The Bellamy Trial (American Mystery Classics)

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “I will try to, Your Honor.”

  “Mrs. Ives, you have told us that when you were standing in darkness you heard a sound that frightened you. Was it someone trying the door?”

  “Oh, no; the door was open. It wasn’t anything as clear as that. I thought first that it was someone moving in the bushes, but it was probably simply my imagination.”

  “You didn’t hear anyone whistling?”

  “No.”

  “You are quite sure that neither of you locked the door?”

  “Absolutely. Why should we lock the door?”

  “I must remind you again, Mrs. Ives, that it is I who am examining you. Now, you say that you went into the room ahead of Mr. Bellamy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far were you from the body when you first saw it?”

  In the paper-white face the eyes dilated, suddenly, dreadfully. “I don’t know. Quite near—three feet—four feet.”

  “You suspected that she was dead?”

  “I knew that she was dead. Her eyes were wide open.”

  “You did not go nearer to her than those three or four feet?”

  “No.” She forced the word through her lips with a dreadful effort.

  “You did not touch her?”

  “No—no.”

  “Then how did the bloodstains get on your coat?”

  At the sharp clang of that triumphant cry she shuddered and turned and came back to him slowly from the small, haunted room. “Bloodstains? There were no bloodstains on my coat.”

  “Do you still claim that the coat that you smuggled out of your house Sunday morning, was stained with grease from Mr. Bellamy’s car?”

  “No—no, I don’t claim that.”

  “That’s prudent of you, as Sergeant Johnson has testified that there was no grease whatever on the car.”

  “I meant to explain that before,” said Sue Ives simply. “Only there were so many other things that I forgot. It was kerosene from the lamp—the coat was covered with it. I didn’t know how to explain it, so I thought that I had better get rid of it.”

  “I see,” said the prosecutor grimly. “You’re a very resourceful young woman, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said the clear, grave voice. “I don’t think that I’m particularly resourceful.”

  “I differ from you. . . . Mrs. Ives, you didn’t intend to tell this jury that you had been in the gardener’s cottage on the night of the nineteenth of June, did you?”

  “Not if I could avoid doing so without perjuring myself.”

  “You decided to do so only when you were literally forced to it by information that you found was in the state’s possession?”

  “It is hard for me to answer that by yes or no,” said Susan Ives. “But I suppose that the fairest answer to it is yes.”

  “You had decided to withhold this vitally important information because you and Stephen Bellamy had together reached the conclusion that no twelve sane men could be found to accept the fantastic coincidence that you and he were in the room in which this murder was committed within a few minutes of this crime, and yet had nothing whatever to do with it?”

  “I think that again the answer should be yes.”

  “You are still of that opinion?”

  “I no longer have any opinion.”

  “Why should you have changed your opinion that twelve sane men could not possibly believe your story?”

  “I do not know whether they will believe me or not,” said Sue Ives, her eyes, fearless and unswerving, on the twelve stolid, inscrutable countenances raised to hers. “You see, I don’t know how true truth sounds.”

  “I should imagine not,” said the prosecutor, his voice cruelly smooth. “No further questions.”

  And at that Parthian shot the white lips in the white face before him curved suddenly and amazingly into the lovely irony of a smile, a last salute over the drawn swords before they were sheathed.

  “That will be all,” said Lambert’s voice gently. “You may stand down.”

  For a moment she did not move, but sat staring down with dark eyes to which the smile had not quite reached, at the twelve enigmatic countenances before her—at the slack, careless young one on the far end; the grim elderly one next to it; the small, deep-set eyes above the heavy jowls of that flushed one in the center; the sleek attentive pallor of the one next to the door. She opened her lips as though to speak again, closed them with a small shake of her head, swept up gloves, bag and fur with one swift gesture, and without a backward glance was gone, moving across the cluttered space between her chair and the box with that light, sure step that seemed always to move across green grass, through sunlight and a little wind. She did not even look at Stephen Bellamy, but in the little space between their chairs their hands met once and clenched in greeting and swung free.

  “Your Honor,” said Lambert, in the quiet, tired voice so many leagues removed from the old boom, “in view of Mrs. Ives’s evidence, I would like to have Mr. Bellamy take the stand once more. I have only one or two questions to put to him.”

  “He may take the stand,” said Judge Carver impassively.

  He took it steadily, the white face of horror that he had turned from the day before schooled once more to the old courtesy and quiet.

  “Mr. Bellamy, you have heard Mrs. Ives’s evidence as to the circumstance that led up to your visit to the gardener’s cottage and of the visit to the cottage itself. Is her description is accord with your own recollection?”

  “In complete accord.”

  “You would not change it in any particular?”

  “No. It is absolutely accurate.”

  “Nor add to it?”

  “Yes. There is something that I believe that I should add. Mrs. Ives was not aware of the fact that I returned to the cottage again that night.”

  If Lambert also was not aware of it, he gave no sign. “For what purpose?”

  “I had no definite purpose—I did not wish to leave my wife alone in the cottage.”

  “At what time did you return?”

  “Very shortly after I left Mrs. Ives at her home. I actually didn’t know what I was doing. I took the wrong turn in the back road and drove around for a bit before I got straightened out, but it couldn’t have been for very long.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Until it began to get light; I didn’t look at the time.”

  “You did not disturb the contents of the cottage in any way?”

  “No; I left everything exactly as it was.”

  “Nor remove anything?”

  “Nothing—nothing whatever.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bellamy. That will be all, unless Mr. Farr has any questions.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have one or two questions,” remarked Mr. Farr, leisurely but grim. “You, too, are highly resourceful, Mr. Bellamy, aren’t you?”

  “I should hardly say that I had proved myself so.”

  “Well, you can reassure yourself. That extra set of automobile tires had to be accounted for, hadn’t they?”

  “I should have accounted for them in any case.”

  “Should you, indeed? That’s very interesting, but hardly a responsive answer to my question. I’ll be grateful if you don’t make it necessary for me to pull you up on that again. Now, you say that you didn’t touch anything in the cottage?”

  “I said that I did not disturb anything.”

  “Oh, you touched something, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I touched her hand.”

  “I see. You were looking for the rings?”

  “No. I didn’t think of the rings.”

  “They were still there?”

  “Until you asked me this minute I had not thought of them. I do not believe that they were there.”

  “Mr. Bellamy, I put it to you that you returned to that cottage with the express purpose of removing those rings, the necklace, and any traces that you or Mrs. Ives may ha
ve left behind you in your previous flight?”

  “You are wrong; I did not return for any of those purposes.”

  “Then for what purpose?”

  “Because I did not wish to leave my wife alone.”

  “You consider that a plausible explanation?”

  “Oh, no; simply a true one.”

  “She was dead, wasn’t she?”

  “She was dead.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew that you couldn’t do anything for her, didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t sure.” The voice was as quiet as ever, but once more the ripple of the clenched teeth showed in the cheek. “She was afraid of the dark.”

  “Of the dark?”

  “Yes; she was afraid to be alone in the dark.”

  “She was dead, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes—yes, she was dead.”

  “You ask us to believe that you spent hours in momentary danger of arrest for murder because a woman who was stone dead had been afraid of the dark when she was alive?”

  “No. I don’t ask you to believe anything,” said Stephen Bellamy gently. “I was simply telling you what happened.”

  “You say that you didn’t touch anything else in the cottage?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “How could you find your way about without a light?”

  “I had a light; I took the flashlight from my car.”

  “So that you could make a thorough search of the premises for anything that had been left behind?”

  “We had left nothing behind.”

  “But you couldn’t have been sure of that, could you? A knife, perhaps? A knife’s an easy thing to lose.”

  “We had no knife.”

  Mr. Farr greeted this statement with an expression of profound skepticism. “Now, before I ask you to step down, Mr. Bellamy, I want to make sure that you haven’t one final installment to add for our benefit. That’s all that you have to tell us?”

  “That is all.”

  “Sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “This continued story that you have been presenting to us from day to day has reached its absolutely ultimate installment?”

  “I have already said that I have nothing to add to my statement.”

  “And this is the same story that you were so sure that no twelve sane men in the world would believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It isn’t necessary to prove to me that I have been the fool of the world,” said Stephen Bellamy quietly. “I willingly admit it. My deepest regret is that my folly has involved Mrs. Ives too.”

  “You have had no cause to revise your opinion as to the skepticism that your account of that night’s doings would arouse in any twelve sane men, have you?”

  “Oh, yes, I have had excellent reason completely to revise it.”

  The low, pleasant voice seemed to jar on the prosecutor as violently as a bomb. “And what reason, may I ask?”

  “At the time that I arrived at that conclusion I had naturally had no opportunity to hear Mrs. Ives on the witness stand. Now that I have, it seems absolutely impossible to me that anyone could fail to believe her.”

  “That must be extremely reassuring for you,” remarked Mr. Farr in a voice so heavily charged with irony that it came close to cracking under the strain. “That will be all, thank you, Mr. Bellamy.”

  Mr. Lambert rose slowly to his feet. “The defense rests,” he said.

  The red-headed girl watched them filing out through the door at the back without comment, and without comment she accepted the cake of chocolate and the large red apple. She consumed them in the same gloomy silence, broken only by an occasional furtive sniff and the application of a minute and inadequate handkerchief.

  “You promised me last night,” said the reporter accusingly, “that if I’d go home you’d stop crying and be reasonable and sensible and____”

  “I’m not crying,” said the red-headed girl—“not so that anybody would notice anything at all if they weren’t practically spying on me. It’s simply that I’m a little tired and not exactly cheerful.”

  “Oh, it’s simply that, is it? Would you like my handkerchief too?” The red-headed girl accepted it ungratefully.

  “The worst thing about a murder trial,” she said, “is that it practically ruins everybody’s life. It’s absolutely horrible. They’re all going along peacefully and quietly, and the first thing they know they’re jerked out of their homes and into the witness box, and things that they thought were safe and hidden and sacred are blazoned out in letters three inches tall in every paper in the . . . That poor little Platz thing, and that wretched Farwell man, and poor little Mrs. Ives with her runaway husband, and Orsini with his jail sentence—it isn’t decent! What have they done?”

  The reporter said, “What, indeed?” in the tone of one who has not heard anything but the last three words. After a moment he inquired thoughtfully. “Have you ever thought about getting married?”

  The red-headed girl felt her heart miss two beats and then race away like a wild thing. She said candidly, “Oh, often—practically all the time. All nice girls do.”

  “Do they?” inquired the reporter in a tone of genuine surprise. “Men don’t—hardly ever.” He continued to look at her abstractedly for quite a long time before he added, “Only about once in their lives.”

  He was looking at her still when the door behind the witness box opened.

  “Your Honor”—the lines in Mr. Lambert’s face stood out relentlessly, but his voice was fresh and strong—“gentlemen of the jury, it is not my intention to take a great amount of your time, in spite of the fact that there devolves on me as solemn a task as falls to the lot of any man—that of pleading with you for the precious gift of human life. I do not believe that the solemnity of that plea is enhanced by undue prolixity, by legal hairsplitting or by a confusion of issues essentially and profoundly simple. The evidence in the case has been intricate enough. I shall not presume to analyze it for you. It is your task, and yours alone, to scrutinize, weigh, and dispose of it. On the other hand, the case presents almost no legal intricacies; any that are present will be expounded to you by Judge Carver when the time comes.

  “When all is said and all is done, gentlemen, it is a very simple question that you have to decide—as simple as it is grave and terrible. The question is this: Do you believe the story that Stephen Bellamy and Susan Ives have told you in this courtroom? Is their story of what happened on that dreadful night a reasonable, a convincing and an honest explanation as to how they became involved in the tragic series of events that has blown through their peaceful homes like a malignant whirlwind, wrecking all their dearest hopes and their dearest realities? I believe that there can be but one answer to that question, and that not so long from now you will have given that answer, and that every heart in this courtroom will be the lighter for having heard it.

  “These two have told you precisely the same story. That Stephen Bellamy did not go quite to the end with it in the first instance is a circumstance that I deplore as deeply as any one of you, but I do not believe that you will hold it against him. He did not, remember, utter one syllable that was not strictly and accurately truthful. It had been agreed between them that if it were necessary to swerve one hairbreadth from the truth, they would not swerve that hairbreadth.

  “In persuading Mrs. Ives that her only safety lay in not admitting that she had been in the cottage that night, Mr. Bellamy made a grave mistake in judgment, but it was the mistake of a chivalrous and distraught soul, literally overwhelmed at the ghastly situation into which the two of them had been so incredibly precipitated.

  “As for Susan Ives, she was so shaken with horror to the very roots of her being—so stunned, so confused and confounded—that she was literally moving through a nightmare during the few days that preceded her arrest; and, gentlemen, in a nightmare the best of us do not think with our accustomed clarity and cogency. She did what
she was told to do, and she was told that it would make my task easier if I did not know that she had been near the cottage that night. That, alas, settled it for her once and for all. She has always sought to make my tasks easier.

  “Stephen Bellamy undoubtedly remembered the old precept that it takes two to tell the truth—one to speak it and one to hear it. Possibly he believed that if there were two to speak it and twelve to hear it, it would be a more dangerous business. I do not agree with him. I believe that twelve attentive and intelligent listeners—as you have amply proved yourselves to be—make the best of all forums at which to present the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is my belief, that was my considered advice, and it is my profound conviction that before many hours have passed I shall be justified of my belief.

  “Perhaps you have guessed that my relations to Susan Ives are not the ordinary relations of counsel to client. Such, at any rate, is the case, and I do not shirk one of its implications. There is no tie of blood between us, but I am bound to her by every other tie of affection and admiration. I can say that I believe she is as dear to me as any daughter,—dearer, perhaps, than any daughter, because she is what most men only dream that their daughter may be. For the first time in my life I have offended her since I came to this court—offended her because she believed that I was more loyal to her welfare than her wishes. But she will forgive me even for that, because she knows that I am only a stupid old man who would give every hope that he has of happiness to see hers fulfilled, and who, when he pleads for her life to-day, is pleading for something infinitely dearer to him than his own.

  “If, later, you say to one another and to yourselves, ‘The old man is prejudiced in her favor; we must take that into account,’ I say to you, ‘And so you must—and so you must—well into account.’ I am prejudiced because I have known her since she was so small that she did not come to my knee; because I have watched her with unvarying wonder and devotion from the days that she used to cling to me, weeping because her black kitten had hurt its paw, or radiant because there was a new daisy in her garden; because I have watched her from those bright, joyous days to these dark and terrible ones, and never once have I found a trace of alloy in her gold. I have found united in her the traits we seek in many different forms—all the gallantry and honesty of a little boy, all the gaiety and grace of a little girl, all the loyalty and courage of a man, all the tenderness and beauty of a woman. If you think I am prejudiced in her favor you will be right, gentlemen. And if that fact prejudices me in your eyes, make the most of it.