Gilded Needles

by Michael McDowell

  “And the other lawyer,” said Judge Stallworth, with a bitter smile, “was some friend of yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was a close friend. A very close friend, perhaps. Was your­self, perhaps.”

  “Yes,” replied Duncan.

  “For what period of time did the murderess enjoy your acquaintance, Duncan?”

  “Eighteen months—about that.”

  “It has been a fond—a merry acquaintance?”

  “Quiet, discreet. She is a remarkable woman.”

  Judge Stallworth repeated his son-in-law’s words, without expression. “ ‘Quiet, discreet. She is a remarkable woman.’ ”

  Duncan Phair shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Maggie doesn’t know who I am,” said Duncan. “That is to say she knows only my first name. She does not know that I am a lawyer—she certainly does not know that I am in any way involved with her prosecution, through you, I mean. She knows only that . . . that I have deserted her.”

  Judge Stallworth said nothing, and Duncan, however distressed by this forced revelation, had to continue: “Otherwise she would surely have sent word to me. That is why I have so studiously avoided coming near this place. It would have been disastrous if she saw me by chance.”

  The judge regarded him balefully. “I’m so pleased,” he remarked scornfully, “that you have seen fit to honor me with this confession. If all is not yet lost, it’s not for your want of blundering. In the first place, Duncan, it is axiomatic that a respectable man should take as his mistress a respectable woman.”

  “Maggie is above all—”

  “Respectable women do not have husbands in Sing Sing. Respectable women are not addicted to opium. Maggie Kizer may be cheerful, well-mannered, knowledgeable on a hundred subjects; she may execute excellent Berlin-work and possess a fine hand—but she is not, finally, respectable.”

  “No,” Duncan acquiesced.

  “Leave,” said the judge curtly, “leave this building immediately. The woman will be brought over from the Tombs in a very few minutes. The landlady has been called as a witness and will arrive shortly. I take it you are known to her as well. It is imperative that you be seen by neither. Therefore, leave.” James Stallworth stood, and Duncan, without another word, slipped out of the judge’s chambers.

  In the corridor outside, Duncan Phair glanced through a grimy window at the incongruous “Bridge of Sighs”—elegant replica of the famous Venetian span—that connected the stolid Criminal Courts Building with the dismal Tombs. At that moment Maggie Kizer was being led across it by two guards. Her erect figure, ele­gant carriage, and handsome distinguished face seemed very much in keeping with the delicate stone tracery of that unhappy bridge, over which the most dangerous and degenerate criminals of the city had passed; but in contrast, the men that accompanied her were stooped and beetle-browed Hibernians. In another moment, that criminal queen and her cretinous attendants would step through into the same hallway in which Duncan now found himself.

  Duncan allowed himself a few seconds to gaze on Maggie Kizer—he knew that it would be the last time that he would ever see her—before he hid himself behind a square column. Maggie would be escorted down a side staircase and introduced into a small airless room behind Judge Stallworth’s court where, on a hard wooden bench, she would wait with the other murderers, thieves, and “victims of ’ficial delinquency” whose trials were scheduled for that day.

  He waited a few moments to give Maggie and her guards time to descend out of sight; and in that time Judge Stallworth emerged from his chambers. He saw Duncan standing there, leaning against the peeling column, but his glance might have fallen with as little concern and pity upon a scrofulous beggar in the street.

  Judge Stallworth’s courtroom was the most modestly appointed of the half-dozen within the Criminal Courts Building. It was small, with polished oak furnishings and tall narrow windows look­ing out on a blank wall of the Tombs. Whitewashed walls were adorned with darkened portraits of men no one could identify.

  A quarter of an hour before the court was called, there was much activity in the room. Clerks and minions were setting up for the day’s business, three Negroes were washing the floor of the jury box, which was heavily stained with tobacco juice, while the jury impaneled for the week stood about making introductions and exchanging jokes at the expense of every nationality but the Irish. Lawyers talked among themselves and cast sidewise glances at the jurors.

  The reporters who were present because of Maggie Kizer talked of circulation and pay and perks and the notorious injustice of editors, while the newspaper artists drew caricatures of the reporters, the lawyers, the jurors, the minions, and one another.

  There was a small crowd of idle spectators—those who had come not for gain, or because compelled by law, but only because of their interest in seeing the female dope fiend who was responsible for the death of a man the newspapers called “one of the city’s most beloved and respected citizens, as well as one of its foremost legal minds.”

  Trials in the Criminal Courts Building, and especially those over which Judge James Stallworth presided, were known to be speedy affairs, and even cases of the utmost complexity were rarely carried into a second day. Certainly none of the lawyers or reporters had any thought that Maggie Kizer would be cleared of the charges against her. Judge Stallworth was not known for leniency in his treatment of defendants, either in the course of a trial or in sentencing, and the reporters and lawyers were apprised of what was not commonly known: that the judge’s son-in-law had assisted the Tribune in its exploitation of this crime. The woman had not a chance.

  “Well,” said one cynic, deliberately within hearing of Simeon Lightner, “it just about amounts to conflict of interest, if you ask me what I think about it. Old man ought to withdraw from the case.”

  “Won’t, though,” replied another, and glanced slyly at Simeon, “too good a case, Tribune’ll make fine copy of all this. Old Stallworth would probably lead her up to the gallows himself if he wasn’t ’fraid of tripping on his own gown.”

  Simeon, who had no love for Judge Stallworth and suspected his son-in-law’s disinterestedness, did not see fit to object to these snide remarks. His interest in this trial was great, but he doubted whether it would be so cut-and-dried as the other reporters evidently considered it. In the first place, Simeon had been present at the arrest of Maggie Kizer, and knew her for no common prostitute. She would prove a more troublesome defendant that some doltish painted trollop from Hudson Street. Also, her beauty was much in her favor, and juries, despite overwhelming evidence, despite the exhortations of ireful judges, had been known to acquit certain women of outstanding physical attractions.

  Simeon’s attention was drawn to the entrance into the courtroom of Black Lena Shanks and her granddaughter—Simeon recognized the plainly dressed child as the twin of the boy who visited Maggie Kizer in prison each day. Lena wore a tight black jacket and a red and black plaid skirt. She walked slowly and with the aid of a silver-tipped cane. They moved into the row of seats just behind Simeon. He turned a little to study them.

  It was Ella who most drew his attention. She sat perfectly still and composed, though her eyes darted everywhere, and more than once caught and held his gaze. The child was unlike any offspring of the lower classes that Simeon had ever come across. Those young Tartars were pawing, mischievous, braying, grimy devils; but though this young girl might well be a devil, she was so well behaved as to seem, at first sight, coyly demure.

  Simeon plucked his tablets from his pocket and read through the notes that he had collected on the Shanks family. Some of what he had learned about the family was too dreadful to appear in the Tribune. He looked around and stared at the fat woman on the row behind him; examined her thin black hair, her black beetling brow, her lusterless black eyes, and concluded that he had much rather be closeted with three knife-wielding prostitutes than with an unarmed Lena Shanks.

  The clerk of the court announced the entrance of th
e judge. All the court stood, and Simeon watched as Black Lena Shanks rose tardily and with seeming reluctance, bearing down upon her cane for support. The little girl, standing beside her grandmother, turned, smiled slyly at Simeon, and tugged at her side curls in a suggestive but uninterpretable fashion.

  Chapter 24

  Judge James Stallworth cast his chilling blue gaze over the courtroom, waved the clerk of the court into silence, and seated himself without ado behind the bench. He closed his eyes and waited patiently for all the machinery that was to grind Maggie Kizer into the dust to start itself up.

  Before, her conviction had been a thing that was merely of service to the Stallworth family, but now it had become a matter of necessity. Judge Stallworth did not look at the defendant, he remembered her well enough from the arraignment. He had no further curiosity for the woman who had so charmed his son-in-law, and no compunction either.

  The case was announced, the prosecution rose on its bandy legs and declared that the state was ready to prove that Maggie Kizer had been an accessory to the crime that had deprived an unexceptionable citizen of his invaluable life. During this brief perfunctory harangue, Maggie Kizer sat immobile and expressionless beside her state-appointed attorney.

  Rather than this speech, the jury had made Maggie Kizer its study—a process accompanied by some few whispers, giggles, low-voiced observations, and eye-rollings; which all amounted to a cautious solicitude on account of her beauty and bearing.

  The judge, seeing that the jury was inattendant to the prosecutor’s speech, urged him on sarcastically: “Yes, yes, the man is quite dead, and we are all inconsolable mourners of his inestimable soul.”

  The defense attorney, whose only conference with his client had been conducted in a little corridor outside the courtroom during the quarter hour prior to their being called inside, stated simply that his client had had nothing to do with the terrible crime, that she was an upstanding if unfortunately circumstanced citizen­ess of the city, that she ought indeed to be compassionated for having been forced to witness so foul a deed as that one unquestionably committed by the foul escapee from Sing Sing. She had barely escaped with her own breath intact within her precious lungs; she had labored under the infamous calumnies of the disreputable landlady who was doubtless in league with the escaped criminal; and no one could look at her sitting beside him, so innocent, so well-mannered, so soft-spoken, and imagine that she had ever lifted a violent finger in the course of her brief and unblissful existence.

  “Doubtless you have judged her character aright,” remarked Judge Stallworth, “but it is time for the prosecution’s first witness to be called.”

  A policeman with a wall eye came to the stand, gave his name, address, history of employment within the police department; described how it came to be that he was acquainted with the deceased Cyrus Butterfield; and provided a minute and colorful description of his coming across the body, wedged naked between two barrels of salted cod in an alley off West and Leroy streets on New Year’s Day.

  The defense attorney asked no questions of the witness.

  A pockmarked young man from the city morgue at Bellevue Hospital nervously testified that Cyrus Butterfield had died of the blow of some sharp instrument to the breast which, piercing deep, had punctured the heart. Other bruises and marks on his body had probably been inflicted after death.

  While the nervous young man from the morgue remained on the stand, the report of the coroner’s jury—providing no additional information of importance—was entered into evidence.

  Next, Lady Weale was called to the stand. That lady, whose testimony and manner of speech had been recorded at length in the Tribune by Simeon Lightner, was regarded with some curiosity by the spectators in the courtroom.

  She seated herself in the witness chair nervously, and glanced at Lena Shanks with some apprehension. Lena Shanks glared stonily back. All eyes in the courtroom—except those of Maggie Kizer—had turned on the woman who, with agitation, tugged at the corners of her yellow kerchief that were tied beneath her chin.

  Lady Weale repeated everything that she had told Simeon Light­ner in the chophouse. The recitation was halting, laden with detail that was mostly made up and tended toward the elevation of her own part and motives in the proceedings. Someone had explained to Lady Weale that she had come off badly in the Tribune article, and she now thought to employ the trial as a forum in which to whitewash her smudged reputation. She frequently slipped from the point, did much indicating toward Maggie Kizer (who rather to Lady Weale’s relief had kept on her dark spectacles and never looked up from her folded hands upon the table), and leveled spurious charges against Simeon Lightner, such as that he had threatened her, first with a knife, and then with amorous advances. She even hinted darkly that the reporter himself had been involved in the murder of Cyrus Butterfield.

  The court—judge, prosecution, and defense alike—was wearied by the half-prevaricated circumstantiality of Lady Weale’s testimony, but the jury were vastly amused. They whispered among themselves, chuckled, and laughed outright.

  “Yes, Mrs. Weale,” said the prosecutor, interrupting a description of a party of streetwalkers who had tumbled against her on West Street when she was watching Maggie Kizer’s husband supporting the dead lawyer across the way, “and what did you do then?”

  “Hurried back to Bleecker. Nothing more for me to do then, if you see what I mean?”

  “And what did you find there?”

  “Nothing. What should I be finding?”

  “Well, surely you saw Mrs. Kizer again, surely you spoke with her. Between you, you had just relieved yourselves of a very embarrassing item, to wit, the corpse of a respectable gentleman who had been murdered in the rooms of your house!”

  “Spoke to her, sure.”

  “And what did she say? What did Mrs. Kizer say upon your return?”

  “Said, ‘Did Alick get rid of him?’ And I said yes. And she said, ‘Good,’ and then she said, ‘Good-night, Mrs. Weale.’ What should she be saying?”

  “What indeed? But she seemed—in your perspicacious opinion, Mrs. Weale—not distraught, not upset, not grief-stricken, not conscience-struck, not burdened with the guiltiness of the evening’s horrible entertainment?”

  “We took the lamp and moved it over the carpet to see if there was blood anywhere, and there didn’t appear to be, so we went to bed. Maggie came down to lock the doors herself—didn’t want Alick coming back in again.”

  “And you went to sleep then, slept sound, as if nothing had happened. A man was murdered in the room above your bedchamber, perhaps above the very spot where you slept. For all you knew his blood might be dripping down upon you in your slumber, Mrs. Weale. Do you mean to—”

  “No blood, I’m saying!”

  “What happened the next day?”

  “After the excitement, I was sleeping late. Maggie sent me for the papers, and she read ’em to see if there was mention of Mr. Butterfield and there wasn’t. It was New Year’s, and so many men on the streets that she didn’t venture out, but that evening went down to get money for the jewelry she had taken from Mr. Butterfield.”

  “Where did she go to do this?”

  “Houston Street. Black Lena’s.”

  Lady Weale pointed out Lena Shanks in the back of the court. Judge Stallworth peered over the edge of the bench, closely exam­ined the fat woman with the greasy hair, and then glanced away. Maggie Kizer, not realizing before that her sister-in-law was present, turned and nodded to Lena. Ella smiled at Maggie, as if returning that greeting for her grandmother—whose eyes remained fixed on the gaunt man behind the judge’s bench.

  “And ‘Black Lena’ gave her money?”

  “Yes,” replied Lady Weale, “good money. All Maggie’s business in that line was done with Black Lena. Black Lena,” said Lady Weale, wanting to mollify the old woman for having brought in her name, “was always good to Maggie. Black Lena gives the best returns in the city, I’m told. And besides all that,
Alick Kizer is Black Lena’s brother.”

  After the conclusion of the prosecution’s examination of Lady Weale, the defense attorney returned to Lady Weale’s relation of the murder of Cyrus Butterfield, in the first hour of the new year.

  “Did Maggie Kizer say a single word, did she make a single movement, which might have suggested that she wished any harm to come to Cyrus Butterfield?”

  “No,” said Lady Weale, “ ’Course not. Maggie was good to her gentlemen, didn’t wish any of ’em harm. Furious when Alick stabbed him, if you see what I mean. Even said to me she wished it was Alick that had been killed instead of Mr. Butterfield.”

  “So,” continued the defense, “in your opinion—and you were there, were you not, Mrs. Weale?—Maggie Kizer had nothing at all to do with the death of Cyrus Butterfield.”

  “No,” said Lady Weale, “ ’course not, ’cept that she was the reason he was there in the first place.”

  The prosecution objected to this last question and Lady Weale’s reply to it, and Judge Stallworth struck them from the record.

  Brought up in this, the defense attorney then asked a number of garbled questions concerning Lady Weale’s antecedents, her housekeeping practices; wanted to know why she had done nothing to stop the murder (she had feared for her own life, she said), asked for a history of her acquaintance with the defendant, and at the end, asked, “Mrs. Weale, have you any substantial charge, any charge at all in fact, to bring against the character of the defendant who, by your own admission, never treated you but with a kindness and respect that—for all the court knows—may have been beyond your deserving?”

  “No,” replied Lady Weale solemnly, “I can’t say a word against her. She was the best-behaved, most politest, well-mannered lady I have ever come across, even if she was an octoroon. She never—”

  The remainder of Lady Weale’s adulatory speech was drowned by the clamor that attended this wholly unexpected revelation. The prosecutor grinned, the defense attorney dropped into his chair, the judge closed his blue eyes in ironic solemnity, but their reactions were the only silent ones. The reporters mumbled to one another their delight at this exciting piece of dramatic discovery, the artists called for better views of the defendant, the spectators talked loudly of their astonishment and their previous suspicions, and the jury murmured hotly among themselves.