Defense
“All satisfied, then?” Sam questioned. “All satisfied that Martha
killed her, and that Chad carried the body upstairs and hid it for
her, and left the false clues—including the tatting shuttle, for
reasons unknown—and came down, merry and happy enough, until he took a
sudden notion to write a false confession and walk out and shoot
himself through the head?”
I was satisfied; but I felt like a fool for so being, when Sam put it
like that. I said nothing.
Hubert Hand said, “It looks like a pretty clear case, Sam.”
“Does? What’s become of your clear case against John, unchanged tires,
and everything?”
“I had not heard Ollie’s story, then.”
“Dad,” there was pleading in John’s voice, “you don’t mean to say that
you can’t see the thing? That you aren’t satisfied with this
absolutely logical explanation?”
“Yes,” Sam answered, with his most dangerous drawl, “that’s what I
mean to say. It takes more, or seems to, to satisfy me than it takes
to satisfy some folks. Satisfied? Not by a damn sight!”
John lost his temper. “For the love of Pete, why aren’t you? What
would satisfy you? Say? What are you trying to do? Do you like the
case against me so well that you can’t give it up? You made us all
come clean the other day, or tried to. Come clean yourself, now? What
have you got up your sleeve?”
“I’ve got a couple of good fighting arms up my sleeve,” Sam answered.
“And I’ve got a daughter, dead, in a grave up there. Since she was
knee high to a duck, she’s counted on me, for food, and shelter, and
protection generally. I don’t know—but I reckon she may still be
counting on me, somewhere not too far away, for protection. She is
going to have it.”
Mrs. Ricker began to cry, quietly; but Sam saw her.
“No, no, Mrs. Ricker,” he said, “don’t get me wrong in this. You
believe that she was guilty. I believe that she is innocent. Believing
that way, it is my bounden duty to clear her name. It is my fault that
she isn’t here to stand up for herself. It is my fault, too, I guess,
that I’ve raised John so that he won’t stand up for his own
womenfolks——”
“That’s rotten of you, dad. It is unfair. I’d stand up for Martha till
the cows came home. But what’s the use of bucking straight facts?”
“Damn your straight facts. We haven’t got any. I’ve a few straight
fact questions, though, that will blow this story galley-west. Here’s
one of them:
“Does it stand to reason that, for two months, Gaby lived right here
unharmed by Martha? But that, on the very day, when she feared death
from some outside enemy, Martha should kill her?”
“It is coincidental,” John admitted. “But, just the same, there are
lots of coincidences. We all meet them, all the time.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence that Gaby was afraid of meeting, when she
walked out of this house on the fourth of July. Here’s another
question.
“Mrs. Ricker, she says, was plumb convinced that Martha committed the
murder, and that I helped her by carrying the body upstairs
afterwards. She thought this the night of the murder, and the next
day, and ever since. Why, then, didn’t she come to me and, anyway, put
out a feeler or two in my direction? She knew that I’d go as far to
save Martha as she would go. I wouldn’t protect John, nor any other
person on this place; but Martha was a child—younger, even, than a
child in some ways. Mrs. Ricker knew that I’d save Martha with my last
dollar, and, as somebody said the other day, with my last lie. Mrs.
Ricker and I were alone together for more than half an hour the
morning of the fifth. Why didn’t she give me a hint, then, of any of
this?”
“I—I was afraid,” Mrs. Ricker answered. “I was waiting. I thought that
you would give me the hint—the sign. I was not sure——”
“Not sure then, but sure now?”
“I tell you,” Mrs. Ricker flared up, “I was afraid. So long as she was
living, I was afraid of everything—of everyone. I was afraid of
myself. I dared not think; I dared not look. I scarcely lifted my eyes
from my tatting. I—I was afraid.”
“Now, now,” Sam said. “I see your point in that, especially since
talking had got you in bad once. But—see here. I said a while ago that
I’d always known you were a good woman. Well, I am going to keep on
knowing it, for the present. There are enough folks around here to
jump at conclusions without me doing it. But you, thinking as you say
you think, directly accused Danny the other day. That was not the act
of a good woman——”
“God, Ollie!” Hubert Hand burst out. “He is going to try to pin it on
you, to save Martha and the Stanley name—even yet.”
“You,” Sam said, “are a liar.”
“Safe enough. I wouldn’t fight you, and you know it, old man.”
Sam jumped to his feet. I had to stumble over John, but I managed to
reach Sam first, and to stand in front of him. “Boys, boys,” I begged.
“Not here. Not in this house to-night. Remember——”
Hubert stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away. Sam dropped
into his chair. The telephone bell, in the other room, began to ring.