Page 50 - American English File Student Book 3B

5 READING & LISTENING

a D o you enjoy reading crim e novels? If so, w hich ones? If not, why
The Case for
not? Have you read a crim e story recently? W hat was it about?
the Defense
b 5 41))) Read and listen to P a r t 1 o f a short story. Use the is a short story written
glossary to help you. Then answ er the questions w ith a partner. by novelist Graham
Greene. The story takes
1 W here did the murder take place?
place in England around
2 W hat did the prisoner look like? the time it was written,
3 How many witnesses saw him? in the late 1930s, when
the death penalty for
4 Why did Mrs. Salm on go to the window?
murder still existed. It
5 W hen did Mr. M acDougall see Adams?
was abolished in 1965.
6 Did Mr. W heeler see Adams’s face?

The Case for the Defense

b y G r a h a m G r e e n e
p a r t ı
It was the strangest murder trial I have ever attended. They
named it the Peckham murder in the headlines, although
Northwood Street, where Mrs. Parker was found murdered, was
not actually in Peckham.
The prisoner was a well-built man with bloodshot eyes. An
ugly man, one you wouldn’t forget in a hurry — and that was
an important point. The prosecution intended to call four
witnesses who hadn’t forgotten him and who had seen him
hurrying away from the little red house in Northwood Street.
At two o’clock in the morning Mrs. Salmon, who lived at
15 Northwood Street, had been unable to sleep. She heard a
door shut and so she went to the window and saw Adams (the
accused) on the steps of the victim’s house. He had just come
out and he was wearing gloves. Before he moved away, he had
looked up - at her window.
Henry MacDougall, who had been driving home late, nearly
ran over Adams at the corner of Northwood Street because he
was walking in the middle of the road, looking dazed. And old
Mr. Wheeler, who lived next door to Mrs. Parker, at number 12,
and was woken up by a noise and got up and looked out of the
window, just as Mrs. Salmon had done, saw Adams’s back and,
as he turned, those bloodshot eyes. In Laurel Avenue he had
been seen by yet another witness.

Glossary 1
trial . "iraial the process where a judge, and sometimes a jury,
listens to evidence and decides if somebody is guilty or innocent
Peckham 'pskom/ an area in South London
the prosecution prasa'kyu/n the lawyer(s) who try to show
that somebody is guilty o f a crim e

100 10B