Later on, I became aware of myself while riding down to police headquarters in a Squad car, flanked on either side by a burly plain-clothesman. They did not seem to be paying much attention to me for they were talking among themselves as though I wasn't there.
“Right through the heart. He sure must have been close, too. Her dress was burned.”
“Yeah. I wonder why he croaked her?”
“Oh, we'll get it out of him down at headquarters.”
“Don't be so sure. I think he's a nut. If he ain't, he'll play like he is. Christ, I'm ready to believe he is, right now! Who the hell ever heard of knockin' anybody off before witnesses in the dame's own house?”
“Good lookin' babe, too.”
“Naw. She was old.”
“Well, we'll get a chance at this guy after the line-up.”
The driver of the car, evidently having seen my face in his rear-view mirror, called back over his shoulder. “Hey, boys. The guy's all right now.”
With that, the detectives turned to me at once. One on either side, they started to fire many questions. “Why did you kill her, Johnny?”
“Was that your rod we found on the floor?”
“What's your name, anyway?”
“What was the exact time you did it?”
“Where do you live?”
“Ain't I seen you some place before?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I killed her. Only not then.”
“Not then?” they chorused. “What do you mean by 'not then'?”
“I killed her, yes. But that woman has been dead for eighteen years.”
They both stared at me for a minute. Then one of the cops described a circle about his ear with one finger. The other one nodded his head significantly.
Dig out your law books, all you students, all you judges, all you members of the bar. Dust off Corpus Juris and Blackstone and Wharton and the Constitution; try, if you can, to convict me. On the surface, it looks simple enough. Here I am, an ex-convict with a record of eighteen years in the penitentiary, and I have just shot down a woman in cold blood. Yes, it was in cold blood. I wasn't angry at her any more than I was angry at that German boy I killed back in 1918.
Come on all you prosecutors! My painfully young, court-appointed counsel challenges the world! His briefcase is empty but for three little slips of paper which, he claims, are enough to break any case against me. Maybe he is right. Who knows? Well, whatever happens, it no longer matters to me. Remember that only yesterday I intended to commit suicide? If the case is lost you will only be doing the job for me.
The District Attorney laughed at me when he visited me in jail the other morning. But I think he was rather worried. He secured the indictment easily enough... although it might not have been so easy had my lawyer's plea to go before the Grand Jury been granted.
“You'll get the Chair, Thatcher,” he threatened. “Better let me have your confession and I'll see what I can do about getting you off with a prison sentence. I can recommend leniency, you know.”
“Oh, I did it, Mr. District Attorney. Why should I deny it?”
“Then you are not going to plead insanity?”
“I don't know what my lawyer is going to do.”
“It'll be easier on you if...”
“See my lawyer.”
I was really quite calm throughout all the days of questioning and interviews. I imagine that all the rigamarole I was—;and still am—; being forced through would be a great strain on a person. It was not much of a strain on me. I had been through it before; and while my first trial had me trembling and biting my nails down to the quick, this one lacked the resulting tension. It reminded me of the pinochle games I used to have with Mullins and Carter and the Sarge when we were all of us broke and without a sou and had to play for no stakes.
I have a late edition of a paper in front of me with my picture on the very first page. It isn't a very complimentary study of me for, you see, it was taken by a persistent staff photographer... through the bars. But, if I do not appreciate the picture, the article accompanying it highly amuses me. The lead line reads: “While the alleged slayer of pretty Anita Thatcher paces the floor of his cell in the Tombs, brooding over the blood he is charged to have spilled, preparations are being made for the burial of his victim tomorrow afternoon....”
Brooding? What an imagination! I am not at all sorry that I killed Anita. Should I be? Except that I was born a fool, I have her to blame for what I have become.
In the courtroom this morning, the prosecution trotted out a score of witnesses in short order. By their testimony they placed me in the room where the crime was committed and at the time specified. This time, of course, the corpus delicti was established and the jury learned that I was seen committing the crime by one witness and found with the gun in my hand by others.
The District Attorney opened the case with a short speech that went something like this: “I have never seen a more open and shut case of murder in the first degree. We have everything —;weapon, eye-witnesses and motive. It will be proved in this courtroom that the Defendant shot and killed his ex-wife because he was jealous of her marriage to one of the principals in the case. We will show you that the crime was premeditated, that the Defendant came to the apartment of the deceased woman with a gun in his pocket for the express purpose of carrying out his infamous plan of murder. We will prove to you, by means of expert testimony, that the bullet which ended the life of the deceased came from the gun belonging to the Defendant. After you have heard all the evidence in the case, there will remain to you only one alternative... to return a verdict of Guilty.”
When the District Attorney had finished, my lawyer got to his feet and said: “The Defense has nothing it would like to say at this time.” His immature voice rising in the court caused a titter of mirth to circulate. Even His Honor concealed a smile as he rapped for order.
Then came the parade of witnesses, one by one. I recognized a chauffeur who had been parked before the doctor's door; the doorman from the building across the street; and a salesman who had happened to be passing as I entered the house. I heard Lily Pierce, the Carpenter's maid, testify....
“Then he followed Mrs. Carpenter toward the study. I ran after him and said that he had no right to go in there. He didn't listen to me. He pushed me away and slammed the door in my face.”
“Did you go in after him?”
“Yes, sir, I did. But when I got inside, the doctor told me that it was all right and not to disturb him.”
“I see. Tell the court, Miss Pierce. Did the doctor act as usual? Or did he appear nervous, excited, frightened?”
“Well, he didn't seem quite himself.”
After many more questions, the State turned the witness over to my attorney for cross-examination. “No questions!” sang out the youth.
As Leo Carpenter, pale and haggard, took the stand, my lawyer leaned over and whispered to me: “You've noticed that I haven't cross-examined any of the witnesses. But there's one fellow I may have to. I've got to establish the identity of the deceased, you know.”
“Doctor Carpenter,” the District Attorney was saying. “You saw the crime being committed?”
“Yes. I was there in the room,” he replied. As he said this, our eyes met across the courtroom. I am sure that there was sympathy and understanding in his and the reluctant manner in which he testified on the stand seems to bear me out in this theory. Perhaps he felt that I had only taken just redress for my injuries by killing Anita.
When the State had finished with the witness, my own counsel approached him. The prosecution rested.
“Doctor Carpenter, what relation were you to the deceased woman?”
He hesitated for a brief moment. “No relation whatever,” he admitted. “Anita was Mrs. Peter Thatcher.”
I heard a murmur of surprise in the court and a few newspaper reporters tried to leave in search of telephones. Over the noise, I heard the next question.
“You were not the
husband of the deceased?”
“No, I was not.”
“In all the eighteen years you had been living together as man and wife you never married her?”
“No. How could I? She was Mrs. Peter Thatcher.”
“She was the same woman who was known to you as Anita Thatcher back in the year 1919?”
“She is... she was.”
“Very well. That is all. Will the State allow the identification of the deceased or shall I call more witnesses as part of the Defense?”
“The State allows the identification.”
There was a two-hour adjournment for lunch, following which the Defense resumed the floor. “Your Honor,” called my boy gladiator, “I have here three papers that I wish to offer in evidence. The first of these is an indictment dated in the year 1919 which states that the Defendant, Peter Thatcher, may be remanded to a court for trial on a charge of murder in the first degree. The victim's name: Anita Thatcher! The second of the papers is a certificate of conviction from the Tompkins County Court, Judge Foley presiding. It states that in the same year Peter Thatcher was convicted on a charge of first degree manslaughter for the killing of the same woman. The third paper is an affidavit from the Warden of the State Penitentiary at Ossining to the effect that Peter Thatcher, sentenced by the forementioned court, did serve the time specified and was formally released after having been imprisoned for eighteen years.
“Your Honor, under Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution of this State which says, in part: 'No person shall be subject to be twice put in jeopardy for the same offence,' I demand that the Court instruct the jury to return a verdict of Not Guilty for the Defendant. According to the law, the deceased was killed by the Defendant once already; and he was convicted and sentenced and paid the penalty for the crime by a prison term which lasted from 1919 up until the present year.
“The Defendant committed a legal murder. Or, have it this way, if you like. The Defendant, instead of committing the crime and paying the penalty, paid the penalty and then committed the crime. He cannot be tried on those charges again. In conclusion, I do not ask for clemency for the Defendant. I ask Justice!”
As I write this final portion of my story, which I trust has explained those features which the press have distorted, I cannot refrain from smiling a little. His Honor wore such a woebegone look of bewilderment when my lawyer passed the certificates to the stenographer with a dramatic flourish!
“Let me see those papers, please,” the judge demanded. The stenographer quickly handed them up to him. His Honor changed his glasses and as he read them through, an unusual stillness pervaded the room. Really, I believe that of all the people who were crowded into the court, I was the only person who was not holding his breath.
Finally, after what appeared to be an eternity, the judge looked up. He cleared his throat several times, fiddled with his glasses, and then looked over toward the prosecution's table.
“Well, Mr. District Attorney,” he said with a puzzled frown wrinkling his forehead, “what have you to say to that?”
As yet there has been no decision forthcoming. I know that the prosecution is tearing its collective hair, trying to find some way to get a conviction. My own lawyer is completely at ease. He left this morning for a few weeks of fishing in Maine, promising me that if decision is reserved too long, he'll apply for a writ of habeas corpus.
But I am not impatient to be free. There still remains the problem of where to go.
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