It was the first trial of a white man with a jury more black than white. During the selection, McDow and his counsel challenged one after another until they had found seven black jurors and five white. Most of the white men on the jury were not educated: McDow did not want to be judged by his own peers, let alone Dawson’s.
McDow’s lawyer, Judge Magrath, was a Fire-Eater, and the former governor. He was a distinguished trial lawyer, a big handsome man, commanding, with a long nose and thin lips. His face was clean-shaven, his thick hair was brushed back from a bold forehead. He held your gaze, he held the silence. He used his arms to gesture, he strode back and forth. He was charming, wily, and aggressive.
The prosecutor was William Jervey, an old friend of Dawson’s. He’d supported Wade Hampton’s election, and in 1884 he’d attended the Democratic National Convention, when Dawson was the state delegate. At the trial he brought in two attorneys to assist him, Henry Smith and Julien Mitchell, both also friends of Dawson.
That first day the courtroom was packed to panting. McDow came in wearing a dark suit, his black eyes bright, his hair trim. He walked calmly into the room, composed, nodding and smiling like royalty. After he sat down he took out a white silk handkerchief and flicked at his sleeve. No one could take their eyes from him.
Until Hélène Burdayron was brought in. The crowd whispered and rustled, telling one another who she was: “The French maid!” She was dressed demurely, in black, with white lace at her collar. She had dark circles under her eyes. The bottom of her dress had gotten wet in the rain, and her skirt was heavy and sodden.
They all craned their necks to see her.
When Hélène took the stand, she did not understand the very first thing she was asked. The clerk handed her the black courtroom Bible, tattered, tied with string. He told her to kiss it. She stared at him in incomprehension.
“Kiss the book,” he said, louder.
Hélène looked around the room for help. A man standing by the judge’s desk stepped forward and took the Bible. He kissed it, then handed it to her, nodding. Hélène pressed it dutifully to her lips and awaited the next command.
The prosecutor asked for a translator, since the witness manifestly did not speak English. Magrath disagreed, maintaining that she was competent in the language.
He walked up to her, his hands clasped behind his back, his hair a thick white mane.
“What is your name?” he asked her. He held her gaze, smiling at her.
“Marie Burdayron.”
“You are living in Charleston now?”
“Yes.”
“What is your native language?”
“French,” she replied.
“You came from Geneva to Charleston?”
“With Mrs. Dawson.”
“Where are your relatives and friends?”
But at that Hélène shook her head, mystified. Too many words, too fast.
Smith, sitting at the table, asked again for a translator, but Magrath waved him silent. He walked up to Hélène, sitting on the raised seat.
“Do you know Dr. McDow?” asked Magrath. He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, as though these were things he’d been mulling over, ideas he’d like to share with her.
“Yes.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He asked me to run away with him in France.”
“What did you say?”
“I say I won’t leave Mrs. Dawson for anything in the world.”
“Why did he tell you he wanted to run away?”
“He didn’t give me the reason.”
Hélène told him how they’d met, how he’d besieged her. How she’d told McDow to attend to his marriage, and that she would not run away with him.
Magrath smiled at her, as though he liked her.
“Did it occur to you that if it was wrong in McDow, being a married man and a father, in making these addresses to you, it was wrong in you, being a single young girl, to be listening to those addresses?”
Hélène frowned, trying to understand. She thought they were discussing a moral point.
“Yes, I thought so,” she said.
“And still you continued to listen to them?”
“Yes, I did,” she said, truthful.
“Was his voice musical and soft?” asked Magrath, smiling.
“Yes,” said Hélène, confused.
“Then was it the music of his voice that was enchanting you away?”
“I don’t think it was that, it may be that he was talking English,” she said uncertainly.
“Did you ever help him to talk French?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What was your mode of instructing him in French?”
“I never did teach him,” she answered, floundering.
“He never asked you the pronunciation of a French word?”
“Yes, two or three words I told him with pleasure.”
“You helped him along?” Magrath asked gently.
“Yes.”
“You just led him along by the hand that way?”
“I don’t know what you say,” Hélène answered. Now she’d become uneasy. She understood that there was something she didn’t understand.
Magrath asked her about McDow pulling her in to the colored woman’s yard. He tried to make her admit that she knew why McDow wanted a private space.
“Didn’t you know without his telling you what he wanted you to go there for?”
“I did not know nothing about it.”
“Didn’t you know that he wanted you to go away with him?”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but I would not.”
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know, he would not tell me.”
“Did you suppose that he wanted you to go and play croquet with him?” He spoke gently.
“I did not suppose so,” Hélène said stoutly, but she was out of her depth. Everyone could see it.
Smith asked again for a translator; the judge denied his request.
Magrath asked about the watch McDow gave her.
She never wound it, she said, because she had another one.
“Do you mean to say that it was not necessary for you to keep the watch running to keep Dr. McDow in your mind, that you could remember him without keeping the watch running?”
“Yes, I could,” she said, confused.
Magrath smiled at her. He was a handsome man, with his bright blue eyes, big swath of white hair. High cheekbones.
When Hélène left the stand she looked at McDow. He gave her a little smile, as though they were complicit in something, partners still. She smiled back, but they were not complicit, not partners in anything: the strategy of the defense would be to destroy her character.
* * *
McDOW TOLD THE COURT a different story from the one he told in the interview, on the night of his arrest. During the trial he remembered his courtesy toward Dawson, his composure, his bold, articulate response.
He described Dawson “entering … with a domineering air, he proceeded in an excitable and irritable voice to say, ‘Dr. McDow, I have just been informed of your ungentlemanly conduct towards one of my servants.’”
Magrath stopped McDow. “Wait a moment. What was his manner?”
“Domineering and aggressive,” McDow repeated.
Magrath nodded and went on. “You repelled the idea that you had been ungentlemanly in your conduct?”
“Yes, sir,” said McDow briskly. “I naturally felt indignant that the man should have entered my office in such a way.”
“Describe to me the general appearance of Captain Dawson,” Magrath asked. He was walking slowly back and forth before the chair. “Was he a large man or a small man?”
“Rather a large man,” said McDow. “Possibly over two hundred pounds in weight and well-developed, muscularly.”
“Had he the appearance of being a strong man?” asked Magrath.
“He had all the appearances of being an athlete,” Mc
Dow said.
“Do you think that you compared favorably with Captain Dawson in that regard?” asked Magrath.
“Well, I think comparatively I am a mere pygmy,” said McDow.
Magrath wouldn’t let this go. “His physical powers were much in excess of yours, were they not?”
“Very much in excess,” McDow assured him.
“Then after this first salutation what followed; what did he rejoin?”
“He said, ‘I give you to understand that she is under my protection and if you speak to her again I shall publish you in the papers,’ and I said, ‘If you do, you infernal scoundrel, I will hold you personally responsible,’” McDow said, pleased with himself.
“Do me the favor to repeat that answer?” asked Magrath.
“He said, ‘I forbid you speaking to her.’ I told him that I would speak to her as long as I pleased, until he showed me he had the authority to prevent it.”
“Then he said…” Magrath said, coaxingly.
“‘I give you to understand, sir, she is under my protection and if you speak to her again I shall publish you in the papers,’ and I said, ‘If you do, you infernal scoundrel, I will hold you personally responsible. Get out of my office.’”
McDow was pleased by the phrase “infernal scoundrel.”
There were other changes in his story. In his first interview, in jail, McDow had told the reporter that the pistol had been in a desk drawer, and he’d scrambled across the room, around the table and to the far corner, while Dawson took two steps to reach the door. Now, at the trial, he said the pistol was in his right hip pocket. That he’d pulled it out to shoot Dawson in the front, to keep him from attacking McDow again. He said he’d carried a pistol for years.
The prosecution challenged this: Why would a doctor carry a gun? No doctors carry guns; it’s antithetical to their calling. And no one carries a loaded gun in his pocket when he sits down to have dinner with his family. Then he got specific: McDow certainly hadn’t carried this one for years, as it was clearly brand-new. On the day of the murder McDow was followed by a detective, who saw him buy it. Moreover, when McDow was asked what sort of pistol it was, he didn’t know the caliber.
McDow claimed that Dawson had struck him ferociously, on the chest, with his hand, and on the head, with his cane; that the caning had bruised his head and dented his hat. But Dawson could not have dented the hat: McDow had not been wearing it when Dawson arrived. McDow had been upstairs having dinner then. He’d put on his hat later, when he went out to get the spade. As to an assault, the doctor who examined McDow found no evidence of battery, only a small scab on the left side of his head. The dent and injury might have come from bumping against the lintel of the closet as McDow buried Dawson. Or the injury might have come from McDow running into the doorframe in Mrs. Fair’s bedroom. She’d written to the judge, describing McDow’s gross insult to her person, and his violent encounter with the doorframe. She offered to testify, but was not permitted to do so, nor was her letter allowed in evidence.
In closing, Magrath walked up to McDow and asked him, man to man, about Hélène. Smiling, as though they were intimates, he asked a personal question. Did McDow think he behaved in an ungentlemanly manner toward her?
“Under the circumstances I don’t know that I did,” McDow said, “because of the willingness on the part of this woman, the acquiescence on the part of this woman, to engage in what I had been engaged in.”
It was an ingenious defense, the idea that the perpetrator would be exonerated by the pliancy of the victim.
At the summation, Magrath and his colleague, Asher Cohen, made a moral assessment.
“Gentlemen, I have only this to say, that my experience and yours is that a man seldom makes the first advance. There is always something in the eye or manner that extends an invitation. There is some instinct in the heart of man put there, I think, by God for a wise purpose which causes him never or very seldom, unless a very bad man, to make the advance, unless in some mysterious manner an invitation has been extended.”
Magrath added gently, “I do say that she, more than he, is responsible for all that has occurred.”
So there it was. It was the fault of the French maid.
In the black community, the tide had turned against Dawson. Despite his record of supporting black progress, despite his editorials supporting black rights and the rule of law, despite his relief efforts during the earthquake, his last editorial had been unforgivable.
After Dawson’s death The News and Courier printed eulogies from all over the country. Scores of white people praised Dawson, people who remembered meeting him, people for whom he’d done something generous. One woman wrote to thank him for reading her essay at her college graduation. The graduating girls were not to read their own essays in public, so a man, usually one of the family, read the essay for her. But Miss Jennie Grier’s essay was written in French, which no one in her family spoke. Someone at the college knew Dawson, and asked him to stand up with Miss Grier at the ceremony. The captain, she wrote, not only read the speech in French, but, when he saw the audience had no idea of what it had just heard, he’d started to sing the Marseillaise. No one knew the words, but they all knew the music. The whole crowd sang it lustily, and afterward they cheered. Miss Grier wrote to say how much that had meant to her: she had never met him before that day. Librarians, schoolteachers, community organizers, readers, professors, lawyers, and farmers wrote in to the paper to express their grief. But the sole response from a black leader came from Reverend J. L. Dart.
I have no hesitation in saying that I believe he was deeply interested in all that concerns the educational and material advancement of the colored people …
Capt. Dawson defended the interests of the colored people in this State in several crises, and his liberal influence and sound and healthful views regarding the welfare of this city and State, and all its people, will be greatly missed.
The longtime black leaders were silent. Many in their community trusted Thomas McDow, who’d been their doctor.
The judge allowed no evidence regarding McDow’s character. The prosecution was not permitted to ask about his visits to brothels, nor the shooting in Tennessee, nor of the insurance fraud, which was still under investigation. Nor could the prosecution mention the sworn testimony by McDow’s brother, declaring that McDow had tried to have his father-in-law murdered so he could poison his wife and marry one of his mistresses. None of this was in the record. Nor, of course, was the story that the jurors were bribed, which included the sums paid to each one.
The jurors, bribed or blameless, took only a few hours to return the verdict: McDow was not guilty of murder. He had been attacked in his home. He had stood his ground.
41.
SARAH DID NOT attend the trial.
On that first rainy day she sat upstairs in her room by the window, in her small striped chair. It felt almost normal, as though she were mending and he were writing beside her. But there was nothing.
She watched the rain lashing the trees, the heavy boughs tossing slowly in the wind. The translucent drops sluiced down the pane, meeting and separating, blurring her view. The thought came to her over and over: he would not come back. It was a recurring revelation. Endlessly she forgot, endlessly she was reminded. They’d had tickets to the opera. She’d have to do something with the tickets. The idea of going without him repelled her. He was gone. Each time she was reminded.
That morning she’d woken up thinking she heard him in the next room. She lifted her head from the deep hollow of the pillow to hear him—what had he said? She waited for him to repeat it—then, waiting, she remembered, and emptiness flooded around her like a black tide.
He would not call to her again in the morning. She would not hear his voice, intimate, rough with sleep, coming through the dimness of the room, still dark before the curtains were drawn. Each time it was like a bargain that somehow she had lost. She was willing to accept the big thing, she knew he was gone. Onl
y it was hard to lose this small thing, the sound of his voice in the dimness of her room. His appearance in the doorway, big and tousled in his nightshirt, his rumpled face, the strong rich smell of his body after sleep. Why must she lose that as well?
The sky outside was dark and lowering with rain. Sarah stood to find a shawl; the chill was coming through the glass. She started toward the armoire and stumbled over the huge dog, sprawled motionless beside her chair.
“Bruno,” she whispered.
He lay flat, his nose between his paws. At his name he rolled his eyes up at her but did not lift his head.
“He’s not coming back,” Sarah said. “He’s gone.”
Bruno watched her, not moving, his tail tucked along his body. Sarah kneeled beside him. She put her hand on his broad head, hard and silky. His eyes followed her. His tail didn’t move.
“But you know that,” Sarah whispered. “Don’t you.” She stroked his head, then laid her own against it. She put her arm around him. He was warm and solid. She began to weep.
Later she sat in the big red plush chair. Her body felt heavy, as though it were filled with sand. She thought of McDow holding forth in court, telling lies. She leaned back, pressing herself against its rounded tufts. She thought of the piano downstairs. He wouldn’t sit at it playing for the children, his head thrown back, that silly song about the duck. And Mozart. It seemed impossible that she couldn’t find him somehow, return to the moment of him singing. He wasn’t here in the room, she knew that, but wasn’t he somewhere? It was impossible to think that he was nowhere in the world.
She lay her head down on his desk, on the blotting paper where he’d leaned his arm while he wrote. She could still smell him faintly, his hand, his wrist. Sometimes she went to his armoire and pressed her head into his lovely clothes, the good tweeds, the melton-cloth coats. They still smelled of him, her husband.
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