“He didn’t!” said the red-headed girl fiercely. “He didn’t know it. How could____”
“The Court!” sang Ben Potts.
“How could he know whether she____”
“Silence!” intoned Ben reprovingly.
Mr. Orsini and Mr. Lambert were both heading purposefully for the witness box.
“Now you’ve just told us, Mr. Orsini, that you were able to see Mrs. Ives’s face when you looked down from your window in the garage as clearly as you see mine. Can you give us an idea of the approximate distance from the garage to the house?”
“Positive. The distance from the middle of the garage door to the middle of the front porch step, it is”—he glanced earnestly at a small slip of paper hitherto concealed in one massive paw, and divulged a portion of its contents to his astounded interrogator—“it is forty-seven feet five inches and one half inch.”
“What?”
Mr. Orsini contemplated with pardonable gratification the unfeigned stupor that adorned the massive countenance now thrust incredulously forward. “Also I can now tell you the space between the front gate and the door—one hunnerd forty-three feet and a quarter of a inch,” he announced rapidly and benevolently. “Also from the fence out to the road—eleven feet nine inch and a____”
Judge Carver’s gavel fell with a crash over the enraptured roar that swept the courtroom. “One more demonstration of this kind and I clear the Court. This is a trial for murder, not a burlesque performance. You, sir, answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put. What’s that object in your hand?”
Mr. Orsini dangled the limp yellow article hopefully under the judge’s fine nose. “The instrument with which I make the measure,” he explained, all modest pride. “What you call a measure of tape. The card on which I make the notes as well.”
Judge Carver schooled his momentarily shaken countenance to its customary rigidity and turned a lion tamer’s eye on the smothered hilarity of the press. The demoralized Lambert pulled himself together with a mighty effort; a junior counsel emitted a convulsive snort; only Mr. Farr remained entirely unmoved. Pensive, nonchalant and mildly sardonic, he bestowed a perfunctory glance on the measure of tape and returned to a critical perusal of some notes of his own, which he had been studying intently since he had surrendered his witness to his adversary. The adversary, his eyes still bulging, returned once more to the charge.
“May I ask you what caused you to burden yourself with this invaluable mass of information?”
“Surest thing you may ask. I do it because me, I am well familiar with the questions what all smart high-grade lawyers put when in the court—like, could you then tell us how high were those steps, and how many were those minutes, and how far were those walls—all things like that they like to go and ask, every time, sure like shooting.”
“I see. A careful student of our little eccentricities. How has it happened that your crowded life has afforded you the leisure to make so exhaustive a study of our habits?”
“Once again, more slow?” suggested the student affably.
“How have you happened to become so familiar with court life?”
“Oh, me, I am not so familiar with it as that. Once-twice—that is enough for one who know how to use his eyes and ear—more is not necessary.”
“No, as you say, once or twice ought to be enough; it’s a pity that you’ve found it necessary to extend your experience. Orsini, have you ever been in jail?”
“Who—me?” The glittering smile with which Mr. Orsini was in the habit of decorating his periods was not completely withdrawn, but it became slightly more reticent. His lambent eyes roved reproachfully in the direction of Mr. Farr, who seemed more absorbed than ever in his notes. “In what kind of a jail you mean?”
Mr. Lambert looked obviously disconcerted. “I mean jail—any kind of a jail.”
“Was it up on a hill, perhaps, this jail?” inquired his victim helpfully.
“On a hill? What’s that got to do with it? How should I know whether it was on a hill?”
“A high hill, mebbe, with trees all about it?” Once more Orsini’s hands were eloquent.
“All right, all right, were you ever in a jail on a hill with trees around it?”
Orsini gazed blandly into the irate and contemptuous countenance thrust toward him. “No, sair,” he replied regretfully. “If that jail was up on a hill with trees around it, then I was not in that jail.”
Once more the courtroom, reckless of the gavel, yielded to helpless and hilarious uproar, and for this time they were spared. One look at Mr. Lambert’s countenance, a full moon in the throes of apoplexy, had undermined even Judge Carver’s iron reserves. The gavel remained idle while he indulged himself in a severe attack of coughing behind a large and protective handkerchief. The red-headed girl was using a more minute one to mop her eyes when she paused, startled and incredulous. Across the courtroom, Patrick and his wife Susan were laughing into each other’s eyes, for one miraculous moment the gay and care-free comrades of old; for one moment—and then, abruptly, memory swept back her lifted veil and they sat staring blankly at the dreadful havoc that lay between them, who had been wont to seek each other in laughter. Slowly, painfully, Sue Ives wrenched her eyes back to their schooled vigilance, and after an interminable breath, Pat Ives turned his haunted ones back to the window, beyond which the sky was still blue. Only in that second’s wait the red-headed girl had seen the dark flush sweep across his pallor, and the hunger in those imploring eyes, frantic and despairing as those of a small boy who had watched a beloved hand slam a heavy door in his face.
“Why, he loves her!” thought the red-headed girl. “He loves her dreadfully!” Those few scattered seconds when laughter and hope and despair had swept across a court—how long—how long they seemed! And yet they would have scantily sufficed to turn a pretty phrase or a platitude on the weather. They had just barely served to give the portly Lambert time to recover his breath, his voice, and his venom, all three of which he was now proceeding to utilize simultaneously and vigorously.
“I see, I see. You’re particular about your jails—like them in valleys, do you? Now be good enough to answer my question without any further trifling.”
“What question is that?”
“Have you ever been in jail?”
Mr. Orsini’s expression became faintly tinged with caution, but its affability did not diminish. “When?” he inquired impartially.
“When? Any time! Will—you—answer—my—question?”
Thus rudely adjured, his victim yielded to the inevitable with philosophy, humor, and grace. “Not any time—no, no! That is too exaggerate’. But sometimes—yes—I do not deny that sometimes I have been in jail.”
Under the eyes of the entranced spectators, Mr. Lambert’s rosy jowls darkened to a fine, deep, full-bodied maroon. “You don’t deny it, hey? Well, that’s very magnanimous and gratifying—very gratifying indeed. Now will you continue to gratify us by telling us just why you went to jail?”
Mr. Orsini dismissed his penal career with an eloquent shrug. “Ah, well, for what thing do you not go to jail in these days? If you do not have money to pay for fine, it is jail for you! You drink beer what is two and three quarter, you shake up some dice where you think nobody care, you drive nine and one-half mile over a bridge where it say eight and one half____”
“That will do, Orsini. In 1911 did you or did you not serve eight months in jail for stealing some rings from a hotel room?”
“Ah, that—that is one dirty lie—one dirty plant is put on me! I get that____”
From under the swarthy skin of the erstwhile suave citizen of the world there leaped, sallow with fury, livid with fear, the Calabrian peasant, ugly and vengeful, chattering with incoherent rage. Lambert eyed him with profound satisfaction.
“Yes, yes—naturally. It always is. Very unfortunate; our jails are crowded with these errors. It’s true, too, isn’t it, Orsini, that less than three weeks before the murd
er you told Mr. Bellamy that the reason you hadn’t asked your little Milanese friend to marry you was that you couldn’t afford to buy her an engagement ring?”
“You—you____”
“Just one moment, Orsini.” The prosecutor’s low voice cut sharply across the thick, violent stammering. “Don’t answer that question. . . . Your Honor, I once more respectfully inquire as to whether this is the trial of Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives or of my witnesses, individually and en masse?”
“And the Court has told you once before that it does not reply to purely rhetorical questions, Mr. Farr. You are perfectly aware as to whose trial this is, and while the Court is inclined to agree as to the impropriety of the last question, it does not believe that it is in error in stating that it is some time since you have seen fit to object to any of the questions put by Mr. Lambert to your witness.”
“Your Honor is quite correct. It being my profound conviction that I have an absolutely unshakable case, I have studiously refrained from injecting the usual note of acrimonious bickering into these proceedings that is supposed to be the legal prerogative. This kind of thing causes me profoundly to regret my forbearance, I may state. About two out of three witnesses that I’ve put on the stand have been practically accused of committing or abetting this murder. Whether they’re all supposed to be in one gigantic conspiracy or to have played lone hands is still a trifle hazy, but there’s no doubt whatever about the implications. Miss Page, Miss Cordier, Mr. Farwell, Mr. Ives, Mr. Orsini—it’ll be getting around to me in a minute.”
“I object to this, Your Honor, I object!” The choked and impassioned voice of Mr. Dudley Lambert went down before the clear, metallic clang of the prosecutor’s, roused at last from lethargy.
“And I object, too—I object to a great many things! I object to the appalling gravity of a trial for murder being turned into a farce by the kind of thing that’s been going on here this morning. I’m entirely serious in saying that Mr. Lambert might just as well select me as a target for his insinuations. I used to live in Rosemont. I have a good sharp pocket knife—my wife hasn’t a sapphire ring to her name—I’ve been arrested three times—twice for exceeding a speed limit of twenty-two miles an our and once for trying to reason with a traffic cop who had delusions of grandeur and a____”
“That will do, Mr. Farr.” There was a highly peremptory note in Judge Carver’s voice. “The Court has exercised possibly undue liberality in permitting you to extend your observations on this point, because it seemed well taken. It does not believe that you will gain anything by further elaboration. Mr. Lambert your last question is overruled. Have you any further ones to put to the witness?”
Mr. Lambert, looking a striking combination of a cross baby and a bulldog, did not take these observations kindly. “Am I denied the opportunity of attacking the credibility of the extraordinary collection of individuals that Mr. Farr chooses to produce as witnesses?”
“You are not. In what way does your inquiry as to Mr. Orsini’s inability to provide a young woman with an engagement ring purport to attack his credibility?”
“It purports to show that Orsini had a distinct motive for robbery and____”
“Precisely. And precisely for that reason, since Mr. Orsini is not on trial here, the Court considers the question irrelevant and incompetent, as well as improper. Have you any further ones to put?”
“No.” The rage that was consuming the unchastened Mr. Lambert choked his utterance and bulged his eyes. “No further questions. May I have an exception from Your Honor’s ruling?”
“Certainly.”
Orsini, stepping briskly down from the witness box, lingered long enough to bestow on his late inquisitor a glance in which knives flashed and blood flowed freely—a glance which Mr. Lambert, goaded by frustrated rage, returned with interest. The violence remained purely ocular, however, and the obviously disappointed spectators began to crawl laboriously to their feet.
“Call for Turner.”
“Joseph Turner!”
A bright-eyed, brown-faced, friendly-looking boy swung alertly into the box and fired a pair of earnest young eyes on the prosecutor.
“What was your occupation on June nineteenth of this year, Mr. Turner?”
“I was bus driver over the Perrytown route.”
“Still are?”
“No, sir; driving for the same outfit, but over a new route—Redfield to Glenvale.”
“Ever see these before, Turner?”
The prosecutor lifted a black chiffon cape and lace scarf from the pasteboard box beside him and extended them casually toward the witness.
The boy eyed them soberly. “Yes, sir.”
“When?”
“Two or three times, sir; the last time was the night of the nineteenth of June.”
“At what time?”
“At about eight-thirty-five.”
“Where did you pick Mrs. Bellamy up?”
“At about a quarter of a mile beyond her house, toward the club. There’s a bus stop there, and she stepped out from some deep shadows at the side of the road and signalled me to stop.”
“Did you know Mrs. Bellamy by name at that time?”
“No, sir; I found out later. That’s when I learned where her house was too.”
“Was yours the first bus that she could have caught?”
“If she missed the eight o’clock bus. Mine was the next.”
“Did anything particularly draw your attention to her?”
“Yes, sir. She had her face all muffled up in her veil, the way she always did, but I specially noticed her slippers. They were awfully pretty shiny silver slippers, and when I let her out at the corner before Orchards it was sort of muddy, and I thought they sure were foolish little things to walk in, but that it was a terrible pity to spoil ’em like that.”
“How long did it take you to cover the distance between the point from which you picked Mrs. Bellamy up to the point at which you set her down?”
“About eight minutes, I should say. It’s a little over two miles—nearer two and a half, I guess.”
“Did she seem in a hurry?”
“Yes, sir, she surely did; when she got out at the Orchards corner she started off almost at a run. I pretty nearly called to her to look out or she’d trip herself, but then I decided that it wasn’t none of my business, and of course it wasn’t.”
“How do you fix the date and the time, Turner?”
“Well, that’s easy. It was my last trip that night to Perrytown, see? And about the date, next morning I saw how there had been the—a—well, a murder at Orchards, and I remembered her and those silver slippers, and that black cloak, so I dropped in at headquarters to tell ’em what I knew—and it was her all right. They made me go over and look at her, and I won’t forget that in a hurry, either—no, sir.”
The boy who had driven her to Orchards set his lips hard, turning his eyes resolutely from the little black cloak. “I got ’em to change my route the next day,” he said, his pleasant young voice suddenly shaken.
“You say that you had driven her over several times before?”
“Well, two or three times, I guess—all in that last month too. I only had the route a month.”
“Same time—half-past eight?”
“That’s right—eight-thirty.”
“Anything in particular call your attention to her?”
“Well, I should think she’d have called anyone’s attention to her,” said Joe Turner gently. “Even all wrapped up like that, she was prettier than anything I ever saw in my whole life.” And he added, more gently still: “About twenty times prettier.”
The prosecutor stood silent for a moment, letting the hushed voice evoke once more that radiant image, lace-scarfed, silver-slippered, slipping off into the shadows. “That will be all,” he said. “Cross-examine.”
“No questions.” Even Lambert’s voice boomed less roundly.
“Next witness—Sergeant Johnson.”
“Sergeant
Hendrick Johnson!”
Obedient to Ben Pott’s lyric summons, a young gentleman who looked like a Norse god inappropriately clothed in gray whipcord and a Sam Browne belt strode promptly down the aisle and into the witness box.
“Sergeant Johnson, what was your occupation on the nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“State trooper—sergeant.”
“When did you first receive notification of the murder at Orchards?”
“At a little before ten on the morning of the twentieth of June. I’d just dropped in at headquarters when Mr. Conroy came in to report what he’d discovered at the cottage.”
“Please tell us what happened then.”
“I was detailed to accompany Mr. Dutton, the coroner, Dr. Stanley and another trooper, Dan Wilkins, to the cottage. Mr. Dutton took Dr. Stanley along with him in his roadster, and Wilkins rode with me in my side car. We left headquarters at a little after ten and got to the cottage about quarter past.”
“Just one moment. Do I understand that the state troopers have headquarters in Rosemont?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Of which you are in charge?”
“That’s correct too.”
“Who had the key to the cottage?”
“I had it; Mr. Conroy had turned it over to me. I unlocked the door of the cottage myself, and we all went in together.” The crisp, assured young voice implied that a murder more or less was all in the day’s work to the state police.
“Did you drive directly up to the cottage door?”
“No; we left the motorcycle and the car just short of the spot where the little dirt road to the cottage hits the gravel road to the main house and went in on foot, using the grass strip that edges the road.”
“Any special reason for that?”
“There certainly was. We didn’t want to mix up footprints and other marks any more than they’d been mixed already.”
“What happened after you got in the house?”
“Well, Mr. Dutton and the doctor took charge of the body, and we helped them to move it into the dining room across the hall, after a careful inspection had been made of the position of the body. As a matter of fact, a chalk outline was made of it for further analysis, if necessary, and I took a flash light or so of it so that we’d have that, too, to check up with later. I helped to carry the body to the other room and place it on the table, where it was decided to keep it until the autopsy could be performed. I then locked the door of the parlor so that nothing could be disturbed there, put the key in my pocket, and went out to inspect the marks in the dirt road. I left Mr. Dutton and Dr. Stanley with the body and sent Wilkins down the road to a gas station to telephone Mr. Bellamy that his wife had been found in the cottage. There was no telephone in the cottage, and the one at the main house had been disconnected.”
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 16