The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  He looked at her doubtfully, not smiling. “I said the prosecution must be running out of keyholes.”

  “Maybe you touched a childhood trauma.”

  “His childhood be damned,” the Old Man grumbled. “He’s still a snotnose pulling the wings off flies, as a profession.”

  “I decline to be compared to a house-fly.”

  “Shut up, dear. I’ve got to listen again.”

  “Sergeant, after Miss Blake’s admission that James Doherty had been her lover, was she questioned any further, there at her apartment?”

  “No, sir. Chief Gage informed her that she would be detained for questioning. She made no protest. Accompanied by yourself, Mr. Hunter, I took her in a police car direct to Mr. Lamson’s office, in this building.”

  “Was she questioned there, in your presence?”

  “Yes, sir, mainly by Mr. Lamson. My recollection is that the others present were yourself, Chief Gage, Miss Wallingford—that’s Mr. Lamson’s secretary—who made a stenographic record of the interrogation, and Sergeant Shields of the State Police, who was present only a part of the time, a few minutes.”

  “Did Miss Blake sign anything during that interview at Mr. Lamson’s office, while you were present?”

  “She did, sir. The stenographic record of the interrogation was typed by Miss Wallingford. Miss Blake then read it, and signed it—signed the written statement that the answers given by her and recorded in the transcript were true to the best of her knowledge and belief. Her signature was witnessed by Mr. Lamson and yourself, and Mr. Lamson requested me to read and initial the pages of the typescript, which I did.”

  “If it please the Court—” and Cecil was gone again, looming over yonder, examining the pages, large ones this time, impressive legal size. More window-dressing. But discussion was longer; she grew inattentive in her drowsiness. She heard Hunter remark that the transcript would be read after cross-examination of Sergeant Rankin—if, said the bald polite man with the shovel chin, Mr. Warner elected to cross-examine. Cecil grunted. A side-bar huddle followed that. Some of the time she knew her eyelids had drooped, hiding her in a murmurous partial darkness; some of the time she was watching, with an abstract friendliness and faraway approval, the thoughtful and still puzzled features of Judge Terence Mann. I can’t explain it either, Judge. According to my own biased notions, I’m not mad, at least no more than my old buddy Hamlet, who also had a mother. Gets complicated there, because Hamlet was decidedly male, I think, any side up, while I’m every inch a wench. Ask Rankin. You see—

  It disturbed her, to reflect how little any of those present would ever know about her. They looked at her; anyway their eyes did. In a few days they would hear her talk from that dizzy isolation of the witness stand; anyway their ears would register certain sounds. Already through the testimony their mental vision (imperfect, cloudy, variously preoccupied) had watched her squeaking grass-blades with the Wayne kids, snapping at poor Cousin Maud on the front porch. They had seen her (through the fogs and excitements of their own scrambled sexual histories) caught in that slow frenzy—(wearing a blouse)—on the divan in Jim’s office, under the glazed smirk of an “art”-calendar nude. Who were you then, Callista?—what were you then? They had seen her, guilty or innocent, standing by black water, under hemlocks, under a hazy moon.

  But they did not know her.

  They could not communicate with the inner spectator-participator. It had needed nineteen years to create the Monkshood Girl, a short time, yet to the jurors, the Judge, Cecil, even to Edith, the nineteen years amounted to an infinite complexity never to be explored. They could not watch the golden kitten Bonnie, nor Aunt Cora. They could not learn of the young discoveries: language, music; endless expansion of the visible world as her hand acquired certain powers of dealing with line and color and mass or began to acquire it. They had no vision for the dreams of her sleep, or the waking dreams.

  Ann Doherty, inarticulate Jim, mysteries quite as obscure. What do you think you know about Ann, gentlemen? Cute, blonde, and married: isn’t that about as far as you go?

  We are not what you see, we people who look at you out of clever photographs in the paper at your breakfast tables. When you burn the image you have created you burn the true self also, but you cannot know that self. I am here with you, and captured, and maybe you ought to fear me as you do, but I am not what you suppose.

  III

  He met the flat patient stare of Sergeant Lloyd Rankin, which indicated a readiness like that of a dog who will not attack unless provoked. Say a Boxer: Rankin was built like that, and would fight in a Boxer’s style, with single-minded courage closely akin to stupidity.

  He saw T. J. Hunter seated at the prosecution’s table and turned partly away from the witness chair, making a show of rereading that transcript of Callista’s ordeal. T.J. would be listening to the cross-examination, and sharply; but Cecil Warner had to admit that the show of bored indifference was quite as expert as anything he could have managed himself. This silence had lasted long enough, or too long; he heard fidgeting in the back rows; he could not spend any more time gloomily viewing Rankin’s Boxer jaws.

  “Sergeant Rankin, when Miss Blake realized she would be under suspicion, you asked her—I think these were your words—you asked her who she thought would believe a story like hers. Correct?—that’s your recollection of what you said?”

  “Yes, sir, I think I put it that way.”

  “Meaning, I suppose, that you didn’t believe her story yourself?”

  “No, sir—I mean no, I didn’t believe it.”

  “Did you suggest that she ought to change her story?”

  “Oh, I told her—more than once, I guess—that she ought to tell the truth about it, that she’d get a better break if she did.”

  “A better break. Those were your words, ‘a better break’?”

  He noticed a dim flush on Rankin’s heavy cheeks, some flicker of doubt or uneasiness in chilly gray eyes. Rankin could have no way of knowing how much Callista might have told. “Yes, I think that was how I put it, Mr. Warner. She seemed to be expecting me to believe it, and—”

  “But she replied: ‘Who knows what anyone believes?’”

  “Yes.”

  “And asked then if you were going to arrest her?”

  “She did, and I told her that would be up to my superiors, not me.”

  “This conversation took place in the kitchenette, after she had taken you out there and shown you the brandy bottle, and volunteered her account which you preferred not to believe?”

  “It wasn’t a case of preference, Mr. Warner. I—”

  “All right, never mind that. The conversation took place in the kitchenette?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told her to go back to the living-room, and she did so?”

  “Yes.”

  “She went ahead of you?”

  “Ahead of me?”

  “My words are plain, aren’t they?” Give him no time—Boxer hates to be pushed. “She stepped out of the kitchenette and walked ahead of you down that little hallway toward the living-room, did she not?”

  “Really I don’t remember. I suppose—”

  “Don’t remember! In direct examination you showed an excellent memory for details. Let me just check your memory a little. What way does the front of that apartment house face, 21 Covent Street? East?”

  “Why—yes, east, or south-east anyway.”

  “Was it a bright day, August 17th?”

  “Yes, bright sunny day.”

  “Hot?”

  “Very hot.”

  “Sunlight in the living-room windows, was there? Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the hallway?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good memo
ry. Let me check it just a little more. What was Miss Blake wearing that day?”

  “A—oh, just a dress, I don’t know what a dressmaker would call it.”

  “Well—color?”

  “White.”

  “Good. A simple white dress. Now look, Sergeant, I think you can remember whether she went ahead of you into the living-room. I’ll help you out—you wouldn’t have left her alone with that brandy bottle when you’d as good as told her she was under suspicion, would you?”

  “Oh—well, that. Yes, if it matters, I remember she went first.”

  “Did you again tell her she ought to change her story?”

  “I may have.”

  “Sergeant, I point out to you again, your memory under direct examination was excellent. You referred to your notebook, you repeated several remarks verbatim—to some of which the defense might have justifiably objected, if I had seen fit. Now—did you tell her a second time that she would get a better break if she changed this story which you say you didn’t believe? Did you, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, it’s my recollection that I did.”

  “Did you suggest any other thing she might do that would, in your words, give her a better break?”

  “Any other—I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then let me help your memory again. This conversation, when you repeated that she ought to change her story—did this conversation take place while you were going back to the living-room?”

  “I—oh, I guess so.”

  “I’m asking for testimony, not guesswork. Did it, or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Miss Blake say?”

  “It’s my recollection that she—I don’t think she said anything.”

  “She didn’t? You remember how she looked, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course. Simple white dress, you said—correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Walking down the hall, between you and the sunlight in the living-room. Didn’t she say, or rather cry out: ‘Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!’—have you forgotten that?”

  He heard Hunter jump up, and waited motionless for the angry blast: “Objection! This is outrageous. There has been nothing—”

  Judge Terence Mann said: “There has been a good deal.” Warner looked up quickly then; if his astonishment showed for a second, probably no one but Terence saw it. There was time to wonder how much of a surprise it was to T.J.—complete, very likely. And Terence Mann himself looked astonished at the swiftness and sharpness of his own words. “If there is any suspicion that a police officer has acted in that manner toward the defendant, the defense is well within its rights to pursue this line of questioning. The objection is overruled.” But Terry must know we can’t prove it. “Answer the question, Sergeant.”

  Staring at the Judge, T. J. Hunter said slowly: “Exception.”

  “Answer the question, Sergeant Rankin.”

  Rankin too had gone quiet, no visible motion in him except a rhythmic twitch at the corners of his Boxer jaws. “Will you repeat the question, Counselor?”

  “I will. I ask whether Callista Blake said to you: ‘Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!’”

  “She did not.”

  “I quote to you these words: ‘Look, I can give you a lot of breaks if you’ll put out.’ Did you say that to Callista Blake?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  “I did not.”

  “You have no recollection of that?”

  “It didn’t happen, that’s all. I never touched her.”

  “No? You didn’t, a few minutes later, strike her across the face with the flat of your hand?”

  “Objection!”

  “Overruled.”

  “I certainly did not. The whole thing is imaginary.”

  “Did Callista Blake, while you had hold of her, tell you that she was ill, that she had had a miscarriage the night before?”

  “Objection!”

  “Overruled.” So Terry sticks his own neck way out, his own feelings involved, his judgment slipping, and where does that take us?

  “Exception.”

  “She did not tell me that, Counselor. She had no occasion to tell me that. I say again, the whole thing is imaginary. I know my duties, and my position as a police officer. Nothing like that happened, and if the defendant says it did, she is lying.” Except for that twitch, and the high tension of his blocky hands gripping the witness chair, nothing in Rankin’s solid front suggested he might himself be lying.

  “You say the whole thing is imaginary. Really! Is it imaginary, just a bad dream cooked up by the defense—what do you take us for, Sergeant?—is it imaginary that you shoved Callista Blake down on the couch in the living-room, that she then told you she was ill, that in spite of that you went on trying to force her, that you exposed yourself, that she then said a certain thing which frightened you, so that you let her go, after first striking her across the face with the flat of your hand?”

  “Objection of course. Whole question improper and fantastic.”

  “Overruled.”

  Terry, I don’t know—

  “Exception.”

  “Nothing like that happened. I deny it absolutely.”

  “In that view of it, I won’t question you further about this, or anything else, I think, since the only thing of service to my client is the truth. I dare say, in redirect examination, you’ll have opportunity to repeat your virtuous denials—”

  “That’s outrageous.”

  Warner swung around. “Something else is outrageous—”

  “Mr. Warner!” But that was Terry, and he must listen. “We cannot have this. Please control yourself.”

  “I am sorry, your Honor. My apologies to the Court, and to Mr. Hunter—who, I am sure, knew nothing about any improper conduct on the part of his witness. That’s all.”

  Warner sat down, with a sudden breaking out of sweat on his face, a dizziness and blurring of vision. Callista’s hand slipped over his, easing his fingers out of their involuntary clench. She was repeating his name softly: “Cecil—Cecil—are you all right?”

  “Yes.” He covered his mouth to speak to her. “I couldn’t break him. I thought I could break the bastard.”

  “Never mind. Relax. You bent him, but good.”

  “Not enough. You’ll have to take the stand, maybe.”

  “But I must anyway. Relax.”

  Concerned for me. He noticed the courtroom was quiet, Hunter delaying. Judge Mann’s gaze was on him too, worried and speculative. Do they think I’m going to fold like Judd? Judd—I said to that man Judd: ‘If you do not understand that question—’ He wiped his forehead. Maybe Callista had helped him get that handkerchief out of his pocket. He would not fold. Let them take their eyes off him. Let them get on with it.

  Hunter was getting on with it—neutrally it seemed. “Sergeant Rankin, I’ll merely ask you: is there any foundation in fact, anything at all, to support this suggestion of misconduct on your part with the defendant Callista Blake?”

  “None whatever, sir. None whatever.”

  Hunter was pausing another long time. Warner now helplessly understood that he was giving Rankin time to think, time for the man’s rather slow wits to come up with the obvious countercharge. Hunter said at last: “In summary, then, you simply questioned Miss Blake about the story she had told you, you took charge of the brandy bottle and so on, you called Chief Gage, and then there was this episode of the fish-tank—when Miss Blake, you say, was composed, sort of philosophical and all that, hardly the way a girl would act, I guess, if she’d just been threatened and pushed around. That’s a correct summary?”

  “Yes, sir, I think that about sums it
up. Well—” It was comic enough, to observe the slow grimace as Rankin caught on to what Hunter would like him to say.

  Hunter asked mildly: “Something you wish to add?”

  “Well—I guess not. Of course I’m very much surprised that the defense should see fit to make a charge like that against me, but there seems to be no way of proving anything—Miss Blake’s word against mine—and if I say anything about—about her own conduct in that respect, it’s the same situation, so I would rather ignore it, let it go.”

  Warner sickened inwardly with self-blame. I underestimated the brains in the son of a bitch—no, hardly even that, for a cub lawyer should have seen it coming, the obvious countercharge by innuendo. Rankin had done it cleverly, though; he could hardly have said anything better calculated to make Callista seem a whore. I should sell apples on a streetcorner.

  A sober workman driving in finishing nails, T. J. Hunter said: “I understand your reluctance, Sergeant, and I think we might as well leave it at that. Recross, Mr. Warner?”

  Cecil Warner remembered how, long ago, on childhood occasions when he had been goaded into fighting, he had often been struck by a crying spell in the midst of battle. It had become a sort of distinction: “Cecil’s all right till he goes to bawling—then watch out!” It would not happen now. But he knew his voice was shouting, too loudly, and cracking absurdly in the shout: “Are you being humorous, Mr. District Attorney? I am concerned with establishing the truth, and questioning that man will not serve any such purpose.”

  Judge Mann started to speak but checked himself, watching Sergeant Rankin step down and stride away. Terry will not look at me. Take my hand, Callista. Hardly wondering at the coincidence, he felt the cool pressure of her fingers renewed. I shall not survive the conclusion, win or lose, but that hardly matters, Old Man—