Death Has Deep Roots by Michael Gilbert Page A

same time three more of the guests, returning to the hotel, entered the foyer.
    “As soon as Monsieur Sainte reached the room he realised that Major Thoseby was dead. He immediately sent for the police. You will hear their evidence, and the evidence of a number of experts, which I will not anticipate now, beyond mentioning one thing. The weapon with which Major Thoseby had been murdered was discovered at the preliminary search. It had been thrust down in the space between the back and the seat of the sofa. It was an ordinary black-handled kitchen knife. Under microscopic examination the handle gave the appearance of having been hastily wiped, but in spite of this attempted obliteration, prints were reconstructed. They were the thumb prints and fingerprints of the prisoner. The prints of her left hand. It is right to tell you that she does not deny them. She says that the knife was one which she often used in the course of her duties in the kitchen. It is right also to mention at this point her explanation of how she came to be in Major Thoseby’s room. It is a very simple explanation. She says that whilst she was in the office the bell indicator for Room 34 carne up. She did not know that Room 34 was Major Thoseby’s room. She did not even know that he had arrived. It was part of her duty to answer bedroom bells, and she therefore went up. When she got there she went in and found the body.”
    Mr. Summers paused again. He had presented the facts, together with the prisoner’s explanation of them, quite flatly, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. This was his habit. It was one of the things which made him a very dangerous prosecuting counsel. Now, however, he was approaching more debatable ground and his style changed imperceptibly.
    “I have reserved to the last,” he said, “the question of motive. This is a matter which is apt to be misunderstood. It is the well-settled law of England – and his lordship will guide you on this, I am sure – that the onus is not on the prosecution to prove motive. Put in another way, we have not to undertake the task of explaining why a murder was done. Our duty is discharged if we show that a murder was done, and that, beyond a reasonable doubt, it was done by the hand of the prisoner. Why then is motive so often in discussion? The answer to that is, of course, that normal beings – sane human beings – do not commit murders. If, therefore, the prosecution can adduce an adequate motive it must have an immense additional compulsive force. I should explain, however, that by ‘adequate’ I do not mean what you might think adequate, or what I might think adequate. You may hold the act of murder in such horror – I trust you do – that no motive would seem adequate for it. That is what is meant when it is sometimes said that the motive must be measured against the actor. You have here a young woman trained, for many years, in violence. I shall deal with that training in evidence. Again, she is a woman who suffered treatment at the hands of the German police which might have turned the mind of the sanest. Finally, she is a woman – at the time of which I am going to speak, the middle years of the war, a young and inexperienced woman – who was seduced, and who gave birth to a child. In prison. In a Gestapo prison. A woman who was released by the happy turn of the war and who set out in search of the father of her child. Who in the course of that search saw her child die of malnutrition. Who came to England to further the search for this man. Who found him in Room 34 of his hotel.”
    “No,” said the prisoner softly. “No, no, no, no, no.”
    “Well, that is all that I have to say at this juncture,” said Mr. Summers. If he had heard the interruption he gave no sign of it. “We shall show you, in order, by the evidence of the witnesses that we shall bring before you that only one person had the opportunity. That the means were to the hand of one person. That the motive was the