“Then afterward, when the man who was hurting you left, what would happen?”
“I’d hear voices upstairs. Then the door would open and shut.”
“Which door?”
“The one to the outside of the house. There were always three footsteps, then the door would open and shut, and that was how I knew the Other Man was leaving, and that he wasn’t coming back that night. When the Man—Mr. Harley—came home, it took him three steps, too, to get from the front door to the stairs.”
“Three footsteps? Exactly three?” Jakob seemed surprised. He leaned forward, alert.
“Yes.”
“Tell me, Emma, did you count anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that contrary to what the district attorney said, you seem to notice quite a lot of things. Did you ever count other things?”
She shrugged, relaxing a little. “I counted the walls.”
“Really? How do you count a wall?”
“They were made of stone. Round, gray, big stones, with loose dirt between them. There were fifteen on the bottom row, and then fourteen, and then sixteen. They weren’t all the exact same size.”
Jakob narrowed his eyes. “Do you know how many stairs there were?”
“Ten. They went up to a door that was always locked—”
“There were ten stairs? Exactly ten?”
“Yes.” As halting as Emma had been before, she spoke fluently now. It was as if Jakob’s logic had unlocked a dam inside her. “They were wood and they weren’t painted. The settee was covered in fabric that had pink and brown flowers. There were seventeen pink ones and only twelve brown ones. And the coal stove said PERRY on it, in block letters with little rectangles at the ends of the lines. The bedspread had little blue and brown flowers and vines. And the cellar always stank.” She was repeating details, but Jakob didn’t stop her. “It was like we were inside a privy. It made us stink, too. There were two windows high up, and boxes outside that blocked most of the light in the day, but we could still see.” She ran out of breath and looked at him expectedly.
“Like I said before, it seems as if you notice a lot of things, Emma,” Jakob said. “You are good with detail.” He turned and raised an eyebrow at the jury, and Thayer let him get away with this small commentary. “Do you like numbers?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Anything else you want to tell us?”
“There were always boat and train whistles. And the trains went by—they were so near. I kept thinking I could touch them and that we could climb on them and get away.” She nodded in Harley’s direction but did not look at him. “Always, after the Other Man left, Mr. Harley would come back down with Claire. And he’d give me water to wash with. And he’d—help me. Then he’d leave us alone. I’d wait till Claire was asleep and then I’d hope my father would come.” Behind her, the afternoon sunlight revealed small fissures in the white marble wall. “And I’d think all night about Elizabeth’s violin. She used to play for us. And I would think about that, and I wouldn’t be so frightened.”
All heads turned to Elizabeth, who ignored the rustle of attention and kept her gaze trained on Emma.
“Now, I want you to try to recall one more thing,” Jakob said. “I want you to tell us something specific about the other man. I know you don’t want to think about him. But try, Emma. I know you couldn’t see him. But something, maybe, that you didn’t need eyes to see?”
She blinked and touched the back of her hand to her mouth, drawing her small knuckles across her lips. “His voice was cold.”
“His voice? Cold, you say? I’m going to try a little experiment. Mr. Harley,” Jakob said, turning. “Could you please say something to Emma?”
Harley looked up. His gaze darted between Jakob and the judge, who nodded.
“Say something? Like what?” Harley said.
“That will do. Now, Emma, is that the voice you remember?”
“No. The Other Man sounded different.”
“Do you think you would recognize this other man’s voice if you heard it again?”
Emma’s new ease evaporated. “Don’t make me see him.”
“He’s not here. Don’t worry. No more questions, Emma.”
A shaking Emma was led from the courtroom by the limping bailiff, trailed by Elizabeth, who had risen from William’s side and fled after her, her lithe figure crossing paths with Jakob, their fingers touching for a brief moment as he headed toward his seat, though no one noticed, because everyone was watching the small girl who had spent her days and nights counting stairs and steps and stones to the shriek of endless train whistles and dreaming of escape.
Chapter Forty-Two
It was three thirty. The air stifled. The temperature inside the courtroom had reached eighty degrees. Albany was a city of bells, and now a dozen clarions marked the half hour, ringing from all quarters of the city. People shifted in their seats while Thayer tugged at the wilting pleats of his robe. His wig had slipped, and he pushed it up with one finger. Even Jakob seemed limp from the heat.
Farrell’s Irish accent turned out to be far less broad when constrained by giving testimony. He chronicled for Hotaling his discovery of the girls and Harley’s arrest, which was dramatic enough, but the revelation of the money hidden under Harley’s mattress proved even more riveting. But when Jakob coaxed from Farrell a description of a system of bribes enforced not just at the New Scotland address, but also at all bawdy houses in the city, a collective gasp of astonishment rocked the room. A surprised Hotaling scribbled something on a piece of paper and gave it to the bailiff, who limped from the courtroom with it. The district attorney slipped another into his assistant’s hands. Thayer raised his eyebrows at Hotaling, who said he had no need to cross-examine.
Darlene Moss’s ample figure was contained by a low-necked rose-colored dress, of far more modest cut than the ones she usually wore, but still revealing. She identified herself as a former prostitute and described her conversation with Harley to Hotaling in her usual voluble way. In turn, Jakob extracted an admission from Darlene that she had been dosing Harley with whiskey throughout the night and that he was suffering from a fever during his so-called confession. When she flounced out of the courtroom at the end of her testimony, her unabashed gaze ran over the gallery, causing several men to shrink in their seats.
It was now five o’clock. Long shadows from the elm trees outside fell across the gallery. The bailiff had opened more windows during Darlene’s testimony, and bluebottles buzzed the room. Men fanned themselves with hats, women with their gloves, which they had peeled off out of desperation and now flicked back and forth in seizures of overheated agitation. Ordinarily by this time in the evening, a judge would have adjourned the proceedings until the next day, but Dr. Mary Stipp was the final witness for the prosecution, and Thayer agreed with Hotaling that it was in the interest of efficiency to allow him to complete his case in one day.
Mary took the stand with her customary authority in spite of whispers of suspicion and curiosity. Somehow the news of her dismissal from City Hospital had been leaked to Horace Young, and in a sly piece bordering on slander, he raised the question of whether or not she ought to be seeing any patients at all. What cautious respect her wartime service had earned her in the eyes of the general public completely eroded. In the past weeks, the number of patients who came to be treated at the Stipp clinics had dwindled to a handful.
To the gallery, Mary’s plain black skirt and white overblouse seemed drab and lifeless compared to Darlene Moss’s peacockery. As Mary answered the perfunctory questions of identity, residence, and credentials—she had served as a nurse in the War of the Rebellion, trained as a physician in New York, practiced for fourteen years—her hair, silvered and curling, fell carelessly from its pins around a face that was serious, intent, and wholly unreadable. Hotaling led her through the p
reliminaries, establishing the close nature of the relationship between the Stipp family and the O’Donnells, the fact that Mary, as both midwife and physician, had delivered both Emma and Claire, the Stipp family’s relentless search for the sisters in the aftermath of the blizzard, and their sudden reappearance on their veranda.
“Now let us get to what happened inside your home after they arrived. What did you notice when you brought Emma and Claire inside?”
“Both Emma and Claire were very frightened. They appeared almost to be in a trance. It wasn’t until my niece Elizabeth played her violin that they allowed us to take them inside, but they had to be carried. Then they seemed to come to themselves, but when we ran a bath, Emma exhibited extreme modesty. She got into the bath with her nightgown on. She didn’t want us to touch or see her. She wouldn’t look at us.”
“Did you subsequently examine both girls?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us your findings?”
“Claire exhibited no evidence of physical harm.”
“And what of Emma?”
Mary cleared her throat. “Emma’s torso was bruised in multiple places: along her right shoulder, bilaterally on her rib cage, along the anterior iliac crests of her pelvis, and on each of the spinous processes. A splinter was embedded in the flesh of the right inner thigh. Several deep scratches had been made on her upper thighs. Her forearms were covered with scratches. Her vaginal opening was swollen, inflamed, dilated.” Despite moaning from the gallery, Mary did not stop her clinical recitation. “The general appearance of the vulval tissue spoke to recent and frequent traumatic vaginal penetration by the male organ as evidenced by multiple labial tears, some fresh, and others in the process of scarring. I stitched two of the recent injuries, eleven stitches total. The others, due to abundant blood flow to those tissues, were already healing. All spoke to Emma having been forced into sexual congress against her will.”
A dozen men in the gallery averted their gaze as Mary finished. She lifted her chin, daring the district attorney to ask the next question. A breeze stirred the heavy air in the courtroom.
“Did you call for the police after that exam?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t need to. Officer Farrell instructed me to alert him to any problems. We told him the next day.”
“Not immediately?”
“I had given Emma and Claire sleeping medication. I was trying to come to terms with things myself.”
“What did Emma tell you of these injuries?”
“That she had been forced to engage in intercourse, and hit when she refused.”
“Did she use that language?”
“Of course not. She’s a child.”
“And what did Claire tell you?”
“Claire has said little of her internment.”
“Did you take Emma to another physician for verification of your conclusion?”
“Why would I? Everything was apparent. There was no reason to put her through more scrutiny. A second examination of that sort would have been brutal in her situation.”
“Why didn’t you ask your husband for verification?”
Mary exhaled, and her eyes showed the slightest flicker of anger. Thayer removed his spectacles and wiped them with the billowing edge of a sleeve of his robe.
“The last thing those girls needed was to be touched by a man, even a man they consider to be their uncle. And my husband does not have experience in the area of female medicine. In these matters, I am the expert. I was a midwife for many years. My mother, Amelia Sutter, is also a midwife. She was with me during the examination. She can corroborate my findings if you need further confirmation.”
Hotaling cleared his throat. “A crime of this nature is personal. Might you be more affected by Emma’s injuries because of your own vulnerability as a woman—”
“Absolutely not. The rape did not happen to me. It happened to Emma. If I were describing someone’s broken arm, would I be rendered inarticulate because I might someday break one myself?”
“Yes, but isn’t it possible that your closeness to her clouded your medical judgment, or may have caused you to exaggerate Emma’s injuries in any way?”
“I never exaggerate, and I certainly don’t have to in this case. The girl was torn and battered. Emma’s precarious mental condition after the fact, the multiple wounds of various ages, the fact that she herself described to me her terror, all lead me to state without equivocation that she was raped. The only thing that is saving her is her youth, because tissue in the young renews itself more readily than in an adult. But I have no idea how her heart will fare. I lay the responsibility for that at the feet of the man who raped her.”
Only the reporters’ scraping of pencil on paper broke the silence as they bent to the task of recording the doctor’s statements word for word.
“How often did you say you shared a meal with the O’Donnell family before the blizzard?”
“Weekly. Sometimes more.”
“Did conversation around the table include medical talk?”
“Medicine is our life.”
“Did it include information regarding sexual congress between men and women?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We are physicians, not pimps.”
A frisson of censure rippled through the crowd, but Mary Stipp did not blink.
“On any occasion in your home, could Emma have perhaps overheard something about childbirth and then extrapolated and imagined that she might have been interfered with?”
“Are you mad? No child imagines rape.”
“No further questions, Your Honor. Your witness, Mr. Van der Veer.”
Jakob leaned over to whisper something to Harley, then rose.
“Dr. Stipp, I would like to speak to your credentials, if I may. Recently, you have been assailed in the newspapers for maintaining a clinic for prostitutes. It has also come to the public’s attention that you have been dismissed from the medical rolls of Albany City Hospital for this reason. How can you possibly defend yourself as a physician competent enough to offer testimony in a case of this kind?”
Mary bristled. It took her a moment to begin, and when she did, Jakob sat down, and as Mary talked, he let himself fade into the background.
“When a vagina is penetrated, it never appears the same way again. Especially in children. The average age of menarche is fifteen. Girls’ bodies before that are neither capacious nor elastic enough to accommodate the male member.” There was a stifled cry from the gallery, which she ignored. “A girl of this age is always physically wounded during the act; any intrusion causes labial and vaginal tears. And may I point out that any so-called desire of a prepubescent girl is a phantom of men’s imaginations, because no one—and certainly not a girl of ten years of age—would ever consent to being so damaged. In addition, because of that private clinic treating prostitutes, I weekly see evidence of the same constellation of injuries in grown women who have been abused.
“I have also from time to time come across young girls with a certain type of vigilant and withdrawn demeanor, like Emma’s. These are children of good homes and families. I then discover that they have been raped.” She folded her hands and looked at the jury. “Raped. So you see, I am better acquainted than most anyone in the city with the effect of rape on female genitalia.”
There was a long silence.
Jakob finally rose and said, “The defense concedes that Dr. Stipp is an expert witness, more than qualified to speak to this issue. In fact, it appears that she might be one of the premier physicians of Albany. We would all do well to remember that.”
Thayer let this commentary go, too. He was no fan of libel.
“Dr. Stipp,” Jakob said, “I have one other concern to address before we get to the salient point. Do you consider it a conflict of interest to have t
reated both the victim and the alleged perpetrator of said incident?”
“I recused myself from Mr. Harley’s care as soon as I learned that he was a suspect in Emma’s case. I did not, however, recuse myself from caring for Emma, because I trust no one but myself.”
“Can you tell us about how you came to do surgery on Mr. Harley?”
“Directly upon learning that a flood was imminent my husband, William Stipp, and I went to City Hospital to treat any victims that might arise. We worked through the night. Toward morning, Mr. Harley was brought in.”
“Can you describe for us Mr. Harley’s injury?”
“He had suffered a sharp cut on the back of his neck, slightly curved, deeper toward his right side. The skin was completely broken, the trapezius muscle on the right side of his neck severely contused. The sternocleidomastoid, too. Had the blow been made with more force or a sharper object, both muscles could have been severed, and his spinal cord ruptured.”
“Could the blade of a shovel have made such an injury?”
“The outline of the wound perfectly matches the side of a shovel blade.”
“Thank you. Now, can you describe the conversations that you had with Emma and Claire regarding the number of men involved in assaulting Emma?”
“On several different occasions, Emma and Claire described two men. They called them the Man and the Other Man. It soon became clear to me that the one she referred to as the Man was Mr. Harley. The matching wound is enough to confirm his identity. She said that Mr. Harley never assaulted her. She said it was the Other Man who had raped her.”
“Did Emma ever say who the Other Man was?”
“No.”
“I have no further questions for now, but reserve the right to recall Dr. Stipp at a future time.”
“Redirect?” Thayer said, almost as a dare.
And Hotaling took it.
“In your experience as a physician, would you say that it’s possible for a young girl to imagine things that did not in fact occur?”
Winter Sisters Page 31