I
Answering T. J. Hunter's inquiry about her occupation, Mrs. Phelps Jason
of Shanesville replied in her own time and manner: "I am a widow with a
limited private income, not employed in the usual sense, certainly not
unemployed in the sense of idle. I manage my Shanesville property as a
wild life sanctuary, and am Secretary of the Winchester County
Anti-Vivisection League."
Judge Mann exhaled. One of those; human, however. In the minute-book,
belatedly, he entered the date, December 9, and the witness's name. On
the pad he sketched a dour bluejay cuddling field glasses.
"Mrs. Jason, how did you spend the afternoon of Friday, August 7th?"
She made no fussy business of verifying the date. "On that day I
attended a picnic given by my neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers."
"Who were the others present, if you recall?"
"Besides Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers, there were Mr. and Mrs. James Doherty,
Mr. Nathaniel Judd, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wayne of Shanesville with
their two children. Also Miss Maud Welsh and Callista Blake."
"Are you well acquainted with the defendant, Callista Blake?"
"Reasonably well. I met her first in 1951, when she was eleven. That is
eight years." Mann sighed and relaxed. Eight years ago, law practice at
Mann and Wheatley already routine: 1951 was the Forman will case; and
spare-time reading in constitutional law with old Joe Wheatley, Uncle
Norden a dusty memory; and creeping up on forty.
"You've been continuously acquainted with Miss Blake all that time?"
"Yes. Of course I saw less of her after she moved to Winchester."
"At that picnic, August 7th, did you have any talk with her?"
"No. We waved or nodded I suppose, when I arrived. Those picnics are
quite informal. The fact that I had no talk with her was accidental; I
was engaged with the other guests, and she was spending her time with
the Wayne children."
"All her time?"
"Why, yes, until about 3:30 anyhow."
"Did anything noteworthy happen then?"
"I don't know if I can judge what's noteworthy, Mr. Hunter."
Mann's attention sharpened at the hint of hostility. Was this State's
witness by any chance intending to pull the rug out from under Hunter?
"I'll rephrase my question. At 3:30, did anything happen important
enough so that you now remember it and wish to tell it under oath?"
"It's not a question of my wishing to tell it, Mr. Hunter. I do not. If
I may use an old-fashioned and unpopular word, it's a matter of duty. At
3:30 Callista went alone into a wild garden back of the lawn."
"Are you yourself familiar with that wild garden?"
"Yes."
"I ask you to show the jury, on this map, the location and extent of the
wild garden. And describe it in your own words, if you will."
Tense but self-contained, Mrs. Jason stood by the map, her hands moving
intelligently, her voice firm and rather pleasant. Mann recalled that
she had given her age as forty-seven; his own age; more weathered than
himself in the face, but an outdoor type, possibly better preserved, her
figure attractive and graceful. "The wild garden area is roughly square,
about a hundred feet on a side. It's closed away from the lawn by a
mixed hedge of forsythia and lilac. There's only one break in that
hedge, an angled passage about two feet wide. It's marked here--"
"Angled--you mean the opening is on a slant?"
"Double slant, zigzag. The hedge is ten or twelve feet thick--that
forsythia will take over everything. I understand the little passage has
to be pruned out fresh every year."
"If it's a zigzag, then you can't look through from the lawn area into
the wild garden--is that correct?"
"Correct. From the lawn it looks like an unbroken hedge. Well, the wild
garden itself is just a patch where everything's been left more or less
natural. There's an old paper birch. Hardy perennials."
"In earlier testimony, the plant monkshood was mentioned in connection
with that wild garden. Have you seen it growing there?"
"Yes." She spoke reluctantly, returning to the witness chair.
"After 3:30, when did you next see Callista Blake?"
"About quarter past four, getting into her Volkswagen."
"You didn't see her come out of that wild garden?"
"No, I didn't happen to. I think I'd gone indoors for a while."
"You're quite certain she went into the wild garden alone? The children
couldn't have gone with her, or perhaps ahead of her?"
"No, they didn't. Shortly before 3:30 Doris Wayne--she's ten--started an
argument with her younger brother Billy. Mrs. Wayne reproved them, told
them to sit by the picnic table and restrain their voices. They did."
Mrs. Jason glacially smiled. "The origin of the argument--"
"Well, that might lead us too far afield. Just--"
"If the Court please--" Cecil Warner cleared his throat with sudden but
stately sonority--"I submit that, to appease the curiosity of all
present including myself, the _casus belli_ between Doris and William
Wayne, though doubtless not part of the _res gestae_, should be made
known." Cecil was even standing, making a production of it, announcing
with eyebrows and twinkle that all he wanted was to have a bit of
ponderous fun and relieve the tension: what could be more innocent?
Risky, but Mann wanted to play along. He said: "Mm, yes. The rules of
evidence should not debar us from ascertaining the gravamen of this
ancillary conflict." _How'm I doing, Cecil? Gravamen, ancillary, each
five dollars, please._ Hunter looked uneasy, not prepared with any
elephantine humor of his own.
"Well, your Honor, Callista had been showing Doris Wayne how to make a
squeak by blowing across a grass-blade held between the thumbs. The
effect on neighboring eardrums is impressive. The argument I mentioned
arose when Billy wished to perfect himself in the same peculiar art and
was informed by his sister that he was not old enough."
Mann let the courtroom rumble while Cecil Warner sat down poker-faced.
Now the jury could never quite forget that this was a girl who could
play with children; that the children must have liked her; that children
are often "judges of character" and so--maybe--
Callista this morning was looking different. Since she first appeared
Judge Mann's gaze had been repeatedly drawn to her as he tried to
discover the nature of the change. No make-up, dressed the same, the
white blouse more wilted. But her cheeks showed faint color; her mouth
was not set in such a bitter line. Once or twice when Warner whispered
to her she smiled, a flash of light almost shocking in its unexpected
sweetness. And when her thin face was relaxed, perhaps the only word for
it this morning was--peacefulness. With no change in the circumstances,
with the troubled honest woman on the stand obviously about to do a
little more toward destroying her from a sense of duty, what had
Callista Blake to do with peacefulness? He noticed also that redheaded
Edith Nolan had managed to get a seat one row nearer the arena, and her
candid blue eyes seldom left the face of her friend.
"Mrs. Jason, did you notice Callista Blake talking with anyone but the
children that afternoon?"
"When she was leaving, I saw Dr. Chalmers standing by her car talking
with her, and the children ran over to say good-bye."
"No one else?"
Mrs. Jason shrugged. "Everything informal--acquaintances of long
standing, no occasion for formal gestures."
"How was Miss Blake dressed that day?"
"Brown skirt, green blouse, very nice with her color."
"Did you notice a shoulder-strap bag?"
"Yes."
"Were you aware of any constraint, or hostility, between Callista Blake
and any of the guests at that picnic?"
"Conclusions of the witness."
Mann said: "I'll rule it admissible. But limit yourself to the single
question, Mrs. Jason."
"The answer is no, I wasn't aware of any such thing."
"Early this year, before the first of May, did you learn--by direct
observation--of anything unusual about the relation existing between
Callista Blake and James Doherty?"
"Objection! Leading the witness. No relevance established."
"The relevance is direct, to the question of motive."
"Objection overruled."
"Exception."
"Shall I repeat my question, Mrs. Jason?"
"You needn't. The answer is no."
"What about after the first of May?"
"I learned on the 12th of May that there was a love affair between
Callista Blake and Jim Doherty." Her brusque answer, shoving aside legal
caution, came on a note of regret that Mann thought could not be false.
Her mind precise, somewhat fanatic, Mrs. Jason would be a truth-teller
at any cost. Never knowingly unjust according to her own standards, she
might wish to temper duty with kindness, but her habits of self-rule
would not allow much of that. "Shall I tell of this in my own words?"
"Yes, please."
"Very early on the morning of May 12th, about two o'clock, I was walking
up Summer Avenue toward the junction with Walton Road. I take walks at
night sometimes, to observe the activities of wild things, also because
I sleep poorly. A short walk is sometimes helpful. I knew Mrs. Doherty
was away for a visit of a few days with her parents in Philadelphia, by
the way. As I walked down the road toward the Doherty house there were
no lights in it. I was wearing tennis shoes, walking quietly. Near the
Dohertys' driveway I heard the voices of Jim Doherty and Callista, both
very individual voices and of course familiar to me. They were standing
together in the drive. Jim's car was there, pointed toward the road.
Moonlight--I was partly hidden by roadside bushes--I'm sure they didn't
see or hear me. As I was about to retreat, they sat down on the grass
near the car and were then turned more toward me, would almost certainly
have seen me if I had moved. The--the situation was such that I could
not let them know I was there--too painful for all three of us."
"But I must now ask what if anything you saw or overheard."
"Oh--Jim said: 'What are we going to do?' And Callista said: 'There
aren't so many solutions, Jimmy. Find a little strength anyway, it isn't
the end of the world.' And he--I did not hear his answer."
"What else was said?"
"Callista said: 'The only real solution is one I'm not ready to face,
Jimmy.' I heard nothing else that she said."
"They were just sitting there on the grass?"
She frowned. Judge Mann saw her lips move.
"I'm afraid the jury didn't hear you, Mrs. Jason."
"I said, she was holding his head to her breast."
"Your witness, Mr. Warner."
Warner stood by the defense table, one hand maintaining contact with it.
"In that overheard conversation, Mrs. Jason, the name of Ann--Mrs.
Doherty--was not mentioned by either of them?"
"No, sir. I've repeated everything I heard."
"Did they learn of your presence there?"
"No. I slipped away. I saw the car--well, if it matters--"
"Go ahead."
"When I was nearly to my house, I saw the car come out of the drive and
go toward the Walton Road junction."
"All you learned, actually, was that some sort of love relation had
evidently developed between these two?"
"Yes, sir, that's all I learned."
"Mrs. Jason, I take you to be a literate person and a lover of truth. As
such, I ask you to consider the thing you've quoted Callista as saying:
'The only real solution is one I'm not ready to face.' Would you agree
that such a remark, made under the conditions you have described, could
be interpreted in many different ways?"
"Yes, certainly."
"For example, whatever it was she referred to may have seemed, at the
time, to a nineteen-year-old girl, like 'the only real solution,' and
yet the words don't give another person any actual clue as to what she
meant?"
"That's true."
"As a lover of truth, would you also agree that you do not know, at
first hand, one single fact, or group of facts, which would justify an
inference that the love relation between these two people was
responsible for the death two months later of Ann Doherty?"
T. J. Hunter was examining his fingernails with labored disgust. Mrs.
Jason said at last: "That is true. I know they were in love with each
other for a while; I know Ann died. So far as genuine knowledge is
concerned, that's all I do know, Mr. Warner."
"Thank you. No further questions."
If he had been defense counsel, Mann was thinking, he would probably
have gone too far with the woman, perhaps losing everything in the hope
of winning a little more. _For a lawyer I'm not the damn type._ And Mann
reminded himself that there is no type. You recognize a few general
patterns, but the simplest human individual is not to be duplicated in a
billion centuries.
A ruddy gray-haired man was being sworn in. Paunchy, scant of breath,
his prominent eyes had the directionless belligerency of a man in some
habitual dread of being laughed at. "Nathaniel Judd, sir, senior partner
in the firm of Judd and Doherty."
"The junior partner is Mr. James Doherty, correct?"
"Yes, sir. Since 1955."
"Your business is real estate and general insurance?"
"Yes, sir." Judd spoke breathily on a while about that. Overweight, poor
and changeable color, slow motions when his body's natural habit should
have been a jerky aggressiveness--maybe what he feared was not only
laughter. Jack, with his comprehensive doctor's glance, might have seen
Nathaniel Judd as a candidate for a coronary, if the man hadn't already
suffered one. Judd was telling how his only son, killed in action in
Korea, had been a close friend of James Doherty's overseas. Doherty had
written when the boy died, and had looked up Judd after his discharge.
"Much as anyone could," said short-breathed Judd, "he's been like
another son to me. Took him into the firm, 1955. Fine head for business.
Good boy. Sixty-one myself, not too active nowadays."
"Did you meet Mrs. Doherty also that year--1955?"
"Yes, sir, soon after they settled in Shanesville, they invited my wife
and me to dinner. Very nice. Met her then. Played bridge."
"Did you meet the Chalmers family then too? And Miss Blake?"
"That summer anyhow. Miss Blake was fifteen." For a lumpily modeled
face, Judd's was expressive. When he mentioned her, the blobby features
sagged.
"You went to a picnic at the Chalmerses', 7th of August, this year?"
"Yes. Can't add anything to what Ella Jason testified."
But Hunter fussed at it a while. Mann's attention wandered. No
individual like another, no one replaceable, not vague soft Judd for
instance or any other. A commonplace: why go on worrying at it,
insisting that no one is expendable? _Expendable_--the stink of that
word lingered from a war already part forgotten, obscured by a more vast
and quiet terror. Under the new terror the politics of 1959 had been
squirming in a fantastic display of the passions of a disturbed ant
hill. _Expendable_: well, the first to express this obscenity must have
been some thick-browed operator of prehistory, who found his fellows
could be manipulated by appropriate grunts and chest-thumpings into
doing a concerted job of skull-busting and rape on those Bad People with
a better campsite and interesting females. As the original inventor of
advertising was the one (man or woman?) who first got the idea of tying
a rag on the genitals.
Mann remembered how in the war years most people, having gagged a bit at
the gnat of that word _expendable_, had then swallowed the camel of the
fact with no great strain. _How does it happen that a man who
transferred to the Medics mostly out of distaste for carrying a rifle is
now a judge of General Sessions, in a state that keeps the death penalty
on the books?_
"Have you met Miss Blake often since she moved to Winchester?"
"No, sir, hardly at all. We--hadn't much in common."
"I see. No ill feeling between you, was there?"
"No, sir, not that. I get along with people--try to." Judd looked more
unhappy; perhaps he felt the prosecutor's silence pushing him.
"Well--when I thought about it at all--guess I supposed she'd outgrow
that cynical attitude, atheism, all that stuff."
"I object!" Warner spoke quietly and, for once, coldly. "Again the
prosecution allows a witness to express loose, incompetent opinions."
"Objection sustained."
Hunter elaborated a patient smile. Judd looked bewildered and dismayed:
what had _he_ done? Warner said: "My thanks to the Court. I will express
the hope that religious bias will not again be injected."