Trial by Fury

by Craig Rice

  “We’ve had a murder,” Tom Burrows said, “or hadn’t you heard? And Senator Peveley was a famous man.” He picked up a newspaper from the table. “There’s the Tribune, just came in on the same bus with you.”

  Malone glanced through the story. Senator Peveley had, it appeared, done everything a Midwestern Senator could do to make himself newsworthy, climaxing it by being murdered.

  “Where’s the press now?” he asked.

  “Most of them,” Tom Burrows said, “are in the hotel bar.”

  The little lawyer looked wistful. “I’ve had a long ride, and I’m very tired,” he began.

  “Not now,” Helene said firmly.

  Tom Burrows looked at his watch. “They’re going to do a news broadcast from Main Street at eleven,” he said. “I’d like to watch. That still gives us an hour or so to talk.” He picked up a large paper bag from the table. “Follow me.”

  He led the way out through the composing room and down a flight of stairs.

  The Main Street of Jackson County ran parallel to a river, and all the buildings on the west side of the street were built on its bank. Below the composing room of the Jackson County Enterprise was a storage room which faced the river. Its double doors, now wide open, were directly over the water.

  Malone agreed that it was the coolest place in town. He located an upturned empty box, sat down, and fanned himself. It was like being in a little cave, dark and mysterious, with a stream flowing at its edge.

  The paper bag contained cheese and cold beer. Tom Burrows took out an enormous pocketknife, first used it to open the bottles, and then began cutting the cheese into generous hunks.

  “Now about this murder,” he began.

  “Who cares?” Malone said dreamily. “Who cares about the murder of an ex-Senator?” He lifted the beer bottle to his lips, took it away, and sang a bar of Kathleen Mavourneen.

  “I care,” Jake said, “if they’re going to hang me for it.”

  “They don’t hang people for murder in Wisconsin,” the lawyer said. “They put you in jail for life. I checked up on it to make sure.” He took another long, comforting pull at the bottle. “You got me all the way up here because you’d socked a deputy sheriff. All right, that’s all fixed up. So let’s forget the whole thing and be merry.”

  “That’s only part of it,” Jake said. “The smallest part of it. Are you my lawyer, or aren’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” Malone said mournfully, “I begin to think I’m your guardian.” He lighted a cigar and stared at the end of it through the darkness. “They can’t keep you here. It’s against the law.”

  “That’s what Jake said,” Helene told him. “But the sheriff takes a larger view.”

  Malone sighed. “All right. Begin at the beginning and don’t leave out anything you can remember.”

  He listened in silence until Jake reached the point where the sheriff had said, “I’m the law in Jackson County.” Then he snorted loudly.

  “You’re making it all up.”

  “He is not making it up,” Helene said. “Nobody would deliberately make up a sheriff like that one.”

  “I still don’t believe it.” He puffed hard at the cigar. “They’ve got nothing against you.”

  ‘We’re strangers in town,” Jake said for the second time that day. As Malone sniffed indignantly, he added, “You and Helene don’t know anything about small towns. I lived in one until I was grown up. Any stranger is an object of curiosity and suspicion, even when he doesn’t happen along at the time of an important murder.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Tom Burrows said. “Sheriff Kling is up for re-election this fall. He doesn’t want to make anybody mad at him and lose a vote. At the same time, he has to give the impression he’s doing something about this murder. So he claims these two are material witnesses and diverts attention to them. And I haven’t any doubt,” he finished, “that if, as time goes along, he doesn’t find any other murderer, he’ll just pin it on Jake, and be done with it.”

  There was a little silence.

  “Of course,” Tom Burrows said, “he may find the real murderer in the meantime.”

  This time it was Jake who snorted. “As the saying goes, I wouldn’t like to hang until he does.”

  “It’s damned funny,” Malone said thoughtfully, “that somebody could walk up to Senator Peveley and shoot him without anybody seeing it, in a public place like the courthouse. Wasn’t anyone around? Weren’t there any witnesses?”

  “There were an even half-dozen witnesses,” Helene told him. “But nobody saw the shooting because nobody was looking.”

  “It was like this,” Jake explained. “There’s this little flight of stairs leading up to the courtroom and the offices on the west side of the courthouse. The shooting took place right at the head of the stairs. Everybody was milling around, picking up papers, or getting hats, or talking, when suddenly there was a shot, Senator Peveley let out a yell, and rolled down the stairs.”

  “But,” the lawyer said, “Somebody must have seen the murderer. A man or woman with a gun doesn’t vanish into thin air.”

  “Everybody was looking at the Senator,” Jake said. “Everybody started down that flight of stairs in a rush, nobody paid any attention to anyone else. With the result that none of those six witnesses can swear where any of the others were at the time the shot was fired, or where any of them were immediately after it was fired.”

  “But the gun,” Malone said irritably. “Where the hell did the gun get to?”

  “That,” Helene said smoothly, “is what’s giving Sheriff Marvin Kling a sleepless night, I hope.”

  “Did they search the courthouse?”

  “They did everything but tear it down,” Jake said. “And they searched everyone in the courthouse.”

  “Well,” Malone said, “if only six people were upstairs at the time the Senator was shot, one of them must be his murderer. In any case, Jake is no suspect, if he was going down the other staircase at the time.”

  “Sheriff Kling says he’s the law in Jackson County,” Jake said quietly. “And he’s not trying to be funny. Do you want to see me on trial before a Jackson County jury, with the young D. A. and the sheriff coming up for re-election in the fall?”

  “You see?” Helene said. “Viewed from practically any angle, it’s a bad spot.”

  “I’ve seen worse ones,” the little lawyer said reassuringly. “Just leave everything to me. Somebody in Jackson County must have heard of evidence. How about this witness of yours, this Buttonholes?”

  Helene snickered. “He’s the town liar, Besides, he’s got a Welsh grandmother.”

  “Well,” Malone said grimly, “that’s one thing they can’t get Jake for. We’ll produce a birth certificate.”

  “Wonderful,” Jake said. “But I’d feel even easier in my mind if you got to work and produced the murderer.”

  Chapter Seven

  The river had turned silver gray in the darkness. Malone gazed at it reflectively.

  “Tell me about all these people,” he said at last, “and begin with the corpse.”

  Tom Burrows settled himself comfortably on his packing box. “The late Senator Gerald Peveley was born on a farm in Jackson County in 1893. He attended Miller township school at Miller’s Creek from 1900—”

  “Skip the frills,” the little lawyer said wearily, “and get to the facts. His family, his business, his personality, and his women.”

  “And his enemies,” Jake added.

  “He had plenty of those,” the young newspaperman said. “Enemies, I mean, not women. From all I ever knew, the Senator led a blameless life. Of course you can get away with plenty in a town like this.”

  “That isn’t the way I heard it about small towns,” Malone said coyly.

  Jake snorted. “That shows what you know about it. Why when I was fifteen—”

  “Never mind your private life,” Helene said sweetly. “You can write to Dorothy Dix about it. Go on, Tom.”
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  “Well,” Burrows said, “Senator Peveley was a prominent Citizen. No ex-Senator, with that much dough, could be anything else in a place like Jackson. If he’d been an ordinary guy, everybody would have openly and admittedly hated his guts.”

  “He didn’t look exactly lovable,” Helene ventured, “from what I saw of him.”

  This time it was Malone who asked, “If he was so all-fired unpopular, how in the hell did he get elected Senator?”

  “That’s an easy one,” Tom Burrows told him. “He was popular with the party. He had plenty of money to contribute to campaign expenses, and he contributed with a lavish hand. He was elected county treasurer at a time when the whole ticket slid in, and then when he wanted to make it state treasurer, the party pushed him through. Finally he wanted to run for the Senate, and the party said, ‘Oh well, why the hell not,’ and there he was.

  “Besides,” he went on, “he had a certain gift for oratory and for making a public hero of himself. He was a real asset to the party, until he quit.”

  Jake said, “I suppose eventually he just got tired of making an asset of himself.”

  “I just wrote a swell rags-to-riches story,” Tom Burrows said. “Farm boy to Capital, in ten easy lessons. It was a lot of baloney. The Senator’s old man left half a dozen farms when he kicked off.”

  Malone blinked. “It still reads like rags to riches to me.”

  “In this country,” the newspaperman said, “half a dozen farms means real dough. He was worth about ten times that when he died, but that was Henry’s doing. Henry had the real business head.”

  “Nice for him,” Malone said. “Who’s Henry?”

  “The Senator’s brother. He’s rather unusual.” Tom Burrows paused. “Oh well, you’ll probably meet him yourself. Henry’s a widower, no children. The Senator had one child, Florence. She’s engaged to the young D. A.”

  “Spare me the young love interest,” Malone said. “I just want to know who was on the second floor of the courthouse when the Senator got his.” He added, “You can call this getting in on murder on the next-to-the-ground floor.”

  “Never mind how you get in on it,” Helene said. “How do we get out of it?”

  Tom Burrows’ voice was thoughtful when he spoke again. “You’ll have to take the town history, I’m afraid. A little town like this is all currents and cross-currents. Everybody is related to everybody else, or entangled with everybody else through birth, church, or business affiliations, hatred, love affairs, or debts. Take that group up in the courthouse today.”

  He paused to light a cigarette. “Well, starting out with Jerry Luckstone. His father is old Judge Luckstone, of Luckstone and Applebury. Was county judge about fifteen years ago. Jerry’s grandfather was a Judge Luckstone here, too. Jerry’s a bright, likable young man only recently out of law school.”

  “How did he get to be district attorney?” Helene asked. “Or do you draw names out of a hat up here?”

  “Well, he was appointed assistant because the D. A. was a friend of the family. Then old Judge Luckstone is something of a power in county affairs, and Jerry’s a smart young boy and everybody likes him, so a couple of years later he ran for the office after the old D. A. dropped out, and got elected.”

  “It’s as simple as that.” Malone murmured admiringly.

  “Jerry and Florence Peveley announced their engagement about a month ago,” Tom went on. “I understood the Senator wasn’t too pleased, but he didn’t come right out and object. Before that Jerry used to run around with Arlene, and I guess he used to go out with Cora Belle once in a while, but so did most of the male population of the county.”

  “Is this a slight shade of the ‘scarlet letter’?” Helene wanted to know.

  “Oh no, nothing like that. Cora Belle—she’s Mrs. Fromm—is frowned on a little, but everybody is still speaking to her. I understand she was something of a lively girl when she was still in high school. There was a little talk when she quit two months before she was to graduate and ran off to Milwaukee, ostensibly, at least, to take some kind of job. Then sometime later news came that she had married a guy named Fromm. A few years ago she divorced him and came back here, and she’s living fairly lavishly on her alimony. Cora Belle’s a heluva lot of fun.” He said the last in a faintly reminiscent tone.

  “I think I’d like to discuss the case with her,” Malone said enthusiastically. He added, “Any link between her and the Senator, except possibly a little hanky-panky on some dark country lane?”

  “Nothing I know about. But she runs around a lot with Ellen McGowan’s younger brother, and I’ve heard that the old dame doesn’t like it a little bit.”

  The lawyer sighed. “I see what you meant about currents and crosscurrents,” he said wearily. “How about this Miss McGowan?”

  “Ellen McGowan,” the newspaperman said, “is what’s popularly known as a remarkable woman. She’s cashier of the bank, member of the school board, head of the library committee, and belongs to a couple of women’s clubs. A highly respected citizen, and very capable.”

  “I prefer my women a little more helpless,” Malone said, “and not quite so remarkable.”

  “She must have been very good-looking, in a tall, thin sort of way, about twenty years ago,” Helene said. “What ever possessed her to become a lady banker?”

  “She sort of inherited it,” Tom Burrows explained. “Her father was cashier of the bank, and she wanted to be his assistant when she came out of school. From all I hear, she worshiped him. He was another prominent citizen and held a bunch of county offices. He was county treasurer for years. Something of a gay old boy, if all I hear is correct. Used to back the trotting races at the Jackson County Fair and play the market with his spare change.”

  Malone clicked his teeth disapprovingly. “He came to a bad end, I presume.”

  “Some time ago he took sick and retired,” Tom Burrows said. “She shipped him off to California to get well and took over his job in the meantime. But he died out there, and she stayed on at the bank.”

  “A dreary sort of purposeful life,” Jake said. “I hope her brother didn’t turn out so well.”

  “He didn’t. Oh, I guess he’s a pretty good farmer. He’s fifteen years younger than she is, and their mother died when he was born, so she brought him up. He’s never married, and she’s half out of her wits that he’ll marry Cora Belle.”

  “From what I’ve seen of Jackson, Wisconsin,” Jake said, “he could do a lot worse.”

  “She’s admired, but not too popular,” Tom Burrows said. “Arlene calls her a cross old cat.”

  “A kind of misanthropussy,” Helene suggested.

  “None of this seems to have much to do with the late Senator Peveley,” Jake said, yawning. “What about this Goudge girl?” He suddenly remembered the phone call in the county clerk’s office and wondered if he should have spoken.

  “Arlene’s all right,” Tom Burrows said, with a sudden forcefulness, as though he’d been called on to defend her. “She’s just plain damn fool.” He paused a moment before he went on. “She Works for Henry Peveley in his real-estate office. Her father’s the county treasurer, also head of the Brotherhood of Churchmen. He makes a public speech on every possible occasion.”

  “A highly reprehensible type of citizen,” Jake said, setting down a beer bottle. “But I don’t see much connection between Arlene and the late Senator.”

  “There isn’t,” Tom Burrows told him, “unless you count in that Jerry Luckstone is engaged to the late Senator’s daughter, and that Arlene used to be crazy about Jerry Luckstone. As a matter of fact, I suspect she still is.”

  “Well,” Helene said, “that leaves us two people who were on the second floor of the courthouse at the time of the crime.”

  “Ed Skindingsrude might murder somebody,” Tom Burrows said, “but he’d do it in a rage, and probably with his bare hands. He’s a mild-looking little guy, but he’s got the temper of a wild man. Been chairman of the county board fo
r twenty-four years, and a damned good one. In private life, he’s a very prosperous farmer, and head of the farmers’ co-operative.”

  “Possible links with the Senator?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know,” the newspaperman said thoughtfully. “He started to beat him up, right in the lobby of the bank, some two years ago, but somebody stopped him. Claimed the Senator had rooked him on some stock deal. He’d been a director of the bank, but he resigned in a huff. Still, that’s hardly enough to bring on a murder in cold blood two years later.”

  “Well,” Helene said, “there’s still the handsome county clerk, the quoting genius.”

  “Phil Smith wouldn’t murder a flea,” Tom Burrows said forcefully. “He’s the gentlest man alive.” He paused to open the last bottle of beer. “He used to teach Latin, Greek, and classical history in the high school here, until about twelve years ago when Senator Peveley and the school board decided the classics were wasted on Jackson’s youth and that a department of farm management would be more purposeful.” He paused again, and then said, “Yes, I know what you’re going to say, but that’s no motive for murder.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Malone said, “if you knew what trivial things can bring on murders. Is there any other tie between this classical scholar and the late Senator?”

  “One,” Tom Burrows told him. “The Senator’s wife was Phil Smith’s sister. But that’s all. No one ever heard of Phil even losing his temper with anyone. When he lost his teaching position, old Judge Luckstone had the idea of running him for county clerk, he was elected and he’s been re-elected every year since. He’s not only every bit as gentle as I said, but everybody in town loves him.”

  There was a longish silence.

  “A lot of very nice people,” Helene said at last. “But none of them seems to have murdered Senator Peveley.”

  “One of them must have,” Malone said. “One of those six.”

  He tossed his cigar out into the river, stood, and stretched like a short, plump cat.

  “It’s time for that on-the-spot news broadcast,” he announced, looking at his watch. “Let’s go.”