The Unquiet Grave: A Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Mrs. Heaster took a deep breath, and again she looked down at her hands. “As far as Jacob is concerned, that’s the worst of it, I think. My husband does not believe that Zona did come back. He thinks I made up the whole story out of grief and spite, for all along I made no secret of the fact that I had no use for Edward Shue. Jacob is embarrassed by all of it. He’s a simple man, and he wants a quiet life and the respect of his neighbors. He says he doesn’t want to be laughed at in public for having a foolish, wayward daughter and a wife who claims she sees ghosts.”

  “He doesn’t believe you?” Preston began to draw circles on a scrap of paper on his desk. He wasn’t sure he believed Mary Jane Heaster, either, but the autopsy report had proved her suspicions were correct. Preston could hardly blame her husband for his skepticism, but he thought that a grieving parent should want to believe it, even if a pragmatic prosecutor had doubts. “Well, perhaps I can understand his feelings on that score. I had a hard time crediting it myself when you first came here back in February with the tale of your daughter’s murder and her testimony from beyond the grave. But he cannot dispute the fact that you were right about your daughter’s being murdered. She was strangled, with the finger marks still on her throat weeks after her burial. The autopsy proved it. Dr. Knapp will swear to it. Does Mr. Heaster doubt him, too?”

  “He hasn’t said. I don’t think he sets much store by doctors, though—or lawyers.”

  “Had it not been for you, ma’am, Shue might have got away with murder—again. We think he also killed his second wife back in Pocahontas County. Don’t let your husband’s attitude make you ashamed, Mrs. Heaster. Your bravery in speaking out allowed us to stop a murderer before he could prey upon still more trusting women.”

  “I don’t think Jacob cares about that. He just doesn’t want people pointing at us and laughing.”

  He could hear the catch in her voice, and he was afraid that she would give way to tears. He wished he had a clean handkerchief to offer her, and indeed he usually kept one in his desk for just such emergencies, but the heat of the day had caused him to use his own and the spare to mop the perspiration from his brow. “Laughing, Mrs. Heaster? I don’t believe they will. The people in court could not be so heartless as that. At least, I hope not. In fact, the trial will be rather cut-and-dried. I shall call young Anderson Jones, who discovered the body, and his mother, Mrs. Martha Jones, and they will testify to the condition of the body upon discovery. Dr. Knapp and perhaps Dr. Rupert will give an account of the autopsy and what they learned from it. When you are called to the witness box, you’ve only got to say what you observed about Mr. Shue’s manner when your daughter’s body was brought back to Meadow Bluff, and describe his behavior at the funeral.”

  She nodded. “I am ready. And then you’ll want me to tell the court about Zona coming to me a few nights after the burying to tell me what really happened to her.”

  Preston sighed and set down his pen. He had been dreading this conversation, and he hoped that he could convey his message with sufficient tact to keep from distressing his witness. “Perhaps I should have mentioned this before, but I won’t be asking you any questions about your—er—encounter with your daughter’s spirit.”

  Mary Jane Heaster blinked, and her lips moved soundlessly for a moment before she could marshal her thoughts. “You won’t be asking— But how could you not? Why, that is how we knew to request the autopsy! The jury must hear that.”

  “Mr. Gilmer and I don’t deem it necessary for you to go into all that. We think that we have sufficient evidence to convict the accused, relying on the accounts given by the physicians, and that of the Jones family, and the testimony of various persons, including yourself, about Mr. Shue’s callous behavior after his wife’s death. We are afraid that introducing the supernatural element into the proceedings would only confuse and distract the gentlemen of the jury.” He ventured a gentle smile. “After all, in a murder trial one does not expect to hear the testimony of the deceased.”

  Mrs. Heaster narrowed her eyes and gave him a scornful look. “You sound like my husband. I thought you believed me.”

  “I did order the autopsy, remember. But my personal feelings in the matter are of no consequence. We think that an astounding tale of a spirit seeking vengeance might confuse the jurors and obscure the other facts in the case. The jury might mistakenly vote according to whether or not they personally believe in ghosts, and that is not the issue here. We want them to concentrate on the more mundane evidence proving the guilt of Edward Shue, and Mr. Gilmer and I feel that the extraneous matter of your, er, visitation is unnecessary. After all, we cannot put the victim’s ghost on the witness stand.”

  “I see.” She was staring past him at the treetops and the bright blue sky framed in his office window, but her jaw was tight and her face was set in a grimace.

  He sighed. “Mrs. Heaster, you mustn’t lose sight of the fact that our purpose here is to see Edward Shue convicted for his crime. That is the most important thing, surely. That is what your daughter wanted, is it not?”

  She glanced at him, and then went back to staring out the window, as if losing herself in the view was the only way that she could escape from the room. “I suppose so.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. He could see that the woman still felt angry, but because she also felt powerless to interfere in the decisions of prosperous male attorneys, she would make no further objections. Now the awkward interview could end. Preston came out from behind his desk and ushered her to the door. “Then let us set our sights on making it as simple as possible for the jury to see that Edward Shue is guilty, and to have no qualms about seeing him hanged. The trial begins on Tuesday, the twenty-second of June.”

  “That will be five months nearly to the day since Zona died. Well, I hope you hang him, Mr. Preston. He’s lived a good deal longer than he deserved to already.” She swept out of his office without waiting for him to frame a reply.

  James P. D. Gardner wondered why lawyers always seemed bored when they were in court. Was it because they had been through the formula so many times that it had ceased to make an impression on them at all, or was it an attempt to mask their competitive feelings on such a solemn occasion by feigning a dignified indifference? He was excited; indeed, he had scarcely been able to sleep the night before for anticipating the drama and the awful significance of the coming trial.

  A murder case! Not many of those would come the way of a country lawyer in the course of his career. Deeds and wills and petty squabbles between neighbors—that was the meat and potatoes of a village law practice. He looked forward to the trial of Edward Shue as a rare opportunity to test his skills of argument and persuasion—if, that is, Mr. Rucker allowed him to take any active part in the case. Perhaps he would only be allowed to sit at the defense table and make notes of the proceedings, but in any case he would now be able to boast that he had participated in a murder trial. He fancied that his acquaintances—and, most importantly, Miss Eliza Myles—regarded him with a new respect because of it.

  He had dressed that morning with the utmost care, despite the summer weather, donning his newest white shirt, freshly laundered and ironed; his black wool suit, twice brushed; and his church shoes, polished until they gleamed. Perhaps he was more carefully attired than the other three attorneys appearing in the case, but then he had to be. The other three were white. Still, it wasn’t only his fear of being mistaken for a lackey that made him dress so formally; a man was on trial for his life, and there could be no more somber occasion than that, even if the formula of a trial had become so routine for the more experienced attorneys that they barely noticed its import.

  He wondered how Edward Erasmus Stribbling Shue felt about the proceedings. He had seemed restless, as if he were unused to sitting still for long stretches, but he had a ready smile for anyone he recognized. Gardner supposed that, like most people who are confident of their physical beauty, Edward Shue expected people to be glad to see him, never anticipating
slights or snubs. Gardner wondered what that would feel like.

  Given the informality of his attire, though, the defendant might have been attending a horse race or a picnic. He wore a simple white shirt, without a coat or necktie, and the same cheap, worn trousers and brown work shoes he might have put on for a day at the blacksmith shop. Gardner wondered if the man hadn’t known any better, or if his lack of coat and necktie had been a concession to the stifling heat of the courtroom. Two other possibilities also occurred to him: one, that the only suit the man owned was the one in which he had got married seven months earlier, and he was loath to wear it to stand trial for the murder of his bride; or two, that he was so indifferent to her death, and so arrogantly certain of being acquitted of the murder, that he couldn’t be bothered to feign grief or concern. Gardner felt a twinge of guilt for this last judgment, for after all he was defending the man, and he felt honor-bound to believe in his innocence. All the same, if he could think so uncharitably about Edward Shue, what impression must the man be making on the spectators and jurors?

  Gardner took his place on the far end of the defense table, to the right of Dr. Rucker and the defendant, who sat between them. As he sat down, murmuring a greeting to Shue and returning a brisk nod from Dr. Rucker, he recoiled from the sour smell of stale sweat that came from the defendant. The rank odor surrounded Shue like a wall, and Gardner had to force himself to maintain a calm and neutral expression. Fighting the urge to retch, he took his handkerchief out of his coat pocket, wishing he had thought to soak it in lavender water to counteract the stench. Tomorrow he would.

  The genial and smiling Shue seemed unaware of the situation, and Gardner wondered whether the odor was due to the stifling heat of the crowded courtroom or the anxiety of the trial itself. The inadequate sanitary facilities of the jail were probably to blame as well. His stomach lurched, and he wished he could move his chair farther away from the defendant, but he knew that to do so might be seen as a moral judgment of the man. He must not allow his actions to prejudice the court. He glanced over at Dr. Rucker, but there was no indication that Rucker detected anything amiss. He was looking around the courtroom like a fox sizing up a henhouse, occasionally offering a polite nod to someone who caught his eye and then looking down again to scribble more notes.

  After a moment Shue leaned toward him and murmured, “They’ll never prove anything, you know. All they’ve got to go on is suspicion and spite.”

  Gardner gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile and nodded, but the gesture came from politeness rather than conviction. In fact, he felt far from confident about the fellow’s chances with the court. Had there been more time to talk and less at stake, he might have explained to Shue that juries’ decisions did not necessarily depend on facts. Sometimes a jury would acquit in the face of solid evidence simply because they liked the look of the defendant, or because the man’s lawyer had charmed them into benevolence; at other times, they might base their verdict on a gut feeling unsupported by any proof at all. At times a trial came very close to being a game of chance, and Gardner earnestly hoped he would never have to bet his life on the whims of a dozen random citizens.

  “All rise.”

  And so it began.

  The evidence was circumstantial, but there was a lot of it. One by one, Preston or Gilmer summoned witnesses to add to the slow-forming mosaic that would depict the death of Zona Heaster Shue.

  On the witness stand, Anderson Jones, well scrubbed and somber in his Sunday go-to-meeting best, stared out at the crowded courtroom with the eyes of a frightened child. Once his gaze fixed on Gardner, who nodded and ventured a brief smile so that the anxious witness would see at least one friendly face in the sea of strangers.

  Judge McWhorter, too, seemed aware of the witness’s unease. He leaned down and said, “Now, young fella, you have no call to be nervous at all up here on the witness stand. You are in no wise in trouble. You just answer these gentlemen’s questions as truthfully as you can, and we’ll all be much obliged for your help. Can you do that?”

  Anderson Jones still looked wary at being before a crowd of strangers, but he nodded to the judge, and managed a faint “Yes, sir.”

  Judge McWhorter smiled. “Well, that’s fine then. Yonder comes Mr. John Alfred Preston, who is one of those lawyers I told you about. You don’t have to be scared of him. He just wants to have a conversation.”

  Preston approached the chair, trying to summon a reassuring expression for the witness, but his thoughts were mainly on the business at hand. He started off gently, intent upon putting the witness at ease before they had to talk about the horrors of that day. A brief series of questions established that the young man was Anderson Jones, that he lived with his parents and brothers and sisters at Livesay’s Mill, and that they were neighbors of Mr. and Mrs. Shue. When Preston decided that Anderson Jones was sufficiently relaxed and focused on the conversation, he drew his attention to the events of January 23.

  “Now you said that you and your family were neighbors of Mr. Shue. Did you often run errands for him or do little jobs about the place?”

  “Yes, sir, whenever he was to ask me, I did.”

  “And on January twenty-third, did Mr. Shue stop by your house and ask you to do something for him?”

  “Yes, sir. He came from the blacksmith shop about ten o’clock, looking for me.”

  “What did he want you to do?”

  “He asked me to go hunt eggs over at his place, and then to go to the house and ask Miz Shue did she need anything from the store that she wanted me to fetch.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I took me a basket and went over there looking for the eggs, but I didn’t find none.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Well, like he told me to, I rapped on the door to see if Miz Shue needed anything. But she didn’t come to the door.”

  “No? What did you do then?”

  “Well, when nobody answered, I pushed open the door and went in. Miz Shue had been feeling poorly lately, and I thought she might be took sick.”

  “And what did you see when you went in?”

  Anderson Jones squirmed in his chair and tugged at the collar of his shirt. “You know that, sir. You asked me about that the other day, and I told you. Do we have to go over it again?”

  There was a ripple of laughter in the gallery, and Mr. Preston glanced at them with a perfunctory smile. “That’s true, I did, but you see, those twelve gentlemen over there in the jury box need to know exactly what you saw and heard, and they have to hear it directly from you. So perhaps you could tell it again for them?”

  “Yes, sir, all right. But it’s a terrible thing. Gives me frights to think of it.”

  “Indeed it is terrible, but you must tell them nonetheless. When you opened the door and walked into the hall of Mr. Shue’s house that day, what did you see?”

  “I saw Miz Shue, there on the floor of the hall, near the stairs.”

  Preston nodded. “That’s fine, Mr. Jones. You’re doing well. Now do you remember how the body of Mrs. Shue was lying? The position of her limbs and so on?”

  “I do. At first I thought she might have passed out and pitched down the stairs, but she was too tidy for that.”

  “Tidy. Can you tell us what you mean by that?”

  “Well, she was stretched out straight with her feet together, just like she was already in a coffin, only she wasn’t. One of her hands was down by her side, and the other one was on her tummy. Her head was tilted a little to one side. And thank the Lord her eyes were closed. Else I might have dropped dead with fright myself, right then and there.”

  “Did you make certain that Mrs. Shue was dead?”

  Anderson Jones regarded the attorney with horror. “No, sir! I didn’t get no closer to her than two paces from the front door, and when I saw her stretched out like that, I knew there wasn’t no use in getting any nearer. I turned right around and ran out the door and back home to tell my mama what
I had found.”

  “What did you mother do?”

  “She told me to run on over to Mr. Crookshanks’s blacksmith shop and tell Mr. Shue. Then she started putting her coat on, and getting ready to go on over there herself to see if there was anything she could do.”

  “To the house, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir. I told her that lady was dead, but she wouldn’t take my word for it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Jones. The court appreciates your account of this tragic event. Now I think we must hear the rest of the story from your mother.”

  Preston looked expectantly at the defense counsel, but Mr. Rucker waved him away, and Judge McWhorter told the witness that he could stand down.

  Anderson Jones hurried down the aisle of the courtroom just as his mother’s name was called as the next witness. When they met in the doorway of the courtroom, Martha Jones touched her son’s cheek, and her anxious eyes sought out Mr. Preston. The prosecutor gave her a faint nod of reassurance, and she paused for a moment. “Now you sit out there in the hall and wait for me, you hear?” she said to Anderson.

  “All right, Mama.” As she turned to go, he added, “Wasn’t too bad.”

  Thus satisfied that all was well with her family, she made her way down the aisle, and took the oath somberly, but without a trace of nervousness.

  Henry Gilmer, Preston’s predecessor and his second chair for the trial, undertook the questioning of the new witness, establishing more details about the events of Saturday, January 23. Mrs. Jones echoed her son’s statements that, yes, they were neighbors of Edward Shue, and were acquainted with the newlyweds.

  “And did you visit the residence of Mr. Edward Shue on the afternoon of January twenty-third?”

  She sat up straighter and gave Mr. Gilmer a stern look. “I did.”

  “What prompted you to do so?”