The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics)

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Well, you’re a fine one,” said the reporter in tones that belied the statement. He removed an overcoat, a woolly scarf, a portable typewriter, seven tabloid newspapers, and a gray felt hat from the seat next to him and waited virtuously for appropriate expressions of gratitude. None were forthcoming. The red-headed girl scrambled unceremoniously over his feet, sank into the seat, and abandoned herself to a series of minute but audible pants varied by an occasional subdued sniff.

  “What in the world—” began the reporter.

  “Don’t speak to me!” said the red-headed girl in a small fierce voice, and added even more fiercely: “What’s happened?”

  “That’s what I want to know!” remarked the reporter with some emphasis. “What in the world was that perfectly ungodly racket going on outside in the hall?”

  “Me,” said the red-headed girl. “Who’s been on the stand?”

  “You? For the Lord’s sake, what were you doing?”

  “Screaming,” said the red-headed girl. “Who’s been on the stand?”

  “Just a guy from a prison out West to prove that Orsini had served a jail sentence for robbery. What were you screaming about?”

  “Because they wouldn’t let me in. . . . Who’s on now?”

  “That red-headed fellow, Leo Fox, from the gas station. He’s through with his direct, and Farr has him now. . . . Why wouldn’t they let you in?”

  “Because____ No, I can’t tell you all that now. Later—at lunch. Listen, won’t you____”

  “It was Saturday night, wasn’t it, Mr. Fox?”

  “Sure it was Saturday night.”

  Mr. Fox, who was lavishly decorated with freckles, whose coat was about three inches too tight for him, and whose tie was about three shades too green, shifted his chewing gum dexterously to the other cheek and kept a wary eye on Mr. Farr.

  “There were a good many cars getting gas at your station on fine Saturday nights in June, weren’t there?”

  “Sure there were.”

  “Yet this car and its occupants are indelibly stamped on your memory?”

  “If you mean do I remember the both of them, sure I do. They wasn’t just getting gas; the dame—the lady—she wanted a drink of water, and it was me who got it for her. That was what made me remember them, see?”

  “And all you know is that it was some time after nine, because you didn’t come on duty until nine?”

  “That’s right. I don’t never come on until then; and sometimes I’m a couple of minutes late, at that.”

  “But it might have been two minutes past nine instead of twenty-five minutes past, as Mrs. Ives claims?”

  “No, sir, it couldn’t have been nothing of the kind. People don’t get eight gallons of gas, and pay for it, and get change, and ask for glasses of water and get them, and drink them and get away all in two minutes. It must have been more than ten minutes past, no matter if they were the first ones to come along, after I checked in.”

  Mr. Farr contemplated him with marked disfavor. “I didn’t ask you for a speech, Mr. Fox. The only fact you are able to state to us positively as to the time is that you came on duty at nine o’clock, and that Mrs. Ives and Mr. Bellamy appeared after you had arrived.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then that will be all. You may stand down.”

  “Call Mr. Patrick Ives,” said Mr. Lambert.

  “Mr. Patrick Ives!”

  From the corner by the window where he had sat, hour after hour and day after day, with his mother’s small gloved hand resting lightly and reassuringly on his knee, Patrick Ives rose and moved slowly forward toward the witness box.

  How tall he was, thought the red-headed girl—how tall and young, for all the haggard misery and bitterness of that white and reckless face. He stood staring about him for a moment, his black head towering inches above those about him; then, with one swift stride, he was in his place.

  “Mr. Ives, will you be good enough to tell us as concisely as possible just what happened on the night of June 19, 1926, from the time that you arrived at your home to the time that you retired for the night?”

  “Oh,” said Patrick Ives indifferently, “I doubt whether I could do anything along that line at all. I have a notoriously bad memory, and I’d simply be faking a lot of stuff that wouldn’t do either of us any good. Besides, most of that ground has been gone over by other witnesses, hasn’t it?”

  The casual insolence of the conversational tone had had the effect of literally hypnotizing Mr. Lambert, Mr. Farr, and the redoubtable Carver himself into a state of stupefied inaction. As the voice ceased, however, all three emerged from coma into violent energy. It was difficult to tell which of the three was the more profoundly moved, though Mr. Lambert’s protestations were the most piercing. Fortified by his gavel, however, Judge Carver managed to batter the rest into silence.

  “Let that answer be stricken from the record! It is totally improper, Mr. Ives. This is not a debating society. You will kindly refrain from expressing your opinions on any subject whatsoever, and will confine yourself to the briefest replies possible.”

  “If Mr. Lambert will put a definite question to me I’ll see whether I can give him a definite answer,” replied Mr. Ives, looking entirely unchastened and remotely diverted.

  “Very well,” said Lambert, choking with ill-concealed wrath. “Will you be so kind as to tell us whether anything out of the ordinary occurred during that evening, Mr. Ives?”

  “No.”

  “Before dinner?”

  “No.”

  “After dinner?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Ives flung him the monosyllables like so many very bare bones tossed at a large, hungry, snapping dog.

  “Miss Page testified that she met you at the nursery door with a ship model in your hand at about eight o’clock. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you see her again?”

  “About a quarter of an hour later.”

  “Was her testimony as to what followed correct?”

  “Oh, it was correct enough as far as it went.”

  “It went further than she told us?”

  “Considerably,” said Mr. Ives, a grimly reminiscent smile flitting across his haggard young face.

  “In what direction?”

  “In the direction of violent hysterics and general lunacy,” said Mr. Ives unfeelingly.

  “What was the cause of these—er—manifestations?”

  “Miss Page,” said Mr. Ives with great clarity and precision, “is a high-strung, unbalanced, hysterical little idiot Mrs. Ives had____”

  “Does Your Honor consider that a responsive reply?” inquired Mr. Farr with mild interest.

  “The Court has already warned the witness to keep strictly to the question. It repeats that warning. As for the reply, it may be stricken from the record.”

  “I consider it an absolutely responsive reply,” cried Mr. Lambert with some heat. “Mr. Ives was explaining why Miss Page____”

  “You may take your exception and put the question again, Mr. Lambert. The Court has ruled on the reply.”

  “What caused the hysteria you speak of?” inquired Mr. Lambert through gritted teeth.

  “The fact that Mrs. Ives had told her that her services were no longer required, and that she had better make her preparations to leave on Monday. Miss Page wished me to intervene in her behalf, as I had already done on two occasions.”

  “Did you acquiesce?”

  “On the contrary,” said Pat Ives—and at the tone of chilled steel in his voice the red-headed girl felt a flash of something like pity for her pet detestation, the flower-faced Miss Page—“I told her that in my opinion Sunday was a better day than Monday, and that I’d send Roberts to help with the packing.”

  “Why was Miss Page so anxious to stay, Mr. Ives?”

  “How should I know?” inquired Mr. Ives. “She probably realized that it was a very excellent job that she was losing.”

&n
bsp; “That is the only explanation that occurs to you?”

  “It is the only explanation that it occurs to me to give you,” said Mr. Ives gently, a small, dangerous smile playing about the corner of his mouth.

  Mr. Lambert eyed him indecisively for a moment, and prudently decided on another tack. “Did that conclude your conversation?”

  “Oh, no,” replied Mr. Ives, the smile deepening. “That started it.”

  “Will you give us the rest of it, please?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. As I told you, I have a bad memory. If it doesn’t betray me, however, I believe that it was largely an elaboration of the two original themes.”

  “What themes?”

  “The themes of her departure and my intervention.”

  “Miss Page said nothing about a note?”

  “A note?” There was a look of genuine surprise in the lifted brows.

  “She did not mention having intercepted a note from Mrs. Stephen Bellamy—having abstracted it from a book in the library?”

  “I see,” said Mr. Ives, the brows relaxing, the smile returning, a little deeper and more dangerous. “No, I don’t believe that she mentioned that. It would probably have made an impression on me if she had.”

  “Had you any reason to believe that Miss Page was jealous of Mrs. Bellamy, Mr. Ives?”

  “Jealous of Mrs. Bellamy? Why should Miss Page have been jealous of Mrs. Bellamy?”

  “I thought that possibly you might be able to tell us.”

  “You were in error,” said Mr. Ives, leaning a little forward in his chair. “I am totally unable to tell you.”

  He did not lift his voice, but Mr. Lambert moved back a step somewhat precipitately.

  “Yes—exactly. Now, Mr. Ives, Melanie Cordier has testified that you told her that you had not found the note she claims to have placed there. Was that correct?”

  “That is what I told her, certainly.”

  “And it was an accurate statement on your part?”

  Mr. Farr rose leisurely to his feet. “Just one moment, please. I’m becoming a little confused from time to time as to whether this is direct or cross-examination. It looks as though Mr. Lambert were going to leave me very little to do. Possibly I’m in error, but it certainly sounds to me as though he were impeaching the veracity of his own witness.”

  “The Court is inclined to agree with you. Do you object to the question?”

  “I don’t particularly object to the question, but it strikes me as totally out of place.”

  “Very well. You need not reply to that question, Mr. Ives.”

  “Thanks—with Your Honor’s permission, I prefer to. I’m sure that Mr. Lambert will be glad to know that my reply to Melanie Cordier was entirely accurate.”

  “How many of these notes had you received previously?” inquired Mr. Lambert, and the expression that inflamed his countenance was not one of gratitude.

  “Six or eight, possibly.”

  “Over what period?”

  “Over a period of about two months.”

  “Are you aware that Miss Cordier testified that she had placed possibly twenty there over a much more extended period?”

  “Well, if she testified that,” said Patrick Ives indifferently, “she lied.”

  “What was the tenor of these notes?”

  “They were largely suggesting appointments at the cottage.”

  “How often were these appointments carried through?”

  “Twice.”

  “Only twice?”

  At the flat incredulity of Lambert’s face something flared in Patrick Ives’s heavy blue eyes.

  “Twice, I said—twice.”

  “Will you give us the dates?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t—once in the latter part of May, again about a week before the murder. That’s about the best that I can do.”

  “Mr. Ives, there has been some talk here of this knife, State Exhibit 6. Miss Page has identified it as belonging to you. Is that correct?”

  “Quite.”

  “Will you tell us when you last saw it?”

  “The last time that I remember seeing it before it was produced here in court was on the afternoon of my wife’s arrest—Monday the twenty-first.”

  “Have you any idea where it was on the night of June nineteenth at half-past nine?”

  “I have a very definite and distinct idea,” said Patrick Ives, and for the first time since he had mounted the stand the haggard restlessness of his face relaxed to something curiously approaching gaiety. “It was in my right-hand trousers pocket.”

  Mr. Lambert’s exultant countenance was turned squarely to the jury. “How did it come to be there?”

  “It was there because that’s where I stuck it when I took the boat upstairs to Pete at eight o’clock that evening, and it stayed there until I put it back on the desk Sunday morning after breakfast.”

  “No chance of an error on that?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “No possibility of its being in the possession of Mrs. Ives at any time that evening?”

  “Not a possibility.”

  “Mr. Ives, where were you that evening at nine-thirty o’clock?”

  The careless gaiety departed abruptly from Patrick Ives’s face. For a long moment he sat staring at Lambert, coolly and speculatively. His eyes, still speculating, shifted briefly to the hundreds of eager countenances straining toward his, and at the sight of their frantic attention his mouth twisted somewhat mirthlessly. “Unkind, isn’t it,” mocked his eyes, “to keep you waiting!”

  “I was at home,” said Patrick Ives.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Smoking a pipe and looking through a magazine, I think, though I shouldn’t like to swear to the exact time. I wasn’t using a stop watch.”

  “In what room?”

  “Well, I’m afraid that I can’t help you there much either. I moved about from one room to another, you see. I did a little more work on the boat, smoked, read—I didn’t follow any set programme. I wasn’t aware at the time that it would have been judicious to do so.”

  “You are aware now, however, that Melanie Cordier said that you were not in any of the lower rooms when she made her rounds at ten?”

  “Then I must have been in one of the upper rooms,” said Patrick Ives gently.

  “You are also aware that Mrs. Daniel Ives has told us that you didn’t bring her her fruit that night because you were not in the house?”

  “Well,” said Pat Ives gently still, “this is probably the first time in her life that she was ever mistaken. I was in the house.”

  “What caused you to change your mind as to attending the poker party, Mr. Ives?”

  “Circumstances arose that made it impossible.” The inscrutability of Mr. Ives’s countenance suggested that he would be a formidable addition to any poker party.

  “What circumstances?”

  “Circumstances,” said Mr. Ives, “that I shouldn’t dream of discussing either here or elsewhere. I am able to assure you, however, that they were not even remotely connected with the murder.”

  “What circumstances?” repeated Mr. Lambert, with passionate insistence.

  “Now, what,” asked Mr. Farr with languid pathos, “I again inquire, is my distinguished adversary leaving for a mere prosecutor to do?”

  “Mr. Lambert,” said Judge Carver austerely, “it strikes the Court that you are most certainly pressing the witness unduly in view of the fact that this is direct examination, and you are therefore bound to abide by his answer. The Court____”

  “He has refused to give me an answer,” replied Mr. Lambert, with some degree of justice and a larger degree of heat. “I may state to Your Honor that I regard the witness’s manner as distinctly hostile and____”

  “The Court fails to see wherein he has proved hostile,” remarked Judge Carver critically, “and it therefore requests you to bear in mind henceforth that you are dealing with your own witness. You may proceed with the e
xamination.”

  Mr. Lambert turned his richly suffused countenance back to his own witness, avoiding Sue Ives’s eye, which for the last half hour had not once wavered from the look of passionate indignation that she had directed toward him at the outset of his manoeuvres.

  “Mr. Ives,” said Mr. Lambert, “you heard Miss Roberts testify that she believed that it was your voice that she heard as she tried the door to the day nursery, did you not?”

  “Yes, I heard her testify to that effect.”

  “Was she mistaken?”

  “No,” said Patrick Ives, spacing his words with cool deliberation, “she was not mistaken.”

  “Was she mistaken in believing that the door was locked?”

  “No, she was not mistaken.”

  “Which of you locked the door, Mr. Ives?”

  “If you will tell me what that has to do with the murder of Mimi Bellamy,” said Mr. Ives with even greater deliberation, “I will tell you who locked the door.”

  “You refuse to answer my question?”

  “Most assuredly I refuse to answer your question.”

  “Your Honor____” choked the frenzied Lambert.

  “The Court also fails to see what the question has to do with the case,” said Judge Carver, in a tone by no means propitiatory. “It is excluded. Proceed.”

  “It is being made practically impossible for me to proceed in any direction,” remarked Lambert, in a voice unsteady with indignation. “Impossible! Mr. Ives, all that any occupant of that room had to do in order to get out of the house was to unlock that door and go, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely all,” acquiesced the hostile witness cordially.

  “No one would have been likely to see either one or the other or both depart, would they?”

  “I think it highly unlikely.”

  “No one saw either you or Miss Page in the house between nine and ten, did they?”

  “Not a soul—not a single solitary soul,” said Mr. Ives, and his voice was almost blithe.