“Oh, the poor dears!” said Laura.
“Somehow I didn’t realize it had been like this.”
But it was Jim who struck her dumb; Jim, so carefully dressed, so drawn, so isolated.
She reached out and caught my hand, and for once she was silent.
Silent she remained, through that ghastly impaneling of a jury which required days, and until the opening speech of the State’s Attorney.
During that speech, however, her color rose and her eyes flashed.
“How dare they?” she muttered.
“How dare they?”
I have no space here for that trial, for its heartbreaks and its insufferable dragging hours and days.
Witnesses came and went.
The audience, those who had won the daily battle for admission, sat and fanned themselves with hats, handkerchiefs, newspapers.
To such few points as told in Jim’s favor they were cold; they were united against him, a seething mob of hatred, waiting and furiously hoping for revenge.
Laura said they were like the market women who knitted around the guillotine while the French aristocracy was being executed, and so I felt that they were.
In vain Godfrey Lowell fought, cross-examined, almost wept out of his exhaustion and anxiety; in vain he made the Inspector’s points, from “a” to “g.”
The jury was hot and growing weary.
Sarah’s blood-stained clothing and the sword-cane were on the table.
They reasoned from cause to effect.
He had had the cane, she had threatened his easygoing life, he had been seen where she was killed, he killed her.
Judy’s eyes were sunk in her head by the end of the third day, but she remained throughout the trial, from that sonorous opening speech of the District Attorney, of which I reproduce only a paragraph or two:
“We will show, gentlemen of the jury, that this unfortunate woman, on the day before she was killed, wrote to this defendant and asked him to meet her, on urgent business.
A reconstruction of a portion of this letter as shown on her blotter will be produced in due time.
And we will show that she sent this letter.
She not only wrote it but she addressed an envelope, and the imprint of this envelope, left on the cuff of that uniform of service which she wore, has been examined by experts and pronounced to be her own handwriting.
It has been compared, as the law requires, with valid examples of her handwriting; samples easy to obtain, for this good and faithful friend to this family for years kept a record of all their illnesses, day by day.
“We will show that on the night of the crime, this defendant varied from his ordinary procedure; that he dined early and without dressing, which in this case means that he did not put on a dinner jacket.
That is more important than it may sound.
There are certain individuals, gentlemen, to whom a dinner without a dinner jacket approaches the unthinkable. It is cataclysmic. And so revolutionary was it in the habit of this defendant that his servant made a mental note of it.
“Following this early meal, and he ate very little, he went out. He had put on a light golf suit and a pair of heavy shoes, and this suit and these shoes will be shown to you later on, stained with blood; the blood, we fully believe of this dead woman.
“But there was another and even more terrible, more sinister object in that house that next morning.
The sword-stick stood once more in the hall, where it had stood before.
But this sword-stick, or sword-cane, gentlemen, had become a matter of intense importance to this defendant.
“Either on his return the night before, or during that day, or even following the discovery of Sarah Gittings’ body, this defendant proceeded furtively and secretly to wash the sword-cane.
“But he could not clean the interior of the sheath.
That remained for the experts of our department.
They have found human blood in that sheath, and also another object.
“The age of human blood, after a certain period of time, is difficult to determine.
My friends of the defense may urge that this blood may be from some ancient duel long since forgotten.
But of this other object discovered the age is unquestioned.
Adherent to this sheath was a needle from a pine tree, and this needle was fresh, gentlemen of the jury.
It came from a particular variety of evergreen to be found only on that slope of the city park down which this unfortunate woman had been dragged.
“Numbers of similar needles, from similar trees, were found clinging to her clothing on the recovery of the body.
And I may add that in the opinion of the experts for the state, this blood inside the sheath was similarly fresh.”
Why go on?
Bit by bit he built his case, and bit by bit Jim sagged in his chair.
When he reached the question of motive, and named Florence Gunther, there was such a stir in the courtroom that it had to be called to order.
“Now, gentlemen of the jury, it is not our purpose here, directly or indirectly, to try this defendant for the murder of Florence Gunther; but here and there this girl’s name will have to enter the record.
“On the day of this murder Florence Gunther took from the safe of her employers a certain document, sealed in a brown manila envelope and duly endorsed.
This document has disappeared, but its identity has been established.”
And with the description of the will which followed, the supplying of the motive, the case was indeed as Godfrey had predicted; over before it commenced.
He fought on doggedly, but what were such things as hairs and fibers to a jury which had already reached its verdict?