These Honored Dead

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  Midway through the afternoon session, Prickett had the sense—and the skill—to bring Warren to the nub of the matter. The rival doctor testified Dr. Patterson had often touted his self-brewed medicinal liquors as a reason his own medical practice flourished, while Warren’s did not enjoy the full success his superior learning should have produced. Patterson had boasted, Warren relayed to the jury, that the strongest of his liquors was so powerful a few drops would dissolve any bodily ailment, and a few more would be sufficient to produce almost instant slumber.

  As the gallery whispered excitedly about this new evidence of guilt, Lincoln rose to his feet. “Will you admit Dr. Patterson here is known for his modern methods and learning?” he began.

  Warren stared out mournfully. “He, himself, has often said as much, Mr. Lincoln,” he replied, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Indeed, there was a time he told me—”

  “You’ve answered the question, Doctor,” Lincoln said with a raised hand. “Let’s see if we can’t keep matters moving apace.” Warren looked over at Prickett, but the prosecutor did not seem inclined to interfere with Lincoln’s attempt to control his witness.

  “Patterson has sometimes undertaken treatments you were unfamiliar with or hesitant to try, for lack of a certain result?” put Lincoln.

  “That’s true. He’s been reckless, in my judgment. For example, there was the time—”

  “But oftentimes, his patients have lived,” continued Lincoln. “As a result of his innovative treatments, they’ve lived. Isn’t that the case?”

  “For every one such, I’d wager there are three who’ve died sooner than they’ve needed to,” Warren returned. “For those three, if I had been privileged to be entrusted with their care, I suggest the results might have been conclusively different.”

  “You have been all these years a competitor of Dr. Patterson?” Lincoln asked.

  “A colleague, I’d like to think,” Warren returned, affecting an ill-fitting modesty. “There have been more than enough sick persons in the village—in the county, for that matter—to challenge all those of us with medical learning.”

  “But none who’ve been more prominent, or successful, than Patterson—wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Perhaps,” said Warren. He shifted in his chair.

  “If a man falls sick in Springfield, he’s most likely to ask his wife to send for Patterson, isn’t that the case?”

  “Not in the last few days, I wouldn’t think.” Warren could not prevent a smile from creeping onto his face.

  “I meant prior to these events of course, Doctor,” Lincoln replied sharply.

  “Perhaps.”

  “And would you admit your practice would be enhanced if Dr. Patterson were—well, if he were no longer ministering to patients in Springfield?”

  “You can hardly believe, Mr. Lincoln, such a prospect would influence my testimony today.”

  “The jury shall be the judge of that,” Lincoln returned, and he sat.

  “At least Mr. Lincoln tried to undermine that witness,” Jane whispered to me as Warren slowly made his way from the well of the courtroom.

  Before I could respond, Prickett sprang to his feet and announced, “Your Honor, as the final witness of our case-in-chief, the People call Hiram Jenkins.” As it turned out, the most damning testimony was about to arrive.

  An older, tall man with well-tended whiskers made his way forward. The man and his name were vaguely familiar, but I had not placed either by the time Prickett began his examination.

  “Were you, sir, at the general muster in Menard last weekend when the Widow Harriman’s body was discovered?”

  “I was,” Jenkins replied in a deep voice.

  “And did you view her body there?”

  “Sheriff Hutchason sent for me,” Jenkins said, “to give him a second opinion on the body and the causa mortis. We’d served together, you see, in the Indian War. He knew of my medical skill.”

  Startled, I realized Jenkins had been the drunk medic who’d tottered up to us from his tug-of-war games. That disreputable rogue was almost unrecognizable in the well-groomed man who sat on the witness chair now. I leaned forward with interest.

  “Now, earlier that same day, did you happen to notice anything out of the ordinary?” Prickett asked. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the prosecutor’s voice. He believes he’s going for the kill, I thought.

  “I saw a high-tandem gig, one of those sporting types, on the Springfield road,” Jenkins replied.

  “At what time was this, in relation to when you examined—at the sheriff’s request—the Widow Harriman’s body?”

  Jenkins looked up at the ceiling and thought. “About six or seven hours prior, I’d judge. It was very early that morning. The sun had barely breached the horizon.”

  “How is it you happen to remember this particular gig?” asked Prickett. “After all, I expect there were a great many vehicles and beasts on the roads that day, it being the muster.”

  “There were, but the sporting gig was driving away from the muster—away from Menard. Everything else I saw that day was heading toward Menard.”

  “Did you recognize the gig, Mr. Jenkins?” asked Prickett.

  The gallery was silent with expectation.

  “I’d seen it plenty of times before,” the witness said, nodding. “It belonged to Dr. Patterson over there.” There was an explosion of noise, through which Jenkins added, “He cared for my little Jimmy, before he passed on. Must have seen that same vehicle coming up my road a half-dozen times.”

  The courtroom was in tumult. In front of me, Patterson’s shoulders were tensed. Judge Thomas sucked on his cigar and pounded for order, though he seemed in no great hurry to have it restored. When it finally was, he gestured at Prickett to continue.

  “Did you see Dr. Patterson himself in the gig?” the prosecutor asked.

  “I saw him at a distance from behind—saw his back and hat,” Jenkins said. “I’d recognize his surgical coat anywhere. There were too many times I watched in sadness as he drove away from our house after administering another purging to Jimmy.”

  “You yourself have medical knowledge,” said Prickett. “Why was it you engaged another medical man to look after your Jimmy?”

  “Patterson told me he knew of modern treatments that would keep the boy alive.”

  “Did they?”

  “No.” Jenkins blinked twice.

  Prickett gave a respectful nod toward the witness and the jury. But as he turned back toward his table to sit, he had a wide smile of victory on his face. As Lincoln started to rise from his seat, Patterson put his hand out on Lincoln’s arm and whispered something.

  “Mr. Lincoln?” prompted the judge, who was looking over at their table with interest. “Do you have any questions for this witness?”

  “A moment, if I may, Your Honor,” Lincoln said hesitantly. He bent over next to Patterson and the two men whispered back and forth with growing animation. I leaned forward to try to catch their conversation, but the rest of the gallery was soon filled with noisy speculation about the same topic and I couldn’t hear a word. A number of the jurors were whispering back and forth as well. As Lincoln and Patterson continued talking, Lincoln’s expressive face became set in a look of dismay.

  “Tempus fugit, Mr. Lincoln,” Judge Thomas prompted, without sympathy, after a minute had passed. “Time flies.”

  Lincoln started to straighten up. He gave a last, questioning look at Patterson, who nodded vigorously in response.

  “No questions for this witness at this time, Your Honor,” Lincoln announced. Several gasps of surprise arose from the audience.

  “We’re adjourned for the day, gentlemen,” the judge said to the jury. “We’ll resume on the stroke of nine tomorrow to hear Mr. Lincoln’s defense.” I could almost hear the judge adding, silently, “If he has one.”

  As the courtroom filled with excited conversation, Lincoln strode to the railing and beckoned at me. “Come by Hoffman’s Row af
ter supper,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear him over the din. “I’m sure I could use your good counsel then. Miss Speed’s as well, for that matter. Patterson’s finally agreed to tell me the whole truth.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The Globe’s public room that evening was full of men speculating confidently about the exact date on which Patterson would hang. More than a few wagers were placed. Martha and I did our best to ignore the chatter as we ate side by side. I described the day’s proceedings in court and Lincoln’s request to meet; in turn, Martha reported Phillis had said tomorrow would probably be the day the sheriff’s child made his or her entrance into the world.

  “And perhaps the day that seals Patterson’s departure,” I said.

  “Show some confidence in your friend Mr. Lincoln,” said Martha. “I’m sure he’ll have a plan for the doctor’s defense. Especially now that, as you’ve said, Patterson’s confiding in him a fuller version of events.”

  “I’m not sure I want to have confidence in Lincoln,” I returned. “If Patterson’s in fact guilty . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “And, I’ll tell you, having sat in court the past few days, it’s getting hard to hold any other view. The evidence against him has been damning.”

  A few minutes later, we finished our meal and headed for the still, darkened streets. There was a hint of chill in the air. “Are you sure,” Martha asked as we walked along, “your judgment about the trial isn’t being clouded by your feelings for the Widow Harriman? From what I’ve seen, the question of Dr. Patterson’s guilt is very much unresolved. And you must understand, Joshua, whatever happens at the trial isn’t going to bring her back to life.”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “Perhaps you do as an abstract matter,” returned my sister. “But that’s not the way I’ve seen you reacting over the past few days.”

  I felt my temper rising. “So you’re an expert, all of a sudden, on matters of the mind?”

  “I’m an expert on you, dear brother,” she said, putting a bare hand on my arm. Her touch warmed me. “At least I’d like to think I am. Do you realize, while the sheriff was testifying to the condition of the Widow Harriman’s body, you looked up at the ceiling of the courtroom and started mouthing words? It was exactly as if you were trying to communicate with somebody.”

  “Did I?”

  “Did you what?” called Lincoln through the open door of No. 4, Hoffman’s Row.

  “I’m trying to help my brother untangle his heart,” Martha said as we entered the law office.

  “In that case,” said Lincoln, a warm smile crinkling the skin beside his gray eyes, “you’re the only person in Springfield, Miss Speed, who’s got a more thankless task than me.”

  Lincoln swept some papers off Stuart’s lounge with a careless swing of his arm. As they fluttered about the disheveled office, he said, “Please, sit. I’m glad to see you both.”

  “How can we be of use?” Martha asked earnestly.

  Lincoln lowered himself into his chair with a sigh and drew his buffalo robe around his shoulders. He looked tired. “You’re going to get an answer to your question, Miss Speed,” he said after a moment. “About what makes someone insane in the eyes of the law.”

  “What?” I exclaimed.

  “I’ve spent the past four hours over at the jail cell, talking with Patterson,” Lincoln said. “He’s finally told me what happened. It would have been a lot more useful to his defense if he’d done so when he was first arrested, but he’s done so now. He was waiting to hear the evidence against him, I suppose.

  “Our defense in court tomorrow will be lack of sound mind. The Illinois statute books are clear a man’s not legally responsible for actions committed in a condition of insanity.”

  “You can’t mean it!” I cried, but Lincoln bobbed his head somberly.

  “I don’t understand,” said Martha, looking back and forth between us.

  I felt the blood pounding in my head. “What Lincoln’s saying,” I said, “is the doctor’s now confessed to him he is the murderer. That it was he who killed Lilly and Jesse and Rebecca—all of them, I take it,” I added, looking up at Lincoln, who nodded. “And now Lincoln’s going to argue he’s not legally responsible for the murders because he’s mad.”

  I turned back to Lincoln and continued, with anger: “Which is absurd. The doctor’s as sane as you or me. Depraved, to be sure, if he’s now admitting he was the killer all along. Grotesquely depraved. But stone-sober sane.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Speed, until you’ve heard the whole circumstance,” said Lincoln. “Wait for the testimony tomorrow and then you can come to a conclusion.”

  “There’s nothing more to be heard,” I said. “Nothing could change my mind. The man deserves to die. And the sooner, the better.”

  “I’ve never heard of insanity used as a defense in a murder case,” Martha said. “Has anyone ever actually won acquittal on that basis?”

  “More often than you might think,” Lincoln said. “Do you remember reading of the case of the out-of-work house painter who shot at President Jackson a few years ago? Tried to shoot him in the portico of the Capitol building, in Washington, only both of his guns misfired?”

  “Oh—wasn’t the King involved somehow?” said Martha.

  “That’s right,” Lincoln said. “The evidence at the trial showed the accused, a fellow named Richard Lawrence, believed himself to be the King of England. Lawrence believed President Jackson was preventing him from receiving the riches to which he was entitled. It took the jury all of five minutes to acquit him by reason of insanity. And that was for trying to kill the President of the United States.”

  “But he was a man who went around mad all the time, from the sound of it,” Martha said. “That’s obviously not Dr. Patterson’s case.”

  Lincoln nodded. “Very perceptive,” he said. “The testimony tomorrow will be that Patterson’s been suffering from transitory fits of insanity. Maybe you should be reading the law after all, Miss Speed. Just because your brother couldn’t endure the intellectual rigor doesn’t mean there’s not hope for you.”

  Martha gave Lincoln a pleased smile. I scowled; I was in no mood for Lincoln’s humor.

  Lincoln picked up a half-eaten apple from among the clutter on the table in front of him and contemplated it. He took a large bite and chewed loudly.

  “Let me see if this one convinces you,” he said. “There was a bizarre case in England recently. A sober, industrious tradesman was sitting calmly at home, reading his Bible, when a female neighbor came in to ask for a little milk. He looked wildly at her, instantly seized a knife and attacked her, and then attacked his own wife and daughter. His aim appeared to be to decapitate each of them, as he tried cutting the napes of their necks.” Martha gasped in horror, and Lincoln gave a perverse grin.

  “Anyway,” Lincoln continued, “the man was subdued before he could inflict a fatal wound on any of them, and a doctor came at once and concluded he was in the midst of an epileptic fit. His complexion was a dusky red, his eyes starting from their sockets, and he was continually extending his jaws as if trying to yawn. The doctor tied him down and depleted him, both bloodletting and purging, and within three days he was back to normal. Had no memory of the acts he’d committed. Indeed, shocked to hear what had happened. He wasn’t charged with a crime, for how could he be? How could it be said he had intended harm? As far as I know, he lives peacefully in Sussex to this day, if you want to go for a visit.”

  “Oh dear,” said Martha, with a shudder.

  “But that doesn’t remotely describe Patterson,” I objected.

  “Or consider Hamlet,” Lincoln said, taking another bite from his apple. “He acts rationally in contriving a scene by the players to test his uncle’s guilt but irrationally in ordering Ophelia to the nunnery. When he kills Claudius at the play’s end, is it an act of sanity or insanity? ‘Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane / Drink of this potion. Is thy union here?’” />
  “But Hamlet’s a fictitious character,” said Martha.

  “In many respects,” Lincoln responded, “he’s more fully realized than the men you’ll encounter on the street tomorrow.”

  “It’s an odd coincidence,” she said. “Dr. Patterson himself mentioned Hamlet and King Lear at dinner on my first night here when he was talking about Major Richmond’s condition.”

  “That’s no coincidence,” Lincoln returned. “I’ve talked to any number of modern medical men who swear the Bard provides the entire taxonomy of mental alienation and its proper treatment. It goes far beyond Hamlet’s fits and Lear’s melancholy. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show the dangers of mania. Malvolio is imprisoned in Twelfth Night for being a lunatic. Stephano confronts Caliban’s madness in The Tempest with methods material and psychological. And so on.”

  “You’ve certainly thought a great deal about diseases of the mind,” said Martha.

  “Perhaps I have,” Lincoln replied. His face did not betray whatever inner feelings he had on the subject.

  “Even the word ‘lunatic’ itself harbors the concept of an affliction waxing and waning, I suppose,” Martha said.

  “Just so,” said Lincoln. “The idea of a person made insane only by particular phases of the moon.”

  Unsettled, I stood and walked over to the small window and squinted up at the glittering night sky. It was almost time for the luminous harvest moon to make its appearance. Even through my visceral anger, I could understand the intellectual force of Lincoln’s argument, but—

  “Doesn’t it dishonor the dead?” I asked aloud.

  “What do you mean?” said Martha.

  “I mean, three vital persons have had their lives ripped away. That’s an awful thing any way we look at it. It’s a violation of God’s plan for each of them, even though we can’t know what His full plan was. And now, Lincoln’s suggesting no one needs to bear guilt for these terrible acts if they were acts of irrationality. That the victims’ pain, their abject fear at the moment of attack, the loss their loved ones feel”—I swallowed before continuing—“none of it matters depending on what was inside the mind of the man committing the crime. That the dead don’t matter, only the villain.”