by Lionel White
“Well Ann, this is the situation. I want you to understand it, even if Charles will not, and perhaps you can talk with him again and convince him. Right at this moment we have absolutely no defense. The State has an excellent case, and not a circumstantial one either. They can establish motive and opportunity. All they need do is break down Charles’s alibi, and he’s as good as dead. To break down that alibi, they merely have to plant the seeds of doubt in the minds of a jury. And frankly, that will not be hard to do. I am afraid that the Grant girl is hardly the best possible witness material.”
Ann smiled, but without humor.
“I agree, Howard,” she said. “But where does that leave us? What do we do?”
I hesitated a long time before I spoke, but at last I did. I told Ann about the conversation I had had with the private investigator, Glitz, and about his ideas for a possible line of defense. I didn’t pull my punches; I gave it to her just as he had given it to me.
She looked at me for a long time after I had finished speaking and I could tell nothing from her expression. Finally she sighed and dropped her eyes.
“I would have to perjure myself, wouldn’t I, Howard? ”
“I am afraid you would,” I said.
“And answer a thousand questions of the police and the district attorney before I even got to court. Perhaps even take a lie detector test? ”
“That’s right, Ann.”
Again she didn’t say anything for a long time. She sipped her water and at last looked up.
“I’ll agree to do it under one condition,” Ann said.
“And that condition?”
“That you outline the idea to Charles. That at the same time you tell him that I am retaining you to get me a legal separation as soon as this trial is over, no matter how it comes out. And then, if he wants me to go ahead with it, I will do so.”
Ann’s announcement that she was going to get a separation left me with conflicting emotions. Lord knows, I couldn’t blame her. Charles certainly no longer deserved her love; not after his long-drawn-out affair with the Grant girl. On the other hand, Charles was my client and had been my friend. I knew that if news of an impending separation ever got out before the trial it would do our case irreparable damage.
And yet I felt an odd sense of pleasure. I didn’t analyze my feelings at the time, I only knew that when she told me that she had decided to leave her husband, I felt a strange thrill.
I stuck to business, though, and warned her that any news about a separation could really ruin whatever case we had.
“You don’t have to worry,” Ann said. “I won’t say anything to anyone. But Charles must know of my plans and he must personally agree to my going along with the scheme. And he must also understand that my pride will no longer permit me to go on living with him. I won’t divorce him—that’s against my religious principles. But at the same time I will no longer go on living with him. He’s got to understand that. When will you see him?”
“As soon as possible,” I said. “Tomorrow if I can.”
The following morning I once more drove out to that small house in Huntington where Virginia Grant lived. This time, when I rang the doorbell, it was answered by a girl who had changed so completely that I had difficulty in recognizing her at first.
Ginny Grant was dressed in a plain, tailored tweed business suit. She wore her hair parted in the center and drawn harshly back and tied in a bun. Her set, pale face was without make-up and there were huge black circles under her startling eyes. There was no smile, nothing of the former careless flippancy she had displayed on that previous occasion when I had visited her. She held the door open, wordlessly, nodding for me to enter.
I came to the point at once. I told her exactly what the situation was, exactly how strong a case they had against Charles. And I asked her point blank if she was still standing by her position—that he had spent the entire night with her.
“I am going on that stand and tell the truth, Mr. Yates,” she said. “I know, absolutely know, that Charles did not murder Jake Harbor. He was with me every single minute from midnight until after six o’clock in the morning.”
“And if the district attorney decides to charge you with being an accessory?”
“It will make no difference. I will still tell the truth.”
There was something so utterly sincere about the way she said it that I couldn’t possibly doubt her. It was at that moment, as I listened to her calm, determined answer to my question, that I first realized that I myself had never been completely convinced of Charles’s innocence. Not from the very beginning. I had never believed that he had spent that entire night with Ginny Grant. I hadn’t analyzed it, hadn’t really broken it down in my own mind, but somewhere in my subconscious I had been skeptical all along.
But standing there, listening to this girl, I suddenly had, for the first time, confidence in the innocence of my client.
We talked for a few more minutes, but I had already learned what I had come to find out. Ginny Grant was going to stick to her story until the end. She as much as admitted that the district attorney’s office had attempted to make a deal with her, but she said they had been very cagey. No outright threats or anything like that; nothing which might be used in court. Still she knew very well where she stood. If she testified in Charles’s behalf, she would be in trouble.
When I left her that morning, I had a new and completely different feeling about the girl. For the first time I was able to see something of what Charles must have seen in her. She would be loyal to him no matter what the cost to her.
П5
I didn’t stay long. She had a nasty, racking cough. This case was taking its toll of her too.
I saw Charles Merriweather at three o’clock that afternoon.
He had lost a lot of weight; his clothes were unpressed and he needed a shave. But even worse was his demeanor. There was something almost hangdog about him. As though he no longer cared. He seemed totally disinterested in what I had to say.
“I saw Ann last night,” I told him. “Charles, I hate to have to tell you this, but it’s important. Very important. Ann has informed me that she intends to get a legal separation. She will wait until after the trial and won’t let anyone know about it until then, but she is adamant.”
“A separation?” he said, almost listlessly. “Well, I can’t say that I blame her. And I can’t say that I’m surprised.”
In spite of the way he had treated her, I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t help it. There was something almost hopeless about the way he took the news.
“Understand,” I said quickly, “she is not deserting you. Anything but. She is standing by right straight through. The fact is, she is willing to do a lot more than merely stand by. She is willing to go on the stand and perjure herself for you.”
He looked up at me curiously.
“She is?”
“Indeed she is. You see, I must tell you this, Charles. I hate to have to say so, but right at the moment, you haven’t a ghost of a chance. If we walked into court to-176
morrow morning, there isn’t a question in the world but that you’d be convicted.”
He nodded dumbly, hardly looking at me.
“But,” I continued, “there is a chance we can beat
this case. There seems only one way, however, to do it. And the entire thing will hinge upon Ann and yourself.”
For the next ten minutes I outlined the alternate plans. The possibility of changing his story and switching it around so that he would admit that he killed Harbor, while maintaining that he had an excellent reason for doing so. I gave it to him as Glitz had outlined it to me and I had repeated it to Ann. I didn’t pull any punches; I let him see that it would be difficult and that there would be no guarantee. But I also tried to impress upon him that the other way, sticking to his original story, was almost sure suicide.
He waited until I was all through and then for the first time spoke up.
“And you have talked w
ith Ann about this?”
I told him that I had.
“And she agrees to go through with it?”
“She has agreed under two conditions. First that I tell you about her intention to get a separation from you. Secondly, that you yourself agree to the plan.”
He thought for a long time and then at last shrugged and looked directly into my eyes.
“I want to ask you one thing, Howard,” he said. “Let us say we go through with the story. That I make a new statement. That Ann backs me up on it. And then we go into court and the district attorney succeeds in breaking '77
Ann down. That she is unable to hold up under cross-examination? What then?”
“Then I’m afraid, well, I’m afraid that would be it. You wouldn’t have a hope.”
“In other words,” he said, “it will work only if Ann is able to put it across?”
“It amounts to that,” I said.
He waited again for a long time without speaking and so I finally said, “The decision is yours, Charles. I must know what you want to do.”
Once more he looked at me with those oddly expressionless eyes.
“Tell Ann to come and see me again,” he said. “I’ll talk with her. And then I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll try and have her here within the next twenty-four hours,” I said. “And oh, by the way, Ann said that when she last saw you, she told you that she had changed her mind and felt you should bring in another man on the case. A really thoroughly experienced criminal trial lawyer.”
He stared at me for a moment.
“She told you that?” he said.
“Yes.”
He thought for a moment and then slowly shook his head.
“No, Howard,” he said. “I’m completely satisfied with you. I want no other lawyer.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two days later my boys arrived from school for their Christmas vacation. After they had been home a few days, they asked to have dinner at International Airport. They liked the exotic food there, and they loved to watch the planes take off and land.
We were crossing a waiting room in the great new terminal at the airport when I saw him and I couldn’t have been more surprised. We spotted each other at the same moment.
“Lieutenant Giddeon,” I said. “This is a surprise.”
He smiled, shook hands and then turned and said hello to the boys. He said that he was on his way to Nassau for the first vacation he’d been able to find time for in five years and he hoped to get in some sailing down there.
I could see that he had a little time on his hands, and I wanted to talk to him. I asked the boys to go on into the dining room and said that I would join them in a few minutes.
The Lieutenant and I sat in the lounge and I told him that I was surprised to see him leaving now.
“Well,” he said, “things are quiet. I guess you know I’ve been off the Merriweather Case for a couple of weeks. District attorney’s office feels they have it all wrapped up.”
THE MERRIWEATHER FILE
There was something a little odd about the way he said it and so I asked, “And you feel the same way, Lieutenant?”
He shrugged.
“I’m a cop,” he said. “For me a case is never completely wrapped up. Officially of course, my work is done. But—”
“But?”
“Well, maybe I’m a little thick,” he said. “But I will tell you something, Howard, strictly off the record. Merriweather certainly looks guilty as hell and nothing he’s saying is helping to prove that he isn’t. But somewhere in the back of my mind is a tiny doubt. I can’t explain why, but it’s there. You know, by the way, that I checked into that story Mrs. Merriweather told about thinking her life had been threatened?”
I looked up with quick interest.
“Yes, I checked it as much as I could. I’m inclined to believe it, or at least part of it. That dog was definitely poisoned and not by accident. Someone wanted it out of the way. Another thing, the gas stove had been tampered with, the pilot light purposely put out of commission.”
“And then you believe her story?” I asked.
“I believe it, yes. But I still can’t see where it ties in. I still can’t understand what it might have to do with the murder of Jake Harbor.”
He stood up.
“Have to pick up my ticket,” he said. “Anyway, as I have told you, the department has taken me off the case. I’ll be seeing you after I get back, I hope.”
For the first day or two after the boys’ return to school, I was very busy at the office catching up with routine work. And then, on a Wednesday morning, I went down to the county jail and saw Charles Merriweather.
I could almost sense the defeat in him before he started speaking.
“I’ve thought over what we discussed and I’ve talked with Ann about it,” he said. “I’ve come to a decision. There will be no plea, no phony confession, no new statement.”
“Are you sure, Charles?” I said. “Do you realize—”
“I’m sure. I’m very sure. The truth may look bad, but I would rather be stuck with that as a defense than try to get by with some complicated, impossible story.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“Charles,” I said, “it’s up to you. I don’t know whether you’re right or not, but at least now I can tell you this. If you and Ann had gone ahead with the other plan, I should have had to drop out of the case. I could never have conducted a defense based on perjury. I would have been incapable of it, both from the point of view of honor and from the point of view of hoping to put it across. You would have had to call in another man. However, in spite of your decision, I’d still advise you to obtain the services or a really experienced criminal lawyer.”
He looked at me and for several moments just watched my face. Finally he spoke.
“Howard,” he said, “I want you to tell me the truth, the absolute truth, about something. Will you?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Charles.”
“Do you think I murdered Jake Harbor?”
It was my turn not to answer. It was my turn to think,
to search my innermost heart. At last I raised my eyes and looked into his.
“I don’t know. I honestly and truly don’t know what I think. You have refused to talk to me and I have the feeling that you’re concealing a lot. Certainly everything that has come out so far would lead me to think that you are. But for some completely illogical reason, Charles, I believe you. I believe you when you say you are innocent of Harbor’s murder.”
For the first time a thin smile crossed his face.
“In that case, Howard,” he said, “you are still my lawyer. I want the man who goes into court to represent me to believe in me—and I don’t think any other lawyer in this world would.”
He said it with such utter sincerity that I was unable to keep myself from reaching over and pressing his hand.
The Merriweather Case came up for trial on May sixteenth.
I had wanted to have the actual trial postponed, but the district attorney had been extremely anxious to bring the case into court as soon as possible. My own client agreed with him and I was powerless to act.
In those last months, I had tried again and again to get Charles to talk, each time without success. When the district attorney’s office brought the indictment against Ginny Grant, charging her with being an accessory before 182
and after the fact, I pled with him, but he still refused to speak.
“I did not murder Harbor. I have an alibi for the time of the murder. I am innocent.”
And that was all he would say.
I did everything I could humanly do. I subpoenaed the men with whom he had played poker on Sunday night. I had the bartender from the tavern where he had met Ginny Grant testify. I put Ginny Grant’s milkman and newspaper boy on the stand and they swore to seeing the car in the driveway of Ginny Grant’s house at four o’clock and at a quarter to six.
Charles h
imself took the stand, against my better judgment. His testimony was excellent, so long as he was sticking to what he did on the night of the murder. But when the district attorney began questioning him concerning his relationship with the Grant girl, and with the murdered man, any optimism I may have felt concerning his previous testimony was at once wiped out. Charles seemed to have an absolute obsession for telling the truth and nothing but the truth. He candidly admitted to his affair with Ginny Grant; admitted knowing and making horse bets with Harbor.
The one technical point I won was when the district attorney attempted to bring into the case testimony concerning the death of his first wife. I objected that any such testimony was immaterial and irrelevant and I won my point. But it was a shallow victory.
I had character witnesses and I did as strong a job as I could on cross-examining the state’s witnesses. I had to '*5
rest my defense solely on Charles’s alibi; there was nowhere else to go. If the jury believed that alibi, then they would have to find him innocent. There was nothing I could do in my summation to try and throw the guilt on anyone else. I could only attempt to indicate that the police investigation itself had been lax. That Harbor was a man who had many enemies, any one of whom might have killed him.
Ann Merriweather herself never did take the stand. Charles had requested, in fact insisted, that I not call her.
The prosecutor’s summation before the jury was masterful and, compared to my own, spectacular and flamboyant. He had all the ammunition: the fact that Charles was found with the body; the fact that the victim had been killed in the Merriweather home. He was able to establish motive and opportunity. If there was anything lacking in his case, he didn’t hesitate to draw on his imagination to make up for it.
The tragic fact is, however, that there was very little lacking. It was just about open and shut.
It took the blue ribbon jury all of an hour and a half to bring in a verdict of murder in the first degree. Before sentence was pronounced, I begged Charles to let me enter an appeal, to fight the case all the way through. He absolutely refused. There was, of course, the formal, obligatory appeal, which was automatically turned down, but we could have still carried the case into another court had he so desired. But his attitude was one of total defeat. He just didn’t seem to care.