Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  At this extraordinary outburst, Xavier drew breath to interrupt; and would have forcibly seized his belovèd by the shoulders, to still her, had she not adroitly eluded him. “And I am offended, Cousin,” she continued, yet more angrily, “by your frequent evocation of Valentine Westergaard, as if that sickly creature represented some standard of deportment, to which I have reference; and by your familiar allusion to my ‘suitors,’—as if you, or anyone else, knows a whit of my innermost feelings. I care not for Osmyn Goshawk as a man, yet respect him, as an upstanding citizen; and cannot think that it matters greatly that he is near-bald,—any more than it matters, to the world, that Xavier Kilgarvan boasts an overabundance of hair. As for Reverend Bunting,—while no woman could feel any ‘womanly’ affection for him, it is quite possible to regard him highly and even with awe: for he enjoys an intimacy with God’s will, quite enviable to those of us who feel a greater compatibility with Satan! As for Calvin Shaw, one of our more dissolute Winterthurn bachelors,—he is no more dissolute, I submit, than Wolf Kilgarvan, and interests me to the same approximate degree.”

  Xavier stared at her, his own eyes abrim with tears; and a heartbeat of uncommon ferocity pounding, it seemed, in every part of his body. How faint with desire, how agitated, the young man found himself, at the sound of Perdita’s raised, incautious, provoking voice: how dazed, at the sight of her beautiful face, wildly agleam with passion—! He stared; and stared the more; and murmured that she was cruel,—most cruel—that it was self-evident she did not love him: that she meant only to toy with him, and torment him, as she had so many years ago, at Glen Mawr Manor,—albeit there was the excuse of her tender age then, while now, no excuse whatsoever! “If, Perdita, you would leave off hypocrisy, and outright subterfuge,” Xavier said, in a trembling voice, the while his fingers writhed with the desire to take hold of her, “you might confess that you decline to marry me because I am poor, and likely to remain so; and you require money, and some degree of social rank. You might confess that you find my profession ‘low’ and ‘mean,’ following your benefactress’s charge: you might confess that you care not a whit whether I live or die, or must endure a lifetime of melancholy and heartbreak as a consequence of your cruelty.”

  “And there is hypocrisy, indeed!—and the most artful species of subterfuge!” Perdita said, laughing. “That I must marry a man, merely to save him from a lifetime of self-pity—!”

  With no mind to their surroundings, but only to each other, the distraught lovers had long since wandered from the graveled walk, into a wild, grassy, wooded area: where, with the gradual cessation of the rain, a light mist had arisen, in sinuous and irregular fingers: and the dimly glimpsed trunks of divers trees, including white birch, created a glowering, phantasmal, yet not altogether disagreeable aura. So potent was the fine pale mist, it quite obscured the sky and, indeed, much of their surroundings; so that the unhappy pair had only each other to contemplate, save for the ghostly tree-figures in the background. Xavier’s heart now beat so rapidly, and so strangely, he half wondered if, by malefic design, Perdita, or someone unknown, had lured them out of Juniper Park altogether, and into the wild forest bounding the Devil’s Half-Acre!—there being, without a doubt, a marked alteration of the very quality and texture of the air, and of Xavier’s own soul. Glancing about, startled at his unrecognized surroundings, Xavier bethought himself, with a thrill of horror: “Here, in such a setting, amidst such mist, and secrecy, and anonymity,—what should not befall us? What has not already occurred, not once, but numberless times—?”

  Yet Perdita continued to rail at him, most incautiously; and to tease; and gibe; and, indeed, as he had seen, torment: for it was clear now that she did not love him, and would never be his wife. Xavier gazed upon her through tear-dimmed eyes, and felt a wave of vertigo, as if he had drawn near to a mirror, and his own breath had begun to cast a pall of steam over it, obscuring its image. “It is I, in enchanted guise; she is my own soul; yet how she despises me!” Thus the wretched young man inwardly charged, while, still, his steely fingers did indeed “ache” to seize hold of her; and his heartbeat expanded, to pulse everywhere in his roused flesh. That he might lay hands upon her and grip her hard,—and harder still—so that her terrible words might be silenced: so that he might, in abandon of all that was gentlemanly and chaste, crush her in his arms, and press his mouth, all craving and helpless, and ravenous, against hers—! Ah, what bliss! And if she should submit to him, in maidenly confusion, or voluptuous acquiescence; or if she should prove resistant, and fight him with fists, and nails, and teeth,—why, that should scarcely matter, with Xavier in so extreme a state!

  At this moment, a misstep of Perdita’s in the wet grass, or, it may have been, a sudden shrinking on her side from the expression glimpsed in Xavier’s face, caused her to turn her ankle: and to whimper aloud in surprised pain. Whereupon, acting with gentlemanly alacrity, Xavier sprang forward to catch her, and steady her in his arms and—

  The “Cruel Suitor” Tried

  Amongst veteran collectors of Murder, both here and in the United Kingdom, the much-publicized five-week trial of Mr. Valentine Westergaard for the “aggravated and premeditated” murder of Miss Eva Teal (the sole crime for which the defendant was ever to be indicted) is no less prized, to this day, than the grisly murders themselves: the divers unexpected turns of the trial culminating in Valentine’s testimony, and the jurors’ unforeseen verdict, rendering it a rare and exotic episode, indeed, in the history of criminal law—! Yet the outcome, precisely because it so baffled most expectations, was deemed highly satisfactory by the great majority of the spectators,—if not by certain of the principals, who, it is no exaggeration to state, never entirely recovered from the ordeal.

  Indeed, for many years before I had taken on the challenging task of editing, collating, and presenting material relevant to this crucial,—and, I am afraid, not altogether palatable—season in Xavier Kilgarvan’s life, I had been well aware of the controversial old case of Winterthurn’s “Cruel Suitor”: yet had supposed it to be one of those open-and-shut cases about which the overpunctilious delight in arguing, to the exasperation of others. Now, however, as my immersion in these old documents has granted me the status of an “amateur-expert” myself,—one whose familiarity with the proceedings allows me the omniscient eye poor Xavier craved—I quite see the grounds for controversy; and why, in certain circles, the “guilt” or “innocence” of Mr. Westergaard continues to stir animated debate. For here, we have to deal not only with the perennial elasticity of such terms, as they are employed by our legal brethren, but their ethical, moral, and even metaphysical dimensions as well—! Setting aside the verdict of the twelve gentlemen jurors, and paying heed strictly to Valentine Westergaard’s bold testimony in his own defense, who amongst us would have wished to cast the first stone?—and how, indeed, should we have cast our ballots?

  Guilty,—or Not Guilty,—or,—?

  BY THE TIME THE TRIAL OPENED, some six months after Eva Teal’s body was found in the Devil’s Half-Acre, Winterthurn was laid under the spell of pitiless cold; and the numerous events of the past summer (not excluding the fate of Isaac Rosenwald, whose name was now rarely mentioned) seemed remote indeed; and partaking of the febrific uncertainties of that season. As the newspapers in the Valley and through the state had long since seized upon other colorful subjects, it was jarring to the more conservative citizens of Winterthurn that, yet again, and with equal zeal as before, a journalistic “hue and cry” was inaugurated in their midst: virtually every desirable hotel room in the city booked (an entire floor of the Winterthurn Arms taken, for the duration of the trial, by an unnamed “Veiled Lady” and her entourage,—including, it was rumored, five toy terriers and a cockatoo), and tearooms and restaurants crowded, and hackney drivers grown arrogant with their own importance: and, overnight, no question on anyone’s lips save,—Is Valentine Westergaard indeed the “Cruel Suitor”?

  The majority of the newspapers, especially those in
the Valley, sided with the defense, and proclaimed the prosecution’s case flimsy, and trumped up, and, withal, outrageous: yet even those that clearly delighted in the spectacle of a Gentleman Jack the Ripper (as the several Hearst papers deemed him) showed rather more an inclination to consider Valentine innocent until proved guilty than they had Rosenwald: the oft-stated task of the prosecution being, to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt; while the task of the defense was but to stir, in the jurors’ hearts, that selfsame shadow of a reasonable doubt. Thus it is, under our law, the burden of the prosecution is always more onerous than that of the defense: which, of course, is altogether as it should be, that the innocent are protected from harm.

  As for the formidable young Angus Peregrine, a nephew of Henry’s, and a graduate of Harvard Law School,—the informed reader is probably most familiar with this gentleman for his later association with the infamous “Boss” Everwald of the Senate (he who was eventually censured by his fellows, after many years of wrongdoing), and for his historic defense of the “Rummage Hill Strangler,” amongst other much-publicized activities. At the time of the Westergaard trial, however, young Peregrine was generally known for his success in defending a motley assortment of persons, ranging from the wealthy to the penniless. (For instance, Angus Peregrine volunteered to defend the notorious “Medford Widow,” who had, by a conservative estimate, poisoned some eight husbands during the course of her matrimonial career: albeit, at the time of her arrest, the lady was all but impoverished.) Such cases the ambitious young criminal lawyer took on for the excellent publicity they afforded him, and for the sport as well, as he was apt to merrily phrase it, of doing battle with seasoned warriors in the courtroom.

  “To enter battle in such circumstances,—when matters of actual life and death are at stake,—is to feel, to the very marrow of one’s bones, that one is at last alive,” Mr. Peregrine oft-times stated. And, indeed, with his sleekly black, oiled hair, and his slanted brow, and his zestful complexion; with his squat, barrel-chested, yet surprisingly agile body; with his “piercing” eyes and his elastic face that seemed, like any actor’s, to spring to life with the stimulus of an audience, expressing now grave concern, and now beatific calm, and now heckling mirth, and now Christian compassion, and now scathing contempt, before the enthralled eyes of a jury: why, it was a joy for courthouse buffs, no matter their loyalties, to see such a professional outmaneuver this witness, and that; to make of hostile witnesses inadvertent allies of his own; to anticipate the prosecution’s strategy by astonishing concessions, and yet more astonishing denials; to “stonewall” at decisive moments; to lead the most timorous of defense witnesses through a mare’s nest of questions, to a destination ingeniously plotted, by Peregrine’s own hand; and, in short, to make fools out of his adversaries, that he should reign supreme.

  Needless to say, Angus Peregrine did not always succeed quite so dramatically; and what triumphs he had already achieved, were won after an incalculable siege of sheer labor. So far as the Westergaard case was concerned: that he would be flummoxed, so to speak, by one of his and Valentine’s most trusted witnesses,—Colin Kilgarvan, in fact—is not to be held against him, as nearly everyone who has studied the case is agreed, that no attorney could have foreseen so bizarre a happenstance. “Ah, do not mention Winterthurn City!” Angus Peregrine often remarked, with a snorting laugh, over the decades, “—the most lethal climate of my acquaintance: turning some hapless gentlemen into beasts, and others, who would defend them, into fools.”

  It is a measure of Angus Peregrine’s magnanimity, and Xavier Kilgarvan’s civility, that they should dine together at the Corinthian Club, when at last the impaneling of the jury was completed,—a tedious procedure, as it proved, lasting an unconscionable five weeks: and that, with very little expenditure of time on social chatter, or inconsequential panegyrics regarding the excellence of the Club’s cuisine, the two young men should fall into an intense discussion, not of Valentine, nor even the case at hand, but of the philosophical nature of their opposing positions. Xavier declared, in a curt voice, that, though he could not fail to respect Angus for his success within his field,—criminal law being, as he well knew, an uncommonly savage and competitive species of activity—he could not at all respect him outside it: and supposed it must be stated, in as frank language as possible, that they were enemies; and the defeat of one would be the triumph of the other. “Indeed,” said Xavier ominously, “the defeat of the prosecution, in this case, will be the defeat of Justice itself.”

  At this belligerent remark, Angus Peregrine evinced genuine surprise, and disappointment; perhaps as a consequence of being four or five years Xavier’s senior, and therefore more experienced, and worldly; and being of the tribe of stolid, rubicund, gregarious gentlemen much prized by doormen, maitres d’, hotel maids, and the like. Which is to say, he felt a measure of comradely affection for all men who were his equals, and was quite baffled that, upon occasion, they should express dislike or disapproval of him. Thus, while the frowning Xavier picked at the roast beef laid so lavishly on his plate, and limited himself to but a few sips of the costly French champagne Angus had ordered, the more exuberant of the two gentlemen expounded, at length, on the nature of his profession, as he viewed it. “Let us say, Xavier, that you have proved,—that is, you believe you have proved—that my client is guilty of the crime with which he has been charged. No, let us go a step further, for the sake of argument, and grant that you, with all your detectively skills, have proved his guilt; and that he is, indeed, guilty. Why, then, how can you not know,—you, who are a Kilgarvan, and a nephew of old Erasmus—that the challenge, for me, rises almost exclusively from that predicament?—which is to say, not the prosecution’s ‘proof’ of guilt, but ‘guilt’ itself. Were the defendant innocent, and a verdict of not guilty naught but his just desert, how should I, Angus Peregrine, be allowed any margin for genuine triumph? In such meager soil, what meager plants might grow? Nay, mere ‘justice’ no more excites me as a worthy goal than a game of poker in which all players possess equal skills, and identical cards; or an exchange between the two of us, in which, let us say, you give me fifty dollars in paper money for fifty dollars in gold coins.” Waxing ever more articulate as the minutes passed, and his companion stared at him in stony silence, the genial Mr. Peregrine waved for another bottle of champagne, and even laid a brotherly hand upon Xavier’s motionless arm, while continuing: “The great joy of my profession, Xavier, is the converse, it seems, of yours. For you make it your task,—and a transparently futile one, I am bound to say—to rid the world of the injustice of crime: by which is meant, the criminal sorties upon the innocent waged by their ‘criminal’ brethren. You are a Platonist, perchance, who wishes the Criminal to be dealt with, that Criminality be attacked at its literal base; and Justice restored. I, however, seem to have sprung full grown, as it were, out of my mother’s womb, so far as a sense of such things goes: for I cannot any more believe in the abstraction of Justice than I can believe in a child’s Eden, from which we were all expelled. Thus it is, Xavier,—ah, do not scowl at me, and fix me with a murderous eye, simply for telling the truth!—thus it is, my friend, I take up with zest the challenge of the Law, and, indeed, rise from my bed each morning at five-thirty, aflame with plans, my skull buzzing with thought, precisely for these reasons. Just as ‘innocence’ per se is not a legal term, so innocence is not a very fruitful state; and my instinct is, save in very rare cases, to shun it like the Devil. Though,” the good-natured gentleman said, with a chuckle, as he instructed the wine steward to refill Xavier’s glass, “so far as Valentine is concerned, it may even be that he is innocent. Or, at any rate, not guilty.”

  None of this, we may assume, was entirely surprising to Xavier, though all of it was disagreeable,—nay, repugnant; the more so, in that it was communicated to him in so blatantly sunny a manner, it seemed hardly cynical at all—! Taking care to keep his voice subdued, so that no one dining nearby should hear
, Xavier said: “But then, is not your life criminal too? Is it not predicated upon lies, hypocrisy, and subterfuge of every sort? For, by your own acknowledgment, you prefer guilty clients; you are most comfortable with crime; and derive your energies from it. How would you defend your life, erected upon such a foundation?”

  Whereupon Angus Peregrine said, after a moment’s unclouded reflection: “My life, Xavier, and my professional career, must not be confused. For the one has not invariably to do with the other; I hope I have the wit to keep them distinctly separate—! And you—?”

  Xavier winced at this friendly query, as if it gave him pain; and replied, in a singularly slow, halting, benumbed voice: “My life and my professional career are,—are—one and the same.” So saying, he drained the champagne from his glass without tasting it; as if the knowledge of his unique doom had struck him only at that moment. “One and the same.”

  “Well, I shall drink a toast to such courage,” Angus Peregrine said merrily, “and give thanks to Allah, that the width of this table separates us!”

  AS THE IRASCIBLE and somewhat deaf Chief Justice Francis C. Armbruster presided over the trial, there was, unavoidably, a fair amount of “empty” time, during which the Judge soundly chastised the prosecuting attorney, or the defense, for some minor error in procedure: for the eighty-nine-year-old jurist was most roused to life, as it were, when afforded the opportunity to cross swords with the “Young Turks” (as he called them, half fondly, and half in contempt) who came before his bench. To this distinguished old gentleman, James William Hollingshead, at the age of sixty-one, was but an upstart young man with political ambitions, who spoke in an unseemly orotund manner, less as if he were prosecuting a case before a judge and a jury than addressing a huge assemblage. (Indeed, never had the main courtroom of the Winterthurn County Courthouse been so jammed with spectators,—still less, with such a contingent of lavishly attired ladies! Their slow-wafting perfumes and colognes, and the sight of their resplendent furs, and elegant befeathered hats, must have been quite dazzling to the courthouse regulars: and could not have failed to throw Mr. Hollingshead slightly off course.) Thus it was, the prosecution was so frequently interrupted in its opening remarks, a full three and a half hours was required for a fairly simple and direct assertion to be made,—viz., the State would prove that the defendant, Valentine Westergaard, was the murderer of Eva Teal; that he had deliberately befriended her in order to take advantage of her youth, naïveté, and misplaced trust in him; that, sometime between the hours of 3:00 A.M. and 4:30 A.M., of the morning of June 8, of the previous year, he had, in a manner both premeditated and bestial, taken her life, in his townhouse at Hazelwit Square; and had subsequently transported her body to the Devil’s Half-Acre, where it was discovered some hours later, in a most cruel and mocking posture. (These charges, it scarcely needs be said, were wondrously expanded by the District Solicitor, who, as the minutes passed, began to throw off his initial trepidation, that, before a packed gallery, he was prosecuting the grandson of Colonel Westergaard—! Thus it was, Hollingshead fell into his customary rhythm of speech; albeit Judge Armbruster’s queries, and visible expressions of impatience and doubt, were sometimes distracting.)