Read Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder for Free Online

violently wrenched from his person. Then Parry sprang from his seat, moving Kerressey’s evidence onto uncomfortable ground:
    Do you know of a man called Thomas Lee?
    I know Thomas Lee.
    Was he examined by the coroner in your presence?
    No, he was not.
    Did you not hear … in the course of your enquiries in this case, that Mr Briggs was seen alive on the night of the murder at Bow Station, and that there were two people in the carriage with him?
    The Solicitor General objected on the grounds that the question tended to introduce hearsay into the evidence. Parry countered tersely: I apprehend that if he heard, in prosecuting his enquiries, a fact of so important a character as this, and that fact was kept from the jury in the opening speech for the Crown, I have a right to ask the witness whose special duty it was to investigate the case, whether it did not come to his notice.
    Refusing to allow the defence an advantage, Judge Pollock ruled that the question could not be pressed. Was his judgement already formed? Parry was forced to retreat, scuppered from raising the spectre of those two men in Briggs’ compartment. Until Lee could take the stand for the defence, the issue of whether Briggs had company in the train on the night of his murder was inadmissible. The police knew that there were at least four people whose own experience strongly corroborated Lee’s statement but they were under no legal obligation to reveal this to the defence. Parry was unaware that Lee’s story had been substantiated by others. Had he known, he might have been able to force Inspector Kerressey to admit under oath that an alternative scenario for the murder existed. Instead – potentially damning for Müller – what the alert jury was most likely to remember from Kerressey’s deposition were his closing words: I am sure the [inside] handle of the door was bloody. There was no blood on Mr Briggs’ hands.
    Ballantine called the chemist Dr Letheby to describe the blood spatters on the glass and upholstery of the carriage, to confirm that their pattern was consistent with blows to the head and to testify that, from the existence of coagulum within it, the blood had been living when it came on the glass . Then it was the turn of John Death to recount the events of Monday 11 July. He said that the chain Müller had exchanged with him on that day (labelled Number 1) was missing the jump link designed to connect its two halves. Instead there was a common pin bent to form a loop and a piece of string.
    Parry might have sought to question Death’s identification of Müller by asking whether the jeweller had not repeatedly seen Müller’s photograph during the voyage with Tanner to New York. Instead, Parry said that Müller admitted to visiting the shop but that it had been on an earlier occasion. Asking Death to look closely at the chain labelled Number 3 (Müller’s original, pawned chain), Parry wondered whether it was not the case that Müller had brought this chain to be mended during November 1863 and that he had paid one shilling and sixpence for the work? Death was sure that was not the case. Had Müller not returned during June 1864 to offer that chain for exchange? Again, Death was certain that he had never seen the prisoner before 11 July.
    Take that chain , ordered Parry, and look at it carefully again and tell me whether a link has been broken. Death examined the piece of jewellery labelled Number 3. Yes, he admitted, it showed signs of being mended. Was it not taken in for repair at his own shop? No, he was sure that he had never seen that chain before. Parry tried one last time. Was it not possible that he had served Müller as a customer weeks prior to the murder? Death said that he had no such recollection.
    As the day inched forward Müller’s landlady Ellen Blyth told the court that he had worn the same clothes on Sunday 10 July as he had worn on the previous evening and that he had been lame in his right foot since 7 July,