“Your Honor,” March spoke up, “may I now request the court that I be permitted its indulgence—for a few hours—to return to my office. There’re some details which remain for me to finish up. At a time set by the court, I’ll return myself to custody.”
Judge Ettinger considered the request, then nodded. “Your bail will continue in effect until you return to this court…” he glanced at the wall clock, “at three o’clock this afternoon. However, I shall direct that you be accompanied by a deputy sheriff assigned to this court.”
“Thank you,” said March. He turned away.
In the reception room of March’s office, the deputy glanced around casually, then dropped into a chair. Picking up a magazine, he began to leaf through it. “I’ll wait out here,” he told March.
The manner of the officer had been both friendly and courteous, and March returned it. “Make yourself comfortable,” March replied, “and if you want some coffee… Lydia will get it for you.” March went into his private office, and Lydia Gorham, who had been seated silently at her desk, quickly rose to follow him.
The secretary’s eyes were swollen with repressed tears. “There’s so much… I want to say…she said with difficulty.
“There’s nothing to be said,” March corrected her gently. “But I’m glad of the chance to tell you goodbye.” His eyes swept his desk with embarrassment. He picked up a small, expensive clock in a tooled-leather case, and abruptly handed it to Lydia, speaking shortly to cover his emotions. “Here, I’d like you to have this.”
The young woman’s fingers caressed the smooth, cool covering of the case. “All right… thanks,” she said, choking.
March’s voice stopped her. “You’ve been with me nearly seven years… that’s a long time.” Lydia nodded, and he continued quietly, “I’ll stop in to see you—oh… in a year… or so. That’s not so very long…”
“I’ll always want to see you,” she replied. Then she attempted to resume her usual brisk manner, and forced herself to speak in a tone of efficiency. “Is there anything I can do now?” she asked.
“Yes. You have a metal wastebasket. Please bring it in here.”
When the secretary returned, Taylor was with her. She placed the metal container on the floor and went back to her own desk, leaving the two men alone.
Finally Taylor said, referring to the sentence, “I’ll do what I can, Cyrus. I’ll appeal it.”
“As you please,” March agreed almost indifferently. “In the meantime, you might think about yourself, too. I suggest you have a talk with young Steve Murray about coming in with you. Some day he’s going to be a good trial lawyer.”
“It won’t be the same,” Taylor disagreed. He added hopefully, “Besides… after you return… maybe we can work something out…”
“Doing what?” March asked bluntly. His voice, however, quickly changed to a note of warmth. “Thanks, anyway, for your offer. My place is in a courtroom, and unless I’m there, I’m not worth my keep.”
“Perhaps the bar will change its mind and let you practice again.”
March didn’t reply. He turned and walked to the window… the one from which he had often stared deep in thought. “For the present, it’d be better to split our account down the middle, sell my library and personal office stuff. See that Ivy gets the check.”
“You know I will,” Taylor promised.
“There’s plenty to take care of her until I get back… and enough for both of us to get started again after that.” March turned from the window, his lips forcing a smile. “I have to report back to Ettinger at three.”
“All right. I’ll see you before you leave.” Sadly, Taylor returned to his own office.
After his partner had left, March closed his office door. Unlocking the drawer in his desk, he removed Tim Nordeen’s old report on Ivy. He stared at it thoughtfully, then flicked his lighter and held the flame to the document. As it burned, he walked to the metal wastebasket, dropping the cindered sheets in it. Then, he crossed to a tall filing cabinet containing his own files. From it, he took out a folder marked “Personal,” containing documents and papers which a man collects during his lifetime. Sheet by sheet, March burned the material to ashes in the metal container.
Then, opening a second drawer in the cabinet, he removed a bulky, accordion-pleated envelope which was closed and tied with an attached cord. On it was a neat label: ‘Notes re: Case of Ivy Lorents.’ The attorney carried the folder to his desk and opened it.
Inside were his innumerable notes jotted down during the trial, as well as memos, plans, and ideas—used and unused. Neatly folded were the floor plans and measurements which he had made of Ivy’s apartment, the coroner’s report, and copies of the ballistics diagrams offered at the trial. Finally, was the thick stack of photographs and enlargements taken by the crime laboratory photographer on the night of the shooting.
March pulled the metal wastebasket beside his chair, and sitting down at his desk proceeded to methodically destroy the contents of the file. One by one, the sheets—large and small—were burned to ashes, until only the photographs remained.
Printed on heavy paper, the photos burned more slowly—the flame crawling up the corners—licking the paper brown—then consuming it. He examined each picture, knowing—it seemed—each detail in advance, before giving it to the fire.
As March held the lighter to one of the last photographs in the thick stack, his attention suddenly riveted on it. As his eyes interpreted the details of it anew, his thumb released the trigger of the lighter, and the flame died. Slowly, March flattened the picture on his desk. He leaned over it… his mind absorbing and developing the details with a dreadful clarity. It was as if, for the first time, the veils of inaccuracy and misdirection had been stripped from his sight.
In his memory he again heard Ivy’s voice, on that long past day when he had urged her, “Please try to remember everything you did. Even to such details as closing the door.” And she had replied, “I’ll try. I’ll start with the door. I closed it. Then I switched on the lights… I was wearing a stole, and I dropped the fur on the chair near the door.” Later he had asked, repeating the question, “Before or after the police arrived, did you change anything… move anything in the room?”
She had told him firmly, “No… nothing at all.”
Now, March stared intently at the photograph. The picture, stark black and white, was an enlargement of the fur stole draped carelessly on the seat of the occasional chair.
There it was… exactly where Ivy had said she had tossed it down. But his eyes registered a detail which formerly had seemed merely a shadow… a dark irregular line—a crease, perhaps, in the folds of the fur… beneath the stole as it lay on the chair. It was a minute detail escaping the many other eyes which had examined it in the laboratory and the D.A.’s office. March, for the first time recognized that the detail was an optical illusion. It was not a shadow at all. But it appeared where a shadow should have been—and for that reason, it had been accepted as such.
Unnoticed by the attorney, absorbed in his examination, the door to his office quietly opened. Ivy stood motionless in the doorway, then called to him softly, “Darling…”
I straightened at the sound of her voice. With my first glance at her, I was again entrapped by her beauty. The intensity of my love surged over me, and the excitement of her presence, the old well-remembered entangling of my emotions seized me once more. My hands trembled and I had to force my words over the dryness of my lips. “I asked you not to come…”
Ivy stepped past the door and walked to my desk. She put her arms around me. “I couldn’t let you leave… not say goodbye…” she whispered. Her lips raised to mine, and I was helpless to avoid her kiss.
As I felt the warm impact of her lips, the blinding scales of a lifetime dropped from my eyes. I knew that each of us is born with the seeds of our destruction within us. They lie hidden, silently ticking away the years until, finally, in one way or another they lead us to our
graves. But suddenly, it was given to me to understand that it was not alcohol which had seeded my destruction—but a yet greater weakness. It had not been within me to command a completeness of my own soul, an independence of spirit. First it had been Beatrice, then it was Ivy. Each filling a part of what I lacked, and each nourishing the seeds of my weakness.
I heard myself saying, bleakly, “This isn’t making it any easier.” Gently, at first, I tried to free her arms, then in a frenzy of apprehension I tore them from me.
I could feel the startled stare of her eyes, and I knew that she had no way of understanding the violence of my actions, or the desolation in my voice. I placed both my hands on my desk—my arms had to support my body, as it didn’t seem possible that I could stand alone. My head fell forward between my shoulders and I found myself staring down at the evil photograph. Twice I attempted to speak before I could find my voice. And then the despair was abruptly swept away, and the words came with no more doubt and hesitation.
“During the trial,” my voice was a monotone, “something bothered me. Once in a while I seemed to be on the trail of it, not really knowing for what I was searching—but almost finding it. Perhaps, I was afraid to search too hard. Eventually, I stopped looking for it.” I raised my head and straightened my shoulders.
Ivy stood quietly, but desperately alert. She sensed her danger and waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, her question was drawn from her slowly. “What was it?”
“Arthea Simpson’s black sweater. She wore one that night, but she didn’t have it on when she was killed. I wondered where she had put it down.”
“Have you found out?” Ivy’s words were so low that I could barely hear them.
“Yes.” I pointed to the photograph. Ivy’s eyes followed my finger to the stripe of shadow lying beneath her stole on the chair. “Arthea Simpson placed her sweater on that chair when she let herself into your apartment to wait for you. Later, when you came in after leaving Robert Knox, you dropped your stole on top of her sweater.”
“No!” Ivy protested numbly. “No… she wasn’t there when I got home.” But the lie was revealed in her voice.
“She was there,” I repeated. “You saw and talked to Arthea, and you knew it was Arthea when you killed her.” We stared at each other until the pain forced me to look away. Then I added, “Joe Willard was right after all.”
Ivy took a step backward. Then another. Her eyes avoided me to conceal the nakedness of her fright. “Are you going to tell Willard?”
“No,” I told her, and her breath caught in relief. “You couldn’t be tried anyway, and I have worn my fool’s cap in public long enough. But now that I’m a convicted criminal, you can easily get a divorce while I’m in prison.” I paused, then slightly raised my voice—forcing her to understand. “And you get one!”
Ivy nodded. Her hands fumbled, fluttering with her purse. “I… am sorry. Will you at least believe me about that?”
I picked up the photograph and flicked my lighter to the paper. The flames licked at it hungrily, anxious to turn it into ashes. To me, the taste of ashes had already left my mouth, and I could tell her, “That’s not important. I no longer love you, or hate you. Now you’re just another client…” I forced a smile at the irony. “… a client—and I had to win your case the hard way.”
Moving the burning paper carefully from one hand to the other, I dropped the twisting, charred shred of paper into the metal basket. “However,” I told Ivy, “this time I won more than just a case.”
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
Not I, Said the Vixen Page 22