Mr. Lambert, still flown with some secret triumph, made an ample gesture of condescension.
“Very well, I consider it highly irregular, but leave it that way—leave it that way by all means. Now, Your Honor____”
“You say you have a certificate, Mr. Farr?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“May we have its contents?”
“Certainly.” Mr. Farr tendered it promptly. “It’s from the chief surgeon at St. Luke’s. As you see, it simply says that it would be against his express orders that Dr. Barretti should take the stand to-day, but that, if nothing unfavorable develops, he should be able to do so by Monday.”
“Yes. Well, Mr. Farr, if Mr. Lambert has no objections you may produce Dr. Barretti then. You have no further questions?”
“None, Your Honor.”
“Very well, the Court stands adjourned until to-morrow at ten.”
“What name did he say?” inquired the reporter in a curiously hushed voice. “Dr. What?”
“It sounded like Barretti,” said the red-headed girl, getting limply to her feet.
“The poor fool!” murmured the reporter in the same awe-stricken tones.
“What?”
“Lambert. Did you get that? The poor blithering fool doesn’t know who he is and where he’s heading.”
“Well, who is he?” inquired the red-headed girl over her shoulder despairingly. She felt that if anything else happened she would sit on the floor and cry, and she didn’t want to—much.
“It’s Barretti—Gabriel Barretti,” said the reporter. “The greatest finger-print expert in the world. Lord, it means that he must have their____ What in the world’s the matter? D’you want a handkerchief?”
The red-headed girl, nodding feebly, clutched at the large white handkerchief with one hand and the large blue serge sleeve with the other. Anyway, she hadn’t sat on the floor.
The fourth day of the Bellamy trial was over.
CHAPTER V
“HE couldn’t look so cocky and triumphant and absolutely sure of himself as that if he didn’t actually know that everything was all right,” explained the red-haired girl in a reasonable but tremulous whisper, keeping an eye in desperate need of reassurance on the portly and flamboyant Lambert, who was prowling up and down in front of the jury with an expression of lightly won victory on his rubicund countenance and a tie that boasted actual checks under a ruddy chin. Every now and then he uttered small, premonitory booms.
“He could look just exactly like that if he were a Godforsaken fool,” murmured the reporter gloomily. “And would, and undoubtedly does. Whom the gods destroy they first make mad. Look out, there he goes!”
“Your Honor,” intoned Mr. Lambert with unction, “gentlemen of the jury, I am not going to burden you with a lengthy dissertation at this moment. In my summing up at a later time I will attempt to analyze the fallacious and specious reasoning on which my brilliant opponent has constructed his case, but at present something else is in my mind; or perhaps I should be both more candid and more accurate if I say that something else is in my heart.
“We have heard a great deal of the beauty, the charm, the enchantment, and the tragedy of the young woman whose dreadful death has brought about this trial. Much stress has been laid on her appalling fate and on the pitiful horror of so much loveliness crushed out in such a fashion. It is very far from my desire to deny or to belittle any of this. Tragic and dreadful, indeed, was the fate of Madeleine Bellamy; not one of us can think of it unmoved.
“But, gentlemen, when its horror grips you most relentlessly, I ask you to think of another young woman whose fate, to my mind, has been bitterer still; who, many times in these past few days, would have been glad to change places with that dead girl, safe and quiet now, beyond the reach of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have been raining about her own unprotected head. I ask you to turn your thoughts for one moment to the fate of Susan Ives, the prisoner at the bar.
“Not so many weeks ago there is not one of you who would not have thought her an object of profound envy. Sue Ives, the adored, the cherished, the protected; Sue Ives, moving safe and happy through a world of flowers and blue skies that held no single cloud; Sue Ives, the lucky and beloved, the darling of the gods. There she sits before you, gentlemen, betrayed by her husband, befouled by every idle tongue that wags, torn from her children and her home, pilloried in every journal in the land from the most lofty and impeccable sheet to the vilest rag in Christendom, branded before the world as that darkest, most dreadful and most abject of creatures—a murderess.
“A murderess! This girl, so loyal and generous and honest that those who knew her believed her to be of somewhat finer clay than the rest of this workaday world; so proud, so sensitive and so fastidious that those who loved her would rather a thousand times have seen her dead in her grave than subjected to the ugly torture that has been her lot these past few days. What of her lot, gentlemen? What of her fate? What has brought her to this dreadful pass? Lightness or disloyalty or bad repute or reckless indiscretion or evil intent? Your own wife, your own daughter, your own mother, could not be freer of any taint of scandal or criticism.
“Accusations of this nature have been made in this court, but not by me and not against her. Of these sins, Madeleine Bellamy, the girl for whom all your pity has been invoked, has stood accused. She is dead. I, too, invoke your pity for her and such forgetfulness as you can mete out for the folly and dishonor that led to her death. For if she had not gone to that cottage to meet her lover, death would not have claimed her. She met death because she was there, alone and unprotected. Whether she was struck down by a thief, a blackmailer, an old lover or a new one, is not within my province to prove or in yours to decide. My intent is only to show you that so slight is the case against Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy that a stronger one could be made out against half a dozen people that have been paraded before you in order to defame her.
“What is this case against her? I say against her, because if you decide that Mrs. Ives is not guilty, the case against Stephen Bellamy collapses automatically. It is not the contention of the state that he committed this crime. The evidence produced shows, according to the state, that he and Mrs. Ives were together throughout the evening, at her instigation. If she had nothing whatever to do with the crime, it follows inevitably that neither did her companion. I again, therefore, turn your attention to Mrs. Ives, and ask you once more what is this case against her?
“This: You are asked to believe that this girl—many of you have daughters older than Susan Ives—that this girl, gently born, gently bred and gentle-hearted, upon receiving information from a half-intoxicated and infatuated suitor of Mimi Bellamy’s that Mimi was carrying on an affair with her husband, Patrick Ives, dined peacefully at home, rose from the table, summoned Mrs. Bellamy’s adoring husband to meet her down a back lane, procured a knife from a table in her husband’s study and straightway sallied forth to remove the encumbrance that she had discovered in her smooth path by the simple and straightforward process of murdering her—murder, you note, premeditated, preconceived, and prearranged. Roughly, an hour and a half elapsed between the time that Susan Ives set out and the moment that the scream fixes as that of the murder.
“Presumably some of that time was occupied in convincing Mr. Bellamy of the excellence of her scheme and some of it in idle conversation—the time must have been occupied somehow; the actual rise and fall of a knife is no lengthy matter. Mr. Bellamy, we gather, was so entertained by the death of his idolized wife that he yielded to hearty laughter—Mr. Thorne has told you of that laugh, I believe.
“The lamp has gone out, so in total darkness they proceed to collect the jewels and wait peacefully until Mr. Thorne has put his keys under the doormat—the door is locked; they have thought of everything, you see—when once more they venture forth, enter an automobile that has the convenient quality of becoming either visible or invisible as serves them best, and return promptly an
d speedily to the house of Mr. Stephen Bellamy.
“Possibly you wonder why they do that. It is barely ten, and almost anyone might see them, thereby destroying their carefully concocted movie alibi, but possibly they thought that the Bellamy house would be a nice place to hide the pearls and talk things over. We are left a trifle in the dark as to their motives here, but undoubtedly the prosecutor will clear all that up perfectly. Ten minutes later they come out, and still together start off once more, presumably in the direction of Mrs. Ives’s home so that everyone there can get a good look at them together, while Mrs. Ives still has the knife and the bloodstained coat in her possession. There they part, Mrs. Ives to straighten up a little before she takes some fruit up to Mrs. Daniel Ives, Mr. Bellamy presumably to return to his own home and a night of well-earned repose.
“In the morning Mrs. Ives rises sufficiently early to pack up the blood drenched garments in a large box for the Salvation Army; she turns them over to a maid to turn over to a chauffeur, requests a fresh pair of gloves and sets forth to early church—the service which she has attended every Sunday of her life since she was a mite of six, with eyes too big for her face, hair to her waist, skirts to her knees and little white cotton gloves that would fit a doll if it weren’t too big. The prosecutor leaves her there telling her God that last night she had had to kill a girl who was liable to make a nuisance of herself before she got through by cutting down Sue Ives’s monthly income considerably. Of course it all may seem a trifle incomprehensible to us, but it’s undoubtedly perfectly clear to God and the prosecutor.
“I think that that is a fair and accurate statement of the state’s case, though Mr. Farr undoubtedly can—and will—make it sound a great deal more plausible when he gets at it. But that’s what it boils down to, and all the specious reasoning and forensic and histrionic ability in the world won’t make it one atom less preposterous. That’s their case.
“And on what evidence are we asked to believe this incredible farrago? I’ll tell you. We have the word of a hysterical and morbidly sensitive girl with a supposed grievance that she overheard a telephone conversation; we have the word of a vindictive young vixen who is leading nothing more nor less than a life of sin that she planted a note and failed to find it again; we have the disjointed narrative of an unfortunate fellow so far gone in drink and love that he was half out of his senses at the time that he is supposed to be reporting these crucial events and has since blown his brains out; we have the word of an ex-jailbird who might well have more reasons than one for directing the finger of suspicion at a convenient victim; we have a trooper, eager for credit and prominence, swearing to you that he can as clearly recognize and identify a scrap of earth bearing the imprint of a bit of tire as though it were the upturned countenance of his favorite child—a bit of tire, gentlemen, which undoubtedly has some hundreds of millions of twins in this capacious country of ours.
“It is on this evidence, fantastic though it may sound, that my distinguished adversary is asking you to condemn to death a gentle lady and an honest gentleman. On the testimony of a neurotic, a love thief, a jailbird, and a drunkard! These are plain words to describe plain truths. I propose to produce witnesses of unimpeachable record to substantiate every one of them.
“It is, frankly, a great temptation to me to rest the case for the defense here and now; because in all honesty I cannot see how it would take any twelve sane men in this country five consecutive minutes to reach and return a verdict of not guilty. Remember, it does not devolve on me to prove that Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy are innocent, but on the state to prove that they are guilty. If they have proved that these two are guilty, then they have proved that I am. I believe absolutely that one is not more absurd than the other.
“On that profound conviction I could, I say, rest this case. But there is a bare possibility that some minor aspects of the case are not so clear to you as they are to me—there is a passionate desire on my part to leave not one stone unturned in behalf of either of my clients—and there is also, I confess, a very human desire to confront and confound some of the glib crew who have mounted the steps to that stand day after day somewhat too greatly concerned to swear away two human lives. It will not be a lengthy and exhausting performance, I promise. Four or five honest men and women will suffice, and you will find, I believe, that truth travels as fast as light.
“Nor shall I produce the hundreds upon hundreds of character witnesses that I could bring before you to tell you that of all the fine and true and gallant souls that have crossed their paths, the most gallant, the finest and the truest is the girl that this very sovereign state is asking you to brand as a murderess. In the case of the People versus Susan Ives I shall call only one character witness into that box—Susan Ives herself. And if, after you have listened to her, after you have seen her, after you have heard her tell her story, you do not believe that society and the law and the people themselves, clamoring for a victim, have made a frightful and shocking error, it will be because I am not only a bad lawyer but a bad prophet as well. Gentlemen, it is my profound and solemn conviction that whatever I may be as a lawyer, I am in very truth a good prophet!”
“I don’t believe he’s a bad lawyer,” said the red-headed girl breathlessly. “He’s a good lawyer. He is! He makes everyone see just how ridiculous the case against them is. That’s being a good lawyer, isn’t it. That’s making a good speech, isn’t it? That’s____”
“He’s a pompous old jackass,” said the reporter unkindly. “But he loves his Sue, and he did just a little better than he knows how. Not so good at that either. You don’t make a case ridiculous by jeering at it. If____”
“Call Mrs. Platz!” boomed the oblivious object of his strictures.
“Mrs. Adolph Platz!”
Mrs. Platz, minute and meek, with straw-colored hair and straw-colored lashes and a small pink nose in a small white face, advanced toward the witness stand with no assurance whatever.
“Mrs. Platz, what was your position on June 19, 1926?”
“I was chambermaid-waitress with Mrs. Alfred Bond at Oyster Bay.”
“Had you been formerly in the employ of Mrs. Patrick Ives?”
“Yes, sir, I was, for about six months in 1925. I just did chamber work there, though.”
“Was your husband there at the time?”
“Yes, sir. Adolph was there as what you might call a useful man. He helped with the furnace and garden and ran the station wagon—things like that.”
“How long had you been married?”
“Not very long, sir—not a year, quite.” Mrs. Platz’s lips were suddenly unsteady.
“Mrs. Platz, why did you leave Mrs. Ives’s employ?”
“Do I have to answer that, sir?”
“I should very much like to have you answer it. Was it because you were discontented with your work?”
“Oh, no, indeed, it wasn’t that; nobody in this world could want a kinder mistress than Mrs. Ives. It was because—it was because of Adolph.”
“What about Adolph, Mrs. Platz?”
“It was because____” She shook her head despairingly, fighting down the shamed, painful flush. “I don’t like talking about it, sir. I’m not one for talking much.”
“I know. Still, the only thing that can help any of us now is truth. I’m sure that you want to help to give us that.”
“Yes, sir, I do. All right then—it was because of the way Adolph was carrying on with Mrs. Ives’s waitress, Melanie.”
“How did you know that?”
“Oh, I think they wanted me to know it,” said Adolph Platz’s wife, her soft voice suddenly hard and bitter. “He was more like a lunatic over her than a sane, grown-up man—he was indeed. I caught him kissing her twice—once in the pantry and once just behind the garage. They wanted me to catch them.”
“What did you do when you made this discovery?”
“The first time I didn’t do anything; I was too scared and sick and surprised. I didn’t know men did
things like that—you know, not the men you married—not decent ones that were your brother’s best friends, like Adolph. Other men, might, but not them. I didn’t do anything but cry some at night. But the next time I saw them I wasn’t so surprised, and I was mad right through to my bones. I jumped right in and told both of them what I thought of them, and then I went right straight to Mrs. Ives and told her I was leaving the minute she could get someone else, and I told her why too. I told her she could keep Adolph, but not me.”
“What happened then?”
“Then she sent for Melanie and Adolph and they both said it wasn’t so.”
“Your Honor____”
“Never mind what anyone said, Mrs. Platz; just tell us what happened.”
“I couldn’t do that without telling you what we were all saying, sir. We were all talking at once, you see, and____”
“Yes. Well, suppose you just tell us what happened as a result of this conference?”
“Adolph and I left, sir. I wouldn’t have stayed no matter what happened after all that—not with me a laughingstock of all those servants for being such a dumbbell about what was going on. And Mrs. Ives didn’t want Adolph without me, so he came too. There wasn’t any way Mrs. Ives could tell which of us was speaking the truth, so she didn’t try; but all the same, she gave Melanie as good a dressing down as____”
“Yes, yes, exactly. Now just what happened after you left Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Platz?”
“Well, after that, sir, we had a pretty hard time. We weren’t happy, you see. I couldn’t forget, and that made it bad for us; and I guess he couldn’t either. Maybe he didn’t want to.”
The flood gates, long closed, were open at last. The small, quiet, tidy person in the witness box was pouring out all her sore heart, oblivious to straining ears, conscious only of the ruddy and reassuring countenance before her.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Platz, but we aren’t permitted to learn the opinions that you formed or the conclusions that you reached. We just want the actual incidents that occurred. Now will you just try to do that?”
The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics) Page 18