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Middleheath, eagerly following up the opening. "Possibly nothing that one could swear to," rejoined the witness, in an exceedingly dry tone. Mr. Middleheath essayed no more questions, but got the witness out of the box as quickly as possible, trusting to his own address to remove the effect of the evidence on the mind of the jury.
Middleheath he stated that he had frequently attended the late Lady Penreath, the mother of the accused, for fits or seizures from which she suffered periodically, and that the London specialist who had been called into consultation on one occasion had agreed with him that the seizures were epileptic.
He talked learnedly of the difficulty of diagnosing epilepsy except after prolonged observation, and cited lengthily from big books, which a court constable brought into court one by one, on symptoms, reflex causes, auras, grand mal, petit mal, Jacksonian epilepsy, and the like. The only admission of any value that Mr. Middleheath could extract from Dr.
You said you were aware that the accused was discharged from the Army suffering from shell-shock. Did he tell you so himself?" "No, my lord. I was informed so." "Really, Mr. Middleheath " The judge's glance at Counsel for the Defence was so judicial that it brought Mr. Middleheath hurriedly to his feet again.
He used to be the very soul of courtesy, but when he returned from the front he refused to attend a 'welcome home' at the village church and hear the vicar read a congratulatory address." "I hope you are not going to advance the latter incident as a proof of non compos mentis, Mr. Middleheath," said the judge facetiously.
It was observed by the feminine element in court that she did not look at her lover in the dock, but kept her eyes steadily fixed on Mr. Middleheath. Her story was a straightforward and simple one. She had become engaged to Mr. Penreath shortly before the war, and had seen him several times since he was invalided out of the Army.
Middleheath called an official from the War Office to prove formally that Lieutenant James Penreath had been discharged from His Majesty's forces suffering from shell-shock. "I understand that, prior to the illness which terminated his military career, Lieutenant Penreath had won a reputation as an exceedingly gallant soldier, and had been awarded the D.S.O," said Mr. Middleheath.
Middleheath pointed out, had seen the prisoner in a fit at the Durrington hotel, and he emphatically declared that the accused was an epileptic, with homicidal tendencies. Such an opinion, coming from such a quarter, was, to Mr. Middleheath's mind, incontrovertible proof of the prisoner's insanity, and he did not see how the jury could go behind it in coming to a decision.
Reginald Middleheath, the eminent criminal counsel, who depended as much upon his portly imposing stage presence to bluff juries into an acquittal as upon his legal attainments, which were also considerable. Mr.
Middleheath, with a bland smile of protest. "It is highly improper, as nobody knows better than the Crown Prosecutor, and calculated to convey an altogether erroneous impression on the minds of the jury. There is not the slightest evidence to support such a statement. The evidence is that he saw the servant and paid his bill before departure. That is not running away."
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