committed suicide, and that letters from Jackson would be found in his hand.
They arrived at Kinder’s house about one in the morning. Bertrand took off his boots, gave them to Burne to hold, and climbed into the house by the dining-room window. He came back much later—Burne fell asleep meanwhile—angry because Kinder would not drink his beer, and consequently was awake. “We had drugged it,” said Bertrand.
Some days, about a week later, Bertrand produced in his surgery a hatchet, and asked Burne to bore a hole in the handle so that he might tie it under his coat by a string. A young man, Ranclaud, who was staying in the house, asked what he meant to do with it. Bertrand answered abruptly, and with no care for probabilities, that he was going fishing, and went out with Burne to their hired boat. On the way, he said that Kinder had insulted him; that he was going to knock Kinder’s brains out first, and then get a divorce from Mrs. Bertrand.
I remarked what object could he have in putting Mr. Kinder out of the way when Mrs. Kinder was as good as a wife to him. He said he wished to have Mrs. Kinder all to himself.
On this occasion Bertrand entered the house by the same window, but returned soon, saying that Jackson and Mrs. Kinder’s brother Llewellyn were sleeping in the house, and as the boards creaked he did not think it safe.
COUNSEL: Safe to do what?
BURNE: To murder Mr. Kinder, as I understood.
A week later the expedition was repeated, but in remarkable conditions. Bertrand shaved himself at midnight; then blacked his face, donned a mask and the red Crimean shirt, topped this disguise with a slouch hat, took off his boots, drank some brandy, and set out in the boat at about 1.30 in the morning. Burne went with him. Why he should have done so is inexplicable. True, he was in Bertrand’s employ; true, he may not have taken seriously Bertrand’s boasts and threats against Kinder. But he was sufficiently well aware of danger when his own skin was in question.
On these occasions I always carried the hatchet myself; I also used to get him to sit in front of me in the boat for fear of accidents. I made him pull the stroke oar, while I pulled the bow oar, fearing that, taking me by surprise while my back was turned, he might throw me into the water.
That night Bertrand asked Burne to help him when he got inside the house. If Kinder, he said, were to be killed that night, suspicion would inevitably fall on Jackson, who was leaving Sydney next day. The young man answered that it was all too romantic for him, that he had no share in Mrs. Kinder and intended to run no risk. Bertrand at this seemed to abandon his plan, whatever it may have been, and they rowed home. This was the last expedition in the boat.
But not the end of Bertrand’s fantastic preparations. His next act was to cut off his moustache, dress as a woman, and go with Burne to buy two pistols at a pawnshop in Lower George Street, then a fairly tough locality. On the day following this purchase he acquired a sheep’s head, and began to practise shooting at it in his surgery with bullets he had made himself in a mould. His wife and her mother ran in at the first shot, alarmed, naturally enough, by the noise and smell of smoke. This was on a Saturday. On Monday morning Burne was told to destroy the broken skull in the furnace, and did so. That afternoon he heard that Kinder was dying.
At this point we get Bertrand’s own version of the tragedy as he told it to Burne on his return from Kinder’s house. Kinder, he said, had actually shot himself as the result of a practical joke. The two men had left the house and their wives in search of a pub and a drink. On their way back Bertrand had suggested that the women should be given a fright, and produced a pistol, which he said had no bullet in it, but only powder and a wad. Kinder, who was drunk, agreed to put it against his head and fire; and when they came to the room where the women were, actually did so, with the result that the charge of powder drove the wad into his ear and jaw. Proof of this, said Bertrand, was that no bullet could be found.
It was a fantastic story, but Bertrand’s counsel seized upon it, and later there was great argument about it and about when the doctors came upon the scene. Unfortunately, Bertrand, forgetting this sketch of a possible defence, later admitted to Burne that his wife had found a bullet, and produced from his pocket a flattened scrap of lead which he said was the bullet in question. Burne secreted one of those that had been made in the surgery to fire at the sheep’s head, and gave it to the detectives; this bullet fitted the second of the pawnshop pistols.
Defence counsel could not do a great deal with Burne. They could prove him a poltroon, but by no means could they prove him a liar. The butcher who had sold the sheep’s head, the pawnbroker who had sold the pistols, Buckley the boatman, Mrs. Bertrand’s mother who had witnessed the pistol practice—all these in turn corroborated his story. Asked why he did not attend the inquest and there tell what he knew, he answered that he had not been subpœnaed. Asked why he had gone to the detective office afterwards with information, he gave the following answer:
It was slightly for the sake of public justice, and by way of protecting my life that I went there, the object being self-preservation in particular, the other in a slight degree.
This naïve statement virtually ended his evidence. His last admission was to the effect that he, Burne, had read part of Bertrand’s diary before the detectives came; then he was told to stand down, having proved himself a useful though contemptible witness for the Crown.
VI
After certain corroborating witnesses came one Alexander Bell-house, employed in the Government Service, who had known Bertrand for some years. He repeated an extraordinary statement made to him by Bertrand a month before the trial. After a game of cards at the house in Wynyard Square, Bertrand had accompanied him to the door as he was leaving, and told him that he was responsible for the death of Kinder. “He said that he was sorry for Kinder but wanted him out of his way.” He also told Bellhouse that he was a powerful mesmerist, and could do anything he liked with people. His wife knew of his attachment to Mrs. Kinder. He stated that he had put the pistol in Kinder’s way, not that he had shot him. The witness was so greatly shocked by Bertrand’s statement and manner that he “could not sleep that night because of it”. The impression left on his mind was that Bertrand had somehow compelled Kinder to shoot himself.
Harriet Kerr, Bertrand’s sister, followed Bellhouse with an even more remarkable story.
Early in the morning Bertrand came into my bedroom as I was washing the baby. He said, “Stay a minute, I have something to say to you.” He told me to sit on the side of the bed and asked if I had read of the death of Kinder. I said I had. He paused a little, then said, “Kinder did not shoot himself. I shot him.” I replied, “You must be mad to say such a thing!” He said, “No, I am not mad. I tell you I did shoot him.” I said, “But how cruel of you to do so,” and put my hands up to my face. He pulled them down again. I was crying, and he said, “Don’t cry. I don’t regret what I have done.” He said when he had shot Kinder he put the pistol in his hand and a pipe in his mouth.
Three weeks later Mrs. Kerr had another talk with her brother. This time his wife was present, but asleep. “She used,” said Mrs. Kerr, “to sleep a great deal. It was more like stupor.” Bertrand said that he did not want to have to kill Jane, and that a divorce would be better, if he could get up “an adultery case with a respectable married woman”. His sister took him to task bravely about his behaviour in general and this plan in particular. Jane had done him no harm, she told him, and Mrs. Kinder was a wicked woman. He knew that, he said. She was wicked already, and he would make of her a second Lucrezia Borgia. It was very likely, he intimated, that before his sister went to Brisbane she would find herself attending his wife’s funeral. Mrs. Kerr went on to describe an attempt upon Jane’s life. At one o’clock in the morning there was an argument, and Bertrand, taking up a life-preserver, threatened his wife, who cried out in terror the strange words: “Don’t kill me. You promised
