On the whole, however, her story bore
the stamp of truth; and a half-apologetic but none the less persistent
cross-examination left it scarcely less convincing than before.
There was one independent witness for the defence, in addition to the
experts in photography and chains. The landlady of the house at which
Rachel called, in the early morning, on her way home with the cab, was
about five minutes in the witness-box, but in those five minutes she
supplied the defence with one of its strongest arguments. It was at
least conceivable that a woman who had killed her husband might coolly
proceed to pack her trunk, and thereafter fetch the cab which was to
remove herself and her effects from the scene of the tragedy. But was it
credible that a woman of so much presence of mind, to whom every minute
might make the difference between life and death, would, having found
her cab, actually drive out of her way to inquire after a sick friend,
or even a dying lover, before going home to pick up her luggage and to
ascertain whether her crime was still undetected? Suppose it were a
lover, and inquire one must: would one not still leave those inquiries
to the last? And having made them, last or first; and knowing the grim
necessity of flight; would one woman go out of her way to tell another
that she "had to go abroad very suddenly, and was going for good?"
"Inconceivable!" cried the prisoner's counsel, dealing with the point;
and the word was much upon his lips during the course of a long and very
strenuous speech, in which the case for the Crown was flouted from
beginning to end, without, perhaps, enough of concentration on its more
obvious weaknesses, or of respect for its undoubted strength.
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