Calamity Town Page 16

  His lips were on hers, and he was pressing, pressing.

  “Cart. No. Not yet.” She pushed. ”Darling. Please¯”

  “You called me darling! Damn it, Pat, how could you play around with me all these months, shoving that Smith fellow in my face¯”

  “Cart,” moaned Pat, “I want to talk to you . . . first.”

  “I’m sick of talk! Pat, I want you so blamed much¯” He kissed her mouth; he kissed the tip of her nose.

  “I want to talk to you about Jim, Cart!” cried Pat desperately.

  She felt him go cold in one spasm.

  He let her go and walked to the wall with the windows that overlooked the Courthouse plaza, to stare out without seeing anything¯cars or people or trees or Wrightsville’s gray-wash sky.

  “What about Jim?” he asked in a flat voice.

  “Cart, look at me!” Pat begged.

  He turned around. ”I can’t do it.”

  “Can’t look at me? You are!”

  “Can’t withdraw from the case. That’s why you came here today, isn’t it¯to ask me?”

  Pat sat down again, fumbling for her lipstick. Her lips. Blobbed. Kiss. Her hands were shaking, so she snapped the bag shut. ”Yes,” she said, very low. ”More than that. I wanted you to resign the Prosecutor’s office and come over to Jim’s defense. Like Judge Eli Martin.”

  Cart was silent for so long that Pat had to look up at him. He was staring at her with an intense bitterness.

  But when he spoke, it was with gentleness. ”You can’t be serious. The Judge is an old man, your father’s closest friend. And he wouldn’t have been able to sit on this case, anyway. But I was elected to this office only a short time ago. I took an oath that means something to me. I hate to sound like some stuffed shirt of a politician looking for votes¯”

  “Oh, but you do!” flared Pat.

  “If Jim’s innocent, he’ll go free. If he’s guilty¯You wouldn’t want him to go free if he’s guilty, would you?”

  “He’s not guilty!”

  “That’s something the jury will have to decide.”

  “You’ve decided already! In your own mind, you’ve condemned him to death!”

  “Dakin and I have had to collect the facts, Pat. We’ve had to. Don’t you understand that? Our personal feelings can’t interfere. We both feel awful about this thing . . . ”

  Pat was near tears now and angry with herself for showing it. ”Doesn’t it mean anything to you that Nora’s whole life is tied up in this ‘thing,’ as you call it? That there’s a baby coming? I know the trial can’t be stopped, but I wanted you on our side. I wanted you to help, not hurt!”

  Cart ground his teeth together.

  “You’ve said you love me,” cried Pat. ”How could you love me and still¯” Horrified, she heard her own voice break and found herself sobbing. ”The whole town’s against us. They stoned Jim. They’re slinging mud at us. Wrightsville, Cart! A Wright founded this town. We were all born here¯not only us kids, but Pop and Muth and Aunt Tabitha and the Bluefields and . . . I’m not the spoiled brat you used to neck in the back of your lizzie at the Grove in Wrightsville Junction on Saturday nights! The whole world’s gone to pot, Cart. I’ve grown old watching it. Oh, Cart, I’ve no pride left¯no defenses. Say you’ll help me! I’m afraid!”

  She hid her face, giving up the emotional battle. Nothing made any sense¯what she’d just said, what she was thinking. Everything was drowning, gasping, struggling in tears.

  “Pat,” said Cart miserably, “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  That did it. She was drowned now, dead, but there was a sort of vicious other-life that made her spring from the chair and scream at him.

  “You’re nothing but a selfish, scheming politician! You’re willing to see Jim die, and Pop, and Mother, and Nora, and me, and everyone suffer, just to further your own career! Oh, this is an important case. Dozens of New York and Chicago and Boston reporters to hang on your every word! Your name and photo¯Young Public Prosecutor Bradford¯brilliant¯says this¯my duty is¯yes¯no¯off the record . . . You’re a hateful, shallow publicity hound!”

  “I’ve gone all through this in my mind, Pat,” Cart replied with a queer lack of resentment. ”I suppose I can’t expect you to see it my way¯”

  Pat laughed. ”Insult to injury!”

  “If I don’t do this job¯if I resign or step out¯someone else will. Someone who might be a lot less fair to Jim. If I prosecute, Pat, you can be sure Jim will get a square deal¯”

  She ran out.

  And there, on the side of the corridor opposite the Prosecutor’s door, waiting patiently, was Mr. Queen.

  “Oh, Ellery!”

  Ellery said gently: “Come home.”

  Chapter 21

  Vox Pops

  “Ave, Caesar!” wrote Roberta Roberts at the head of her column under the dateline of March fifteenth.

  He who is about to be tried for his life finds even the fates against him. Jim Haight’s trial begins on the Ides of March before Judge Lysander Newbold in Wright County Courthouse, Part II, Wrightsville, U.S.A. This is chance, or subtlety . . . Kid Vox is popping furiously, and it is the impression of cooler heads that the young man going on trial here for the murder of Rosemary Haight and the attempted murder of Nora Wright Haight is being prepared to make a Roman holiday.

  And so it seemed.

  From the beginning there was a muttering undertone that was chilling. Chief of Police Dakin expressed himself privately to the persistent press as “mighty relieved” that his prisoner didn’t have to be carted through the streets of Wrightsville to reach the place of his inquisition, since the County Jail and the County Courthouse were in the same building.

  People were in such an ugly temper you would have imagined their hatred of the alleged poisoner to be inspired by the fiercest loyalty to the Wrights.

  But this was odd, because they were equally ugly toward the Wrights. Dakin had to assign two county detectives to escort the family to and from the Courthouse. Even so, jeering boys threw stones, the tires of their cars were slashed mysteriously and the paint scratched with nasty words; seven unsigned letters of the “threat” variety were delivered by a nervous Postman Bailey in one day alone. Silent, John F. Wright turned them over to Dakin’s office; and Patrolman Brady himself caught the Old Soak, Anderson, standing precariously in the middle of the Wright lawn in bright daylight, declaiming not too aptly to the unresponding house Mark Antony’s speech from Act III, Scene I of Julius Caesar. Charlie Brady hauled Mr. Anderson to the town lockup hastily, while Mr. Anderson kept yelling: “O parm me thou blee’n’ piece of earth that I am meek an’ zhentle with theshe¯hup!¯bushers!”

  Hermy and John F. began to look beaten. In court, the family sat together, in a sort of phalanx, with stiff necks if pale faces; only occasionally Hermy smiled rather pointedly in the direction of Jim Haight, and then turned to sniff and glare at the jammed courtroom and toss her head, as if to say: “Yes, we’re all in this together, you miserable rubbernecks!”

  There had been a great deal of mumbling about the impropriety of Carter Bradford’s prosecuting the case. In an acid editorial Frank Lloyd put the Record on record as “disapproving.” True, unlike Judge Eli Martin, Bradford had arrived at the fatal New Year’s Eve party after the poisoning of Nora and Rosemary, so he was not involved either as participant or as witness. But Lloyd pointed out that “our young, talented, but sometimes emotional Prosecutor has long been friendly with the Wright family, especially one member of it; and although we understand this friendship has ceased as of the night of the crime, we still question the ability of Mr. Bradford to prosecute this case without bias. Something should be done about it.”

  Interviewed on this point before the opening of the trial, Mr. Bradford snapped: “This isn’t Chicago or New York. We have a close-knit community here, where everybody knows everybody else. My conduct during the trial will answer the Record’s libelous insinuations. Jim Haight will get from Wright County
a forthright, impartial prosecution based solely upon the evidence. That’s all, gentlemen!”

  Judge Lysander Newbold was an elderly man, a bachelor, greatly respected throughout the state as a jurist and trout fisherman.

  He was a square, squat, bony man who always sat on the Bench with his black-fringed skull sunk so deeply between his shoulders that it seemed an outgrowth of his chest.

  His voice was dry and careless; he had the habit, when on the Bench, of playing absently with his gavel, as if it were a fishing rod; and he never laughed.

  Judge Newbold had no friends, no associates, and no commitments except to God, country, Bench, and the trout season.

  Everybody said with a sort of relieved piety that “Judge Newbold is just about the best judge this case could have.” Some even thought he was too good. But they were the ones who were muttering.

  Roberta Roberts baptized these grumblers “the Jimhaighters.”

  * * *

  It took several days to select a jury, and during these days Mr. Ellery Queen kept watching only two persons in the courtroom¯Judge Eli Martin, defense counsel, and Carter Bradford, Prosecutor.

  And it soon became evident that this would be a war between young courage and old experience. Bradford was working under a strain. He held himself in one piece, like a casting; there was a dogged something about him that met the eye with defiance and yet a sort of shame. Ellery saw early that he was competent. He knew his townspeople, too. But he was speaking too quietly, and occasionally his voice cracked.

  Judge Martin was superb. He did not make the mistake of patronizing young Bradford, even subtly; that would have swung the people over to the prosecution. Instead, he was most respectful of Bradford’s comments. Once, returning to their places from a low-voiced colloquy before Judge Newbold, the old man was seen to put his hand affectionately on Carter’s shoulder for just an instant. The gesture said: You’re a good boy; we like each other; we are both interested in the same thing¯justice; and we are equally matched. This is all very sad, but necessary. The People are in good hands.

  The People rather liked it. There were whispers of approval. And some were heard to say: After all, old Eli Martin¯he did quit his job on the Bench to defend Haight. Can’t get around that! Must be pretty convinced Haight’s innocent . . . And others replied: Go on. The Judge is John F. Wright’s best friend, that’s why . . . Well, I don’t know . . .

  The whole thing was calculated to create an atmosphere of dignity and thoughtfulness, in which the raw emotions of the mob could only gasp for breath and gradually expire.

  Mr. Ellery Queen approved.

  Mr. Queen approved even more when he finally examined the twelve good men and true. Judge Martin had made the selections as deftly and surely as if there were no Bradford to cope with at all. Solid, sober male citizens, as far as Ellery could determine. None calculated to respond to prejudicial appeals, with one possible exception, a fat man who kept sweating; most seemed anxiously thoughtful men, with higher-than-average intelligence. Men of the decent world, who might be expected to understand that a man can be weak without being criminal.

  * * *

  For students of the particular, the complete court record of People vs. James Haight is on file in Wright County¯day after day after day of question and answer and objection and Judge Newbold’s precise rulings. For that matter, the newspapers were almost as exhaustive as the court stenographer’s notes.

  The difficulty with detailed records, however, is that you cannot see the tree for the leaves.

  So let us stand off and make the leaves blur and blend into larger shapes. Let us look at contours, not textures.

  In his opening address to the jury, Carter Bradford said that the jury must bear in mind continuously one all-important point: that while Rosemary Haight, the defendant’s sister, was murdered by poison, her death was not the true object of defendant’s crime. The true object of defendant’s crime was to take the life of defendant’s young wife, Nora Wright Haight¯an object so nearly accomplished that the wife was confined to her bed for six weeks after the fateful New Year’s Eve party, a victim of arsenic poisoning.

  And yes, the State freely admits that its case against James Haight is circumstantial, but murder convictions on circumstantial evidence are the rule, not the exception. The only direct evidence possible in a murder case is an eyewitness’s testimony as to having witnessed the murder at the moment of its commission. In a shooting case, this would have to be a witness who actually saw the accused pull the trigger and the victim fall dead as a result of the shot. In a poisoning case, it would have to be a witness who actually saw the accused deposit poison in the food or drink to be swallowed by the victim and, moreover, who saw the accused hand the poisoned food or drink to the victim.

  Obviously, continued Bradford, such “happy accidents” of persons witnessing the Actual Deed must be few and far between, since murderers understandably try to avoid committing their murders before an audience. Therefore nearly all prosecutions of murder are based on circumstantial rather than direct evidence; the law has wisely provided for the admission of such evidence, otherwise most murderers would go unpunished.

  But the jury need not flounder in doubts about this case; here the circumstantial evidence is so clear, so strong, so indisputable, that the jury must find James Haight guilty of the crime as charged beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever.

  “The People will prove,” said Bradford in a low, firm tone, “that James Haight planned the murder of his wife a minimum of five weeks before he tried to accomplish it; that it was a cunning plan, depending upon a series of poisonings of increasing severity to establish the wife as subject to attacks of ‘illness,’ and supposed to culminate in a climactic poisoning as a result of which the wife was to die.

  “The People will prove,” Bradford went on, “that these preliminary poisonings did take place on the very dates indicated by the schedule James Haight had prepared with his own hand; that the attempted murder of Nora Haight and the accidental murder of Rosemary Haight did take place on the very date indicated by that same schedule.

  “The People will prove that on the night under examination, James Haight and James Haight alone mixed the batch of cocktails among whose number was the poisoned cocktail; that James Haight and James Haight alone handed the tray of cocktails around to the various members of the party; that James Haight and James Haight alone handed his wife the poisoned cocktail from the tray and even urged her to drink it; that she did drink of that cocktail and fell violently ill of arsenic poisoning, her life being spared only because at Rosemary Haight’s insistence she gave the rest of the poisoned cocktail to her sister-in-law after having merely sipped . . . a circumstance James Haight couldn’t have foreseen.

  “The People will prove,” Bradford went on quietly, “that James Haight was in desperate need of money; that he demanded large sums of money of his wife while under the influence of liquor, and sensibly, she refused; that James Haight was losing large sums of money gambling; that he was taking other illicit means of procuring money; that upon Nora Haight’s death her estate, a large one as the result of an inheritance, would legally fall to the defendant, who is her husband and heir-at-law.

  “The People,” concluded Bradford in a tone so low he could scarcely be heard, “being convinced beyond reasonable doubt that James Haight did so plan and attempt the life of one person in attempting which he succeeded in taking the life of another, an innocent victim¯the People demand that James Haight pay with his own life for the life taken and the life so nearly taken.”

  And Carter Bradford sat down to spontaneous applause, which caused the first of Judge Newbold’s numerous subsequent warnings to the spectators.

  * * *

  In that long dreary body of testimony calculated to prove Jim Haight’s sole Opportunity, the only colorful spots were provided by Judge Eli Martin in cross-examination.

  From the first the old lawyer’s plan was plain to Ellery: to cast doubt,
doubt, doubt. Not heatedly. With cool humor. The voice of reason . . . Insinuate. Imply. Get away with whatever you can and to hell with the rules of cross-examination.

  Ellery realized that Judge Martin was desperate.

  “But you can’t be sure?”

  “N-no.”

  “You didn’t have the defendant under observation every moment?”

  “Of course not!”

  “The defendant might have laid the tray of cocktails down for a moment or so?”

  “No.”

  “Are you positive?”

  Carter Bradford quietly objects: the question was answered. Sustained. Judge Newbold waves his hand patiently.

  “Did you see the defendant prepare the cocktails?”

  “No.”

  “Were you in the living room all the time?”

  “You know I was!” This was Frank Lloyd, and he was angry. To Frank Lloyd, Judge Martin paid especial attention. The old gentleman wormed out of the newspaper publisher his relationship with the Wright family¯his “peculiar” relationship with the defendant’s wife. He had been in love with her. He had been bitter when she turned him down for James Haight. He had threatened James Haight with bodily violence. Objection, objection, objection. But it managed to come out, enough of it to reawaken in the jury’s minds the whole story of Frank Lloyd and Nora Wright¯after all, that story was an old one to Wrightsville, and everybody knew the details!

  So Frank Lloyd became a poor witness for the People; and there was a doubt, a doubt. The vengeful jilted “other” man. Who knows? Maybe¯

  With the Wright family, who were forced to take the stand to testify to the actual events of the night, Judge Martin was impersonal¯and cast more doubts. On the “facts.” Nobody actually saw Jim Haight drop arsenic into the cocktail. Nobody could be sure . . . of anything.