Ashes From A Burning Corpse (An American True Crime Reporter in the 20th Century Book 3)

by Noel Hynd

“And shared generously,” he said.

  “Generously,” I agreed. “Even indulgently.”

  We all laughed.

  Captain O’Neil took over the conversation. Through his contacts in the various police forces in the Old Confederacy, he had heard a few personal anecdotes about Hemingway. He had no reluctance to amuse us.

  Hemingway had been living at his Cuban home, Finca Vigía, since the war began in 1939, Captain O’Neil related. Hemingway’s first contribution to the Allied war-effort was to organize his own self-styled counter-intelligence force to root out any Axis spies operating in Havana in 1942. He had fifteen to twenty men with whom he had worked five years before during the Spanish Civil War, when they had all been on the anti-Franco side.

  “The effort yielded no results, however,” Captain O’Neil said, “which didn’t surprise anyone. So, Hemingway shifted his attention to fighting the German U-boats operating in the Caribbean.”

  “What?” Schindler laughed.

  “No, no, I swear this is true stuff,” O’Neil said. “Hemingway got permission from the U.S, Ambassador to Cuba, Spruille Braden, to arm his fishing boat, the Pilar, for patrols against U-boats off the Cuban coast. So now Ernie is out there with machine guns, bazookas, and hand grenades.”

  “No!” I laughed.

  “Yes. The Pilar has become something like a Q-ship, a heavily armed decoy. Hemmie sails around in what appears to be a harmless pleasure craft, inviting the Germans to surface and board, and when they do, the boarding party would be disposed of with the machine guns, and the U-boat would then be engaged with the bazookas and grenades. That’s the plan, anyway.”

  “I’ll believe it more when he claims to have sunk some German tonnage,” Schindler said.

  “Which have you read by our pal, Ernie?” O’Neil asked me.

  “I read For Whom The Bell Tolls and Death in The Afternoon,” I said.

  “Which is the one about the man who got his balls shot off?” Keeler asked.

  “What?” I asked, turning.

  “That’s The Sun Also Rises,” said Schindler.

  “That’s what the book is about?” I asked. “Hemingway doesn’t behave like a guy who lost his manhood.”

  “Oh, he didn’t. And that’s not entirely what the book’s about,” Schindler said. “When Ernie was an ambulance driver on the Italian Front at the end of the First World War, he got hit in his lower body by a trench mortar. Took a couple of hundred separate chunks of shrapnel wounds. Think about it, gentlemen. Must have been torture. His scrotum was pierced twice, and he had to be laid on a special pillow for weeks in a special military hospital in Italy for genital wounds. His testicles were undamaged and his penis intact. But he knew a man who had lost his entire manhood. He wondered what a man’s life would have been like after that if his penis had been lost and his testicles and spermatic cord remained intact. So he wrote a book about this poor guy whose gonads had been blown away and what his problems would be when he was in love with someone who was in love with him and there was nothing that they could do about it.”

  “I might skip that one,” I said.

  “War is war, gentlemen,” O’Neil said. “Sad, serious business.”

  “Read A Farewell to Arms, Alan,” Ray said. “I think you might appreciate it.”

  “Duly noted,” I said.

  The conversation returned to the trial.

  Nassau was percolating with rumors that Sunday night, mostly about the trial, and largely focused on Harold Christie. The story that Captain Sears had related in court was the centerpiece. Sears had insisted that he had seen Harold Christie away from Westbourne on the night of the murder. Curiously enough, nobody in court had brought out the fact that Christie had a brother who looked enough like him, in fact, to pass for a twin in the conditions under which the cop saw the man in the station wagon.

  This evening, the gossip around Nassau was awash with rumors that the driver was, in fact, Christie’s brother, Frank, and Harold was the other man in the car. This spin on purported events suggested that Harold and Frank Christie were out driving on a mission they wanted kept quiet at all costs. It also gave some credibility to the tale of the now-deceased night watchman who claimed he had seen Christie down at the piers welcoming some shady visitors.

  For those locals who gave credence to the notion that Christie was somehow involved in Oakes’ death, this was compelling supporting evidence. However, there was a corollary to the theory, favored by those who believed in Christie’s innocence.

  Christie was a personable, quietly attractive unmarried man about town with a bit of reputation for the ladies: especially married ladies whose husbands were off fighting the war. One of his rumored frequent conquests was, it seems, a British officer’s wife who had been a dinner guest at Westbourne on the eve of the murder. The lady had been driven to her Eastern Road home by fellow guest Charles Hubbard. The suggestion was that Frank drove Harold to the woman’s home for an assignation at an hour when her two children would be asleep. Meanwhile, Harold’s car remained at Westbourne, where its presence would support his contention that he never left the house, and the British officer himself was off on a battlefield somewhere in Europe or Asia, not realizing that he was ceding valuable territory on the home front.

  CHAPTER 25

  On Monday October 25th, the courtroom proceedings continued.

  Lt. John Douglas of the Bahamian police recalled a conversation with de Marigny in which the count supposedly said, “the old bastard should have been killed anyhow.” While the statement may have reflected much public sentiment, it didn’t do the defendant any good.

  As the proceedings moved slowly forward, Harold Christie, still reeling from his tense performance on the witness stand, felt it necessary to give an interview to reporters, this time to crush more rumors about his whereabouts during the early morning of the murder. Christie admitted to the Miami Herald that his story sounded implausible, but he couldn’t help that because it was true.

  The judge was not pleased with Christie giving outside interviews. He issued a warning about giving public statements, and then, as if on cue, another interview surfaced, this one by Captain Edward Melchen. It contained comments he had given to correspondent John B. McDermott of United Press. No sooner had the comments circulated than Melchen tried to walk back from them. He called McDermott a liar and denied giving an interview.

  Thus arrived the first chink in Melchen’s armor. No one imagined that McDermott had faked a story. Melchen was a liar. The defense was ready to pounce. The Count’s junior counsel, Ernest Callender, cross-examined Melchen and capitalized fully on the officer’s perceived dishonesty. In doing so, he exposed a major flaw in the prosecution’s case.

  Melchen staggered the court with an extraordinary statement about the fingerprint that his colleague Barker had supposedly lifted from the Chinese screen. Melchen admitted that he did not know about this fingerprint until Barker broke news of it to Lady Oakes in Bar Harbour, Maine at her husband’s funeral.

  The two Miami cops had been presumably working closely on the case since the early afternoon following Sir Harry’s death. They had travelled together back to Miami, and then on to Maine. And not once was the fingerprint mentioned? They had discussed other aspects of the case, but Barker had not referred even fleetingly to the single most important piece of evidence against de Marigny?

  Or so said Melchen on Monday.

  On Tuesday in court, Melchen asked permission to change his testimony, explaining that he had been tired when he gave it. He had heard Barker mention lifting a print to Colonel Erskine-Lindop and that he was going to process it. At Bar Harbour, Barker told Lady Oakes about a print on which he was still working which he thought was de Marigny’s.

  An irritated Chief Justice said, “That is very different from what you said yesterday. Don’t you know the very great importance of this piece of evidence? Have you a good memory?”

  “A fairly good memory,” Melchen answered.

&n
bsp; “Tell me, now that you are not tired, have you talked to Barker about this matter since you gave evidence yesterday?”

  “No,” Melchen answered. “I talked about it in the Attorney General’s office with the Attorney General in the presence of Captain Barker, after I gave evidence yesterday.”

  This remark suggested that, having blundered in the witness-box, Melchen went into deep discussions with the Attorney General and Barker, to see if his evidence was salvageable. The stench in the air suggested that something was very wrong.

  Melcher’s equivocation ignited a moment of panic for the prosecution. The defense tried to have the print withdrawn as evidence. They argued that the print was inadmissible, but the judge ruled against them.

  Higgs might have been set back by the decision, but he wasn’t. He wore a sly smile and looked like a man who had just gained some important ground. He shifted his attention to the authenticity of the fingerprint that Ray Schindler had originally questioned. Now everything would hinge on Barker’s testimony, and especially his ability to withstand the dogged, penetrating interrogation of young Godfrey Higgs, who was gaining steam and confidence.

  So the fingerprint, allegedly from de Marigny’s right little finger, was formally admitted as evidence.

  When Captain Barker, the Miami cop, hulked into the witness box, Godfrey Higgs started to blast away with double barrels, armed with ammunition supplied by Schindler, Captain O’Neil of the New Orleans Police Department, and Keeler, who all sat in the same hot pew with me. We tried to cool ourselves with hand fans as we watched the drama unfold.

  Young Higgs was impressive. To shatter the opposition’s case in court, lawyers often rely on circumstantial evidence. The traditional analogy is that each piece of evidence is a brick. No specific event by itself may prove or disprove a case. But once assembled, the individual bricks might build a wall, a solid brick wall, that provides a barrier to conviction or acquittal. Higgs was skillfully constructing such a wall.

  Barker told the court he had taken rubber lifts from the top panel of the screen because his Scotch tape had run out. In the magistrate’s court, he had marked in blue pencil the area from which he thought the rubber lift of de Marigny’s print was taken. Now he equivocated. He informed the court that, since re-examining the screen, he was not now prepared to say the print was lifted from that area. It did, however, come from the top panel, he asserted. The screen was carried to the witness-box so that Barker could see it more clearly.

  Barker, working on his own crash-and-burn routine, blithely said, “I wish to inform the court that the blue line which I now see on the screen was not made by me. There has been an effort to trace a blue line over the black line that I made myself on August first in the presence of the Attorney General in the Central Police Station. That blue line is not my work.”

  Then, astonishingly, he said he wished to correct this statement. Following the inconsistencies of Melchen, this had a powerful effect. The prosecution’s two-star witnesses, far from being stars, were coming off as a couple of incompetent clowns. First, they said one thing, then they said something else. They couldn’t even seem to make up their mind on their own testimony. Jurymen shuffled their feet and exchanged glances.

  Higgs was ready for his big moment.

  Barker continued, “I am sorry I have caused the court this trouble. I wish to withdraw what I said about the alteration of the blue line. I find my initials where the blue line is.”

  He said the area marked by him had been indicated twice—the first time in black pencil, then in blue. He had dated the find on July ninth, but only recorded it on August first.

  Higgs could barely contain his excitement.

  “So, until August first there was nothing on that screen to show where the fingerprint came from?” asked Higgs.

  “I relied on my memory only,” Barker said,

  Higgs displayed astonishment. Out of his view, so did the jurors.

  “Yet on the third of August in the magistrate’s court,” Higgs reminded the witness, “you swore on your oath that, ‘I marked the spot on the screen, where the latent impression above referred to was found, with pencil and it is now within the area marked with blue pencil and signified by Number 5 and initialed and dated 8/3/43 by me.’”

  “Yes. I did,” Barker said.

  “And you marked that area while giving evidence in the magistrate’s court and said that was where the print came from?”

  “I did.”

  “You were certain then that it came from that area, weren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  “And why are you not certain today, Captain Barker?”

  “I re-examined the screen carefully last Sunday. I did not have sufficient evidence of ridges to enable us to say with certainty that it came from that area. I can only say now that it came from the top of the screen.”

  Higgs paused for a moment so that the implications could sink in for everyone in western hemisphere. If the fingerprint was to put de Marigny’s neck in the noose, Barker needed to show beyond doubt that it came from the screen. De Marigny’s fingerprint detached from its background was useless.

  “Where would you say today that the print came from?” Higgs asked.

  “I can only say now from my memory that it came from some part of the top of that panel. I did not feel justified in isolating any area.”

  Higgs, who had done some solid research on the witness, then asked Barker to give a rundown of his career.

  Barker said he had been a street cop, then had worked as a clerk and then returned to uniformed duties before his eventual elevation to superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It was penny-ante stuff compared to his present responsibilities.

  “Is it customary in Miami to appoint a superintendent with such small qualifications?”

  “No,” Barker said.

  “You had only five months as a clerk before that?”

  Barker answered, “Yes.”

  “You continued as superintendent of the BCI until March 1939, when you were ordered back to uniformed duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Barker hesitated. “Insubordination,” he said.

  “And you remained out of that department for eleven months?”

  “Yes.”

  Higgs closed in for the kill. “You term yourself a fingerprint expert?”

  “As the term applies, yes.”

  “Have you ever introduced as evidence a lifted print without producing photographs of the actual raised print on the object on which it was found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you give me the name of just one case in which you have done so.”

  Barker pondered it. “I can’t do that.”

  “Not one?”

  “I could by inspection of my records.”

  “This Chinese screen that is so important here?” Higgs asked. “Is the screen mobile?”

  “It can be moved.”

  “Why didn’t you produce this moveable object in this court with the print on it?”

  “The only equipment I had on the 8th and 9th of July was a small dusting outfit and tape. The use of tape expedited the examination.”

  “But you came prepared to look for fingerprint evidence, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you left your fingerprint camera behind?”

  “I didn’t know the nature of the case. I thought the kit I brought was sufficient to take care of the average situation, even a murder case. A camera would have been desirable, but I didn’t know the conditions.”

  Again, Barker came off as an idiot, a professional hack who was prepared to take short-cuts even when a man’s life was at stake.

  Higgs ramped up the pummeling.

  “I suggest, Captain Barker,” Higgs said, “that there were numerous articles in Sir Harry’s room that you never processed.”

  “I quite agree with you.”

  “If the accused had left a finge
rprint on that screen, wouldn’t it be likely that he left fingerprints on other objects?”

  “Yes, under ordinary conditions. It is, however, my opinion that the nature of the crime and the extent of emotion or hurry would most likely prevent him from handling a lot of objects. In this case there was no necessity for the assailant to handle many objects.”

  “Well, why did you dust the powder room downstairs?” Higgs asked.

  Barker answered, “We can’t exclude anything in an investigation like this.”

  “But you did exclude a number of articles in the bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  If the defense had yet to put Barker’s dishonesty beyond doubt, there was now no question. Higgs continued to hammer at Barker’s credibility for two days. Eventually, he came right out and said what everyone in the courtroom was thinking: it was impossible for the print to be lifted from the screen without some of its ornate pattern being lifted, too. The print, in other words, had detached from its supposed original venue with no proof it had ever been there.

  This revelation meant one of two things: that Barker was almost criminally incompetent or grossly dishonest. And it suggested another possibility: that the print had been lifted from another object unconnected with the murder scene to frame de Marigny.

  Higgs slammed home exactly that point. “I suggest that Exhibit J never came from that screen.”

  “It did come from that screen! Number 5 panel!” Barker answered.

  “You can show none of the scrollwork on Exhibit J, can you?”

  “I cannot.”

  Higgs continued softly. “This is the most outstanding case in which your expert assistance has been required, is it not?”

  “Well, it’s developed into that.”

  “And I suggest that in your desire for personal gain and notoriety you have swept away truth and substituted fabricated evidence.”

  “I emphatically deny that!” Barker bellowed.

  But it was too late to reverse the damage Barker’s testimony had done to the prosecution’s case.

  ***

  On November 4, 1943, Alfred de Marigny was freed from his cage to give evidence in his own defense. After two weeks of silently observing proceedings, he was anxious to speak.