The Reservoir

by John Milliken Thompson

  Meredith next produces a piece of paper containing a poem in a neatly written hand. He explains to the judge that it was found beneath the lining in Miss Madison’s trunk. It is so disgusting that he cannot read it to a courtroom filled with ladies and gentlemen. The judge allows him to pass it around to the jury, each member of whom takes his time with it. Then he calls to the stand a banker who has many times served as a handwriting witness. The banker examines the poem, then the sole letter from Cluverius found in Miss Madison’s trunk. The letter is dated from the time she was living with her grandfather and contains nothing incriminating—just pleasantries and a reminder that she was overdue for a visit to Little Plymouth. The banker says that the two papers appear to be from the same hand.

  Crump snorts. When his turn comes, he asks, “You call yourself an expert?”

  The banker is uncowed. “No sir, I never did.”

  “Yes, you did just now. Mr. Stenographer, read back the first question and answer.” The stenographer does and there is no mention of the word “expert.” Crump fumes, “You don’t mind my calling you an expert then?”

  “You may call me what you like, Judge Crump, but I object to your making me call myself something I never have.”

  Tommie is twisting in his seat. He knows the poem. It’s from Wisdom for Girls, but how Lillie came to have a copy of it in her trunk he has no idea. Anybody could have sent it to her, and here they’re claiming it’s in his own hand. His teachers praised his handwriting, though a callous boy from Gloucester said it was prissy. Tommie later found an opportunity to hit him in the face.

  Mrs. Mary Dickinson of Millboro’ Springs takes the stand. She becomes an immediate crowd favorite with her charming laugh and mountain accent. “No,” she laughs, her eyes crinkling and bosom jouncing, “I would not say Lillie was a particularly brave person. She didn’t like sleeping without one of my little granddaughters being in the same room. And she had a time crossing the river by herself in the little boat.” Then she grows thoughtful and quieter. “She was the sweetest thing.”

  “She wasn’t the sort, then, to go off to a secluded place by herself?” Meredith prods.

  “Oh, no sir. Not hardly.”

  “And when she got back from Richmond in January—who did she say she visited there?”

  “She said she saw her cousin Tommie.” At this, the crowd begins buzzing and murmuring, and Hill has to rap his gavel, not bothering anymore to explain why. Crump whispers something to Evans, then leans over and glances sharply at Tommie, who keeps his eyes on the witness.

  “And before she left for Richmond in March,” Meredith continues, “how did she seem to you?”

  “She seemed agitated in her mind. Like something wasn’t quite right. And she said a queer thing. She said she had a kind of bad feeling about the trip. And I told her she didn’t have to go, but since she was going to help an elderly lady I didn’t press it.”

  “Bad feeling about the trip? I should say so.”

  The parade of witnesses keeps moving through, each one questioned minutely by both sides. A streetcar driver named Loach testifies that he picked up a young couple at about nine o’clock the night of the thirteenth and drove them out to Reservoir Street, but he won’t swear that the prisoner is the same man. He’s also unsure whether he picked them up at Twelfth, across from the American Hotel, or farther down, around Fifteenth. The woman was short and stout and wore a red shawl.

  Mark Davis, proprietor of the Davis House, relates how he chatted and ate an apple with the prisoner around midnight, nothing apparently amiss. He also states that the prisoner stayed at his hotel in early January.

  Then Gretchen O’Banyon takes the stand, spreading excitement through the crowd. Tommie has not seen her for at least a year and he hardly recognizes her; she has her hair up in a way that makes her less attractive. She’s thinner and unpainted and wearing a high-necked blouse and navy skirt, and looks altogether less like a prostitute and more like a working girl.

  She explains that she works at Mrs. Goss’s cigar store now, but did work at Lizzie Banks’s house. Meredith asks her what she did there.

  “I entertained gentlemen,” she says, looking straight at Meredith.

  “And do you recognize the prisoner?”

  “Yes sir, he came and visited me and other girls several times at Lizzie Banks’s.”

  “And what name did he go by?”

  “Walter Merton.”

  “Walter Merton,” Meredith repeats. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes sir.”

  On cross-examination, Evans does his best to confuse and scare her, asking what she did before coming to the house of ill repute, and exactly when she saw the prisoner. “And you think you saw him there?”

  She glances first at Meredith for encouragement. “I know he was there. I don’t think nothing about it.”

  “Who did you first tell about having seen him?”

  “Mr. Meredith and Jack Wren. Mr. Meredith came first, but Ada and Ella and I wouldn’t tell him anything because we didn’t know who he was.”

  “I see,” says Evans. “And then Mr. Wren came?”

  “Yes, and he showed us a picture of the man and I said, ‘Mr. Wren, I know nothing in the world about it.’ And he says, ‘Uh huh, I know so-and-so.’ Then Lizzie told me to go on and tell what I knew.”

  “What did he mean by he knows so-and-so?”

  “He knew something about me that I didn’t want repeated.”

  “What was it?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Did you used to go with Mr. Wren?”

  “You don’t have to answer that!” Meredith shoots out, and Gretchen, with a quick glance at Wren sitting in his customary place, claps her mouth shut. Wren gives her a smug smile and a wink—his little birds can always be counted on to sing for him and nobody else. He plans to hand the city a nice fat bill when this is all over, though the publicity alone is making it more than worth his while.

  During a break Tommie and his lawyers meet in a guarded room adjacent to the judge’s office. Tommie and Mr. Evans take seats, while Crump and his son stand. Crump folds his arms and stares out the window at the people across the street in Capitol Square. Tommie follows his gaze and sees a colored man with no legs dragging himself on a little wheeled board and holding out his cap. A blond-haired girl in a blue dress puts some money in and goes skipping off. Now Crump lights a cigar and turns his back to the window. “What people will do to survive is amazing,” he says. “Tommie, did I ever tell you what it was like here when the Yankees came calling?”

  “No, sir,” Tommie says, knowing that Crump is building to some monumental chastisement.

  “I was here until the last day. The lower part of the city was all smoke and fire, fire and smoke. Warships exploding in the river, mobs looting liquor stores. This was before we’d given up the city, mind you. Soldiers in hospitals suddenly discovered they could walk—they could by God run. Then the old men and boys who’d been guarding the city left with the Confederate government out across the bridges and all hell broke loose. I left too, but I’m told the prisoners in the penitentiary broke out, and got away, most of them. Just like that, their world was made anew. But Tommie, there’s no war going on. So unless we have an earthquake or a flood like I’ve never seen in my lifetime, you’re stuck in prison. When somebody like Mrs. Dickinson gets on the stand and says Miss Madison told her she saw you in Richmond last January and it’s the first your counsel has heard of it—well, I don’t know what to think. How can you explain such a thing? Did you, in fact, see her here then?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  “Mrs. Dickinson would have no reason to lie about that under oath. So either Miss Madison lied or you’re lying now. Which is it?”

  Tommie waits for Mr. Evans to say something calming, but he just sits there beside Tommie looking over some notes. Crump, his son alongside him like a shadow, stands awaiting an answer. “I don’t know what reason she would have to li
e,” Tommie says. He is struck by his own coolness, and he begins to consider the matter from Lillie’s point of view. Under what circumstances would she use his name to cover up her whereabouts? “Perhaps she wanted to throw Mrs. Dickinson off in some way,” Tommie says. “What more innocent name could she use than her cousin’s?”

  Crump scrutinizes him. “So you were here in Richmond both times she was here, and you never laid eyes on her?”

  “My business brings me here often, Mr. Crump.”

  “I know that, Tommie.” Crump puffs out a lungful of smoke, rubs the back of his neck, and rolls his head side to side. He addresses Evans, “We’ll have to go with that then.” Now turning to Tommie, “Young man, did anybody ever tell you you can be infuriating?”

  “Yes sir,” Tommie says, a faint smile on his lips.

  “I like you, honestly. But everybody out there knows now that you’re no saint. If there’s anything you want to tell us about you and that girl, this is the time. Believe me, it can only help. We’ll work out a new battle plan.”

  Tommie tries to clear away the doubts that have been gathering strength. Would it be advisable even now to throw the entire matter into Crump’s able hands and hope for mercy from the jury? Probably they’ve already made up their minds. Buried in all that testimony is a nugget of truth that the jury must have the rough shape of, even if they can’t get the exact dimensions. The question is, what truth are they on to? “No sir,” he says, “I don’t know any more about it than you do.”

  During the afternoon session Tommie sits through testimony from two men employed in the nailworks on Belle Isle who claim to have seen him and a short, chunky woman with a red scarf. One of them says he heard the woman exclaim, “Oh, cousin Tommie!” Tommie has not been on Belle Isle in years, and Lillian has never called him cousin Tommie.

  “You mean to tell the jury,” Evans says to one of the workers, “that you have never seen the prisoner since his arrest and yet you identify him as someone you saw fleetingly three months ago?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And how many strangers do you see on Belle Isle in the course of a week?”

  “That depends, sir—sometimes a handful, sometimes maybe a dozen or two.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t fitting your memory in with something you read in the paper?”

  “I’m right sure.”

  On a redirect, Aylett says, “Will you ever forget the features of the dead girl out at the almshouse?”

  “No sir,” the worker says, shaking his head.

  The star witness is saved for near the end of the prosecution’s case. The jeweler Herman Joel takes his place at the head of the courtroom. He’s a short man with a goatee and a heavy Polish accent, and he sometimes unintentionally makes the court laugh by mangling an English idiom. “And you sold a watch key to the prisoner?” Meredith asks.

  Joel clears his throat and blinks his eyes. “Close up all day I look at jewelry. The faces not much. But, yes, I think the same man it is.”

  “And is this the key?” Meredith shows him the gold key.

  Here Joel takes out a pair of eyeglasses, tucks the stems methodically behind his ears, and examines the key.

  Again he rapidly blinks his eyes, then says, “I believe it is a key on which I replace the barrel and selled, yes, to the gentleman.”

  “How would you know for a fact if it was the key?”

  “I take apart the key and see it is my work, or, no, it is not.”

  “Judge,” Meredith says, “could Mr. Joel be permitted to open the key up and see if it’s his work?”

  “I object to this proceeding,” Crump says. “We haven’t even identified it yet, and here you are wanting to destroy it.”

  Hill rules that unless both sides agree, the key cannot be tampered with. When Crump’s turn comes, he asks Joel if he has any proof he sold the key to the prisoner.

  Joel runs air across his vocal cords. “Records of my works and sales I keep in Bland’s store. But page is missing.”

  “That’s convenient for you. You say the page for that day is gone?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know.” Joel blinks once.

  “You come in here with a story before twelve bearded men, men of brains representing the commonwealth of Virginia, and you can’t back it up in any way whatsoever? Who did you first tell this story to?”

  “I speak with detective. Now I think the less talk the better it is. I should speak with a cat tongue.” The audience titters.

  “I should say so,” Crump fumes. “That’s all, Your Honor.”

  Crump sits down in a huff. At the break, Crump and Evans confer about this as if Tommie doesn’t exist. Then Evans turns to Tommie. “This could be what tilts the jury, Tommie. It’s little things like this. Suppose we let him open it and he claims it’s his work, then at least we’ve taken the mystery out of it. We can always point out that one jeweler’s work is similar to another’s, and, anyway, just because it looks like his work that doesn’t mean it’s the same key he repaired for you.”

  “He didn’t repair a key for me. He recognizes me because he repaired a watch for me. He took his time getting it back to me and I got upset with him, and that’s why he’s so happy to come in here now and perjure himself. It’s good publicity.”

  “I’m sure all that’s true, but what about letting him open it up? The jury has a picture of you crawling through the fence and snagging your watch key. We need to change that picture.”

  Tommie thinks about it for a moment. “What do you think, Mr. Crump?”

  Crump rubs his beard, becoming the contemplative jurist he does not show in front of the court. “I don’t know, son. Mr. Evans could be right. On the other hand, Joel’s hardly going to back down now, even if the file marks and whatnot he finds inside that key aren’t what he expects.”

  Both wait for Tommie’s decision. “I think for now we don’t let them open it,” he says. “Maybe they’ll forget about it once they’ve heard our defense.”

  Crump and Evans exchange looks. “Maybe,” Evans says. “But the prosecution will remind them.”

  Richardson and Birney take their turns on the stand, recounting the details of the arrest, Richardson from time to time glancing at Tommie as though trying to square in his mind the young man he met in Little Plymouth with the murderer the prosecution has pieced together. The hours Richardson and his men have spent tracking down leads, interviewing people who have some connection or other with the case, and then sorting through all this evidence, have accumulated to where he hardly knows his home anymore. He has attended some of the trial, when he could find the time, because people keep asking him his opinion about Tommie’s aunt, his brother, his parents, Lillie’s home life, and all kinds of things the newspapers have gotten onto. He doesn’t have answers for most of them, nor can he quite fathom what it is people are after. Do they just want to be entertained by the downfall of a fellow human being? Do they feel pity for Cluverius? Or is there some deep-seated anger at a fellow who gets too big for his britches and comes here to visit an unspeakable act upon a girl—who could have been one of their own daughters—and is so lacking in honor and decency that he tries to hide it, taking what he wants like a carpetbagger and then running off?

  Richardson answers the questions both sides put to him, but only one question really bothers him and it comes from Aylett: “In addition to the torn note, what made you decide to arrest the prisoner?”

  “The testimony of the victim’s father,” Richardson says, and as soon as he does he sees weeks of work by scores of people adding up to nothing but a weak chain leading from the American Hotel to the reservoir. He still thinks he arrested the right man—there is a mountain of proof. Yet none of it is solid. The only truth, as he has long known, is what you can get people to believe.

  And then, after ten days and seventy-seven witnesses, the torture is nearly over. The commonwealth says it has one more witness.


  Howard Madison has been noticeably absent for most of the trial of his daughter’s accused killer. He takes his time walking to the witness box as though he’s ten years older than he really is. Willie studies him, wondering if he hasn’t primed himself with a drink or two. His hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a wrinkled black bow tie and a gray Confederate jacket with brass buttons and the number of his unit stitched to the shoulder.

  Aylett tells him he knows how difficult it must be to have to come here and discuss the murder of his daughter, and that he doesn’t have many questions. He then asks if Madison’s daughter and the prisoner were romantically involved. Madison replies that Fannie Lillian told him she was in love with her cousin Tommie and that he had promised to marry her. Willie stares hard at Madison, almost daring him to look his way. He has not laid eyes on the man since their encounter at the Tayloe place, and now he’s sure that Madison is lying—and enjoying himself in the process.

  On his cross, Evans asks Madison, “When exactly was it that she told you this?”

  Madison screws up his brow, shakes his head. “It was ’long about July.”

  “Early July? Late July? When exactly?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a great deal of difference, Mr. Madison. The timing is crucial, as is your memory of it.”

  “I think it was early July.”

  “And where exactly were you at that time?”

  “At my place. We were out in the barn. I was mending an axle on my hay tedder, and she come in and says, ‘Pa, I need to tell you something,’ like it was real important.”

  “Go on, what were her exact words?”

  “She said, ‘Pa, me and Tommie are gettin’ married. He’s promised me.’ I said, ‘What’s the rush?’ and she said, ‘We just have to.’ Those were her exact words, ‘We just have to.’ And then she went off up to the house.”

  “Mr. Madison, is there anyone else, your wife, for instance, to whom she might have said the same thing?”

  “She might’ve.”

  “And yet you’re the only one who has come forward with this unsupportable hearsay. Don’t you think that’s strange?”