CLAT 2020 English Language: The Case for the Defence

It was the strangest murder trial I ever attended, where the old woman was found battered to death. He was a heavy stout man with bulging bloodshot eyes. All his muscles seemed to be in his thighs. The clock had just struck two in the morning. Mrs Salmon in 15 Northwood Street had been unable to sleep: she heard a door click shut and thought it was her own gate. So she went to the window and saw Adams (that was his name) on the steps of Mrs Parker's house. He had just come out and he was wearing gloves. He had a hammer in his hand and she saw him drop it into the laurel bushes by the front gate. But before he moved away, he had looked up at her window. The fatal instinct that tells a man when he is watched exposed him in the light of a streetlamp to her gaze-his eyes suffused with horrifying and brutal fear, like an animal's when you raise a whip.
Mrs Salmon was called in the Court.
'And do you see the man here in court?'
[She looked straight at the big man in the dock, who stared hard at her with his Pekingese eyes without emotion.]
'Yes,' she said, 'there he is.'
'You are quite certain?'
She said simply, 'I couldn't be mistaken, sir.'
'Thank you, Mrs Salmon.'
[Counsel for the defence rose to cross-examine.]
'Now, Mrs Salmon, you must remember that a man's life may depend on your evidence.'
'I do remember it, sir.'
'Is your eyesight good?'
'I have never had to wear spectacles, sir.'
'You are a woman of fifty-five?'
'Fifty-six, sir.'
'And the man you saw was on the other side of the road?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And it was two o'clock in the morning. You must have remarkable eyes, Mrs Salmon?'
'No, sir. There was moonlight, and when the man looked up, he had the lamplight on his face.'
'And you have no doubt whatever that the man you saw is the prisoner?'
'None whatever, sir. It isn't a face one forgets.'
Then he said, 'Do you mind, Mrs Salmon, examining again the people in court?
No, not the prisoner. Stand up, please, Mr Adams!
And there at the back of the court with thick stout body and muscular legs and a pair of bulging eyes, was the exact image of the man in the dock.
'Now think very carefully, Mrs Salmon. Can you still swear that the man you saw drop the hammer in Mrs Parker's garden was the prisoner and not this man, who is his twin brother?'
Of course she couldn't.
[Excerpts from "The Case for the Defence" by Graham Greene]

Who was murdered in the scene described in the passage?

Mrs Salmon is not dead – she is giving evidence to the court. Although it was Mrs Parker’s house (according to the perception of Mrs Salmon), it cannot be inferred who exactly was killed. It is only known that the victim is an old woman battered to death.

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