“Go on, what next?”
“I run I did.”
“But tell the jury why.”
“Cause yockommy hant, loping.”
“Object!”
Mr. Brice was red as he jumped up and cut it off. He said he was amazed the prosecution would offer such shady evidence. He said every member of the jury knew the legend of this hant at Hollis Hill, and knew also the presumption of wrongdoing the hant’s presence would set up. He said this was Upper Marlboro, Md., not Salem, Mass., in the seventeenth century, “when superstition was law.” The judge said: “I’m inclined to agree,” and told the jury to disregard stuff about hants. When Mr. Lucas said: “Your witness,” Mr. Brice acted as though such a witness wasn’t even worth cross-examining, and asked no questions at all. He had hurt us, though, that boy. He had put her up on the tank, where she hadn’t mentioned being, in any statement to the cops.
And finally there were the shells, the one in the living-room, ejected when Val shot at her, the other outside, both with my fingerprints on, which was natural enough, as I’d loaded the clip in the spring. But no prints were on the gun, to show who had done the shooting, as it was caked with mud when found. That night, when Mr. Brice came to the hospital, he admitted he was sunk, “as low as I ever get.”
I said: “Wouldn’t the truth help, Mr. Brice?”
“Well, what is the truth?”
I told it for maybe an hour, as well as you can tell anything to a man who flinches in pain and all but cuts his throat at everything you say. It went on like that till I got to Sickles, when all of a sudden he grabbed me. He said: “What was that? What was it? Wait a minute, Webster, start over again!”
I did, putting in Lippert’s part in it, the stuff Val had told me, there in the living-room, and then the rest of it, what he had said on the ladder. When I finished, he kept staring, and I said: “Listen, Mr. Brice, it was a big case they had here, several years ago.”
At that he burst out laughing, and said: “Webster, it’s terrific. Why—it even convinces me. Until now I had thought—well who wouldn’t?—that you and she did it, as Lucas says.”
“But you took our case?”
“You’re entitled to counsel.”
He explained, for quite some time, that no matter who did it, we had to be represented, and that if every lawyer in the county declined, the court would still appoint one for us. But still the smile was there, until I said: “Well, what’s so funny? First you groan and then you laugh—I’d like to know the joke.”
“I don’t think I’m telling you. I think I’ll leave it there, something you don’t know, that could make trouble for Lucas if he accidentally stumbles into it. All right, then, Webster? You’re willing to spill it all?”
“I’ll do what has to be done.”
“I want nothing held back. I don’t have to put you on, but if I do, the only witness that’ll help is an absolutely reckless witness. One that’s not only willing to talk but anxious to talk—that kicks all immunities aside and cuts it loose.”
“I got nothing to hold back.”
“The holdup?”
“I hate it but I’ll tell it.”
“You’re on, first thing in the morning.”
CHAPTER XVIII
SO I TORE IN, BUT FOUND out right away how important counsel is, as he asks the questions. The holdup was in, but in front was restitution. The gun was in, but in front was the deal that had been made, so it had been given to Val. The love I bore her was in, but Mr. Brice called it “devotion,” which made it seem slightly different. All of it was in, but from our angle, and in a way to prove we meant to break it clean. On Sickles we took off all wraps, and I really let go, especially Lippert’s part in it, which Brice figured he probably hadn’t told Lucas, thinking it died with Val. It hit the court like a bombshell, and I knew I had landed solid, because the gasps that came from the courtroom were like the roar of a crowd at a hook. When I came to my flying tackle, I all but used blueprints, showing where I was, where Val was, and where she was. Mr. Brice went into the moaning, which I described, and the scream she was supposed to have given, which I said I didn’t hear. A mumble went around, so the judge tapped on his desk, and I knew the people were putting it together my way, reasoning that naturally I wouldn’t hear her, as I was already knocked out.
While I was talking, she had listened and not listened, staring off part of the time, as though rehearsing what she would say, and in her lap part of the time, at an envelope she had there. Lucas watched her, more than he seemed to watch me, and made some notes on a card. When he started to cross-examine, he did it very friendly, first straightening up my blankets, asking how I felt, and making a little crack about my recovery of memory. I bore in mind to be reckless, and handed it back as he gave it, as though the memory was a bit of a joke. He kept it up, being so funny I had to laugh myself, and of course I’d try to top him. Then he began to bore in, until Brice got up and objected. There seemed to be some kind of rule that if I hadn’t been asked about it on direct examination, I couldn’t be grilled for it on the cross. Brice said it was “irrelevant, a waste of time,” but Lucas said he had asked the police about it, in presenting the state’s case, and could go into it therefore, here now questioning me. And then: “As to irrelevance, it has a solemn bearing on this case that this defendant, as a means of obstructing justice, has already invented one complicated, ingenious, and incredible story, which he regards so lightly as to joke about it, and may have invented another—once he heard about Sickles.”
The judge held it was proper, and we went over and over and over it, my memory there at the hospital; and repeatedly, when I was to “tell in my own words” the way things happened, I could tell nothing at all. When at last I burst out: “Listen, Mr. Lucas, suppose you try facing a murder rap, and see what you make up”—that did it. He insisted I had made it up, every word about Arizona, and I said: “Just to protect myself—until I knew where I was.” He made me repeat it, and I realized how it sounded. Then, at last, he moved on to Sickles, and I said: “It was a big case they had—several years ago.” That got a laugh, even from the judge, and I realized it was the booby trap. Because of course, if I’d been making anything up, presumably I’d have got the thing straight. But Lucas just laughed too, and said: “Several score years ago, Webster. Sickles lost a leg at Gettysburg. You need a clerk to look up your cases.” That got an even bigger laugh, and on it, quite suddenly, he sat down, without going into the main event on the ladder at all.
It helped a little, maybe, that Brice called Daniel and pinned the gun switch on him, but not much. I had led with my chin and landed.
I had taken all day and part of the next morning, so it was the afternoon of the third day of the trial when she took the stand, white, grim, and tense. After the usual preliminaries, Brice gave her a general question: “Now please tell the jury, Mrs. Valenty, in your own words, what led up, the main events, in any way relevant, to the death of your husband.” She answered, very slow: “In my own words, Mr. Brice, let me say at the start that none of it had any relation to what I told the police officers. I said what they’ve said I said. I made things up—not to shield myself, as it never entered my mind that I would be accused. To hush up for my husband what he tried to do to me, so it never, never would come out. I remind you, Mr. Brice, that after I got down from the tank, after screaming no doubt, since a point has been made of that—both the men were alive, groaning there on the ground. And if I did what I did with the gun, I’m not ashamed, I’m proud of it. And if Duke Webster made things up, he had reason, after the way one police officer practically sold him to slavery. And if Mr. Lucas is making things up, misrepresenting Duke as he is—no doubt he has reason too, after the part he played in my husband’s designs on my life.”
Wham.
“Just a minute!”
“Yes—Mrs. Valenty—please.”
Lucas was white, Brice hardly able to talk, she icy, a tight little smile on her face, as she watched
the effects of what made my poor little bombshell look like a firecracker. The judge told the jury to retire, and when they had clumped out, said: “Mr. Brice, what does this mean?”
“I’m completely caught by surprise.”
“Mrs. Valenty?”
“It means that Mr. Lucas, knowing my husband was set on a child, though the doctor had said it would kill me, didn’t even make one phone call to warn me what was in store for me. It means my husband rang him, before he was state’s attorney, to find out who made the decision in case one had to be made, as to the life that would be spared—a conversation that I overheard—and that he did not, not ever, ring me. He was my husband’s friend, but perhaps it won’t be such fun to accuse the widow of murder.”
The judge argued with her, saying it was not up to Lucas to discuss his client’s affairs, and Brice argued with her, saying it was “utter folly” to claim justifiable homicide. She said: “If you don’t want my case, Mr. Brice, I can get somebody else. But I can tell you right now, we’re going to try my case, and not some case you think ought to be my case. My husband wanted me dead, and Mr. Lucas knew it. That’s the first event that led to my husband’s decease. I was married to Death, and he pursued me to the end—but didn’t get me, thanks to a brave boy, Duke Webster. That’s my case, and I won’t have any other.”
Brice wiped the sweat from his face, but Lucas took it quite calm.
He said: “The call was made, Your Honor, exactly as she says, and I’ll stipulate it, if that helps, or take the stand, if Brice wants—though it may surprise her what I said at the other end, which she apparently didn’t hear. But I see nothing I can object to. If that’s her case, I may feel, as Brice does, she’s courting complete disaster—but there’s nothing I can object to.”
“Bring the jury in.”
She ripped along with it, on the same question all afternoon, and told of her childhood, St. Mary’s, the oxen, the church, the holly, all the stuff that had meant so little to me but that the jury seemed to get the point of. She told of her “weakness,” and the relation it had to Val’s hopes for a child. It turned out that Hollis Valenty was ten times as dark an idea as Bill had mentioned to me, and that the volcanoes I’d heard in the summer were plenty real. Toward the end of the day she opened the envelope she held in her lap, and broke out the pictures that got such a play, “taken of me, by my husband’s photographer, on my wedding day, and by myself, with a camera I have, by working it with a string—as I became, little by little, with Duke Webster’s help.”
Brice squawked as usual, and the court warned her that if introduced, the pictures would be public property, subject to use by the press, but she said: “I want the jury to see what I’m talking about. Why I could have no child, as natural birth was impossible, and an operation, a Caesarean as it’s called, was impossible too, as no stitches could hold in such fat.”
So the pictures went to the jury, and the men looked away quick, but the women, the three middle-aged women at the far end of the box, studied each separate one. The papers got them too, and ate them up, hog-wild, just why I don’t quite know. But some, the fat ones, were too ugly to be quite decent, and the others, the slim ones in bra and panties, were just a little too pretty. There was a pause during the looksee, and she sat staring at me, her face turning pink.
“Webster, is there anything on earth, anything you know I can tell her, any message you can send, that’ll stop this insane recital?”
Brice had stopped by the hospital that night on his way to see her, and after saying that, in spite of the Arizona fumble, my testimony had helped a lot, he got bitter about her and “this damned surprise she’s sprung on me.”
He went on: “It’s worse than you think, Webster, because Lucas is really decent. He warned Valenty, and he’s got the memo to prove it, notes typed up by his girl, that he was heading for trouble if he went through with any such scheme of having a child that could kill his wife. He’ll take the stand, sure—if I’m silly enough to ask him. And on top of that he’s too nice. He’s got something on her, and I don’t know what it is. So he’s the guy, Webster, she’s picking a personal feud with.”
“He’s the guy to lick just the same.”
“But why make herself trouble?”
I thought that over, pointed out she already had trouble, and Lucas wouldn’t pull any punches just from her pulling hers. Then I asked him: “You heard of Doc Kearns?”
“Not that I know of, no.”
“Fight manager. Had Dempsey.”
“Oh. Jack. Yes.”
“Beautiful boxer, Dempsey, one of the best in the business. But also a socker, see, the best in the business. Well, making him box was safe. But letting him sock was dough. So the doc gave him his head, and, brother, how it worked. Of course they were taking a chance, because Jack could stop one, same as anyone else. And, as a matter of fact, he did. Firpo lowered the boom, and Jack all but went out before he climbed back in the ring. But he won. That was before I was born, but they’re still talking about it. Listen, Mr. Brice, you got a socker. Goddam it, let her sock.”
“I wish I thought she could?”
“Could? She has. My heart’s still jumping at the swings she landed today—and a heart can’t be fooled. And besides, you heard what she said. This is her case—not some case you dream up tonight.”
“It’s your neck too, Webster.”
“And my heart, especially that.”
So he let her sock, and by the time she was done, the middle of the next afternoon, it was clear for the whole world to know that in her mind at least the scene on the tank was just one more chapter of “something ordained from the beginning, except that Duke intervened.” All that time Lucas was quiet, not objecting, hardly seeming even to listen. When it came his turn to question her, he got up, stood studying his fingernails, and then spoke very easy: “Just one or two points, Mrs. Valenty. First, was there or was there not a pregnancy?”
“That was a fine invitation to be a mother, wasn’t it, now, Mr. Lucas? What would you have said? No, there wasn’t a pregnancy.”
“Did your husband tell you, after the call you overheard, of the warning I gave him then? About the consequences he’d face if you did incur pregnancy and he took no surgical steps to protect you?”
“ ... No, he did not.”
Suddenly the points she had piled up looked sick. But he was polite as he asked her: “Later, judging from the pictures, a child was possible?”
“I guess so, I—”
“Yes or no, please.”
“I could have had one, yes.”
“And you still refused?”
“I didn’t want one no more.”
“Your improved health, you testified, came after Duke Webster’s arrival, and in fact was due to his help. If, as you say, you no longer wanted a child, you must have had some reason not connected with health. Was this reason Duke Webster?”
She skinned back her lips, so her teeth flashed mean. She said: “Mr. Lucas, when a man treats me that way, so even you own up you warned him, do I have to run into his arms the minute I’m restored, and holler ‘oh goody goody, now I can have a baby’? Is that what I have to do?”
“The question, Mrs. Val, is whether Duke Webster was the reason for your later refusal to have a child. Please answer yes or no.”
“Quit telling me what to answer.”
“I’m not telling you what to answer, Mrs. Val. I am telling you that your failure to answer, to give me a simple yes or no, will be pointed out to the jury, to be weighed by them in its bearing on your guilt.”
She had got red when she flashed her teeth, but now little by little, as the seconds dragged on and the place was still as a tomb, she turned gray, chalky white. Then: “For the love I bore—for the love I bear—a clean, decent boy—who showed me the way—to health, hope, and God—my answer has to be—yes, yes, YES.”
She was on the floor, with the count started, but Lucas was still polite. He said: “One more thing, Mr
s. Val. Webster, in his testimony, said your husband—up on the ladder this is—shot at a—at an animal. Did you become aware of such a creature, Mrs. Val?”
“I wasn’t listening to Duke.”
“No, you were engrossed with your pictures, I noticed. But let’s get back to the tank. Did you see any animal at that time?”
Only little by little, as her eyes got bigger and bigger, did she realize that this was the case against us. No matter what had gone before, about Hollis Valenty or anyone else, if I were low man on the ladder and had actually fired that shot, it all boomeranged against us. She said, half crying: “What are you talking about, Mr. Lucas? It was too dark to see that night.”
“Did you hear an animal, Mrs. Val?”
“I was in prayer, Mr. Lucas.”
“Can you name the animal for us now?”
“No. No, Mr. Lucas, no.”
“That’s all, Mrs. Val.”
CHAPTER XIX
LUCAS, WINDING IT UP, WAS NICE to us and more. He wasn’t called to the stand, but more or less told it all anyhow. He said: “I have no doubt that the general trend of her life was just as Mrs. Val says. Val Valenty I counted a friend, but I couldn’t rest with my conscience if I didn’t tell this jury he was exactly the kind of man he has been depicted here in this court. He was staunch, fanatical, in his loyalty to all who succumbed to his will, and it is my belief, in spite of what Mrs. Val says, that had she agreed to the child, he would have spared no expense, trouble, or care to pull her, as well as the child, safely through Once she thwarted him, however, he became hard, and every word she has repeated, of his call to me, was spoken just as she told it, and I gladly add to her story, if it helps her case at all, the warning I felt compelled to give him that he was heading into something serious—‘one hell of a spot’ were the words I used, according to my secretary’s notes at the time—if he persisted in his intention.”
He stopped, studied his nails in a way that seemed to be habit, and went on: “I’m perfectly willing to believe in the decency of her love for Webster. I allege no impropriety. Life is replete with instances of conscience ruling the heart, and this may well have been the case here. But you are not asked to judge a moral question, to decide if a wife, driven by fear, by hate, by love, by the great wave of circumstance, has the right to kill as one way out. If that were all, the case would be simple, if dangerous, for let us admit the annals of crime are replete with instances of juries who found for the wife. You, however, are asked to pass on a question of fact: did the husband, though it was the wife who was driven, who feared, hated, and loved, who first conceived of the tank, as we know from credible evidence, as an instrument of death—did the husband, on one afternoon’s caprice, reverse the course of the wave and attempt the deed the wife had plotted against him? Did he, because of Webster’s quick intervention, fall into his own trap?