devons.h.i.+re and Lansdowne Houses. It had already been proved that had Phineas Finn retraced his steps after Erle and Fitzgibbon had turned their backs upon him, his shortest and certainly most private way to the spot on which Lord Fawn had seen the man would have been by the mews in question. Lord Fawn went on to say that the man wore a grey coat,--as far as he could judge it was such a coat as Sir Simon now showed him; he could not at all identify the prisoner; he could not say whether the man he had seen was as tall as the prisoner; he thought that as far as he could judge, there was not much difference in the height.