The reporter cast an anxious eye at the red-headed girl. “You’ve been
crying,” he said accusingly.
The red-headed girl looked unrepentant.
“Of all the little idiots! What’s Sue Ives to you?”
“Never mind,” said the red-headed girl with dignity. “I can cry if I
want to. I can cry all night if I want to. Keep quiet. Here she is!”
“Mrs. Ives, what made you decide to go on to the cottage?” Lambert’s
voice was very gentle.
“I think that it was Stephen’s idea, but I’m not absolutely sure. I
was at my wit’s end by this time, you see. But I believe that it was
Steve who suggested that maybe she had been taken ill or perhaps even
fallen asleep at the cottage. I remember agreeing that it was stupid
of us not to have thought of that before. At any rate, we both agreed
to go on to the cottage.”
She stopped again and sat for a moment locking and unlocking her
fingers, her eyes fixed on something far beyond the courtroom door.
“What time did you arrive at the cottage?”
“At about quarter past ten, I believe—twenty minutes past perhaps. It
isn’t more than a five-minute drive. We drove the car up through the
lodge gates and then turned off the little dirt road to the cottage.
We drove it right up to the front steps, and then I said, ‘It’s no
good; there’s no light in the place. She isn’t here.’ Steve said,
‘Maybe she left a note saying where she was going,’ and I said,
‘That’s perfectly possible. Let’s go in and see.’ He helped me out,
and just as we got to the door, I said, ‘Well, we’ll never know. The
place will be locked, of course.’ Steve had his hand on the door knob,
and he pushed it a little. He said, ‘No, it’s open. That’s queer.’ I
said, ‘Probably she thought that he might come later.’ And he opened
the door and we went in.”
She sat staring with that curious, intent rigidity at that far-off
spot beyond the other closed door, and the courtroom followed her
glance with uneasy eyes.
“And then?”
“Yes. And then when we got in there wasn’t any light, of course. Steve
asked, ‘Do you know where the switch is?’ And I told him, ‘There isn’t
any switch. Douglas has always been talking about putting electricity
in these cottages, but he never has.’ Steve said, ‘Well, there must be
a light somewhere,’ and I said, ‘Oh, of course there is. There always
used to be an old brass lamp here in the corner by the front
door—let’s see.’ It was right there on the same table. There were
matches there, too, and I struck one of them and lit it. Steve had
stepped by me into the room; he was standing by the door, and he stood
aside to let me pass. There was a little breeze from the open door,
and I had put up one hand to shield the light and keep it from
flickering. I was looking at the piano, because I’d never remembered
seeing a piano there before. I was half-way across the room before
I—before I——” The voice shuddered slowly away to silence.
After a long pause, Lambert asked, “Before you did what, Mrs. Ives?”
She gave a convulsive start, as though someone had let fall a heavy
hand across the nightmare. “Before I—saw her.”
The voice was hardly a whisper, but there was no one in the room
beyond the reach of its stilled horror.
“It was Mrs. Bellamy that you saw?”
“Yes, I——” She swallowed—tried to speak—swallowed again, and lifted a
hand to her throat. “I’m sorry. Might I have a glass of water? Is that
all right?”
In all that room no one stirred save the clerk of the Court, who
poured a glass of water with careful gravity and handed it up to her
over the edge of the box. She drank it slowly, as though she found in
this brief respite life itself. When she had finished it, she put it
down gently and said, “Thank you,” in a voice once more clear and
steady.
“You were telling us that you saw Mrs. Bellamy.”
“Yes. . . . I must have dropped the lamp immediately; all I remember
was that we were standing there in the dark. I heard Stephen say,
‘Don’t move. Where are the matches?’ He needn’t have told me not to
move. If I could have escaped death itself by stepping aside one inch
I could not have moved that inch. I said, ‘I have them here—in my
pocket.’ He said, ‘Strike one.’ I tried three times. The third time it
lit, and he went by me and knelt down beside her. He touched her wrist
and said, ‘Mimi, did it hurt? Did it hurt, darling?’ The match went
out and I started to strike another. He said, ‘Never mind. She’s
dead.’ I said, ‘I know it. Dead people can’t close their eyes, can
they?’ He said, ‘I have closed them. She’s been murdered. I got you
into this, Sue, and I’ll get you out of it. Where are you?’ I tried to
say, ‘Here,’ but I couldn’t. And then I thought that I heard something
move—outside—in the bushes—and I screamed.
“I’d never done that before in my life. It didn’t sound like me at
all. It sounded like someone quite different. Steve whispered, ‘For
God’s sake, be still.’ I said, ‘I heard someone moving.’ He said ‘It
was I, coming toward you. Give me your hand.’ His was so cold on my
wrist that it was horrible.
“I put my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming again, and he
pulled me through the hall and on to the porch. I said, ‘Steve, we
can’t leave her there like that—we can’t.’ He said, ‘She doesn’t need
us any more. Get in the car.’ I pulled back, and he said, ‘Listen to
me, Sue. It doesn’t make any difference how innocent we are, if it is
ever known that we were in that room this evening, we’ll never be able
to make one human being in God’s world believe that we aren’t
guilty—and we’ll have to make twelve of them believe. I’ve got to get
you home. Get into the car.’ So I got in, and he drove me home.”
She was silent, and the courtroom was silent too. To the red-headed
girl, it seemed as though for a space everyone had foregone even the
habit of breath and held it suspended until that voice should finish
its dreadful tale. She could see Patrick Ives in his corner by the
window. A long time ago he had buried his black head in his hands, and
he did not lift it now. His mother had placed one small gloved hand on
his knee. It rested there lightly, but she was not looking at him; her
eyes had never wavered from Sue Ives’s white face. Long ago the winter
roses had faded in her own, but it was as gravely and graciously
composed as on that first day.
“Did you drive straight home, Mrs. Ives?”
“Straight home. Stephen spoke two or three times; I don’t remember
saying anything at all. He told me to say that we’d driven over to
Lakedale, and then he said that everything would be all right, because
no one would know that Elliot had spoken to me, and no one could
possibly know that we had gone to the cottage. I remember nodding, and
then we were at our gate. Stephen said, ‘You might as well give me
that signal that we decided on before to let me know whether Pat’s
there; will you, Sue?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘You might ask him
whether he heard from her this evening.’ I said, ‘Steve, it isn’t us
that this is happening to, is it? It isn’t us—not Pat and you and I
and Mimi?’ He said, ‘Yes, it’s us. I’ll wait right here. Hurry, will
you?’
“I went into the house. All the lights were out except one in the
hall, but I went out through the study and the dining room to the
pantry. It connects with the servants’ quarters, and I wanted to make
sure that none of them were about, as I had to go up and unlock the
day nursery, and I was afraid that Kathleen Page might make a scene.
It was all dark and quiet; there wasn’t anyone there. I passed the ice
box as I came back, and I could see the fruit through the glass door.
I remembered that Pat couldn’t have taken it to Mother Ives, and I put
some on a plate and went upstairs. Her door was open; she always left
it open so that we could say good-night if we came in before eleven.”
“Were you with her long?”
“Oh, no, only a minute. I told her that Steve and I had driven over to
Lakedale instead of going to the movies, and kissed her good-night.
Then I went around the gallery and on up to the nursery wing. I
unlocked the door and pushed it open, but I didn’t go in. Pat was
sitting by the table, reading. The door to Miss Page’s room was
closed. He sat there looking at me for a moment, and then he stood up
and came into the hall, pulling the nursery door to behind him. He
said, ‘I didn’t know that you had it in you to play an ugly trick like
that, Sue.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know it either.’ I went down to the
study and lit the light—twice. I waited until I heard the car start,
and then I went up to my room and took off my clothes and went to bed.
There were several lights in the room, and I kept every one of them
burning until after the sun was up. In the morning I got up and
dressed and went to church, and it was just a little while after I got
home that we heard that Mimi’s body had been found. And Monday evening
both Stephen and I were put under arrest.”
She was silent for a moment, and then said in a small, exhausted
voice, “That’s all. Must I wait?”
Lambert said gravely and gently, “I’m afraid so. When was the first
time that you told this story, Mrs. Ives?”
“Night before last—to you—after they found my finger print, you know.”
“It is the full and entire account of how you spent the evening of the
nineteenth of June, 1926?”
“Yes.”
“To the best of your knowledge, you have omitted nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Thank you; that will be all. Cross-examine.”
Mr. Farr advanced leisurely toward the witness box and stood staring
thoughtfully for a long moment at its pale occupant. Under those
speculative eyes, the sagging shoulders straightened, the chin lifted.
“You were perfectly familiar with the gardener’s cottage, were you
not, Mrs. Ives?”
“Perfectly.”
“You remembered even where the lamp stood in the hall?”
“Yes. I used to go there often as a child.”
“Nothing had been changed since then?”
“I don’t know. I was only there for a few seconds.”
“Not long enough to notice a change of any kind whatever?”
“There was the piano; I remember that.”
She sat very straight, watching him with those wide, bright eyes as
though he were some strange and dangerous beast.
“Were you familiar with the back entrance from the River Road—to the
Thorne estate, Mrs. Ives?”
“Yes.”
“You could have found it at night quite easily?”
“You mean by the lights of the automobile?”
“Exactly.”
“Yes.”
“Were you aware that it was a shorter way to reach Orchards than going
back by way of Rosemont?”
“Oh, yes; it was about three miles shorter.”
“Why didn’t you take it?”
“Because when we were in Lakedale we had no idea of going to the
cottage. We didn’t think of it until long after we had returned to
Rosemont.”
“But why didn’t you think of it before? You knew that in all
probability Mrs. Bellamy was waiting for your husband at the cottage,
didn’t you?”
The question was asked in tones of the gentlest consideration, but the
sentinel watching from the dark eyes was suddenly alert.
“No, I didn’t know that at all. In the first place, I wasn’t sure that
she had gone there; in the second place, I wasn’t sure that she had
waited, even if she had gone.”
“There was no harm in making sure, was there?”
“I thought there was. My idea in seeing Stephen was to get him to talk
to Mimi; I hadn’t the faintest desire to take part in the humiliating
and painful scene that would have been inevitable if I had confronted
her.”
“I see. Still, you were willing to confront her in her own home,
weren’t you?”
“Yes.” She bit her lip in an effort to concentrate on that. “But that
wouldn’t have been tracking her down and spying on her, and by then——”
“‘Yes’ is an answer, Mrs. Ives.”
“You mean that it’s all the answer that you want?”
“Exactly.”
“You didn’t really want to know why I did it?”
Under the level irony of her glance the prosecutor’s eyes hardened.
“For your own good, Mrs. Ives, I suggest that you do not attempt to
bandy language with me. You were not only willing to see her in her
home but not long after you went to seek her in the cottage, did you
not?”
“Yes. By that time we were both desperately worried and I put my own
wishes aside.”
“You wish us to understand that you went there on an errand of mercy?”
“I am not asking you to understand anything. I was simply telling you
why we went.”
“Exactly. Now, when you got to the cottage, Mrs. Ives, you say there
was no light?”
“There was no light.”
“But you fortunately remembered that this lamp was in the hall?”
“Fortunately?” repeated Susan Ives slowly, “I remembered that there
was a lamp in the hall.”
“How long has it been since you were at Orchards?”
“I have not been there since my marriage—not for seven years.”
“How long since you were in the cottage?”
“I’m not sure—possibly a year or so before that.”
“Were you a child nine years ago?”
“A child? I was over twenty.”
“I thought you told us that it was as a child that you went to the
cottage.”
“I went occasionally after I was older. I was very fond of the old
gardener and his wife. They were German and very sensitive after the
outbreak of the war. We all used to go down from time to time to try
to cheer them up.”
“Very considerate indeed—another errand of mercy. But about this lamp,
now, that you remembered so providentially after nine years. You are
quite sure that it wasn’t in the front parlour?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“It couldn’t have been standing on the little table that was
overturned by Mimi Bellamy’s fall?”
“How could it possibly have been standing there?”
“I was asking you. You are perfectly sure that it wasn’t standing on
that table, lighted, when you came in?”
“I see.” The unwavering eyes burned brighter with that clear disdain.
“I didn’t quite understand. You mean am I lying, don’t you? I have
told you the truth; the lamp was on the table in the hall.”
“Your Honour, I ask to have that reply stricken from the record as
unresponsive.”
“It may be stricken from the record to the point where the witness
says, ‘The lamp was on the table in the hall.’” Judge Carver stared
down with stern, troubled eyes at the clear, unflinching face lifted
to his. “Mrs. Ives, the Court again assures you that you do yourself
no service by such replies and that they are entirely out of order. It
requests that you refrain from them.”
“I will try to, Your Honour.”
“Mrs. Ives, you have told us that when you were standing in darkness
you heard a sound that frightened you. Was it someone trying the
door?”
“Oh, no; the door was open. It wasn’t anything as clear as that. I
thought first that it was someone moving in the bushes, but it was
probably simply my imagination.”
“You didn’t hear anyone whistling?”
“No.”
“You are quite sure that neither of you locked the door?”
“Absolutely. Why should we lock the door?”
“I must remind you again, Mrs. Ives, that it is I who am examining
you. Now, you say that you went into the room ahead of Mr. Bellamy?”
“Yes.”
“How far were you from the body when you first saw it?”
In the paper-white face the eyes dilated, suddenly, dreadfully. “I
don’t know. Quite near—three feet—four feet.”
“You suspected that she was dead?”
“I knew that she was dead. Her eyes were wide open.”
“You did not go nearer to her than those three or four feet?”
“No.” She forced the word through her lips with a dreadful effort.
“You did not touch her?”
“No—no.”
“Then how did the bloodstains get on your coat?”
At the sharp clang of that triumphant cry she shuddered and turned and
came back to him slowly from the small, haunted room. “Bloodstains?
There were no bloodstains on my coat.”
“Do you still claim that the coat that you smuggled out of your house
Sunday morning was stained with grease from Mr. Bellamy’s car?”
“No—no, I don’t claim that.”
“That’s prudent of you, as Sergeant Johnson has testified that there
was no grease whatever on the car.”
“I meant to explain that before,” said Sue Ives simply. “Only there
were so many other things that I forgot. It was kerosene from the
lamp—the coat was covered with it. I didn’t know how to explain it, so
I thought that I had better get rid of it.”
“I see,” said the prosecutor grimly. “You’re a very resourceful young
woman, aren’t you?”
“No,” said the clear, grave voice. “I don’t think that I’m
particularly resourceful.”
“I differ from you. . . . Mrs. Ives, you didn’t intend to tell this
jury that you had been in the gardener’s cottage on the night of the
nineteenth of June, did you?”
“Not if I could avoid doing so without perjuring myself.”
“You decided to do so only when you were literally forced to it by
information that you found was in the state’s possession?”
“It is hard for me to answer that by yes or no,” said Susan Ives. “But
I suppose that the fairest answer to it is yes.”
“You had decided to withhold this vitally important information
because you and Stephen Bellamy had together reached the conclusion
that no twelve sane men could be found to accept the fantastic
coincidence that you and he were in the room in which this murder was
committed within a few minutes of this crime, and yet had nothing
whatever to do with it?”
“I think that again the answer should be yes.”
“You are still of that opinion?”
“I no longer have any opinion.”
“Why should you have changed your opinion that twelve sane men could
not possibly believe your story?”
“I do not know whether they will believe me or not,” said Sue Ives,
her eyes, fearless and unswerving, on the twelve stolid, inscrutable
countenances raised to hers. “You see, I don’t know how true truth
sounds.”
“I should imagine not,” said the prosecutor, his voice cruelly smooth.
“No further questions.”
And at that Parthian shot the white lips in the white face before him
curved suddenly and amazingly into the lovely irony of a smile, a last
salute over the drawn swords before they were sheathed.
“That will be all,” said Lambert’s voice gently. “You may stand down.”
For a moment she did not move, but sat staring down with dark eyes to
which the smile had not quite reached, at the twelve enigmatic
countenances before her—at the slack, careless young one on the far
end; the grim elderly one next to it; the small, deep-set eyes above
the heavy jowls of that flushed one in the centre; the sleek attentive
pallor of the one next to the door. She opened her lips as though to
speak again, closed them with a small shake of her head, swept up
gloves, bag and fur with one swift gesture, and without a backward
glance was gone, moving across the cluttered space between her chair
and the box with that light, sure step that seemed always to move
across green grass, through sunlight and a little wind. She did not
even look at Stephen Bellamy, but in the little space between their
chairs their hands met once and clenched in greeting and swung free.
“Your Honour,” said Lambert, in the quiet, tired voice so many leagues
removed from the old boom, “in view of Mrs. Ives’s evidence, I would
like to have Mr. Bellamy take the stand once more. I have only one or
two questions to put to him.”
“He may take the stand,” said Judge Carver impassively.
He took it steadily, the white face of horror that he had turned from
the day before schooled once more to the old courtesy and quiet.
“Mr. Bellamy, you have heard Mrs. Ives’s evidence as to the
circumstance that led up to your visit to the gardener’s cottage and
of the visit to the cottage itself. Is her description is accord with
your own recollection?”
“In complete accord.”
“You would not change it in any particular?”
“No. It is absolutely accurate.”
“Nor add to it?”
“Yes. There is something that I believe that I should add. Mrs. Ives
was not aware of the fact that I returned to the cottage again that
night.”
If Lambert also was not aware of it, he gave no sign. “For what
purpose?”
“I had no definite purpose—I did not wish to leave my wife alone in
the cottage.”
“At what time did you return?”
“Very shortly after I left Mrs. Ives at her home. I actually didn’t
know what I was doing. I took the wrong turn in the back road and
drove around for a bit before I got straightened out, but it couldn’t
have been for very long.”
“How long did you stay?”
“Until it began to get light; I didn’t look at the time.”
“You did not disturb the contents of the cottage in any way?”
“No; I left everything exactly as it was.”
“Nor remove anything?”
“Nothing—nothing whatever.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bellamy. That will be all, unless Mr. Farr has any
questions.”
“As a matter of fact, I have one or two questions,” remarked Mr. Farr,
leisurely but grim. “You, too, are highly resourceful, Mr. Bellamy,
aren’t you?”
“I should hardly say that I had proved myself so.”
“Well, you can reassure yourself. That extra set of automobile tires
had to be accounted for, hadn’t they?”
“I should have accounted for them in any case.”
“Should you, indeed? That’s very interesting, but hardly a responsive
answer to my question. I’ll be grateful if you don’t make it necessary
for me to pull you up on that again. Now, you say that you didn’t
touch anything in the cottage?”
“I said that I did not disturb anything.”
“Oh, you touched something, did you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I touched her hand.”
“I see. You were looking for the rings?”
“No. I didn’t think of the rings.”
“They were still there?”
“Until you asked me this minute I had not thought of them. I do not
believe that they were there.”
“Mr. Bellamy, I put it to you that you returned to that cottage with
the express purpose of removing those rings, the necklace, and any
traces that you or Mrs. Ives may have left behind you in your previous
flight?”
“You are wrong; I did not return for any of those purposes.”
“Then for what purpose?”
“Because I did not wish to leave my wife alone.”
“You consider that a plausible explanation?”
“Oh, no; simply a true one.”
“She was dead, wasn’t she?”
“She was dead.”
“You knew that?”
“Yes.”
“You knew that you couldn’t do anything for her, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure.” The voice was as quiet as ever, but once more the
ripple of the clenched teeth showed in the cheek. “She was afraid of
the dark.”
“Of the dark?”
“Yes; she was afraid to be alone in the dark.”
“She was dead, wasn’t she?”
“Yes—yes, she was dead.”
“You ask us to believe that you spent hours in momentary danger of
arrest for murder because a woman who was stone dead had been afraid
of the dark when she was alive?”
“No. I don’t ask you to believe anything,” said Stephen Bellamy
gently. “I was simply telling you what happened.”
“You say that you didn’t touch anything else in the cottage?”
“Nothing else.”
“How could you find your way about without a light?”
“I had a light; I took the flashlight from my car.”
“So that you could make a thorough search of the premises for anything
that had been left behind?”
“We had left nothing behind.”
“But you couldn’t have been sure of that, could you? A knife, perhaps?
A knife’s an easy thing to lose.”
“We had no knife.”
Mr. Farr greeted this statement with an expression of profound
skepticism. “Now, before I ask you to step down, Mr. Bellamy, I want
to make sure that you haven’t one final installment to add for our
benefit. That’s all that you have to tell us?”
“That is all.”
“Sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“This continued story that you have been presenting to us from day to
day has reached its absolutely ultimate installment?”
“I have already said that I have nothing to add to my statement.”
“And this is the same story that you were so sure that no twelve sane
men in the world would believe, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It isn’t necessary to prove to me that I have been the fool of
the world,” said Stephen Bellamy quietly. “I willingly admit it. My
deepest regret is that my folly has involved Mrs. Ives too.”
“You have had no cause to revise your opinion as to the skepticism
that your account of that night’s doings would arouse in any twelve
sane men, have you?”
“Oh, yes, I have had excellent reason completely to revise it.”
The low, pleasant voice seemed to jar on the prosecutor as violently
as a bomb. “And what reason, may I ask?”
“At the time that I arrived at that conclusion I had naturally had no
opportunity to hear Mrs. Ives on the witness stand. Now that I have,
it seems absolutely impossible to me that anyone could fail to believe
her.”
“That must be extremely reassuring for you,” remarked Mr. Farr in a
voice so heavily charged with irony that it came close to cracking
under the strain. “That will be all, thank you, Mr. Bellamy.”
Mr. Lambert rose slowly to his feet. “The defense rests,” he said.
The red-headed girl watched them filing out through the door at the
back without comment, and without comment she accepted the cake of
chocolate and the large red apple. She consumed them in the same
gloomy silence, broken only by an occasional furtive sniff and the
application of a minute and inadequate handkerchief.
“You promised me last night,” said the reporter accusingly, “that if
I’d go home you’d stop crying and be reasonable and sensible and——”
“I’m not crying,” said the red-headed girl—“not so that anybody would
notice anything at all if they weren’t practically spying on me. It’s
simply that I’m a little tired and not exactly cheerful.”
“Oh, it’s simply that, is it? Would you like my handkerchief too?” The
red-headed girl accepted it ungratefully.
“The worst thing about a murder trial,” she said, “is that it
practically ruins everybody’s life. It’s absolutely horrible. They’re
all going along peacefully and quietly, and the first thing they know
they’re jerked out of their homes and into the witness box, and things
that they thought were safe and hidden and sacred are blazoned out in
letters three inches tall in every paper in the . . . That poor little
Platz thing, and that wretched Farwell man, and poor little Mrs. Ives
with her runaway husband, and Orsini with his jail sentence—it isn’t
decent! What have they done?”
The reporter said, “What, indeed?” in the tone of one who has not
heard anything but the last three words. After a moment he inquired
thoughtfully. “Have you ever thought about getting married?”
The red-headed girl felt her heart miss two beats and then race away
like a wild thing. She said candidly, “Oh, often—practically all the
time. All nice girls do.”
“Do they?” inquired the reporter in a tone of genuine surprise. “Men
don’t—hardly ever.” He continued to look at her abstractedly for quite
a long time before he added, “Only about once in their lives.”
He was looking at her still when the door behind the witness box
opened.
“Your Honour”—the lines in Mr. Lambert’s face stood out relentlessly,
but his voice was fresh and strong—“gentlemen of the jury, it is not
my intention to take a great amount of your time, in spite of the fact
that there devolves on me as solemn a task as falls to the lot of any
man—that of pleading with you for the precious gift of human life. I
do not believe that the solemnity of that plea is enhanced by undue
prolixity, by legal hairsplitting or by a confusion of issues
essentially and profoundly simple. The evidence in the case has been
intricate enough. I shall not presume to analyze it for you. It is
your task, and yours alone, to scrutinize, weigh, and dispose of it.
On the other hand, the case presents almost no legal intricacies; any
that are present will be expounded to you by Judge Carver when the
time comes.
“When all is said and all is done, gentlemen, it is a very simple
question that you have to decide—as simple as it is grave and
terrible. The question is this: Do you believe the story that Stephen
Bellamy and Susan Ives have told you in this courtroom? Is their story
of what happened on that dreadful night a reasonable, a convincing and
an honest explanation as to how they became involved in the tragic
series of events that has blown through their peaceful homes like a
malignant whirlwind, wrecking all their dearest hopes and their
dearest realities? I believe that there can be but one answer to that
question, and that not so long from now you will have given that
answer, and that every heart in this courtroom will be the lighter for
having heard it.
“These two have told you precisely the same story. That Stephen
Bellamy did not go quite to the end with it in the first instance is a
circumstance that I deplore as deeply as any one of you, but I do not
believe that you will hold it against him. He did not, remember, utter
one syllable that was not strictly and accurately truthful. It had
been agreed between them that if it were necessary to swerve one
hairbreadth from the truth, they would not swerve that hairbreadth.
“In persuading Mrs. Ives that her only safety lay in not admitting
that she had been in the cottage that night, Mr. Bellamy made a grave
mistake in judgment, but it was the mistake of a chivalrous and
distraught soul, literally overwhelmed at the ghastly situation into
which the two of them had been so incredibly precipitated.
“As for Susan Ives, she was so shaken with horror to the very roots of
her being—so stunned, so confused and confounded—that she was
literally moving through a nightmare during the few days that preceded
her arrest; and, gentlemen, in a nightmare the best of us do not think
with our accustomed clarity and cogency. She did what she was told to
do, and she was told that it would make my task easier if I did not
know that she had been near the cottage that night. That, alas,
settled it for her once and for all. She has always sought to make my
tasks easier.
“Stephen Bellamy undoubtedly remembered the old precept that it takes
two to tell the truth—one to speak it and one to hear it. Possibly he
believed that if there were two to speak it and twelve to hear it, it
would be a more dangerous business. I do not agree with him. I believe
that twelve attentive and intelligent listeners—as you have amply
proved yourselves to be—make the best of all forums at which to
present the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is
my belief, that was my considered advice, and it is my profound
conviction that before many hours have passed I shall be justified of
my belief.
“Perhaps you have guessed that my relations to Susan Ives are not the
ordinary relations of counsel to client. Such, at any rate, is the
case, and I do not shirk one of its implications. There is no tie of
blood between us, but I am bound to her by every other tie of
affection and admiration. I can say that I believe she is as dear to
me as any daughter,—dearer, perhaps, than any daughter, because she is
what most men only dream that their daughter may be. For the first
time in my life I have offended her since I came to this
court—offended her because she believed that I was more loyal to her
welfare than her wishes. But she will forgive me even for that,
because she knows that I am only a stupid old man who would give every
hope that he has of happiness to see hers fulfilled, and who, when he
pleads for her life to-day, is pleading for something infinitely
dearer to him than his own.
“If, later, you say to one another and to yourselves, ‘The old man is
prejudiced in her favour; we must take that into account,’ I say to
you, ‘And so you must—and so you must—well into account.’ I am
prejudiced because I have known her since she was so small that she
did not come to my knee; because I have watched her with unvarying
wonder and devotion from the days that she used to cling to me,
weeping because her black kitten had hurt its paw, or radiant because
there was a new daisy in her garden; because I have watched her from
those bright, joyous days to these dark and terrible ones, and never
once have I found a trace of alloy in her gold. I have found united in
her the traits we seek in many different forms—all the gallantry and
honesty of a little boy, all the gaiety and grace of a little girl,
all the loyalty and courage of a man, all the tenderness and beauty of
a woman. If you think I am prejudiced in her favour you will be right,
gentlemen. And if that fact prejudices me in your eyes, make the most
of it.
“Of Stephen Bellamy I will say only this: If I had a daughter I would
ask nothing more of destiny than that such a man should seek her for
his wife—and you may make the most of that too.
“On this subject I will not touch again, I promise. It is not part and
parcel of the speech of counsel for the defense to the jury in a
murder trial to touch on his feeling toward his clients. I am grateful
for the indulgence of both the Court and the prosecution in permitting
me to dwell on them at some length. During the course of Mrs. Ives’s
examination something as to our relation was inadvertently disclosed.
In any case, I should have considered it my duty to inform you of it,
as well as of every other fact in this case. I have now done so.
“A few days ago I said to you that Susan Ives was rich in many things.
When I said that I was not thinking of money; I was referring to
things that are the treasured possessions, the precious heritage, of
many a humble and modest soul. Love, peace, beauty, security,
serenity, health—these the least of us may have. As I have said, I am
pretty close to being an old man now, and in my time I have heard much
talk of class feeling and class hatred. I have even been told that it
is difficult to get justice for the rich from the poor or mercy for
the poor from the rich. I believe both these statements to be equally
vile and baseless slanders.
“In this great country of which you and I are proud and privileged
citizens, we are all rich—rich in opportunity and in liberty—and there
is no room in our hearts for grudging envy, for warped malice. We do
not say, ‘This woman is rich; she has breeding; she has intelligence
and culture and position, therefore she is guilty.’ We do not say,
‘This man is a graduate of one of our greatest universities. Five
generations of his ancestors have owned land in this country, and have
lived on it honourably and decently, gentlefolk of repute and power in
their communities; he is the possessor of a distinguished name and a
distinguished record, therefore he is a murderer!’ We do not say that.
No; you and I and the man in the street say, ‘It is impossible that
two people with this life behind them and a richer and finer one
before them should stoop to so low and foul a weapon as an assassin’s
knife and a coward’s blow in the dark.’
“But even in the strictly material sense of wealth, Mrs. Ives is not a
wealthy woman. I should like, in the simple interests of truth, to
dispel the legends of a marble heart moving through marble halls that
has been growing about her. She has lived for several happy years in
what you have heard described to you as a farm house—a simple,
unpretentious place that she made lovely with bright hangings and open
fires and books and prints and flowers. If you had rung her doorbell
before that fatal day in June, no powdered flunky would have opened it
to you. It might have been opened by Mrs. Ives herself, or by Mr.
Ives’s mother, or by a little maid in a neat dark frock and a white
apron. Whoever had opened it to you, you would have found within a
charming and friendly simplicity that might well cause you a little
legitimate envy; you would have found nothing more.
“Sue Ives had what all your wives have, I hope—flowers in her garden,
babies in her nursery, sunshine in her windows. With these any woman
is rich, and so was she. As for Stephen Bellamy, he had no more than
any good clerk or mechanic—a little house, a little car, a little maid
of all work to help his pretty wife. That much for the legend of pride
and pomp and power and uncounted millions that has grown up about
these two. In the public press this legend has flourished
extravagantly; it is of little concern to you or to any of us, save in
so far as the preservation of truth is the concern of every one of us.
“The story that you have heard from the lips of Mrs. Ives and Mr.
Bellamy is a refutation of every charge that has been brought against
them. It is a fearless, straightforward, circumstantial and coherent
account of their every action on the evening of that terrible and
momentous night. Granted that every witness produced by the state here
in order to confound and confuse them has spoken the absolute and
exact truth—a somewhat extravagant claim, some of you may feel—granted
even that, however, still you will find not one word of their
testimony that is not perfectly consistent with the explanation of
their actions that evening offered you by the defendants.
“Not only does the state’s testimony not conflict with ours—it
corroborates it. The overheard telephone conversation, the knife from
the study, the stained flannel coat, the visit to Stephen Bellamy’s
house, the tire tracks in the mud outside the cottage, the
fingerprints on the lamp within—there is the state’s case, and there
also, gentlemen, is ours. These sinister facts, impressive and
terrible weapons in the state’s hands, under the clear white light of
truth become a very simple, reasonable and inevitable set of
circumstances, fully explained and fully accounted for. The more
squarely you look at them, the more harmless they become. I ask you to
subject them to the most careful and severe scrutiny, entirely
confident as to the result.
“The state will tell you, undoubtedly, that in spite of what you have
heard, the fact remains that Susan Ives and Stephen Bellamy had the
means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit this crime. It is our
contention that they had nothing of the kind. No weapon has been
traced to either of them; it would have been to all intents and
purposes physically impossible for them to reach the gardener’s
cottage, execute this murder and return to Stephen Bellamy’s house
between the time that the gasoline vender saw them leave Lakedale and
the time that Orsini saw them arrive at Mr. Bellamy’s home—a scant
forty minutes, according to the outside figures of their own
witnesses; not quite twenty-five according to ours.
“But take the absolute substantiated forty-minute limit—from 9:15 to
9:55. You are asked to believe that in that time they hurled
themselves in a small rickety car over ten miles, possibly more, of
unfamiliar roads in total darkness, took a rough dirt cut-off, groped
their way through the back gates of the Thorne place to the little
road that led to the cottage, got out, entered the cottage, became
involved in a bitter and violent scene with Mimi Bellamy which
culminated in her death by murder; remained there long enough to map
out a campaign which involved removing her jewels from her dead body,
while fabricating an elaborate alibi—and also long enough to permit
Mr. Thorne, who has arrived on the piazza, ample time to get well on
his way; came out, got back into the invisible automobile and arrived
at Mr. Bellamy’s house, three miles away, at five minutes to ten.
Gentlemen, does this seem to you credible? I confess that it seems to
me so incredible—so fantastically, so grotesquely incredible—that I am
greatly inclined to offer you an apology for going into it at such
length. So much for the means, so much for the opportunity; now for
the motive.
“There, I think, we touch the weakest point in the state’s case
against these two. That the state itself fully grasps its weakness, I
submit, is adduced from the fact that not one witness they have put on
the stand has been asked a single question that would tend to
establish either of the motives ascribed to them by the state—widely
differing motives, alike only in their monstrous absurdity. It is the
state’s contention, if it still cleaves to the theory originally
advanced, that Madeleine Bellamy was murdered by Susan Ives because
she feared poverty, and that she was aided and abetted by Stephen
Bellamy in this bloody business because he was crazed by jealousy.
“I ask you to consider these two propositions with more gravity and
concentration than they actually merit, because on your acceptance or
rejection of them depends your acceptance or rejection of the guilt of
these two. You cannot dismiss them as too absurd for any earthly
consideration. You cannot say, ‘Oh, of course that wasn’t the reason
they killed her, but that’s not our concern; there may have been
another reason that we don’t know anything about.’ No, fortunately for
us, you cannot do that.
“These, preposterous as they are, are the only motives suggested; they
are the least preposterous ones that the state could find to submit to
you. If you are not able to accept them the state’s case crumbles to
pieces before your eyes. If you look at it attentively for as much as
thirty seconds, I believe that you will see it crumbling. What you are
asked to believe is this: That for the most sordid, base, mercenary
and calculating motives—the desire to protect her financial future
from possible hazard—Susan Ives committed a cruel, wicked, and bloody
murder.
“For two hours you listened to Susan Ives speaking to you from that
witness box. If you can believe that she is sordid, base, calculating,
mercenary, cruel, and bloody, I congratulate you. Such power of
credulity emerges from the ranks of mere talent into those of sheer
genius.
“Stephen Bellamy, you are told, was her accomplice—driven stark,
staring, raving mad by the most bestial, despicable, and cowardly form
of jealousy. You have heard Stephen Bellamy, too, from that witness
box, telling you of the anguish of despair that filled him when he
thought that harm had befallen his beloved—if you can believe that he
is despicable, cowardly, bestial, and mad, then undoubtedly you are
still able to believe in a world tenanted by giants and fairies and
ogres and witches and dragons. Not one of them would be so strange a
phenomenon as the transformation of this adoring, chivalrous, and
restrained gentleman into the base villain that you are asked to
accept.
“The state’s case, gentlemen! It crumbles, does it not? It crumbles
before your eyes. Means, motives, opportunity—look at them steadily
and clearly and they vanish into thin air.
“If means, motives, and opportunity constitute a basis for an
accusation of murder, this trial might well end in several arrests
that would be as fully justified as the arrests of Susan Ives and
Stephen Bellamy. I make no such accusations; I am strong and sure and
safe enough in the proved innocence of these two to feel no need of
summoning others to the bar of justice. That is neither my duty nor my
desire, but it would be incompatible with the desire for abstract
truth not to point out that far stronger hypothetical cases might be
made out against several whose paths also have crossed the path of the
ill-starred girl who died in that cottage.
“We come as close to establishing as perfect an alibi as it is likely
that innocent people, little suspecting that one will be called for,
would be able to establish. What alibi had practically anyone who has
appeared against these two for that night? The knife that Dr. Stanley
described to you might have been one of various types—such a knife as
might have been well discovered in a tool chest, in a kitchen drawer,
in the equipment of a sportsman.
“You have analyzed the motives ascribed to the defendants. I submit
that, taken at random, three somewhat solider motives might be robbery
or blackmail or drunken jealousy. When one possible witness removes
himself to Canada, when another takes his life—they are safely out of
reach of our jurisdiction, but not beyond the scope of our
speculations. I submit that these specifications are at least fruitful
of interest. Abandoning them, however, I suggest to you that that
girl, young, beautiful, fragile, and unprotected in that isolated
cottage with jewels at her throat and on her fingers, was the natural
prey of any nameless beast roving in the neighbourhood—one who had
possibly stalked her from the time that she left her house, one who
had possibly been prowling through the grounds of this deserted estate
on some business, sinister or harmless. Ostensibly this was a case of
murder for robbery; it remains still the simplest and most natural
explanation—too simple and too natural by half for a brilliant
prosecutor, an ambitious police force, and frenzied public, all
clamouring for a victim.
“Well, they have had their victims; I hope that they do not sleep
worse at night for the rest of their lives when they think of the
victims that they selected.
“Two things the state has made no attempt to explain—who it was that
stole the note from Patrick Ives’s study and who it was that laughed
when Madeleine Bellamy screamed. Whoever took the note, it was not
Susan Ives. She had no possible motive in denying having taken it; she
freely admitted that she searched the study for some proof of her
husband’s duplicity, and she also admitted that Elliot Farwell had
informed her that he believed her husband was meeting Madeleine
Bellamy at the cottage that very night. The note, which we presume was
making a rendezvous, would in no way have added to her previous
information. Any one of six or eight servants or six or eight guests
may have intercepted it; whoever did so knew when and where Madeleine
Bellamy was to be found that night.
“The laugh is more baffling and disconcerting still; the state must
find it mightily so. It will be instructive to see whether they are
going to ask you to believe that it was uttered by Stephen Bellamy as
he saw his wife fall. In my opinion only a degenerate or a drunken
monster would have chosen that moment for mirth. Possibly it is Mr.
Farr’s contention that he was both. Providentially, that is for you
and not for him to decide.
“The state has still another little matter to explain to your
satisfaction. According to its theory, Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives
arrived at the scene of the crime in a car—in Mr. Bellamy’s car. The
murderer of Madeleine Bellamy did not arrive in a car—or at any rate,
no car was visible two minutes later in that vicinity. There were no
tire tracks in the space behind the house, and the state’s own
witnesses have proved that on both Stephen Bellamy’s visits his car
was left squarely in front of the cottage door. If someone left an
unlighted car parked somewhere down the main drive, as the state
contends, it was not he. His car would have been clearly visible to
any human being who approached the cottage. It will, as I say, be
instructive to see how the state disposes of this vital fact.
“I have touched on these matters because I have desired to make clear
to you two or three factors that are absolutely incompatible with any
theory that the state has advanced. If they are to be disposed of in
the most remotely plausible fashion, some other theory must be
evolved, and I believe that you will agree with me that it is rather
late in the day to produce another theory. I have not touched on
them—and I wish to make this perfectly clear—on the ground that they
are in no way necessary to our defense. That defense is not dependent
on such intriguing details as who took the note, or who laughed, or
whether the murderer approached his goal on foot or in a car. The
defense that I advance is simple and straightforward and independent
of any other circumstances.
“Of all the things that I have said to you, there is only one that I
hold it essential that you carry in the very core of your memory when
you leave this room on as solemn an errand as falls to the lot of any
man. This only: That the sole defense that I plead for Stephen Bellamy
and Susan Ives is that they are innocent—as entirely and unequivocally
innocent as any man of you in whose hands rests their fate; that this
foul and brutal murder was against their every wish, hope, or desire;
that it is to them as ghastly, as incredible, and as mysterious as it
is to you. That and that only is their defense.
“It is not my task, as you know—as in time Judge Carver will tell
you—to prove them innocent. It is the state’s to prove them guilty. A
heavy task they will find it, I most truly believe. But I would have
you find them something more than not guilty. That is the verdict that
you may render with your lips, but with your hearts I ask you to
render another more generous and ungrudgingly. ‘Innocent’—a lovely,
valiant, and fearless word, a word untainted by suspicion or malice. A
verdict that has no place in any court, but I believe that all who
hear your lips pronounce ‘Not guilty’ will read it in your eyes. I
pray that they may.
“I said to you that when you left this room you would be bound on the
most solemn of all errands. I say to you now that when you return you
may well be bound on the most beautiful one imaginable—you will return
in order to give life to two who have stood in the shadow of death.
Life!
“You cannot give back to Susan Ives something that she has lost—a
golden faith and carefree security, a confidence in this world and all
its works. You cannot give back to Stephen Bellamy the dead girl who
was his treasure and delight, about whose bright head clustered all
his dreams. You cannot give back to them much that made life sweetest,
but, gentlemen, you can give them life. You can restore to them the
good earth, the clean air, the laughter of children, the hands of
love, starlight and firelight and sunlight and moonlight—and brightest
of all, the light of home shining through windows long dark. All these
things you hold in your hands. All these things are yours to give.
Gentlemen, I find it in my heart to envy you greatly that privilege,
to covet greatly that opportunity.”
He sat down, slowly and heavily, and through the room there ran an
eager murmur of confidence and ease, a swift slackening of tension, a
shifting of suspense. And as though in answer to it, Farr was on his
feet. He stood silent for a moment, his hands clasped over the back of
the chair before him, his eyes, brilliantly inscrutable, sweeping the
upturned faces before him. When he lifted his voice, the familiar
clang was muted:
“Your Honour, gentlemen, when my distinguished adversary rose to
address you an hour or so ago, he assured you that he was about to
take very little of your time. We would none of us grudge him one
moment that he has subsequently taken. He is waging a grim and
desperate battle, and moments and even hours seem infinitesimal
weapons to interpose between those two whose defense is intrusted to
him, and who stand this day in peril of their lives on the awful brink
of eternity itself.
“The plea that has made to you is as eloquent and moving a one as you
will hear in many a long day; it is my misfortune that the one that I
am about to make must follow hard on its heels, and will necessarily
be shorn of both eloquence and emotion. It will be the shorter for
lack of them, but not the better. What I lack in oratory I shall
endeavour to supply in facts: facts too cold, hard, and grim to make
pleasant hearing—still, facts. It is my unwelcome duty to place them
before you; I shall not shrink from it. It will not be necessary for
me to elaborate on them. They will speak for themselves more
eloquently than I could ever hope to do, and I propose to let them do
so.
“Before I marshal them before you, I will dispose as briefly as
possible of two or three issues that Mr. Lambert has seen fit to raise
in his speech to you. First, as to the wealth of Mrs. Ives. I cannot
see that the fact that she is wealthy is in any way a vital issue in
this case, but Mr. Lambert evidently considered it sufficiently
important to dwell on at considerable length. He managed very
skilfully to place before you the picture of a modest little farmhouse
with roses clambering over a cottage gate, presided over by an even
more modest chatelaine. Very idyllic and utterly and absolutely
misleading.
“The little farmhouse is a mansion of some twenty-odd rooms, the roses
grow in a sunken garden as large as a small park; not many cottages
boast a swimming pool, a tennis court, a bowling green and a garage
for five cars—but Mrs. Ives’s cottage took these simple improvements
as a matter of course. Mr. Lambert drew your attention to the fact
that if you had rung a door-bell the lady herself might have hastened
to welcome your summons, and, he implies, to welcome you in to see how
simply she lived.
“I doubt profoundly whether Mrs. Ives ever opened her door in her life
unless she was intending to pass through it, and I doubt even more
profoundly whether you would ever have been requested to cross the
threshold of her home. Mr. Lambert did admit that the bell might have
been answered by a little maid, but he failed to specify which one of
the five little maids it might have been. He added, in an even more
lyric vein, that Susan Ives had no more than any of your wives—no more
than roses in her garden, sunlight in her windows, babies in her
nursery. I confess myself somewhat taken aback. Are your wives the
possessors of an acre of roses, a hundred windows to let in sunshine,
a day and night nursery for your babies to play in, with a governess
in still a third room to supervise their play? If such is the case,
you are fortunate indeed.
“As for Stephen Bellamy, Mr. Lambert has assured you that any mechanic
in the land was as well off as he. Well, possibly. The mechanics that
I know don’t have maids to help their pretty wives, and gardeners to
sleep over their pretty garages, but perhaps the ones that you know
do.
“So much for the wealth of the defendants. I said at the outset that
it was a matter of no great importance, and in one sense it is not; in
a deeper sense, it is of the greatest possible significance. Not that
Susan Ives was, in the strictest sense of the word, a wealthy woman,
but because of the alchemy that had been wrought in her by the
sinister magic of what we may call the golden touch.
“You all know the legend of Midas, I am sure—the tale of that unhappy
king who wished that every object that his fingers rested on might
turn to gold, and whose fingers strayed one day to his little
daughter’s hair and transformed her into a small statue—beautiful,
shining, brilliant, but cold and hard and inhuman as metal itself.
Long ago Curtiss Thorne’s fingers must have rested on his little
daughter’s hair, and what he made of his child then the woman is
to-day. The product of pride, of power, of privilege, of riches—Susan
Ives, proud, powerful, privileged, and rich—the golden girl, a
charming object of luxury in the proper surrounding, a useless
encumbrance out of them.
“No one knew this better than the golden girl herself—she had had
bitter cause to know it, remember; and on that fatal summer afternoon
in June a drunken breath set the pedestal rocking beneath her feet.
She moved swiftly down from that pedestal, with the firm intention of
making it steady for all time. It is not the gold that we hold in our
hands that is a menace and a curse, gentlemen—not the shining counters
that we may change for joy and beauty and health and mercy—it is the
cold metal that has grown into our hearts. I hold no brief against
wealth itself. I hold a brief against the product of the Midas touch.
“Mr. Lambert next introduced to you most skilfully a very dangerous
theme—the theme of the deep personal interest that he takes in both
defendants, more especially in Susan Ives. The sincerity of his
devotion to her it is impossible to doubt. I for one am very far from
doubting it. He loved the little girl before the fingers of Midas had
rested heavy on her hair; he sees before him still only those bright
curls of childhood clustering about an untarnished brow. Many of you
who have daughters felt tears sting in your eyes when he told you that
he loved her as his daughter—I, who have none, felt the sting myself.
“But, gentlemen, I ask you only this: Are you, in all truth and
fairness, the most unbiased judges of your daughter’s characters?
Would you credit the word of an archangel straight from heaven who
told you that your daughter was a murderess, if that daughter denied
it? Never—never, in God’s world, and you know it! If, in your hearts,
you say to yourself, ‘He has known Susan Ives and loved her for many
years; he loves her still, so she must be all he thinks,’ then Mr.
Lambert’s warm eloquence will have accomplished its purpose and my
cold logic will have failed.
“But I ask you, gentlemen, to use your heads and not your hearts. I
ask you to discount heavily not Mr. Lambert’s sincerity, nor his
affection, nor his eloquence, but his judgment and his credulity.
Platitudes are generally the oldest and profoundest of truths; one of
the most ancient and most profound of all is the axiom that Love is
blind.
“So much for two general challenges that it has been my duty to meet;
the more specific ones of the note, the car, and the laugh, I will
deal with in their proper places. We are now through with
generalizations and down to facts.
“These fall into two categories—the first including the events leading
up to and precipitating the crime, the second dealing with the
execution of the crime itself.
“I propose to deal with them in their logical sequence. In the first
category comes the prime factor in this case—motive. Mr. Lambert has
told you that that is the weakest factor in the state’s case; I tell
you that it is the strongest. There has never come under my
observation a more perfect example of an overwhelming motive springing
from the very foundation of motivation—from character itself.
“I want you to get this perfectly straight; it is of the most vital
importance. There is never any convincing motive for murder, in that
that implies an explanation that would seem plausible to the sane and
well-balanced mind. There is something in any such mind that recoils
in loathing and amazement that such a solution of any problem should
seem possible. It makes no difference whether murder is committed—as
it has been committed—for a million dollars or for five—in revenge for
a nagging word or for bestial cruelty—for a quarrel over a pair of
dice or over a pair of dark eyes—to us it seems equally abhorrent,
grotesque, and incredible. And so it is. But in some few cases we are
able to study the deep springs in which this monster lurks, and this
is one of them.
“I ask you to concentrate now on what you have learned as to the
character of Susan Ives, from her own lips and from the lips of
others—the undisputed evidence that has been put before you. Forget
for a moment that she is small and slight, sweet-voiced, clear-eyed—a
lady. Look within.
“From the time that we first see her, on the very threshold of
girlhood, to the time that you have seen her with your own eyes here,
she has shown a character that is perfectly consistent—a character
that is as resolute, as lawless, and as ruthless as you would find in
any hardened criminal in this land. At the first touch of constraint
or opposition she is metamorphosed into a dangerous machine, and woe
to the one that stands in its way.
“Seven years ago, over the bitter opposition of her adoring father,
she decided to marry the man who had previously been Madeleine
Bellamy’s lover, and who had, deservedly or undeservedly, somewhat of
the reputation of the village scamp and ne’er-do-well. Her marriage to
him broke her father’s heart. Shortly thereafter the old man died, and
so bitter, relentless, and unforgiving is the heart of this daughter,
whom he had longed to cherish and protect, that not once since she
left it in pride and anger has she set foot within the boundaries of
her childhood’s home.
“She returned, however, at the first opportunity to Rosemont; the
arrogance that consumed her like a flame made it essential that she
should be triumphantly reestablished on the grounds of her first
defeat. And the triumph was a rich and intoxicating one. Wealthy,
courted, admired, surrounded by a chorus of industrious flatterers, no
wonder that she became obsessed with a sense of her power and
importance. She was, in fact, undisputed queen of the little domain in
which she lived, and her throne seemed far more secure than most.
“She was not precisely a benevolent monarch; poor little Kathleen Page
and Melanie Cordier have testified to that, but then they had made the
dangerous error of murmuring protests at the rule. A little judicious
browbeating and starvation reduced them to the proper state of
subjection, and all was well once more. Graciousness and generosity
itself to all who bent the knee at the proper angle, as her
mother-in-law and maid have testified, still, it required the merest
flicker of insubordination to set the steel fingers twitching beneath
the velvet glove.
“Nothing more than fugitive rebellions had penetrated this absolute
monarchy, however, up to that bright summer afternoon when news
reached its sovereign that there was an aspirant to the throne—a
powerful pretender—an actual usurper, with the keys to the castle
itself in her hand. The blood of Elizabeth of England, of Catherine of
Russia, of Lucrezia of Italy rose in the veins of this other spoiled
child to meet that challenge. And, gentlemen, we know too well the
fate that befell those rash and lovely pretenders of old.
“Enough of metaphor. From the moment that Susan Ives knew that the
beautiful daughter of the village dressmaker was trespassing on her
property, Madeleine Bellamy was doomed.
“So much for the motive. Now for the means. We will take Susan Ives’s
own account of that evening—the account that was finally wrung from
her when she found, to her terror and despair, that the state had in
its hands evidence absolutely damning and conclusive. The telephone
call, Orsini’s vigil at the window, the tire tracks, the finger
prints—all these successive blows brought successive changes in the
fabric that the defendants were weaving for your benefit.
“It became evident early in the trial that their original tale of
absolute innocence and ignorance would not bear inspection one minute,
but they continued industriously to cut their cloth to fit our case
until they were confronted with two or three little marks on the base
of a lamp. Then and then only they saw the hopelessness of their
plight, discarded the whole wretched, patched, tattered stuff, and
tried frantically to replace it by a fabric bearing at least the outer
pattern of candour. What candour under those circumstances is worth is
for you to decide.
“Mr. Lambert assures you that they had both decided to stop short of
perjury. If the conclusion of Stephen Bellamy’s first story on that
stand was not in fact black perjury, whatever it may have been
technically, is again for you to decide. I have little doubt of that
decision.
“But in Mrs. Ives’s account of that evening’s doings, you have the
outward and visible sign of truth, if not the inward and spiritual
state. The story that she finally told you I believe to be
substantially correct as far as outward events go—up to the point
where she entered the cottage door. From then on I believe it to be
the sheerest fabrication. Let us follow it to that point.
“From the moment that Elliot Farwell informed her that Mimi Bellamy
was carrying on an intrigue with her husband, her every act is a
revelation. It is no pleasant task to inspect from then on the conduct
of this loyal, gentle, generous and controlled spirit, but let us set
ourselves to it. She has heard that her reign is threatened—what does
she do?
“She returns to her home, concealing the rage and terror working in
her like a poison under a flow of laughter and chatter—and cocktails.
Susan Ives is a lawless individual, gentlemen—the law was made for
humbler spirits than hers. In her house, in this court, in that
darkened cottage, she has shown you unhesitatingly her defiance and
contempt of any law made by man—and of one made by God.
“She is not as yet quite sure that Farwell has told her the truth;
there is too much arrogance in her to believe that danger actually
threatens her from that direction—but, under the smiling mask, behind
the clenched teeth, the poison is working. She goes to the hall to bid
Farwell good-bye and to warn him not to give her knowledge of the
intrigue away—perhaps already a prophetic sense of her share in this
dreadful business is formulating. And while she is speaking to him she
sees in the mirror Melanie Cordier, placing the note in the book. It
is the work of a minute to step into the study after Melanie has left,
abstract the note, master the contents, and return to the living room,
her guests, and Patrick. On the way back, she stopped in the hall long
enough to eavesdrop and get her cue. With that cue as to the
prospective poker game in her possession, her course was already
clear. She went up to Patrick Ives with a lie on her lips and a
blacker one in her heart, and told him that she was going to the
movies that night with the Conroys.
“She then followed him again into the hall to spy on him while he
counted the bonds; she followed him back to the study after dinner to
spy on him again, to see where he put them; she got rid of him with a
lie, broke into his desk, confirmed her worst suspicions, and decided
definitely on a course of action. A telephone message to Stephen
Bellamy, another lie from the foot of the stairs to her unsuspecting
husband, and she was on her way.
“Before she reached the gate, something went wrong, and she returned
to the house—possibly for the reason that she gave you, possibly for
another. At any rate, within a minute or so she was at her old task of
eavesdropping and spying, and a minute or so later than that Patrick
Ives was safely locked up, well out of the running when it came to
protecting the foolish girl at the cottage or the maddened one on her
way there. Susan Ives had successfully disposed of the greatest menace
to the execution of her scheme. Perhaps fuel was added to the flame by
what she heard from the room off the day nursery; perhaps she heard
nothing at all and merely wanted to get Patrick out of the way. It is
a matter of no great importance. She had accomplished her purpose and
was on her way again, to meet Stephen Bellamy.
“It is the state’s contention that she went to that rendezvous with a
knife in her pocket and murder in her heart. Patrick Ives has told you
that the knife that the state put in evidence was not out of his
possession that evening; it is for you to decide whether you believe
him or not. But which knife struck the blow is of no great importance
either. The knife that murdered Madeleine Bellamy was, as you have
been told, a perfectly ordinary knife—such a knife as might be found
in any of your homes—in the kitchen, in the pantry, in the tool chest.
From any of these places Susan Ives might have procured one, cleansed
it and replaced it. We need not let which one she actually procured
give us great concern.
“Susan Ives herself has touched very briefly on that drive with
Stephen Bellamy through the quiet, starlit summer night; she merely
confirms Stephen Bellamy’s account, which is neither very coherent nor
very convincing. The gist of it was that Sue Ives was occupied in
proving Mimi’s guilt and he with denying it. Some such conversation
may well have taken place.
“The part that Stephen Bellamy played in the actual commission of this
murder is a more enigmatic one than that of Susan Ives, if not less
sinister. From the outset, it must have been perfectly clear to Mrs.
Ives’s exceptionally shrewd mind that, if she did not want Stephen
Bellamy at her heels as an avenging husband, she must lure him into
the rôle of an accomplice. This, by means best known to herself, she
accomplished. We have it on Stephen Bellamy’s own word that he entered
that little room with her and left it with her, and we know that he
sits beside her in this dock because they have elected to hang or go
free together.
“Now as to what Mr. Lambert is pleased to refer to as their alibi, and
then I have done.
“Of course, they have neither of them the shred of an alibi. Accepting
the fact that they left the gas station shortly after nine and reached
Stephen Bellamy’s at about ten, they would have had ample time to
reach the Thorne place by the River Road, confront the waiting girl
with the intercepted note, murder her, make good their escape, and
return to Bellamy’s by ten o’clock. Later, Bellamy returns to the
cottage alone to get the jewels, in order to give colour to the
appearance of robbery and to remove any traces of the crime that they
may have left behind them. Possibly it was then that he brought the
lamp from the hall and smashed it at the dead girl’s feet. By then
they had had time to work out a story in the remote possibility of
their eventual discovery pretty thoroughly. At any rate, he took Susan
Ives home and returned alone. I repeat, they have no alibi.
“‘Well, what of the laugh?’ you say. ‘What of the car that was not
there?’ To which I echo, ‘What of them, indeed?’
“Gentlemen, just stop to think for one minute. Who heard that laugh?
Who failed to see that automobile? Who fixed the hour for this murder
at the moment that would come closest to establishing an alibi for
these two? Why, the brother of Susan Ives—the loving, the devoted, the
adoring brother, who stood up here in this room and told you that he
would do anything short of murder to protect his sister——”
Lambert was on his feet, his eyes goggling in an ashen countenance.
“He said nothing of the kind! Your Honour——”
“He did not say that he would not commit murder?”
“He did not say that he would do anything short of it. Of all the——”
“Then my memory is at fault,” remarked Mr. Farr blandly. “It was
certainly my impression that such was the substance of his remarks. If
it gives offense I withdraw it, and state simply that the person who
has fixed the hour of the murder for you is Mrs. Patrick Ives’s
brother, Mr. Douglas Thorne. There is not a shred of evidence save his
as to the moment at which the murder took place—not a shred. You are
entirely at liberty to draw your own conclusions from that. If you
decide that he was telling the absolute truth, I will concede even
that possibility.
“Mr. Thorne simply tells you that at about nine-thirty on the evening
of the nineteenth of June he heard a woman scream and a man laugh
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the gardener’s cottage at Orchards.
He adds that at the time he attached no particular importance to it,
as he thought that it may have been young people sky-larking in the
neighbourhood—and he may have been perfectly right. It no more
establishes the hour of Madeleine Bellamy’s murder than it establishes
the hour of the deluge.
“It is, in fact, perfectly possible that the murder took place after
ten o’clock, after the visit to the Bellamy home and the alleged
search along the road to the Conroys. Only one thing is certain: If it
was nine-thirty when Mr. Thorne walked up those cottage steps, and if
at that time there was no car in sight, then the hour of the murder
was not nine-thirty. It may have been before that hour, it may have
been after it. It was not then.
“So much for Mr. Lambert’s trump cards, the laugh and the car. There
remains the theft of the note, which he claims Mrs. Ives had no
interest in denying. Of course she had every interest in denying it.
If she admitted that she had found the note, then she would be forced
to admit to the jury that she knew positively that Mimi was waiting in
the cottage, and that did not fit in with her story at all. So she
simply denies that she took it. And there goes their last trump.
“Stripped of glamour, of emotion, of eloquence, it is the barest, the
simplest, the most appallingly obvious of cases, you see. There is not
one single link in the chain missing—not one.
“Unless someone came to you here and said, ‘I saw the knife in Susan
Ives’s hand, I saw it rise, I saw it fall, I heard the crash of that
girl’s body and saw the white lace of her frock turn red’—unless you
heard that with your own ears, you could not have a clearer picture of
what happened in that room. Not once in a thousand murder cases is
there an eyewitness to the crime. Not once in five hundred is there
forged so strong a chain of evidence as now lies before you.
“There was only one person in all the world to whom the death of
Madeleine Bellamy was a vital, urgent, and imperative necessity. The
woman to whom it was all of this—and more, far more, since words are
poor substitutes for passions—has told you with her own lips that at
ten o’clock on that night she stood over the body of that slain girl
and saw her eyes wide in the dreadful and unseeing stare of death.
When Susan Ives told you that, she told you the truth; and she told
you the truth again when she said that when you knew that she had
stood there, she did not believe that it would be possible for you to
credit that the one fact had no connection with the other. Nor do I
believe it, gentlemen—nor do I believe it.
“By her side, in that room, stood Stephen Bellamy. By his own
confession it was he who closed the eyes of that slain girl, he who
touched her hand. By his own confession he has told you that he did
not believe it possible that you would credit that he stood there at
that time and yet had no knowledge of her death. Nor do I believe it,
gentlemen—nor do I believe it.
“Mr. Lambert has told you that to him has fallen the most solemn task
that can fall to the lot of any man—that of pleading for the gift of
human life. There is a still more solemn task, I believe, and that
task has fallen to me. I must ask you not for life but for death.
“The law does not exact the penalty of a life for a life in the spirit
of vengeance or of malice. It asks it because the flame of human life
is so sacred a thing that it is business of the law to see that no
hand, however powerful, shall be blasphemously lifted to extinguish
that flame. It is in order that your wives and daughters and sisters
may sleep sweet and safe at night that I stand before you now and tell
you that because they lifted that hand, the lives of Stephen Bellamy
and Susan Ives are forfeit.
“These two believed that behind the bulwarks of power, of privilege,
of wealth, and of position, they were safe. They were not safe; they
have discovered that. And if those barriers can protect them now, if
still behind them they can find shelter and security and a wall to
shield them as they creep back to their ruined hearthstones, then I
say to you that the majesty of the law is a mockery and the sacredness
of human life is a mockery, and the death penalty in this great state
is a mockery.
“There was never in this state a more wicked, brutal, and cold-blooded
murder than that of Madeleine Bellamy. For Susan Ives and Stephen
Bellamy, the two who now stand before you accused of that murder, I
ask, with all solemnity and fully aware of the tragic duty that I
impose on each one of you, the verdict of guilty of murder in the
first degree. If you can find it in your hearts, in your souls, or
your consciences to render any other verdict, you are more fortunate
than I believe you to be.”
In the hushed silence that followed his voice, all eyes turned to the
twelve who sat there unmoving, their drawn, pale faces, tired-eyed and
tight-lipped, turned toward the merciless flame that burned behind the
prosecutor’s white face.
The red-headed girl asked in a desolate small voice that sounded very
far away, “Is it all over now? Are they going now?”
“No—wait a moment; there’s the judge’s charge. Here, what’s Lambert
doing?”
He was on his feet, swaying a little, his voice barely audible.
“Your Honour, a note has been handed to me this moment. It is written
on the card of the principal of the Eastern High School, Mr. Randolph
Phipps.”
“What are the contents of this note?”
Lambert settled his glasses on his nose with a shaken hand. “It
says—it says:
“My dear Mr. Lambert:
“Before this case goes to the jury, I consider it my duty to lay
before them some knowledge of the most vital importance that is my
possession, and that for personal reasons I have withheld up to the
present time, in the hope that events would render it unnecessary
for me to take the stand. Such has unfortunately not been the case,
and I therefore put myself at your disposal. Will you tell me what
my next step should be? The facts are such as make it imperative
that I should be permitted to speak.
“Randolph Phipps.”
Judge Carver said slowly, “May I see the note?” Lambert handed it up
in those shaking fingers. “Thank you. A most extraordinary
performance,” commented the judge dispassionately. After a moment he
said more dispassionately still:
“The Court was about to adjourn in any case until to-morrow morning.
It does not care to deliver its charge to the jury at this late hour
of the day, and we will therefore convene again at ten to-morrow. In
the meantime the Court will take the note under advisement. See that
Mr. Phipps is present in the morning. Court is dismissed.”
“I don’t believe that I’ll be here in the morning,” said the
red-headed girl in that same small monotone.
“Not be here?” The reporter’s voice was a howl of incredulity. “Not be
here, you little idiot? Did you hear what Lambert read off that card?”
“I don’t think that I’ll live till morning,” said the red-headed girl.
The seventh day of the Bellamy trial was over.