The Bloodstained Jacket in Court, Explained：account for

What's really going on

Forensics look like the prosecution's cleanest weapon: blood of the victim's own group, on the accused's jacket, half-washed. Wilfrid's response is the film's method in miniature — accept the fact and change what it means. He does not deny that the stains are human blood; he makes the same fact harmless by showing the accused shares that blood type. The burglar theory, by contrast, gets him nowhere: "Let us not surmise, Sir Wilfrid, but confine ourselves to facts," the judge cuts in, and the gloves argument dies with it. Then comes the more dangerous thread: the knife and the wrist. Wilfrid's question about whether the cut was "an accident or done deliberately after the murder to account for the bloodstains" is objected to and withdrawn — but the doubt has already been planted.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Blood group evidence can cut both ways in court.
• A polite phrase can end questioning as firmly as a shout.
• The knife test plants doubt about how the cut happened.
• One certificate can outweigh a room full of suspicion.

発音のポイント

• handed to our — Handed to our runs together, with the t linking into our.
• In your — Your is reduced to a light /jər/ in fast speech.
• edge of it — The words edge of it link into a single run, almost edge-ov-it.