The defense attorney, whose only conference with his client had been conducted in a little corridor outside the courtroom during the quarter hour prior to their being called inside, stated simply that his client had had nothing to do with the terrible crime, that she was an upstanding if unfortunately circumstanced citizeness of the city, that she ought indeed to be compassionated for having been forced to witness so foul a deed as that one unquestionably committed by the foul escapee from Sing Sing. She had barely escaped with her own breath intact within her precious lungs; she had labored under the infamous calumnies of the disreputable landlady who was doubtless in league with the escaped criminal; and no one could look at her sitting beside him, so innocent, so well-mannered, so soft-spoken, and imagine that she had ever lifted a violent finger in the course of her brief and unblissful existence.
“Doubtless you have judged her character aright,” remarked Judge Stallworth, “but it is time for the prosecution’s first witness to be called.”
A policeman with a wall eye came to the stand, gave his name, address, history of employment within the police department; described how it came to be that he was acquainted with the deceased Cyrus Butterfield; and provided a minute and colorful description of his coming across the body, wedged naked between two barrels of salted cod in an alley off West and Leroy streets on New Year’s Day.
The defense attorney asked no questions of the witness.
A pockmarked young man from the city morgue at Bellevue Hospital nervously testified that Cyrus Butterfield had died of the blow of some sharp instrument to the breast which, piercing deep, had punctured the heart. Other bruises and marks on his body had probably been inflicted after death.
While the nervous young man from the morgue remained on the stand, the report of the coroner’s jury—providing no additional information of importance—was entered into evidence.
Next, Lady Weale was called to the stand. That lady, whose testimony and manner of speech had been recorded at length in the Tribune by Simeon Lightner, was regarded with some curiosity by the spectators in the courtroom.
She seated herself in the witness chair nervously, and glanced at Lena Shanks with some apprehension. Lena Shanks glared stonily back. All eyes in the courtroom—except those of Maggie Kizer—had turned on the woman who, with agitation, tugged at the corners of her yellow kerchief that were tied beneath her chin.
Lady Weale repeated everything that she had told Simeon Lightner in the chophouse. The recitation was halting, laden with detail that was mostly made up and tended toward the elevation of her own part and motives in the proceedings. Someone had explained to Lady Weale that she had come off badly in the Tribune article, and she now thought to employ the trial as a forum in which to whitewash her smudged reputation. She frequently slipped from the point, did much indicating toward Maggie Kizer (who rather to Lady Weale’s relief had kept on her dark spectacles and never looked up from her folded hands upon the table), and leveled spurious charges against Simeon Lightner, such as that he had threatened her, first with a knife, and then with amorous advances. She even hinted darkly that the reporter himself had been involved in the murder of Cyrus Butterfield.
The court—judge, prosecution, and defense alike—was wearied by the half-prevaricated circumstantiality of Lady Weale’s testimony, but the jury were vastly amused. They whispered among themselves, chuckled, and laughed outright.
“Yes, Mrs. Weale,” said the prosecutor, interrupting a description of a party of streetwalkers who had tumbled against her on West Street when she was watching Maggie Kizer’s husband supporting the dead lawyer across the way, “and what did you do then?”
“Hurried back to Bleecker. Nothing more for me to do then, if you see what I mean?”
“And what did you find there?”
“Nothing. What should I be finding?”
“Well, surely you saw Mrs. Kizer again, surely you spoke with her. Between you, you had just relieved yourselves of a very embarrassing item, to wit, the corpse of a respectable gentleman who had been murdered in the rooms of your house!”
“Spoke to her, sure.”
“And what did she say? What did Mrs. Kizer say upon your return?”
“Said, ‘Did Alick get rid of him?’ And I said yes. And she said, ‘Good,’ and then she said, ‘Good-night, Mrs. Weale.’ What should she be saying?”
“What indeed? But she seemed—in your perspicacious opinion, Mrs. Weale—not distraught, not upset, not grief-stricken, not conscience-struck, not burdened with the guiltiness of the evening’s horrible entertainment?”
“We took the lamp and moved it over the carpet to see if there was blood anywhere, and there didn’t appear to be, so we went to bed. Maggie came down to lock the doors herself—didn’t want Alick coming back in again.”
“And you went to sleep then, slept sound, as if nothing had happened. A man was murdered in the room above your bedchamber, perhaps above the very spot where you slept. For all you knew his blood might be dripping down upon you in your slumber, Mrs. Weale. Do you mean to—”
“No blood, I’m saying!”
“What happened the next day?”
“After the excitement, I was sleeping late. Maggie sent me for the papers, and she read ’em to see if there was mention of Mr. Butterfield and there wasn’t. It was New Year’s, and so many men on the streets that she didn’t venture out, but that evening went down to get money for the jewelry she had taken from Mr. Butterfield.”
“Where did she go to do this?”
“Houston Street. Black Lena’s.”
Lady Weale pointed out Lena Shanks in the back of the court. Judge Stallworth peered over the edge of the bench, closely examined the fat woman with the greasy hair, and then glanced away. Maggie Kizer, not realizing before that her sister-in-law was present, turned and nodded to Lena. Ella smiled at Maggie, as if returning that greeting for her grandmother—whose eyes remained fixed on the gaunt man behind the judge’s bench.
“And ‘Black Lena’ gave her money?”
“Yes,” replied Lady Weale, “good money. All Maggie’s business in that line was done with Black Lena. Black Lena,” said Lady Weale, wanting to mollify the old woman for having brought in her name, “was always good to Maggie. Black Lena gives the best returns in the city, I’m told. And besides all that, Alick Kizer is Black Lena’s brother.”
After the conclusion of the prosecution’s examination of Lady Weale, the defense attorney returned to Lady Weale’s relation of the murder of Cyrus Butterfield, in the first hour of the new year.
“Did Maggie Kizer say a single word, did she make a single movement, which might have suggested that she wished any harm to come to Cyrus Butterfield?”
“No,” said Lady Weale, “ ’Course not. Maggie was good to her gentlemen, didn’t wish any of ’em harm. Furious when Alick stabbed him, if you see what I mean. Even said to me she wished it was Alick that had been killed instead of Mr. Butterfield.”
“So,” continued the defense, “in your opinion—and you were there, were you not, Mrs. Weale?—Maggie Kizer had nothing at all to do with the death of Cyrus Butterfield.”
“No,” said Lady Weale, “ ’course not, ’cept that she was the reason he was there in the first place.”
The prosecution objected to this last question and Lady Weale’s reply to it, and Judge Stallworth struck them from the record.
Brought up in this, the defense attorney then asked a number of garbled questions concerning Lady Weale’s antecedents, her housekeeping practices; wanted to know why she had done nothing to stop the murder (she had feared for her own life, she said), asked for a history of her acquaintance with the defendant, and at the end, asked, “Mrs. Weale, have you any substantial charge, any charge at all in fact, to bring against the character of the defendant who, by your own admission, never treated y
ou but with a kindness and respect that—for all the court knows—may have been beyond your deserving?”
“No,” replied Lady Weale solemnly, “I can’t say a word against her. She was the best-behaved, most politest, well-mannered lady I have ever come across, even if she was an octoroon. She never—”
The remainder of Lady Weale’s adulatory speech was drowned by the clamor that attended this wholly unexpected revelation. The prosecutor grinned, the defense attorney dropped into his chair, the judge closed his blue eyes in ironic solemnity, but their reactions were the only silent ones. The reporters mumbled to one another their delight at this exciting piece of dramatic discovery, the artists called for better views of the defendant, the spectators talked loudly of their astonishment and their previous suspicions, and the jury murmured hotly among themselves.
When at last the judge succeeded in quieting the courtroom, the defense attorney, with the air of a man defeated, asked Lady Weale: “You are certain of this imputation? You have proof of Mrs. Kizer’s mixed parentage? Did she tell you this herself for instance?”
“No,” said Lady Weale, “she didn’t know I knew. Alick told me when he first brought her to live on Bleecker Street.”
“What exactly did this convicted felon tell you, Mrs. Weale?”
“That Maggie was an octoroon. That she had a black line beneath the thumbnail that proved it, so she always wore gloves.” Mrs. Weale pointed to Maggie’s folded gloved hands upon the oaken table. “And she had a fleck of black in her eyes, so she always wore dark spectacles.”
Maggie raised her head and a reflection of the courtroom flashed in the amber glass of her spectacles.
“But,” said the defense attorney nervously, wishing to high heaven he had never addressed a single word to this woman, “you had no confirmation of these unjust, doubtlessly false imputations from Mrs. Kizer herself?”
“No,” replied Lady Weale, “never talked of it. Maggie Kizer was a prince of tenants, except of course for the murder, and that wasn’t her doing. She—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Weale,” said the defense attorney, and seated himself.
The prosecutor considered that he had no need to belabor Mrs. Weale’s testimony; its effect would not be dissipated by anything the defense attorney could allege or suggest, and so he signified that he had no further questions of the witness.
After Lady Weale had stepped down the prosecution called Lena Shanks to the stand. He had not proposed this before, but seeing that the lady was in the courtroom already he did not think that corroborative testimony could do any harm; and it was surely a mark against the defendant that she had sold the dead man’s jewelry.
Lena Shanks was sworn in, but it was immediately apparent that her English was poor and that questions posed to her would have to be simpler than those which had been put to Lady Weale.
Lena Shanks stood in the witness box to the left of the judge’s bench, but her head was turned slightly, and she kept Judge Stallworth within her baleful sight all the time that she testified.
The jury made audible facetious comments on her appearance in general and her massive girth in particular. The foreman voiced the opinion that it wasn’t a witness in the box, but a ton of coal that had been delivered to the courtroom by mistake.
“Your name?” demanded the prosecutor.
“Lena Shanks.”
“Address?”
“201 West Houston Street.”
“You own a shop we believe.”
She nodded, and was asked to answer the question aloud.
“Ja.”
“What kind of shop?”
“Pawnshop.”
“What is your shop called?”
Lena made no answer.
“What is your shop called?” the prosecutor asked again.
“No name. People come to Black Lena.”
“Did Maggie Kizer come to you on the night of January first?”
“Ja.”
“And did she tell you that your brother, her husband, had just brutally murdered the lawyer Cyrus Butterfield?”
“Nein.”
“She said nothing of the death of Cyrus Butterfield?”
“Nein.”
“Did she inform you that your brother, Alick Kiser, had escaped from prison and come to her?”
“Nein.”
“When did you last see your brother, Mrs. Shanks?”
“ ’78.”
“Well,” said the prosecutor, “when Maggie Kizer came to you on New Year’s night, did she sell you—beg pardon, pawn with you—some men’s jewelry, which included several gold rings, a gold watch and chain, and several pieces of sapphire jewelry?”
“Nein.”
“No?”
“Nein. Maggie came, and I owed her money. Paid her and she went away.”
“You owed her money?”
“Ja.”
“How much money?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“Why? Under what circumstances had Maggie Kizer lent you money, when rather it is your business to lend money?”
“Lent my daughter Daisy money when my daughter Daisy needed it.”
The prosecutor, in some consternation, turned the witness over to the defense, who smirking for the unexpected good fortune, repeated: “Maggie Kizer then brought you no jewelry of any sort, neither man’s jewelry, nor a woman’s jewelry, nor rings with sapphires in them, nor rings without sapphires in them, nor gold watches, nor watches made of quartz, nor watches made of any mineral whatsoever—is that correct?”
“No jewels,” said Black Lena, and stared at Judge Stallworth.
“Madam,” said the Judge severely, “I must warn you that if you are perjuring yourself in this matter, you will be treated with the utmost severity by the law. There is nothing to be gained by an attempt at protecting this woman. The police will search your premises, and if you are found with anything that remotely resembles the jewelry that was worn by Cyrus Butterfield on the night he was murdered, you will answer for it with your freedom. You will repent of your perjury on an extended visit to one of the islands situated in the East River.”
“No jewelry,” repeated Lena, for the first time with a sly smile on her face. She turned slowly away from Judge Stallworth, and was dismissed by both attorneys.
This completed the prosecution’s case. The only witness called for the defense was Maggie Kizer herself, who approached the stand with a hesitant gait. There, the judge asked that she remove her spectacles, and she did so with a trembling hand. All the courtroom leaned forward to catch the black fleck in her green eye. Maggie Kizer turned a blank face on the jury. She seemed unaware of the intensity of the attention she commanded.
Her attorney asked her to state what had happened on the night of December 31, and in halting but melodious speech, Maggie Kizer told the story of that night, often wandering from the narrative or trailing off altogether, so that she had to be gently prompted. Her tale, if incoherent at times, or beside the point, still left a better impression than could have been expected, for she spoke of Cyrus Butterfield with respect and some affection, spoke with indignation of the intrusion of the escaped convict and described how she had been powerless to stop the altercation that had developed between the two men.
At this point the attorney for the defense thought it best to have his client leave off, and he thanked her. Maggie unfolded her spectacles again, and was raising them to her face, when her motion was interrupted by the prosecutor: “Oh, if I might have a few words, Mrs. Kizer, before you withdraw from the box—just a few words.”
Maggie lowered the spectacles and her eye trailed listlessly to the bandy-legged prosecutor. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I will answer your questions, sir.”
“Your speech was finely wrou
ght, Mrs. Kizer, may I say, and showed you an evilly circumstanced victim, or perhaps, considering your profession, I should say, an evilly circumstanced victimizer. You have nowhere denied, have you, that you get your living by the prostitution of your body, have you? That for you, ‘bed’ and ‘board’ are one and the same thing?”
“I am, sir, as you have yourself said, evilly circumstanced. I am an object of charity, and dependent upon the good offices of others for my sustenance.”
“And Mr. Butterfield was a kind Christian man who provided you with such sustenance out of the generosity of his heart?”
“Yes, Mr. Butterfield was a good man, as you have said, unexceptionable I think is the word you employed.”
Maggie’s speech faltered a little, and fell sometimes to an inarticulate softness. Her eyes seemed unable to maintain their focus upon any object or person.
“And you, in your gratitude, accorded Mr. Butterfield certain favors.”
“Sir,” said Maggie wearily, “I have not denied that when the convict entered my rooms, unannounced and through violence to the locks on my doors, Mr. Butterfield was lying in my bed in a state of extreme dishabille.”
“Yes,” said the lawyer, a little abashed, “thank you for that admission again. We will all do well to remember it. You have declared yourself distraught that Mr. Butterfield was murdered—”
“Certainly,” replied Maggie, “my regard for Mr. Butterfield was very high.”
“—and yet you did not hesitate to relieve yourself of his corpse, you did not hesitate to protect the murderer of this inestimable lawyer, you did not hesitate to deny Mr. Cyrus Butterfield—whom you held in such high regard—to deny him the small comfort of a Christian burial?”
“No,” replied Maggie Kizer without hesitation, “I did not. Cyrus Butterfield, much as I had esteemed him, was past my help or comfort. At that time, I became more concerned with my own safety and wished only to protect myself. I was grieved, but I was not foolish.”
Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Page 19
