‘Was that when she said “poison”?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’d you think she meant?’
‘She didn’t mean anything! She was delirious.’
‘So you didn’t take her seriously.’
‘She didn’t know what she was saying.’
Mr. Pettingill nodded. ‘Much obliged, doctor. That’s all.’
But before Doctor Seyffert could leave the stand, Quinton was on his feet. ‘One question, doctor,’ he said sharply. ‘After she said “poison” did she say anything else?’
‘No.’
“‘Poison’ was her last word before she died?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s all.’ Quinton turned away and, as the other left the stand, called Doctor McGraw.
Doctor McGraw had a head like a lion, with a great mane of tawny hair. Quinton addressed him respectfully.
‘Your name?’
‘Robert Winston McGraw.’
‘Your occupation?’
‘Medical examiner of Suffolk County, Massachusetts.’
‘For how long have you held that position?’
Mr. Pettingill came to his feet. ‘You don’t have to qualify Doctor McGraw, Brother Quinton,’ he said in a friendly tone. ‘Everybody knows he’s the best there is.’
But Quinton, ignoring this interruption, proceeded with his questions, leading Doctor McGraw to recite his years of experience with death by violence.
‘Now, Doctor,’ he said at last. ‘I want to present you with a statement of certain symptoms.’ He lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and began to read a careful catalogue, based upon Dr. Seyffert’s testimony, of the phases through which Ellen passed before she died; and when he finished he asked: ‘Could you, doctor, on that statement, determine the cause of death?’
Doctor McGraw hesitated, and Ruth was surprisingly certain that he disliked Quinton; that he thought Quinton an incompetent blunderer. She guessed that he had so often been a witness in such cases as this that he knew better than Quinton how his testimony should be conducted. His tone was full of dry scorn as he answered.
‘No,’ he said.
Quinton flushed as though under a sharp rebuff. He stepped back to the table, hesitated, turned again to the witness.
‘If you had been in attendance in this case,’ he asked, ‘and the symptoms were as stated, what would your procedure have been?’
Mr. Pettingill climbed to his feet. ‘Your Honor,’ he said agreeably. ‘Brother Quinton’s trying to keep within the rules and having a hard time of it, but I guess what we all want to know is what Doctor McGraw thinks Mrs. Harland died of. The defense wants the jury to have all the facts we can give them, so as far as we’re concerned, the Doctor can go ahead and tell us, without all this beating around the bush.’
Judge Andrus’ eyes twinkled under his black brows. He said to Quinton: ‘The defense will offer no objection if you allow Doctor McGraw to discuss Mrs. Harland’s death in his own way.’
Quinton was crimson with humiliation, but he accepted the opportunity. ‘Doctor,’ he directed, ‘give us your opinion as to the diagnosis suggested by the facts stated.’
Doctor McGraw’s voice when now he spoke was deeper; it rumbled in the quiet room.
‘On the facts as stated,’ he explained, ‘it is certain that this woman died of an acute digestive irritation. That might be gastro-enteritis, gastritis arising from natural causes, ptomaine poisoning, something of the sort. Or it might be from arsenic poisoning, or from some other artificial or mechanical irritation. In all such cases, where death results from a sudden onset of indigestion without known cause, an autopsy is indicated Superficial indications are seldom conclusive without a post-mortem. Examination of the rejected contents of the stomach, even before death, would probably reveal arsenic if it were present. A post-mortem would certainly do so. But without an autopsy, it’s impossible to state positively the cause of death.’
Quinton asked insistently: ‘It might have been arsenic poisoning?’
‘It might have been, yes, certainly.’
Quinton dismissed him and when Pettingill asked no questions, Quinton called Doctor Rowan of Augusta, whose testimony paralleled that of Doctor McGraw. Then a Mr. Martinsbury whom Ruth had never seen testified to the cremation of Ellen’s body and the delivery of her ashes to Harland; and the morning session ended.
Ruth spent that noon recess in a room in the courthouse, where she and Deputy Hatch and Mrs. Sayward were served lunch on trays. The deputy — he was a ponderous and bulky man — ate enormously and in silence, and having done so he relaxed in a semi-somnolent condition to submit to the laborious processes of digestion; but Mrs. Sayward chattered while she ate, and afterward she produced a half-knitted sock and set her needles clicking; and she talked cheerfully about herself and her affairs. Her tongue rattled as amiably and as tirelessly as her needles, and Ruth found herself listening, interested and sometimes amused. The hour passed quickly.
– III
When Judge Andrus once more took his place on the bench, Quinton called Leick to the stand. Ruth had not seen Leick since her arrest, and his eyes met hers in loyal greeting. Quinton, to her surprise, asked Leick nothing about the picnic on the shore Instead, omitting preliminary questions, he came at once to that moment when Ellen uttered her first cry of pain, and he made Leick tell how he and Harland tried to carry her to the house, how she collapsed on the way.
‘So I fetched a door — took it off its hinges — and I brought some blankets,’ Leick explained. ‘And we carried her up to the house on that.’
‘What then?’ Quinton prompted.
‘They sent me to fetch the doctor.’
‘How soon did you return?’
‘Soon’s I could, but it was all of two hours. I had trouble finding him. It was getting on to dark.’
‘What then?’
‘Doctor Seyffert went to work on her, and I fixed them up some supper.’
‘They ate it?’
‘Yes. They took turns, one at a time, the others staying with her.’
‘Did you at any time go into the room where Mrs. Harland was dying?’
‘I don’t know as I did. She was in bed.’
‘Did you hear her speak?’
‘No.’
‘Now, after she died, what happened?‘
‘Well, Mr. Harland was wore out. After the doctor left, he went to sleep. Come daylight, Mrs. Harland had me go telephone to the undertaker and we got ready to take her to Boston.’
‘The jury may not understand you. Mrs. Harland was dead. The defendant was not then “Mrs. Harland.” You wish to say that the defendant took charge, and that you arranged to have Mrs. Harland’s body sent to Boston?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you at any time go back down to the beach, the scene of the picnic?’
‘Yes, just before we left the house to drive to Bangor.’
‘For what purpose did you go to the beach?’
‘We’d left some stuff down there. I was going up into the north woods, the next week, to help build a logging camp and swamp out some roads, so I wouldn’t be coming home again till spring; so I went down to get my wash boiler, that we’d boiled the lobsters in, and the lunch basket.’
Quinton turned to Mrs. Parkins. From beneath the table where she sat, she produced a wicker hamper, and Quinton showed it to Leick. ‘Have you seen this before?’ he asked.
‘That’s the lunch basket,’ Leick agreed. ‘Or anyway, it looks like the same one.’
Quinton addressed the bench. ‘Your Honor, I ask to have this hamper marked for identification.’ He looked toward Mr. Pettingill. ‘Unless there is some objection?’
Pettingill brought the hamper to where Ruth and Harland sat. Ruth told him quietly: ‘It’s ours. I remember that scratch on the handle.’ She opened it, but it was empty. ‘It’s ours,’ she repeated.
Pettingill spoke to Judge Andrus. ‘No objection, Your Honor.’
Q
uinton asked Leick: ‘Did you on that occasion open the lunch basket?’
‘No.’
‘Had you opened it before?’
‘We’d used some forks to eat the lobster. I scrubbed them with sand and put them in the basket, put the thermos bottles back in, and the leftover lobster and things. That was right after we et lunch.’
‘Did anyone use sugar in their coffee at that picnic?’
‘She did.’
‘The deceased?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was the sugar in a container?’
‘In an envelope. She tore the corner off.’
‘Did you see that envelope at any time after she last used it?’
‘She put it back in the basket.’
‘Now what did you do with the basket?’
‘I brought it up to the house and put it and the wash boiler in the shed.’
‘When did you next see it?’
‘Here, a minute ago.’
Quinton turned to the bench. ‘Your Honor, if there is no objection, I should like to excuse this witness at this time and recall him later. My present purpose is to establish a corpus delicti, to present the complete chain of evidence that a crime was committed.’
Judge Andrus looked inquiringly at Mr. Pettingill, and the big man stood up. ‘If the court please,’ he suggested, ‘Leick Thorne was one of the three people — outside of Ellen — who saw what happened at the picnic. We’ll want to hear him tell all about it.’
Quinton explained: ‘I propose to recall him for that purpose.’
Pettingill addressed the court. ‘All right, we’ll let Brother Quinton put his case his own way, Your Honor.’
Judge Andrus nodded, and Quinton said: Then for the present, that is all.’
‘No questions, Your Honor,’ Mr. Pettingill announced. ‘But we reserve the right to cross-examine on all this witness’s testimony later.’
Leick left the stand. Quinton sat down, and after a whispered word, Attorney General Shumate rose. His movement hushed the courtroom; and he said quietly:
‘Your Honor, the State calls Russell Quinton!’
– IV
At the sound of Quinton’s name, there was an instant quickening attention across the crowded benches. Quinton took the stand, was sworn. Mr. Shumate stood facing him, put the preliminary questions. Ruth, watching them both, felt the pounding of her heart, and she wondered what was now to come, what testimony Quinton could possibly give, and she listened in a still attention as the quiet interrogation got under way. After the preliminaries, Mr. Shumate asked:
‘Now, Mr. Quinton, were you at some time informed of the death of Mrs. Ellen Harland?’
‘I was.’
‘Did you, as a result of that information, do something?’
‘I did.’
‘Will you tell us what you did at that time?’
‘At the time of her death,’ Quinton explained, ‘I was in New Brunswick, duck shooting. I heard about her death a few days after my return. I had known her — and her father before his death — for years, and I felt a deep and sincere grief. I called on Doctor Seyffert to learn the details.’
‘Go on, please.’
‘After talking with him, I went to see Leick,’ Quinton continued. ‘He was not at home, but his shed door was open and I stepped inside. I saw a copper boiler and a lunch hamper on the floor near the door that led into the kitchen.’
‘I show you the hamper here marked for identification.’
‘It is the same one.’
‘Had you ever seen it before that day?’
‘I had presented it to Ellen Berent, before her marriage to Mr. Harland.’
‘Under what circumstances?’
‘We were — friends.’ Ruth wondered why he did not say they were engaged, but he went quickly on. ‘I had gone to Boston to see her after her father’s death. We went for a picnic on the shore north of Boston, and I bought the hamper and gave it to her for that occasion.’
‘When you recognized the hamper, in Leick’s shed, what did you do?’
‘I opened it.’
‘How long was this after Mrs. Harland died?’
‘Ten days or two weeks.’
‘What did you see in the hamper?’
‘The ice compartment was half full of water; and a lobster, and some claws, were floating in it. There were thermos bottles, forks, salt and pepper shakers, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, a can of dry mustard, a sandwich covered with blue mold, some chocolate doughnuts.’ He added: ‘Maybe I didn’t notice all those things at the time. I just looked in. I didn’t touch anything.’
‘What did you then do?’
‘I took the hamper out to my car.’
‘Why?’
‘I had known Ellen for many years. It had been my gift to her. I knew she would be glad for me to have it.’
‘You took it out to your car?’
‘I took it home. On the way home I threw away the stale food, the moldy sandwich, the lobsters.’
‘Did you put anything in the hamper?’
‘No.’
‘You took it home?’
‘I put it away up in the attic.’
‘Did you first clean it, or have it cleaned?’
‘No. I decided that I had had no right to take it, so I hid it behind some trunks, under the eaves.’
‘When did you next see it?’
‘On the eighteenth of last June.’
‘Under what circumstances?’
‘Deputy Hatch, Mrs. Parkins, and I went to my house. I pointed out the hamper to the deputy. He drew it out from where it was hidden. At my direction, without opening it, Mrs. Parkins sealed it with gummed paper. We drove to Augusta and delivered it, still sealed, to Mr. Catterson there.’
‘From the time you put the hamper in the attic till at your direction Deputy Hatch picked it up, did you touch it or see it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did anyone else?’
‘Not that I know of. I’m sure no one saw it.’
’Now Mr. Quinton, did you at some time go to the Berent house at Bar Harbor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Under what circumstances?’
‘On June nineteenth, I went there with Mrs. Parkins, Deputy Hatch, and Mrs. Freeman, the housekeeper.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘I had a search warrant. I went to make a search of the house.’
‘In the course of that search, did you find anything?’
‘I found a bottle containing some white powder.’
The Attorney General turned back to the counsel table, and Mrs. Parkins from a suitcase under the table produced a bottle with a wide mouth and a glass stopper. Ruth recognized it. It had once contained bath salts, had been in her bathroom cabinet.
‘I show you this bottle,’ said Mr. Shumate.
Quinton took it in his hands. ‘It’s the same one,’ he said.
The bottle was marked for identification, and Mr. Shumate asked: ‘Where did you find this bottle?’
‘Behind a loose section of baseboard, in the bedroom in the southeast corner of the second floor.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I picked it up carefully, with a handkerchief around my hand. Without touching it with my bare hands, I wrapped and sealed it, in the presence of Mrs. Parkins and Deputy Hatch, and in their presence I delivered it to Mr. Catterson, the state chemist.’
‘Do you know what he did with it?’
‘At my suggestion and in my presence, he had it examined for fingerprints by Mr. Norton. He then analyzed the powder it contained.’
‘By the way, what did Mr. Catterson do with the lunch hamper when you took it to him?’
‘In my presence, he broke the seals, took out the things in it, listed them, and then analyzed the contents of an envelope he found in the hamper.’
The Attorney General nodded and turned to Mr. Pettingill. ‘Your witness,’ he said.
Mr. Pettingill, before
rising, spoke in a low tone to Ruth and to Harland. ‘No use trying to break him down on that story,’ he said. ‘He’ll have his secretary and Joe Hatch to back him up. But you notice he left it open for me to ask him why he went to get the hamper when he did, and why he searched the Bar Harbor house. If I ask him, he’ll say it was because he had that letter from Ellen, and then I’ll have to ask him about that. But if she could have put anything in that letter that we can’t handle, I’ll keep clear of the whole thing. What do you say?’
Ruth said quickly: ‘I don’t know what’s in the letter, but I remember that bottle. It had bath salts in it. I kept it in my bathroom cabinet. It was a birthday present, but I used the salts only once or twice, and I never missed the bottle. Ellen discovered that loose baseboard when we shared that room as children, and she called it her secret hiding place and made me promise never to look in it. I hadn’t thought of it for years. The carpenters forgot to nail the end of the baseboard, and you could pry it out two or three inches from the wall.’
Pettingill nodded. ‘What about the letter?’
Ruth looked at Harland, asking his agreement. ‘We don’t want to keep anything hidden, Mr. Pettingill. I want to know what’s in the letter.‘ Harland whispered his assent.
Pettingill hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m taking your word for it that the letter can do no harm.’ They were silent, and he reflected: ‘All right, I’ll walk into Brother Quinton’s trap.’ He rose in that laborious way which was his courtroom habit, like an uncertain, feeble old man; and his manner was humble and confused. ‘Well, Mr. Quinton, this about the lunch basket is all news to me,’ he remarked, in an interested tone. ‘I want to be sure I’ve got it straight. You stole the hamper full of rotten lobsters because you’d given it to Mrs. Harland as was, and you wanted it to remember her by. Is that it?’
‘You can have it so!’
‘I don’t want it any way only the true way. Is that the way it was?’
‘I didn’t consider it stealing.’
‘Well, we all have our ideas about that,’ Mr. Pettingill suggested. ‘Most of us country folks have gone off and left our houses unlocked, one time or another, and come home and found something missing; and most generally, unless we know the neighbors have borrowed, we get kind of mad, call the folks that did it thieves. Sometimes summer folks pick up little things for souvenirs, or boys break in and see some gimcrack they want. Course, it’s hard on the folks that own the things; but I can see how it might not seem like stealing to the ones that take them.’
Leave Her to Heaven Page 35
